Her throat went tight, and she found the potent mixture of fear, relief, and sympathy was overwhelming.
“I am glad, then,” she managed to say, voice too high. “For the shelling, and the grenade. That you were hurt before you could be sent out.” This was perhaps not the right thing to say, given the way he was staring at her. She hastened to add, “I know that your injury has given you no end of trouble but I …” She faltered and blinked rapidly at the emotion threatening to spill from her eyes. “I would have never known you otherwise.”
“I admit I am grateful for it too,” he said softly. “I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that one day I would be glad for what happened to me.”
A tear slipped from her eye, leaving a stinging trail on her cheek in the cold night air. She forced a lighter tone. “I doubt your past self would trust it. I doubt he believed in time travel any more than the present Alexander does.”
His fingers tightened on hers briefly before letting them go. “You’re right. I would have thought the concussion was playing tricks on my mind.”
She didn’t reply to that, choosing instead to focus on the press of his leg against hers and the resulting warmth. She knew she ought to return to her window to watch if anyone was coming or going from Number 28, but she felt an increasing pressure to share some of her own grief.
“I went to the battlefields,” she blurted after a moment of indecision. “When I was at the conference. After it, rather. I went to Lijssenthoek, to see where Wesley was buried. And Ypres.”
Alexander was silent, but his hand found hers again. She took it, gratefully. “It was Elizabeth’s idea to go. She booked train tickets to Belgium and planned to find us a guide who could show us to the cemeteries, to see Wesley’s grave and my father’s.” Her words had withered to a whisper. “But she had to return before we could go. I felt I’d be a coward not to go simply because I was alone. But I wish I hadn’t gone. I wish …” Emotion stole the remainder of her voice.
“Past Saffron made a brave choice to go.”
“Past Saffron did as she always does,” she said with a wavering sigh. “She rushed into something without considering what the reality would be. Example A, going to the war-torn countryside and expecting a peaceful place to say goodbye.”
Lijssenthoek Cemetery had been anything but peaceful. She’d seen photographs of the place in the newspapers years ago, sullen rows of mismatched crosses over uneven dirt. Work had been done since then to beautify it. Most of the crosses had been transitioned to uniform white stone markers. Shrubs and trees had been planted, a stone arch built, and the place was silent but for the barest breeze rustling what leaves had been left on the young tree branches.
But it had brought Saffron no peace. She’d been unable to take a full breath the entire time, unable to stop tears from falling in a torrent. She sobbed violently the entire brief visit, pausing only to whisper a prayer when she at last found Wesley’s marker.
She knew now that the unending tears had been as much for herself as for Wesley and the dozens of men buried there. She had not losther life, but she lost a future with the boy she loved. She lost a piece of innocence the moment she realized that the war would not be the quick, righteous fight the politicians had anticipated, and it would crawl on and on, dragging down thousands of innocent people with it. Visiting Wesley’s grave had only emphasized feelings she thought she’d reconciled long ago.
After that, she dreaded going on to Ypres. She had not known exactly where her father had been buried, and Elizabeth had suggested they visit the few British cemeteries to search for him. But the prospect of doing so had frozen her. She’d made it off the train, barely, but the idea of even leaving the train station had been too much.
She stayed inside, sitting wide-eyed and motionless on a bench until some kind soul with an enormous mustache and gentle eyes asked her if she needed assistance. He helped her find the train back to Paris and board it.
That was when a fresh wave of tears came—when she realized she’d taken from herself the opportunity to find her father, to say goodbye, even if it was a miserable goodbye.
She said all of this to Alexander, who listened while his thumb ran over the top of her hand in steady, slow strokes.
“And now I’ll never be able to say goodbye,” she whispered. “And I want to. I want to put to rest all the …” She hesitated to admit it. “The doubts I have about him.”
“Berking?”
“Yes,” she murmured, grateful he remembered her confession of Berking’s suggestions. “And I found out that Dr. Calderbrook, the director here, invited my father to work at Kew Gardens in his lab. I don’t know why my father wouldn’t have told me about it. Kew was … It was a special place for us. It was the greatest treat to go there. I don’t know why he would not have even mentioned it to me, that he’d been offered the chance to work there.”
“I’ve never been to Kew,” Alexander said. “I imagine it must thrill you.”
At the warm humor in his voice, her lips lifted into a tremulous smile, even as recollections of running through lush tropicals in amassive glasshouse set off more pangs in her chest. “I was like a child in a toy shop.”
“You haven’t been there recently?”
“I haven’t been since before the war.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Was the laboratory at Kew different from this one?”
“My understanding is that it simply moved here. The fields of study have expanded, but it’s still a plant pathology lab at its core.”
He hummed thoughtfully. “And you worry that your father was working to make his subjects more dangerous, rather than resistant to disease and pests.”
“That was Berking’s implication.” She sighed. “It seems such a stupid thing to worry about. Breeding a plant to increase its toxicity does not mean my father planned to do anything nefarious with it. I know that. But after all that I’ve seen with what the plants already in existence can do, and knowing that the government has an interest in those plants … I cannot help but wonder.”
“He could have been experimenting with the natural defenses of the plant. Many of those toxins are simply biological defenses. Maybe he was testing to see what level of toxicity was needed to prevent insects from eating them. Or studying how to use those toxins for medicinal purposes.”
“I suppose.” She’d thought of that, but it was comforting to hear Alexander suggest it as a possibility.
