Unexpectedly, Edwin laughed. 'I say, you sound fearfully silly.'
She willed her fangs to recede. Inside tight fists, nails dwindled.
'My name is Kate Reed, and I am a volunteer ambulance driver. You can ask Lady Buckingham or Mrs Harker for my references.'
He did not seem impressed.
'I assume you have followed me because of an intuition that I might come to some dire harm which would require your angelic ministrations?'
To pretend to be an even greater twit than she felt herself to be, she tried to project sheepish meekness. He let go and looked her up and down. She knew how odd she must seem in her disguise.
'I'm out for a stroll,' she claimed, loosening and rewinding her scarf with dignity.
'In an air raid?'
The fires were dying. Dravot had stalked around the blaze. He stood at the end of the road, a dozen yards away. She concentrated on drawing in her claws. It was important the sergeant did not think her a threat to his master.
'You've soot on your face,' Edwin told her, unkindly.
She rubbed her cheeks with mittens. He tapped his forehead and she concentrated on that area.
'You're just making it worse. With those specs, you look like a mole.'
As a child, Kate had been called 'Moley'. Penelope Churchward, the princess of their circle, thought the nickname remarkably amusing. No one heard much from Penny these days.
'You are gallant, Mr Staff Officer.'
'Lieutenant Winthrop, at your service.'
He presented his hand as if it were a calling card. She took his fingers and gave a gently painful squeeze. He set his teeth grimly but fixed a smile over the hurt.
'Pleased to meet you.' She curtseyed, letting him go.
He flexed his fingers to make sure they were all working.
'You're the Katharine Reed who writes so cleverly for the Cambridge Magazine, are you not? The intrepid lady journalist who called for Field Marshal Haig's prosecution on the grounds of criminal negligence?'
Kate's heart sank. If Edwin knew who she was, he would probably insist she get the Mata Hari treatment. She imagined Dravot wrestling her head off with quiet satisfaction.
'I have had the honour of writing for that periodical,' she replied, non-committally.
'I understand you're quite the heroine to those front-line troops who manage to have the Cambridge smuggled past the censors.'
He sounded as if that was meant as a compliment.
'And were you not imprisoned after the Easter Uprising? I seem to have your name lumped in with the Gore-Booths and Spring-Rices of this world. A Fabian and a Fenian.'
'I write what I see.'
'I'm surprised you can see anything through those goggles.'
He sounded as if that was meant as facetious.
'Has anyone ever suggested to you that alluding persistently to a person's infirmities might be considered impolite?'
Edwin smiled broadly but was not fooled. There was grit in him. He was not the usual silly-ass staff officer. Of course, she had known that. The lieutenant did not spend his time counting tins of bully beef. He was in with the Diogenes mob.
She decided to play the reporter.
'Do you have any views on the current state of the war? Is Allied command of the air under threat?'
He shrugged, unquotably.
'With the Russians out of it, do you fear a German spring offensive?'
His smile hardened slightly, but he said nothing.
'If you have nothing to say on the subject, would you mind if I bade you goodnight and went on my way? I, at least, have work to do.'
He stood back, spreading his hands.
'Not at all. Good night, Katharine.'
'That's only my name in print. Everybody calls me Kate.'
'Very well. Good night, Kate.'
She nodded, nicely. 'And a good night to you, Edwin.'
He was not caught. 'I didn't tell you my name.'
She tapped her nose. 'I have sources, Lieutenant.'
Before he could quiz her further, she withdrew. As she walked off, she heard Dravot move to confer with him. To her relief, the sergeant was not sent after her. The further away she was, the more comfortable she felt.
The Zeppelins seemed to have slunk back to Germany. Firefighters were getting the blazes under control. It was snowing again, slushing into the gutters. Within hours, all the water pumped at the fires would freeze, making a skating rink of the quarter.
She reviewed her sitiuation. Never again would she get within a hundred yards of Edwin Winthrop without being noticed. And he would talk with Charles, which would get her name added again to the list of those unwelcome in the vicinity of the war. She must come at this Malinbois business from a completely new angle. More than before, she was convinced something tasty was afoot.
12
Bloodlines
'The world has made of me what it would, and I make no excuses for myself. I have followed the dictates of my heart, even when such a course was unwise. I am to be shot as a spy but, in truth, I have scant talent for espionage. You, above all, know that, Charles. I am a courtesan, simply. I am kindly called the last of the grandes horizontales. I suppose that in this cruel century I must be considered a prostitute, merely...'
The document was the holograph confession of Gertrud Zelle, known to the popular press by her stage name, Mata Hari. Winthrop had intended to defer studying the manuscript but found himself on the train to Amiens, confined in a compartment with a Captain Drummond whose win-the-war tirade was unutterably irksome. The red-faced, beefy vampire was a fine specimen of the bulldog breed, which is to say he was barking mad. An advocate of the 'one-big-push' strategy, Drummond insisted the blueprint for victory was that all the Allied armies should go over the top at the same time.
'The sausage-eaters will turn tail and scarper,' Drummond said, grin displaying interlocking fangs in his square jaw. 'Your dratted Germ-Hun doesn't have the stomach for a proper scrap.'
After four years of murderous, costly squabbling over a few muddy miles, Drummond struck him as insane. A pair of lieutenants, fresh from training, were converts to the captain's way of thinking. Winthrop doubted they would survive a week in the lines. The Hun might not have the stomach of the Tommy, but he certainly had entrenched machine-gun positions.
'It's the only cursed way,' Drummond said, as passionately thick-headed as a campaigning politician. 'One big push to Victory.'
The lieutenants agreed, swearing to be in the first wave. Drummond had just killed them, and probably all the men under their command.
'If the fathead politicians would let us out of the trenches, we'd give the swine of Saxony and the poltroons of Prussia the sound biffing they so richly deserve. With the Kaiser hoisted on a sturdy stake, we should shove on into the Russias and sort out the blasted Bolshies.'
Winthrop imagined the tide of war surging around the world, sweeping through continents like a dreadful winter.
'Mark my words, the real enemy is the clique of homicidal, alien Jews that has done for the weak-blooded Romanovs.'
Drummond concluded his editorial and got down to gory stories of Germans killed with bare hands and teeth. Winthrop pleaded urgent business and read on.
I am Dracula's get. I was one of his mistresses. When the Graf settled at the Kaiser's court, he turned several of us. In life, he was an Eastern potentate. Always, he must have a harem. He would fiercely deny it, but his habits are Ottoman. Fortunately, I was a passing diversion. He is uncomfortable with women of this century. We are difficult to bend to his will. He prefers the pliable, superstitious fools of his own time. The favourites, the ones he calls wives, have been with him for centuries. They have child minds and beast appetites, all 'I want' and 'give me' and 'now'. I am not of that breed, but I fear degeneration is inevitable. Now I shall never learn whether my bloodline harbours the taint.