Lost Among the Living(102)

Alex was already gone from the bed. He usually was; he had always been an early riser, restless and full of thoughts as the dawn came, and now he was even more so. I slid out of bed, washing quickly, twisting my hair back, and pulling on a robe before I left the bedroom to go find him.

He was on the front terrace, sitting on a wicker chair. The morning was chilled, and steam rose from the hot cup of coffee at his elbow. As I approached the doorway I could see he was sitting with one ankle crossed over the other knee, utterly still, his drink untouched, his head bent as he looked at something he held that I couldn’t see. He wore a shirt that he’d hastily pulled over his head and a loose pair of trousers, and his feet were bare.

My own bare feet flinched on the cold floorboards, but still I came outside and sat in the chair next to him, pulling my wrap closed over my chest.

“Good morning,” I said to him.

Alex looked at me, and for a moment his extraordinary blue eyes with their black-ringed irises flickered over me without recognition before focusing, as they always did, on my face. He was startled, I realized; he’d been engrossed in something.

“Mrs. Manders,” he said. “The mail has arrived.”

I glanced at the small pile of letters in his lap. “It’s early.”

“It comes when it comes,” he said.

I gave him the ghost of a smile at that, and he returned it. This was how we’d learned to handle everything during the month we’d been in this place—buses, meals, guides, the post. It comes when it comes. It was a different sort of life, and not a bad one, though I found myself longing for England, something I hadn’t screwed up the courage to mention to him yet.

I turned and looked out past the terrace. The cottage we’d rented was on the shore, and though it was rocky, and February here was cool, the sight and sound of the waves was an unceasing hypnotism—a cure, it turned out, for anything that ailed you. I had grown stronger in four weeks, and so had he. Far off in the water, fishing boats bobbed, moving busily about, and seagulls spun in the air overhead.

“Do you want to know what the mail has brought?” I heard Alex say.

I looked down at my feet and curled my toes. My body was alive with perfect satisfaction, every blood vessel and nerve. I felt no need to fidget or twitch, only to occasionally stretch and flex myself. There was no denying I was pleased as a cat, and the man sitting next to me was quite certainly the cause of it. I thought perhaps that his own pose, barely dressed in the cold and so still that he was hardly breathing, mirrored my own feeling. Here, in private and far from the world, we had no need to hide how in love we obviously were. The mail would change all of that. I could tell from the sound of his voice.

“I suppose,” I replied.

“I have received a letter from a man named Chalmers,” Alex said. “He works for the Home Office. He says he has a post for me that I am perfectly qualified for, but as it is of a confidential nature, he’ll have to speak to me about it in person.”

My stomach dropped. I had not thought, in this peaceful place, that a few words from his lips could inspire such sudden fear. “Another assignment?” I made myself ask.

“No,” he replied. “At home, in England. I made it clear in my last letter that my terms are not negotiable.”

I swallowed and made myself look out at the water again. “I see.”

“He encloses another letter, this one from an agent in London. There is a house that can be had for very good terms, in a desirable location. Due to my recommendation from Chalmers, he’s willing to hold it until I can make a decision.”

“So that’s it, then,” I said, as the wind blew off the water and lifted my hair, bringing its salty smell. “We have to go back.”

“You knew it would happen sooner or later, Jo,” he said gently. “It’s time.”

“I know. It’s just—I don’t know what’s next.”

“I know.”

I turned and looked at him. He was watching me; I didn’t know how long he’d been watching me as I’d stared at the water. “Do you want to do it?” I asked him.

His gaze did not leave me, and his expression did not flinch. “I want to talk to him, yes,” he said. “I want to see what he has to say.”

“You said you want to be your own man.”

“And I have been. But perhaps I can serve my country and be my own man at the same time.”

I bit my lip. “And what about me?”

“What do you want to do?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. He waited patiently, knowing I would speak. “I enjoyed the photography,” I said, wondering why the words felt slightly embarrassing. “I found it freeing. I’d like to take it up again.”

Not a single second of derision crossed his expression. “You’d like to be a photographer?”

“No,” I replied, surprised at how easy the answer came. “I want to learn it and get a studio, and then I want to teach it.”

Alex blinked, and his expression relaxed in that way that meant he was looking at something he liked. “You would be very good at that.”

I did not mention that every thought, every plan I had for the future, was suffused with the hope for a child as if colored by a lens; he already knew. “I suppose London would be the best place to try it,” I said. “But that isn’t the only letter you received. There’s something else, isn’t there?”