The Legend of Nimway Hall_1940_Josie Read online

  He found the open gallery to the cellar and took the set of worn stone stairs down to the landing and the closed door. Prepared to meet anyone on the other side—Arcturus or enemy agent, Gideon listened a moment, readied his electric torch and his side arm then carefully lifted the latch and pushed the door into the soft darkness of what appeared to be an open storage area for all manner of cider making equipment. Long shelves of jars and jugs, baskets and funnels, piles of folded burlap, bales of straw and an empty wagon parked in front of a pair of large sliding barn doors.

  An odd place for a live drop, a new one on him. Unique to Somerset, to Nimway Hall. Deciding against calling out to alert Arcturus, he closed the door behind him and switched off his torch to allow his vision to adjust to the shadows.

  Only then did he notice—through a forest of hanging ropes—a small clapboard room tucked into the back corner, a pale yellow glow seeping around the edges of a door, and a voice, staccato and low, followed by the faintest set of clicks.

  Arcturus—at last.

  He made a silent, studied approach born of his training and stopped at the door to listen. The murmur of the same voice, another round of clicking. The frizzle and buzz of a radio dial searching out a frequency.

  Had Arcturus been operating all this time from the grounds of the Nimway estate? Was he the cider master, or Tully, the orchardist, after all? And why hadn’t he been informed by HQ of the radio transmitter?

  It was long past time to confront the man and make this bloody live drop happen! Gideon yanked open the door, expecting to find Arcturus at the radio—

  Not Josie! But there she was, perched on the edge of a stool, headphones covering her ears, elbows propped on the tall table, her left hand twisting a knob on the transmitter, her right hand holding a pencil, poised above a code book.

  She turned and smiled at him as though she’d been expecting him, eyes bright and excited as she listened to whatever sounds were coming through her headset.

  He could only watch in dumbfounded silence as Josie, his love, read out a set of numbers into the microphone as though she’d done so a hundred times. She listened intently, touching the tip of her pencil to the code book, counting number by number, paused and then said, “Roger. Johnnie-Sugar-One. Out.”

  “Josie.” Her name was the only thought in his head. Josie-Stirling-One. Was she a Special Duty civilian observer, along with everything else? “What are you doing here?”

  She turned on the stool, hooked a heel on the crossbar and pulled off the headset, her eyes glinting in the pale light of the single shaded bulb hanging over the radio.

  “Have you really not figured that out, Gideon? After all the clues I left you last night and yesterday, last week and the week before?”

  “Clues?” He was having trouble not gathering her into his arms, his marvelous Josie. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yesterday at the fete—I was so surprised! I wasn’t expecting you, any more than you were expecting me.”

  “After kissing me, imploring me to come? You invited me, Josie.” He’d been so torn, wanting to escort her, having instead to meet his contact, afraid suddenly, in this fracturing moment, that he’d misunderstood her feelings for him. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Gideon, you’re not hearing me. Josie invited you to the fete.” She stepped down from the stool and took his hand, held it fast, as though afraid he might turn and leave in the next breath. “But it was Arcturus who arranged the live drop between us.”

  “What do you mean?” Her words roiled inside his head, making them difficult to follow.

  “At the Coconut Shy, just after six. We would find each other as agents do, I would hand-off the list of the Aux Unit names then we would go our separate ways, unremarked by anyone but us.”

  His heart slowed, his brain too. “You’re not making sense, Josie. How could you know about—”

  “And how could you not know, Gideon. I am Arcturus. Why can’t you understand when the evidence is so very clear?” He glanced away from her silly chatter, but she caught his cheek with her soft hand, found his gaze and trapped him in her story. “That after I’d dressed your leg and massaged your aching body, you kissed me and fell asleep and I left my own dead drop capsule in your hand.”

  “You couldn’t have.” Surely, someone else—

  “I told you this morning when you asked me that I was the last, the very last person in your room, and yet you didn’t believe me.”

  A night of magic that must still be holding him in its enchantment, muddling his thoughts.

  “And yesterday, you waited nearly an hour at the Coconut Shy for Arcturus to approach you. But the live drop never took place, did it? Because I called it off.”

  “You?” She couldn’t have. How could she have known what was about to happen between him and Arcturus?

  “Because when you came to flirt with me at the Shy, you were wearing the Spitfire badge on the right side of your jacket, not on the left where I had pinned it earlier.”

  He spread his fingers against his chest where she’d touched the badge, the memory of her warm palm and her odd reaction, her sudden distance and melancholy, beginning to settled on his heart like a dark web.

  “You see, Gideon, I knew in that single moment that you were Invictus, the agent I had been waiting for.”

  No. “But that would mean you are—”

  “Arcturus? Yes. I am. And there I was, standing in front of you at the Shy with the message capsule in my pocket, ready to hand it off to you, waiting for you to recognize me as Arcturus. But you didn’t. You were looking right at me, Gideon, looking for me, so blinded by your narrow-mindedness that you couldn’t possibly see me as your equal. Your fellow agent of the SOE. Your partner.”

  Not his partner. “Not possible.”

  “Certainly not possible after tonight, Gideon.”

  A chill swept through him, the life he’d begun to imagine with Josie at his side vanishing beyond his reach. She’d made him love her for her generosity, trust her with his heart, believed in her ideals. And now she had turned her exacting mirror on his shame, revealed to him his own fanciful reflection of himself, a man no longer whole, no longer invincible.

  “You’re right, Josie—or whoever you think you are.” He took a deep breath to temper his outrage, filled his lungs with the warm scent of apples and autumn and this woman of illusions. “We are dangerous together.”

  “How can you say that?”

  Because she had changed him, unfocused and diminished him. “I’ll stay at Yeovilton tonight and make arrangements for a transfer in the morning. We are done here.”

  “Just like that, Gideon?”

  Just like that. No other way. “I’ll report to headquarters that we weren’t a match, as we must be in order to be partners.”

  She was looking at him with watery eyes. “Which will hurt me more than you could ever imagine. Because I love you, Gideon. I will to the end of my days. For your uncompromising courage, your compassion and your sense of honor.”

  The receiver crackled and a thin voice squawked through the headset.

  “Yes. Well, Josie. Then it’s done. Take care of yourself.” She’d chosen a path he could not follow.

  “And you, Gideon.” Her voice had already turned away from him.

  He shut the door on the intimacy of her hushed words spoken into another man’s ears and left the cider mill, his decision easily made.

  The night was as dark as Gideon’s mood as he drove the Austin along the country road away from Nimway Hall toward the air station. He’d left the cider mill and called ahead to Todd, who had been eager to learn of his sudden interest in a new position in the SOE. Not behind enemy lines, but given the condition of his knee, that path now seemed forever closed off to him.

  Whatever came of it, he couldn’t remain at his current post; working alongside Josie every day would not only be a threat to the operation, but an indictment of his principles.

  You were looking right at
me, Gideon, looking for me, so blinded by your narrow-mindedness that you couldn’t possibly see me as your equal.

  Bloody hell, Josie was all he could see at the time, was far more than his equal, all the good he could imagine, their lives together stretching out into a future filled with love making and honey and loads of children. Even now, as he sped away from her as quickly as he was able through the darkness, putting as much distance between them as possible, she was calling him back to her with her nonsensical logic.

  Different battlefields, certainly. Different weapons, different enemies, but, farming and soldiering are equally critical to winning the war.

  Bloody woman and her bloody notions about the prosecution of the war. Warfare was an ordeal of violence and gore, the darkest of human strategies played out upon a landscape of death and horror, and survived only by the strongest. No place for romantic ideals. This war would not be won on the home front. Not with Spitfire fetes or ration books, or by village ladies knitting jumpers for the troops.

  Not by Josie, who believed herself to be invincible.

  Damn and blast! He hurried along the narrow lane, the only light available to guide him over the corrugated roadbed was the slitted spread of the car’s shielded headlamps. Not even the faintest illumination to mark the farm houses that he knew were set just off the roadway.

  Nothing to illuminate the interior of the car but the soft glow of the dials on the instrument panel, which seemed stronger than he remembered, suspiciously blue-white and bright enough to throw its reflection into the center of the rear seat.

  A vexingly familiar glow that he was certain he’d left behind forever at Nimway Hall. Convinced that his eyes were playing tricks on him, he slowed to a crawl, adjusted the rear view mirror to focus into the backseat where the glow was brightest, and nearly swerved into the hedge.

  Josie’s orb! He stomped on the brake and stopped in the middle of the road, twisted in his seat. The bloody thing was still there, pulsing blue and white, its center swirling, agitated, as though wanting to speak its mind.

  It’s pushy and rude and thinks it knows best—

  As though such an object could actually think!

  “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Just as Gideon realized he was demanding an answer from a bloody stone, the yellow beams of a lorry came into view behind him. The hulking vehicle came to a halt and blew its horn. Feeling the fool, he pulled forward into a lay-by and listened to the string of colorful curses and grinding of gears as the lorry lumbered around him before continuing on its way.

  He’d watched until it disappeared beyond a curve, hoping the incident would clear his mind of Josie and the backseat of his unwelcome passenger. But there it sat: the Orb of True Love, pulsing and shimmering and, yes, rocking all on its own.

  “You’re not supposed to be away from the Hall, you bloody thing.” Must be a madness of some sort: to be chiding a stone for breaking the house rules and hitching a ride with him. Not that distance from the Hall seemed to matter. He’d driven the Austin well clear of the Nimway estate, nearly to the A37, fifteen minutes short of the air station where he would be free to choose his own path.

  But like any stone, anywhere, it said nothing. So he reached between the front seats and grabbed the orb, opened the window and held it outside, ready to toss it to the verge and drive on, let it find its own way home.

  Home to Josie.

  Are you in need of true love, Josie?

  She’d blushed and stammered at the time, answered with one of her distractions. Besides, I’m fairly sure that the orb changed its mind about us.

  Then the marvelous woman had set about proving just the opposite, by ravishing him with her kisses, enchanting him with her magic, inviting him into her heart. To live there. To love her.

  But if she was Arcturus, then who was he? Who was Invictus? Who could they possibly be together?

  I love you, Gideon. I will to the end of my days.

  Invictus. Unconquered.

  Josie!

  Chapter 13

  We’re done here, whoever you think you are.

  I’m Josie Stirling, you pompous, pigheaded, prig! My code name is Arcturus, and will remain so, until the war is won! With or without you!

  Oh, to have thrown that and so much more at Gideon before he’d had a chance to stalk off! But why waste her time, or her breath, on a man who would never change, who cultivated wrong-headed opinions about everything and everyone, himself especially?

  He had every right to be angry, to feel deceived and manipulated. So did she. Angry at whoever decided to make them partners and not inform them from the start. Next time she spoke with Fenwick at HQ she’d wring the name of the culprit out of him and make sure it never happened again.

  But the real and sharpest ache that had settled like a stone in her heart, was that she had been so right about Gideon’s reaction when he finally realized she was Arcturus. Dismissed her and her intelligence work as though she’d highjacked the code name from a more deserving agent. Her allegiance and experience held no more value to him than a toast crumb settled on his sleeve, brushed away and easily forgotten.

  So be it, Colonel Fletcher. I wish you well.

  It was nearly half-eight by the time she completed her radio transmission duties, locked up the cider mill and finished her final rounds of the estate. For once it was blessedly quiet in the Hall, the children in bed, not a single meeting, her father on an all-night training patrol with his Home Guard unit, the Land Girls attending the cinema in Shepton Mallet.

  And Gideon would be in Yeovilton by now, expediting his transfer, with no plans to meet her in the library at half-ten tonight, or any night in the future.

  Weary and heartsick and angry to the marrow, she sat at her desk in her office as she’d done every night of the war and encoded her intelligence observations, planes spotted, Home Guard patrol reports, messages sent and received, the radio transmission and, tonight, the disheartening quarrel with Gideon. Hardly a quarrel, a quarrel would have meant a debate with the man, a heated exchange of ideas, followed by a logical compromise of one kind or another. But Gideon’s answer was to dissolve their partnership on the spot. No discussion. No room for discourse.

  No room to keep stewing about the impossible man. So Josie logged the farm’s output into her daily journal, acres plowed and planted, eggs collected, gallons of milk and fat percentages, petrol consumed, barrels of cider pressed—

  Exhausted and hoping to keep thoughts of Gideon at bay by reading herself to sleep, she took a bath, dried her hair and had just finished slipping into her flannel pajamas bottoms and jersey top when Winnie began barking at something outside, beyond the wall of the kitchen garden.

  Winnie had never been an idle barker, her alerts usually meant business, especially at night. So Josie slipped sockless into her loafers and her oversized Mackintosh, left her office with her electric torch and hurried through the service hall to the outside porch then out into the light rain.

  She tracked Winnie’s voice along the kitchen pathways, up the stone stairs and through the garden arch, found the dog easily, her head and shoulders stuck deep inside a low hedge of shrubby cotoneaster, barking and snuffling, tail curled and wagging wildly.

  “What is it, girl?” Fairly certain Winnie’s target wasn’t an enemy paratrooper, Josie shooed her from the hedge, then flashed her torch beam down through the branches just as one of Mrs. Higgins’ white Leghorns charged forward with a cackle, flapping her wings and diving between Josie’s legs before she could catch the accursed thing.

  “Oh, no, you don’t, little lady!” She chased the indignant hen through the flower garden, was finally able to scoop her up in the middle of a bed of spent buddleia. The rain had slickened the cobbles, but she made it to the chicken house, popped the unhappy escapee through the top of the nesting gallery and dropped the lid on a chorus of squawking.

  As soggy as the angry old hen, Josie hunched the hood of her Mackintosh over her head an
d hurried back through the rainy darkness to the covered porch and into the service hall, looking forward to climbing into bed and pulling the covers over her head.

  Josie shut the door, stepped out of her muddy loafers, threw off her wet Mackintosh and hung it on the hook. Cold and nearly as wet as Winnie, she was starting toward her office in her bare feet when the dog let out a woof then loped around the corner into the darkened corridor that serviced the Hall’s public rooms.

  “Winnie, quiet! You’ll wake the house!” She followed with her electric torch, ready to give chase before the dog could race up the stairs and into the children’s room. But Winnie was waiting for her in front of the service door to the library, tail wagging.

  “Sorry, girl, not tonight or ever. He’s gone. I’ll have no more meetings with the colonel.” No more imagining a future with him. “Come, let’s go to bed.”

  But Winnie only sat swishing her tail across the floor, staring intently at the door—and the sharp beam of blue-white light streaming through the keyhole and striking the brass bowl on the console table on the opposite side of the dark-paneled passage.

  Just to be certain the light wasn’t coming from her torch—which at best was only ever a sorry spread of yellow, she flicked it off, set it on the console table, then stood there staring at the soft limning of silver that framed the library door, and knew it could only mean—

  The orb! Oh, how wrong you were about me and Gideon, you vicious old thing!

  Finished with the man and romance and the whole Nimway True Love nonsense, Josie yanked open the door, not caring what she might find on the other side, or how she was going to rid herself of the family curse.

  There it was! The abominable orb, beaming away on the table between the two reading chairs where she and Gideon used to sit in front of the fire during their companionable meetings. Where they would share the workings of their days and try to chart their tomorrows, would tease and banter, where he would lift her into his arms and kiss her, warm her with a blanket when she arrived, wet and muddy and at sixes and sevens.