Chapter Thirty-Two

“Betty! Wait up!”

Doing her best to ignore her brother’s calls, Betty tried to quicken her pace but only succeeded in nearly tripping herself up, as she didn’t spot a gap in the paving stones. Congratulating herself on missing a fall, she didn’t see the lamppost looming up in the gathering darkness, and before she could alter her course, she hurtled headfirst into it at near full speed. Wobbling backward, she would have fallen, but a pair of strong hands grabbed her under the arms.

After allowing herself to remain in her rescuer’s arms for a minute to recover her wits and allow her head to stop ringing, Betty could stand on her own again. Slowly turning her head, she opened her mouth to speak and was confronted by Marcus. Of course it would be her brother, who else?

“Oh, bloody hell!”

“You didn’t have to try to knock yourself out just to avoid me, you know,” he said, though there wasn’t an accompanying smile.

Gingerly, Betty touched her forehead, wincing as she felt a bump already beginning to form. Turning her attention back to Marcus, she asked, “What do you want?” She looked over his shoulder to see if certain people had also followed her and was glad to see the coast appeared to be clear. “And more to the point, what do they want?”

Instead of replying, Marcus took one of Betty’s arms and gently put it through the crook of his. Looking around, he spotted exactly what was needed. “Come on, please,” he added when Betty appeared reluctant to accompany him. He pointed with his finger and, following it, Betty gave a curt nod.

“We’ve only rock cakes left, love,” the waitress told them as they entered the small café.

“Couple of teas, too, please,” Marcus asked as he gently steered his sister to a free table. “Well, if they’ve only got rock cakes left, it means one of two things,” Marcus said as he held out a chair for Betty. He took his own seat. “One, they’ve a very good baker.”

“Or?” Betty asked, unable to stop herself.

“Or they’ve a bloody awful baker, and the rock cakes are the last things anyone could bear to eat.”

Despite the unusual situation, Betty couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s better,” Marcus said, once she’d stopped.

The tea and rock cakes appeared before them, and Betty waited for the waitress to leave, though not before she noticed how her eyes roamed over her younger brother, who looked rather, she had to admit, resplendent and quite handsome in his officer’s uniform. “So, what is it you want?”

Stirring his tea, Marcus took a quick sip prior to answering. “Firstly, I’d like to apologize for that,” he pointed at her forehead.

“That apology, I accept.”

“Thank you.” Marcus inclined his head. “As for my parents?” He shrugged. “That’s a strange story.”

Remembering her brother wouldn’t necessarily be made from the same stuff as his parents, Betty allowed him a small smile. “I’ve a little time.”

“In that case, I apologize for my parents turning up. I’d come up to see Mr. Burrows too and didn’t realize they’d followed me.”

Betty took up a rock cake and, with obvious effort, sawed it in half, spread on it the tiny amount of jam before her, and took a bite. Hastily, she covered her mouth, pretended to cough while surreptitiously putting the mouthful onto the side of her plate. Washing out her mouth with her tea, she gave Marcus a pointed look. “I think we have an answer to your assessment of this place’s cooking abilities,” she told him sotto voce.

Without hesitation, Marcus pushed his cake away. “The rock cakes taste like rocks, then.”

“Why would they have followed you?”

Marcus ran a finger around his collar. “What do you, ah, know about them?”

“You mean, aside from them not wanting either myself or Eleanor because we were girls?”

Marcus shook his head. “I won’t pretend to understand that.” He looked up. “Betty, would you believe me if I told you, if I’d have known about you or Eleanor anytime earlier, I’d have looked for you sooner?”

Betty searched his face before slowly nodding her head. “I believe you would have.”

“Thank you,” Marcus replied, offering her his hands across the table. “Now, back to my parents. Do you know what it is my father does? Or did, I should say.”

Betty took a sip of tea. “All I know is that he’s a member of parliament, though I’m not sure where.”

“Half true. He’s no longer sitting, actually.” He looked around to see if they could be heard, but the café was only half full, and he’d picked a table against the wall with the specific purpose of making it difficult to be either overlooked or overheard. “The Party asked him to resign.” Betty’s eyes widened, asking for an explanation. “He’s lost everything—money, the house, and probably even more important to him, his social standing.”

Betty asked the only question possible. “How?”

“Gambling, mostly,” Marcus replied miserably. “That and, though I don’t know the full details, hefty involvement in the black market.”

****

“Ungrateful bastards!”

“Settle down, George, remember your ulcer,” George Palmer’s wife tried to soothe him.

“Why should I calm down? Eh? Tell me that!”

Marcus walked into the office for another moving box at that moment and was immediately aware of the tension in the room. Rolling his eyes, he tried to blank out the coming argument. It seemed that whenever he’d been to his parents’ house over the last year, they’d done nothing but argue. Growing up, he’d rapidly come to the conclusion his parents barely tolerated each other. Love certainly never even entered the equation. He’d often wondered how he came into existence, and when he’d learned about his sisters, he toyed with the idea he’d been adopted. Unfortunately, his face bore too much resemblance to his father’s for that to be a serious possibility.

“Well, it isn’t as if you haven’t got only yourself to blame, is it!” Darcie Palmer shouted back. “If it wasn’t for your greed, we’d still own our house. You would still have a job—an important job, I may add. And we would not have a gang of cutthroats on our tails!”

George made a scoffing noise in the back of his throat. “Cutthroats. Ha!”

“What would you call our every move being tracked by those people you owe money to, then? Boy scouts? Speaking of which, just how do you propose to pay them back? The house has gone, and that doesn’t cover half what you owe them. It’s not like we’ve the extra money coming in, either, since your little scheme caved in, and now, what are we going to live on?”

Marcus stopped lifting his refilled box at hearing this. He’d never liked his father—or his mother, come to that—but by the sound of it, a great deal more was going on with them than he’d thought. What on earth had his father been up to? If the man owed money and—Marcus would bet, the irony not lost on him—anything he owned, it was to do with gambling. His father loved cards. However, the cards didn’t love him. Even as a teenager Marcus had been able to beat him at any game he was challenged to. Putting the box down, he slowly pretended to add more items, intrigued and hoping to find out more. His mother obliged, not surprisingly, as once she got a bee in her bonnet about something, she didn’t let go.

George had backed up against his now-empty desk, his eyes wide as his wife stood before him, hands on her hips, the one person he was afraid of. “It’s hardly my fault the doctor was stupid and the group captain and his wife were greedy as well as stupid.”

Darcie laughed, out loud, obviously not worried about being overheard, though the same couldn’t be said about her husband, as George immediately rushed past her and slammed the door shut.

“Keep your bloody voice down!” he hushed at her. “Do you want everyone to hear what we’ve been up to?”

“We? Oh, no.” His wife shook her head. “There’s no ‘we’ here. I didn’t ask you to gamble away your wages, let alone our house. I certainly didn’t ask you to take money so some cowards could shirk their responsibilities. They should take their chances, as our Marcus here does.”

Marcus juggled a bottle of ink. He hadn’t been sure if either of them had been aware of his presence. What his father said next so shocked Marcus that he didn’t stop to think before speaking.

“Maybe we should see if—what’s her name? Oh, yes—Betty has any money.”

“You can’t do that! All she’s got is a lovely little cottage.”

Immediately the words were out of his mouth, he knew he’d said the wrong thing, as both his parents immediately focused attention upon him.

“Has she really?”

Marcus felt a shudder go up his spine. What had he done?