She had to think. Make her mind work for both of them.
Where to go?
Their feet pounded the pavement in fast rhythm together. Her heart kept pace. Her arm around his waist held him firmly against her side and she could feel him trying not to put weight on her, but once he stumbled. His damaged hand hit the ground hard but he said nothing, just hauled himself up and back to the running. The more they ran, locked in chaotic flight, the more she loved him. His will was so strong. And there was a calmness at the centre of him that controlled the pain and exhaustion. Only the muscle that flickered in his jaw betrayed him.
Think. But it was hard when everything was slipping and sliding inside her.
She ducked down Laburnum Road to their left. Then right and immediately right again, zigzagging to confuse pursuit. Her breath came in quick, sharp gasps. As she drew Chang An Lo across the road, they were almost run down by a bicycle suddenly swooping out of the gloom, skidding in the snow, and it set her pulse pounding faster to realize how near the soldiers could be without her even knowing.
She could think of nowhere safe except the docks. Tan Wah’s old hovel, if it was still there. Liev Popkov had destroyed its roof but it was better than nothing, anything was better than nothing. But it was a long way. Chang was weakening, his feet stuttering as if trying to give up on him.
‘The quayside,’ she muttered, her breath flaring out in front of her in the icy air.
He nodded. Snowflakes were caught in his eyelashes.
‘Can you make it?’
He nodded again. No waste of breath.
She slowed their pace to a hurried walk. She wasn’t going to have him drop dead on her. Headed downhill. All they had to do now was cross the big junction of Prince Street and Fleet Road, then keep going straight down to the docks, but as they approached the crossroads she saw two policemen standing on the corner right in front of her. One was in British uniform; the other she recognised as French. They were huddled in their navy capes, heads close together.
Without breaking stride she steered herself and Chang through the crawling traffic across to the other side of the road, away from the uniforms, and thought she had got away with it. But the British one’s head came up. He stared straight at her. At Chang. Said something to his colleague. Both immediately strode in her direction, carving a path through the sheet of white air. She couldn’t run. Not with Chang An Lo. Instead she tried to come up with a good reason why a white girl would be stumbling along with a Chinese draped around her shoulders in a snowstorm.
She couldn’t.
The police figures were closer, held up by a small burst of traffic, all shrouded in white. Death robes. A native man pushing a wheelbarrow with a child sitting in it swore at the car in front, which had slowed for the junction. It revved its engine ready to accelerate away, and the noise made Lydia glance across at the driver. She could barely see him through the sweep of snow-laden windshield wipers, but she saw enough. Instantly she stepped out onto the road, dragging Chang with her.
She tapped at the sedan’s window. ‘Mr Theo, it’s me.’
The window rolled down and Mr Theo’s grey eyes peered at her, narrowed against the cold wind. ‘Good God, what are you doing out in this?’ His gaze shifted to Chang An Lo. ‘Bloody hell.’
The policemen were almost at the car.
‘I…’ Her dry mouth tripped her up. She tried again. ‘I need a ride.’
She saw his eyes notice the two uniformed figures now approaching the rear of the car. Beside her Chang An Lo’s breathing came in convulsive gasps.
‘Not on the run, are you?’
‘No, Mr Theo,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course not.’
He knew she was lying. She could see it.
‘Get in,’ he said.
46
Well, this was an interesting turnaround.
Theo was leaning against the doorframe of his guest bedroom and despite the sick headache that was a permanent fixture these days, he was smiling.
Po Chu was going to love him.
On the bed lay the young Chinese. Hell’s fire. What a state the fellow was in. Looked terrible. Don’t die. Don’t you dare die. I need you alive.
The Russian girl was sitting beside the bed on a chair that was well over four hundred years old, not that she had eyes to appreciate its beauty right now. She was holding one of his mangled hands in hers and talking to him in a low urgent voice, the words too soft for Theo to hear. But that didn’t matter.
Lydia Ivanova, you have brought me a prize indeed.
Theo drove her home. He’d almost had to cart her bodily out of the sickroom, she was so loath to leave, but Theo was having none of it. There was Alfred to face, so she had to go home and sort that out first. Anyway there was something so intense about the way she tended the Chinese young man that Theo was nervous that she was about to leap into bed with him, fever or no fever. What would Alfred say to that?
He left Li Mei bathing the patient’s brow with herbs and potions from the hoard in the satchel and promised Lydia she could return when her mother and Alfred said she was allowed to. Not before.
She had almost spat at him with fury but fortunately had more sense and finally succumbed with ill grace. Her eyes watched Li Mei with naked suspicion, but in the end she had accepted that her Chang An Lo was in safe hands. No police.
‘I give you my word on it,’ Theo said. ‘As an English gentleman. Li Mei will take good care of him while you’re gone.’
For a moment then, he thought she would bite.
To say Valentina Ivanova Parker was angry was an understatement. Theo was shocked. Never had he heard a woman use such language, and quite obviously neither had Alfred. She poured torrents of Russian and English abuse on her daughter’s head. But the girl stood there and took it. She didn’t cry and she didn’t run. Her hands rubbed the sides of her damp skirt and sometimes her gaze lowered to her wet shoes but most of the time she looked her mother in the eye and said nothing.
By contrast Alfred’s displeasure was muted. But he was British. Not like these crazy Russians. Theo attempted to leave but Alfred stopped him.
‘Hang on a sec, old chap, if you don’t mind. I want to hear the details of what happened, but first I must deal with Lydia.’
So Theo waited and while he waited he went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured out three large whiskies. He sipped his own.
‘Enough, Valentina. That’s enough.’ Alfred spoke sharply and it got through to her.
She stopped shouting. Glared at both Alfred and Lydia, snapped something more in Russian, and then headed straight for the drink Theo was holding out for her. She knocked it back in one gulp and shuddered.
‘I hate whisky,’ she said and filled the glass with vodka.
Alfred spoke quietly but sternly to his stepdaughter. ‘Lydia, you have only been a member of my family for a week but already you’ve brought disgrace on my name.’
He paused, in case she had any comment to make, but the girl just scowled at the floor, the way Theo had seen her do a hundred times in class when reprimanded.
‘Emotions are running high right now,’ Alfred continued with remarkable calm, ‘and we all risk saying things we may later regret, so I want you to go up to your room and stay there for twenty-four hours. To give you time to reflect on what you’ve done. Your meals will be brought to you. Now go.’
‘But I can’t, I have to…’
‘No buts.’
‘Please, he’s ill and…’
‘Lydia, do not make this harder than it already is.’