The green eyes came back to her, uncompromising but also at least no longer so dismissive. And that in itself pumped more adrenalin: it was better to be scared than to be nothing, she discovered to her surprise.
And get in first signalled the adrenalin—
"After all, it's my fault that Dr Mitchell and Mr Aske are here, Mademoiselle." It was no different from sighting the enemy's quarter-deck in the v-notch of the carronade, and then pulling the lanyard.
"My father commanded Vengeful, and I asked Dr Mitchell to finish his book."
It pleased her to drop the the from Vengeful, as Father always insisted, and she was the more rewarded by the very slightest suggestion of doubt in those green eyes.
"I wasn't going to ask you any questions, Miss Loftus, as a matter of fact... I thought it just possible that you might not know what was happening to you." The doubt faded. "But now I think I may have been wrong."
Bluff. Or, if not bluff, what could they do to her?
"Wrong about what, Mademoiselle?"
Aske sat up suddenly, as though stung. " Not your drivers, Miss MacMahon? Not your drivers?" He looked quickly at Paul, then back at the Frenchwoman. "Whose drivers, then?"
"Good question, Humphrey!" said Paul. "Whose drivers, if dummy3
not theirs? And the right question too, because it gives us our answer in one."
"Answer to what?"
"All this. The VIP treatment!" Paul nodded. "Mademoiselle MacMahon's newest masters don't give a stuff for the British, but they don't want any unscheduled trouble with their Russian friends at the moment, not with all the deals they've got going."
"With the Russians?" Aske repeated the words incredulously.
"What the devil have the Russians got to do with what we've been doing?"
"I can't imagine. But if I had to guess ... I'd say that we're all the victims of ... a misunderstanding, shall we say?" Paul looked at Nikki MacMahon hopefully. "How about that?"
"A misunderstanding?" She received his olive branch as though it had nettles entwined in it.
"That's right. Because . . . contrary to what you have assumed . . . Humphrey and I are on leave, and we're strictly devoted to 1812. And if you can prove anything else, you can lock us both up and throw away the key—and we'll come quietly, too."
"But I don't have to prove anything—"
Paul lifted his hand. "I haven't finished. You have a nasty suspicious mind, Nikki—or your bosses have . . . But if the roads behind us are crawling with KGB heavies I can't honestly blame you altogether."
dummy3
"That's very generous of you, Paul." She seemed to relent slightly. "You're about to blame them, are you—for also having nastier and more suspicious minds?"
"Ah . . . now you're beginning to get my drift." He smiled.
"But I don't altogether blame either of you, actually . . .
Because, you see, Nikki, before I started my leave I was engaged in an activity which surely interested them . . .
Nothing that had anything whatsoever to do with France, I assure you . . . but something they certainly could take exception to. Only, you appreciate that I can't tell you what."
He shrugged disarmingly. "But I suppose it is just possible they thought I was still hard at work—quite incorrectly, as it happens."
Elizabeth became aware that her mouth had dropped open, and closed it quickly. It wasn't so much that he was craftily offering the French security service Peace With Honour, as that he had so quickly and ingeniously interwoven truth with lies, and fact with fiction.
The emerald-green shoulders drooped. "Paul... do you know how many cars they sent to Laon?"
It was in the balance now, as he shook his head.
"Five, Paul. And ten men. Ten men, Paul!"
It was still in the balance.
"We were afraid there was going to be a blood-bath." Nikki stared at him. "And you're lying—of course."
It was going the wrong way.
dummy3
Paul gave a tiny shrug. "Well, if I told you the truth you'd never believe it. Just let Elizabeth go, that's all—she was led astray by bad company, you can say."
"No." Nikki shook her head again. "It's all or none."
"Better make it all then, because I promise we'll go quietly.
But if we have to stay we'll make trouble, I promise you that, too." He nodded. "Starting with a phone call to the British Embassy."
"You can have one call, Paul." This time Nikki nodded. "From the departure lounge. Your plane leaves in two hours. The seats are already booked."
XIV
As ELIZABETH REACHED for the bell-chain which hung beside the big iron-bound door a narrow window under the eaves above swung open.
"Oh—hullo there! I thought I heard a car." Cathy Audley's little bespectacled face peered out of the window. "You're early . . . but come on in—it isn't locked."
Elizabeth set her hand on the latch, and then remembered Humphrey Aske and turned back towards the car.
"The daughter, is that?" He made a face. "You go on, Miss Loftus, and I'll bring in your luggage . . . And then you'll have to protect me. I'm not at my best with little girls."
He wouldn't be, thought Elizabeth waspishly, and then dummy3
despised herself for becoming infected with Paul's prejudices.
The trouble was, it was not an infection which could be shrugged off easily once it was in the blood, even though Aske of all men had treated her with his own brand of courtesy, diffident but unfailing; it wasn't anything he said, or anything he did—it was what he was which made her irrationally uneasy, and there was nothing to be done about it.
She forced her mind away from him, and stepped into the house— and was uneasy there, too: it was like coming home, yet not coming home—home, because here, still guarded, she could feel safe, and she who outlives this day and comes safe home . . . and because the home from which she had been plucked on Saturday could never be home again for her after what had happened in it.
"Elizabeth!" Cathy pattered down the great polished staircase and skidded breathlessly to a halt in front of her. "You're early—sorry, but Mummy's gone to Guildford with Daddy—
but the old gentleman's here, and I've put him in the library with Mummy's Guardian and a glass of sherry."
What old gentleman? There was simultaneously too much and too little to grasp there at one go: they were expected, which was fair enough from Paul's phone call, which had brought two cars to Gatwick . . . and Humphrey Aske had driven one of those with all his Brand's Hatch skill . . . But what old gentleman?
dummy3
"That's fine, dear—" Gently now, gently, to be taken for granted by a child as an equal was a high compliment, not to be trifled with "—how long has he been here?"
"Oh not long. Do you know, Elizabeth—he has hair coming out of his ears?" Cathy nodded. "But he's terrifically polite—
he calls me 'Miss Audley' and stands up when I come into the library, would you believe it?"
Elizabeth had hoped for better than that, but while she was searching for another approach the door clicked behind her and Cathy's magnified eyes looked past her.
"Hullo. Who are you?" The child frowned.
"I... am Eeyore's brother," said Humphrey Aske. "Do you know who Eeyore was?"
"Yes." The eyes filled with suspicion. "He was a donkey."
"Correct. So people put burdens on me. And they beat me at regular intervals. And that makes me a donkey."
And that did indeed make him a donkey, thought Elizabeth, even though he was doing his best with Winnie-the-Pooh.
Because he had chosen the wrong child to patronise.
"Cathy—this is Humphrey Aske, a friend of your father's,"