Bicycle tires whished on the far side of the wall, feet plopped to the pavement, and Else wheeled her bike through the gateway. She wore a dress the color of a ripening plum—and a guarded expression.
“Good day.” Henrik pushed away from the wall and raised a faint smile. “Am I to find a new boardinghouse?”
“First, I have a few questions.” She rested her bicycle against the wall. “Is there someplace we can talk outdoors? It’s a pretty day.”
“I know a place.” He led her across the front of the villa. “What are your questions?”
Else walked about six feet from him and gripped her hands in front of her. Her eyebrows formed a frown. “Fru Thorup said you’ve changed. Have you?”
As much as he wished to persuade her to let him move away, as much as he also wished to persuade her to fall in love with him, only truth would pass his lips today. “In many ways, yes. In others, not enough.”
Her heels tapped across the driveway. “Will you go back to it? After the war? Go back to your playboy life?”
At the far corner of the house, the shadow of the villa fell over him. “My playboy life. Let me spell it out for you. Drinking, carousing, womanizing, and doing shoddy work—when I bothered to show up for work, that is.”
Else’s gaze flickered, and her brow puckered.
His answer was only half of the truth, and he sighed. “I’ll never go back to any of it. I died to that life, and it no longer holds any appeal.”
The breeze tossed a flaxen lock across her cheek, and she swept it away. “When you’re Hemming, is it all an act?”
“Yes.” He headed toward the sea. “I pretend to be slow of speech, slow of mind, and rough of manner.”
“Not that.” One corner of her mouth turned down. “Hemming is kind and thoughtful. Is that an act?”
Henrik entered the line of beech trees above the rocky strand along the Sound. To his left the boathouse and pier blocked the view toward Vedbæk Beach, and to his right the wall blocked the view of the neighbors.
“Is it an act?” Else’s voice quivered.
“I’m afraid so. I have far more of my father’s brusque mannerthan I’d like. I spent my first fourteen years emulating him and the next sixteen years defying him. Neither centered on kindness.”
“Oh.” Her voice fell. She faced him under a beech tree and twisted her fingers together. “So when you gave me the wooden dog, when you save plates for Laila and me, when you’ve encouraged me—that was all pretend?”
The incidents threaded through his memory. Had those actions come from what he thought Hemming would do? Or from his own heart?
He frowned at the incongruity. “No. That was real.”
“As Hemming...” The finger-twisting became almost frenetic. “You said you pray for me, you go to church, you carry your Bible. Is that an act?”
“No.” He didn’t have to consider that question. “My faith is part of why I’ve changed. No, itisthe change.”
Her fingers rested, and she stared at them. “In all the essentials, you aren’t acting.”
“I—I don’t know about—”
“I thought so. All week I’ve thought about it. It’s too real not to be real.” With a dip of her chin, she closed the distance between them, wrapped her arms around his waist, and pressed her head to his chest. “Please don’t move.”
“Else, don’t.” His arms stuck out at his sides. He didn’t dare embrace her.
“I found the constant.”
“The constant?”
“The constant that unites the three equations of who you are.”
In defiance of his own will, his arms folded around her. “What is that?”
“Nobility.”
