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“We’re going to Charles and Katherine’s.” She smiled at him. “I thought you’d forgotten. You usually do.”
“Oh.” She was right, he had forgotten, on purpose, even though his relationship with his son was better than it had been for years. Events in May had forced Lucas at last to tell Charles about his position during the war. He had become so used to its being secret, he had not realized how totally he had shut out even those closest to him. Josephine had known what he did, but she had never mentioned it until then. He was startled that she knew and, when he thought about it, rather pleased. It gave him a sense of not being nearly as alone as he had imagined, and her silence meant that she understood him professionally as well as personally. He had been in love with her when they married over half a century ago. Now it was more than that: a companionship of the mind and spirit.
He was standing just out of her way, by the spice rack, where Toby’s lead was hung and they kept a spare emergency flashlight. “I lost my temper with Peter Howard today,” he said quietly. “I think I was wrong. But I can’t change how angry I am.”
Josephine looked at him steadily for a moment. Her eyes were solemn, as silver-gray as her hair. Her face was made for emotion. “Perhaps you should decide who you’re really angry with,” she said quietly. “Or what you are really afraid of.”
“Afraid?” Instantly, he started to defend himself.
“Oh, Lucas, don’t play games with me,” she said mildly. “You know as well as I do that most anger is actually fear of something. Anger is so much easier.”
He smiled with momentary amusement. “Are you saying I’m being cowardly?”
“What is it about, really?” she asked instead of answering.
He took a deep breath, but couldn’t find the right words. They were too blunt, or else too evasive.
Josephine turned away from the bench, but she did not prompt him.
“He has sent Elena on a job,” Peter admitted.
“Good, s
he was getting restless,” Josephine said. “I think she was beginning to think she was not good enough.”
“That’s absurd!” he said immediately. “Berlin—”
“Could have been a fluke.” She cut across him. “I don’t think so and neither do you. But you know Elena: she questions herself; she always has. But more so since that miserable business with Strother.”
“That’s it.” He grasped the opportunity to explain. “Peter has sent Elena to Trieste, to bring Strother back, with his information.” There, it was out.
Josephine froze. For a moment her shock was perfectly plain, then she mastered it and looked calm again. Only a shadow in her eyes betrayed her emotions. “That’s awkward. Are you afraid she’s going to be so upset that she can’t do the job properly?”
“No!” He denied it instantly. “I was thinking of how humiliated she would be because that bastard…”
“What? You aren’t going to make any sense at all if you don’t tell me whether she is rescuing him or bringing him back to be executed.”
He was stunned. “Good God. You don’t think I’d let Peter do that, do you? Anyway, if we were going to execute Strother, we would’ve done it years ago. A discreet accident somewhere.” He paused. She already knew that. “Stop interrogating me, making me answer my own questions.”
She gave him a soft sweet smile. “You are the one who knows the answers, my dear. Are you really saying that sending her was a good idea, as long as it remained only an idea? Or that she is competent, but she shouldn’t have to face anything emotionally unpleasant or embarrassing?”
“No!”
“Good, because she wouldn’t thank you for that.” She walked past him to put the pruning shears away in the drawer used for small garden tools. She touched his arm on the way back to tidy the table. “You have to let children fall over, and then get up by themselves. Otherwise, they will think they can’t. They don’t always need help, and Elena is much stronger than you think. You play off each other, you know. She does what she thinks you want her to, and you do what you think she needs. Don’t protect her from doing her best; she won’t thank you for that, either.” She gathered up the cut stalks and fallen leaves and put them in the rubbish bin. “And of course, if I’m wrong, you are going to have to work hard to forgive me.” She gave him another bright smile, but there was a flush of anxiety in it, gone again so quickly he was not sure he had really seen it.
“Am I suffocating her?” he asked.
The sweet smile flickered across her face again. “I would rather say you’re tipping her out of the nest.” She pushed the last of the stalks down into the rubbish bin. “Now go and change for dinner; you’re not going out like that. You look as if you’ve been playing with the dog out in the fields.”
At the word “dog,” Toby sat upright and cocked his ears.
“Not yet,” Josephine told him. “But I won’t forget you. Your suppertime is six o’clock.” She avoided using the word “dinner.” That was another word he knew.
“Lucas.”
He looked at her.
“I know she needs a success,” she explained, “but she needs to get it herself. And, if you think about it, you know that as well as I do. For goodness’ sake, let her believe you trust her, even if you don’t.”
