And a large part of unlocking the enigma that was Evelyn Ainsworth.
Chapter Thirty-Five
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London, England
April 20
Bill got out of the back of the sedan and went up the shallow steps to the glossy black door of the stately home on Brook Street. He carried a bag filled with groceries from the market in one hand and his umbrella in the other. The sky had been overcast all morning, threatening rain that had yet to appear. As he pressed the bell with the handle of his umbrella, he cast a glance to the heavy clouds overhead. It was coming. There was no doubt about it. London was in for deluge.
Wesley had called him at home a few hours ago to tell him that the train bearing Evelyn from Scotland had arrived at Waterloo station. The fact that his assistant had volunteered to spend his Saturday morning at the train station waiting to ensure that Jian arrived back in London safely was telling. He had been just as concerned as Bill was himself when they hadn’t heard anything from her leading up to her evacuation. It had been with great relief that they received the message from HMS Cardiff that the package was onboard. A rough crossing in the North Sea, complicated by a close shave with a German U-boat, had delayed her arrival in Scapa Flow. Then a violent storm had once again delayed her moving onto the Scottish mainland and beginning the final leg of her journey back to England.
But now she was home, and Bill had stopped to get her a few provisions on his way over, knowing that the Ainsworth residence in London had been standing empty. This at least would save her having to go out for dinner on her first night back after what must have been, in the end, a harrowing experience.
When the door opened, his ready smile froze on his face and his eyes widened in shock. Evelyn was dressed in wide-legged black trousers and a white blouse with flowing sleeves, but the clothes did nothing to conceal the fact that she had dropped a significant amount of weight in the three weeks that she had been gone. Her hair was pulled back into a chignon at the back of her head, giving him an unimpeded view of an extremely pale face and very deep, dark hollows under her eyes.
“Bill!” she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up and a smile spreading across her face. “How lovely! Come in!”
She stepped back so that he could enter the house, closing the door behind him.
“Welcome back, Evie, my dear,” he said with a smile, recovering his composure quickly. “I’ve brought you a few things to help tide you over until you can get to the shops.”
“Thank you! All I’ve got in the larder is tea.” She moved to take the bag from him but he shook his head and pulled it away.
“I’ll carry it in for you,” he told her. “You must be exhausted.”
“Not so exhausted I can’t carry a few groceries,” she replied with a laugh. “Very well. Let me take your hat and coat, at least.”
Bill handed her his umbrella and hat and shrugged out of his top coat.
“How was the train down?”
“It was very uneventful, which I appreciated very much,” she said, turning to hang his coat in a closet inside the door. “I came on the Flying Scotsman, which was a first for me.”
She closed the closet door and turned to lead the way down the hall to the kitchen in the back of the house.
“Well, you’ve had enough starts and stops over the past few days, haven’t you?” he asked, following her into the large kitchen. “You deserved a non-stop trip. How long did it take?”
“A little over seven hours.” She turned to take the bag of groceries from him and motioned him into a seat at the table. “I slept some of the way. There’s something about trains that always makes me sleepy.”
Bill sat down and crossed his legs, watching as she unpacked the bag on the counter a few feet away. Her movements were much slower than normal and he hadn’t missed the strange gait as she preceded him down the hallway, as if she was nursing a bad foot. She hadn’t limped, precisely, but she definitely wasn’t moving with her usual confident energy.
“It’s the rocking, I expect,” he said. “What time did you get in?”
“Just over an hour ago. I’d just finished unpacking when you came.” Evelyn turned with a packet of sausages in her hand. “This is wonderful! Thank you! And you even bought eggs!”
“I seem to remember that the Norwegians are like the French in that they don’t eat a good breakfast,” he said with a faint smile. “It looks like I made the right choice. You look half starved, my dear.”
She grimaced and turned to put the sausages on the counter while she reached into the bag to pull out the rest of the groceries.
“That’s due more to my flight across Norway than the bread and cheese breakfasts,” she said over her shoulder. “Believe me, when I could get it, that bread and cheese was wonderful!”
“When you could get it?”
“Food was...scarce,” she said, emptying the bag. She turned to reach for the kettle on the stove. “We had to go on foot through the mountains, avoiding the villages and towns where we could have bought food. We weren’t sure where the Germans were, you see. It was safer to avoid them and not risk being caught between the advancing troops. Else, the landlady at the boarding house in Oslo, packed us a basket with bread and cheese when we left in the middle of the night, which was very kind and generous of
