“If I were to guess . . .” He paused not for effect, but to suck in another breath and grip the railing better. Couldn’t Dot and Aunt Millie at least have found a flat on the ground floor? “He asked.”
Red’s scowl didn’t lessen any. “And she simply told him where he could find her?”
“Where to find me.” Blast, but when had these stairs grown as tall as the Matterhorn? “She knows we’re old school chums.”
“But—”
“Trust me, Red. I know the type of fellow my sister likes, and Phillip Camden isn’t it. She’s never gone in for the sort who is chasing a different girl every week.”
Red didn’t look quite convinced, but Drake couldn’t spare the breath to offer any more encouragement just now.
Funny though. All the exertion didn’t at all distract his mind from winging a few streets away to where he imagined a certain letter being dropped into a certain post box.
Margot obviously didn’t care for Camden’s type either. But did she care for his?
21
So intriguing.” The duchess was leaning back in her chair, her teacup dangling from her hand and her trousered legs crossed in what looked like a pose for an advert in one of the fashion magazines Maman had always liked. “I know it’s all still theoretical, but it sounds very revolutionary, doesn’t it?”
“Indeed.” Margot sipped the last of her own coffee—apparently what the duchess preferred to serve in her dainty little teacups—with a smile. She and Maman hadn’t been able to find or afford decent coffee since moving here. The very scent was enough to take her back to Belgium. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that she heard Papa chuckling over his own cup. “Einstein’s mathematics are certainly sound. I don’t know how one could prove his theories, but they could be true. Which is quite amazing.”
The duchess hummed and sat forward to slide her cup onto the end table by her chair. “The mathematics themselves are a bit beyond me, I confess. But the ideas . . .” She flashed a smile. “If my grandfather keeps sending me what journals he can find, can I keep passing them along to you? I’ve so enjoyed getting to talk to someone about something other than this dratted war.”
Margot could only blink for a long moment. Surely she’d wake up and find this had been nothing but a dream. Because surely nowhere in this world did a place like this still exist. The beautiful Stafford townhouse, the tea cakes with real sugar in them, the hostess who could converse intelligently about something other than children and clothes and aide meetings. “Of course, Your Grace. I would be delighted.”
“Good. And you can call me Brook. After all”—her smile went impish—“apparently I have already proven a terrible influence on you. The ward matron has done nothing but scowl at me ever since you cut your hair. It looks lovely, by the way.”
“Oh.” Margot lifted a hand, not to touch the waves that she rather thought she’d mastered creating by now, but to motion the compliment away. “It was more for a point than for fashion. I don’t much care whether I’m in vogue.”
Brook opened her mouth but got out no reply before there came a genuine cacophony from the entryway. Doors opening, closing, the butler’s shuffle, and what sounded like a dozen—or perhaps two—enthusiastic little voices calling out, “Maman! Maman! Tu ne devines jamais ce que on a fait!”
Instantly the duchess’s face lit, and she leaned forward with her arms outstretched for the miniature people who came barreling into the room. Boys, apparently. The larger probably around five, the smaller perhaps three. They were dressed similarly in short trousers and knee socks, the caps that matched their jackets both askew as they hurled themselves into their mother’s arms.
“What did you do?” Brook asked in response to her boys’ claim that she would never guess. “Grandpapa didn’t take you to the sweets shop again, did he?”
“I learned my lesson after you left me with them last time.”
Margot turned her head to see a full-sized person following the boys at a more sedate pace. A gentleman, obviously, and presumably either the duchess’s father or father-in-law. He wore a small smile that seemed perfectly at home in the corners of his mouth and a jacket with four gleaming black buttons, and he’d taken five steps into the room before he seemed to notice that it held someone other than his grandchildren and their mother. But when he looked over at Margot, it was with a ready smile.
“The zoo!” the bigger of the little ones exclaimed, switching without any seeming thought from French to English.
“How fun!” Over her son’s head, Brook said, “Papa, this is Margot De Wilde, about whom I was telling you earlier. Margot, my father, the Earl of Whitby.”
“How do you do, my lord?” Margot slid her empty coffee cup onto the table nearest her and held out a hand to shake.
Lord Whitby took it with a sparkle in his eye to match his grin. “Ah, the mathematician! Yes, Brook was telling me how excited she was to find someone with whom to discuss that journal. And your brother is the violinist, I believe?”
“He is, yes.”
Apparently that was far too much boring talk for the boys to suffer. The littler one bounced on his toes and tugged on his mother’s arm. “Maman, there were lions! Roary lions, but they no roared.”
Brook chuckled and pulled the smaller one into her lap, holding the larger close with an arm about his middle. “And these are my boys. William is the elder—the Marquess of Abingdon.”
“Bing,” the boy pronounced with a grin not unlike his mother’s.
“And my baby is little Lord Ambrose.”
“Just Am,” the little one corrected, one finger hooked in his mouth. “Not baby.”
“Of course not.” Brook took off both their caps, somehow keeping her grin out of her voice. “Did you behave for Grandpapa?”
“What would have been the fun in that?” Lord Whitby made himself comfortable in another of the chairs. “But I kept him from tumbling into that ‘roary’ lions’ den, so I deemed it a successful outing.”
Ambrose gave a belly laugh. “Grandpapa say lion eat my hand if I pet him.”
Bing smirked. “I told him if it did, he’d have to get one of those false ones that our new factory is making.”
“You have a prosthetics factory?” Interesting. Many of the nobility Margot had met over the years seemed to think it beneath them to have a hand in anything related to a trade.
“There is a rather great need. It seemed a good thing to invest our resources in.” Whitby arched his brows at his daughter. “Though remind me to speak to you of that later, my dear. We still need to find more management. We may need to run an advert.”
Margot sat up straighter. Blinked. Listened. Waited for the numbers to chase her thoughts.
Nothing.
She folded her hands in her lap and drew in a breath. She couldn’t not speak just because God was still silent. “May I ask what sort of qualifications you require? I’ve a friend in search of a position. He is himself just recently back from the war, injured. He wears a prosthetic foot—and has actually altered it rather cleverly.”
“Really.” Eyes alight, Brook looked to her father. “Have you a card to give her, Papa? Someone with some engineering talent would be just the thing.”
“He would indeed.” Whitby reached into his pocket and came out with a card, which he rose to hand over. “And we’re trying to hire mostly veterans who have been injured. I daresay we would have a position for him somewhere, regardless of his skills. Has he any education?”
“Some, though I’m not sure of specifics.” Margot held the card for a moment. It was just a rectangle of card paper, cut at perfect right angles in the typical aspect ratio.
But to Redvers Holmes, it could be the future. She smiled and tucked the card into her handbag. “Thank you. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to know of the opportunity. And now I had better say farewell and get home.” It was already dark and no doubt cold, but she still wanted to stop by the park and see if Williams had made an
other play.
“I’m so glad you could join me.” Brook nudged Ambrose back to his feet and stood.
Her father took to his feet, too, with a huff. “Are you in trousers again? Brook Elizabeth—”
“I was riding!” She didn’t look repentant. If anything, she looked as mischievous as her sons.
“When? And why didn’t you change before your guest arrived?” With a shake of his head that did nothing to disguise the amused glint in his eye, Whitby turned to Margot. “Forgive my daughter. She thinks social conventions are in place solely to be challenged.”
“A proclivity I inherited straight from my recluse of a father.” Still grinning, Brook came over and clasped Margot’s hands. “Come again soon, please. And I’ll pass along the next journal.”
“Thank you. And thank you for having me.” She smiled, squeezed the duchess’s hand, and then shook the earl’s again too.
And could all but see Maman smiling at her. She’d managed a social engagement with two of England’s finest, and not once had her mother’s memory had to chastise her. Of course, they’d mostly been talking about mathematics and theoretical physics. But still.
The little ones said a farewell, too, and then Margot was shown out. The Stafford car sat waiting to take her home. She’d tried to turn down the offer, but Brook had insisted that the tube station was too far, at least after dark.
As she settled into the back of the automobile, handbag in her lap, she let her eyes slide closed. At home, she’d find the stack of newspapers still waiting. She’d gathered all she could find from the weeks surrounding Maman’s death, but she’d only made it through half of them.
There was nothing there. Not in the ones she’d searched. Granted, that meant nothing, but . . . but it drained her to pore over the newsprint for hour after hour and find nothing. Nothing.
Was it really not there? Or had those numbers gone just as silent as the ones from the Lord?
She drew in a long, slow breath. At work she was fine. Her mind worked more or less as it always had. But at home . . . all she could do was notice how empty the flat felt. Her mother wasn’t there to chide her for thinking about nothing but work. Every time she went to the kitchenette, there seemed no point in cooking anything just for her.
Maman would have liked Holmes. And Drake. And this unconventional duchess and her father.
I could stand to be alone if I could still hear you, Lord. She directed the silent words upward. But even to her ears, they sounded more accusatory than inviting. Because she shouldn’t be alone. And yet, she ought to be capable of it. She could be. She would be.
Once out of Westminster and back in her own neighborhood, Margot instructed the driver to drop her at the park. As he puttered away again, she hurried over to see if the Go board was set up.
It was. She took a moment to study the play and identify Williams’s latest move, smiling at the slip of damp paper anchored to it this time, proving it had been waiting for hours. Yosu-miru. A probing move. She answered it with a move that took one of his stones but no doubt revealed to him a bit of her strategy. She’d been making each move with the eye toward sabaki—a flexible position that wouldn’t easily be attacked.
She looked around, half expecting to see Holmes there simply because she had the card to give to him. But no one lingered in the night, and as the first needles of a cold rain stung her face, she had to grant the wisdom of that. Opening the umbrella she’d long ago learned never to leave home without, she hurried to her building, gathered her post from the box, and jogged up the stairs.
Once inside, she tossed everything into its proper place and flipped through the three envelopes. One was a bill for funeral expenses—she’d check their numbers and then split it with Lukas. But the other two were odd. They were both in the same handwriting, to her, but with no return address. Heart thudding almost painfully, she noted that they each had a number in the place where the sender’s direction ought to have gone. 1 and 2.
She opened 1 first. Inside rested a small slip of paper, no bigger than one inch by three. Les Heures Claires was written upon it.
Her chest eased. What had she thought? That this was something from whoever had killed her mother? It could be, she supposed. But if so, it was rather odd that he’d reference the book of poetry that Lukas had given her for her birthday. The one that Drake Elton had also been reading.
She ripped open the second envelope and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. When she flattened it and angled it toward the low gaslights, her lips twitched up. Numbers. Whole paragraphs of beautiful numbers.
Rather obvious of him. But . . . clever too. He knew she couldn’t turn down a puzzle, apparently. Bypassing that imposing stack of newsprint that wouldn’t speak to her no matter how hard she searched for hidden meaning, she turned to her room with its tiny little desk. With its volume of poetry. With its fresh paper and ready pen.
The code was simple, using the poetry book as the key. Like a breath of spring air compared to the work she did at OB 40 every day. And fun because of it. It took her only a few minutes to work it out, flipping back and forth and back again in the book and then writing down the word that corresponded to each three-part number. Page, line, word on the line.
Only once she’d finished did she bother to really read what he’d written her. And even then, it wasn’t the words that struck her—they were flattering nonsense, praising her dark eyes and her wit—it was the fact that he’d written them. Like this. That somehow, though he’d barely known her for a few weeks, he knew her so well.
What was she to do with this? With a man who’d apparently decided that yes, he would pursue her? He’d already said if he did so, it wouldn’t be casually. This, then, was his declaration. He was courting her.
She pressed her hand against the page as too many thoughts swirled, a jumble of words and impressions and feelings where orderly numbers should have been. He was mixing her up. And for some reason, she liked it even as she hated it.
This wasn’t the path she’d set out upon. Get through the war, go to university, conquer academia—that was her future. That was it. She had no intentions of letting a man pursue her when she was only eighteen. There was time enough for such thoughts later. In a decade, perhaps. Or two.
And yet . . . she didn’t know who some future man in a decade or two might be, or how well she’d like him. But she knew who Drake Elton was. And she did like him.
“No. I’m not doing this.” She wouldn’t give up her dreams just because a field agent with a broken nose asked her the right questions and sent her puzzles in the post. She wouldn’t be the sort of girl she just wasn’t, concerned with finding a husband and holding his attention. She didn’t know how to be that girl.
When I close my eyes, you are there. When I turn my heart to prayer, you are there. The words, penned in French, jumped off the page at her.
She leaned back in her chair, straightening her spine, and stared at the wall. There were a hundred and sixty gaudy orange flowers on this wall, faded to a shade nearly not-glaring. Three hundred and twenty once-green leaves. Twenty-two vertical stripes behind them. Four inches between each row.
When I turn my heart to prayer . . .
She hadn’t been able to pray since she lost Maman. Not really. She hadn’t really tried. Because before, she’d never had to try. God had always been there, waiting, directing. She’d never had to do more than reach out to Him, and there He was. Filling her mind with numbers. With the assurance that He’d set the world in order, and so it wasn’t chaotic. There were equations. There were formulas. There were reasons.
She didn’t know how to reach Him now, when it wasn’t easy anymore. She didn’t know how to find Him when He wasn’t just right there. She didn’t know how to know Him when the numbers were silent.
Her eyes dropped back down to the encoded letter. She didn’t know how to do this either. She didn’t know how to deal with someone who could pinpoint her so easily and yet who envisioned such a differe
nt future.
Cold rain hissed at the window. The kitchen sat empty and aroma-less with no supper upon the stove. The newspapers towered on the table, unsolved and uncaring. She should cook something. Or read something. Or try to find a pattern in the ice on the window.
Instead, she took the decoded letter in hand and sprawled on her bed to read it again, brushing away a wave of hair that fell against her cheek in the process. It was nonsense, most of it.
But it was beautiful nonsense nonetheless.
22
The days had been rather mild for November in London, even given the rain. But Drake had nothing but the rain to blame for the absence of the man in the doorway across the street. He hadn’t been there since the day Drake had gone down to get a look at him—two days ago.
It was the rain. He hoped. Because if it wasn’t the rain, then it was most likely that whoever he was had spotted Drake after all.
Red was due any minute, and Drake had hoped to send him out today to follow the bloke. But with no bloke to follow, what was he to do?
He paced the flat, which he’d been doing as much as he could manage. He had eventually made it up the stairs the other day, but he probably wouldn’t have, had Red not been helping him. And that wouldn’t do. Not for long. Who knew what he might have to do to evade Jaeger?
The doctor had told him not to push—but then, the doctor had also praised his progress when he did push, saying that morning, “See there? The proper amount of rest and your body heals itself.”
Ha. He’d given up on rest and had taken to walking whenever he wasn’t working. Around the flat, down the corridor outside their door, down a few stairs and then back up. Not many at a time—he wouldn’t strand himself and then have to listen to Dot berating him for it. But a few, repeated, was the same as more in the long run.
He slanted a glance at the table. Beside his stacks of newly decoded intelligence that he’d been reading through today, he had another letter he’d ask Red to post, to Margot. He’d sent a new one each day, and she had to be getting them. She’d be coming for dinner tonight. And whether she addressed the subject or not, he’d at least make sure the letter wasn’t just sitting there. That would be awkward.
The Number of Love Page 24