“Are you in love with him?” I felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner.
“No. Maybe? I would be lying if I said I wasn’t interested,” Daphne said. Her face took on a dreamy expression. “So many people still see me as that sad, anxious victim. Freddie sees me as a real person. I’m starting to hope someday he might see me as a woman, too. He looks to me for advice, for companionship, but nothing else yet.” She fidgeted. “But when I saw him react to you that night, I realized it’s possible there is no chance for me at all.”
Freddie squinted in our direction and then spotted us, the blinding lights on him having put us in comparative darkness. Relief spread over his face. He waved, and then beckoned. I stood instinctively. Daphne did, too.
We paused. Our eyes met. I nodded and sat back down as Daphne hurried toward Freddie, into the light.
* * *
Nick sidled in as they shushed the room. Daphne tucked herself unobtrusively into a far corner next to a curio cabinet full of priceless china bibelots, and I spied Richard with Bea and her ever-present notebook along the back wall. Nick and I moved over to stand next to them, a mismatched menagerie of supporters, all of us trying with varying degrees of success to act like this was no big deal. Freddie had never done a solo interview, only joint ones with Nick, and I could see on his face that he felt the weight of this.
Terry Dempsey, the BBC journalist who’d been tapped for this, greeted Freddie with a firm handshake and then tugged down the tail of his suit jacket so he could sit on it. “Saw it in a movie once,” he said sheepishly. “Keeps the shoulders from rising up on me.”
This was meant to break the tension, and Freddie smiled, but I could see his foot tapping anxiously against the leg of the chair.
Terry opened with a softball about Freddie’s prior military career, which let him ease into the approved explanation for his decision to enter a war zone: a desire for service, a sense that he’d never reached his fullest potential in the military, and absolutely zero mention of the family feud that had made him feel so adrift in the first place.
“But surely that didn’t require such a perilous posting,” Terry said.
Freddie nodded. “What mattered most was that my cohorts knew I wasn’t out to be a tourist within the military, ticking off a box. I wanted something where I’d be constantly required and inspired to prove my dedication. You might recall, I’ve not been particularly dutiful thus far in my life.” Terry chuckled obligingly. “To make an impact, and put to rest any questions, I needed a place where anything less than full throttle wouldn’t be acceptable.”
“And what did you learn, do you think?” Terry asked. “What was the gift of this experience?”
“Gift?” Nick hissed incredulously. “It’s not a birthday treat.”
Freddie held his face impassive, but I could tell from his tapping toes that it required effort. “It is impossible to come out of the service without a sense of perspective,” he said. “One can always do more with what one is given. I’ve gained an even greater respect for people like my grandmother, my father, and my brother, who’ve understood better than I the way a life of good fortune must be shaped by a proper sense of duty.”
“But why the cloak-and-dagger approach?” Terry asked. “Why simply vanish?”
“Officially it was out of concern that I’d be a target, but for me, it was the threat I might pose to the other soldiers,” Freddie said. “Their work thrives on secrecy. I would have shouted it from the London rooftops, but the attention could’ve put their lives in even greater danger.”
“And it was dangerous,” Terry said. “I’m told you saw quite a bit of action, and that it’s the reason for your arm being in a sling.”
Freddie gulped. On the monitors, he simply looked serious, but we could see his left hand gripping his knee. Next to me, Nick frowned.
“I can’t give specifics, Terry,” Freddie said.
“You were injured,” he pressed. “It’s very brave to risk yourself like that.”
“No. Courage isn’t what I did,” Freddie said. His hand migrated from his knee to rub at the seat of his chair. “Courage isn’t trying to find purpose in a short burst of service. It’s giving your life to it, however long that life might be.