Page 109 of The Number of Love
No. There could be no life after this, knowing he hadn’t saved his brother. There could only be roaming the earth like a ghost. Another spasm struck, another cough wracked him.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered, but the words were different now. It took him a long, burning moment to realize why. To realize she was speaking in German. And that she sounded like his mother. “Put your hand on Dieter now. Please touch his lungs where the pneumonia has settled in and break them free. Four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-eight...”
He tried to pull away, but the weight of her arm across his shoulders was too much. He tried to insist that he hadn’t really wantedher prayers, but he couldn’t force any more words from his throat. He tried to find one last move to steal the momentum.
But she was right. He’d had to cheat to make the last move he’d made—and still he’d lost. Another cough shook him. And the darkness won.
Drake rubbed a hand up the arm of Margot’s coat, needing the assurance that she was still standing here, alive and talking, after Dieter Regnitz had passed out on that arm. After she’d held him like a friend until the authorities arrived, apparently. He could hardly believe it. Might not have, if Abuelo hadn’t been shouting the same story in Spanish, incredulous, while Margot calmly recited it for the officers who had just hauled the man away. While they’d been driving madly back through London to make sure the villain hadn’t escaped and come back here, she’d been holding him. Praying for him.
The police had already asked questions aplenty. But they hadn’t asked his. He closed his eyes for a moment while he drew in a long breath. And then he rested his forehead against hers. “What would I have done if I’d lost you?”
Margot sighed. Her arms were folded across her middle. And her gaze was locked on the door that had closed behind the uninvited guest and his new escorts. The door that now had a bullet lodged in it. A bullet meant for her.
“He had no moves left to make. He’d already lost, the moment he fired that gun. He just couldn’t see it yet. Couldn’t see that he’d backed himself into a corner.Aji keshi.” Her eyes wandered back to his. And softened. “I felt sorry for him, Drake. If I were in his place, I may have done the same thing. Tried to fill the hole with vengeance, because it’s just so gaping.”
Always surprising him, this one. He smiled and pressed a kiss to her hair. “I’m not ashamed to say that all I feel about him right now is relief that he’s in custody.”
But still Margot frowned. “If they put him in prison, he’ll probably die of pneumonia.”
It was likely. “He has to go to prison, Margot. Those are the consequences for the actions he took. He killed people.” So had Drake though. Was it different, that he hadn’t meant to? That it had happened in action, in a time of war?
Dieter Regnitz obviously hadn’t thought that made it excusable. The English government certainly would say it did. There would be no imprisonment for Drake, no legal ramifications for Maxim Jaeger’s—no, Heinrich Regnitz’s—death. If anything, he’d get a commendation for a job well done.
But it didn’t feel well done. He’d robbed a man of his brother, a mother of her child. He’d made holes in their lives, and it put one in his too. The government telling him it was right didn’t make it feel so.
Margot touched a finger to his chin, making him look up and realize those dark eyes had been on him, a smile hovering on the corners of her mouth. “What are you most proud of, in how all this played out? What are you most grateful for?”
He knew what she was doing. The same thing he’d done with her, that first day in the corridor outside Hall’s office. Asking the question that would get at the heart rather than the circumstances. The question that would reveal who a person was far more than their name ever would.
And the answer here was easy. “You and Dot—to both.” He’d always thought, he supposed, that his role was to be the one in the action. Saving them when necessary. Rushing in, defending, dodging the bullets. But they’d done a rather fine job of seeing to things themselves.
At her name, his sister stood from the chair she’d taken in the landlord’s office—where their grandfather had apparently set up his base of operations. She moved to the doorway, where Abuelo stood.
He received her with a proud smile and an arm around her shoulders. “Ah, yes. Our girl is a brave one. I am proud of you, Dorothea.”
She offered him a tired smile, but she shook her head. “I still don’t understand what you’re doing here, Abuelo. In England. Why didn’t you just send word of what you’d found? You’ve never come before, even when Mama died.”
Abuelo lifted his dark brows, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Because my coming would have done nothing then. Changed nothing. She was gone already, God rest her soul, and you scarcely knew me then, for my presence to bring any comfort. You had your father, your friends. But now, this—my coming could change everything. Why would I not do it, when it meant life for my grandchildren?”
“Well then.” Looking exhausted and disheveled, but steady, Dot offered another weary smile. “Perhaps you’ll stay long enough to come to my wedding.” Then the smile wobbled and she straightened, shifting a bit until she could look at Margot. “I’m sorry. For what I said earlier. I wasn’t—”
“It’s forgiven, Dot. Forgotten.” Margot held out a hand, and his sister sidled past Abuelo so she could take it in her own. “I’m happy you’re getting married. I just didn’t want you to do it out of fear.”
“I know. But I’m not. Perhaps yesterday I was, but ... but I’m not. Though it must be asked...” Dot looked from Margot to Drake and back again. “If you could argue that I should wait a bit because it wouldn’t change my love, isn’t the opposite true too? How long do you really have to wait when you know God put you together for a reason?”
A good question, to be sure. But Drake already knew the answer to that one. “As long as it takes.”
They smiled at him—Dot with indulgence, Margot with gratitude—and then turned together for the stairs. “You can have Aunt Millie’s bed tonight, Margot. Drake will have to go to Abuelo’s hotel with him. He won’t mind, will you, Drake? And Red can...”
Drake shook his head as the two women continued up the stairs without a backward look to make sure he’d agreed with the arrangements.
Red slapped a hand to his shoulder. “I’m off for home, then, I suppose. It was good serving with you today, Elton.”
“Agreed. I can think of no one I’d rather have beside me in this war.” Well, and Camden. But no need to bring him up just now, since he’d already left after seeing everyone had survived the night.
Red turned then to Abuelo. Shoulders straight, chin up, confidence in his eyes that certainly hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. “I look forward to getting to know you better while you’re here, sir.”
Abuelo shook his hand, not so much as a twitch in his countenance to show any unease at the thought of being away from the home that had long been his fort. “Indeed, young man. The very words I was thinking.”
