Willa laughed. Lukas kissed the baby fist he held captive. Zurie squealed in delight.
Margot rolled her eyes. But with amusement. “It is only hair.” How many times would she have to say that? It was part of the reason why she’d not resorted to scissors since she was ten. “It will grow back, if I decide I want it to.”
“And in the meantime, you’ll look chic and on the cutting edge of fashion.” Willa laughed even as she said it, obviously anticipating the scowl Margot now directed at her reflection. “There, Lukas, I gave her a reason to grow it back out. See what a good wife I am?”
A buzz sounded from the hallway, and Lukas spun out of the door. “That will be your sisters, I imagine. I will let them in.”
“I don’t know why I did it.” Margot said the words quietly, almost changing her mind about saying them at all. But that was the truth that had settled as she walked here. She wasn’t usually so impulsive, especially not about something a stranger said. It didn’t matter. It could have no effect on her life what some random woman in a hospital thought of her. But she had let it—she had made it affect her by reacting as she had done.
She didn’t care about the hair. It would grow, or it would not, if she decided she liked it this way. She’d cut it before. She was hardly like one of those girls who thought they wanted to be fashionable and then bawled their way out of the barbershop.
But the irrational action—that bothered her.
Willa put the scissors down and leaned over until her head was next to Margot’s, their faces sharing the reflection. They looked nothing alike—Willa’s hair was a fair brown, straight and silky, her nose flatter, her complexion that perfect English rose—but they were sisters. Love and Lukas had made them so, and it was the only reason Margot entrusted her with such an unsettling truth.
It was why she made no objections when Willa slid an arm around her shoulders. This sister of hers wasn’t much of a toucher. Only with those she loved best, and only in moments when it mattered. When Willa put her arm around her, Margot knew it meant something.
In many ways, they spoke the same language.
“Margot. I know you think it’s weak to give in to emotions. But you just lost your mother. That can’t go unanswered by your heart.”
“It hasn’t.” It wouldn’t. She would discover what had really made her mother fall and breathe her last. She would go over every minute of her last days until she had answers.
“It has. This isn’t something you approach scientifically, as a puzzle needing to be solved. This isn’t a matter for your head.” She lifted her fingers and rested them against the side of Margot’s head.
Margot drew in a breath. “Everything is a matter for the head. The mind controls the heart—or can. We do not have to be swayed by every emotion that comes along.”
“No. Not each one. But sometimes they crash over us, don’t they? Too strong for us to swim against, to fight off. And then we do illogical things like cut our hair off in the middle of a hospital corridor. Or go with someone into occupied territory to rescue his mother and sister.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Worse, she couldn’t hold Willa’s reflected blue-green gaze. She looked down, even though she could count on one hand the times she’d ever been the first to avert her eyes in a conversation.
It wasn’t wrong to feel emotion. She knew that. Especially in something like this.
But it was dangerous. So dangerous. Emotions didn’t obey the rules. They existed somewhere outside the set of axioms that governed the rest of her life. They confused her.
Chatter and feminine laughter in three different tones filled the hallway. Were it anyone else giggling, she would have gone tense again, but Willa’s sisters she knew well. And knew that they deserved every lighthearted moment they could find or create. They’d lived hard lives, all of them, before the war had set their family of orphans on a different path.
Elinor was the first to enter, looking as though she stepped from an advert, in a smart suit and with perfectly coiffed hair. She held something in her hand that she brandished like a weapon, held aloft to rally the troops. “I bring curlers and wavers!”
Margot would have leapt from the chair if Willa weren’t holding her down. “No. Absolutely not. I only wanted you to trim it—and how did they even know?”
“I told Lukas to telephone them.” Willa narrowed her eyes at her. “Sit still and stop squirming like a child, Margot. You’re as bad as Jory. This isn’t about fashion—this is about blending in.”
“I fail to see—”
“She’s very right.” Rosemary edged over to the dressing table and set down a bag of her own. “Something we learned long ago: Look right, and you’ll draw less attention, not more. If you’re going to have short hair and you don’t want everyone ogling you for it, you have to style it like the other girls are doing.”
Margot groaned. She certainly hadn’t thought of this when she picked up those scissors, or she would have come up with a less bothersome way to snarl at the matron.
“We’ll put it in terms you can understand. That’s why we brought Lina along.” Elinor motioned to the auburn-haired completion of the trio. Evelina wasn’t a direct adoption into their family—she’d married their eldest brother, Barclay, two years ago. “She understands mathematics better than the rest of us.”
Evelina made a show of cracking her knuckles. “I’ve borrowed Fergus’s text so I can get my phraseology right. We’re talking about waves, Margot. So let’s think in terms of amplitude and altitude, all right?”
Elinor nodded and unfastened the bag she’d brought. “Now, you’re going to want to start with these clips. I’ll show you how, but for tonight we’re going to use one of those Marcel heated curling irons.”
It took a ridiculously long time for the sisters to finish their instructions, though that was largely because they were constantly interrupting one another. But Margot thought she was a pretty good sport about it. She took note of how wide each section of hair needed to be, the volume each clip could hold, what diameter she needed in an iron, and which direction to rotate either an iron or a clip to get the desired effect—though she still wasn’t sure she actually desired the effect. She practiced a few times on her own, and she didn’t say what she was thinking about how difficult it would be to get the back into the silly little curlers by herself.
She wasn’t going to point out that she now lived alone. She wouldn’t.
She’d remember the process, though, and do what she could with it. At least since she could simply go to bed with her hair wound around the pins at night and take them out in the morning. A bit of pinning and, according to Elinor, she’d be finished. At least since she’d solidly refused the offer of the pomade the blonde had brought.
At last, they deemed the style complete and let her face the mirror again.
Margot wrinkled her nose at her reflection. “It isn’t me.”
“It is now.” Willa smirked and smoothed down a tuft of her daughter’s hair. Zurie had at some point abandoned Lukas, it seemed. “Unless you want us to make you match your niece.”
Right on cue, Zurie lunged for Margot, chanting, “Go-Go! Go!”
A game board flashed before her mind’s eye. A strange man in the park, playing it. He’d been there a few more times, though not regularly.
Zurie’s fingers found her new waves and latched ahold of them, earning a laughing reprimand from the others. Margot didn’t much care if the style was destroyed, but she also didn’t object when Willa took the little one back. She liked Zurie, and she would like her even more as she grew up a bit and could carry on a conversation. But she never experienced whatever tug these other young women must feel, to make such silly faces and coo over each new addition to their family.
“Let’s show Lukas.” Rosemary tugged her to her feet and gave her a helpful push toward the door. “You know, Go-Go, I could work wonders with that dress, too, if you let me—”
“No. And you’re n
ot allowed to call me that if you’re over three years old.”
Rosemary gave an exaggerated sigh. “You’re hopeless. But we love you anyway.”
A minute later, she stood obediently in front of her brother while he regarded her with lifted brows. His silence stretched long enough that Margot’s fingers curled into her palms. “What? I know it looks strange, but—”
“Non. Ce n’est pas ça.” He shook his head, blinked rapidly. “It isn’t that at all. You look . . . you look like Mère.”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous.” She’d always taken after their father, not their mother. And Maman had certainly never had short hair. Though she had occasionally styled the sides in waves, for special occasions. It had been years since Margot had seen her make such an effort. Before Papa died.
“Look.” Lukas reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. From within it, he slipped a small photograph. “I had it with me in Paris. Before the invasion.”
She took the thick paper, her throat going tight when she looked down at it. Maman, smiling at the camera, looking beautiful and polished. She remembered the portrait—it was what Papa had wanted for his birthday the year before he died. But she’d thought all the prints of it were gone, like everything else from her past.
“I didn’t know you had this.” Each feature was so familiar. So beloved. The darkest hair. The sparkling eyes. The perfectly proportioned face, symmetrical and unequivocally beautiful because of it. And waves on the sides of her hair.
Even so. Her brother may see their mother in her, but only because he wanted to. She handed the photo back and forced her tone to go light. “Does that mean you won’t disown me?”
His smile was crooked. “I did not disown you the other times, did I?”
“No. But I was a child.”
“You were never a child.” Chuckling, he put the photograph back into his wallet, that back into his pocket, and then stepped closer to fold her into his arms. “But you are still my baby sister.”
He said no more. But he didn’t have to. She knew all the things he didn’t voice.
After a moment, she pulled away with a muted smile. “I’d better get home. It’s getting late.”
“You do not . . .” Have to. But he didn’t say that again either. Just sighed and nodded. “Be careful. It is dark already.”
He was coming a long way, this brother of hers. It used to be that he wouldn’t think of allowing her to travel the distance home alone. But as that had proven impossible to keep to, given their very different hours with his concert schedule and her work, he’d settled for making sure she could defend herself against any attacker. Willa and Barclay had taught her all she needed to know.
She said good-bye to the other girls and soon slipped out into the night. The November air was cold but welcome, chasing a few bits of residual clutter from her mind. She buried her hands in her pockets and strode along, from gaslight to gaslight, from Kensington back toward her flat in Chelsea.
Fog had crept in from the Thames at some point while she was inside. It would protect them tonight from biplanes and zeppelins. She watched it swirl in front of the nearest light, moving so slowly that it nearly looked immobile. But it wasn’t. Nothing ever was, it seemed.
At the corner, she paused. Looked toward the park, cold and dark. She didn’t have to see to know where Mrs. Rourke usually sat with her crocheting. Where the stranger had taken up residence at the wrought-iron table instead of Gregory, playing no one at Go.
He wasn’t there now, of course. Even from here she could see the silhouette of the empty chair. But why was he ever? Who was he? And where had he come by that game?
“Have you any spare change, miss?”
She didn’t jump, but she did jerk her head toward the voice more quickly than if she’d noted the figure before his words snuck through the fog toward her. There, someone shuffling toward the light.
Male. Twenty-two to twenty-five, were she to guess. Five feet eleven inches, if he’d been standing up straight, which he wasn’t. He was hunched against the chill and hobbling with that distinct gait that suggested a missing limb. Hair of an indeterminate color in the dim light. A cap pulled low against the cold. A scarf that was more holes than knit—Maman would have been appalled.
He didn’t come any closer. Whether the distance was out of respect or because he knew he’d get nothing from her if he scared her, she could only guess. But she opened her handbag. The journal that the duchess had given her still protruded from the top, but she reached in around it and pulled out her change purse. She never carried much on her, not unless she was going to the shops. But she counted out what she had and held it all out in her palm. “Here.”
The man hesitated, edged a bit closer, and then took a single florin. “I won’t take all you have, miss. You’ve no doubt a husband and little ones at home.”
“No, I haven’t. Take it all.” She followed his hand and spilled the coins into it. Maman would have given more conservatively, always mindful of the house in Brussels that would need repair and the accounts that might be drained when they were no longer frozen.
But Margot’s equation was different.
The man’s fingers closed around the offering. “I don’t—I mean, thank you. I hate to have asked. To have had to ask.”
He must be new to such hard times.
“I’ll work for it. If I can. That is . . .” He edged back half a step. No expression of pain accompanied the awkward movement, so perhaps the injury wasn’t as new as the low circumstances. “There’s not much I can do these days.”
And she had nothing that needed done, regardless.
Or did she? “I do have one small task that you can accomplish. Not now, but sometime this week.” She pointed to the park, and to the empty table and chair. “Sometimes there is a man there, playing a board game with white and black stones. He’ll tell no one his name. But if you could determine who he is, I would very much appreciate it.”
The stranger frowned. “All right. May I ask why?”
“Because I don’t like unknowns. Every x in an equation ought to be solved for.”
“Then you’ll want to know my name as well.” He stuck out a hand. “I’m called Redvers—Red, for short. Red Holmes.”
She shook rather than holding her hand out, wrist limp, for him to bow over. “Any relation to Sherlock?”
He laughed, making her glad she’d emptied her change purse for him. “Not that I’ve yet discovered. So once I’ve found out who that other bloke is, how am I to let you know?”
Well, that was a good question. She could only imagine Lukas’s outrage if she told him where she lived. “If you’re in this neighborhood often, you could simply make it a point to be on this corner around five-thirty. That’s when I usually walk by.” When she walked this way, which she typically only did if coming from her brother’s, or if she fancied a turn through the park. But she’d take the long way until he reported back. And then he wouldn’t know her actual path, in case he was less savory than he seemed.
He nodded and slid the hand with the coins into his pocket. “Thank you, miss. I’m grateful. I won’t spend it on anything but food, I promise you.”
Yes, definitely new to his current plight. She nodded and kept her features schooled. “I trust not. Have a good evening, Mr. Holmes.”
“You too, miss. Thank you.”
He hadn’t asked her name, and he backed up again to give her room to go by. She nearly smiled. In the French sectors of Belgium, people tended to get much closer than the English did in general. Stop to ask someone for directions, and they all but embraced you. But she’d taken rather naturally to the more generous spaces between people, and she appreciated now that he was obviously taking pains to keep from alarming her.
A nice man, she would guess. On hard times thanks to whatever battle had stolen part of his left leg. Of no more use to the army. She could only imagine how long he’d been recuperating, the agony as he learned to use a false fo
ot. But none of that showed on his face now. No pain, other than that of failure. He must have been trying recently to find work and been turned away.
There ought to be something though. It was a simple matching operation. Perhaps when he told her the name of the Go player, she would ask him what skills he had.
And in the meantime, she could at the very least provide him with a better scarf. Maman always had a stack of extras. “You never know when you might see a neck in need of warmth,” she’d said no fewer than eight times.
She hurried home, checking over her shoulder to be sure no one was following—cold or not, she wouldn’t have the fellow finding out where she lived. In the door, up the stairs. Noting absently the squeaky stair, the missing rung, all the markers. She kept her stride open and long as she moved to 3E. Three of E. Three of—no.
Just 3E. No more equations there.
She let herself in and locked up behind her. With one hand she turned on the low gaslights while she dropped her handbag on the table with the other. Then she turned and made it two steps toward the bedroom doors before she stopped.
The scarves were all in Maman’s room. Behind the door that she hadn’t opened in a week. The door she’d not really planned to open again until someone called her on her cowardice. In a month or two. Or three. Or four.
She hadn’t said anything to Red Holmes about the scarf. He wouldn’t know if she changed her mind.
But she would know.
Margot stood rooted to the spot for five seconds. And then ten more. And another thirty before she drew in a long breath and forced herself forward. Right foot—one. Left foot—two. Another halt.
“You’re stronger than this, Margot.” She clenched her hands into fists and wished she hadn’t spoken aloud—it made the flat seem all the emptier. Just go.
Go—white stones and black, the outlines of squares. Strangers in the park.
The Number of Love Page 14