Chapter 4
I let out a shuddering breath, correctly deducing that I’d been reprieved. At least temporarily. I turned to face the door, ignoring, for the moment, my torturers.
Two men stood there, the first a typical Auxiliary, though this one sported a bandage across his brow, and the second a gentleman, in his starched and pressed uniform with a greatcoat pulled over it. His gaze flicked to King’s hands, now reaffixing his belt, before returning to me.
“You would be better served to answer these officers’ questions rather than face prison or possible hanging for your silence.
” He spoke with crisp elocution, but no matter how official he sounded, it would not change the fact that they could not hold me indefinitely.
Not on as flimsy evidence as they held, while outside others worked against them in my defense.
When I remained stonily silent, he sighed as if I was naught but a child who had disappointed him. “You’ll have to talk eventually.”
My eyebrows threatened to get me in trouble again, inching upwards to counter this claim.
He shook his head, turning to the Auxie. “Escort her back to barracks.”
I didn’t give them time to change their minds, skirting out of the room to do as I was told.
The Auxie waited until we’d emerged into the yard, the daylight beginning to fade, before he spoke. “What happened?” He nodded toward where I clutched my aching abdomen.
“They tried to persuade me to talk,” I said, breaking my silence.
“How?”
I turned to look at him, and his frowning scrutiny of the left side of my face told me the hot poker must have left visible damage after all. “I don’t think you want to know.”
More pressingly, I didn’t think I could say without breaking down in sobs. I was struggling to hold myself together as it was. It seemed at any moment I might fall apart at the seams.
“Damn,” the Auxie breathed under his breath.
We rounded the Chapel Royal, making our way toward the rear of the Castle. There a woman stepped away from the wall. It appeared she’d been waiting for us. I realized it was Nancy.
She sent the Auxie a questioning look and he halted, allowing her a moment to speak to me. The tears glinting in her eyes confirmed what I’d begun to suspect about my appearance. She grabbed my hand. “Your husband is doing everything he can.”
I nodded numbly, careful not to reveal the slip of paper Nancy had pressed into my palm.
She glided away with a nod of thanks to the Auxie guard, and we continued on as if nothing had happened.
I counted to ten after the door to my cell closed and the metallic shriek of the lock turning had faded away.
Then I approached the fire, bending down to stir it up.
My hand shook as I grasped the blunted poker, the memory of what I’d endured under Hardy’s hand swimming to the surface.
I shook it away, hunching over the fire to read the words scrawled on the chit Nancy had given me.
Plans in the works to free you. Stay strong.—M/X
It was from Alec. The X standing for his surname and the M for his code name while in Ireland, MacAlister. Or for all that I knew, maybe it was the other way around. Maybe MacAlister was truly his name, and Alec Xavier had only ever been an alias.
For all that I knew Alec—had spied on the Germans, and faced down death, and even slept with him on one occasion during the months when Sidney had allowed me and the rest of the world to believe he was dead while he pursued a traitor—I wasn’t sure I’d ever truly known him.
He was an enigma I doubted I could fully understand. I wasn’t certain I had a right to.
What I did know was that he was a good friend and a good man, regardless of whether we stood on the same side of the conflict.
And like Sidney, he would be doing everything he could to see me freed.
It just so happened that his tactics were liable to involve a prison break—one arranged with Mick Collins’s support.
Unfortunately, such an effort was only likely to make things worse for me. But I couldn’t help but feel grateful, nonetheless. And sorely tempted to accept the freedom offered to me should they somehow prove successful.
I tossed the paper into the fire, wrapping my arms around my knees as I crouched, watching its edges curl and blacken.
In seconds, it disintegrated before my eyes, consumed by the flames licking around it.
My left eyelid ached and the skin around my eye felt hot to the touch.
The heat of the fire was making it worse, but I couldn’t seem to back away.
My edges felt too curled and blackened. And I wondered how long it would be before I crumbled to ash. Did I want to?
When I woke the next morning, the ache in my abdomen from King’s last blow was just as persistent.
What was worse, I was now bleeding, even though my courses were not due.
Of course, I had no supplies to deal with this or even a change of clothes.
I explained as much to the MP who brought me breakfast, and he seemed rather more embarrassed for me than I was embarrassed for myself.
Anger was my predominant emotion, coupled with worry, and I refused to mince words regarding what had caused my injuries.
A physician was brought to me. An army physician who had clearly not treated a woman in decades.
He attempted to persuade me that I must be mistaken in my arithmetic, but I refused to be lectured on my own body by a gray-haired brass hat.
Regardless, there was little he could do other than advise that I monitor the blood flow and inform the guard if I felt lightheaded, confused, or short of breath.
The garments and supplies brought to me were scratchy and ill-fitting, and I raised such a fuss that a set of my own clothes was delivered to me some hours later along with my warm woolen coat, gloves, and a hat.
I was so relieved to have some of my own things that I spared the old MP—who was truly a darling, fretting for me and bringing me tea and biscuits—another diatribe on my ill treatment.
Either Sidney or our maid Ginny had also thought to send some basic toilette items, including a comb and toothbrush, and after performing some basic ablutions and changing into the fresh garments, I felt much more myself.
I donned my woolen coat to ward off the chill of the cell, lifting the collar to inhale the comforting scent of home.
I detected a faint whiff of Sidney’s cologne, and it caused an ache in my chest—a deep, swelling longing to feel his arms around me, holding me safe and secure.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the burn of tears and firmly pushed it away lest I give way to another spate of weeping as I had in the middle of the night when I’d trusted that at least the darkness had hid my slow unraveling from prying eyes.
Picking up the leather gloves, I thrust my hands inside only to feel the crunch of an obstacle thrust into the space for the left middle finger.
Approaching the fire, I slowly worked out the tiny roll of paper.
The sight of it brought back a flood of memories from the war when entire reports inside the occupied areas were written in minuscule print on such slips of paper and then transported by rolling them around pins concealed in your hair or sewing them into the thin lining of your garments.
Though not normally a courier, I had been responsible for such documents from time to time, burying them in the nest of my thick, deliberately dulled curls.
Unrolling the smuggled chit, I discovered it was short and succinct.
In contact with C. Release imminent. Hold on, my love.
He hadn’t signed it, but there was no need to for I would have recognized Sidney’s neat scrawl anywhere.
I released a shuddering breath, leaning one hand against the wall above the hearth to support me.
Sidney had gotten in touch with the Chief, then, and he would interfere after all.
This knowledge made me feel less alone, less without defense.
Now that I knew that there was a bulwark at my back and the vanguard was coming for me, I could breathe a little deeper and straighten my back a little taller.
The ache that lingered in my gut was more bearable.
I might have tossed this paper in the fire as well, but I decided to keep it. If they searched me and found it, it would merely inform them that I knew I was not without recourse. In the meantime, it gave me strength feeling it wedged in the glove along my finger, a talisman against fear.
I was left alone for most of the day except for when the old MP brought me my meals or stepped in to check on me.
He told me his granddaughter had red hair, his expression conflicted, and I knew it was his way of saying he didn’t approve of what was being done, but that he had his orders to follow.
I suspected most of the soldiers posted here felt the same.
Toward the late afternoon, when the light filtering through the window into the basement began to shift, the old MP came for me again.
Seeing the grim cast to his features, my heart rate accelerated, but I donned my hat and straightened my attire, determined to face whatever was before me with a straight spine and firm chin.
I’d not heard anyone in the neighboring cells earlier—the walls being too thick, I supposed—but striding down the passageway I heard the plucky warble of an Irishman.
“Oh, death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling; oh, grave thy victory? The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling for you but not for me.”
It had been a popular, if blasphemous soldiers’ song during the war, and I couldn’t halt a swift grin at the prisoner’s cheek in singing it here.