Lost Among the Living(81)

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Let me take care of it,” came a voice from the doorway.

We both turned. Alex stood leaning against the doorjamb, listening, his hands jammed casually into his pockets.

“Alex!” Martin cried happily.

Alex turned his gaze on me. “You weren’t at supper,” he said.

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked innocently.

“God, no. You should have warned me. I had no idea it would be so excruciating.” His voice lowered. “Aunt Dottie told me that your mother died last week. You didn’t tell me.”

I looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. She also told me you never come to supper.”

I turned to Martin, and we exchanged a glance. “Martin is ill,” I explained to Alex, “and I’m just the help. We try not to go to supper if we can avoid it.”

Alex’s voice was quietly angry. “Another fact that you helpfully did not explain to me.”

“I say,” Martin broke in. “Is everything quite all right between you two?”

Alex pushed off the doorjamb and came into the room. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Just keen, as your fiancée would say.”

Martin put a hand to his forehead, like a fainting lady in a film. “Please don’t make fun of Cora,” he said. “She’s a good girl. It turns out I rather like her.”

“Then you should be happy she went home with her parents. What has gotten into Aunt Dottie and Uncle Robert, by the way? They’re practically at each other’s throats.”

“They’re worse than ever, I agree,” Martin said. “They’ve never thought much of each other, but Franny’s death seems to have done them in.”

Alex stood next to my chair, took his hands from his pockets, and looked down at Martin on the bed. “Matty,” he said, “you look like hell.”

To my surprise, Martin’s chest shook with quiet laughter. “You haven’t called me that since we were boys,” he said, looking up at Alex with the strange, complex adoration I’d seen on his face in that first moment I’d come into the parlor, a mix of love and a bitter sort of pain. “I take it you overheard what I told Cousin Jo?”

“Enough of it.” I could feel the tension vibrating from both of them. “Leave it to me, Matty. What was the man’s name?”

Martin seemed to hesitate, looking up into Alex’s face, but finally he spoke the words. “George Sanders,” he said. “That was the fellow. His wife’s name is Alice. She lives in Torbram.”

“And how much money did she want?” Alex asked.

“A thousand pounds. I told her I’d think about it. I didn’t know what else to say.”

“I’ll handle it,” Alex said softly. “Just get some rest.” He studied Martin closely. “You’re not on anything for the pain,” he observed.

Martin glanced at me, then looked back up at Alex. This time his laugh was bitter. “I’m afraid not, old chap.”

Alex rocked back on his heels in comprehension. “Is there nothing that can be done?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Martin said. “I don’t care anymore, not for myself, anyway. I just want to stay around for the wedding, for Cora’s sake. She’ll be part of the family then, a married woman, and at least as a proper widow she’ll have some options.” He looked at Alex thoughtfully. “It’s the only reason I don’t ask you to get your pistol and put me out of my misery, Coz.”

I sat in shocked silence, my stomach turning, as Alex actually seemed to consider the idea.

“No,” he said at last.

“You could,” Martin said to him, the words a whisper in the quiet room.

“I could,” my husband agreed. “But I won’t.”

They locked gazes for a long moment, and then Martin relaxed back into the pillows and closed his eyes. “Hell,” he said, the word coming out on a sigh.

He didn’t speak again, and after a moment I felt Alex’s hand close over my wrist. His touch was warm on my cold skin. I let him pull me unresisting from my chair and lead me from the room, closing Martin’s bedroom door softly behind us.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR



“I can’t believe you,” I said to Alex as he led me downstairs and along the corridor to my bedroom. “That was barbaric.”

“I said no to him,” he argued.

“But you thought about it. You actually thought about—about killing him to make the pain stop. Your own cousin.”

Alex pulled me into my room and shut the door. “I repeat—I said no,” he said. “But I’d do it cleanly, and quicker than whatever is killing him.”

“What is the matter with you?” I cried.

He still held my wrist. He leaned in, and I could smell his scent as I felt my own pulse in my throat. “Go to war, Jo,” he said. “Go to war, and watch a man die in agony, screaming for his mother, and tell me then that death can’t be merciful.”

I went still in his grip. “Did you kill people?” I asked him. “When you were—a German? Did you fight? Did you kill English soldiers as part of your cover?”