The Way to London

by Alix Rickloff

  “If it’s a joke, the laugh’s on me. We didn’t exactly part on friendly terms.” She rubbed her arms, suddenly chilly. She’d forgotten the way he seemed to stare right through her. And the way she hated it. A girl needed some secrets.

  “You were upset.”

  “If by ‘upset,’ you mean ‘mad as hell,’ you’re right. But it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t sink our ship or cause Mrs. Pratchett’s death.”

  “Neither did you, lass.”

  There it was again. That damned perceptiveness. She needed to be on her guard around him. “It was good of you to come. I’m not sure if I would have done the same in your shoes.”

  “What are you doing here?” He looked around. “And why do you look as if . . .” He seemed to think better of whatever he was going to say, falling back on a feeble shake of his head. “Last I heard you were going to take London by storm. The city would be your oyster and every gentleman at your beck and call.”

  “And so I shall—with your help. I need a lift, you see.”

  Her mother had perfected the art of twisting men round her little finger. It didn’t take much: a smile, a look, a careless touch. They fell like skittles at her feet. When Lucy was eleven, Amelia had thought it amusing to see her daughter emulating her methods. When Lucy was eighteen, Amelia found it rather less so. But by then, it was far too late, and her daughter proved more than adept. Lucy employed those skills now with a subtle sway that brought her all too comfortably close. “I know it’s asking a lot, but you were the only one that I thought might help. Doesn’t that make you feel special?” She lifted a hand to caress his cheek.

  He grabbed her wrist, his face hard, the smile gone. “It makes me feel like I’m the only man left in England who doesn’t want to strangle you on sight, though I’m not sure why that surprises me. You never were someone interested in making friends, only collecting followers.”

  She tore away from him, feeling suddenly cheap and ugly. Humiliation burned her cheeks. “You don’t have to be rude. It was a notion I had, that’s all. If you don’t want to help, I’m sure I can find someone who will.”

  She started to walk away, but he reached for her hand and swung her round to face him. “Hang on. I didn’t say I wouldn’t help. I just wish you didn’t . . .” He spread his hands. “All you needed to do was ask.”

  “Very well. I’m asking. Can I get a lift? The trains are stopped between Exeter and Bridgwater while they repair the tracks, and I need to get to London as soon as I can.”

  “Hot date?”

  “Something like that. I’m meeting an old friend about a job. Now, will you please help me?”

  He gave his chin a thoughtful rub. “I don’t know. The last time we spoke, you treated me as if I were muck under your dainty foot. Now I’m your Prince Charming. It’s a lot for a simple country lad like me to swallow.”

  “Prince Charming? Let’s not get carried away. I’m in need of a lift, not a fairy tale.”

  There it was, that damned insolent amusement again. Oh, how she wanted to clobber the cheeky sod. “Well? Yes or no?” she snapped. “I haven’t got all day.”

  “Right, then. I may be the biggest fool in Christendom, but when a beautiful young woman asks me for a lift, who am I to refuse?”

  “Really? You’re an absolute lifesaver.” She grinned before putting her fingers between her lips and giving a quick blast. “Come on, Bill. It’s on.”

  “Wait a minute. Who’s Bill?”

  She kissed him on the cheek, whispering in his ear, “Our chaperone, of course.”

  So since I was going to London anyway, I thought I’d offer my services as chaperone. Bill’s going home to his mother in Bethnal Green,” Lucy explained before Corporal McKeegan could ask. The back of the estate wagon was loaded with toolboxes, empty gas cans, coils of rope and chain, a folded car rug covered in dog hair, and three bushel baskets of ripe strawberries.

  Lucy was squashed hip-to-hip and thigh-to-thigh against Corporal McKeegan. Every shift of the gears, his left hand brushed her knee. She noted the long squared fingers, grease under the nails; the glow of blond hairs sprinkling his wrist; a livid white scar across his freckled knuckles.

  So different from Yoon Hai’s sleek beauty and courtier’s polish.

  A proud feline compared to an affable sheepdog.

  But for some reason, she imagined the sheepdog’s strong capable hand caressing the slope of her shoulder, the length of her rib cage, and her body warmed uncomfortably. To hide her humiliating reaction, she turned her attention to Bill, who was hanging out the rear passenger window.

  “Get back in here before you knock your head off,” she scolded. “Or end up with a mouthful of bugs.”

  “You sound like an old mother hen,” McKeegan said.

  “Go faster,” Bill urged as he waved to a passing bicyclist. “Faster.”

  “Any faster and this old rattler will bust a hose. She’s held together with Sellotape and string as it is. Besides, there’s a sentry post on the other side of the bridge. Don’t want old Mr. Bonnie or Dr. Carr to panic and take a potshot at us.”

  Lucy’s stomach tensed. “Sentry post?”

  If they checked her papers, they might realize she’d done a bunk and call the authorities. Aunt Cynthia was sure to be hot on her trail by now. It wouldn’t take a fortune-teller to figure out where she’d gone or a genius to trace her route. She’d only just managed to elude disaster. Was she so quickly going to be up to her neck in it again?

  “Nothing to worry over,” McKeegan explained. “They built pillboxes and tank traps all up and down this stretch of the county when they thought the Germans might invade. Home Guard took it over last winter. If you ask me, it’s more an excuse for the lads to escape their wives so they can drink a few pints in peace. I mean, Mr. Bonnie couldn’t hit the side of a barn if he were standing five feet from it.”

  “Drunk, blind, and armed. You fill me with confidence, Corporal.”

  He looked over, his blue eyes crinkling with silent amusement. “It’s Michael. I’m not in the army anymore.”

  “Maybe not, but I prefer to keep our relationship on a more businesslike footing.”

  They dropped over the crest of a hill. Below them, a river tumbled and curled over slick rocks as it made its way south toward the Channel. A pair of ducks paddled in the shallows. A willow trailed green like a curtain beside a mossy bank. Just before the bridge stood a squat cement structure, an ominous slit peering at oncoming traffic. A spectacled man in the tin hat and khaki uniform of the Home Guard sat on a folding chair reading a paper. Another wearing an old LDV armband smoked a pipe, his rifle leaning against the bridge’s parapet. Hardly what one would call a deterrent to crack German paratroopers.

  The estate wagon gave an asthmatic cough and rattle as McKeegan ground the gears down to idle. The man in the hat wandered over to them, leaving his rifle behind. “Morning, Michael. You’re out and about early this fine day. Feeling better, are you?”

  “Much.”

  “Well, don’t overtax yourself. A heart condition is nothing to sneeze at.”

  “I’m fine, Dr. Carr. Really. The boffins have said it’s just a murmur. Nothing fatal.” Crushed against his side, Lucy sensed his growing impatience in the jump of taut muscles, the tightness in his frozen smile.

  The good doctor was not so observant. “So you say, lad, but little problems can grow into big ones if we don’t take care.” He finished with a jolly laugh that was not returned.

  “You have me there, sir.”

  In the meantime, the second sentry wandered up, making no attempt to even look as if he were remotely concerned about invasion. He leaned on the butt of his rifle as if it were a walking stick. “Thought that was you, Michael. Didn’t see you down at the pub last night. Shoulda come. Martin beat that Frobisher lad from over Crewkerne way in shove ha’penny. A real nail-biter. It came down to the final point.”

  Watching grown men toss pennies all evening sounded like one of the
inner circles of hell to Lucy, but McKeegan brightened immediately. He relaxed back against the seat, his fingers loose on the wheel. “Sorry I missed it,” he answered with absolute sincerity.

  “There’s to be a rematch tonight. You should come and lay money down. Could pick yourself up enough for a trip to the pictures, maybe. Martin’s got a real flair. Not as fine as Tommy Bowen down at the chemist’s shop, mind, but then few can match Bowen for the skill.”

  “I might just do that, Mr. Bonnie. I hear they’re showing Here Comes Mr. Jordan. That’s one I’d like to see.”

  Mr. Bonnie leaned against the car, and any idea Lucy had that they might make a swift getaway was lost. “Sylvia went last night with that lad working out at Turrell’s sawmill. The one with the finger missing.”

  “Harris?”

  “Aye, that’s his name. Good lad. Got the use of that cottage up by Simmer’s Wood since his grandfather passed. I went to school with his aunt—Harris’s, not the old duffer’s. Name of Ruby. Pretty as a dream. Kissed her behind the coal shed. She slapped my face for my troubles.”

  “I remember his cousins from Sunday school picnics. They were always driving the vicar mad with their antics. Mum said they’d both joined up with the merchant navy.”

  “Aye. It was that or a stint in Dartmoor for ’em both.”

  Dear God. Would this torture never end? Not that she wasn’t interested in Sylvia and her nine-fingered sweetheart or curious about what sort of antics those Harris cousins got up to at Sunday school, but . . . well . . . in point of fact . . . she wasn’t.

  Just as she thought they might effect an escape, the doctor shoved his way back into the conversation. “Where you headed so early this morning and in such a rush anyway? It’s barely half nine.”

  “Mum sent me to pick up the WI’s strawberries. They’re canning at the village hall this afternoon.”

  “Looks like you picked up more than that.” Mr. Bonnie peered across at Lucy as if only now realizing McKeegan had company—and thus a new source of gossip. He tipped his hat. “How do you do, Miss—”

  “Stanley. Sarah Stanley.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Stanley. Headed into Charbury for the canning, are you?”

  “Passing through. The corporal was kind enough to give my brother and me a lift.”

  “He’s a kind boy, is our Michael, especially to pretty girls,” Mr. Bonnie said with a wink and a smile.

  “That’s a fine thing to say, Henry Bonnie.” Dr. Carr gave a grandfatherly harrumph. “You’ll scare the poor girl. Go on, then, lad. Your mum will be waiting for those berries, I expect.”

  “And be sure to come to the pub tonight,” Mr. Bonnie interrupted. “Martin’s a sight to behold when he’s on top of his game.”

  “Will do.” With a final wave, McKeegan accelerated over the low stone bridge.

  “Oh my God, I thought we’d never escape,” Lucy commented with a roll of her eyes.

  “I wish we could stay like they said,” Bill said with a bookmaker’s gleam in his eye. “I’d like to see that Martin bloke take on Frobisher. Might be worth a bob or two if the odds is right.”

  Around a curve toward the village, McKeegan pulled over to the side of the road out of sight of the post, the tension back in the rigid bracing of his spine, the squaring of his shoulders. “All right. Spill it.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucy stalled.

  “I mean the fake name. What’s going on?”

  Bill left off writing his name in the dust of the back window. “Tell him, Lucy. Michael’s no double-crossing whiddler.”

  “His name is Corporal McKeegan.”

  “He told me to call him Michael.”

  “Since when do you do what people tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” McKeegan interrupted. “And why do I think I’m not going to like the answer?”

  “Well, you know how I told you that I was escorting Bill back to his mother in London?”

  His brows crinkled to a confused frown.

  “Well, that much is true. It’s just that maybe . . . just maybe . . . I’m doing it a bit more unofficially than I let on.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We’ve done a bunk, Michael,” Bill said proudly. “Lucy and I are on the lam.”

  “You ran away? You kidnapped him and ran away?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. I didn’t kidnap anyone. Bill was already running away. I just decided he might be more successful if he had someone with him—a sort of guardian, if you like.”

  “You, a guardian?”

  “Don’t sound so shocked.”

  “‘Shocked’ doesn’t begin to cover it.” He looked at her long and hard, but beyond a flicker of displeasure, his face gave nothing away. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Can’t someone help someone else without having their motives questioned?”

  “In the normal run of things, I’d say yes. Where you’re concerned, I hedge my bets.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  He put the car in gear and pulled back onto the road. “So prove me wrong.”

  “Maybe I will . . . Michael.”

  Chapter 12

  McKeegan’s Garage turned out to be an old converted smithy, a stone water trough to one side of the petrol pump. An Austin 7 and an older-model Buick, both in various stages of repair, stood in the two main bays, while a motorbike lay in pieces below a rusted red, white, and green sign for Castrol motor oil. A wooden outside stair led to a set of sparsely furnished rooms above the garage with a small kitchenette and bath at the far end.

  Michael snatched two pairs of drying socks from a line strung across the small sink, which he shoved into his trouser pockets. “Mum lives across the way, but the garret is my own little paradise.”

  “Lucky you,” Lucy replied, eying the drab set of rooms.

  “I like it,” Bill declared.

  “You would.”

  Automotive magazines and a week-old newspaper proclaiming First Bombs on Tokyo lay scattered across a lumpy, stained couch, while a row of empty Bass beer bottles stood on the scratched and scarred end table alongside a few rusted engine parts. Someone had attempted to pretty up the place with a colorful rag rug and curtains at the dormers, but it wasn’t nearly enough to combat the general air of neglect. Michael might live here, but this was a temporary billet at best. Not a home.

  She was reminded of Nanreath Hall and felt an immediate stab of empathy.

  “Guess this isn’t exactly the rich digs you’re used to,” he said.

  “Not even close. For one thing, it’s decidedly lacking in dead animals.”

  He cocked her a puzzled look, but she merely smiled enigmatically.

  “I’m only staying until I can save enough for a place of my own. There’s a cottage just beyond the millpond I’ve my eye on. It’s been empty for a few years, needs some work, but the bones are still good.” He grabbed a dirty bowl and glass from a table and hid a pair of flannel pajama bottoms under a couch cushion. “There’s even a cowshed out the back.”

  “You’ve sold me. What right-minded person wouldn’t jump at the chance to own his own cowshed?”

  He laughed, her comment bouncing off his impenetrable good nature. He gave one more despairing glance around at the mess. “Right. Well, there’s a bath just through there. You can wash up and I’ll be back to collect you in twenty minutes.”

  “Wash?” Bill shuddered. “I don’t need a wash. Tell him, Lucy.”

  “You’ll bathe,” Lucy answered. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

  Bill looked mutinous, a stubborn jut to his jaw.

  “If you hurry, you can be clean and still have time to explore the village. I thought I saw a sweetshop at the end of the lane.”

  “Right. I’ll only be a tick.” He made a dash for the bathroom, where loud sloshing and humming soon followed.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you have a real knack with him,”
Michael commented.

  “I’m making it up as I go. But he’s not bad, only a little wild. He’s had to grow up too quickly and on his own.”

  Michael caught and held her gaze. “Something you might know a little bit about.” Her heart skipped a beat and a twinge of something electric curled up her spine. Then he went and ruined it. “But are you certain helping him run away is wise?”

  “I asked for a lift, not a lecture. If I’d wanted to be told off, I’d have stayed with my aunt in her horrid mausoleum.”

  “Is your aunt that bad?”

  “No, in fact she’s irritatingly good, which is even worse.”

  “Only you would hold someone’s virtue against them.”

  “It’s not her virtue that rubs me the wrong way. It’s that she expects me to be virtuous as well.” My God, how Lucy hated his look of patient understanding, as if he knew anything about her and her life. It was almost as bad as his usual expression of patronizing amusement. “Not that I don’t appreciate these little chats of ours, but why don’t you stick to carburetors and leave the psychoanalysis to the experts? Okay?”

  He leaned against the table, crossing his arms. “Very well. No psychoanalysis. Just the honest truth—what’s really going on?”

  “I told you.”

  “You told me some cock-and-bull story about helping Bill find his mother, which is well and good, but what’s waiting for you in London?”

  “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

  “You rang me up out of the blue on a busy Wednesday morning. That makes it my business. So spill it or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  Michael shrugged and began tidying. A discarded pair of half-darned socks. An old greasy newspaper. A dirty plate. Slowly . . .

  Methodically . . .

  As if he had all the time in the world . . .

  “You’ll refuse to help me? Is that it? I should never have telephoned you. It was a daft idea.”

  “You said it. Not me.”

  She fumed inwardly, but he continued his snail’s-pace spring cleaning—a pair of battered work boots, a stain on the end table. All while that glimmer of laughter crinkled the corners of his blue eyes, and his mouth twitched as if he were at the edge of laughter. It was as if even when he was being completely serious, there was a part of him that couldn’t help but see the absurdity of the situation. Despite her best efforts, she felt a betraying smile tugging at her own lips. How did he manage to make her want to scream and laugh at the same time? It wasn’t fair. “Fine. If you must know, I’m meeting an important man about a job. He’ll only be in London for a few more days and then he leaves for the States, so I have to get there as soon as I can.”