Martin put a hand to his forehead, like a fainting lady in a film. “Please don’t make fun of Cora,” he said. “She’s a good girl. It turns out I rather like her.”
“Then you should be happy she went home with her parents. What has gotten into Aunt Dottie and Uncle Robert, by the way? They’re practically at each other’s throats.”
“They’re worse than ever, I agree,” Martin said. “They’ve never thought much of each other, but Franny’s death seems to have done them in.”
Alex stood next to my chair, took his hands from his pockets, and looked down at Martin on the bed. “Matty,” he said, “you look like hell.”
To my surprise, Martin’s chest shook with quiet laughter. “You haven’t called me that since we were boys,” he said, looking up at Alex with the strange, complex adoration I’d seen on his face in that first moment I’d come into the parlor, a mix of love and a bitter sort of pain. “I take it you overheard what I told Cousin Jo?”
“Enough of it.” I could feel the tension vibrating from both of them. “Leave it to me, Matty. What was the man’s name?”
Martin seemed to hesitate, looking up into Alex’s face, but finally he spoke the words. “George Sanders,” he said. “That was the fellow. His wife’s name is Alice. She lives in Torbram.”
“And how much money did she want?” Alex asked.
“A thousand pounds. I told her I’d think about it. I didn’t know what else to say.”
“I’ll handle it,” Alex said softly. “Just get some rest.” He studied Martin closely. “You’re not on anything for the pain,” he observed.
Martin glanced at me, then looked back up at Alex. This time his laugh was bitter. “I’m afraid not, old chap.”
Alex rocked back on his heels in comprehension. “Is there nothing that can be done?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Martin said. “I don’t care anymore, not for myself, anyway. I just want to stay around for the wedding, for Cora’s sake. She’ll be part of the family then, a married woman, and at least as a proper widow she’ll have some options.” He looked at Alex thoughtfully. “It’s the only reason I don’t ask you to get your pistol and put me out of my misery, Coz.”
I sat in shocked silence, my stomach turning, as Alex actually seemed to consider the idea.
“No,” he said at last.
“You could,” Martin said to him, the words a whisper in the quiet room.
“I could,” my husband agreed. “But I won’t.”
They locked gazes for a long moment, and then Martin relaxed back into the pillows and closed his eyes. “Hell,” he said, the word coming out on a sigh.
He didn’t speak again, and after a moment I felt Alex’s hand close over my wrist. His touch was warm on my cold skin. I let him pull me unresisting from my chair and lead me from the room, closing Martin’s bedroom door softly behind us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“I can’t believe you,” I said to Alex as he led me downstairs and along the corridor to my bedroom. “That was barbaric.”
“I said no to him,” he argued.
“But you thought about it. You actually thought about—about killing him to make the pain stop. Your own cousin.”
Alex pulled me into my room and shut the door. “I repeat—I said no,” he said. “But I’d do it cleanly, and quicker than whatever is killing him.”
“What is the matter with you?” I cried.
He still held my wrist. He leaned in, and I could smell his scent as I felt my own pulse in my throat. “Go to war, Jo,” he said. “Go to war, and watch a man die in agony, screaming for his mother, and tell me then that death can’t be merciful.”
I went still in his grip. “Did you kill people?” I asked him. “When you were—a German? Did you fight? Did you kill English soldiers as part of your cover?”
His grip flinched on my wrist, his fingers flexing without thinking. “No,” he said. “My cover was as a messenger, remember? No, I didn’t fight. Not then. But I can’t speak to what I did before I became Hans Faber, Jo. Don’t ask me. I don’t much like to remember.”
I looked into his blue eyes and held his gaze. He had always been so good at everything—he’d be good at killing, too, even if he didn’t want to be. “I did go to war,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t shoot guns or parachute out of planes, but I did go to war. I rolled bandages and I bought liberty bonds and I lined up for rationed food. And I read the casualty lists, and I waited, and I wrote the War Office and the Red Cross after the Armistice, and—and I packed your things; I put them in boxes. I—”