“And you find him attractive.”
“Yes, but we’re—so far apart.”
“Intellectually?”
Else twirled her fork in her cabbage as if winding spaghetti.
Laila clucked her tongue. “Why is it a problem for a womanbut not a man? How many brilliant men are happily married to women who aren’t terribly bright?”
Quite a few. “It’s different for women. You know it.”
“It shouldn’t be.” Laila gnawed off a bite of bread.
“More importantly, we have little in common.” His laborious reading had pounded that point home.
But the trampled hedge around her crush refused to grow back.
19
VEDBÆK
SATURDAY, JULY3, 1943
Color drained from the light in the boathouse, leaving gray in its place. Not long until it was dark enough to row.
Henrik laid aside the volume of Kierkegaard, his eyes bleary from his head cold. No, bronchitis. He could no longer lie to himself.
Thorvald Thorup sat in the corner with a sympathetic half smile. “She must be special, this Kierkegaard-reading physicist of yours.”
“She isn’t mine.”
“But you wish she were.”
Maybe it was his stuffed-up head or maybe he was simply tired of keeping secrets. “Yes.”
He knew the moment he’d fallen for Else—when he’d pretended to struggle to read the newspaper. She’d given him a look, not of pity but of compassion, grieving that he’d never know the joy of reading. Then she’d defended him with vigor. She could yelp to defend a friend more readily than to defend herself, and he loved her for it.
Thorup rested his forearms on his bent knees. “So much for your vow not to get involved with a woman.”
Henrik blew his nose into his handkerchief. “As Shakespeare wrote inA Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘Reason and love keep little company together nowadays.’”
“I don’t speak English.”
“Neither should I.” A cough ripped up, and he covered it with his handkerchief. He’d let down his guard that evening and reacted to Laila’s quote. At least the women hadn’t noticed.
As the friendship grew, he slipped more often, as if Henrik wanted to shove aside Hemming and talk to the woman himself. He should have moved out of the boardinghouse months before. Now that he loved her, he couldn’t bear to leave.
“Are you sure you should go tonight?” Thorup asked. “Your cough’s worse.”
“Nothing the night air won’t cure.”
Thorup raised one eyebrow.
Henrik stuffed his handkerchief in his coat pocket. “I have a lot to deliver. Unrest is growing, sabotage is increasing, and more agents are arriving. Who knows what the weather will be like next week? I need to go tonight.”
“Stubborn.”
“I don’t deny that.” Henrik stood and opened the door to the gray evening. “It’s dark enough to set up.”
