The Last Night in London by Karen White (reading list .TXT) 📕

of the car, he turned to her again. “Listen carefully. I have a new job for you.”

She looked at him, hating him. Hating herself. “What is it?”

He smiled, knowing he’d won. “I need you to visit the London Library in St. James’s Square tomorrow morning after ten o’clock. Check out Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It will be misshelved. The location is written on the piece of paper you took from the purse of the woman seated next to you tonight. If you believe someone is watching you, come back later in the day. There will be an envelope inside. I need you to deliver the envelope to thirty-seven Chester Terrace. Slip it into the mail slot on the door, and do it at night so no one sees you. You’ll do this every Thursday, each week a different book and a different time of day, always misshelved. The pickup time and the location of the next book will be written in invisible ink on the title page of each book. You will need a heat source to read it—Jiri will show you. Destroy the page when you’ve memorized it.”

She felt the driver’s eyes on her in the rearview mirror, and a violent tremor made her jaw ache. She recalled the letters from Graham she’d given to Alex, which then had been returned to her with singe marks between the lines, and she thought she might be ill.

“And if I say no?”

The gleam of his teeth in the moonlight mocked her as he smiled. “Oh, my dear, we both know you won’t.”

The door shut, and the car pulled away. Eva stood still for a long time, watching it disappear until she could no longer hear the engine, feeling an unfamiliar weight on her arm. She looked down and saw Alex’s bracelet, the diamonds throwing back the reflected glow of a dimmed headlight like stars in the black, black night.

—

On a rare day off, Eva walked with Precious into the Palm Court of the Ritz Hotel to meet Sophia for tea. As always, when the two of them were together, heads turned; people stared as if they’d never seen two tall blond women together. It made Precious giggle, but Eva remained pointedly unaware of the attention. It was something she’d learned from watching Sophia and her debutante friends, the women who’d been taught proper deportment from the cradle.

Besides, she was completely and gloriously drunk. She’d found it was the only way she could face each day and the reality that Graham could have been in the midst of an air battle, that she might not see him again. At one of the dinners she’d attended at Sophia’s, an obnoxious guest had mentioned that the fatality rate for airmen in combat was fifty percent. At Sophia’s look of distress, David had asked the gentleman to leave.

She also needed to forget why she went to the London Library once a week to check out a new book. How she’d find an empty envelope between the pages and slip it through the mail slot of the house in Chester Terrace under cover of darkness.

The only way to make her self-loathing go away was to drink the endless supply of fine Scottish whisky Alex presented her with. She neither knew nor cared where or how it had been procured. When drunk, she could speak without slurring her words and could even manage walking in a relatively straight line. As could her father—up to a point. She supposed that was the one useful thing she’d inherited from him.

The opulent Palm Court, with its glass ceiling, enormous Corinthian columns, and full-grown potted palm trees, bustled and thrummed. Waiters sped to and from full tables as if a war weren’t being waged on the other side of the Channel.

Sophia stood to greet Precious and Eva, kissing them each on the cheek. She smiled warmly, pretended that she didn’t smell the whisky on Eva’s breath, and chattered through tea. But she kept rattling her cup in its saucer and adding sugar to a cup already oversweetened.

Eva caught her arm as Sophia reached for the sugar bowl for the third time. “What’s wrong? Is it David?” He’d applied for active duty more than once, but he’d failed his medical examinations twice on account of a minor heart condition that wouldn’t affect day-to-day life but exempted him from active duty. He’d been permanently assigned a desk in the War Office, which he took as an affront to his manhood. He’d already applied for yet another medical examination, just to be sure.

Sophia shook her head. “No. It’s not David.”

Eva’s blood froze. She’d been at Horvath’s just that morning with Mr. Danek. Again he’d shown her the map of Europe, the defensive Maginot Line on the French–German border that many were calling impenetrable. But with Germany’s invasion of Belgium on the tenth of May, it was entirely conceivable that the German armies could bypass the line completely by cutting through Belgium. And once they got through Belgium, France and the English Channel would be the only things standing between England and the Germans.

Despite the early hour, Eva had gone back to the flat and poured a healthy serving of whisky. She remembered what it had been like when Graham had been missing before, and that was for only a short time. She couldn’t imagine a lifetime of missing him. Of knowing she’d be given no more chances to tell him she loved him. To tell him the truth. To ask his forgiveness.

She’d fallen asleep on the couch and woken hours later to Precious telling her she needed to get ready for tea. Precious had fixed Eva’s hair and makeup and helped her dress, her hands gentle, her words consoling and free of any criticism about the empty glass on the table or the stale stench of whisky on her breath. And now, staring across the table at Graham’s sister, Eva was grateful for the alcoholic haze. “It’s Graham, then.”

A waiter appeared, bringing more