‘Miss Marshwic . . .’ The look of despair was slowly fading from him, to be replaced by an expression that was completely dead. His eyes flicked to the letter she had cast down, then to another missive he had lying open before him.
‘What is it?’ she demanded, more urgently. His hands were shaking slightly, and it was so out of character that it scared her.
‘I regret . . .’ He swallowed, voice drying up on him. ‘I am very sorry . . .’
‘What is it?’ for a third time. By this time she knew, and simultaneously she did not want to know – if he would only keep the news behind his teeth, then it need not be real. Her words spilled out from her nonetheless, inviting the worst.
‘It’s your brother, Miss Marshwic. He is dead.’
And the clammy silence descended on them both again. Emily clutched at the edge of the desk for support. There was a pain inside her, as though he had stabbed her. Northway watched her impassively.
‘Dead? Rodric?’
‘Miss Marshwic—’
‘Say nothing!’
She leant heavily on the desk, fighting for control, each breath more ragged than the last. A great emptiness was being torn inside her, gaping wider with each passing moment.
‘Mr Northway, you have always said you would not lie to me,’ she got out.
‘I have.’
‘Tell me one thing, Mr Northway. This post, you have created for me. This thing you have done, for me. When I came to you on his behalf at the start of autumn, and asked you to do this very thing for him, could you have done it?’
‘Miss Marshwic . . .’
‘Could you?’ she asked furiously. ‘Tell me the truth, as you claim you always do. Could you have saved my brother from this, Mr Northway?’
He was bold enough to look her in the face and say, ‘I could.’
Her resolve buckled at last and she collapsed into the chair across the desk from him and shook, fists clenched at her sides. She should weep aloud now: that was the dutiful sister’s part, after all. Her eyes remained dry, though. She had another role facing her than to be a stay-at-home mourner. Rodric was gone. He was gone and she knew what must be done now.
‘I bitterly regret,’ she forced out, ‘that I must refuse your generous offer.’
‘Miss Marshwic, please, this need not change things . . .’
‘It does, Mr Northway.’
‘But it need not. You can still . . .’
She looked up, steely-eyed, and pinned him to his seat. ‘I am enlisting, Mr Northway I am taking the Gold and the Red. I cannot work for you, and I cannot avoid my duty any more. I thought I could, but what would Rodric have said? What would any true servant of our country say about this sordid little deal of ours?’
‘You cannot go to war,’ he insisted.
‘I will.’
He stood suddenly, knocking his seat to the floor. Emotions came and went across his face like clouds. ‘Listen to me, Miss Marshwic. You’re an intelligent woman. You must know what this damned draft means. No sane man depopulates his nation for a winning war. No ruler sends his women – his country’s future – into battle just to hold enemy ground. You cannot believe that, Miss Marshwic. We are losing. You must have realized that. Every fourth day a list of the Chalcaster dead arrives, a list of the wounded who will never fight again. The war is not those lies you see in print. The war is death and maiming. The war is terror and bloody stupidity. I would spare everyone if I could, Miss Marshwic, but I cannot. I can spare only one person that fate, and the person I choose is you. Please, take the post I offer you here, for God’s sake, because the war is not as the papers or the gossip or the King himself tells it.’
The harsh words, from a man who had never lost his temper before, shocked her. ‘And you yourself have witnessed this war?’ she said quietly, for she knew he had not.
‘I hear. I listen. Believe me, Miss Marshwic, I know. The war goes badly, very badly for us. You cannot be blind to that.’
Her recent dreams agreed with him, eager now to start haunting her again. ‘I suppose I have known somehow, but it changes nothing, Mr Northway.’
‘But it must. Miss Marshwic, please . . .’
‘If anything, my country needs what little help I can give