She made a sound, one that I would have sworn was very like Brodie’s.
“Give me my notice then if you intend to do so, but I’ll not apologize,” she announced, then returned to the kitchen.
I had no intention of doing so, of course. Brodie was right, at least in that. However, he was still a horse’s ass, and I would have told him to his face if he was there.
Fifteen
After makingmy feelings known the previous afternoon, I usually would have slept quite soundly, particularly with very few hours sleep the night before.
I didn’t. And like the night before, I rose somewhere near four in the morning and returned to my desk in the front parlor.
I spread out everything that I had gathered regarding Dr. Bennett’s murder and Brodie’s investigation into Soropkin. Along with that cryptic message that had been intercepted and seemed to confirm what was planned by Soropkin.
I then read the notes Dr. Bennett had made for that second book that he would now never write. He had been fascinated with the possibilities of restorative surgery that included of all things… the possibility of full restoration of one’s facial features.
It certainly seemed that he had been able to provide that for Ethan. However, between his notes and those ancient procedures written almost three thousand years earlier in those papyrus texts that Sir Reginald had been able to translate for me, I had discovered far more.
The ability to restore someone’s features seemed almost too incredible to believe, yet according to those ancient proceduresit seemed more than possible with descriptions of specific surgeries that had been performed and documented. What other possibilities might come from that?
Soropkin came to mind. He had been seen weeks earlier in London and followed to Aldgate where Dr. Bennett had set up that secret office. He had then disappeared, vanished, and Brodie, along with the resources of the Agency, had been unable to find him.
Was it possible that he had gone to Dr. Bennett for just such a surgery? The implications were horrifying, and yet… If I allowed myself to take that next step, past the impossible and the horror of it, the possibility was there.
With a different face, how easy might it be to move about without anyone the wiser?
“Bulldog with a bone”Brodie had said of me more than once.
I knew where it came from, the need to have order, to understand everything, to know the most minute detail, then examine it, find the reason— when everything seemed to spin out of control.
I thought of my father. Like it or not, the man had affected both my sister and I with his presence, and lack of; his lies and deceptions, and then the manner in which he ended his life. I had struggled with it most of my life it seemed, hating him for what he’d done. Then attempting to run away from it all as my great-aunt once suggested.
“What is… simply is,”she told me after one of my episodes as she called them with great wisdom, when I had taken myself off into the forest at Old Lodge and not returned until the following day, in spite of her gamesman’s warning that there were dangers there.
“You must accept what has happened, move on, and not waste time on someone that doesn’t matter.”
That seemed so very simple at the time but hardly a salve for my anger at our father. There was more, she told us, as there usually was when Linnie or I seemed to be having a rough go of it.
“Ask yourself, can you change the sort of man your father was?” she asked me at the time, and had then proceeded to answer the question herself.
“No, you cannot! You might wish to drag the man out of his coffin and kick him in the shins, or worse. But be done with it, child. Trust me, there are good men. I promise you.”
It had taken me a while to absorb that. After all, I was only ten years old at the time. But I knew that she was right.
Brodie was a good man. I had known it from the beginning, even if it had taken me a while to acknowledge it.
Perhaps that was the reason the conversation the day before had infuriated me so… that he thought that I might“still have feelings for Sir James?”
Feelings that I knew were nothing more than admiration for someone who had traveled widely, was far more experienced and worldly than myself, and for those several weeks that we traveled together had indulged someone who quite simply, was not experienced or worldly.
It hurt that Brodie seemed to think so little of me.
If I hadn’t been so angry at the time, I would have heard what wasn’t said. There was almost a sadness in his voice, as I thought back on it. Perhaps fear that he might be right? It seemed that I had unknowingly hurt him as well.
The mantle clock chimed— half past eight o’clock, a reminder that the Queen’s procession and dedication of the memorial was scheduled for two hours from now.
I knew from past events that people would already be gathering along the procession route the Queen was to take from Buckingham Palace to the memorial.
I could not stay here and simply wait to receive word of whatever might or might not happen.
