“My father died in 1912, of a heart b-blockage.” It was a kind of blockage, getting stuck in the heart with a butcher knife wielded by a cuckolded husband. “My mother didn’t like the rumbling from Germany, and decided to bring me to London.” To escape the scandal, not the Boche. “She died of influenza last year, God rest her soul.” Bitter, vulgar, and haranguing to the end, flinging teacups at Eve and swearing.
“God rest her soul,” the captain echoed with a piety Eve didn’t buy for one moment as genuine. “And now we have you. Evelyn Gardiner, orphan, with her pure French and pure English—you’re sure about the German?—working in an office for my friend Sir Francis Galborough, presumably passing time until she marries. A pretty girl, but she tends to slide from notice. Shyness, perhaps?”
The tabby wound his way through the open door with an inquiring meow. Eve called him up to her lap. “Captain Cameron,” she said with the smile that made her look sixteen, tickling the tabby under the chin, “are you trying to seduce me?”
She’d succeeded in shocking him. He sat back, coloring in embarrassment. “Miss Gardiner—I would not dream—”
“Then what are you doing here?” she asked directly.
“I am here to evaluate you.” He crossed his ankles, recovering his aplomb. “I’ve had my eye on you for a number of weeks, ever since I first walked into my friend’s office pretending to speak no French. May I speak plainly?”
“Have we not been speaking plainly already?”
“I don’t believe you ever speak plainly, Miss Gardiner. I’ve heard you murmuring evasions at your fellow file girls, to get out of the work you consider boring. I heard you tell a bold-faced lie when they asked why you were late this morning. Something about a cabdriver who delayed you with his unwanted attentions—you’re never flustered, you go about cool as cream, but you faked fluster beautifully. You weren’t late because of an amorous cabdriver; you were staring at a recruitment poster outside the office door for a good ten minutes. I timed it, looking down from the window.”
It was Eve’s turn to sit back and blush. She had been staring at the poster: it had showed a line of stalwart-looking Tommies, soldierly and identical, with a blank space in the middle. There is still a space in the line for YOU! the headline above it blared. WILL YOU FILL IT? And Eve had stood there bitterly, thinking, No. Because the lettering inside that blank space in the line of soldiers said in smaller script, This space is reserved for a fit man! So, no, Eve could never fill it, even though she was twenty-two and entirely fit.
The tabby in her lap protested, feeling her fingers tighten through his fur.
“So, Miss Gardiner,” Captain Cameron said. “Can I get a straight answer out of you if I ask a question?”
Don’t count on it, Eve thought. She lied and evaded as easily as she breathed; it was what she’d had to do all her life. Lying, lying, lying, with a face like a daisy. Eve couldn’t remember the last time she’d been completely straight with anyone. Lies were easier than the hard and turbulent truth.
“I am thirty-two,” the captain said. He looked older, his face lined and worn. “Too old to fight in this war. I have a different job to do. Our skies are under attack from German zeppelins, Miss Gardiner, our seas by German U-boats. We are under attack every day.”
Eve nodded fiercely. Two weeks ago the Lusitania was sunk—for days, her fellow boarders dabbed at their eyes. Eve had devoured the newspaper accounts dry-eyed, enraged.
“To stave off further such attacks, we need people,” Captain Cameron went on. “It is my job to find people with certain skills—the ability to speak French and German, for example. The ability to lie. Outward innocence. Inward courage. To find them and put them to work, ferreting out what the Boches have planned for us. I think you show potential, Miss Gardiner. So, let me ask: do you wish to stand for England?”
The question hit Eve in a hammer blow. She exhaled shakily, setting the cat aside, and answered without thinking. “Yes.” Whatever he meant by stand for England, the answer was yes.
“Why?”
She began to pull together something pat and expected about the vile Fritzes, about doing her bit for the boys in the trenches. She let the lie go, slowly. “I want to prove myself capable, to everyone who ever thought me simpleminded