In the Shadow of Your Wings

by J. P. Robinson

  Thomas made a slight humphing sound in the back of his throat. Isabella had always fussed over Malcolm more than she should have. Perhaps that was why the boy had been unable to handle life without her and had thrown himself into marriage with scarcely a thought for the consequences. He was trying to escape the pain of loss.

  Thomas’s silver eyebrows knitted together. Leila’s entrance into their world had been so unexpected that, at first, he had mistaken her for a woman on the prowl for easy money. Malcolm’s impetuous nature made him liable to fall for such a scheme. And yet, Leila had succeeded in reaching his son whereas he had failed.

  Malcolm had refused to enlist when Thomas had demanded it of him, but Leila had managed to get him to volunteer within a few weeks.

  His lips pursed. How did she do it? A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.

  “Enter!”

  The door squeaked open and he glanced over his shoulder, expecting Greyson or one of the other servants.

  “What on earth?” Pivoting on his heel, Thomas hurried toward the door. “Leila!”

  She stood before him, streaming water from every part of her body. She trembled—from cold, he supposed.

  “Leila, what is the matter?” Stepping around her he yanked on a braided bell rope to summon his servants. “Come, give me your coat and sit by the fire. Jenny will be here in a moment.”

  He moved forward but she held up a hand, stopping him.

  “No, Thomas.”

  “What is it?” He stepped back, eyes probing her face. Something was clearly troubling her. “Did you walk here? In this weather?”

  “I have something to tell you.” The hitch in her voice confirmed his suspicions. Something had happened. Had she had word from Malcom? Was he hurt or—

  Thomas shook his head, gathering his scattered thoughts. She was freezing and soaked. “Whatever it is can wait. First, let me take your coat, then sit down by the fire.”

  He pulled the sodden garment off her shoulders despite her protests then pushed her to his chair. “Sit here and don’t move. If you catch pneumonia it won’t do either of us any favors.”

  He spun toward the corner and tugged on the cord again. “Where are the servants?”

  As he turned back to her, he caught sight of the small suitcase. Leila opened her mouth, but his upraised hand forestalled her questions. “Not now. We’ll talk about it later. You are welcome in my home. You know that.”

  “I—”

  The door flew open, interrupting the flow of Leila’s words. Greyson, pursued closely by Jenny the maid, rushed into the study. At the sight of her, Greyson’s eyes widened.

  “My apologies Lady Steele.” He bowed slightly. “With the noise, I did not hear you at the door.” A crash of thunder emphasized his words.

  Jenny had already slipped around him and taken Leila by the arm. “Come with me dearie and we’ll get you all sorted out.”

  “Thank you, Jenny.” Leila took her arm but paused by the door.

  “I will wait here.” Thomas nodded toward the fireplace. “Now go.”

  AN ORNATE TIMEPIECE had just sounded three o’clock when Leila stood outside Thomas’s study. She wore the same lilac dress that Jenny had purchased three days and an eternity ago. Perhaps it would bring her good luck and make Thomas more amiable.

  She raised her left hand to knock but paused as she caught sight of her wedding ring. Thomas would completely misunderstand her relationship with his son once she confessed. He would see it as a marriage of convenience—which it had been. At first.

  Again, she raised her hand. Again, she lowered it. She didn’t fear the fact that Thomas would denounce her as much as she dreaded the disappointment that would surely cloud his face once he knew the truth.

  Swallowing hard, she rapped on the door.

  “Enter.”

  Leila closed her eyes and tugged on the handle.

  “Ah, Leila.” The corners of Thomas’s mouth lifted as she entered the room. “I’m sure you feel much better now.” He gestured toward the fireplace. “Please, sit down.”

  Rubbing his hands together, he moved toward his chair. “It’s rather bizarre that you should show up, actually. I was just thinking about you a few moments ago.”

  Leila followed him but didn’t sit down. “Is that so?” Her voice was shrill, almost a squeak.

  Thomas glanced from her to the chair. “Feel free to sit. I dried it myself.”

  “I’d rather stand if you don’t mind.” She twisted the ring on her left hand.

  “As you wish.” He chuckled softly. “Perhaps I’d better sit down. In case what you have to say is as extraordinary as it seems.”

  A feeling akin to nausea rolled through her stomach. But she had made her choice and, once decided, she rarely changed her mind.

  Folding her hands in her lap, she stared at the floor. “I want to tell you who I am.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her shoulders slumped. This was going to be hard. So very, very hard.

  “My name is Leila Durand.” She murmured the words while slowly lifting her gaze to his own. “And I am a German spy.”

  THOMAS WAS USED TO dealing with the unexpected. In the Tirah campaign, he had led British soldiers against Indian rebels who had mastered the art of guerilla warfare. As head of the Bank of England, he was directly impacted by the economic vagaries of a nation at war. In his personal life, he had watched his wife decline from the very picture of health to a corpse within three months. But nothing he had ever faced surprised him more than the words that hung, heavy with impossibility, upon the still air between them.

  He stared at her, pinned in place by the pitiable expression on her face. He knew he should be doing something—sending a servant for the police or locking her in a closet to prevent an attempted escape—but his shell-shocked mind refused to allow him to breathe, let alone move.

  “A... spy?” He wanted to get up and drag her out of the room, but his legs refused to obey him.

  “There’s more.” Leila spoke quickly now, the words tumbling over each other, as though admitting the first secret had cut the cords that bound her tongue. “The story you told me, the one about your ancestor Charles.”

  She twisted the ring on her left hand once more. “My family tells a similar story. In our version, it is my great-grandfather who sells his son for a bottle of whiskey. The son is the spitting image of the French prince. He dies in prison so that the heir to the throne can go free.”

  “Your great-grandfather...” Thomas gaped at her.

  “It’s true.” She nodded, the glint of unshed tears shining in her eyes. “I grew up in a world filled with so many lies I didn’t know what to believe. But when I came here and saw the portraits... heard you explain, I realized that it was true all along.”

  Thomas slammed his eyes shut. He was an officer of the British army. He had stolen victory out of the teeth of defeat more times than he could count. He could handle this.

  His eyes flew open as he thrust himself out of the chair. “Forget that for the moment. Tell me, when did you first come to this country?”

  She flinched before the harshness in his tone but, to her credit, Leila lifted her chin and answered without hesitation. “Last year, just before I met Malcolm.”

  Malcolm. So, he had been right all along. The marriage had been a ruse. The prize was not money, as he had suspected, but something much worse. He froze as the implications of her words sunk in. She had been in his home while he argued with Malcolm. She had spent the night only a week ago. God, what secrets did she learn?

  “Who sent you here?”

  She hesitated.

  “Speak!”

  “My handler, Werner Jaëger. The head of foreign intelligence.”

  Fury walled up inside of him, a blinding rage that threatened his sense of control. Not only had this woman seduced his son, but she had done so with the express intention of eliciting information that was to be used against the British empire. His empire
!

  “You married my son only to gain access to my home?”

  “Yes...” She flushed. “I mean, no. I-it’s not the way it seems.”

  “Then what is it?” His bellow bounced off the towering walls. “What exactly am I not understanding?”

  She was silent.

  “We had an agreement, Leila. A truce! You told me you loved my son. I suppose that too was a lie!”

  Hurt flickered over Leila’s face but Thomas was beyond caring.

  “I came here under orders, yes, but after I met Malcolm I truly began to love him. You see—” She stopped.

  “What?” Like a lion in a cage, the fury within him paced about, seeking any opportunity to rend and destroy.

  “I had been married before and,” her voice dropped as she confessed, “my first marriage ended... badly. M-my husband attacked me on our balcony one night. He was drunk and we struggled. He...” she swallowed, closing her eyes. “He fell over the railing and... died.”

  “You... killed your husband?” He recoiled as though he had just discovered she was carrying a highly contagious disease.

  “No! It was an accident. The railing gave out under his weight. I couldn’t save him. When I returned to Germany I hated men; I hated life. But the war offered a second chance. At least, that’s what I thought.”

  Leila looked up at him, eyes pleading for his understanding.

  “Malcolm gave me something.” She made a helpless gesture. “A reason to believe in life and for that I loved him. You have to believe me!” She stepped closer, but Thomas drew back a pace.

  “Malcolm. Did he know?”

  “No. I didn’t want to hurt him.” She glanced away.

  “Hurt him? You married him to spy on his family. To destroy his country!”

  Leila’s face screwed into a crimson ball. “And I have lived with the constant fear that I would be responsible for his death.” She was shouting but, then again, so had he. “Do you know what that’s like, Thomas? To feel responsible for the death of someone you love?”

  Her words hit him like a solid punch to his gut. Thomas’ eyes slid to the portrait of his wife. How many times had he berated himself for not finding a cure for the cancer that had claimed Isabella’s life? He had lost that battle and the guilt of his failure still haunted him.

  Leila spoke again. “Malcolm went to war because he saw me with a man—a messenger from Berlin. He thought,” her voice cracked, “that I was in love with someone else. Of course, I couldn’t tell him the truth and, without a confession, he’d never believe that he was the only man I’ve ever loved.”

  Thomas felt his blood run cold. “Are you saying that Malcolm enlisted to escape? No other reason?”

  He had hoped that his son had volunteered to serve his country from a sense of patriotism. For the first time in years, Thomas had been able to muster up a scrap of pride when thinking about his son. For the first time, he had been able to hold his head up whenever Malcolm’s name was mentioned in the Prime Minister’s presence. And now, even that scrap of pride had fragmented into disappointment.

  Leila wiped her cheeks with the heels of her palms and Thomas turned away. Not once since his wife had been taken had he felt as helpless. Where are you, God? He slammed his fists on the window sill. Why?

  Leila provoked a volatile mixture of anger and sympathy. Was she the villain or the victim in this sadistic twist of fate? His mind named her the perpetrator but a quiet voice within his heart reminded him that he had been quick to judge her before. Why?

  His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Why... what?”

  Thomas turned slowly toward her. “Why come to me now? At first, I drove you away. You came back and I welcomed you into my home. And all along you never said a word. But here you are, confessing after having walked through the storm.”

  Her mouth thinned. “Because, in a few days, Werner will be out to kill me.”

  Thomas drilled her with his gaze. “Explain.”

  Reaching into the pocket of her gown Leila withdrew both a book and a small piece of paper. She extended them to him and, after a moment, Thomas took them.

  His eyebrows hiked together as he flipped through the book, but he was silent. Then he glanced at the paper and his blood froze in his veins. On it were printed a series of seemingly meaningless dots and dashes. But Thomas knew that this was much more.

  Hughes had been present at Thomas’s meeting with the Prime Minister two days ago in London. At that meeting, the head of security had pulled out this same paper, shown it to both men and told them what it meant.

  “You said your name was... Durand?” Thomas’s head jerked up. “Annabelle Durand?”

  She nodded.

  Memories pieced themselves together in his mind. The encounter outside Hughes’s office, the familiarity of her face and name. His eyes flew from the paper to her face. “You were a spy, operating under Hughes’s own nose?”

  “I obtained a position under the name Annabelle Durand as part of the cleaning crew.”

  “Dear God.” Thomas forked his fingers through his hair. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Thousands more could die if the Germans know we’re aware of their plans, Malcolm among them!”

  “They won’t know.”

  He thrust the paper in her face. “You have exactly two minutes to explain that statement to me and to convince me not to hand you over to the authorities. Because, believe me, Annabel or Leila or whatever it is you call yourself, that is exactly what I am about to do!”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “They won’t know because I killed the man who was going to relay the information to Werner.”

  “You ki—” Thomas made a choking sound as though her words had dropped from his ears and grabbed him by the throat. “How many men have you killed, exactly?”

  “One.” Leila lifted her chin and spoke in even, clipped tones. “My husband’s death was an accident brought on by his own drunken folly. I’m speaking about the agent whom I knew as Charles, although I doubt that was his real name. He had come with new orders from Berlin.”

  “What were they?”

  She held his gaze and spoke softly. “To assassinate you.”

  Silence filled the room. Thomas’s face was expressionless but, inwardly, he felt as stable as a leaf in a hurricane. In that silence, the truth became clear: she had been offered the choice of his life or her own. She had chosen him. Again, the question flitted through his mind. Why?

  “Werner began to suspect my loyalties were divided so he sent Charles to interrogate me. When he doesn’t return, Werner will know there’s been foul play. If you turn me in, he will send an agent who will murder me before I can face a British firing squad.”

  Thomas blanched. A few minutes passed before he spoke again. “You... committed treason when you killed one of your own.”

  “They are no longer my own.” She looked at him with a slack expression, eyes wet and dull. “Charles was the agent Malcolm thought I loved. My loyalty was already suspect. In killing him...” Her voice trailed off. “There’s no going back now.”

  Thomas considered her carefully. He had trusted her once before only to learn that she had taken advantage of his goodwill. Or had she?

  His mind spun through the events of the night when she had arrived on his doorstep, alone. She had come to intercede for Malcolm, that much was clear. She had been prepared to leave, only staying when he insisted upon it. The next day, he had offered to let her remain at the Estate, but she had refused when she could have turned the situation to her advantage.

  No one interested in eliciting information would have rejected such an opportunity. Then, she had refused to assassinate him. He sucked in a deep breath, driving his inner lion back into its cage.

  When he pushed past the emotional heat of the moment, it was clear that Leila’s conscience, not the Kaiser, had directed her steps. By confessing, she had placed her life in his hands. With one word he could condemn her. Or...

/>   “What do you want me to do, Leila?”

  “I-I came to ask you to help me flee Great Britain.” She stepped closer. “You have the means and resources to smuggle me out of Europe. If I go to America, I can start my life over.”

  “And Malcolm?” He shook his head. “You would abandon him?”

  Her forehead crinkled. “I doubt he would ever forgive me.”

  He gave a slow nod. She was probably right. If Malcolm ever learned the truth behind their relationship, he would disappear from her life forever. But still...

  “No.” Thomas cleared his throat.

  Leila’s eyes widened. “Please Thomas, I beg you.” She dropped to her knees. “I have nothing left.”

  “Stand up, Leila.” Reaching down, he pulled her to her feet. “You will not flee to America. You will remain here at Northshire and help us as you helped the Germans.”

  The idea mushroomed in his mind, growing more appealing with every passing second. Leila had been well-trained, that much was obvious. Why waste such potential?

  She recoiled, a frown working its way across her face. “I-I can’t. To deliberately work against the Fatherland is not something I can do. Shooting Charles was as much reflex as anything else. This... this is wrong.”

  Age had brought wisdom to Thomas, wisdom that now allowed him to move beyond his emotions and focus on two things. First, although Leila had deceived him in the past, she was being forthright now. Her hesitation showed more clearly than anything she had said or done up to this point, that she was sincere.

  Second, he knew that forcing the issue would only drive her away. Great Britain was an island, one whose borders were being closely monitored for people just like her. Since she had no other options, time and patience could persuade her to use her skills in the service of the Empire and its allies.

  “Here is my decision.” Thomas folded his hands behind his back as though about to issue an order. “You will remain here at Northshire as my guest. I will hire additional security, which is probably a good idea anyway in times like these. Should this Werner fellow think to send men here, well, they’ll get more than they bargained for.”