“It was . . .” Her smile froze. Her blood froze. Her very heart froze, and she could only stare at him. “You? You are Eighteen?”
Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her. After all, given the number of agents in Spain and the fact that she knew he was a part of Thoroton’s network, she could have easily calculated the chances of it being him. Could have. But hadn’t.
She pushed away from the table, tossed her napkin into the place where her plate had been, and spun away. Perhaps it made sense, in a way. Who better for God to tell her to pray for than her new friend’s brother? Dot would have been devastated had he been killed in the field. Her last close relative, gone.
It was for Dot. Surely. That was why God had whispered Eighteen into her ear over and over again.
Her fingers curled into her palm, bit into the flesh. Though she wasn’t aware of giving them the instruction, her feet had taken her to the window. The curtains were drawn, of course—it was dark outside, and the blackout restrictions were in place. She gained nothing by standing here. She couldn’t see out. Couldn’t track the clouds. Couldn’t watch raindrops race and tumble down the glass.
But she could feel the cold radiating off it, and she could see her own window in her mind’s eye instead of this one. Those grey clouds that had broken up and chased each other across the sky on that wretched day. She could hear Lukas, now as then. Smell the tea Dot had pressed into her hand that day.
She could hear that blighted number echoing over and again in her ear. Eighteen. Eighteen. Eighteen.
Her palms stung from where her nails, always kept short and utilitarian, dug into her palms.
“What did I say?”
She jumped at the voice, so close to her side. The wrong voice. Not Lukas or Dot or the landlady. Him. Her head snapped his way, that blood that had gone cold now raging. “You.” It came out low, accusatory. As if he could help that God had brought him to her mind. “I prayed for you.”
His brows knit over that knot in his nose, and he reached out a hand to the opposite window frame to brace himself. His hand shook, but she suspected it wasn’t from her revelation. “Thank you? Though I’m not certain why you sound so angry about it.”
“Not now, after you came home. Then. Before.” She dragged in a breath, huffed it out. “Eighteen. God kept bringing the number to mind, ever since I decoded that report from Thoroton for DID. Not long after Dot and I met.”
His fingers bit into the wood like hers did into her palm. “Wait. That you decoded?”
“I’m not a secretary, Drake.” She spat it, hurled it at him, hoping it would hurt him and not quite sure why she hoped that. Or why she thought it would. She was nothing to him, and his preconceived notions being challenged couldn’t really affect anything. “I’m a cryptographer.”
“You?” Incredulity flickered across his face, chased by denial, amusement, and then simple blankness. “All right. You’re a codebreaker. And you decoded one of Thoroton’s reports for the admiral. So you read about Agent Eighteen and . . . ?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to be talking to him, frankly, but unfortunately the powers of her mind stopped rather short of moving her by sheer will through time and space, and there were far too many people between her and the door who wouldn’t let her storm out of her own birthday celebration. Blast them all. “And God kept bringing the number to mind at odd moments. Telling me to pray. That first day, the Tuesday. And then a Sunday in the park, after Mass. And—”
“Tuesday and Sunday,” he muttered. When she peeled her eyes back open, she saw his brows were furrowed again. “The day I ran into Jaeger in the warehouse. And then in the city.” His gaze clashed with hers, tangled. “Your prayers may well have saved my life those days.”
“Bully for you.” She jerked her head back toward the blank window again and folded her arms over her chest.
He shifted closer, something tense and pain-filled in his movement. His side, no doubt. “Do you really hate me that much? That you begrudge having prayed for me?” Or maybe not his side.
She pressed her lips together, but still pressure built inside her head. Blast and blast again. She shook her head. “Of course not. It isn’t you at all. It’s just . . .” She wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t tell him. Why should she? It was none of his business. He was nothing to her. Nothing but the brother of a friend.
Nothing but the man God had told her to pray for when she should have been praying for her mother. Something hot and wild heaved its way from her stomach upward, making her shoulders convulse. She squeezed her eyes shut again. “That day. She was lying there on the floor, already gone, and all that was going through my head was that stupid number. My mother was dead, and God was concerned for you.”
“Margot.” He stepped closer, so close she could smell his soap. So close she could tell that he was blocking the view of her from the others. Shielding her from their attention as brine scalded her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault.” It was His. She shuddered and leaned into the window frame, trying and failing to wrestle it all back down. “I should have been praying for her. Not you. That morning, when I was just standing there, waiting for her to come. He should have brought her to mind then. Should have told me to go home, but no. He let me get that stupid fever that muddled my mind, and He said nothing. No numbers to warn me or spur me home or anything. He just let her die and didn’t let me help.”
“Maybe you couldn’t have.” Fingers brushed her shoulder, retreated. “Maybe He wanted to spare you that pain.”
“What?” How did that make any sense at all? Prying her blurred eyes back open yet again, she turned her head to glare at him.
He was too close. Under normal circumstances, she would have backed away or made him do so. Just now, she knew it was to keep their conversation private, and with that she could agree. No one else needed to hear her falling apart. “I could have saved her. If I’d just gone home earlier—”
“Why do you assume that?” His face a careful mask of dispassion and yet, somehow, empathetic, he held her eyes. “Do you hold the powers of life and death in your hands?”
As if that deserved a response. She pursed her lips.
“Margot, sometimes there’s simply nothing we can do. You want to think you could have helped, that a few minutes or hours would have made a difference. That she could be here still.” He spread his hands. “But what if it wouldn’t have? What if, no matter what you did that day, she would have died? Do you think it would be easier now if you’d seen it happen? If she’d been in your arms?” Now his face contorted. “It wouldn’t be. Trust me. I was with my mother in the boat when it overturned. I tried to get her to shore, I tried to save her. I was barely more than a lad, but I thought it was my fault that I couldn’t. I watched her face mottle and her soul fly away. You never forget that. Never. You ought to be thanking the Lord for sparing you such a memory.”
She shook her head. “Better bad memories for me than her dying alone.”
“Really? You think she’d have wished that on you? What if her last prayer was for you, that the Lord spare you that?”
She jolted and pressed that last inch into the window, away from him as much as she could manage.
Because she could imagine it. Maman, feeling the pain, knowing her last minutes were upon her, and thinking not of herself or how to get help, but of her children. Praying that God spare them whatever pain He could.
But He shouldn’t have listened. He should have told her anyway.
Drake swayed a bit on his feet, but he didn’t move off, didn’t reach for any support. “I know nothing makes it easier. I do, I’ve been there. Logic can’t make it feel less.”
Her chin edged up. “I am no slave to my feelings.” She wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.
His smile looked sad. And understanding. “Then cling to the logic. If you trust the Lord enough to listen when He asks you to pray for a stranger, you must trust H
im in this too—that He knows better than we do when it is time for us to die.”
How many times had she said she trusted the Lord because He was the only being in the universe she could be sure was smarter than she? She hadn’t questioned Him when He took Papa home. But somehow this was different. “I cannot accept it. Not this time.” Her words emerged bare and skeletal, clattering against each other like dry bones.
He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Lukas appeared, frowning and fierce. “Margot, what is the matter?” He shot an arrow of a look at Drake.
Margot touched her brother’s arm to still him. “We were talking of Maman. That’s all.”
She could feel his muscles relax, even as he sighed and focused on her again. “It is supposed to be a celebration of your birthday tonight, ma bichette.”
As if she could help but think of her mother when celebrating her own birth. It was such a ridiculous thing to say that her shoulders wiggled against the itch of it. “Don’t be stupid, Lukas.”
He wasn’t, and so he could puzzle out quickly enough the idiot thing he’d said. He rolled his eyes.
She lifted her chin. “And if you don’t stop calling me a doe, I’m going to—”
“What should I call you instead? Mon nombre?”
She had to give it to her brother—he knew how to cheer her. “That would do.”
“You are ridiculous. But I shall still give you your gift. Come.”
She let him take her hand and tug her toward the couch. And she sent Drake a long glance as she stepped around him. One that apologized, she hoped, for Lukas assuming he had made her cry. One that said she appreciated him listening—and not being offended at her for all but accusing him of being the reason she hadn’t saved her mother.
One that said, perhaps, that she hoped they could be friends . . . if he’d just stop looking at her as he did.
18
Drake blamed his exhaustion on the churning waves crashing around inside him, knowing very well that had little to do with it.
She’d prayed for him. Whenever he faced the threat of Jaeger, she’d been praying.
Had it been old Mrs. Colton from the flat above Dot’s who said so, he simply would have marveled at the Lord’s care. But it wasn’t. It was her. While her dark eyes had been haunting him, his number had been echoing in her mind, bidding her to pray.
Did it mean anything? That they were somehow connected, other than through his sister? She’d say no, he suspected.
But his heart said yes.
Were the others not chattering and passing Margot a few wrapped packages, he may have splayed a hand over his chest to try to dampen the ache there. He’d have to be a fool to pursue this course. And he wasn’t. He didn’t need the headache and heartache of chasing after a girl who wanted nothing to do with him.
But not nothing. There’d been something in that final glance of hers. Something that acknowledged that there was more connecting them than Dot. Or there could be.
Not romance though. She’d call him a fool for even considering it and pretend he didn’t exist again while sitting a few inches away, as she’d done through dinner.
“Here.” Her brother—who at least didn’t still look ready to finish what Jaeger’s bullet had started—handed her a rectangular gift that shouted book in its dimension. “I had Barclay scouring the bookshops for months to find this.”
He had no idea who Barclay might be, but Willa, who sat on the end of the couch closest to him, leaned over to say, “My older brother. He has a . . . knack, let’s call it, for finding whatever anyone might need. Hence why Admiral Hall has hired him to do just that.”
Drake produced a smile for her, though she turned back to face Margot before she really saw it.
Margot had gotten the paper off the book and laughed when its title was revealed.
Dot scooted forward on her chair. “What is it? Something about mathematics, no doubt.”
“Yes.” Grinning in a way that nearly stopped his heart, she held up the book.
“No.” Her brother sent her a mock scowl.
Dot lifted a brow. “Poetry?”
Margot nodded. “Mathematics. Meter and rhythm and rhyming patterns. All mathematics.”
“Hardly.” Lukas’s eyes were definitely twinkling over his frown. “Music. Poetry is but music without the instruments.”
Willa rolled her eyes and leaned back comfortably against the couch. “Spare us the familiar debate, you two. And do explain why you had my brother hunting for this particular book of poetry, luv.”
“Émile Verhaeren is one of Belgium’s most beloved poets.” His expression softened into a smile. One flavored, it looked to Drake, with honeyed memories. “Les Heures Claires was the book we first began our music-or-mathematics debate over, when Margot was . . . what? Nine?”
Drake’s throat went tight. Les Heures Claires.
“Eight.” She ran a hand over the cloth binding. Her amusement shifted into longing. “It burned along with all our other books. In Louvain.”
Dot shot a look at Drake. “Isn’t this the one you’re reading now?”
All eyes flew to him, and he nodded. “I found a copy in my favorite bookshop in Bilbao. Had it with me when I was . . .” He motioned to his side.
Lukas turned wide eyes on him. “Parlez-vous français?”
Nodding, Drake said, “Oui. In addition to Spanish and Italian and Latin. Spanish is, of course, my best language after English, but French is a close third.”
“I’ve always been a dunce at languages.” Dot chuckled at herself and cast a look at Red, who’d pulled over a chair from the dining table. “You?”
“I always reckoned English enough.”
Drake looked between his sister and their old friend. Measuring. Gauging. Her eyes lit when she looked at Redvers Holmes in a way he hadn’t seen them do since Nelson signed up. And now that he paused to think of it, her smiles had been rather more abundant than usual when talking with him too.
He let out a slow breath. Finding the bloke a good position just got a bit more imperative.
“Here. This is from Drake and me.” Dot handed Margot a small package that contained a few decorative hairpins and grinned. “Mostly me.”
He certainly hadn’t chosen them. “Entirely Dot. She’s just too good to allow me to arrive empty-handed to the celebration, so she added my name to the tag.”
Margot lifted her eyes to him for the slenderest of seconds before focusing on the package, but it was a sliver of attention large enough to pierce.
Blast it all, he’d never get her out of his head now. The eyes, the prayers, even the poetry had all conspired against him. He was doomed. Which left him with one vital question.
What could he do about it?
“Oh, how lovely.” No particular excitement emerged with Margot’s words as she lifted the crystal-encrusted pins from their box. “Thank you, Dot.”
His sister laughed. “I know you don’t care a whit for pretty baubles. But they’ll help keep your hair out of your face without the need for the pomade you detest.”
“Oh!” Now her face brightened. “Thank you very much, then. And there are ones with metal flowers as well.” She held these up, presumably for Willa to see, since the other men seemed about as interested in them as Drake was.
But he took mental notes on Margot’s reactions. Pretty things—useless. Useful things—priceless. Mathematics over music. Logic over feelings. She was obviously a subscriber to the virtues of sarcasm, and when one could engage her there, she went from stony silence to smiles. She said she didn’t want a husband and children, but family was obviously of the utmost importance to her.
She sought solitude. But if she really wanted to be alone, she wouldn’t be so angry at God for letting her mother die that way.
He let it all tumble through his head while Dot served the cake she’d made with the sugar she’d been saving. He’d never win Margot over through conventional means. Never gain her heart if he
appealed to it outright. But there had to be a way. She was no island—she was anchored to Lukas, to Willa, to Willa’s family. She’d formed a quick attachment to Dot and seemed to have taken to Red.
Drake let a bite of cake melt on his tongue. It would be easier if she were just another girl. Like Ada. But he’d never liked Ada. He had no interest in just another girl. This one, though. He apparently preferred dark eyes to ready smiles. Sarcasm to sweetness. Codebreakers to secretaries.
Codebreaker. He straightened a bit in his chair, barely even wanting to wince. She must be a talented one indeed, for DID to have hired her to the position contrary to convention. Obviously she loved it. That was the life she wanted to pursue, even after this madness of war was over. Numbers and equations and puzzles.
He could use that. Convince her he could be a part of it.
An hour later, their guests were all moving toward their coats and the door, laughter still ringing out. No one expected Drake to shuffle along with them, but he at least stood and added his farewells. And, when Lukas De Wilde stepped over to shake his hand while the others were all by the exit, Drake seized the opportunity before it slipped away. Who knew when he’d see her brother again?
“May I ask you a question?” He kept his voice low, though it was doubtful the others would hear him over Dot and Red’s laughter.
Lukas smiled. “Of course.”
The smile likely would shift in a moment. Drake braced himself. “May I court your sister?”
Well, the man didn’t shout in laughter at the absurdity. Or scowl either. He just went very still and held his gaze for a long moment. “Mr. Elton . . . I personally have no objections. But my sister very well may.”
“I know.” His eyes drifted to her. She was standing at the door, between Willa and Dot, buttoning her coat. With them but not one of them. Loving them even if she wasn’t like them. It could be done. She was capable of such attachments. “But I have a plan.”
The Number of Love Page 20