Treacherous Is the Night

by Anna Lee Huber

  “Your evening might have been uneventful, but mine was not.” I lifted my glass, gesturing toward the window with it. “This . . . charlatan Daphne dragged me to pretended to summon one of my contacts during the war.” I tipped my glass back, draining it of all but ice.

  Sidney spoke without inflection. “A contact? From the Secret Service?”

  I nodded. “A midwife named Emilie. Well, that was her code name anyway. She gathered intelligence and worked as a courier for La Dame Blanche, a spy ring operating in German-occupied Belgium and France that passed information to Britain during the war.”

  He sank down onto the ledge by my feet. “La Dame Blanche. After the legend of the White Lady whose appearance was supposed to herald the downfall of the Hohenzollern dynasty?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised he would recognize it immediately.

  “Appropriate given their goal of helping to defeat the German Army.”

  “Yes, well, Madame Zozza shouldn’t have had any knowledge of the woman, let alone my activities during the war. So the very fact that she did suggests that someone has been sharing sensitive information.”

  “Unless she was also an agent,” he suggested, speaking into his glass.

  I turned to look at him as he drank, not having considered such a possibility.

  “Surely you don’t know everyone who worked for the service during the war?”

  I rested my head back against the window frame behind me. “Then if that’s the case, she’s using confidential information in order to further her cons. I suspect C would want to know about that.” I hadn’t spoken to the chief since I was released from the service months earlier. But having spent four years on his staff—first as a typist and secretary, and then in various other roles, from translator to field agent—I knew him well enough to apprehend he would not find such a breach of the Official Secrets Act amusing.

  I frowned and Sidney arched his eyebrows in expectation, waiting for me to share my thoughts.

  “Your suggestion has merit, but . . . I find it difficult to believe this woman worked for us in any capacity. She didn’t work in the London or Rotterdam offices, I can tell you that. So for her to have access to Emilie’s name and the fact that I was in contact with her, she would have had to be either an agent within the occupied territories or stationed at Folkestone.”

  “So lodge your complaint with C, or whoever you intend to get in contact with, and leave the matter for them to sort out.”

  There must have been something in my eyes that gave me away, for he paused in raising his glass again. “Or don’t you intend to leave the matter to anyone?”

  I resented his long-suffering tone. “I don’t think you appreciate how serious this is. Someone divulged classified information to a Spiritualist, information that pertains to me, and I want to know why. Was it intentional? Were they merely desperate for money? Or do they have a careless tongue like your chum from Oxford who revealed my role in the service after a few drinks?” I narrowed my eyes in challenge. “Perhaps he’s the culprit. Now might be a good time to tell me who he is.”

  He ignored this pointed query. “Maybe Madame Zozza learned of your involvement from Emilie herself. Or from someone Emilie told.”

  I shook my head. “She never knew my real name.”

  He lowered his hand to gently grasp my bare foot where it rested against the ledge next to him. “Darling, our pictures have been in all the newspapers over the past few weeks. Even overseas. It would not have been difficult for her to discover who you really are.”

  I half suspected he was intentionally trying to distract me, for I found it difficult to ignore the frisson of awareness that swept through me at his touch. Nevertheless, it would take much more than that to divert me from my concerns. “You don’t know Emilie. Her role in La Dame Blanche may now be known, but she’s hardly one to beat her gums about it. Not to mention the fact that the medium implied she’d been caught by the Germans and killed. To my knowledge, that never happened. The last time I saw her was in August 1918, so if she’d been apprehended after that, she almost certainly would have still been awaiting trial when the armistice occurred in November. There wouldn’t have been time for her to be transported to Siegburg or executed.” My brow furrowed. “Unless she was killed while being captured.” I shook my head. “No. It simply doesn’t make any sense.”

  But Sidney had latched on to something else I’d mentioned. “Siegburg? Isn’t that a German prison?”

  “Yes. That’s where most of the women convicted of espionage were sent, and some of the men.”

  He stared down at the ice melting in his glass. “Is that where they would have sent you had you been caught?”

  I chuckled mirthlessly. “No, as a British citizen I’m sure the Germans would have been only too happy to execute me.” The fact no longer troubled me. I’d made my peace with it long ago. And in any case, the war was over. I was no longer in danger of facing a German firing squad.

  But Sidney had clearly not confronted such a possibility. He didn’t flinch or protest. In fact, he barely seemed to react at all. But apparently, I still knew him well enough to be able to tell I’d shocked him. When he lifted his gaze to meet mine his jaw was tight and his pupils dilated.

  The air between us was heavy with unspoken things, chief among them the reality of our lives during the years of war. I was more familiar than most with the conditions Sidney had contended with while in the trenches. I’d been close enough upon occasion to see them in the distance, to smell them, even if I’d never set foot inside. So, while I might not know the details of each day, each battle, I had a general idea of the hell he’d been through.

  But Sidney had no concept what my war had been like. He’d spent most of it believing me safe in London, tied to a clerical job, and assisting at the canteens. Gathering chestnuts for acetone, packing socks with cigarettes and peppermints to be shipped to the front, and crumpling tissue papers until they were so soft they no longer crackled when packed into the lining of sleeping bags—tasks that many women had undertaken for the war effort. Even after he’d discovered I worked for the Secret Service, it was evident he hadn’t truly comprehended what that involved.

  In truth, I was glad he hadn’t known, for then he would have worried when there were far more important things demanding his attention. It also meant he hadn’t been able to forbid me from doing my bit in the manner I wished.

  Regardless, we were treading on dangerous ground, at least for tonight. There would come a time when I would have to stop avoiding the subject, but not now. Not while my nerves were still taut from that farce of a séance, and my wits were dulled with drink.

  I reached out to pull the window shut. “I’m going to pay Madame Zozza a visit tomorrow morning, and find out just what she knows, and who told it to her.”

  “What if she won’t tell you?”

  I swung my feet down to the floor, but remained seated as the world tilted a little. “Oh, I suspect she will.” My voice was hard with determination. “If a bribe won’t work, then my threatening to inform the Secret Service should do the trick.”

  “Is that necessary?” he grumbled.

  I looked up at him sharply.

  “I mean, so she pretended to summon a woman from a now-defunct intelligence network. Does it really matter? The war is over. No one is going to go after her.”

  “Should I have argued the same thing when you feigned death for fifteen months and dragged me into danger, all to catch the man who betrayed your battalion?” I asked.

  He scowled. “That was different. That was treason. We don’t even know what this is.”

  “Precisely. We don’t know.”

  He sighed, conceding my point.

  “And I will not let it go until we do.”

  I glared at him a moment longer to be certain he understood before turning away. The floor was cold beneath my feet and I wanted nothing so much as to retire to bed and warm them beneath the covers. However, I wasn’t c
ertain how steady I would be on my feet. Oh, I wasn’t so primed that I couldn’t walk a straight line, but even a wobble might tip Sidney off to the true depth of my inebriation.

  But then he surprised me.

  “Would you like some assistance? I mean, you helped me solve my investigation. It seems only right I should return the favor.”

  I drummed the fingers of my left hand against the ledge beneath me, considering his proposal. Part of me was suspicious of his offer, especially after he’d tried to convince me to forget the matter entirely. But another part of me recognized he could be quite helpful. It would also give us a chance to interact with one another without our marriage being the focus. Of course, given the nature of the questions we would be asking, I would likely be required to share things about my time in German-occupied Belgium and France that might shock him, but I was willing to risk it. So long as my time in Brussels didn’t come under scrutiny, and I couldn’t see how it would. Emilie had not operated anywhere near there.

  I allowed my gaze to travel over him as if examining him critically. Not that there was anything to physically criticize. Far from it. “I suppose you might prove useful.”

  A glint I well-remembered entered his eye, one that reassured me even as it made my breath quicken. One that made me believe the distance that separated us might not be so insurmountable after all.

  “Ah, well, I do so long to be useful,” he leaned closer to drawl in my ear.

  The gust of his breath against my neck raised gooseflesh along my skin. Gooseflesh I was certain he could see and feel with his fingertips as he slid his hand up my back into my auburn castle-bobbed tresses. I turned my head, allowing his lips to find mine, and fell into his kiss.

  At least this firestorm of attraction was something I could be certain of. Neither time nor war nor separation had dimmed it. Since Sidney’s return, I’d alternately craved and feared the intensity of our joining, for in many ways it was the only thing that seemed right between us. And yet, even in this, something was still lacking.

  But for now I didn’t fight it, I leaned into it. Wanting to forget, at least for a little while, that part of us was broken. And I had no idea how to fix it.

  * * *

  “You should have let Sadie answer it.”

  I glanced up from where I sat fuming in the passenger seat of Sidney’s Pierce-Arrow the following morning to glare at him. “You sound just like my mother.”

  “Well, if you had, you wouldn’t have had to hear that from either of us,” he pointed out with irrefutable logic.

  I exhaled an aggrieved sigh. I’d rather gotten into the habit of answering the telephone myself while the war was on. So naturally I’d picked it up when it rang while I was standing next to it before we departed for Chelsea. This action never failed to set my mother’s teeth on edge.

  “I do so wish you’d let the servants answer your telephone like any proper British woman of means,” she groused upon hearing my voice.

  “Good morning to you, too, Mother.” I rolled my eyes at Sidney.

  His lips quirked. “It’s good she can’t see you,” he murmured, placing his hat on his head.

  “Is that Sidney, I hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, good. He’s still there.”

  I couldn’t keep the mischievous twinkle from my eye. “Did you wish to speak with him?”

  He shook his head vehemently and I was forced to suppress a laugh. Though my amusement didn’t last.

  “Not just now, dear. But I worried his learning about all of your carrying on during the war might have run him off.”

  “Why would you say such a thing?” I gasped.

  “Because husbands don’t want their wives gallivanting about town while they’re away, dear,” she delivered with cutting precision, as always casting my actions in the worst possible light. I could practically see her patting her hair as she examined herself in the reflection of the mirror positioned over the table where the telephone stood in my parents’ entry hall, thoroughly unremorseful. “Besides you were raised better than that.”

  “He was away at war, Mother. And then dead. Not visiting Norfolk.”

  Sidney’s eyebrows arched at this pronouncement and I turned away.

  “Oh, but he wasn’t really dead now, dear. That makes all the difference.”

  I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, holding on to my temper by the thinnest of threads. Upon learning Sidney was alive, my mother, like most of Britain, completely ignored the fact that he’d allowed his reported death to go uncorrected for fifteen months. Fifteen months which I’d spent grieving. The only thing that mattered was that he’d returned.

  I’d fielded an endless number of remarks about how delighted I must be. And I was. Though “delighted” wasn’t the immediate word that came to mind. Relieved, pleased, and grateful were more accurate. But it was all much more complicated than that.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t conscious of how fortunate I was. I knew there were thousands upon thousands of women in Britain who wished they were in my shoes, welcoming their newly resurrected husbands home. Nor was I unhappy about his return. But all those people failed to consider the ramifications of his absence.

  I’d tried pointing this out to my mother, but she seemed to think the fact that he’d been pursuing a traitor wiped the slate clean. At least, on his part. She much preferred to focus on my behavior while I believed he was dead.

  “Did you want something, Mother?” Other than to criticize me.

  “Your brother will be traveling to London on Wednesday. He wants to have dinner with you and Sidney.”

  Why my mother had called to tell me this and not Freddy, I didn’t know. Being a decorated surgeon, my oldest brother was perfectly capable of operating a telephone. Of course, she could be referring to Tim. Just seventeen months younger than I, he’d always been happy to take the path of least resistance and let Mother do as she would. But somehow, I knew it must be Freddy making the trip.

  “Of course, we’d be delighted to.”

  “Good. He’ll ring when he arrives. He’s staying at the Savoy, as usual,” she added as an afterthought.

  Definitely Freddy then.

  She rang off rather quickly, and I stared down at the ear piece, suddenly having the sneaking suspicion I’d been taken in. If I had still been a gambling woman, I would have bet a tidy sum that my mother was about to telephone Freddy and tell him I’d asked him to dinner. Not that I minded seeing my brother, and I knew Sidney would be pleased to chat with his old friend, but I very much resented my mother’s machinations. I knew my mother loved me in her own disapproving, domineering way, but I often wished she was not so very difficult.

  That being said, I vastly preferred her to the almost stoic indifference exhibited by Sidney’s parents. I’d spoken to them but a handful of times during the war and after their son’s reported death. His father hadn’t even traveled to London to manage the business of Sidney’s death. Everything had been coordinated through his solicitors—even notifying me of the stipulations of Sidney’s will and that they would handle the payment of the death duties.

  Upon Sidney’s miraculous return, they’d taken the train up from their estate in northern Devon to see him, but they’d only stayed two nights. His sister had dashed up to London for just an afternoon. I rather thought they would wish to spend more time with him. And although he never said so, I could tell from Sidney’s expression that he had, too. But apparently, pressing business was waiting for them in Devon. More pressing than spending time with their resurrected son and brother.

  Determinedly pushing my mother’s criticisms from my mind, I turned to stare out the windows of Sidney’s motorcar at the passing buildings along King’s Street. “It will be good to see Freddy.”

  “It will.” He darted a glance at me as he sped around a lumbering omnibus, barely missing the fender of a Hudson. “Though, didn’t you say his wife just gave birth to their first child?”

  Sidney had never
been what one would call a careful driver, and his time at the front certainly hadn’t cured him of his devil-may-care attitude when he was behind the wheel. I gripped the seat, trying to stop myself from sliding toward Sidney as we zipped back into traffic.

  “In May.”

  His gaze flicked toward me again, and I continued.

  “But what you’re really asking me is whether this trip is at the instigation of Freddy or my mother. And the answer is, I suspect, a little of both. I’ve no doubt Mother encouraged the trip, but Freddy would never have agreed had there not been some real reason for him to make it.” I turned my head to peer under my lashes at him in cynicism. “The dinner, however, is almost certainly Mother’s concoction.” Seeing the smile curling his lips, my sarcasm turned to puzzlement. “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s only . . . I’ve missed this.”

  “Missed what?”

  His deep blue eyes met mine. “Your reading my mind.”

  A warmth filled me. It was nice. This easy camaraderie. During our whirlwind courtship that last glorious summer before the war, it had come so naturally almost from the start, and I’d taken it for granted it would always be there. But war and time and separation had slowly chipped away at it, so that now it seemed almost a rare occurrence. Which made it all the more affecting when it did happen. So much so that, for a moment, I couldn’t form a response.

  Fortunately, Sidney wasn’t expecting one. “So we’re to be spied upon, is that it? What’s the standard procedure when facing an enemy interrogation?” he jested. “Do we feign ignorance and canoodle, or do we call him on it?”

  I laughed. “Given the fact that Freddy would see through our canoodling ruse in an instant, I suggest . . .”

  Sidney slammed on the brakes, cutting off my thoughts as I tried to stop myself from flying into the dashboard. His arm shot out to right me as we came to a stop inches from the rear of the motorcar in front of us. Any outrage I might have felt at the actions of the driver was swiftly eclipsed by the shock of the sight before us.