Chapter 9
By the time we reached Upper Fitzwilliam Street, I had myself more in hand, though I wasn’t entirely composed. Sidney attempted to carry me inside, but I refused.
“It will only alarm them,” I protested, concerned for our staff who had already suffered enough. “I can make it. Just give me your arm.”
As I emerged on the pavement, Nimble, Sidney’s valet, came lumbering out the door.
“Oh, Mrs. Kent, it’s good to see ye. I told Ginny and Mrs. Boyle”—our maid and cook—“that the Cap’n would bring ye home.
I told ’em he would.” Nimble had served as Sidney’s batman during the war and despite being told numerous times to stop addressing him by his former rank, he persisted in calling him Captain.
“How are they? How are you?” I asked anxiously, having been too overcome to ask Sidney about them on the drive from the Castle.
I scanned Nimble’s appearance for injury, but all I could see were the scars blistering the left side of his face near his hairline and the missing part of his left ear from a shell explosion during the war.
“Don’t worry about me,” he objected. “And Ginny and Mrs. Boyle would say the same. Got chucked about a bit, but we’re none the worse for wear.”
This was exactly what I’d feared, no matter how Nimble minimized it. I’d known the men who’d remained behind after I’d been dragged away wouldn’t have gone easy on them, though I supposed I should be glad they hadn’t incarcerated any of them.
The same couldn’t be said of Wick. I must get in touch with his editor to see what could be done.
“Take the roadster around to the mews,” Sidney ordered Nimble, guiding me toward the door.
I didn’t require much assistance. Especially not when I saw who was standing in the doorway.
I cried out in surprise and delight as our friend Max pulled me inside and straight into his embrace. “What are you doing here?” I demanded to know. “And you!” I added as Max released me and I turned to spot my friend George, as well.
George enfolded me in a swift but fervent hug. “You gave us a right bloody scare, Ver,” he pronounced almost in scolding.
“But I don’t understand,” I said to them all.
“When we heard what happened, of course, we came,” Max replied. “How could we not?”
I blinked at him and George. I should have known they would give no different answer. Because they were the best of men and the best of friends to us. “Thank you,” I blubbered as, in spite of my best effort, I began to weep again.
To their credit, they all took this in stride, leading me up to the parlor at the back of the house.
They took my coat and hat and settled me on the chaise longue with a blanket over my lap, a handkerchief tucked in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so well and promptly cared for.
However, I could do without their hovering. “Sit down. Please,” I begged them once I had myself more in hand.
Sidney dropped into one of the chairs before the hearth, bending forward over his knees almost as if he was praying. I knew that none of this had been easy for him, and as strong as he wanted—needed—to be for me, he was struggling.
Max raked a hand back through his dark butterscotch-blond hair and slid from the arm of the sofa onto its cushion.
As the Earl of Ryde and a former staff officer in the army, I knew that his presence and petitions on my behalf had given them more weight.
I also feared looking into his soft gray eyes that he’d taken on a measure of guilt at not being here to help protect me.
It was the same sort of guilt he carried for abandoning the men he’d commanded in the trenches when his father, the late earl, had interfered after Max had suffered a shoulder injury, and contrived to have Max promoted out of harm’s way at the front, making him the adjutant to a major general.
Then, as now, it had not been his fault, but it would eat at him still.
It had been nearly six months since I’d last seen him, and I was relieved to see that he seemed to have regained his usual steadiness and calm composure even in the face of all this.
When Sidney and I had left London, Max had still been grappling with the implications of his father’s treasonous association with Lord Ardmore, but he seemed to have found his feet again.
Or perhaps my emergency had allowed him to feel more in his element.
He always had been good in a crisis. It was, I suspected, one of the reasons he’d made an excellent commanding officer.
Or so Sidney had said, since he’d served under him.
George Bentnick, on the other hand, had been my friend during the war.
Quite bluntly, he was brilliant. A gifted mathematician, he’d been recruited to work in counterintelligence in OB40, Naval Intelligence’s cryptology department.
There were many days during the early part of the war—when I had yet to venture into the field and instead worked as a clerk, translator, and analyst for the foreign division of military intelligence when it was simply called the Secret Service—that I had come to depend on George’s calm precision and stoic rationale.
When the graphic reports from Belgium and France and farther afield became too disturbing, when reading the rolls of honor in the newspapers listing the dead was overwhelming, his numbers and logic had soothed me and our mutual friend Daphne.
George was the last to sit, claiming the end of the sofa nearest to me.
It seemed like he had always been fretting over me like a brother.
And when my middle brother, Rob, had died—his aeroplane being shot down over France—he seemed to fill the post in earnest. With his dark eyes, caramel skin, and rich black hair that curled into tight whorls, George resembled his Indian grandmother, but he’d inherited his above average height and sturdy frame from his father.
“Daphne wanted to come …” he began and then hesitated as if not knowing how to continue.
“Say no more,” I told him, aware of the difficulties of traveling when one was a single female.
Daphne lived in London with her father and brother, who often took advantage of her kindness and easygoing nature.
They would never have let her board a ferry to Ireland.
And considering everything I’d seen and experienced, I couldn’t say that I blamed them.
“But how were you able to get away?” I asked. George was a professor of mathematics at Oxford, and it was the middle of the term. “What about your classes?”
“I’ve been granted two weeks’ leave,” he assured me. “It’s all cleared.”
“And we’re all going to be returning to England anyway. Just as soon as Verity is fit to travel,” Max declared. “Correct?” he added when neither Sidney nor I confirmed this.
Still hunched over, Sidney lifted his head to look at me, silently asking whether I wanted to be the one to explain. “Unfortunately, there’s a complication.”
Max and George both turned to me anxiously.
“Because we did such a good job uncovering the phosgene plot”—I tried and failed to keep the sarcasm from my voice—“they now want us to ingratiate ourselves with the rebels and uncover what we can, particularly about Collins and his intelligence network. And they didn’t exactly give us a choice in the matter. ”
“Bloody hell,” Max exclaimed.
George’s brow furrowed. “Are we sure this isn’t Ardmore’s doing? It sounds like one of his contrivances.”
“I’m not sure of anything,” I admitted. “And their decision to”—I scowled—“‘put us to use’ may have been influenced by him.” I looked at Sidney, who was now sitting upright in his chair.
“But we also managed to plant some significant doubts about Ardmore’s loyalty.
With any luck, those doubts weakened his hold on some key figures, and they’ll open an investigation into his activities and investments. ”
“So you can’t leave Dublin?” Max clarified.
“Not yet,” Sidney confirmed.
Max pushed to his feet with a discontented sigh. “That calls for a drink.”
“But you don’t have to stay,” I told him as he crossed to the satinwood console table that acted as a sideboard.
“No, no. If you’re staying, I’m staying,” he stated firmly, as he poured two fingers of whiskey into a glass.
He turned, gesturing with the decanter to ask if any of us would like some.
Sidney and George nodded their assent while I declined, content with my tea.
“Especially considering the fact that part of the reason you’re in this mess is because of my father. ”
“Ryde, you’re not responsible for your father’s actions,” Sidney reminded him.
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe I shouldn’t do everything I can to remedy the wrongs he committed.
” He finished pouring the other men’s drinks, delivering their glasses to them.
“You both uncovered the location of the phosgene, with Bentnick’s able assistance as cryptographer, in the nick of time before it could kill anyone.
” His gaze drifted to me. “But the endeavor was not without its casualties.”
I offered him a reassuring smile. “I am all in one piece.” At least physically.
Sidney took a long swallow from his glass, staring at its contents as he spoke. “They published Kevin Barry’s account of the torture he endured during his own interrogation.”
I realized what he was saying, glancing at Max and George, who would no longer meet my eye.
“It was printed too late to do him much good. He was executed anyway.” Sidney began to tip his glass back to take another drink and then hesitated, to add, “But it sure gave me a number of nightmares.”
I knew he was speaking of me. How I was in the custody of the same men, and he could do nothing to get to me or stop them from doing the same to me as they’d done to young Barry, or worse.