already seen more than enough.
The major escorted me up the path, his steadying hand on my arm the entire way. At the top, Felix took my hand and pulled me to him in a tight embrace. For just a moment, I sagged against him, feeling the relief of being safe again finally hit me.
“Are you all right, Ellie?” he whispered into my hair.
I nodded against his shoulder.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, Felix.”
“I do hate to interrupt,” Major Ramsey said, his tone just bordering on terse, “but we don’t have much time. You’ll have to act quickly, Lacey, to get the forgery done.”
“Yes, sir,” Felix said jauntily. With his arm still around me, we walked quickly back to the cottage.
I sat on the sofa, wiping at the bleeding scrapes and scratches on my arms and legs with a wet cloth, while the major and Felix went over the documents. They switched out the real plans for the false ones, and Felix made a copy of the letter in Jocelyn Abbot’s hand, replicating certain passages of the false document to verify them as Jocelyn had done with the original.
At last, he pushed the letter toward the major. Major Ramsey glanced at it and then nodded. He folded it and put it with the false documents and put them in his pocket. He put the gun in the other.
“Good luck, old boy,” Felix said.
“Be careful,” I told him, suddenly afraid.
He nodded. His eyes met and held mine for just a moment.
Then he turned and left the cottage to meet the German agent on the beach.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It was a long, tense wait.
Felix sat smoking, and I sat looking down at my bruised and scratched limbs, neither of us saying much.
My body ached from the tumble down the cliff, the struggle on the beach, and the tension of this whole day. My head was pounding, too. All told, I felt rather like I’d been run over by a truck.
I pride myself on being made of strong stuff, but the events of this evening might have put a good dent in a cruiser tank.
A short while after the major had gone, there was a sound at the front door. We looked up to see Kimble and Colm had returned.
Colm gave Felix a nod that I interpreted as meaning they’d managed to stash Oscar’s body somewhere. I tried not to think about it. He had been a traitor and a killer, but I still didn’t like the idea of his body lying out on the sand like something washing up on the beach. His mother, Major Ramsey’s aunt, would want to bury her son.
But that was something to think about when all of this was over.
There was still danger to be faced, after all. Still enemies to be met head-on.
I heard a slight thump from the other room as Colm took a seat beside me on the sofa. Matthew Winthrop. Felix told me the men had locked him in one of the other rooms after they’d finished their questioning.
“I’ll go check on the prisoner,” Kimble said, leaving the room.
This gave me a thought. Whose clothes had been in the bedroom upstairs when I was first searching the house this afternoon? Matthew Winthrop had been staying at the hotel, not here, so I didn’t think they belonged to him. And Oscar had been in London every day. Who, then, had been staying in Sir Nigel’s beach house? Someone had clearly been here, and recently. Was there another accomplice yet to emerge?
I was about to phrase the question when we heard the unmistakable sound of the back door opening.
I stood, and Colm did, too. We all looked toward the kitchen.
And then the major appeared in the doorway. We stared at him. It felt as though we were all holding our breath, waiting to see what he would say.
And then he smiled.
Before I could think about what I was doing, I ran to him, throwing myself at him in an exultant embrace. He tensed for the briefest of moments, and then his arms came around me.
“You’ve done it,” I said, a feeling of pride swelling up in me.
“We’ve done it,” he replied, looking down at me. Our eyes met for just a moment, and there was a warmth I hadn’t seen in them before.
“Well done,” I heard Felix say behind me.
It was his voice that called me back to my senses, and I stepped back from the major’s arms, flushing a bit, but still thrilled to my very bones at what we had