“Do you really mind it so much, then?” I kicked a stray rock toward the verge of the road, feeling his gaze lift to look at me. “The fact that I worked for the Secret Service? Does it bother you?”
“Is that what you think?” His voice was more serene than I expected.
“I don’t know what to think. But I see the way you look at me. I see the doubt, the uncertainty . . . and I can only wonder.”
He blew out a heavy breath. “I suppose I have been doing that. But it’s not that I doubted you. Or rather . . . it’s that I doubted everyone.” His mouth flattened into a humorless smile, recognizing he wasn’t making sense. “I suppose I’m wary of being duped again.”
I stiffened, but tried to follow his rationale. “Because of the war?”
He nodded. “All the bloody lies they told us to rationalize the loss of so many lives. All the bloody lies some of my closest friends and fellow officers told to hide the fact that they were committing treason.” He halted and turned to me. “Once you began to reveal just what part you had played in the Secret Service, I started to wonder if I was being deceived again.”
“And then last night I confirmed it,” I whispered.
But he shook his head, reaching for my arm. “No, Verity. What happened between you and Xavier? That was different. I can see that now.” He grimaced. “And I only have myself to blame for allowing you to believe I was dead.” He leaned over me so that our foreheads nearly touched. “It doesn’t mean I like it. But . . . I accept it.”
I inhaled a ragged breath. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he insisted. “And don’t for a minute think I’m not proud of the work you did during the war.” His lips quirked upward at one corner. “It just took me a little while to come to terms with it, that’s all. I’m afraid no man likes to hear his wife has placed herself in such danger, even for a good cause.”
I smiled up at him, blinking back tears as emotion welled in my chest.
It was then that a rumble of thunder rolled in the distance. We turned as one to stare up at the sky, and I touched my cheek, swiping away a raindrop.
“We’d better find shelter.”
Unfortunately, the only thing still standing within sight was an old barn about a quarter of a mile down the road. We hurried toward it, breaking into a run as the rain that had dogged us all day let loose. The blanket Sidney had brought and held over us did little to keep us dry. So by the time he pulled aside the door and we slipped inside, we were both sodden.
I struggled to catch my breath as I removed my hat from my head and shook it out. Turning to survey our surroundings, I discovered the barn was really more of a stable. One that was empty of any animals except perhaps some mice. The roof was damaged over the far end, allowing rain to pour through in a thunderous cascade, but at the front the shed remained dry.
Sidney’s footsteps crunched on the dirt floor as he walked from stall to stall, pausing just outside the second on the left. “There’s straw here, and it appears to be relatively fresh.”
I followed him, watching from the entrance as he shuffled his feet through it, stirring up the earthy scent. “Perhaps one of the farmers nearby still uses the barn for his livestock.”
Though where they were now was anyone’s guess. Likely slaughtered for food.
“I’m not going to question how it came to be here,” he said. “I’m just going to be grateful for it since it looks like we’re going to be spending the night here.” He spread the blanket over the wall of the stall to dry and dropped the satchel on the floor next to it. “I’ll check the tack room for any supplies. Perhaps there’s a set of tools I can use to fix the motorcar.”
I removed my coat and hung it on the stall next to the blanket. I would dearly have loved to change into something dry, but we’d left our valises back in the Pierce-Arrow. Wrapping my arms around myself, I rubbed them trying to generate some heat against the chill. The thumps and clinks coming from up and down the aisle indicated where Sidney was, but instead of following him, I moved back toward the main door.
As darkness fell, the rain drummed against the earth, falling in a curtain that obscured much of the world beyond. An ache began in my breast, like the one I’d felt the last time I’d stood alone this way, watching just such a rain. Though then it had been through a window in Rotterdam, not a barn door somewhere in Belgium, and the man with me was not my husband. The pain was so acute I closed my eyes, wondering if the weather had conjured the memory or our words on the road.
Sidney joined me, pausing just behind my shoulder. The warmth radiating from him penetrated through the thin fabric of my summer blouse and skirt. I thought he might speak, that he might tell me what he’d discovered in the tack room. If he had, it might have broken the spell. But he merely stood behind me, silently watching the rain.
“When you died, I had to stop myself from feeling or else go mad,” I began hesitantly, trembling slightly at the confession. “I . . . I’d already started to numb my mind with gin, but I couldn’t stop myself from physically wanting you. And I thought . . . maybe. . . if I wanted someone else, maybe it would make it stop.” I exhaled a ragged breath. “It wasn’t until after that I realized what a bloody fool I’d been. That I would never stop wanting you.” My voice broke on the last as I finally turned to face him. “Not until the day I died.”
His face was filled with such poignant yearning, such desire, that I couldn’t withhold anything from him as his mouth claimed mine. I couldn’t breathe for wanting him so badly. And apparently, he felt the same, for his kisses and caresses were like a fever.
I didn’t even think of resisting when he pulled me into the stall and laid me down on the blanket he spread over the soft hay. Because for the first time since his return from the grave, there was nothing between us but the sweat of our own skin.
* * *
Later, we lay wrapped in the warmth of each other, the woolen blanket rasping against my still flushed skin. We stared up at the dark ceiling, beyond the glow of the lantern Sidney had found, as the rain continued to fall outside. His fingers toyed with my hair, and I inhaled the scent of his skin and the crushed straw, and savored the contentment seeping into my limbs.
Perhaps I should have halted his advances, but it seemed fitting somehow that we should find each other again in such a humble place. For all that we were wealthy Londoners, we had both lost whatever pretensions we’d clung to during the long years of war. We’d both witnessed the worst and best of man. We’d both roughed it, sleeping in such lowly hovels as trench dugouts and barns. Perhaps it was in these unassuming spaces that we were truly ourselves.
In any case, I was not going to regret it now. Not when I felt fully connected to Sidney for the first time since his disappearance, since before the war. Perhaps even earlier than that. For there was a depth to our relationship now that the naïve eighteen-year-old girl I’d been could not have achieved. For the first time in a long time, I felt a sense of permanence being with him. I realized in the back of my mind I’d formed contingency plans, planning my course of action should the damage to our marriage prove irreparable. But in the space of the last hour, I’d let those go.
As if he’d been contemplating the same thing, he turned his head to press a kiss to my temple. “I hope you don’t mind I didn’t take precautions.”
By unspoken agreement, we’d taken steps to prevent my becoming pregnant until we’d worked out our differences. While I might not have rushed to this step so quickly had the necessary items not been back in the motorcar, I was also not upset.
“No, I don’t mind.”
“It may not even matter,” he remarked offhandedly. “It never happened before.”
I stiffened, not having planned on sharing this here.
He pulled his head away from mine to see into my eyes. “Has it?”
My gaze dropped to his chest, where my fingers combed through the dark whorls of his hair. “Once. Briefly. It was over before I could tell you. And then . . . well . . .�
� I risked a glance up at him. “You were different the next time you had leave from the front, and I decided not to tell you. Not then, at least.” I shrugged. “And then you died.”
He stared down at me a moment longer, before pulling me close again. “Oh, darling,” he murmured into my hair. “I’m sorry.”
I clung tightly to him, absorbing his strength. “Me, too.”
We lay like that for some time, but I couldn’t brush aside the urgency of our situation for long. Especially now that we were stranded without his motorcar.
“Did you find any tools in the tack room?” I asked.
His cheek was pressed against my forehead, and I felt him smile. “Back to business, is it? I feel like I should take offense,” he jested, and then more seriously. “No, I didn’t. Nothing useful to our predicament at any rate.”
“You said you checked the motorcar over at our last stop, and that your tools were all accounted for then?”
“Yes.”
“Did you step away from your motorcar at any point?”
He rolled so that he faced me. “Are you trying to suggest it might have been sabotage?”
“It just seems highly suspicious that such a thing should happen when you just checked the engine, and the particular tool you should need to fix the problem should be missing.”
“I’m not trying to refute you. I had the same thought.”
“Then you did step away for a moment?”
He nodded. “And either that mechanic or one of those boys could have tampered with the radiator.”
“But why?”
“I can’t answer that.” He arched his eyebrows. “Unless someone convinced them to do so.”
“Someone who doesn’t want us to reach Emilie,” I finished for him. “Or at least wants to delay us.” I frowned. “But for what purpose?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
* * *
How long I’d been sleeping, I didn’t know, but something woke me with a start. I lay still, searching the shadows overhead as I listened for the sound that had roused me. A few moments later, I heard it again. It was a sort of thud, followed by a splashing sound.
I rolled my head to look at Sidney, relieved to see he was already awake. He lifted his hand to keep me from speaking, before slowly sitting up. The night being too cool, and our position exposed, we had re-dressed before falling asleep. Now I was glad of it.
We both strained to identify the sound. At some point, the rain had stopped, and a hush had fallen over the barn.
There it was again—a sort of sloshing sound. I began to wonder whether there was a downspout somewhere, but the noise appeared to move along the outer wall, not remaining fixed.
That was when a subtle smell assailed my nostrils. I wrinkled my nose in distaste before sitting upright in horror, for I recognized it. Kerosene.
CHAPTER 24
Sidney grabbed my hand. “Come on.”
He passed me our shoulder satchel and then peered around the edge of the stall. Tugging me forward, we inched along the wall toward the door. A few steps outside the entrance stood a man. In the darkness it was difficult to tell who he was, but he seemed familiar. Something in his fidgeting stance reminded me of someone.
Sidney palmed his pistol, frowning fiercely. I could tell he was tempted to rush him, but though we knew at least one other man was out there dousing the barn, we had no way of knowing how many others we couldn’t see. Whatever the odds, we weren’t going to escape that way without being seen and plausibly shot at. So I trusted he knew what he was doing when he pulled me deeper into the barn. Sure enough, in a stall closer to the far end, one of the boards was missing from the bottom of the outer wall, and the others were rotting away.
He began kicking at those boards with his heel, widening the gap through which I could see the outside. The smell of smoke assaulted my nose, and I glanced behind me, searching for flames. When the space seemed wide enough, he knelt and cautiously peered out. Pulling his head back inside, he urged me to scramble through.
The scent of kerosene was strong, and I realized I was crawling through a puddle of it. Stumbling forward, I kneeled in the sodden grass several feet away, scouring the length of the barn as Sidney struggled to squeeze his larger frame through. Once he was free, we wasted no time in making a hasty retreat deeper into the field. The clouds above obscured the moon, and I prayed whoever was behind us setting fire to the barn did not see us running away.
Several hundred feet from the structure, Sidney pulled to a stop and we swung around to see what was happening. Flames licked up the front of the stables over the space where we’d slept, slowly spreading over the wood. At the corner near the main door, we could see at least two silhouettes watching it burn. Two men who obviously expected us to be inside, burning along with it, for there was no urgency in their movements.
I tugged against Sidney’s hand, pulling him away. There was no use in attempting to confront them now. They would see us coming long before we could do anything to stop them, unless he planned to crawl on his belly through this muddy field. It seemed best for now to let them believe we were dead. And that meant we needed to flee further before that entire barn went up in flames, illuminating the night for some distance.
We stumbled forward as quickly as we dared so as not to risk either of us being hampered by a twisted ankle or worse. Every once in a while, one of us would glance behind us to be certain we weren’t followed. However, when the darkness closed in around us again like a comforting blanket, and it became obvious we had escaped without being seen, we slowed our steps to a walk.
At the edge of a tiny stream, I asked to stop in order to catch my breath. Sidney turned with hands on hips to watch the inferno in the distance, but I kept my gaze resolutely away from it, allowing my eyes to fully adjust to the blackness of night. Wiggling my fingers inside my gloves, I studied the rise and fall of the land and the landmarks I could see.
The stream formed a large arc in the middle of the field before continuing westward. Rather helpfully, the moon peeked through in snatches as the clouds scuttled by overhead. It was during one of these short intervals that I noticed the copse of trees about three quarters of a kilometer distant from us, toward which the stream flowed.
“This is perhaps going to sound unbelievable, but . . .” I glanced at Sidney. “I think I recognize where we are.”
He stepped closer as I lifted my arm to point toward the trees.
“If I’m right, then there’s a house on the other side of that wood. I rested there one day with a downed British pilot we were endeavoring to guide to Holland. It may not be stocked like it was during the war. In fact, it probably isn’t. But there’s a chance there may be fresh clothing and tools to fix your motorcar.” I paused, grimacing at the thought. “If those men didn’t fire that as well.”
“Don’t even say it,” Sidney snapped.
I lifted a hand to his arm in commiseration. I knew how attached he was to his Pierce-Arrow.
He sighed in resignation. “Lead on, then. What do we have to lose?”
I turned to follow the course of the stream and Sidney fell into step beside me, taking the satchel from me.
“Who do you think those men were?” I asked, wondering who had attempted to kill us. The thought made my stomach quaver now that we were further from the danger. “You got a better look than I did. Did you recognize the man by the door?”
From his answering silence, I could tell he did. “It was the man we confronted in Liège. The one who claimed to be that author.”
“Jonathan Fletcher?”
“I should have pummeled his lights out then,” he growled.
“But why? Who is he really?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“And who was with him?”
“I don’t know that either,” he snapped angrily. “Maybe that fellow in the mask you saw on the boat. Or perhaps it was Xavier come to finish us off.”
“You do
n’t have to snarl at me,” I retorted, lengthening my stride to charge ahead of him.
Unfortunately, with his longer legs he had no problem catching me up.
“I didn’t ask for any of this to happen. But it is proof that there’s something wrong. Something very wrong. Why else would someone wish to kill us?”
He grunted his agreement. “Well, whatever the reason, I suppose we should be glad their preferred method of murder is setting fires. After all, there are a lot more effective ways to kill someone.”
I nearly stumbled. “You’re right. The fires all do seem to connect to one another. First the attempt on Emilie, then Madame Zozza’s death, and now this. Killers do tend to stick to the same modus operandi. It’s what they know.”
Sidney turned to look at me, and I could practically hear the thoughts in his head spinning, wondering where I’d learned such a thing, but now was not the time to elaborate.
As we entered the copse of trees, our steps slowed as we cautiously picked our way through them. I drew to a stop when the house with three gables came into view through the branches. All was dark and quiet, but that was to be expected in the middle of the night. We approached silently, alert for the slightest indication that anything seemed off.
The entrance to the house was through a little door in the left gable, and as I drew near I noticed the windows were still boarded up. If someone had intended to return here, they’d either been unable or elected not to. I moved to open the door, but Sidney stopped me with a hand on my arm, insisting on going first. Holding his pistol at the ready, he stepped through the threshold. I glanced behind us, scanning the trees before following him inside.
The door opened into a spacious room which seemed to echo with loneliness at its abandonment, just as it had during the war.
“Stay away from that corner,” I directed Sidney as I moved toward the large stone fireplace, its carved ornamentals shrouded in dust. “Some of the floorboards and wooden wall panels are crumbling with rot.”
I reached for the door of the cupboard to the right of the hearth, its rusty hinges complaining from disuse. Inside it appeared like the normal wooden interior of a closet, but I knew better. Bending over, I pushed against the back wall near the bottom. It swung inward as the top swiveled outward, with the pivot at the center of the wall.
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