RMS Aquitania
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1938
Eight o’clock. Outside sick bay, Evelyn tapped her foot and adjusted the belt of the burgundy gabardine dress Simone had given her.
Dr. Schwartz meandered down the passageway with a teasing smile on his jowly face. “Ah, Mrs. Lang. What a surprise to find you here,” he said in his German accent.
“How is he?” Evelyn pushed away from the wall. “You didn’t let me see him all day yesterday. I haven’t seen him in over thirty hours.”
Dr. Schwartz opened the door to his examination room. “Only a new bride counts the hours.”
The longest thirty hours of her life. “Please, sir. We’re docking in a few hours, and it’s vital that I speak with him before we disembark.”
“I’ll talk to the night orderly. Please have a seat.” He slipped into Peter’s room so quickly, Evelyn couldn’t see past his portly frame.
She stared at the offending closed door. How could she sit? The ship’s captain had wired ahead to New York. As soon as they docked, FBI agents and police would board to take testimonies and to arrest George Norwood. After that, Evelyn would be caught up in a flurry of cables and interviews and paperwork, the long list of tasks she’d assembled yesterday while staving off worry for Peter.
The coming hour might be her last time alone with him, to tell him how she felt and to lay out her case for a future together.
“Oh, Lord.” Her foot resumed its frenetic tapping. “Show me the way to tell him the truth so we can have a life together.”
She was mangling the Bible verse again, but this time it felt less self-serving.
Dr. Schwartz returned. “Your husband is much better today.”
Every pent-up muscle uncoiled. “Thank goodness.”
“He slept well. He’s recuperating from his surgery.”
“His fever? The knife wound?”
“He’s responding to the sulfanilamide and the debridement. Other than nerve and bone damage, I expect him to make a full recovery.”
Evelyn’s eyes slid shut, and she pressed her hand to her mouth. “Thank goodness. Thank you, Doctor. May I—”
“Yes, you may see him.” The doctor’s eyes shone with kindness. “Then you both will stop pestering me.”
“Has he—he’s been asking for me?”
“Every minute. Go in. The orderly is in the operating room attending to—our other patient.”
Norwood. She tensed, but Norwood was incapacitated by the gunshot wound and major abdominal surgery. Plus, they’d handcuffed him to the operating table for good measure.
Dr. Schwartz held open the door, and Evelyn stepped into the recovery room.
Peter lay in a bed against the right wall, and he craned up his head. “Evelyn.”
“Oh, Peter.” She pulled up a chair close beside him. He looked pale, but his eyes and smile were brilliant, and she stroked his brow, so blessedly warm and alive, yet so blessedly cool. “You’re all right. Thank God you’re all right.”
“And you?” He searched her face. “You’re all right?”
She smoothed back the golden waves of his hair. “A little shaken, but mostly worried about you. How do you feel?”
“Much better today.”
“Your arm?” Gauze bandages wound up from his wrist and over his shoulder, crossing his bare chest. “Does it hurt?”
“Not as much as you’d think, but they give me morphine, so it’s hard to tell.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “Knowing you’re safe is the best medicine ever.”
She was indeed safe, but she’d still taken her meals in the stateroom to avoid attention in the dining room. “Jeffries says the whole ship is talking about us, about the shooting.”
Peter glanced past her toward the door to the operating room. “I’m glad you didn’t listen when I told you to shoot him. I’m glad he’s alive.”
Sweet, compassionate Peter. Evelyn twiddled a blond curl around her finger. “I’m glad too, because he gave a full confession.”
“He did? I thought I heard the doctor say something yesterday.”
Her gaze roamed the curve of his eyelids, the sandy lashes, and the Wedgwood blue she loved. She nodded to reset her brain on the conversation. “Norwood heard Dr. Schwartz’s German accent and assumed they were on the same side. Dr. Schwartz played along and brought in one of the ship’s officers, who pretended to be a German agent.”
“Clever,” Peter said.
“Yes. Norwood told the officer everything. How he worked with the Gestapo, first to frame Mitch O’Hara and then to trap me. How he paid Helga to steal my passport, how his brother had a friend in the German passport office make the false passport, how he told Otto where I was on Kristallnacht so the mob could kill me.”
Peter grunted, as close to a curse as she’d heard from him.
“Norwood had a list of French fascists in his pocket,” Evelyn said. “He asked Dr. Schwartz to dispose of it. Those were the thugs he hired to shadow us in Paris—and the man he hired to kill us in Cherbourg.”
Peter’s eyes darkened. “The man I killed.”
She raked back the curl she’d been playing with. “You acted in self-defense, and Norwood’s confession sweeps away all doubt. You’ll be questioned, but only as a formality. Norwood’s going to prison. It’ll be a mess of a case with so many countries and nationalities and a British ship on international waters, but he’ll go to prison. So will his brother.”
Peter shook his head on the pillow. Sadness turned down the corners of his eyes. “I never thought—never thought I’d have to shoot one of my oldest friends.”
“Shh.” She stroked his hair. “He shot too, remember? He planned to kill both of us. You acted in self-defense—and to protect me.”
Her throat clamped shut. If she hadn’t already been in love with him, she would have fallen that night.
Watching him stand up to Norwood, strong and resolute. Watching him communicate with her in a way only she would understand. Watching him down on one knee taking down the man who planned to murder her.
“I’d do it again.” His voice rumbled in a way that turned her insides every which way.
“I know you would.” She needed to kiss him. Right then. Her lips softened at the thought, yearning for him. But her body resisted, stiffened, disobedient.
“Thank you for understanding my signals.” His gaze penetrated deep, as if reading the struggle within her heart.
“We make a good team.” She was still playing with his hair, and her fingers stilled. They did make a good team, and that was the segue she needed, the one she’d searched for in vain during the entire voyage.
Did he return her feelings? The only way to find out would be to open her mouth and tell him.
A frustrated scream built up inside her, and she strangled it.
Evelyn pushed up to her feet and spun to the cabinet by the door, her back to Peter. His belongings lay strewn along the top, the books and toiletries she’d sent the day before. “What a mess. You poor thing. You need things in order.”
“It’s fine. We’re arriving in New York soon anyway.” His voice sounded distant. Sad.
Evelyn cringed as she straightened the books. What was she doing? Why couldn’t she speak?
“New York,” Peter said. “You can get your passport and your next assignment.”
She tried to put his comb in the leather shaving kit, but she couldn’t see, the window of her vision darkened. “Yes. Yes, I can.”
“Where do you want to go?”
Wherever Peter was. Her lungs and her eyes and her mind opened wide, to the way, to the solution.
And the glass cleared.
She tucked Peter’s comb into the kit. “As soon as you find a job, I’ll ask for an assignment there.”
Silence hung, thick and weighty, and Evelyn held her breath, her fingers tense around his toothbrush.
“What do you . . . ?” Peter coughed. “What do you mean?”
In went the toothbrush, and she raised one shoulder. “I couldn’t figure things out, but I was going about it backward, trying to figure out how you could teach while I gallivanted around the world. But I’m a reporter. A reporter can work anywhere. No matter where you go, I can write.”
“I . . . I’m missing something.”
Yes, he was. The something about her loving him and wanting to be his wife forever. She zipped the shaving kit shut. “We’re a good team, don’t you think?”
“Yes . . .” A question turned up the end of the word.
“I never really thought of marriage as a trap. The person traps, not the institution. And you—I trust you.”
The bed creaked behind her, and bedclothes rustled. “Evelyn, please turn around so I can see your face.”
Evelyn plopped the kit on top of the books. “For heaven’s sake, Lang. I read your signals on the deck in the dark. Why can’t you read mine now?”
“Evie . . .” His voice drew her, warm and inviting, but firm. “I want—to see—your face.”
That face scrunched up, and she turned to him, peering out of one eye.
Peter sat up, leaning against the headboard, his expression as tender as when he was pretending to love her. Only now he had no reason to pretend.
All her reservations melted, and her mouth fell open. “I love you.” She slapped her hands over her face. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Of all the trite—I’m a writer! Surely I could find a better way to say—”
“Evelyn Lang!”
Her hands slid down to her chin, and she stared at him.
Peter beckoned with his good arm, bare and sculpted in masculine perfection. “Would you get over here so I can kiss you?”
“You want to kiss me?”
He grinned and beckoned again. “Yes, I want to kiss you, because I love you, and I want to have and to hold you till death us do part. And I’ll follow you to Timbuktu, or you can follow me to Podunk Falls. I don’t care as long as we’re together.”
He loved her? Oh, he did!
Evelyn rushed to him, perched on the side of the bed, her hands on his cheeks, his arm around her back, her lips on his, his lips on hers, her heart big and full in her throat, throbbing with joy.
His mouth widened under hers in a smile. “I should get shot more often.”
“No. No, you shouldn’t.” She shook her head, rubbing her nose against his, careful to keep her weight off his injured arm. “Never again, you darling, darling man.”
He worked his hand into her hair, cupping the back of her head, his eyes smoky. “I like it when you call me darling.”
She kissed his adorably crooked nose. “I like it when you call me Evie. But no one else can call me that. No one. Just you.”
“My Evie. My darling Evie.” He pulled her to him, to those perfect lips, to his marvelous kiss, his wonderful love.
This was no trap, but freedom—true and ordered freedom, leaning upon and being leaned upon, giving and receiving, speaking and listening.
“Come here.” He guided her over him, to sit with her hips on his good side and her legs draped across his lap. “That’s better.”
She tugged the blanket higher on his bare chest. “Don’t want to scandalize the doctor.”
“Why not? We’re on our honeymoon.” He gave her a playful smile, a promising smile, and he nuzzled his face in her neck. “It turned into a romantic honeymoon after all.”
She laughed and cradled his head, relishing the warmth of his kisses. “A shootout and a garbled declaration of love in sick bay. Oh yes—what could possibly be more romantic?”
Peter’s lips traveled up over her jaw toward her mouth. “I have a lifetime to make it up to you.”
What a delectable thought. But she let a chuckle escape with one more barb for old times’ sake. “Good, Lang. You’ll need it.”