Right below that fuzzy gray, Hugh read the address for the Waifs and Strays Society in Kennington. The tail whapped twice on the page.
Hugh leaned back in his chair. “Do you doubt my motives, good sir? Doubt, you should. Am I doing this for the lady’s benefit or my own?”
Lennox’s green eyes gave him no quarter.
“Ah, Lennox. If you heard her laugh. It’s like a carillon. Is it wrong to want to elicit that laugh, to bring beauty into this drab world?”
One slow feline blink challenged him.
Hugh sighed. “I know she’s a recent widow, and she’s anxious about her son. Yet here I come.” He put on a smarmy voice. “I brought you a list, my dear. Prepare to fall in love.”
Lennox stood, stretched his back, and sauntered across the typewriter keys.
Now the address read, “Kennington, S.E. 11 x:u.”
Hugh hit the carriage return and typed the next item on the list. “The honorable course of action would be to bring her the list at the Hart and Swan and not ask her to dinner.”
With his elbows on the desk, he stretched up his hands, his fingers splayed, and he groaned. “Or am I being ridiculous? ‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ and all.”
Lennox sniffed Hugh’s ring finger.
He’d never come this close, and Hugh froze.
The cat ducked his gray head and brought it up under Hugh’s hand.
Before he could think, his fingers curved down into warm softness. He’d seen people scratching cats and dogs behind the ears. Was Lennox asking for that?
Holding his breath, he slowly, reverently gave a tentative scratch.
Lennox nudged his hand higher, a bit to the side.
“I’m sorry. Did I scratch the wrong spot?” Hugh scratched where indicated, and the cat leaned into it.
Warmth and softness and awe flowed into Hugh’s smile. A gift as precious as Aleida’s laughter.
Perhaps Hugh could stretch out his hand to Aleida. She could turn up her pretty nose and walk away. Or she could lean in.
Only one way to find out.
Down the length of the light oak table in the Programme Conference Room on the fourth floor of Broadcasting House, Norman Fletcher and Albert Ridley stared each other down.
Hugh sat back to avoid the electric current between the men, entertaining though it was.
Ridley sat straight with his massive hands clasped before him on the table. “The BBC simply must do better. First, that dreadful mess caused by François Jouveau and Elliott Hastings, and now—”
“I beg your pardon.” Fletcher spoke in measured tones, but the taut muscles below his chin gave away his anger. “Jouveau works for the BBC European Services, not the Home Service and not in Programming. I have no authority over him.”
“Regardless.” Ridley snapped up one hand. “It speaks of a general recklessness. Now I’ve heard from our men in the United States. On a recent broadcast to America, one of your correspondents allowed his microphone to pick up the shouting of coordinates. Any Nazi sympathizers in the States could send that information to Germany, information that would allow the German Air Force to improve their navigation.”
Only if Hugh had broadcast his own position, which he hadn’t.
Ridley avoided Hugh’s gaze. Whether out of deference for his old friend Cecil or for the Collingwood family, it wasn’t fair to the other men in the room, who would have been called out by name in similar circumstances.
“That was my report,” Hugh said. “On Columbia’sLondon after Dark. Since I never revealed my location, the coordinates were meaningless and the enemy would have received no comfort. However, I promise to be more careful in the future.”
With a lift to his broad nose, Ridley strengthened his glare at Fletcher. “This wouldn’t happen if all reports were read from scripts, recorded in the studio, and edited before broadcast.”
The man didn’t understand how radio worked.
