“He is two of those things,” she said. Somewhat thickly.
He didn’t say anything.
“Was,” she added hurriedly. She stared down at her tea.
She was absolutely certain he’d noticed her little mistake with verb tenses.
He seemed to make it his business to notice things.
“Why have you not married, Mr. Hawkes? It seemsthe thing a man ought to do when he is old and wise, as you are.”
His head went back briefly in surprise. He studied her, pensively.
At any rate, he seemed to be considering her question.
He said slowly, “I was never certain I was the sort of man who could be a good husband.”
She’d lied, apparently, when she’d said he couldn’t surprise her. “This matters to you?”
“Oughtn’t it?” Nowhesounded surprised.
“I didn’t know that men worry about such things. The world is generally arranged to suit them.”
“I suppose it is. And we do muck it up.”
She twisted her mouth, ruefully. “What sort of things do you think make a man a good husband?”
He leaned back in his chair and looked at her almost accusingly, faintly impressed and amused. As if this was a question he’d never before been required to answer aloud.
And he didn’t, for at least a moment or two.
“I suppose I always thought that the least of a husband’s duties was to protect his wife and children from... everything,” he began, almost hesitantly. “To the extent that this is possible. Ugliness. Danger. Deprivation. To provide a life of comfort and safety. And to be present for all important things—the good moments, the hard ones, the raising of children. My own father was that sort, until he died when we were still young. And my profession required me to travel a good deal. I was brought into contact with many people, some of whom were... not possessed of fine characters, but with whom it was necessary to work. It was occasionally my duty to see... and do... unpleasant things.”
It was quite an oblique and fascinating answer.
He clearly had not revealed the whole of the truth of his life. Perhaps he could not. But what he had said amounted to a breath-stealing vow: what he wanted was to honor and protect. He hadn’t mentioned love, that potent grenade of a word, but it seemed to her the very definition of love:Beingthere, no matter what.
“Unpleasant people.”She recalled the shocking, competent violence with which he’d fought his blankets. The startling discovery of a knife tattooed beneath his arm. The way he’d tensed when the residents of The Grand Palace on the Thames had filed into his room. As though he was someone who expected attacks.
She was almost afraid to ask.
But she at last did. “What is the nature of your work?”
His hesitation was brief.
“I was a soldier. And then I worked for the crown,” he said shortly.
The swift way he’d said it called to mind someone deciding to gamble on an uncertain hand of cards. His expression was unreadable. A gambler’s game face.
And she noticed he’d saidworked. Past tense.
She was beset by a vague sense of unreality. It was becoming increasingly difficult to reject the possibility that the man in front of her was also the glowing, dashing, urbane man she’d seen long ago in a ballroom. The one who had gone to prison for espionage.
The similarities surely could not all be ascribed to coincidence.
Could they?
But why—and how—did he come to be here?
