Her friend chuckled. “Because everyone is invited, and from what I hear, he and Mr. Serocold will be performing for us. Sarah said they’re talented musicians, the both of them.”
Margot smiled. She could see musicians of far more talent whenever she pleased—she had only to tag along with Lukas and Willa. But Serocold and Herschell, two of the cryptographers, did have talent, to be sure. Maman had dragged her to a similar dinner party over the summer.
Tedious thing. At least until she’d been on hand for one of the always-entertaining debates between Dilly Knox—confirmed atheist—and William Montgomery—who’d even come to said dinner party in his clerical robes.
To Dot she only said, “I don’t imagine I’ll want to attend, no.”
“It could be good for you. To get out and do something, I mean.” Her cheeks flushed, and Margot didn’t think it was from the sting of the wind. “I know I am a fine one to speak of the merits of getting out.”
“I am out every day.” Though come to think of it . . . “Do you mean you want to go?”
“I don’t know. I won’t. I know I won’t. Not unless you needed the outing and required my company.”
A rather elementary equation, this. A single variable—Dot’s desires—combined with the known quantities of her fears and Margot’s presence. But the fears were substantial and negative, so the result would be too, unless the variable were large enough to overcome it. And the only way for Dot to make it so was to call upon her desire to be there for someone else. For Margot.
No, perhaps not so simple an equation. Because that same variable of Dot’s desires must be on the other side of the equal sign as well. She wanted to go. Or at least, she wanted to want to go.
Margot didn’t. But she’d learned long ago that wants must often be sacrificed when it came to maintaining relationships. “I’ll think about it. See how I’m feeling on Thursday and Friday.”
Her throat no longer ached, but she was still rather exhausted by day’s end. A blessing that allowed her to fall into bed and go immediately to sleep without having to look overlong at the flat. At the closed door to Maman’s cupboard of a room. To all the empty places that should have been filled with laughter and chiding and French phrases.
She focused on the street that would lead them to Charing Cross Hospital and changed the subject. “How long do you suppose your brother will be in hospital?”
“The doctors said it will be weeks.” Dot sighed. “Drake will be gnawing at the bit long before then. Perhaps I’ll be able to convince them to release him to my care, since my flat isn’t far. I can set up Aunt Millie’s room for him.”
Margot hadn’t yet pieced together all the details of her friend’s family. Most of it, but there were still a few gaps. “Where does he usually stay when in London?”
“At a club, lately. He’d been attending university in Spain before the war, so after our father died, we agreed it was best to let the house, and I moved in with Aunt Millie.” She didn’t say with words how hard the change had been on her, but a wisp of it echoed in her eyes. She’d moved, she’d made a new home. She hadn’t been willing to do it again when Aunt Millie evacuated. “Drake wasn’t at home enough to warrant keeping a room for him.”
A Lord-inspired move, no doubt. Margot had already learned that their father’s shipping business, which her brother had planned to take over once he graduated, had suffered greatly in the first days of the war, with three-fourths of their vessels being struck by U-boats. Perhaps after the war they would rebuild the line, but that was hardly possible while Drake Elton was in the Royal Navy.
The hospital loomed large and quiet ahead of them. Margot could all but feel her remaining energy drain away another half a percent with every step she took.
But she would treat it as she did everything else—a mental exercise. She counted the steps as they entered. How long it took to travel down the corridor, up the stairs to the lieutenant’s ward, down the next corridor. How many doors on each side of the hallway. Calculate the hour by how far into the rooms the light from the windows stretched.
Dot turned in at the appropriate door, but Margot halted, her ears nearly twitching. From somewhere down the corridor came a French diatribe in a cultured female voice. It acted like a magnet upon her bones, pulling her toward it.
“Margot?”
She motioned Dot on. “Go ahead. I’ll find you in a moment. I want to see who’s shouting in French.”
Dot disappeared into the ward with a chuckle. Margot followed her ears down the corridor, to the entrance of a small administrative room in which two women stood. The younger was the one doing the shouting, her words complete with a few uniquely Gallic gestures of her hands. She was dressed in serviceable grey, like the nurses, but jewels winked at her ears and from her fingers. And her curly blond hair had been shorn above the shoulders. Somehow Margot couldn’t imagine the strict matrons allowing that for just any nurse or volunteer.
The matron in front of her, in a crisp white apron over a dowdy grey dress, wore a pinched expression on her face. “I’m terribly sorry, Your Grace, but I’m sure whatever you’re on about has a reasonable explanation.”
Margot leaned into the doorframe. “She said that she’s tired of being given only the neat and tidy jobs after years volunteering here, just because her husband’s a duke, and that if it wouldn’t be too ironic for words, she’d complain to him of this preferential treatment. But then any changes would be a result of more preferential treatment, and so she’s thoroughly stymied, and she knows nothing will change, and so she’ll just shout about it for a moment, get it out of her system, and then pretend to be a reasonable British lady again.”
The duchess spun on her, amusement sparkling in her eyes. “Had I known someone was handy who could understand me, I would have made the rant in Monegasque.”
Margot lifted her brows. “My Italian is passable too—I probably still could have pieced the gist of it together. Je suis désolée.”
Her Grace tilted her head and studied her. “Northern France or Belgium?”
“Louvain.” Margot mirrored her position. “Given the reference to Monegasque, may I assume Monaco?”
“Oui.” She smiled. “Though not recently. I suppose eventually I ought to claim to be from either Yorkshire, where my father lives, or the Cotswolds, where I now do.” The lady held out a hand, masculine style. “Brook Wildon.”
“The Duchess of Stafford!” the ward matron practically shouted, exasperation bringing her up onto the balls of her feet. As if ready to pounce on Margot if she dared to greet so lofty a personage by name.
Margot shook the duchess’s hand. “I believe you’ve met my brother at one of his concerts. Lukas De Wilde. And I am Margot.”
“Oh yes, you’re the mathematician! He’s mentioned you. Fondly. Tell me . . .” Brook reached into a bag slung onto her shoulder and pulled out a few papers. “It’s really very fortuitous that I should run into you. I’ve been trying to find someone to discuss this with, but none of my friends care in the least, and my husband, who first introduced me to these concepts, is a bit busy at the present time. Have you read Professor Einstein’s latest paper on how general relativity describes the creation and fate of the universe?”
Margot’s fingers itched—not like her insides did when someone said something stupid, but in a way that made her reach out and take the proffered paper with more enthusiasm than could possibly be polite. “I have not been able to find any recent copies of the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte.”
“It’s rather difficult to get anything originally published in German right now, to be sure. But my grandfather has connections.” Brook waved a hand. “Keep that one, read it, and then I would love your thoughts, if you’ve the time. Are you volunteering here?”
She nearly nodded, just because of all the positivity thrumming through her head. But she caught herself. “No. I’m just visiting a patient with a friend.” Unable to resist, she thumbed throu
gh the journal.
“Then take this too.” A calling card appeared in Margot’s vision and tucked itself into the page of the journal she’d opened to. “When you’ve had a chance to read it, just jot me a note, and we’ll arrange tea or dinner or whatever is most convenient for you.”
“I will. Thank you so much, Your Grace.” She dragged her gaze off all those beautiful scientific words long enough to smile at the lady.
Said lady positioned a hat over her short curls with a grin. “Excellent. So glad to have met you, Margot. I’ll let you get back to your friend, and I to my boys, before my father can spoil them beyond recognition. Bonne soirée!”
“Merci. À vous aussi.” Margot’s eyes ran down the index of the journal. All the articles looked interesting, but she made special note of where Professor Einstein’s began—page 142. At least with all the codebreaking she’d been doing, her German was more or less fluent. She ought to be able to follow the professor’s words. And the numbers, of course, would speak for themselves in that language unique to them, independent of German or English or French.
The matron huffed and took Margot by the elbow, propelling her back into the corridor. “I ought to take that from you, young lady—it is surely a sin to fill your mind with that rot.”
“I beg your pardon?” Margot closed the journal and tucked it under the arm opposite the matron.
“How the universe was created, she said. And its fate! As if we don’t know the former and can ever know the latter. That is in the Lord’s hands, not man’s.” The woman’s brows met above her nose in a frown.
Margot’s neck itched. “We can know it was created by God and still ask questions as to how, madam. That is not a sin. And if you think it is, then I find it curious that you work in a hospital, because is not medicine to the human form as theoretical physics is to the universe? Seeking to understand the order by which the Lord set the world in motion?”
A hmph was the matron’s answer to that. She stared at where the duchess’s figure disappeared down the stairwell. “Blessed as we are to have such a patroness, that one is not fitting company for a girl like you. You ought to dispose of that card. Bobbing her hair as she’s done—and I’ve heard she’s even been seen in trousers! Hardly a good influence on an impressionable young thing like yourself.”
“An impressionable young thing?” A wave crashed over her, making her head feel tight and her throat close off and her heart pound so hard that the words unknown heart condition flickered through her brain.
She hated being called young. Hated it. Too long she had been dismissed, her ideas ignored solely because she hadn’t been alive as long as others. She’d thought those days were beyond her now that she’d been part of the adult world for so many years. But no, this frumpish lump of a woman would speak down to her simply because her skin was smooth with youth. And impressionable? As if she hadn’t mind enough to make it up for herself? That she would just follow someone else’s fashion choices?
As if it even mattered if she did?
Margot yanked her elbow out of the woman’s grasp. With one hand she pulled the pins from her hair, and with the other she reached for a pair of scissors sitting on a wheeled cart outside one of the ward doors. The scientific journal smacked onto the floor.
“What in the world are you—?”
“Well, if I’m so impressionable . . .” She held out the long, dark coil of hair and, with a single snip, cut it off.
Still that wave crashed and roared and bubbled, making her breath come too fast. She slammed both shears and hair onto the cart and bent to snatch up the journal. “There. Now you know you may as well judge me as you do anyone else who doesn’t conform to your narrow-minded views.”
The woman made a sound that was half gasp, half squeak of protest.
Margot marched into Lieutenant Elton’s ward, still fuming. For a few steps. Then the steam dissipated. The pressure in her chest eased. Her eyes burned. She stopped, eyes fastened on a seam in the tile floor, and tried to regulate the ragged edges of her breath.
In—two, three, four. Out—two, three, four. Eight beats. Six seconds. One cycle. Two. Three.
Trace the seams. Measure the tiles. Twelve inches by twelve inches. Twenty-six tiles from one wall to the other. Three hundred twelve inches. Eight yards and two feet.
Hair tickled her neck in a way it hadn’t done since she was six—the first time she’d taken a pair of scissors to her hair, to eliminate the need for the ridiculous ribbons Maman had insisted on tying in it. That day, she’d learned what happened when she crossed one of Sophie De Wilde’s invisible lines, and she hadn’t been able to sit at her desk chair without pain for hours.
But Maman wasn’t here to see. To judge. To punish. Or to decide that it wasn’t deserving of punishment.
She had never drawn the lines in the same place twice. The second time Margot had cut her own hair, at age ten, it had simply been because it was annoying her, not in rebellion. Maman hadn’t punished her that time, and it wasn’t because she’d left it longer—below her shoulders, no ends tickling her neck. It had been because it hadn’t been meant to hurt anyone.
“It is the heart that matters,” Maman had said as she evened out the edges that second time. “The motivation.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. The matron was a narrow-minded hag. But Margot’s actions wouldn’t actually hurt her. They were merely a statement. So did it deserve punishment?
“Margot! What did you do?”
Apparently Dot thought it did. Or deserved outrage, anyway.
Margot opened her eyes to find that she’d apparently made it to Lieutenant Elton’s bed, more or less. Her friend had stood up, eyes as round as zeros, fingers reaching out to touch the blunt edges of Margot’s hair.
Margot swallowed. “Made a statement to the matron about the opinion in which I held her judgments, I believe.” Riding that wave of whatever-it-had-been. The one that left her empty when it ebbed.
For the first time in their acquaintance, Dot looked baffled by her. “Why? Why would you . . . Everyone will say you’re . . .”
“The better question is,” Drake Elton put in from his place propped against pillows, “what did the matron say to instigate the reaction? We all know she’s a judgmental nag.”
Her insides went a bit softer. Margot offered him a smile for taking her side, despite the fact that he had no real reason to. Then she looked back to Dot. “I don’t care what anyone says.” She meant only to blink, but her eyes stayed shut for a long moment. Squeezed. “She just made me so . . .”
“Angry?” Now Dot’s voice was soft. The kind of soft that meant she was trying to be understanding, and perhaps probe a bit. Maman had always excelled at that particular tone.
Margot forced her eyes back open. “Of course not. That wouldn’t be logical.”
“No.” Dot drew the word into three syllables. “It would be emotional. You’ve had a trying week.”
Trying. The English word came from the French. To examine, to separate the good from the bad. Is that what losing her mother was supposed to do? Cull and test and examine her? Or bits of her? Or perhaps just try her, as a whole, and sit in judgment?
No. There could be no purpose to it. None. Not from God.
But someone else could have had a purpose. A black one. Hitting directly at Room 40, perhaps. Or at Margot.
Margot sucked in a breath and angled away. “Do you mind if I leave? I don’t mean to abandon you, but I know well I didn’t cut it in a straight line, and—”
“Oh, it’s straight.” Dot’s lips twitched. “Just . . . diagonal.”
That was enough to make her twitchy, and she squirmed her shoulders in protest. “Short I don’t mind. Crooked won’t do.”
Her friend laughed. “No. It won’t do at all. Do you need my help?”
“Willa can fix it, I imagine. You enjoy your time with your brother.” She sent him a tight smile over Dot’s shoulder. “Sorry to have caused a ruckus.”
; “Are you kidding?” His grin looked almost nearly without pain. “This is the most interesting thing to happen here in days. You’ve made yourself the heroine of the ward.”
With a shake of her head more amused than she’d thought it could be, Margot tucked the journal and the duchess’s card into her handbag and calculated how long it would take her to reach her brother’s house—and how many horrified looks she’d have to ignore on the walk.
12
Ignore your brother.”
Margot kept her gaze on the mirror, but she moved it from the reflection of Willa as she snipped at the back of her hair to Lukas, who stood glowering in the doorway. An image that might have looked more intimidating were Zurie not gurgling happily in his arms and smacking his cheeks with chubby hands.
“No, do not ignore me. I am only saying what everyone else will. Short hair on women is scandalous.”
Willa smiled as she worked. “He doesn’t mean that, because he knows well that I cut mine the year before he met me, and he would never ever imply that I committed some grave social error in doing so.”
Lukas’s reflection frowned. “That was different. You cut yours so you could sell it and buy material to make your brother a coat. That was a selfless reason, not one made from frustration. Or fashion—not that Margot ever thinks of something as trivial as fashion.”
Snip. Snip. Willa cut hair in the same way she played the violin—with precise, well-planned movements. The tension in Margot’s shoulders eased. She would be even and symmetrical again in no time.
“You know how rebellious I am, luv. Keep saying how unbecoming it is, and I’m going to cut my own.”
Lukas’s reflection intercepted little Zurie’s hand, which made the baby giggle. His scowl only darkened. “Absolutely not. I forbid it.”
Margot’s gaze went to Willa in the mirror. Her sister-in-law only grinned at the command. “And why not? Will you not love me anymore if I have short hair?”
“That is not it, as well you know. But if you cut yours, then it would not be but a day before suddenly I was thinking that short hair was the loveliest style ever to come into fashion, and it is embarrassing to constantly be changing my opinions based on whatever you do. Spare a man his pride, mon amour. Take pity.”
The Number of Love Page 13