"All it means, love, is that I had a particularly realistic nightmare, an erotic dream, and you had the bad luck to witness it."
He smiled at her, so close, their eyes mirroring. The smile that J, with his acerbic tongue, sometimes alluded to as the coup de grace.
"It also means," said Blade, "that I am a lousy lover. A selfish pig that cares only for my own satisfaction. A pig that rolls over and snores without even a goodnight kiss. Now I ask you, darling, is that the Blade you know? Even if there were another woman, which there isn't - and I swear that on the Queen and my own sainted mother - would I treat her like that? Even in a dream? So you see it was only a nightmare. Someone else's nightmare. Not me at all. I think we had best just forget it. Come sweets, and give a kiss, and I'll pay you back threefold."
This time the quote did not work. The smile did not work. The famous Blade charm did not work. Zoe turned her face away from his.
"I think we had best not forget it, Richard. The nightmare, yes. You are probably right and it was only that. I am a little fool and there is no other woman named Taleen. It is an odd name, though. To imagine, dream up, even in a nightmare!"
Even the best, the sweetest, of them have nasty claws.
Blade sighed and closed his eyes against the moonlight, plucked a stalk of heather and chewed on it, and silently goddamned Lord L and all the boffins, and computers, and J and M16A, and especially damned himself as far back as Oxford for having let himself be recruited there. He damned the concept of duty and knew he could never refute it. Most especially he damned, to the nethermost regions of the darkest pit, the Official Secrets Act. There was never any release from it. Not ever. Even if duty and country and decency did not deter - the Act did. They had you forever. You opened your mouth once, one faint whisper, and they hung you. Even J would do it. And J loved him like a son.
Zoe was speaking quietly. "Until a few months ago, Richard, you were asking me to marry you."
And so he had been. He had loved her then and he loved her now. He gritted his teeth and was silent. The gulls fluttered on their ledge. The moon sailed away to adventure. Blade waited. He might yet get out of this one, but it was going to be a near thing. Christ! He didn't want to lose this woman.
"I wouldn't at first," she went on, "because of a number of things. There was no rush, I didn't know very much about you, and I wasn't sure if I loved you enough for marriage. Then, when I was sure, and loved you desperately, you stopped asking. Just like that." Blade groaned aloud.
Quickly she leaned to kiss his cheek. Her lips were chill and in her voice was a subtle note of change as she said: "Poor darling. Does it hurt so much?"
She was not, he knew, alluding to any physical pain. She had her lovely little sharp talons ha him now and she was going to rend a little, just to even matters up.
"You disappear for long periods of time, Richard. You never give me any excuses, I'll say that for you. You just disappear and then come back with strange marks and scars on you, and an odd look in your eye, and you walk in and expect me to pick right up where we left off. And I do. I always have, so far. I hop right into bed and I love it. But I can't love it forever, you know. I'm a woman. I want to get married and have children and have a husband I see every day. And every night. You won't even tell me what you really do for a living!"
Blade squinted up at her and made the effort. "Come off it, Zoe. You know what I..."
She put a cool hand over his lips. "Bureau of Economic Planning. Whitehall."
It was a new cover, one that J had dreamed up since the computer experiments began.
"I asked about your real job, Richard. That Bureau thing is only what they call a cover in the thrillers. I've looked into it. Father has friends, I have friends, and all our friends have friends. It wasn't so hard, really. You have got an office in Whitehall, and a pretty little thing as a secretary, and you spend about one hour a week there, signing papers that mean nothing."
Blade closed his eyes again. Somewhere a cuckoo sang a last sad parting note. Wait until J heard about this! The plumbing was leaking. It had, of course, been a hasty setup.
Zoe leaned to kiss him softly on the mouth. Her lips were warm again. "Dick. Sweetheart. If you are some sort of secret agent, doing some sort of dreadfully mysterious and dangerous work, why don't you just simply tell me? Just one word. I'll understand and never ask another question."
Hah!
"I can't tell you," he said. "I can't tell you anything at all."
"Not even yes or no?"
"Not anything."
There was silence. The cuckoo cried a last time. Zoe was leaning over him, her marvelous taut breasts touching his face.
"All right," Zoe said at last. "Will you marry me, then? Right away. I love you so much that I'll settle for just that. Marry me and I'll try my best not to be a hindrance to you in whatever it is you do."
"I can't marry you."
When the computer thing began they voided his old Official Secrets Act and had made him sign a new one - with a special codicil. No marriage. J was the best security man in all Europe and he did not trust bedsprings, even connubial ones.
Zoe drew away from him. "You can't marry me? Or won't marry me?"
"Can't. I..."
They heard the phone ringing in the cottage then, a hundred yards back from the cliff, shrill and angry in the quietness.
Zoe stood up abruptly and starting brushing off her skirt. "I'm not expecting a call."
"I am. Come on. I'll carry you." Blade snatched her up and ran down the path, carrying her as effortlessly as a man carries a kitten. There was a four-step stile just at the turnoff to the cottage and he took it in stride, vaulting the high stone like a thoroughbred at the National.
Zoe cried out. "You fool. You'll cripple both of us!" Ordinarily she would have loved it. There was no particular hurry. Blade knew the phone would keep ringing. It did.
The phone was in the bedroom. Blade flung Zoe on the bed in a flurry of skirts and long bare legs and went to answer it. It was an ordinary black phone with no scrambler attachment. "Hello."
"Hello, dear boy. How are things?" J's tone was bland and calm as the Channel a hundred yards away. He sounded as if he were about to invite Blade to tea the next day.
"Things might be a little better," Blade said. He glanced at Zoe on the bed. She had arranged her skirt and was regarding him with an odd little smile, her chin cupped in her hand. A reclining Mona Lisa.
"My dear fellow," said J, "I hope I haven't interrupted anything." J sounded as though he actually meant it.
"Only a blazing quarrel, sir. Nothing to worry about. What is it? Is the deal going through?"
"It is," said J. "First thing in the morning. Can you be at your office in Whitehall to sign the necessary papers? Quite early?"
"Right, sir. I'll be there." He hung up. Blade went to a closet to get his light suitcase, very conscious of Zoe's dark eyes on him.
"Off again, darling?"
He nodded, still without looking at her, and began to toss things into the suitcase. He hadn't brought much down from London this time.
"When shall I see you again?"
At last he could be honest. "I don't know. And I'm not being evasive, Zoe. I just have no way of knowing when I will see you again."
He was about to add - perhaps not ever, but cut it off in time. That would be cruel. She loved him. She was going to imagine things anyway, but at least they would be in the realm of ordinary human fears. Bad enough. Tell her he was going into a new dimension, with only a fifty-fifty chance of ever getting back, and she would go mad. Or think he was. And anyway there was the ACT.
Blade said: "I have to do a little job. I can't say when it will be finished."
"Dick!"
He turned and she was holding out her arms to him, her eyes moist and her mouth trembling. He went to her. It was like one of those beautifully done scenes in the silent movies when no word is spoken and no shred of meaning lost.
She pulled him down on top of her. He took her tenderly, then with a rising lust and ardent savagery, matched by her own, until the peak was reached and they could be tender again.