“We will catch him,” I told her, meeting her gaze, allowing no doubt to surface.
We had to; any other course was unthinkable.
Disembarking was a laborious business, with three men struggling to keep Ben O’Meary’s chair from shooting down the steep gang-way. Mycroft had sent two cars, both to give space to carry our trunks and bags and to provide two sturdy drivers to shift them. Ben could actually stand, with assistance, since his legs were burnt, not paralysed, but we were nonetheless grateful for the help. And being Mycroft’s men, they would no doubt double as bodyguards, should the need arise.
The roads were an icy slush, and I quickly regretted that we had not tackled the trains instead. Helen seemed oblivious to the skids and slips; the boy duke spent the first part of the journey bouncing from one window to another and the last part asleep; Iris was withdrawn into her own thoughts; and Ben became visibly more and more uncomfortable.
At midday, we stopped at an inn for luncheon. On the way inside, one of the drivers took me aside for a consultation.
“The farther into the countryside we go, Miss Russell, the worse the roads will be. If you want to stop the night and continue tomorrow, just say the word.”
“If this turns to snow, the roads could be completely impassable tomorrow,” I noted. He said nothing, not even to answer my unspoken question, leaving the decision up to me. “Let’s go on after we’ve eaten. If the driving gets too difficult, that’s your word to speak.”
He looked offended, although it was the conditions I was questioning, not his skill. We ate quickly, and upon returning to the motorcar I took the seat beside the driver, to leave more space for those behind the glass. Ben stretched his legs across the seat, Gabe looked at picture books on his mother’s lap, Iris stared out the window, and we drove on through the darkness, the drizzle changing to snow in our head-lamps, then back to rain.
We passed through Arley Holt and past the deserted train station, and at the turning with the post saying JUSTICE HALL, we went left, spurning the crowded manor house, whose every guest room would soon be bursting, for the quieter spaces of Badger Old Place. These larger motorcars seemed almost certain to become wedged between the tight sides of the lane, but in the end we emerged unscathed. Down the frozen track, through the gates and the outer yard, threading into the lodge-house tunnel and there was Badger’s neat gravel, the chapel, and the high Elizabethan windows, glowing with light and welcome.
Gabe had fallen asleep with his thumb in his mouth, and he clung to his mother’s side while our two drivers deftly eased Ben into his chair. Introductions were made, and while Mrs Algernon bustled and welcomed like the excellent housekeeper she was, Alistair had eyes only for the boy, this cranky, waist-high snippet of Hughenfort on which so much rested, the futures of two men and of a great house; apart from his distraction, Alistair’s welcome was warm (for him) and he waited until we had been given hot drinks and rooms before he climbed into one of Mycroft’s motorcars and was driven away.
We changed our clothes, while Gabe pounded up and down the various stairways to rid himself of the tiresome journey. This took a quarter of an hour, after which we sat down to Mrs Algernon’s plain and excellent dinner, then adjourned to the Hall, where the child eyed the huge boar’s head uncertainly and the rest of us settled into the novelty of a floor that didn’t heave or bump beneath us. The entire time, from the moment we climbed down from the car, throughout the meal, and as we took our places before the fire in the Hall, we moved in a kind of limbo. In part this was tiredness compounded by the disorientation of our Canadian companions; but we were also simply waiting. At last our ears caught the sound of tyres on the gravel outside. Ali came in first, and then Marsh, with Holmes behind them closing the door.
Marsh stood in the doorway, a stone thinner but restored in his energies, apparently unaware of Alistair’s hands tugging away his coat and plucking the hat from his head. All of Marsh’s tremendous powers of concentration were focussed upon the woman standing in front of the fire and on the child grown suddenly shy, taking refuge in her skirts. Marsh’s fingers went up to his face—not, as I first thought, to trace the scar, as he was wont to do in Palestine when troubled. Rather, his fingers came to rest across his lips, a gesture of such uncertainty, I should not have imagined him capable of it.
Iris eased him into the moment, crossing the room to greet her husband with a very European sort of kiss, then looping her arm through his in order to lead him forward. “This is Ben O’Meary,” she told him; I doubt Marsh even noticed he was shaking the hand of a man in a wheeled chair. “And Helen.”
Helen stood before him, straight and proud, her son half hidden behind her. Marsh stepped forward and took her hand briefly.
“Welcome to England, Mrs Hewetson,” he said evenly.
“Please, it’s Helen.”
“Helen, then. Thank you. And this is young Gabriel.”
“Gabe,” came an indistinct mutter from the cloth around her thighs.
“Can you shake hands with Lord Maurice, Gabe?” Helen asked the top of his head.
The child seemed to consider this for a minute, then began to unwrap himself from her skirts. He stepped away and looked up at Marsh, chin raised, black hair tumbled.
Marsh’s heart seemed visibly to stutter. Certainly the breath caught in his throat—I could hear it do so. His blunt fingers came up again towards his face, and then he noticed the boy’s small hand, extended towards him. Slowly, he stretched out his arm and wrapped his hand gently around that of the child, his son’s son.
“Oh, Gabe,” he said, his voice impossibly soft. “I am very, very happy to meet you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Late that night, when the Canadians had bedded down and the Algernons taken to their quarters, we gathered in the first-floor solar for a council of war. Holmes and I diverted to our rooms to trade our tight collars and high shoes for clothing more conducive to comfort and thought. When Holmes had donned a smoking jacket and I my house-slippers, we walked back down the corridor and let ourselves in.
The room was dimly lit and filled with indistinct shapes, an Aladdin’s cave of family treasures. My eyes came to rest on the figures before the pulsing flames, and my heart leapt in sudden, startled joy at the image that greeted my eyes—then my vision cleared, and the figure that I had seen as Mahmoud Hazr in Arab dress turned more fully into the light, and it was only Marsh, wearing a long, old-fashioned smoking jacket over his trousers and shirt.
However, as we settled to our places around the fire, I found I could not shake the image of Mahmoud among us. For one thing, he was brewing us coffee—true, using an elaborate glass machine over a spirit lamp rather than the graduated brass pots of the Arabs, and spooning the grounds from a Fortnum and Mason’s packet instead of pounding the beans to powder in a wooden mortar, but the scent evoked the ghosts of tents and robes. And carpets—but there, too, the room moved East, for in the weeks I’d been away Badger’s plain Turkey floor covering had been overlaid with smaller, more ornate carpets. Like the floor of a tent. The drawn curtains might well have been goat’s-hair walls, the fire in the stone hearth crackled with the same rhythm as one laid in a circle of rocks on sand, and the flickering across the gathered faces seemed to darken them, so that even Iris appeared swarthy. The odours of coffee and cigarettes teased my mind, the man squatting before the flames in a tumble of robes, the easy silence before talk began . . .
Abruptly, I stood and switched on one of the electric lamps, and the room was jerked back to Berkshire. The others blinked at the sudden glare, and reason returned. We took our coffee in porcelain cups with handles on their sides and saucers beneath; we were in chairs, not on the floor; the tobacco the others lit was Turkish, not the cheapest black stuff of the desert smoker. I breathed a sigh of relief, took a swallow of Piccadilly coffee, then glanced over at Marsh.
And saw Mahmoud in his eyes, in the hidden amusement of that private, all-seeing gaze, acknowledging what my illuminating efforts meant, why I had needed to do it. His gaze held me in my spot, and then I found myself smiling slowly back, that same warm, intimate sharing of a private joke.
