Chapter 10
“That water must be freezing by now.”
I slowly lifted my head from where I’d let it loll against the edge of the bathtub, staring unseeing at the wall, to look up at Sidney. He stood over me, his hands on his hips, assessing me clinically rather than with the usual interest he showed when finding me in such a state.
“Not really,” I murmured, not yet having summoned the energy or the will to climb out of the water. My fingers and toes were thoroughly pruned and the hair on the top of my head already drying. I’d figured once my teeth started chattering, I’d find a way to get my feet under me.
Sidney reached for the towel Ginny had laid out for me in the sunbeam shining through the far window. The light had since shifted so that only a sliver of the towel was still being heated by the sun’s rays. “Sit up,” he urged.
With a sigh, I complied, shivering as the air touched my shoulders.
He pulled me to my feet, wrapping the towel around me as I stepped out of the tub.
I watched his face as he rubbed his hands over the towel, drying my skin.
In view of the amount of care he took with me, I might have been a young child, but I knew it was because he’d seen the bruises on my abdomen. It was writ in the pucker of his brow.
“You telephoned your parents?” he asked, perhaps finding our silence uncomfortable.
I was certain he’d overheard at least part of our conversation, but I answered anyway. “Yes.”
“And sent your telegrams?”
Again, I was certain he’d seen Nimble depart, but still I replied. “Yes.”
“I’ve asked Mrs. Boyle to send a tray up so that you can rest.”
“Sidney,” I murmured.
“And if you don’t feel up to dressing and coming down for dinner later, that will be fine.”
“Sidney, look at me,” I tried again.
“Max and George will understand. We’ll all understand.”
I freed my hand from the towel, pressing my hand to his cheek. His gaze finally reluctantly met mine.
My voice quavered. “I … I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that!” he snapped, backing away from me so that my hand fell. “Why would you say that? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why do I feel like you’re angry with me?”
“I’m not. I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with them.” He flung out his arm in what I guessed was supposed to be the general direction of the Castle. “They’re the ones I’m furious with.”
“But I’m the one who brought us here. I’m the one who stubbornly insisted on staying, on foiling Ardmore,” I countered.
He shook his head vehemently. “No, Ver. We chose to come here. We chose to stay. And if we hadn’t …”
We knew now precisely what would have happened had we not stopped those disguised phosgene cylinders from being fired.
In my mind, I could still see the faces of the mourners and protestors gathered outside Mountjoy Jail that fateful morning—men, women, and children singing, kneeling, praying, clutching their rosaries.
How many of them would have been poisoned? How many would have died?
Sidney gripped my upper arms, his gaze boring into mine. “Are you saying now that you wish we hadn’t persisted?”
“No. I … I would have accepted this consequence, even had I known this would be the result. I would have accepted this consequence ten times over.”
His jaw tightened and his eyes sparkled with wrath.
I swallowed. “Then why …?”
“Because it should have been me!” He turned to pace away from me, clearly trying to regain control of his temper.
“It should have been me they detained, not you,” he said in a more measured voice, though rage still simmered within him.
“What kind of monsters choose to arrest a woman and torment her, and leave her husband untouched? Who in their right mind does that?”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, grasping what he wasn’t able to put into words.
“If I’d been here rather than in the carriage house. If I’d been the first to confront them …”
“They still would have taken me.”
Sidney turned to me in startlement.
“O admitted it to me. And … Ardmore came to see me while I was in custody.”
His ferocity was almost as great as his disbelief, his entire body vibrating with it. “They let Ardmore see you?!”
I nodded, clutching the towel tightly around me against the chill. I’d not intended to tell him this next part, but perhaps he needed to hear it. “He told me that he’d wanted you arrested. That O contradicted his directive.”
Sidney’s brow quirked in skepticism. “He was probably just saying that to soften—”
“He wanted you arrested because he knew I would do anything to have you released.”
He stilled, staring back at me.
“As a man, they would have shown you no mercy,” I explained. “And having heard the rebels talk about the Castle’s ‘knocking shop,’ I would have known that. And I would have agreed to whatever Ardmore wanted, to save your life.”
“You don’t know that,” he replied stiffly.
“Maybe,” I conceded, wanting to believe I would have rejected anything truly evil. “But he would have had leverage over me, over us.” And it would have slowly destroyed us. I didn’t say this last part out loud, but from Sidney’s stricken expression I thought he comprehended.
I shivered, recalling us to my damp, undressed state. He turned to usher me into our adjoining bedchamber and helped me dress in a loose dress and cardigan. Fortunately, most of the bleeding from King’s punch had stopped, otherwise I wasn’t sure what the sight would have done to my husband.
“The letter from C.” I’d recalled it while I was soaking in the bath. “I forgot it in my coat pocket. Would you—?”
I hadn’t even finished the sentence before he was out the door, urging me to remain seated on our bed.
It was a high platform four-poster bed, which we had to use steps to climb up into.
In short order, he returned with the letter and the lunch tray he’d alluded to earlier, evidently having intercepted Ginny on her way to deliver it.
I smelled almond soup and grilled stuffed mackerel, which was arranged next to a curled endive salad with lemon vinaigrette dressing.
I gestured for Sidney to set the tray on the side table while I took the letter from him.
I didn’t waste time examining the seal to see if the missive had already been opened.
It was best to assume it had. As usual, it was typed—likely by the Chief’s secretary and my friend, Kathleen Silvernickel—and then signed with a flourished C in green ink.
To be frank, the contents were of little interest. He confirmed receipt of the telegram I’d sent just an hour before I was detained and thanked and congratulated me on a job well done.
He also apologized for the Castle’s cock-up.
Being acquainted with C’s at times crude sense of humor, I suspected he’d chosen that word in particular.
It was that same crude sense of humor which made me drop the letter as I caught sight of the only thing that stood out.
On the signature, there was a small dot of green ink at the center of the C’s curl.
Though it appeared to merely be a stray drip of ink, I knew from past experience that this was an indication that there was a message written in invisible ink below it.
C had become rather enamored with the use of invisible ink during the war and had quite enjoyed the discovery that semen could be utilized.
He’d jested, “every man had his own stylo.” This was the reason I’d dropped the page.
I wanted to believe C would not have used something so objectionable, and I detected no offensive smell, which was the reason its use had been halted.
But I also knew that, at times, C’s decorum left much to be desired.
“What is it?” Sidney asked.
I glanced thoughtfully at the food on my tray. “I need some lemon wedges.”
“Lemon wedges?” he repeated, but then realization seemed to dawn for he looked at the paper in my lap with new eyes.
As he hurried from the room, I collected a handkerchief from one of my drawers. Then I lowered the tray to my lap and removed the bowl of soup and silverware to lay the letter on its flat surface. When I heard my husband coming, I poured some hot tea from the pot into my cup.
Taking the bowl of lemons from Sidney, I carefully squeezed the juice from one of the lemon wedges onto the letter below C’s signature and swiped one corner of the handkerchief over it so that it soaked into the paper.
Then I lifted the page over my teacup, allowing the steam from the tea to heat the paper.
Almost immediately, a chemical reaction began to happen.
But I needed more lemon juice. I repeated the process with three more wedges and then held it over the steaming teacup.
We were able to make out three blotchy words.
Trust no one.
Neither Sidney nor I spoke for some moments, continuing to stare at the paper as I set it on the tray and the words slowly began to disappear again. My heart had lodged somewhere in my throat, and I was struggling to stifle the alarm flooding through my veins.
I asked myself again whether I was supposed to have read this message before we spoke to Anderson, O, and Sturgis. But how on earth? It’s not as if I could have simply popped out for some lemon juice or completed the process in front of them.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you know how to lie without flinching.”
I turned to look at my husband. I’d wondered how he’d felt about my decision to fib, about forcing him to fib. I guess I had my answer. “Unfortunately, in this work, it’s necessary sometimes.”
He lifted his gaze from the letter to study my features. “I just didn’t know you were so good at it.”
My upper lip curled in disdain. “You weren’t so bad at it yourself.”
“True,” he conceded, his tone conciliatory.
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding, offering an olive branch of my own. “I’m grateful you followed my lead. I wasn’t sure you would.”