I took a breath, my cheeks flushing hot.
He continued, his voice gentling a little. “I knew before we’d finished our first glass of wine that night that I had to do it. I was forbidden to speak about what I was doing. If I kept it up, and kept it from you, you would figure it out eventually. You were too sharp. And once you knew I’d been hiding things from you, you’d walk away without a look back. Of that much, I was sure. So it was easy, really. I had no choice.” His eyes watched me in the dim light. “Mabry argued with me, of course, but it was no use. By the time I met you coming out of Casparov’s office the next day, it was over.”
This was going to kill me. If he kept talking he was going to kill me, but still I spoke—still I pushed him on. “But it wasn’t over. Was it?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. Around us, the house was still. For the first time I wondered how late it was, what had happened to the party, whether all of the guests had gone to bed. It all seemed so far away.
When Alex spoke, his voice was a rasp. “It was over for a time,” he said. “And then the war came. And it wasn’t over anymore.”
The war. Me sitting on the bench in Victoria Station that last time, sick and feverish and desperate, his kiss on my lips. The pain had been so awful I had thought I would die.
I closed my eyes, which were burning and dry, and steeled myself.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Alex uncrossed his legs and stood, restless. He paced across the room, his long legs taking it in three strides, and turned. “Mabry contacted me again when the war started,” he said. “He had more work for me. I told him no. My reasons were the same as ever—I would not lie to my wife. I would fight for my country, but I would do it as everyone else did—as a soldier.”
Bitterness rose in my throat. I would not lie to my wife. “Go on,” I said.
“Mabry told me I was insane,” Alex said. “The war was in its early days, but he already knew how it was. He told me I’d be bloody mulch in a Belgian battlefield in six weeks, when instead I could be doing actual good for my country. With my skills I could be ferreting out agents, decoding messages, even traveling Germany undercover and reporting. He said I had no right to commit suicide.” Alex glanced at me. “But I was a foolish optimist, like everyone else in 1914. I didn’t know any better. I chose the RAF, because it seemed more challenging and more glamorous than ground fighting. I wanted to do something hard.” He shrugged, the gesture almost a flinch of pain. “I got my wish, in that at least.”
“I suppose you gave in,” I said, not wanting to hear him say any more, not wanting to hear another lie come from his lips. “Because you went to Reims, when you told me you trained at Reading. I read your file.”
He stopped pacing. He had turned away from the lamp, and I watched his shadow go still. “Mabry?” he asked, his voice strangled.
“He showed me the file,” I said. “I know that you trained at Reims and that you came here to Wych Elm House on authorized travel without telling me. That you were here the day Frances died. That you went back to Reims when you left me at the train station in 1918.” The words poured out of me, unstoppable. They did not feel good, only burned me and made me sicker. “I know, Alex.”
“That’s how you knew,” he said softly. “That’s why you didn’t believe my story. You’ve seen the file. Mabry plays a dirty game.”
“Martin saw the file, too.” I tried to keep the bitterness from my voice. “He must know it’s a lie, the same way I do.”
But Alex shook his head. “Martin will believe me. He was over there. He knows that what makes it into the War Office file usually has nothing to do with the truth.”
“Are you certain of that?”
“He’ll believe me,” Alex said again.
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. I thought of the rapt expression on Martin’s face, the way his gaze had fixed worshipfully on Alex, and I knew that Alex could make Martin believe anything. The thought only made me angrier.