He said it gently. Almost wryly.
But he laid those words down like an offering to a queen.
They were a confession.
And a declaration.
They both knew it.
The air in the room had gone velvety, suddenly.
He moved a few more feet into the house. “Do you mind if I close the door?”
“No,” she said softly.
He closed it.
They regarded each other from a safe distance.
“I believe I know who you are,” she said carefully, finally. “And I believe you know who I am.”
“Well, I gathered,” he said gently, easily enough. “But I wonder if you will tell me how you know who I am.”
She felt her face flushing. But she wanted to give him truths the ways he’d given truths to her.
“I did not realize it at once, you see. And then when I suspected it, I thought surely I was mistaken. You cannot possibly remember me, but I saw you... twice. At an embassy ball in Spain. I had never seen anyone so dashing, Mr. Hawkes. You looked so different then, somehow. And yet... I see now you are the same, only more so.”
“I suppose time and prison change a man. Like what happens to whiskey in a barrel.”
“Yes,” she said gently. “I imagine so.”
For a moment nobody spoke.
“You went to prison for espionage?”
“Yes. The French object to that during wartime.”
“You were guilty?”
“Well, naturally. I was Head of English Intelligence. And I was very, very good at my job until I was caught.”
“They like to execute people for that sort of thing.”
“Yes,” he said gently. “But they liked my fortune better in this instance, so that’s what they took instead of my life.”
She took this in thoughtfully.
“I am... so very glad you are not dead,” she said. Her voice nearly cracked.
And at this, Hawkes for a moment couldn’t speak at all. He thought he would remember those words, in her voice, for the rest of his life.
His eyes burned, too, with a surfeit of emotion he could not precisely identify. But he needed to tell her the whole truth before he went to her. Before he took her in his arms. Just as she needed to unburden herself of hers.
And so he proceeded.
“It was, in fact, Brundage who negotiated for my life.”
Neither spoke for a moment. She was watching him carefully.
