strong arms longing to hold her. But the wounds of the past inflicted by Marcus, even her own father, flayed open, raw and stinging. She’d trusted them once, had sought shelter in their arms, but had found no comfort in the end.
A rush of wind whipped her skirt as the airplane glided in low and touched down. It looked barely big enough to hold them, much less the pilot. No matter. She’d climb inside a matchbox if it got her back to England. And far from the turmoil of emotions she didn’t want to sort out.
“Come, Mr. Anderson.” Throwing her shoulders back, she summoned the coldest chill she could muster into her voice. “It’s time you collected your payment.”
Chapter 31
Barrett kneaded his hat in his hands, careful not to touch anything. The gleaming walnut floors, portraits of fancy dressed people and colorful landscapes lining the paneled walls, the velvet drapes surrounding the dozens of windows overlooking the rolling green lawn, and the smell of beeswaxed furniture were all profound reminders of the world Kat came from. A world he had no part in.
Three days ago they’d left the horrors of France behind as they flew across the English Channel to land in what appeared to be an abandoned airfield somewhere in Dorset. Two autos with armed soldiers had been waiting. One bundled away the women while the other tossed him in the rear seat and raced off into the night. He’d spent hours at a military headquarters being debriefed. He’d begged for news of Kat and Ellie, but none was given. Not until an invitation with a single name was presented to him at the end of his interrogation.
“Sir Alfred will see you now.” Above the upturned nose, the butler refused to meet his eye. He flattened himself against the door in hopes Barrett’s commoner germs wouldn’t leap upon his starched penguin suit as he stepped by.
A long, spacious room with dark wood greeted him. Three walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled to capacity with musty tomes. The fourth wall of windows looked out to a formal garden of green hedges and sparrows pecking the ground. At the far end of the room, situated behind a massive desk with stacks of papers, sat Sir Alfred Whitford, the man himself.
Marching across the thick rug, Barrett didn’t slow his pace until the tips of his shoes hit the front of the oppressive desk.
Sir Alfred’s thinning gray eyebrows flicked upward. He didn’t bother rising to greet him. “Mr. Anderson, we meet at long last.”
Barrett gripped his hat to keep from slugging the man across his aristocratic face. “Aye.”
Blunt fingers tapped the top of his immaculate desk, while deep lines creased into the man’s face as he studied Barrett with unblinking eyes. Barrett had to imagine many a man cringing under such a glare. Though every angle of the hardened face was unfamiliar, that stare was utterly and completely Kat. He shoved down the sudden pang in his heart.
The fingers stopped drumming. “The deal was to bring my daughters back safely.”
“As I’ve done.”
“As you’ve done?” Sir Alfred’s fingers clamped into a fist. “My eldest daughter comes home with bruises around her neck and the other with a bullet hole in her.”
Bitterness, swift and red hot, barreled down Barrett’s veins like a bullet readying to erupt from a muzzle. “They got those defending one another from a madman.”
“A madman you let them cavort with all over Paris and half of Germany. Only for him to shoot his wife and himself in a barn.”
“Has Ellie recovered?”
“Eleanor will mend now that she is home where she belongs. Unlike the places you dragged her around.” Sir Alfred twisted his head to the side as red crept up his neck. His voice rose with each word. “Dancing with the Schutzstaffel, drinking with movie stars. Dinner parties with Hitler. What kind of man are you?”
“The kind you and your government cronies paid to rub elbows with those snakes. It made me sick to watch Kat slog on her belly alongside those monsters.”
Sir Alfred’s fist banged the desk. “Don’t you dare drag her name into this. I wanted my daughters returned immediately, but my ‘cronies,’ as you call them, went behind my back and kept them there. Two weeks ago I found out my daughters were crawling through the French countryside with you blazing the trail.”
The rage Barrett had barely tried to contain spewed up and out. If justice was swift, the louse before him would drown in the venom.