The Heir's Proposal Read online

  Addie stumbled to her feet and picked her way across the room littered with debris to where Fran lay crumpled, white-faced, and silent. “Fran!” She gently shook the girl’s shoulder to rouse her. Fran didn’t respond. Addie’s hand came away covered in blood. She squatted beside her relieved to see the girl’s chest rise and fall.

  Diana? Addie yelled her name; it sounded raspy, unlike her voice. Piles of bricks and plaster from the roof and the collapsed wall blocked her way to the printing room where Diana was.

  Shouting rose from the street. She made her way over to where the wall had come away, leaving an alarming drop. She peered down into the street crowded with people. “We need help up here!”

  “The ambulance is coming, lass,” a man called back.

  As Addie climbed over her broken desk, she scratched her leg on a nail sticking out of the wooden struts. Sheer will drove her to reach the printing room door where Diana, Joe and Florence were. It still stood, and she prayed the room behind it remained intact, although she knew it couldn’t be. She pushed it and peered in. The ceiling and part of the roof had fallen in. She could just make out Diana’s fair hair among the debris. “Diana!” Addie screamed. She pulled the bricks away, breaking her nails. She knew in her heart it was useless, but she refused to give up.

  “Go back, Addie.” It was Joe. “You might bring more of the roof down.”

  “Oh Joe. You’re all right? I can’t see you.”

  She was peering inside when behind her a gentle voice urged, “Come away, love, it’s dangerous here.” The man took her arm in a firm grip.

  “I have to stay.” Annoyed, Addie attempted to pull away from him.

  “There’s naught you can do. Leave it to the others.”

  “Joe’s in there. I can’t see him, but he’s alive. I can’t see Florence, either. I’m not sure about Diana.”

  She dragged in her breath and looked up into his face. Tom from downstairs. He should leave. She didn’t want him hurt too. She nodded. “I’ll come, but is someone coming to help them?”

  “They’re on their way.”

  A policeman in his blue uniform appeared and stepped cautiously through the wreckage. “How many here?” he asked.

  “Three in that room,” she said pointing to the printing room, where rubble rattled down, and another cloud of dust rose. “But you must get Fran out. She’s hurt, unconscious. Please hurry.” She put a hand to her wet cheeks and discovered the blood from a gash near her ear.

  “You need that attended to,” he said. “Tom, take the lady down. I’ll bring the other one. The lot could come down any minute.” He made his way over to Fran.

  “What happened?” Addie asked, clutching Tom’s arm. “Was it a gas explosion?”

  “A bloody zeppelin,” Tom said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  Addie looked back. The policeman lifted Fran up, and she hung limply in his arms. Was she dead?

  The wall had fallen away from one side of the staircase. It was a miracle it still stood. Addie tried to order her breathing as Tom assisted her down the unstable staircase. They picked their way carefully over piles of broken bricks.

  It seemed to take forever until they reached the street. Addie stared up at their building, disbelieving, as if in a dream. She felt as if she wasn’t there, as if watching a film from a darkened theatre.

  The bomb had destroyed most of it, yet the building next door stood intact, although the windows were all broken. The bomb had flattened the house across the road to a pile of tile, timber, bricks, and broken glass. The inner staircase oddly still standing, like the teeth on a comb.

  They had cordoned off the end of the street. Workers already foraged through the remains of buildings while survivors clustered around like wax figures, barely moving or talking. The breeze chased plaster dust along the ground. It drifted in the air like smoke. More men arrived to help. They roamed the ruins, feverishly digging through the rubble, carrying out the dead and those who had miraculously survived on stretchers.

  Their neighbor stood beside Addie.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Bracket,” Addie asked, gazing at his white face.

  He stared at her unseeingly. “I saw the thing.” His voice shook so hard she had to lean forward to understand him.

  “What? What did you see?” Addie asked him.

  “The zeppelin. I thought it terrible, but beautiful too. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t run.”

  “Come and sit down.” Addie took hold of his limp arm and led him over to the ambulance. Fran was conscious, thank God, sitting up while a nurse treated her head injury.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  At the War Office, Bryce and Monty waited for their orders. Colonel Martin raised his baton to the map of an island pinned to the blackboard. “This is the first stage of your journey. The island of Borkum. You will leave England on an armed merchant ship from Lowestoft. It will carry you across the Channel to the North Sea. A rowboat will take you to the less populated east coast of the island.

  “One slip up could be all it takes to have the Germans onto you,” Colonel Martin stated bluntly. “In 1910, the Germans imprisoned two British officers, Captain Bernard Frederick Trench and Lieutenant Vivian H. Brandon for espionage after photographing the military installations on Borkum. Worse would happen to you. The Germans on the island will be on high alert.

  “Your mark is the German chemist, Leopold Hirsch. He is visiting his sister in a tiny hamlet close to where you land. Fraulein Hirsch has a cottage near the sea. You’ll learn more about him from your contact. You’ll rendezvous with him. He’ll be waiting for you on the German mainland. Use the code.”

  He moved back to the map, tapping the map of the island, drawn on the board. “There’s a road leading down to the tip. Stick to it, head south until you come to a rocky inlet, and liaise with the captain of the fishing boat. He will furnish you with limited supplies and drop you on German soil, then go on to Delfzijl, a Netherlands coastal village, with their catch.

  Keep an eye out for any unusual activity. Whatever you see will interest the Admiralty. Because of Germany’s submarine capability, Churchill plans to mitigate the impact of any attack on British shipping.”

  “Why don’t we land in the Netherlands and cross to Germany, sir?” Bryce asked.

  Colonel Martin shook his head. “Too difficult to get past the German guard. And it would take too long to reach your target. Hirsch would have returned to Berlin before you get there.

  “I will be brutally frank,” the Colonel continued. “The odds of you getting out alive are less than we would like. But if you pull this off, the mission could save thousands of lives. And help us win this war.”

  Monty smoothed his hair back. “Our roles, sir?”

  “Chedworth will lead the mission as he speaks German. You, Standford, will take out the scientist. There are no rules. Think on your feet. If you land in trouble, find a way out of it. If they discover you, Hirsch will be whisked back to Berlin and heavily guarded. We will have lost our chance.

  I wish we had a network to help get you out as we do in France. Apart from a handful of men we rely on, we don’t have it. Now’s the time to speak up if you wish to decline the mission.”

  When Monty cast Bryce a questioning look, Bryce wondered if he’d changed his mind about going. He was in two minds about Monty being replaced. Although he’d rather work with someone else, he disliked leaving him here to woo Addie.

  “Hirsch heads the German chemical weapons program and is their foremost scientist,” Martin continued. “We have learned they are working on a nerve gas which is stronger and more effective than mustard gas, for use at the front. This lethal new gas will spread farther and kill everything it touches. It is likely if you succeed that this program will be at least delayed or even abandoned entirely. We have this brief window of opportunity, according to our intelligence, to grab him at the cottage.” He picked up photographs from the desk and handed them one each.

  Bryce studied the s
epia photograph. Hirsch stood in the center of a group of men, some in uniform. He was fair, with a chisel-boned, Germanic face and rimless glasses. “Memorize that face before you go, then dispose of the photograph. Our agent has been in the area for some weeks and knows the man’s habits. He will give you food and shelter for the night.”

  A corporal handed them a sheet of paper. “After Standford deals with Hirsch,” the colonel continued. “Should you get away clean, make your way down the Ems Estuary toward Emden and cross to Delfzijl. How you get across the river I leave to your own initiative. Your contact there is Jorgan Devoss. The preacher at the protestant church in Huibertplaat. Do not carry that information into Germany. Devoss will wait in the church until midnight every night for a month. After that, I can’t say. He must look after his own. Only approach him in the church, not the presbytery. He might be under observation. Although the Netherlands is neutral, German agents are in the country. Nowhere is safe.

  “You are masquerading as fishermen. The password you use in Germany and again in the Netherlands is ‘Good catch today?’ They will reply. ‘No, the fish aren’t biting.’

  Devoss will hide you while he organizes the last stage of your journey, a boat to take you across the Channel to Kent. This mission has a narrow time frame for success.”

  He picked up the baton and held it in front of him with both hands. “We’ll furnish you with additional information closer to your departure. Questions?”

  Bryce shook his head. The mission was tougher than he’d expected. It didn’t look too hopeful he’d make it back. He would put his affairs in order, advise Addie without going into details. He had wanted to leave her safe at Langley, but he realized he’d been selfish. She should live as she wished without pressure from him. Some other lucky blighter would make her happy. It better not be Monty. He swallowed on a surge of painful jealousy.

  “If caught, they could hold you for a time and question you before you’re executed. We’ll issue you with a cyanide capsule.”

  Sobered by the possibility of torture or a nasty death, he looked at Monty. He folded his arms, looking grim.

  “Requisitions will supply you with weaponry.”

  A sergeant entered the room and saluted. “Excuse the interruption, Colonel. We have just received news they’ve bombed Greenwich!”

  Chairs thrown back with a screech, the men ran over to the windows to raise the blinds. Search lights strafed the sky above the rooftops, in search of the deadly zeppelin. Word reached them it had gone. Silently floating higher to avoid detection.

  “Greenwich? That’s where Diana’s publishing company is located,” Bryce said. He turned to the colonel. “I have family in Greenwich, sir.”

  Monty put a hand on Bryce’s shoulder, his eyes concerned. “When do we leave, Colonel?”

  “Three days, weather permitting,” the Colonel said. “Dismissed.”

  “Sir.”

  Bryce and Monty left the room at a run.

  Chapter Eight

  The area now crawled with workers. With a streetlight knocked out, torches cast shadows as they flickered through the dark. Men combed the rubble. A sudden landslide had them scrambling to safety. Addie coughed in the smoky air. She’d found a piece of debris, part of a door to perch on, and sipped from a flask a man had given her as she waited for them to bring out Diana, Florence and Joe. The strong liquor scalded her throat, leaving a trail of heat through her frozen body.

  Two canvas-sided ambulances stood in the street. A Red Cross nurse in her purple-striped dress and white apron with the distinctive red cross symbol hurried over to her. “I’d best treat those wounds,” she said bending down to inspect Addie's jaw and the scratch on her leg. “We don’t want them to get infected.”

  She was young. Not much older than Addie. And so calm and capable. Addie fought dizziness as the nurse’s sure hands treated the cuts. “Anywhere else hurt, miss?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” How could that be? When the others… “You are very kind, thank you.”

  The nurse patted her arm and hurried away to help a recent arrival.

  Flames erupted from a house four down from theirs. Nurses tended the wounded on stretchers. They covered the dead with blankets, lined up along the street, while ambulances ferried the living to hospital.

  Tom came to reassure her the bakery had been empty. Still oddly detached, she watched men angle two stretchers down the precarious stairs which still stood, defying gravity.

  The men reached the street and placed the stretchers on the ground beside the ambulance. A blonde head splattered with blood showed from beneath the blanket. It suddenly became painfully real. Gripped with horror, Addie jumped to her feet, her stomach roiling. Diana! She tottered over to them, her knees threatening to give way. “No!” she croaked and reached out to pull back the blanket.

  Before she could, a man seized her wrist. “Don’t look, Miss,” he said. “You don’t want to remember her like that.”

  Addie turned on him. “But it’s my friend! It’s Diana!” Painful sobs tore at the back of her throat.

  The men deposited the stretchers into the back of a truck. “Who is the other one?” she asked the man beside her.

  “She’ll need identifying later, miss,” he said. “Can you provide the policemen with the names of those who worked there?”

  She nodded; suddenly aware she’d been pressing her fingers so hard into her palms; she’d drawn blood from a broken nail. When the ambulance drove away, she then turned and was sick in the gutter.

  A man standing nearby handed her his red handkerchief.

  She took it blindly, not having been aware he was there. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, lass.”

  Addie wiped her mouth as they led Joe out, a bandage around his chest. She hurried over to him. “Joe! Are you all right?”

  His eyes looked dull. “Yes. Are you? They’re dead, Addie,” he said when she nodded. “What about Fran?”

  “Oh God. She’s over there. A doctor is with her.”

  “Thank God.” Joe walked over to her with Addie following. “I’m relieved to see you’re all right, Fran.”

  “Do you have somewhere to go, Fran?” Addie asked. “Is there someone who can stay with you?” To her knowledge, Fran had no one.

  Fran’s pale blue eyes were expressionless. “I don’t know, I…”

  She looked as if she’d shatter any minute, like china dropped on the floor. Addie hugged her feeling the shudders ripple through the girl’s narrow body. “You’re to come home with me.”

  Rain clouds moved overhead, and it began to drizzle. The flames still burning in the ruins spat, flickered and died. Suddenly filled with purpose, Addie searched the street for a means of transport. She must find a telephone and ring Bryce! As she moved toward it, a hackney arrived. Two men leaped down from it.

  “Bryce!”

  He ran over to her while Monty spoke to the cabbie.

  “Oh, dear God, Addie. I thought I was afraid…”

  “Diana is dead.” Her voice sounded strange to her ears.

  “Oh no! Oh Addie. I’m so sorry.”

  She turned away and dry retched. “Here,” Bryce gave her his handkerchief. He held her hair. “It’s all right, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

  Her stomach felt raw and empty. Her strong will which had kept her on her feet now deserted her, and her knees gave way. Bryce’s arm slipped around her supporting her. “We’ve kept the cab. I need to get you home.”

  Fran had fainted. Monty hefted her up in his arms. “Does she need to go to the hospital?” he asked a nurse who had hurried over.

  “I don’t think so. We’re overrun.” She checked Fran’s pulse. “She needs to rest.”

  “Fran is coming home with me,” Addie said again, as Bryce helped her over to the cab.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Bryce made tea in the kitchenette of their flat. A dismal place, he couldn’t imagine why Diana had chosen it. He added lots of sugar to their cup
s, which was good for shock, and they both needed it. Addie had said she intended to stay here. It was a terrible idea for several reasons. It wasn’t far from the bombing. And it would be sad for her. He needed to make her see reason.

  He carried the tea into the tiny parlor on a tray he’d found. The room looked even smaller with Monty there stoking the fire, but the warmth was welcome.

  Bryce put their tea on the table. “There was no milk,” he said.

  “I know…I’m sorry, I forgot to buy some,” Addie murmured, as if this was a tea party.

  Monty drew a silver flask from his pocket and added a tipple of whiskey to the cups.