Page 24 of A Family Of His Own
Over them.
The past was the past, and the challenges that Fate elected to throw in their path between there and London were what they now had to face.
Their gazes shifted. Diana started to pull off her gloves. Toby glanced at her hands and noted that she had, indeed, found a ring to pass as a wedding band.
Nothing else could more clearly state that she was committed to their new roles.
“So,” he murmured, “from here on, it’s you, me, Helga, and the children.”
She glanced down. “And Bruno. Don’t forget Bruno.”
Toby followed her gaze to where the dog lay happily stretched on the floor.
Then Evelyn leant forward, looked at Diana and Toby, and with a wide smile, declared, “We’re off on our adventure!”
The boys looked at her and, although still subdued, said nothing to dim her excitement.
Toby smiled at her. “Indeed, we are.” And left it at that.
CHAPTER4
Several hours later, Heinrik Maier raised his cane and knocked smartly on the door of the doctor’s surgery in Kleeblattgasse. When no response came, he tapped again with the same result. He shared a quick glance with the well-dressed woman who stood beside him, then he reached for the doorknob, turned it, and warily pushed open the door.
“Hello? Herr Doctor?” Heinrik stepped over the threshold and halted. His lips tightened at the sight of the carnage.
The woman—Eva Graf—crowded in behind him. “Oh.” She glanced around. “Someone’s been here before us.”
“Evidently.”
Having heard no sound from deeper in the house, Heinrik moved forward, sliding past the upturned desk to advance down the corridor. Both he and Eva were dressed as well-to-do citizens. In both their cases, the image they projected was more or less true.
Heinrik noted the destruction in the two consulting rooms they passed. As they neared the end of the corridor, he released the catch on his sword stick, but there proved to be no reason to draw the blade. They were alone in the house.
It didn’t take long to survey the wreckage in the large rear room.
“Well!” One hand on her shapely hip, Eva glanced around. “I have to say that your English friend is thorough.”
Heinrik sighed. “Toby Cynster is not a friend.”Not exactly.“It would be more correct to say that he’s a well-disposed rival. That means he’s a rival first and not truly a friend as such. Still…” Looking around the room, Heinrik shook his head. “Cynster wouldn’t have done this.”
At the certainty in his tone, Eva cocked a skeptical brow. “Perhaps he was in a rush.”
“No. Such destruction is not his way. He would have searched thoroughly, but he wouldn’t have broken things indiscriminately.” With his cane, he pointed at a shattered vase. “No need to break the crockery, and he wouldn’t have wasted his time.” Heinrik waved an exquisitely gloved hand, indicating the debris all around them. “This suggests that the Prussians we were warned about were here.”
Eva frowned.
Quite why their masters had saddled Heinrik with an agent fresh out of training, he didn’t know. They’d told him that Eva Graf showed a lot of promise, and from what he’d seen thus far, Heinrik wasn’t inclined to argue. Yet he strongly suspected that his masters had caught a whiff of his ennui, his growing dissatisfaction with this secretive and often dangerous life, and had set Eva in place to report on him—on his state of mind.
He could appreciate that the prospect of an agent of his experience and caliber deciding he’d had enough and walking away wasn’t one their masters relished.
After mulling his words, Eva ventured, somewhat carefully, “I’m not sure I understand the point of this mission. Herschel reported that the Prussians were blackmailing him, that under orders from them, he’d killed Locke—or caused him to die, at least—and that he’d been told to find and hand over the missing dispatches to them, the dispatches being theirs in the first place.” She met Heinrik’s eyes. “But aren’t the Germans our allies?”
Heinrik inwardly sighed. “Yes, they are, but in this game, every country acts first and foremost for itself. In this case, we would rather find the dispatches ourselves. One, because we want to know what they contain that has the Prussians so hot and bothered and wanting them so desperately. Intelligence, even—or perhaps especially—on allies is always welcome. If we can lay our hands on the dispatches, our superiors will read them, then copy them, before making a great production of handing them back to the Germans. In doing so, not only would we have learned something almost certain to be useful in some way, but we would have placed the Germans in our debt, and the latter is never to be sneezed at.”
While he’d been speaking, he’d started to move through the lower floor, confirming that the other rooms were equally devoid of interest to them.
Eva trailed after him. When he paused at the base of the stairs leading upward, she asked, “You said that’s one reason. What’s the other?”
“The second”—Heinrik climbed the stairs—“is that we also want to know why the English want the information.”
