Page 51 of The Number of Love
Dot held out a hand, beaming. “Not since the war began and you enlisted.” She turned to include Margot in her smile. “Red and Nelson were great friends. And Red worked for my father.”
“What a small world.” She smiled. But she didn’t want to. Notbecause it wasn’t lovely, that the man she’d decided to trust was indeed trustworthy, an old friend of her new friend. But because she’d done it on her own, on a whim. God hadn’t told her to. He’d given her no indication one way or the other. Her fingers curled into her palm. Was this how it would be from now on? A silent God, leaving her to her own devices?
Holmes still had Dot’s hand pressed between both of his. “I’m so sorry about Nelson. I can’t say how sorry I am.”
“I know. I am too. I still miss him.” She angled a smile toward Margot. “But I’ve learned to go on with the pieces missing.”
He released her hand. “And your brother? How is he? I’ve heard nothing of Elton for several years.”
Dot waved a hand in the general vicinity of her flat. “Home thanks to a gunshot wound, at the moment, but the doctors think he’ll make a full recovery. He’ll be here through Christmas, which is a pleasant change. You ought to come and visit him sometime, I know he’d like that. Oh!” She looked at Margot again, her eyes wide.
Had it been Maman, Margot probably would have been able to read whatever thoughts she was silently shouting. But she didn’t know Dot quite so well yet. She could only lift her brows in response and wait to see what she was thinking.
She didn’t have to wait long. Dot straightened her shoulders and said, “You ought to join us on Saturday. We’re having a small dinner party to celebrate Margot’s birthday. Just us and my brother and her brother and his wife. You’ll give us an even number.”
Six. More even than five, to be sure. It was, Margot supposed, a better number for a dinner party. She saw no particular reason to object.
Aside from the fact that Holmes clearly wasn’t comfortable with it. He glanced down at himself, muttering, “Oh ... how kind. But I don’t think...”
He was wearing the same clothes he had been the other night, and they were none too fine. Not ragged, not yet, but probably also not clean. Certainly not what one wore to a dinner at the home of one’s former employer’s daughter.
Margot pressed her lips together. He was about the same sizeas Lukas. Half an inch shorter, perhaps, but his shoulders looked to be the same breadth. And her brother had plenty of clothes. He could lend him a suit of them, and Willa’s sister Rosemary could do any alterations needed. Rosie was brilliant with a needle. They’d be happy to help. They always were.
“Of course you’ll come.” Margot nodded, as if that settled it. It wouldn’t have done so forher, if she were the one resisting. But perhaps Holmes just needed someone to do for him what Maman had always done for her—insist and leave no room for argument. She’d find a way to inform him later of how to go about avoiding embarrassment. For now, she turned a bit toward the park. From this distance, she could just make out a figure sitting at the wrought-iron table. “Did you have any luck playing detective, Mr. Holmes?”
He chuckled and turned as well. “Well, I’m no Sherlock, I daresay. But I did, at that.” He shuffled a step closer to her and pitched his voice to a lower volume. “It was two days before the bloke showed up, and when he did, he wouldn’t talk to me—as you said was likely to happen. But I followed him to his flat that night and got his name from his box. John Williams.”
“Well, that’s easy to remember.” Dot slid to the other side of Margot, smiling in an easy way that proved she had no stakes in this game.
Margot wasn’t quite sure whyshedid, but the thought of John Williams playing Go in her park just wouldn’t leave her alone. “Thank you, Holmes. I appreciate your finding that for me.”
“Oh, I found more than that.” When he grinned, he didn’t look like a footless soldier who had to beg a few shillings from her. He looked like a friend of Dot’s who knew his way around the city. “Did a bit of asking about. Seems that until the war began, Mr. Williams had been in Japan, part of a diplomatic envoy. Spent a decade there. When hostilities broke out in ’14, he decided to come home and enlist. He was an officer on a minesweeper, theAriel, that was sunk by a U-boat in August. One of the few survivors. According to my sources”—here he leaned closer, speaking more quietly still—“he hasn’t been right since. In the head, I mean.”
Dot pressed a hand to her chest. “How very sad!”
It was, of course. But it was also very enlightening. “Japan.” Margot nodded and recalled the look of the board he’d been using. It had been exquisite—lovelier than the one on which Gottlieb had taught her. He’d probably acquired it in Japan and brought it back to England with him. Though the game originated in China, it was so ubiquitous in Japan that most of the terms of play were Japanese rather than Chinese. “That makes sense.” Not a German connection—a Japanese one.
It ought to make the unease settle. But it didn’t, exactly. It just inspired her feet to move away from Dot and Holmes and toward the hunched figure of John Williams. The last time she’d tried to speak to him, he’d barely even looked at her. That was all right.
She slid into the seat opposite his and didn’t look at him either. She looked at the board, at the game he was playing with no one, and took a moment to take in the positions of the pieces. He was even then taking his fingers off one of his black stones after moving it. She rested two of hers onto a white.
It was cool and smooth and familiar, sucking her back three years in time with that single touch. She sat across from Gottlieb instead of Williams, in the warm home of Madame Dumont, who had taken them in as if they were family, though they’d never met her before that long, grueling march from burned-out Louvain to occupied Brussels. The crisp London air disappeared, the babble of voices was French in her ear instead of English.
But in Brussels, she wouldn’t have made the best move she saw, not often. She’d had to pretend she wasn’t as smart as she was, pretend she wasn’t the daughter of her father, pretend she wasn’t the “crypotography machine” he’d apparently bragged to too many people about having created.
Today she was just one more cog in the machine of Room 40. Allowed to be who she was. Able to play however she pleased. Today Maman certainly wouldn’t be hovering behind her, glowering warnings with wide eyes.
Margot blinked away the pain of that and moved the stone under her fingers.
Williams grunted. She darted a glance up at him, expecting protest to be upon his face. But the corners of his lips had turned up. Just a bit. He still didn’t look at her, but he looked at the board in a new way.
A few minutes must have marched by, though she hadn’t cared to mark them. Then Holmes appeared at her side with a softly cleared throat. “Beg your pardon, Miss De Wilde.” Dot must have filled him in on her last name. “I’m going to see Miss Elton home. And don’t worry.” He pitched his voice low. “I’ll find a way to bow out of your dinner party.”
“Nonsense. Come.” Eyes still on the board, she reached into her handbag and pulled out the scarf that was taking up much of the space inside. “My mother knitted this for you.” Maman hadn’t known it, but it was nonetheless true. “And if you meet me back here in an hour, I’ll take you to my brother’s house. He’ll ensure you have the proper attire for this party, if that’s your concern.”
“Very kind, miss, but I oughtn’t...”
She looked over, up, into his eyes. “We all fall on hard times, Mr. Holmes. The kindness of a stranger saved my life once, and my mother’s. Please. Let me do for you just a portion of what she did for us. It is a small enough gesture. Lukas will not miss one suit of clothes.”
