Curtis’s and misshapen ears that had intrigued me as a child. He had come to the house several times, drinking and laughing merrily with Uncle Mick while the boys and I sat and listened to his tales of bloody bouts in the ring until Nacy had finally shooed us out of the room.
“Yes, Uncle Laddy says he’ll beat the Germans himself if he has to,” I said. “He was a boxer once and says he could take on at least a squadron by himself.”
He looked at me. “Laddy Malone?”
I nodded, smiling brightly. “Yes! Do you know him?”
“I fought Laddy Malone back in ’24,” he said.
“Oh, really?”
“Nearly killed me, he did.” It was the warmest I had heard his voice yet. “Took me months to recover from that fight.”
“I shall have to ask him if he remembers.” I hadn’t seen Laddy Malone in years, and I sincerely hoped that Jerome Curtis wasn’t friends with him and would question the connection. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Tell him Jolly Jerry sends his regards.”
Jolly Jerry. I almost laughed aloud.
“I shall. I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear you’re doing well in life.”
“Not as well as the old days,” he said. “But I ain’t as young as I used to be.”
“Yes, that’s what Uncle Laddy always says.”
“He’s right, though, about us fighters. We’ve still got enough in us to fight the Germans if we need to.”
I nodded. “Yes, I believe you’re right.”
There was a small shaft of light that shone into the garden just then as the French doors opened.
“Elizabeth.” I recognized that disapproving voice. The major had found me.
“Yes, coming, Gabriel,” I said.
I dropped my cigarette and stubbed it out with the toe of my shoe.
“The major thinks I’m a society lady, born and bred,” I said to Jerome Curtis in a whisper. “Uncle Laddy will be our little secret.” Then I winked at him before I turned and followed the major inside.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The major gave me one of those ice-blue glares as he led me back into the house, but he didn’t say anything. I supposed he knew a lost cause when he saw one.
We didn’t stay long at the party after that. The lecture had finished, and we had accomplished our goal of getting into the safe. Besides, Jocelyn Abbot and Matthew Winthrop seemed to have left the party. Leslie Turner-Hill was still there, surrounded by his acolytes, but it didn’t seem he’d be passing off any papers in that situation.
We walked out into the cool evening air, and I took a deep breath, feeling that momentary sensation of weightlessness that always accompanied the end of a completed job. It had certainly been a night.
“Did you learn anything useful from Jerome Curtis?” the major asked me when we were back in the car.
“I don’t get the impression he’s spying for the Germans of his own free will,” I said. “If he’s killing, it’s at Sir Nigel’s behest, but somehow I don’t think he’s involved.”
“And why is that?”
“I don’t know how to explain it. But I’ve known men like that, dangerous men, who, oddly enough, have certain lines they won’t cross. I think spying for the enemy is one of his.”
The major said nothing, and we lapsed into silence as we pulled away from the house and onto the darkened roads. I supposed we were both lost in thought. I’m sure Major Ramsey was thinking about the documents that had not been in the safe and what, if anything, could still be done to locate them. I was thinking about that, too, to a certain extent, as well as my interactions with each of the potential spies.
But the nearness of Major Ramsey in the car’s backseat also caused my mind to return to the embrace on the sofa. I didn’t like that this useless little thought crept its way into my brain. It hadn’t meant anything. Major Ramsey, under normal circumstances, would never look twice at a woman like me. Oh, I didn’t doubt that I could be attractive when I set my mind to it, but a man in his position, an officer in the army, never mind an earl’s nephew, was accustomed to rules and regulations; I made my living by breaking them. I doubted whether we had two things in common.
As a single young woman in the midst of the taxing circumstances of war, it was perfectly natural that I might be drawn to a handsome man with whom I had been thrown into an adventure. Nevertheless, it would do