A Question of Betrayal Read online

  Peter was talking but Lucas had not heard him.

  “…knows him,” Peter was saying. “She has imagination and intelligence. She can warn him that he must get out, and bring with him any information he has about the Austrians. She speaks pretty fluent German and Italian—”

  “Italian?” Lucas interrupted sharply.

  “He’s in Trieste.”

  “Why Trieste?” Lucas asked. “That’s northern Italy.”

  “I know where Trieste is!” Peter said a little sharply.

  Lucas cut him off: “I can see why Strother would be there, but…”

  Peter faced him. “She wants a proper job, Lucas. No more filling in for someone else, and then leaving when it starts to make sense to her. You agreed to our using her after Berlin. She’s brave, resourceful, intelligent, and above all, after her experiences in May, she cares intensely about what is happening in Europe. She’s seen it up close, and she won’t stand by and wring her hands, or believe what we all wish were true, but isn’t.” His eyes were intensely serious now; his voice dropped lower and became almost frantic. “Hitler’s going to war, one step at a time. You know it, I know it, and perhaps Churchill does, but our government’s playing the game of Statues. We played it as children, we all did: turn your back and it moves; look and it freezes, but it’s closer, closer every time. You can’t say you’ll use her, but only for the small jobs that are safe. She doesn’t deserve that, and she’d know, sooner or later. You never did that yourself, to protect Josephine, or anyone else.”

  Lucas felt the fury rise up inside him. “That’s different—” he began.

  “Why?” Peter interrupted. There was not anger in his face so much as distress. “We send the best person for the job. We always have. What am I going to say to others? Too close to me? Too precious? They might not come back? How can you ask another man to send his child to war, but you won’t send your own?”

  Lucas had never forgotten his only grandson. There were times when it hurt as if it had been yesterday. Or Margot’s husband of one week. She had never remarried. But Lucas had, at least temporarily, forgotten Peter’s older brother, James. When he spoke again, it was quietly, but his voice was still tight with pain. “I’m sorry, I had forgotten about James. But it wasn’t the danger I was thinking of, it was the shame, the humiliation of Strother leaving. He seemed to have betrayed us all, but Elena far more than the rest of us. They blamed her, you know that, for having helped him, albeit unknowingly. They believed her, but she still lost her career.” He remembered it so sharply. All the university education, her position in the Foreign Office for which she had worked so hard. He remembered her argument with a pain that was still very real, like a knife inside him, a long, curved blade. “That hurt less than the betrayal of love. Her father doesn’t mention it anymore, but he was so ashamed of her. He’s never really let it go; it humiliated him, too.”

  “I’d forgotten about that,” Peter admitted. “I wasn’t here at the time. I was abroad when I heard about it.”

  “Why the hell do you think she left?” Lucas asked bitterly. “It was the career she worked so hard for, and she loved the bloody man. That would’ve hurt the most, but I think she’s over that now.” He took a deep breath. “But after Berlin, she needs…” He did not know what she needed, or what more to say. Everyone got hurt, if they were alive at all. The only way not to be wounded was not to care enough about anything, or anybody, for the loss to touch you. But then you might as well be dead. It’s just that when it was Elena, it cut him more deeply. In some ways, she was still the eager child who trusted him so completely.

  Peter was struggling to find words. “Even if I had known all that, I still might have sent her,” he said quietly. “What would you have me do? Let Strother be killed and his information lost? Do you think that’s what she would want? I’ll do my job, as long as it isn’t painful? Doesn’t dig up old memories, and open old wounds to bleed again? Let somebody else do it?”

  “No, of course not!” Lucas said angrily. “That’s…” He lost the word, or perhaps never had it. “Is that what you came to tell me? That you sent Elena to Trieste to rescue Aiden Strother, of all people?” He was shouting now, and he could hear the anger in his voice, but not control it.

  “Yes, would you rather I kept it from you?” There was defiance in Peter’s face.

  “I’d rather you bloody well hadn’t done it!” Lucas snapped back. “But you have, and I won’t be able to get in touch with her. You can at least tell me she’s all right.”

  “No, I can’t,” Peter replied. “I won’t know. You weren’t listening. Our contact in Trieste has gone silent. I don’t know if he’s alive. I don’t know what’s gone wrong. I sent the best person I have, perhaps the only person. I didn’t know how deep the Strother affair went. All I heard was that it was an affair.”

  “And if you had known, would you have sent her anyway?”

  Peter met his eyes. “Yes, and so would you.”

  “Would I?”

  “Yes,” Peter said without hesitation.

  Lucas wanted to tell him to go to hell, but instead he turned to walk away, slowly, leaving Toby to realize he had gone and follow him over the rough earth and the cornstalks.

  * * *

  —

  Lucas arrived home, took Toby’s lead off, and let him run into the kitchen, where he was sure Josephine would have a biscuit for him. She always did. Just one, and Toby knew not to ask for another but would still sit there looking soulful and hungry. He was happy enough if she talked to him.

  “What’s for dinner?” Lucas asked, when he came into the kitchen to hang up Toby’s lead. He was not interested, but he wanted to talk. He just did not know where to begin.

  “I’ve no idea,” Josephine answered with a slight smile.

  He was completely wrong-footed. He stood in the middle of the floor, frowning.

  “We’re going to Charles and Katherine’s.” She smiled at him. “I thought you’d forgotten. You usually do.”

  “Oh.” She was right, he had forgotten, on purpose, even though his relationship with his son was better than it had been for years. Events in May had forced Lucas at last to tell Charles about his position during the war. He had become so used to its being secret, he had not realized how totally he had shut out even those closest to him. Josephine had known what he did, but she had never mentioned it until then. He was startled that she knew and, when he thought about it, rather pleased. It gave him a sense of not being nearly as alone as he had imagined, and her silence meant that she understood him professionally as well as personally. He had been in love with her when they married over half a century ago. Now it was more than that: a companionship of the mind and spirit.

  He was standing just out of her way, by the spice rack, where Toby’s lead was hung and they kept a spare emergency flashlight. “I lost my temper with Peter Howard today,” he said quietly. “I think I was wrong. But I can’t change how angry I am.”

  Josephine looked at him steadily for a moment. Her eyes were solemn, as silver-gray as her hair. Her face was made for emotion. “Perhaps you should decide who you’re really angry with,” she said quietly. “Or what you are really afraid of.”

  “Afraid?” Instantly, he started to defend himself.

  “Oh, Lucas, don’t play games with me,” she said mildly. “You know as well as I do that most anger is actually fear of something. Anger is so much easier.”

  He smiled with momentary amusement. “Are you saying I’m being cowardly?”

  “What is it about, really?” she asked instead of answering.

  He took a deep breath, but couldn’t find the right words. They were too blunt, or else too evasive.

  Josephine turned away from the bench, but she did not prompt him.

  “He has sent Elena on a job,” Peter admitted.

  “Good, s
he was getting restless,” Josephine said. “I think she was beginning to think she was not good enough.”

  “That’s absurd!” he said immediately. “Berlin—”

  “Could have been a fluke.” She cut across him. “I don’t think so and neither do you. But you know Elena: she questions herself; she always has. But more so since that miserable business with Strother.”

  “That’s it.” He grasped the opportunity to explain. “Peter has sent Elena to Trieste, to bring Strother back, with his information.” There, it was out.

  Josephine froze. For a moment her shock was perfectly plain, then she mastered it and looked calm again. Only a shadow in her eyes betrayed her emotions. “That’s awkward. Are you afraid she’s going to be so upset that she can’t do the job properly?”

  “No!” He denied it instantly. “I was thinking of how humiliated she would be because that bastard…”

  “What? You aren’t going to make any sense at all if you don’t tell me whether she is rescuing him or bringing him back to be executed.”

  He was stunned. “Good God. You don’t think I’d let Peter do that, do you? Anyway, if we were going to execute Strother, we would’ve done it years ago. A discreet accident somewhere.” He paused. She already knew that. “Stop interrogating me, making me answer my own questions.”

  She gave him a soft sweet smile. “You are the one who knows the answers, my dear. Are you really saying that sending her was a good idea, as long as it remained only an idea? Or that she is competent, but she shouldn’t have to face anything emotionally unpleasant or embarrassing?”

  “No!”

  “Good, because she wouldn’t thank you for that.” She walked past him to put the pruning shears away in the drawer used for small garden tools. She touched his arm on the way back to tidy the table. “You have to let children fall over, and then get up by themselves. Otherwise, they will think they can’t. They don’t always need help, and Elena is much stronger than you think. You play off each other, you know. She does what she thinks you want her to, and you do what you think she needs. Don’t protect her from doing her best; she won’t thank you for that, either.” She gathered up the cut stalks and fallen leaves and put them in the rubbish bin. “And of course, if I’m wrong, you are going to have to work hard to forgive me.” She gave him another bright smile, but there was a flush of anxiety in it, gone again so quickly he was not sure he had really seen it.

  “Am I suffocating her?” he asked.

  The sweet smile flickered across her face again. “I would rather say you’re tipping her out of the nest.” She pushed the last of the stalks down into the rubbish bin. “Now go and change for dinner; you’re not going out like that. You look as if you’ve been playing with the dog out in the fields.”

  At the word “dog,” Toby sat upright and cocked his ears.

  “Not yet,” Josephine told him. “But I won’t forget you. Your suppertime is six o’clock.” She avoided using the word “dinner.” That was another word he knew.

  “Lucas.”

  He looked at her.

  “I know she needs a success,” she explained, “but she needs to get it herself. And, if you think about it, you know that as well as I do. For goodness’ sake, let her believe you trust her, even if you don’t.”

  “I do!” He was horrified.

  “Good, so do I.” And with that she gave him the vase of flowers to carry into the hall and put on the table next to the wall.

  * * *

  —

  Charles Standish was Lucas and Josephine’s only child. He was handsome in a traditional way: regular features, fine dark eyes, and a charming smile. But he had not inherited either Lucas’s high intellect or Josephine’s imagination or wit. Somewhere, unspoken, was his awareness of it.

  But he had had an excellent education, and he maintained a sincerity that drew many people to trust him, a conviction he had never betrayed. He had a remarkable memory, especially for people, their names, their occupations, and very often their vulnerabilities, which he did not abuse. That must have taken some skill in the Foreign Office. He had been as successful as an ambassador could be in the highly dangerous and constantly shifting world of post-war Europe, now lurching yet again toward violent change: Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and the dark shadow of communism spreading in from the east like a storm on the horizon.

  It was Katherine Standish, Charles’s wife, who welcomed Lucas and Josephine at the door. She was undoubtedly Charles’s greatest asset. She was American, but she had become international in the best way: at ease with everyone, and without the imperial baggage that hampered many of the British. Whether she was beautiful was a matter of taste. She was a little lean, even angular, but she knew how to dress to flatter and charm, and above all to be individual. This evening she wore a silk crepe de chine dress of white with casual black splashes. It was crossed at the front, giving it some unaccountable fullness toward the hem, which fell well below her knees. Lucas knew at a glance that it was expensive, but she wore it with an ease that would have made anything look classic.

  “Come in,” she said with a wide smile, standing back to allow them past her. She kissed Josephine lightly on the cheek, then Lucas.

  Charles met them in the withdrawing room, which was very formal and only redeemed in its comfort by the well-worn leather of the armchairs beside the fire. He offered them drinks. He had his father’s favorite sherry and the lighter, drier one that Josephine preferred.

  The other person in the room was Margot, Elena’s elder sister. She was as dark as her father and as elegant as her mother, with the same spare figure and extraordinary grace. She wore a flame-red dress cut on the bias to fall in a cascade of silk from the hips.

  “Grandmother.” She gave Josephine an uninhibited hug and, a moment later, a hug of the same warmth to Lucas. That was new. After the Berlin episode, she, too, had learned of Lucas’s position during the war, since events had made it impossible to exclude his family any longer. It had broken the brittle barrier between them of secrecy, blame, and grief over losses both universal and uniquely individual.

  They exchanged news and spoke of small, comfortable things. Katherine was an excellent cook, although she had domestic help tonight so she could enjoy the company. When the chef informed Katherine that dinner was served, they went through to the dining room, with its formal dark blue velvet curtains and starkly beautiful photographs of bridges, symbols of other people and other times. They were one of the few things in Charles’s house that Lucas loved, something that bridged gulfs in ways only imagined by dreamers.

  They took their places at the long mahogany table, set with crystal and silver. There were two shallow bowls of scarlet leaves and floating white chrysanthemum heads set near the center, between the silver cruet sets. It was a typical Katherine touch.

  Soup was served.

  “Did I tell you, Grandpa, that I’m going to Cecily Cordell’s wedding?” Margot asked casually, referring to the daughter of friends in Berlin.

  “No,” he said with surprise. “Is she getting married in London, then?”

  “No, Berlin. She’s marrying a young officer in the army.”

  “The German army?” Katherine looked startled. “You didn’t mention that.”

  “I don’t think it’s exactly the army.” Margot looked at her soup appreciatively and took an elegant spoonful. “This is good, Mother. Did you teach Cook how to make it?”

  Katherine did not cook as often as she would like. Her social duties took up a great deal of her time, as Charles’s position in the Foreign Office was still demanding. Neither of her daughters had inherited her talent. Margot might have, had she taken the trouble. Elena, so far as anyone knew, had never tried.

  “What do you mean, not exactly?” Lucas asked, keeping his voice as level as possible.

  Margot looked up. “I’m not
sure. It’s some special group doing more important work.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Charles’s tone was suddenly cool.

  “Sorry, Father, I think this only applies to Germans. They aren’t supposed to have a proper army, are they?”

  “What does he do?” Katherine asked.

  “I have no idea. I’m just going to represent the family and take everyone’s good wishes. I’m sure you wish her well.”

  “I think it will take more than good wishes to make her happy if she’s to live in Germany,” Katherine said doubtfully. “But yes, of course we do.”

  “I don’t think you should go to Berlin at the moment,” Charles said grimly. “It’s in a state of unrest. Rather unpleasant, in fact.”

  “I’m only going socially, Father. There and back in a few days.”

  “Two days?” Charles suggested.

  “Hardly worth going for that short of a time,” Katherine pointed out. “She’ll stay with the Cordells and it should be fine.”

  “I think she should send a really nice gift,” Charles began.

  “The gift Cecily will like is her friend turning up to support her, Father. On a day like your wedding, you want to see family and people you’ve known for years who love you,” Margot told him.

  “I didn’t know you were so close to her,” Charles said with a frown. “It must be years since you’ve seen her.”

  “Months,” Margot corrected him. “We have exchanged letters, but that’s all got nothing to do with being a friend now.”

  “Berlin is not—” Charles began again.

  “Really, Charles, Berlin is a very civilized city,” Katherine said. “And reasonably well disposed toward the English. Indeed, the people of Berlin have strong friendships with many notable people. And not only Mosley and the Mitford sisters, also some of them like Lady Colefax and the Duchess of…I forget, but she’s very well connected.”