“I didn’t know the Wallace was back.”

“Yes, well . . . I’d be at the Mountbattens’, but they’ve a houseful of Christmas guests.”

They stared at each other some more. Philip didn’t look entirely welcoming; his expression was closed off in a way Osla remembered from the few times she’d seen him angry. You’re right to be angry, she thought. I ditched you—for very good reasons, but you don’t know that. She couldn’t say it, so she started chattering.

“I’ve only popped in tonight, to surprise my mother. Of course she’s not home—and to think I passed up an outing to the cinema with the Glassborow twins, too. I always wanted a twin sister but given all the tandem giggling from those girls, I probably wouldn’t have heard a word of the film.” Osla ran out of breath. “How are you?”

“Getting over a touch of ’flu.” Now that she looked closer, she saw his face was flushed under his tan, and his forehead had a sheen of sweat. “I was poking my head out for some handkerchiefs the bellboy left me.”

Philip scooped the packet off the threshold, and Osla saw him sway. “Steady on, sailor.” She put her hands to his shoulders, righting him, and his arms came reflexively around her waist. They both paused in the act of moving toward each other, and she could all but see him thinking, I don’t want to get you sick. Osla didn’t care. She pulled his head down to hers and they were kissing, pressed against the door. His mouth was hard and angry, but his hands at her back were soft, as if he couldn’t stop from melting against her. He was warm with fever. “You are ill,” she said, breaking the kiss.

“Not too ill to notice how good you smell.” It seemed to come out involuntarily, and he scowled, pulling back. Osla did too, realizing where they were. No hotel in London would allow a young woman upstairs with a young man unless they’d presented a marriage certificate . . . but here they were, with a room at his back and no eyes to see.

“I’m supposed to be attending the royal pantomime at Windsor tonight,” he muttered. “Aladdin—the princesses are acting.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” Osla put a hand to his forehead. “Get inside.” She pushed the door open, following on his heels. A modest room by Claridge’s standards; nothing like her mother’s suite. Philip’s kit bag lay in a corner; the bed was mussed as if he’d been tossing and turning. “In bed,” Osla ordered, kicking off her shoes. “I’m going to look after you.”

“YOU’RE A LOUSY nurse, princess.”

“You’re a terrible patient, sailor. Put that thermometer under your tongue—”

“You’re enjoying this,” he accused, looking ready to bite it in half.

“Too bally right.” Osla hopped onto the foot of the bed, pulling his feet into her lap. He had long bony toes, and she thought she could get quite inordinately foolish about them.

“It’s just a chill—”

“You’re one of those fellows who say it’s just a sprain when the bone is poking through the skin, aren’t you?”

He looked offended. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do!”

Philip stared at the ceiling, thermometer pointing skyward. “I never had anyone look after me when I was sick before. Not really . . .”

“Other than servants, you mean, or boarding-school nurses with cold-fish hands?” Osla paused. “I never have, either.”

She bounded off to get him a glass of water. I’m enjoying this. Maybe it was the domesticity of it all, so ordinary and yet so strange. In her experience, getting involved with any man meant going places: driving, dancing, the cinema. The plain, everyday ordinariness of walking around barefoot in Philip’s room, making herself at home . . .

“Down,” she ordered, pushing him flat again as he tried to sit up.

“Bully,” he said, spitting out the thermometer.

“Too right, darling, and it’s working—your temperature’s down. You haven’t been very good, but I suppose we can crack the fizz.” She’d had him order a bottle of champagne along with chicken broth. Fizz was good for invalids; everyone knew that. “You’ve been in town a few days?” she asked, popping the cork.

He regarded her steadily. “Are you going to ask why I didn’t ring you?”

She topped up two tea mugs. “. . . I know why you didn’t ring me.”

An awkward silence.

He struggled up on one elbow. “Did you meet someone, Os? Is that why you stopped writing?”

“No, I did not meet someone. Don’t talk such slush.”

“Then why’d you go off me?”

I was protecting you.

“I thought maybe you were backing off,” he said eventually. “Letting things cool down. Can’t say I liked it, but that would probably be the best thing.”

“Why?” Osla looked at him, but he only shrugged. “I wasn’t backing off . . . it’s been a terrible year, Philip. I saw my best friend’s husband and little sister die in front of me in a bombing. She blames me, in part”—Osla still blamed herself, for letting go of Lucy’s hand—“so I lost her, too. And then every day at work I’d type up war reports, and the details could be horrifying.” There, not too many lies in that mix. A few things omitted, like her fruitless, months-long hunt for files that were missing and then not missing. A thief or informant who might or might not have been real . . . Osla still wasn’t sure. All she could do was keep her eyes open; so far nothing else seemed to have disappeared.

“Anyway,” she finished, “I’ve been in such a blue funk, and I didn’t want to write if I couldn’t think of anything cheerful to say, and the longer the silence stretched, the harder it was to reach out.” Osla touched his hand. “Forgive me?”

“I’ve had a bad year, too.” Quietly.

Osla hesitated. Keep your distance. It’s better for him that way. But she couldn’t walk away from Philip like this, not feverish and alone in an impersonal hotel room at Christmastime. Besides, since she’d made the decision to back away from Philip, she’d seen Mab lose Francis—seen her rage and grieve that they hadn’t had more time, more love, more everything . . .

Osla stretched across the bed opposite Philip, twining her stockinged feet with his bony ones. “Tell me.”

It came slowly, in terse fits and starts as they sipped their fizz. Across the Atlantic and back with a convoy; dive-bombed by Stukas all through the Mediterranean when the Wallace was posted to assist in the invasion of Sicily. “There was one night in July,” Philip said. “The moon lit everything up bright as day. We were leaving a wake that glowed like the Yellow Brick Road. The ship had already been hit, everyone knew they were coming back to put us down for good. We had to come up with something quick—I don’t know why the captain listened to my idea, but he did. We banged a big raft together out of crates and timber, heaped debris on it, slung a smoke float at each end, and cast it off—then steamed as fast as we could in the other direction and cut the Wallace dead, engines, lights, and all. All of us sitting there in the dark, hoping the Krauts would assume we’d gone down and that raft of debris and smoke was all that was left . . .”

“I’ll guess that they swallowed it,” Osla said when he fell silent. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

“They swallowed it, all right. We heard bombers screaming overhead, hitting the wreckage to send it to the bottom. Those bastards, strafing what they thought were sailors clinging to debris . . .”

“But they weren’t. It sounds to me like you saved your sailors, Lieutenant.”

Another shrug. “I swear I aged five years that night, Os.”

“Five years . . .” Osla turned over and he snugged her up into his chest, tugging the coverlet up over them both. “Wasn’t it only five years ago we met?”

“Four.”

“That’s all?”

“End of ’39, at the bar downstairs. You in your boiler suit. You looked like Winston Churchill, but adorable.”

“My God. I was an absolute infant.”

“I was, too. I thought war was going to be such a lark.”

They lay quiet, feet entangled, curled up close in the dim room. To Osla, drifting off to sleep, it felt like home again.

AT SOME POINT in the night she woke. Philip’s warm chest wasn’t against her back; instead she felt something soft and fluffy. “Why did you wedge a pillow between us?” she yawned.

“I didn’t have a sword,” he mumbled, half-asleep.

“What?”

“A sword . . . it’s an old story. A knight puts a sword in the bed if he has to sleep beside his lady. So she knows he won’t cross over it.”

“What if she wants him to?”

No answer.

Osla slid out of bed and began unhooking her gray wool dress. They hadn’t drawn the blackout curtains; moonlight threw a little silvery light into the dark room. She could see Philip sit up in bed—he must have got feverish in his sleep, because he’d tossed off his shirt and blankets and had the sheet drawn up around his raised knees. It was the first time she’d seen him without a shirt, and dear God, was it a sight.

“Os,” he said drowsily as she peeled off her stockings, “I’d better go sleep on the sofa.”