Catching the Wind(26)

Even so, he believed in the medieval Code of Chivalry. To fear God and live by honor. To defend the weak and keep faith. To persevere in every endeavor until the end.

A heraldic flag, its fierce lion colored a dark midnight blue, hung over the armor. Autumn leaves dropped behind the animal, seeming to plummet at his roar, and a swath of grass trailed back into the distance under the shower of leaves.

Letha had designed the coat of arms for their family. It meant freedom from evil. The power of the wind. New life. It brought him great honor to hang this symbol of knighthood in his house.

Eileen, his housekeeper, waited by the front door with his trench coat and tweed hat. Long ago, she and Jack used to try to stop him from walking in the rain, but those days were past. Instead of barring the door, she dropped the coat onto his shoulders and handed over his hat.

“It’s lightning, Mr. Knight.”

“I know.”

She opened the door. “Take care.”

He breathed in rain as he hobbled toward the front gate, the moisture coating his lungs. Rain clung to the cold wind and splashed his face. He loved the thrust of power to stir the sea. Shake trees. Carry the voice of a child crying for help.

Here in the storm, tears could fall freely down his cheeks, mixing with the torrent of God’s grief falling from the sky. On days like this, he thought God must surely be crying over the destruction mankind unleashed on one another. At the sight of His children entrenched in violent bitterness and jealousy, their barbaric quest for power detached from Him.

Daniel leaned against his cane as he moved past the gatehouse, toward a grove of pine trees that battled the wind with its daggers of needles and bark.

A blissful peace had settled over England in the late 1940s and ’50s, except in the hearts of the many people trying to find loved ones they’d lost.

After the war, he and George had spent months searching for Brigitte, but they couldn’t locate her. Youth today didn’t understand a world before social media and mobile phones, before one could search the Internet for a missing person or post their picture on screens around the world. And many people—today and from years past—didn’t understand or honor faithfulness. A deep commitment to those you loved, to persevere no matter what. One didn’t just forget a lost friend.

He tightened his grasp around the knob of his cane. Every day he prayed that he wouldn’t forget her.

Wind channeled between the pine trees, like the current of a river carrying him deep into the forest.

For decades after the war, he’d returned to England to search for Brigitte on his own. George and Letha had pitied him, thinking she must surely have passed away. He knew the realities and yet something kept prompting him to look for her. That quiet, still voice that urged him forward. A voice the assailants in his mind had tried to slay.

But he’d persevered like the knights of old, searching for the lost maiden. Like he’d done back in the tree house long ago. Whenever he returned to England, he would look for her, but the longer he searched, the more it seemed as if he were searching for a specific pine needle in this island’s vast grove.

George and Letha both died in 1984. That year he hired a private investigator in London. When that search availed nothing, he hired a second company. Then a third. One of the men he’d hired had come close to finding her—or so he said—but then he’d rammed into a dead end. It had been five years since the last agency closed his file.

Some thought him eccentric to continue this search, but he didn’t care. The knight’s code was to defend, protect. Long ago, he’d promised to find Brigitte, and he would persevere in this quest until God chose to take him home.

Six months ago, he’d begun an exhaustive search for a new investigator, trying to hire a person who would make this a personal journey instead of merely a professional one. He’d wanted to hire a woman who understood English along with some German. Someone who could think differently from the agency men he’d hired in the past. Someone compassionate, smart, and who knew how to keep a secret.

Someone who knew what it was like to be left alone.

When he read Quenby Vaughn’s series of articles about refugees, he was impressed with her ability to empathize with the tragic loss of the children while condemning those who infiltrated a new country intent on doing harm. It was a wretched line to walk, determining who needed help and who wanted to start a war.

Miss Vaughn was smart and capable, empathetic yet tough. Once his investigator discovered that she was preparing to write an article about Lady Ricker, the employer of Mr. and Mrs. Terrell, it seemed his prayers to find the right person for this job had been answered. And now he prayed that Miss Vaughn would do what no one before her had been able to accomplish.

Together they would rescue Brigitte.

The wind rustled the pine needles again, and for a moment he thought he heard barking in the distance. Instinctively, his body cried for him to run, but his legs were so tired, as if he’d already walked a dozen miles today.

He glanced around at the trees, confused.

He had been walking a long way, hadn’t he? All the way from Germany. And he was hungry. Tired.

He lifted the walking stick in his hands. Examined it. Where had he found such a polished piece? Perhaps the farmer had given it to him.

“Brigitte,” he called out into the rain, steadying himself against a wet branch as he scanned the trees for her.