Page 85 of The Number of Love
Margot rolled her eyes. “The question of the hour, it seems. You ought to step into the corridor and share your very new outrage on the subject that no one else has ever once expressed before.”
Camden grunted. But he also smiled. “You’re a sarcastic little thing, did you know that?”
“I was unaware.”
“There you go again.”
“It wasn’t going again. I hadn’t stopped.”
He snorted a laugh. He must have finished whatever he’d been working on since he stood, stretched, and meandered over to the window. And given that he didn’t make a point of bumping into anyone’s chair, he must have been rather pleased with how that one had gone.
She turned back to her own, ignoring the continued debate in the corridor and the mutters from Culbreth and Adcock about a line that was giving one of them trouble. The words in front of her took her six weeks back in time.Wolfram. Erri Barro.It only took her a few more minutes to finish up.
Which was good, since Camden said from the window, “Elton andhis nursemaid are coming this way. I take it we’re having another cozy lunch for four?”
“Unless you’ve decided to be our spare wheel today.” She offered a cheeky grin, knowing well he wouldn’t even consent to being in the same room as Holmes, though she still wasn’t certain why. She’d asked, but he’d only made a snide comment about some people having no sense of humor.
Holmes couldn’t always manage to get away from the factory for a lunch hour, but when he did, he’d taken to swinging by the flat for Drake on his way to meet Dot.
She’d be glowing afterward. And Margot didn’t exactly mind the company either, but she could be fairly certain her face didn’t shine over it—if so, the chaps would never let her live it down.
Margot pulled her lunch sack from under her desk and looked over to the station by the door, occupied now by a thirty-year-old secretary who’d been with them for two years. Margot pressed her lips together. Six weeks wasn’t enough to obliterate a habit of three years, apparently. Maybe eventually she’d stop looking for Maman there. Maybe eventually the ache would subside at least a little. Maybe eventually she’d be able to accept that all her theories, all her leads, all her mathematics had led her nowhere in the question of what really happened.
She ought to be glad there was no evidence that anthrax had been smuggled into the country. It meant no one else was in danger of being infected with it.
As long as it didn’t instead mean that they’d just missed something.
“Ask the nurse what I ought to do about—”
“Shut up, Camden.” She fell in behind Culbreth, who was making his way to the corridor with his lunch. Camden’s chuckle followed them out.
Culbreth sent her a look over his shoulder. “You’re a brave soul, talking to him like that.”
“He isn’t so bad. He just does a good job of hiding that fact.” She wasn’t quite sure who he was behind the wall of pain that stoodbehind the towers of rudeness, but she knew that once a week he went to play chess with Drake during his lunch. And he came back quieter and less surly. Evidence that, under it all, he appreciated his friend.
“Miss De Wilde, your lieutenant is here.” One of the secretaries strode by with a grin, her arms full of files she must have been bringing up from a lower level.
“He isn’tmy...” She cut herself off with a huff when the young woman laughed and passed her. The other girls never listened when she insisted they weren’t a couple.
And they had a point, if she were being honest. How long could she really maintain that one plus one just equaled one plus one and not grant that it was two?
But he’d been true to his word this past week, since the night he’d kissed her. Nothing had overtly changed. He hadn’t kissed her again, didn’t hold her hand, never made mention of that L-word again. His encoded letters continued to arrive day after day.
But the irony of that didn’t escape her either. Thiswashis love for her. Respecting her needs. Letting her work through the fears she’d tried to deny were fears.
I dream of a thousand tomorrows, he’d written to her in last night’s letter.Each one a jewel to be cherished at your side.
She paused at Dot’s door and glanced in to catch her friend’s eye.
“Coming,” Dot sang out with a smile, her fingers not slowing on the typewriter keys. “Did Drake and Red make it today?”
“They did. Though they’ve not come up yet.”
Dot hit one last key with a flourish and then whipped the paper from the machine and tucked it into a basket. A moment later she’d grabbed her food and coat, too, and they continued down the hallway and to the stairs. Drake never took the lift up—he still seemed to think he had to use every possible moment to stretch himself, exercise, and strengthen.
And there he was on the stairs, talking to Montgomery, their Fighting Padre. Laughing with him. Margot’s feet slowed. Holmes caught sight of them and hurried to greet Dot, but Margot hung back so that Drake could finish his conversation.
How did he do it so easily? She leaned against the railing and let herself study him. The line of his spine, of his shoulders, the way he always kept his focus on the person with whom he was speaking. The smile that bade the other smile back. The questions that inevitably drew the truth out of them.
