*
WHEN at last Emmy opened her eyes, a dark figure stood beside her. The figure moved closer and took her hand.
Was she lying on the wedding dresses? All seemed white around her. But no, she was on a bed. White sheets covered her. There were white sheets everywhere. She was in a room full of beds with other people lying on top of them. A nurse moved into her peripheral vision and bent over a man wrapped in white bandages.
“Welcome back,” the dark figure said. “Guess I came for a visit at just the right time.”
Mac.
Emmy lifted her gaze to look at him.
“Where am I?” she murmured.
“At Royal London Hospital, cozy and warm.”
Emmy knew this place. She’d been inside its doors many times over the last two months, looking for Julia.
“I’m afraid I’ve blown your cover, Isabel,” Mac said.
“What?” A ripple of fear wriggled up from within her. Her cover? Did he know who she really was? Is that what he was saying?
“I came to your bridal shop on Tuesday to convince you to come have dinner with me. The ARP on your street said no one was there and I assured him someone was.”
“Dinner?” Emmy couldn’t think properly. “What day is it?”
“It’s Friday, actually.”
Emmy couldn’t remember what day she had last seen him. When had she run off into the rain? What had happened that day?
Monday.
Emmy had seen him on Monday.
And then she had run to the local billeting offices where she had learned Julia was not at Charlotte’s. Julia was nowhere.
“Your nurses tell me you’ll live. They also say I am your hero.” He laughed and squeezed her hand. “So maybe you’ll forgive me, then?”
“Forgive you?” Emmy’s head was spinning.
“You can’t go back to your mother’s shop, I’m afraid.”
“What?”
“Actually, even if I hadn’t blown your cover for you, you still couldn’t go back.”
It was too much to take in. Her place with the wedding dresses was her sanctuary, her secret haven. What did he mean, she could not go back? Had someone figured out that that she was posing as Eloise Crofton’s daughter? Would she be arrested?
Emmy started to rise from the bed, but fell back against the pillows.
Mac was hovering over her in an instant. “Isabel, you’re still very sick. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything yet. That was stupid of me.”
Emmy felt instantly woozy from having tried to sit up. “Water?” she murmured.
Mac reached for a glass at her bedside table. He slid next to her and raised her head off the pillow so that she could drink.
He lowered Emmy gently to the pillow and then reset the glass down on the table.
“What happened?” Emmy whispered.
“You mean after the warden and I found you? There were bombs, Isabel. Just a few hours later. I’m afraid the bridal shop was hit. All the shops on that street were.”
Julia’s book of fairy tales, Isabel’s birth certificate.
Her death certificate . . .
They were all inside Mum’s travel bag.
“I have to go back . . . ,” Emmy whispered.
“Hold on, Isabel. It was hit by incendiaries. There’s nothing left.”
Mac didn’t need to say more. She knew what had become of Julia’s book. Mum’s travel bag, her clothes, her trinkets. And she knew that Isabel’s death certificate had also been reduced to ashes. At least no one combing through the rubble would find it and realize she was an imposter.
“Your bag is here,” he said. “Although I’m afraid that’s all I was able to grab the day I found you.”
“My bag? Here?”
He nodded toward a chair in the corner. Mum’s travel bag sat there like an old, wise friend. It was still clasped shut.
“Bring it to me!”
Startled, Mac was slow to respond, but then he let go of her hand, walked over to the chair, and grasped Mum’s bag by its worn handles. He brought it to Emmy and she clutched it to her chest, embracing it as a child would cuddle a beloved toy. Tears of relief spilled out of her.
Mac stared wide-eyed.
“It was my mum’s,” Emmy said, hoping that was explanation enough. “Thank you for thinking to take it.”
He returned to the chair by the bed. “You’re welcome.”
For a few minutes there was silence between them as Emmy held on to the last thing on earth that she owned.
“Isabel, the hospital is a little short on beds as you can imagine. The nurses want to know who will be coming for you,” he said gently. “Is there a friend or relative here in London who can take you in?”
Emmy shook her head, closing her eyes against the thought that she had nowhere to go.
“What about any relatives elsewhere in England? Is there anyone I can ring for you? Anyone I can take you to?”
Emmy started to shake her head again. And then an image of Thistle House with its climbing roses and clucking chickens, its shining pond and gabled windows, and Charlotte with her long silver braid, filled her head. Charlotte. Would she take Emmy back? Or would she despise Emmy for what she had done? Emmy realized with a sickening thud in her heart that she no longer felt the urgency to stay in London and look for Julia. Her sister was lost to her. Emmy didn’t deserve to be rewarded with finding her and she knew now that she wouldn’t be.
The brides box was at Thistle House, though.
And although Emmy felt no tingling sensation of hope or aspiration at the thought of being reunited with her sketches, at least she would have them again.
“There is someone,” Emmy said. “She’s . . . an aunt. She lives in Gloucestershire.”
“I’d be happy to telephone her for you,” Mac said, then added, “or take you to her.”
He said this last bit as if he wanted to take Emmy to Charlotte’s himself, but did not want to appear too forward. The last thing Emmy wanted was for Charlotte to learn over the phone what she had done and then have to come to London to pull her out of the pit she had dug for herself.
“Would you? Take me there?” Emmy asked.
Mac smiled. “I’d be happy to.”
Emmy nodded. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes at the kindness of this man who thought he knew her.
Mac leaned in, thumbing away the tear that had escaped and was now sliding down her cheek. He kissed her forehead.
It was not the first kiss of lovers, yet it felt just like that to Emmy. A gnawing desire to be wanted—in every possible way—surged up within her. Despite all the mistakes she had made, she still wanted to be loved.
Emmy reached up with one hand to touch Mac’s face and he leaned into her palm.
“If London weren’t a battleground, I’d be attempting to convince you to stay here with me,” he whispered, kissing Emmy’s wrist where it met his jaw.
He rose from his chair. “I’ve got to get back. We’ve a broadcast in less than an hour. But I’ll see you tomorrow, Isabel.”
Mac smiled at Emmy from the door, then turned and left.
As she listened to his footfalls on the corridor outside her room, she reasoned that it was okay for Mac to be attracted to her and for her to be attracted to him.
Because she wasn’t foolish, immature Emmy who had abandoned her sister.
She was Isabel.
And Isabel had done nothing wrong.