Page 20 of The Number of Love
He didn’t even glance at his sister’s image, smiling from the right side of the photo. He was too busy looking at the figure on the left.
The dark-eyed nameless girl.
She stared up at him with an intensity that a camera should not have been able to capture so well. Her lips didn’t smile, exactly, but they didn’tnoteither. The corners were turned up just the slightest bit, in a way that put Mona Lisa to shame.
The black-and-white image couldn’t reveal details like eye color or the shade of suit she wore, but his memory supplied the image’s lack. Deepest brown eyes, so dark they were nearly black. The day he’d seen her, she’d been in dark blue—he couldn’t have said whether this skirt and jacket were exactly the same or not, but he imagined them as such.
Just as he imagined the snap of her wit ready to trip off her tongue.
With a corner of his own mouth tugging up in a smile, he turned to the letter, propping the photo up on his desk.
I know I’ve been chattering nonstop about Margot, so I thought I’d include a snapshot her mother took of us last week at her brother’s house. Her brother is Lukas De Wilde, the violinist—had I mentioned that? I think you’d like her, Drake. It isn’t just that she has learned to tolerate my quirks, as Ada has. It’s that she understands them and knows when to push and when to let me rest. And heavens, but I think she must be the most intelligent person I’ve ever met!
He leaned back against the well-worn wood of his chair, eyes shifting again to the photograph. Margot De Wilde, was it? It felt a bit unsporting to learn her name through no cleverness of his own, but he wasn’t exactly sorry to have a name to go with the memory. A friend for his sister, not like Ada. Pretty, intelligent, and with those dark eyes that cut him to the quick.
His lips curved into a smile. A reason to look forward to his next trip to London, whenever that might be.
7
Where was she? Margot stood just inside the door of the Old Admiralty Building, clutching her umbrella and staring out into the pouring rain. Most of the day shift had already arrived, though there were still a few stragglers jumping over puddles and hurrying inside.
None, however, were Sophie De Wilde. Margot sighed and glanced at her watch. Five minutes late. Not a lot for some people, perhaps, but quite a bit for her mother. And no doubt it was Margot’s fault—she’d grabbed the good umbrella when she left for her weekly night shift yesterday evening, hoping the weather would have improved by the time Maman would need to leave this morning. The other umbrella had been giving them problems for weeks, refusing to go up—or back down after they’d managed to wrestle it into position. It had probably broken outright, leaving her mother to scramble for one she could borrow from a neighbor. Or perhaps even detour to a shop to spend a few precious coins on a new one.
Exhaustion had settled over her shoulders an hour ago. The night shift had managed to break the new codes without too much problem, but Hall had passed her another packet from Thoroton to decipher. “If you have the time,” he’d said as he turned for the door. “If you don’t, I’ll handle it myself tomorrow.”
Had they not managed to break the German codes in ample time,she wouldn’t have minded handing the stack of HUMINT back to the admiral without its plain script counterpart, but she could hardly nap at her desk as Culbreth and de Grey had done with that packet sitting there. So she’d spent her remaining time scribbling like mad, trying to get it finished before her shift was over.
Now the words were a jumble in her mind as the rain poured down before her vision. Wolfram. Agent Thirty. Anthrax. Cartagena.Erri Barro. Codebooks. Agent Eighteen. Bacilli. Madrid. Sugar. Bilbao. Agent Four.
Margot checked her watch again. Was it possible that Maman was waiting at home for her, so she could use the good brolly? It didn’t seem the most plausible course of action, but Maman was not always the most logical creature in the world. Most of the time she was utterly rational. But on rare occasions, frustration or joy or some other incomprehensible feeling would trump better reason and make her do the strangest things. Like sit on the couch with a huff after fighting with an umbrella for ten minutes and declaring to the otherwise empty flat that she wouldn’t move until a working example arrived.
“Everything all right, Margot?”
Margot looked over her shoulder with a muted smile for Dot. She’d obviously only come back downstairs on some sort of errand, as she had a clutch of papers in hand.Shehad arrived ten minutes ago. Margot lifted a shoulder. “Maman is not here yet.”
Dot’s brows drew together. “Has she come down with that flu that’s been going around, perhaps? She looked a bit pale yesterday.”
Margot shifted her weight to her other foot. She hadn’t considered that very likely possibility—which proved how tired she was. “Possibly. Shedidseem run-down. But she would have telephoned Lady Hambro to tell her, if so.”
“And I daresay she will. If so, I mean. But she may have overslept, or been waiting to be sure her ladyship was in.”
True, all. Margot let that possibility slip into the row of them in her mind. Stay or go? Wait or check on her mother?
The numbers were muted, sluggish, as tired as the rest of her. But shethoughtthey agreed with the idea of marching out into the cold rain and going home. The powers of three were singing through her mind. No, of four. No...
“Areyoufeeling all right?” Dot had come closer and reached now to touch a hand to Margot’s forehead. Her own was creased into a frown. Symmetrical lines, equidistant apart. “You feel warm.”
She wouldn’t let just anybody touch her head like that. But it hadn’t taken long for Dot to feel like a sister. And she was too tired to jerk away. “I’m well enough. Just tired.” Though now that she mentioned it, her throat was the tiniest bit sore too.
Nothing a cup of tea and a morning of sleep wouldn’t fix. With what was meant to be a marshalling exhale but came out as a resigned sigh, Margot lifted the brolly. “All right, enough dillydallying. I’ll either find her on the way or see her at home. Good night, Dot. See you tomorrow.”
Her friend grinned. “Good morning, Margot. Stay dry—and put a bit of honey in your tea, if you have any. You sound hoarse.”
“Yes, Mother.” She issued the tease knowing well it would make Dot laugh—rare indeed was the occasion that her friend got to take care of anyone else now that her aunt had left the city.
Then came the draft trying to hold the door shut, the first gust of wet wind lashing against her, the quicksnickof her umbrella going up, and the drumming of rain upon it. Margot set off with her coat cinched tightly around her waist and her head down as she fought the wind that snuck under her brolly.
Gentle rains were entertaining. She could count to the patter, try to find the pattern in the falling droplets. From the safety of her window, she could even imagine that, were she an inch tall, she could map out a path around them.
