Overseas (26 page)

“I see.” His eyes squinted shut. Menstruation evidently wasn’t high on his list of conversation topics, for some reason. “And it’s reliable? Effective?”

“Don’t worry. Over ninety-nine percent, when taken as directed.”

“Which means?”

“Every morning, same time, never miss a day. Oh, crap!” I cried, jumping up. “Just a minute.” My legs tangled in the sheet, tripping me up as I staggered out of the library and raced up the stairs to my travel kit in the bathroom.

He was there in the bedroom when I came out. “It’s all right, isn’t it?” he asked anxiously.

“Fine. Only an hour off from yesterday.” I tilted my head. He’d put his chinos back on, but not his shirt; obviously he’d come up in a hurry. “Um, relax. It’s okay. Not pregnant.”

“You’re sure?”

“A little jumpy, aren’t we?” I folded my arms. “Not that I want a baby just now, either, but it’s not like the
world
coming to an end. You did just vow eternal love, right?”

“I’m sorry.” His lips aimed a smile at me; he sat down on the bed and reached out his arm to draw me in between his legs. “I haven’t any experience with these things. It’s just I understand you modern women
aren’t at all eager for babies straightaway, and I should hate to cause you any distress.”

“I like babies.” I smiled. “Someday.”

“Mine, perhaps?” His eyebrow arched.

“Julian. Of
course
yours.
You
,” I said, my brain leaving that thought behind, “are about the most beautiful man ever created. Look at you.” I ran my fingers admiringly along the neat taut line of his shoulders.

He rolled his eyes. “Your experience is clearly limited, my love, for which I’m very thankful. And now I think I’d better head back downstairs, before these”—he kissed each breast worshipfully—“lure me in again.”

“Oh, all right.” I ruffled his hair, not quite able to tell him I was feeling a bit saddle-sore myself. “I should probably shower and dress, anyway. I’ll be downstairs to make some lunch in a bit. And make the bed, too, I guess,” I added, with a wistful glance at the tangle of linens.

“I could help with that,” he offered, looking guilty.

“Actually, Julian,” I said, over my shoulder, as I walked back into the bathroom, “that would probably be counterproductive.”

I
BROUGHT MY SANDWICH
into the library so I could check my e-mail on the desktop computer. Julian was outside at the moment, turkey and Swiss in hand, barking into his headset, and I thought I’d take my chance while I could get it.

The inbox was full today. My parents had weighed in, full of indignation and concern over the firing, with oddly nothing to say about my sojourn with Julian; Michelle and Samantha, exactly the opposite. I replied to each one, as noncommittal as possible. What could I really tell them, after all? I glanced out the library window, which looked over the garden, and smiled at the sight of Julian pacing along the grass, snatching bites of his sandwich, talking apparently into the air.

And suddenly, without warning, I saw it. Saw him pacing, instead, along the duckboard of a muddy trench, wearing a belted khaki uniform
and puttees, his cap pulled down low on his forehead, German shells screaming overhead. So terribly, piercingly real; I thought I could taste his very death in my mouth. The breath fled my body, leaving a hollow vacuum inside me.

Then it all shifted back to normal, and Julian stood in the warm May sunshine, surrounded by green meadow grass and the first wildflowers of summer. Safe. Here. Now.
Mine.

I turned back to the computer, shaking. A new message had appeared at the top of my inbox. It was from Charlie, his personal e-mail account.

I stared at the screen for a moment, reading the message over a few times. I looked out the window again. I couldn’t see Julian anymore, and an instant later I heard the French door in the kitchen open and close. “Kate?” he called.

“In the library,” I called back.

“We’ve got that call with my lawyer in about fifteen minutes. What is it?” he asked, seeing the look on my face.

“Um, nothing. I mean, something. I don’t know. It’s kind of weird.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Just got an e-mail from Charlie, as a matter of fact. He—I don’t know, it might not be true, traders are so full of it…”

“What
is
it, Kate?”

“Well, I guess they’re saying the counterparty, I mean the supposed counterparty in my so-called information exchange, was Southfield.”

“
My
firm? Oh, that’s rot,” he said. “None of my traders would think of doing that. I’d have their heads, even if it weren’t you on the other end.”

“It
wasn’t
me.”

“You know what I mean.”

The phone rang in the kitchen. “That’s odd,” Julian said, starting out the doorway. “I assumed he would call my cell number.”

I followed him into the hall and down to the kitchen. He picked it up. “Daniel?” he asked. “I thought you…” Silence. I folded my arms and leaned against the doorway, watching Julian’s face turn from vague irritation, to surprise, to concern.

“I see,” he said. “No warning at all?… Yes, odd, certainly… Yes, I’d be happy to. May I have your number? Just a moment, please.” He motioned to me; I leapt for the notepad and pen and handed them to him. “Yes… yes… Thanks very much… If I might ask, how did you find this number? Ah, I see… yes, very good. Good-bye, then.”

He stood for a moment, staring down at the numbers scribbled on the notepad, tapping the pen against them.

“Well?” I asked. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing, really,” he said, not looking up.

“I thought you were finished with keeping things from me.”

He looked up. “What’s that?”

“Look,” I said, “if it’s really nothing, fine. I trust you. But if it’s something, do you mind telling me? Because I’ve gotten pretty
involved
at this point. If there’s something wrong in your life, I’d like to know about it. Maybe even help. If that’s okay with you.”

“Forgive me, sweetheart. Of course I trust you. It’s just I’m frankly so used to secrecy…” He shook his head. “I don’t quite know where to start.”

“Does it have to do with the reason we’re here? The disgruntled investors? The meetings in Boston?”

“Ah. Yes. You’ve a good memory.”

“Julian, I can put a few things together.” I frowned at him, doing just that. “Your meetings were at Harvard, weren’t they? But not the endowment fund. The professor, right? The one who wrote your biography. Hollander. He knows all about you, doesn’t he? So this is all starting to make sense. You go to visit him, and come out in a panic…”

He glared at me. “I don’t panic, Kate. I never panic. I only act on information.”

“So I’m right?”

“You’re too bloody clever, is what you are.” He ran an exasperated hand through his hair and tossed the pen onto the counter. “All right, then. Here it is. I came across Hollander’s book in, oh, ninety-seven or ninety-eight, in a bookstore in Park Slope. I was at rather an all-time low at that point; quite in despair. I’d no one to talk to. I’d found a quiet job in the Goldman back office, kept my head down, saw nobody, was ready to leap off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

I made a little sound at the back of my throat. I wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but he’d spoken so matter-of-factly, without any emotion at all, and I couldn’t quite bridge the distance. He was in full stiff-upper-lip mode.

“So I thought I’d take a chance. I sent him an e-mail, telling him I’d read his book, was terribly interested in the subject, could we have a meeting. His reply arrived almost immediately. I took a day’s leave from work and flew up to see him.” Julian turned around and leaned back against the kitchen counter, staring at the floor. “He knew who I was at once, of course. He was astonished, delighted. I suppose any historian would feel that way, to see his subject walk in through his office door one morning. He accepted the fact of my existence with astonishing sangfroid; my world had always seemed so real, it was only later that the significance of it struck him at all.”

“Yeah, I’ve had a few professors like that.” I tried to smile.

“So he helped me. We talked a great deal, became friends. I nearly moved up to Boston, just for the company, but I was also becoming more interested in my work at Goldman. The slippery slope that eventually led down to starting up Southfield. In any case, he’s kept my secret, and in return I’ve helped him with his work, offering the contents of my memory for his examination. In the past few years things have been perhaps a touch less warm. He wasn’t pleased about Southfield. Ruddy old Marxist,” he said, with an affectionate little smile.

“So what happened?” I asked. “You met with him at Christmas, and then cut me off. You met with him two days ago, and fled here. And now this phone call. So I’m guessing the problem is not with some disgruntled Southfield investor, right? A wee white lie?”

He flinched. “I hated telling you that.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to push any buttons. I know you gentlemanly types have your codes.” I took a few steps toward him and touched his elbow. “In fact, they’re beginning to grow on me.”

His arm reached around me. “I was only trying to protect you,” he said softly.

“I know. I’m not mad.” I slipped my arms about his waist, felt the yield of his flesh, accepting me. “So tell me what happened at Christmas.”

His hand began to stroke my hair. “Someone had approached him about me, about the historical Julian Ashford. He’d read the biography, was particularly curious about Ashford’s final days, could he have a look at the primary materials?”

“What primary materials?”

“Oh, letters. My service notebook, that sort of thing. Hollander had facsimiles of all of them, from the current Ashfords. Hollander refused the request, of course, not knowing the chap from Adam. That was the day you came to see me at the house.”

“When you had that phone call.” I nodded against the side of his chest.

“So Hollander tried to fob him off, and the chap took a different tack. Said he’d heard about this Laurence chap at Southfield, saw his picture
in the
Times
, didn’t Hollander think he had a strong resemblance to Ashford?”

“Do you mean he
knows
?”

“I don’t know. He pressed Hollander quite hard. Offered him money, and then made a threat or two. He had… he had an odd piece of information he’d come across. A bit of trivia, about my last days in France, which we’re not sure how he could possibly know. But he did. It was enough to send Hollander dialing my number the instant he’d hung up the phone. He had the impression, you see, that this anonymous chap was an interested party.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

I felt the heave of his sigh. “Kate, there are any number of people who have, quite legally and properly, benefited from my presumed death. The current Lord Chesterton, God bless him. Various political characters, for more complicated reasons.” He paused. “Some would argue, if they didn’t know any better, that Flora Hamilton’s children might never have been born, if I’d lived through the war. Which is rubbish.”

“Her children?”

“She married soon after the war. Three children; one of them began in politics; you’ll know his name. Bit of a rabble-rouser. His son’s carried on the family tradition.”

“And all these people would be unhappy to find you alive today?”

“It hardly seems credible, does it? No one could possibly believe it’s really Julian Ashford, vintage 1895. But we don’t know what else to think. People hear things; they react irrationally. That’s what I’m afraid of.” I felt his face burrow into my hair. “That someone might threaten you, because of me.”

“Why on earth would someone do that?”

“To make sure I don’t reveal myself, for one thing.”

“But you’d never do that.”

“And how could this mysterious fellow of ours be certain of such a thing?”

I thought this over. “Do you think he’s the one who sent me the book?”

“Possibly,” Julian said, in an even tone. “I’d certainly like to find out. Do you still have the packaging?”

“Yes. It came from a bookstore in Rhode Island. I forget the name. It’s upstairs, in my bag.”

“Then let’s ring them up.” He paused, and his tone slipped lower. “Or visit. We could sail over in my boat. There’s a lovely hotel in Newport. Owner’s a client of ours.”

“Mmm.” I fingered his shirt. “But what’s the update today? The phone call?”

“I met with him, with Hollander, two days ago, as you know. His offices had been ransacked, and a copy of the
Post
left on his desk, with that Page Six item folded back.”

“Oh my God,” I said. My brain pivoted dizzily around this piece of information. I glanced at the French doors leading to the garden, almost expecting to see some menacing face pressed against the glass.

“Yes. Now do you understand why I wanted you up here? It’s not so far-fetched as you think. Clearly the man’s serious. Knows something, or thinks he knows.”

“But what about security? How did this guy get in? Weren’t there cameras?”

He shrugged. “Hollander left the door unlocked, of course. Stepped out to deliver a lecture. He says the cameras showed nothing useful, just the usual scrum of students entering and leaving the building. And now that phone call comes in”—he nodded at the telephone—“from a colleague of Hollander’s. Apparently the old chap’s gone missing.”

“Missing!”

“Well, not missing exactly. He sent an e-mail to this colleague, saying he’d gone on an unexpected research trip, which isn’t unusual for him; but he left my name and this number, which
was
odd. So the colleague, quite properly, wanted to know what’s going on. So should I, for that matter.”