Page 110 of The Number of Love
With a lopsided grin, Red nodded and turned toward the door.
Drake waited for it to shut behind him before he turned to his grandfather. He wasn’t sure where Eneko had vanished to—probably to the hotel on the next street, where they’d reserved rooms. Where apparently Drake would be sleeping tonight too. But he was grateful for a few minutes of solitude with Abuelo. He owed him an explanation.
Abuelo was already turning back into the office, knowing well Drake would follow. He sat down in the pathetic little chair behind the desk and looked as proud and regal as he always did in his own.
Drake sat across from him. “I didn’t leave the navy, as I told you I did.”
“So I gathered.” Was that a twitch in his lips? The beginnings of a smile perhaps? “And frankly, I could never fathom that you would. You were never a coward, Dragón. Many things, but never that. You are an intelligence agent now?”
He couldn’t admit it to just anyone. But no one knew how to juggle trade secrets quite like Francisco Mendoza de Haro. He nodded.
“That makes infinitely more sense than any other explanation. And I am, of course, happy to continue offering my humble abode as your base of operations. On one condition.” He leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Tell me about this Margot De Wilde, whom you look at as though she is the only young lady in the world.”
Drake couldn’t have stopped his grin had he wanted to. “I believe you saw her at her finest today, Abuelo. She is without equal. Brave. Brilliant. She views the world as no one else.”
“Yes, this I saw for myself. But will she make a good wife to you? Give you strong children to carry on your name?”
The smile faltered a bit. “She ... is a bit unconventional in that regard. She has dreams. Dreams she’s afraid she’ll have to forsake if she chooses to marry and have children.”
“Nonsense.” As if that single word was all the answer that was needed, Abuelo waved a hand. “Unconventional may be just what this world needs to recover from the tragedy that has beset it. And dreams ... dreams are only worth pursuing when we have the right person by our side, sí? And the right person is the one who encourages. Who chases the dream along with you. As your mother and your father did for each other.” Abuelo lowered his hand to the desk with a decisivethud. “You will convince her of this. You will take life as it comes, as God wills. And you will be happy together.”
Drake’s smile grew again. He wasn’t sure if it was a prophecy or a command, but either way, he was happy to obey.
Epilogue
Margot held the umbrella aloft and ran more than she walked toward her flat. There was snow mixed in with the rain, proving that February had some teeth to it. And after another night shift, she was more than looking forward to a hot cup of tea, her clanking radiator, and maybe a not-warm-enough bath before she went to bed. Later, she’d write to Drake. And perhaps make another trip to the Tower of London to visit Dieter. He never said much—and his health didn’t seem to be improving.
But she would visit anyway. She had to think that somewhere in Germany, there was a mother who would be glad of it. Glad to know her son wasn’t altogether alone in enemy territory. And in her mind, Maman smiled down on her for it.
She darted into her building while the older gent from 4C held the door open for her on his way out, thanking him with a smile as she lowered her brolly.
“There’s a parcel at your door, Margot,” he said. “Too big for your box, I suppose. Delivered yesterday afternoon—I’ve kept an eye on it for you.”
“Good of you, Mr. Parsons. Thank you.” She gathered the post from her box and jogged up the stairs as she flipped through it. A bill. A postcard from the Cotswolds, where Dot and Holmes had gone fortheir honeymoon, courtesy of the Duchess of Stafford. And a letter in a script that made her heart race more than the stairs accounted for.
She ripped that one open as she reached her floor. Drake had been writing to her nearly every day since he’d been sent back to Spain, but rarely did the letters reach her one at a time. They tended to arrive in weekly batches, and she’d just had a batch two days ago.
But she wasn’t about to complain about an extra. She pulled out the sheet, grinning when she saw the paper wasn’t filled with words, but with numbers. Lowering the page, she caught sight of the decidedly book-shaped parcel waiting at her door.
A moment later, she’d juggled the brolly, the book, and her other post through the door and into their respective places. She unpinned her hat, shrugged out of her coat, and smoothed a hand over the cardigan Maman had given her.
Then she unwrapped the package and grinned.Don Quixote, as he’d promised.
He probably wouldn’t say anything in this coded letter that he didn’t say, now, in his normal ones. And she’d rather gotten the hang of writing sweet letters back too. She hoped, anyway. She tried. Perhaps her lines were filled more with mathematics than with poetry, but it was all the same thing in the end, wasn’t it?
Though she hadn’t yet mustered the courage to say what she knew she would when next she saw him face-to-face. That God had shown her, these last few months, that He could be trusted. Not just with her well-being, but with her dreams. She could trust that He had given her this love for Drake for His own purpose, but that it didn’t negate the other gifts He’d breathed into her. Loving him didn’t mean losing herself. Marrying him someday, creating a family with him, didn’t have to mean forsaking her dreams. Somehow, He could make possible what the world said wasn’t. Somehow, he would fill her with the love a family would demand—as He always had, for her parents and Lukas and Willa, for Willa’s family and little Zurie.
Deciding that tea and a bath could wait, she grabbed paper and a pencil and then sat down with the book. It didn’t take long for the message to take shape. It started out as they usually did, lovely andsure to haunt her. But it was the ending that made her pause and read it again, and then a third time.
I want forever with you. I will wait a year, a decade, a century to make you my wife.But tell me you’ll take me someday, my love. Tell me that the promise of forever can begin now.
She let the pencil clatter to the table and leaned back in her chair, holding the page before her.
“Well? I can wait for an answer, too, but I do have this ring my grandfather gave me....”
“Drake!” She shrieked his name, nearly falling out of her chair in her rush to turn and stand all at once.
He’d been standing, apparently, in the doorway to Maman’s room, which Lukas had just helped her turn into an office. And he was smiling at her. Looking at her in that way he did. Loving her in that way he did, that never demanded anything.
