Mark of the Lion (3 page)

“Lose him in the sun,” someone yelled, and Jade recognized her own voice.

As if the pilot heard her, he plunged into a nosedive with the intent of leveling out nearly on the ground. Perhaps he hoped the rising sun would make him invisible to the pursuing Fokker. Perhaps he hoped the Fokker would follow and crash before pulling up out of the dive. Whatever his plan, his plane had other ideas.

The Sopwith Camel, named for its humped fairing over the guns, often bit its owner just like a real camel. Its rotary engine carried a powerful torque. This increased its amazing agility, but that same torque put many novice pilots in a fatal spin at low speeds unless they compensated with right full rudder. David was no novice, but his damaged rudder didn’t respond adequately enough to counteract the gyroscopic effect of the engine. The plane rolled over in a ground loop and crashed on the starboard wing.

Jade watched for a split second as the plane skidded along upside down across the field, leaving chunks of wood, fabric, and tubing behind it. Then, as if acting on instinct, she gunned her vehicle across the field towards the wreck. The Ford shuddered and protested as she pushed the vehicle to fifty kilometers an hour. Her helmet slid from her black hair. It hung on the back of her head by its strap and tugged at her throat as though trying to hold back any outcry.

Jade skidded to a halt ten yards away and hit the ground in a dead run towards the wreckage. Panic and pure energy prevented her from feeling the pain in her damaged leg.

“David!” she screamed. With inhuman strength born of fear, she ripped away part of the plane and exposed the pilot. Jade fought back the rising taste of bile in her throat and worked to free him before the plane caught fire. Several orderlies raced down the field with a stretcher as she slid him out of the cockpit and onto the ground. There she probed gently for wounds.

“Jade,” he whispered. Blood dribbled from his mouth.

“I’m here, David. Don’t talk.” She unfastened his leather flight helmet and slid it off his brown curls, sticky with blood. She bound his head with his aviator’s scarf.

With tremendous effort, David brought his shaking left hand over to his right, tugged a ring from his bloody finger, and pushed it into Jade’s hand. She heard him try to speak, a hoarse croaking sound, and bent forward to listen.

“Find … my … brother. Mmmm-mi …”

She stroked his head. “Hush.”

The young pilot persisted. “Father’s death, suspic …”

“David, you’re going to be all right. The orderlies are here. Just hold on. Please!”

But already she spoke to a spiritless shell.

 

Beverly tiptoed into the farmhouse basement as softly as her boots allowed. Jade hadn’t moved from her bunk.

“I’m awake, Bev.” Jade’s lusterless voice rang hollow in the dim room.

“I brought you a cup of coffee, love.” Beverly pushed the cup into Jade’s hand and heard the tin cup clink against the ring she was holding. She took it from Jade, sat beside her on the cot, and gazed at the beautiful green stone, almost the same color as Jade’s eyes. “Do you know where his brother is stationed?” asked Beverly. “If not, I can write home and get help looking in the rosters for him.”

Jade sighed once, a deep, soul-shuddering groan. “He doesn’t have a brother.”

“PLEASE TELL MRS. WORTHY I’M A friend of her late son.” Jade stood in the entrance hall of an old London town house and waited impatiently for the butler to show her to a drawing room, a library, a study, or whatever room polite society used nowadays. She’d have been just as happy to settle for the kitchen if it meant sitting next to a warm fire and getting out of her wet coat. Unfortunately, the butler seemed reluctant to show her anything but the way out. She shifted her weight to her good leg and grimaced. Her wounded knee troubled her more today with the rain. Jade wondered if there was still a fragment of shrapnel stuck in there somewhere.

“Do you have a card, miss?” insisted the butler.

“No. Please, tell her I was with David when he died.”

“Very good, miss.” The butler tipped his head, probably as much of a bow as he felt this lowly American female deserved, and left her in the entryway.

David had rarely discussed his family, so Jade didn’t know much beyond the fact that his father had died a few years ago in East Africa. She glanced around for clues to the Worthy family. None jumped out at her. The hall’s sparse appointments included little beyond the requisite umbrella stand and a low table and crystal bowl for leaving calling cards.

Several cards waited in the bowl.
Madam must not have been receiving this morning.
She fingered through them. A Mrs. Hartford and a Mrs. Nattington had called. There was also a card from a Mr. Jacobs of Smith, Wetherby, and Harrison.

Her ears caught the soft sound of a closing door. She quickly released the cards and returned to her original place. If Mrs. Worthy wasn’t receiving earlier this morning, chances were she wouldn’t see her now. Jade wondered if she should have done a bit of name dropping and mentioned her friend Beverly Heathington, lately engaged to Lord Dunbury. The butler returned.

“Madam will see you in the library, miss.” The man inspected her brown wool coat and her prewar broad-brimmed hat with its faded green ribbon band. “Your wraps, miss.”

Jade removed the hat first and handed it to the elderly man. His eyes widened for a brief instant in shock at the sight of her bobbed hair before he regained mastery over his face. He left her alone again to hang up her coat before returning to conduct her to a sitting room.

“This way, if you please, miss.” He led the way down the corridor to a side room. “In here, miss. Madam will be down momentarily.”

He left her standing alone on a lovely paisley Persian carpet worked in autumnal colors. Floor-to-ceiling walnut shelves covered three of the walls. Books primarily filled the shelves, but a large quartz geode prevented
Birds of the British Isles
from getting too familiar with a section of British poets. On the opposite wall, an elephant carved from bloodred jasper held back Shakespeare’s histories. No novels or anything remotely improper. Jade heard a door close somewhere down the hall.

She glanced expectantly towards the door and spied a portrait of David’s father, Gil Worthy. Jade took in the family resemblance of oval face, hazel eyes, and brown curly hair. Mr. Worthy had posed in a smoking jacket, his hands crossed in front to reveal gold cuff links. One bore a G and the other a W. Above the portrait hung the motto “To Be Truly Worthy.”

Underneath the portrait stood a small glass-fronted barrister bookcase. Jade recognized many of the works: Burton’s
Wanderings in West Africa from Liverpool to Fernando Po;
Andersson’s
Lake Ngami
and
The Okavango River;
Cameron’s
Across Africa;
and James’
The Wild Tribes of the Soudan,
to name a few. She looked in vain for Mills’
The English in Africa,
or Lord Cranworth’s
A Colony in the Making
. It seemed that none of the titles were more recent than the late 1880s. The books sat alongside an exotic necklace of whitened bones and yellowed teeth. The teeth, long and pointed, came from a carnivore and a large one at that. Jade had bent down for a closer look when the butler coughed softly and announced Mrs. Worthy’s arrival.

Jade straightened at once to meet the woman who might have become her mother-in-law, had events and her own feelings taken a different turn. Mrs. Gil Worthy was a slender woman of medium height and delicate facial features with light brown hair pulled back in a French roll. She wore an ankle-length black silk dress with elbow-length kimono sleeves. A high-waisted satin belt threaded through the sides of the gown, leaving it to hang loosely in back like a robe. A necklace of jet beads draped her white throat.

Fashionable mourning,
observed Jade. It seemed Mrs. Worthy had enough money to maintain appearances with the latest in haute couture.

Jade extended her hand, but Mrs. Worthy kept hers clasped in front of her. Jade took the hint and dropped her own. “Mrs. Worthy. Please accept my condolences on the loss of David.”

“Thank you, Miss del Cameron.” With a graceful sweeping gesture, the widow indicated a golden brown wingback chair next to a low table. “Please sit down.” Mrs. Worthy perched herself on the edge of a matching walnut brown chair and conveyed the impression that she didn’t intend to occupy it very long, so there was no point in getting comfortable. The butler returned with a silver tea service and set the tray on the low table without a word.

“You may go, Winston,” ordered Mrs. Worthy. Winston bowed and left the room, shutting the door behind him. Mrs. Worthy poured tea into a delicate Wedgwood cup. “Milk or lemon?”

“Neither, thank you,” replied Jade. She loathed tea. The only thing that made it remotely palatable was a thick dose of honey, and she didn’t see any on the tray. Not even any sugar. Mrs. Worthy handed the cup and saucer across to Jade, who received it with as gracious and as insincere a smile as the one on Mrs. Worthy’s face. She waited until the hostess had poured another cup before tasting hers.
Dreadful.

“How is your tea, Miss del Cameron?”

“Fine. Thank you.”

Mrs. Worthy replaced her own cup on the tray and folded her lily white hands in her lap. “You knew my son.” There was no warmth or encouragement in her statement.

Now it begins,
thought Jade. She set her own cup on the tray and steeled herself. “Yes. I drove an ambulance in France.”

“But you’re an American?”

“Yes, ma’am. I am.” She watched David’s mother take in her dark olive complexion and saw the hint of a question in her eyes. Jade waited.

“I do believe David mentioned knowing an … American person,” Mrs. Worthy said, her tone cold. “It was very good of you, I’m sure, to do your bit.”

Jade despised that phrase as much as tea, so she decided to get to the point. “I was with David when he died. I pulled him out of the wreckage.” She watched the woman maintain tight control over her outward demeanor. It would be a lot easier, Jade thought, to feel some sympathy for this woman if she acted as if she had a heart.

“I’m certain you did all you could for him.”

“No, ma’am, but I intend to. David made a last request of me. I’m here to carry it out.” Jade debated getting the ring out of her cloth bag, but her every mental alarm cautioned against it. It was not meant for the mother anyway. “He told me to find his brother.”

Mrs. Worthy was well schooled in hiding her emotions, but in the lengthy silence that followed, Jade detected a few traces of feeling. The woman’s eyes widened for an instant; then the tiny lines around her lips lengthened a fraction as they tightened. It wasn’t astonishment or disbelief Jade read behind those fleeting facial twitches. It was fear.
What is she afraid of ?
Jade wondered.
Exposure? Scandal?
Here was a widow who recently lost her only son. Or had she?

The moment passed. The woman froze into an emotional iceberg again. “You are wasting your time. David was an only child.”

“He didn’t seem to think so.”

“Miss del Cameron,” the woman said in a tone used to instruct an ignorant child of her proper place, “I was told David suffered a dreadful head wound in his crash. It is obvious he was delusional at the time of his death. He has no brother.” She rose gracefully from her seat.

Jade stood as well. All the polite smiles were gone, packed back into cold storage. Jade struggled inwardly to retain any shred of sympathetic feeling for this ice queen. “I apologize if I was indelicate.”

Mrs. Worthy sniffed. “An American trait. I’ll forgive you for it.” She walked to the door and tugged on a tasseled cord. “Thank you for your aid to my son. Perhaps I can offer you some remuneration?”

Jade squelched her rising anger at the blatant insult and reached for the doorknob before Winston arrived. “That won’t be necessary. I was only
doing my bit
. The French gave me a Croix de Guerre, and David gave me his trust. That’s reward enough.” She yanked open the door just as the butler gripped the other side and almost pulled the old man into the room. “My hat and coat if you please, Winston,” she said authoritatively.

Winston, not yet recovered from his less than graceful entrance, said, “Yes, miss,” and hurried off to fetch the garments. Jade marched down the hall and took a last stand by the card table. She glanced down at the crystal bowl, and a devious smile grew as she pocketed a card.

Winston arrived with her coat and hat and held her coat for her as she slipped her arms into the sleeves. Stepping out into the damp February air, she hailed a taxi, climbed into the backseat, and massaged her sore knee.