“To winter,” they all raised their glasses and toasted.
“A wicked one!”
“A wicked one!”
47
Caitrin wrapped her overcoat tighter and wished she had brought gloves. The early morning air was damp and cold, her breath became vapor, and frost had diminished the landscape’s colors. A weak sun barely lightened the southern face of Chequers behind her.
“Good morning. You are up early.” Hector’s voice caused her to turn as he approached.
“You are too, m’lud Hecky.”
“It’s a chilly breeze.”
“It is that.”
“In the north, we call it a lazy wind because it can’t be bothered to go around so it goes right through you.”
“Right enough. I needed to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. Plenty of that to go around out here.”
“Are you going to look at the garden?” Hector said and pointed to the walled enclosure in front of them.
“No, I have never liked obedient plants,” she said and gestured at a rise some distance away to their right. “I’m going up there. Mrs. Churchill said there’s a grand view from Beacon Hill.”
“Mind company?”
“Who?” she said, straight-faced, then laughed. “Of course not, come on. Think you can make it?”
They left a dark trail behind as they crunched through the frosted grass.
“I wanted to tell you that what you did at dinner last night was impressive,” Hector said.
“The way I covered my grievous etiquette error of using the rice knife instead of the soup fork by twirling the pickle prod?”
“By standing up for James. I should have done that too; he was my friend. I’m afraid I let him and the side down badly.”
“There are no sides in this, Hector, just survivors, and you did as you were trained and ordered. But I remember his father when he spoke about James and the pain when he mentioned his wife being in a sanitarium because of her son’s absence.”
“You saw things I didn’t.”
“No. We all see things differently. We each have our own kind of seeing. James’s death will not come as a surprise, and I’m sure William half-expects it by now, but being told he was a traitor would ruin him. And that doesn’t need to happen. The least we can do is let him keep his pride in his son. There will be so many empty houses and lives by the time this war is over.”
“I have asked to go up there and tell them what happened in person.”
“William will appreciate that. Perhaps I might come too.”
“His father would like that.”
They reached the top of Beacon Hill, where the sun offered the slightest warmth. Mist tendrils were withdrawing from the fields below.
“I am curious about something. How did you end up with the Koh-i-n
r?”
“I used the diamond to start the fire,” she said, imitating drawing a catapult, “and saw it on the carpet when I came back to the house. I dropped to one knee and picked it up.”
“Remarkable. I never noticed.” Hector shielded his eyes against the hazy light. “It was not an easy operation, and it didn’t turn out at all the way I imagined, but we did do a good job, eventually.”
“Did we?”
“Yes. The Crown Jewels are safe.”
“And what about Die Brücke? Viscount Rothermere will still have his estate and his newspaper empire. The duke of Buccleuch gets to hide away in his two hundred and forty thousand acres of land, and nothing will happen to him, or to the duke of Wellington. The establishment will close ranks around them and all the other Nazi sympathizers. They are the true traitors, not misguided men like James Gordon.”
“Caitrin, even if you stripped the land away from them and distributed it to the people, in a few generations they would get it all back.”
“Not all of it, and not necessarily back to them, and just the redistribution would be beneficial. More than that, it is the breakup of power that matters most. A fresh start. There will always be men who want everything.” She put her arm through his. “Damn, they even want all the names! Do you know there are towns in England and Wales with inhabitants who are nameless? They walk around, trying to get to know each other, but it’s impossible because the aristocracy has taken them all. Ponder that, Lord Marlton, Hector Bobby Neville-Percy.”
He laughed and said, “Caitrin, you are truly an original.”
“My dad always said that to me, sometimes with a frown. Power has always resided in the country estates, and for centuries Parliament was just a rubber stamp for a king and his cronies to raise taxes on the people. Not anymore, Hector. The people deserve better now, times are changing, and I’m going to push the clock hands to make it move a bit faster.”
“I surrender. Consider me defeated aristocracy.” Hector raised his hands. He took a half-step back, turned to face her, and brought a small box from his pocket. He opened it, took out the wedding rings they had used on the journey, and held them up to the light. “It didn’t last long, but I enjoyed being married to you. Perhaps enjoyed is not quite the word I’m searching for, but I thought—”
“No.”
“No? You don’t know what I was going to—”
“No.”
