“You’ll do no such thing, sailor. You’ve still got a touch of fever.”

“I’m not made of marble, you know.” He waved a hand at her satin slip. “There’s only so much a pillow can do . . .”

“Well, I’m not sleeping in a wool dress, and I’m not sleeping on that blithering sofa either.” She climbed back into bed on his side, hearing her own heart hammer.

“You’re a devil,” he said through the dark, reaching for her. His skin was still hot with fever and Osla caught the flame, losing her breath, making him lose his as they tossed and rolled in the crisp sheets. “Hang on to me,” he said at one point, hands and lips sliding along the edge of her slip, and did something Osla didn’t have a name for, something she didn’t know people did, only it left her wrung limp and breathless, hanging off his broad shoulders like she was about to fall off a cliff. She could feel Philip’s smile against her skin. “You’re finally communicating, princess.”

“Communication should go both ways, it seems to me,” she managed to gasp, and figured out a few ways to do so, letting his hands and his strangled curses guide her along. They came to a stop, clinging and breathing hard, pressed full-length, forehead rocking against forehead. A gentleman never pushed things past a certain point with a girl unless there was some kind of understanding that things would soon be made permanent. Before, whenever they’d reached that point, Philip had never pushed further . . . but they’d never had an opportunity to be alone like this, either. To do whatever they wanted. This time, Osla sensed, she could push past his protests. He was light-headed enough tonight to be reckless—if she was ruthless enough to push till he forgot himself.

But he wouldn’t have pushed if she were the one laid low with fever and forgetting herself.

“Os,” Philip said, sounding strangled. “Better put that pillow back.”

Osla let her head drop, banging her forehead gently against his shoulder. “I hate doing the honorable thing.”

“Oh, so do I,” he growled. They managed to rearrange themselves, limbs aligned back more or less where they should be, pillow wedged virtuously between, Osla’s head on his shoulder. “We could do this any time we wanted, you know,” Osla said into the dark. “Nothing’s stopping us from being—more.”

It was the nearest she’d come to saying it, or even hinting it. Stop calling me princess, because I’m not one—but I could be. If you wanted.

But he’d already slid back into dreamland.

They slept late, and by noon his fever was entirely gone and he was sitting up in bed demanding toast. They ordered from the hotel kitchens, ate in bed . . . Osla looked at the clock, sighing. “An hour till I catch the train.”

“And I have no more excuses to skip the Christmas pantomime at Windsor.”

She brushed a crumb off his lip. “Can’t see you at a children’s panto.”

“It’s more than that. The princesses do it every year for a private audience, to raise money for the men at the front.” He smiled. “Lilibet always gets stuck doing the men’s parts, because Margaret has to get the princess role.”

“She already is a princess. Can’t she play something else for one night?”

“You don’t know Margaret.” Philip looked down at his plate, tearing the last piece of toast to bits. “Os . . . you never really answered my question last night.” He looked up. “Why you stopped writing.”

“I said—”

“—a lot of vague stuff about it being a terrible year. That’s not an answer.” His gaze was keen. “I know you. Terrible year or not, Osla Kendall keeps her chin up and goes right on fizzing along. So what happened?”

She couldn’t look at him. “You’ll have to trust me, Philip.”

“Are you going to write when I ship out again? Or go out with me while I’m in town?”

I’m not sure it’s wise, Osla thought. This meeting had been accidental. If they started being seen around town again, she might be called on the carpet to face more questions. Turn over his letters. Tell us if he contacts his family. Tell us what he says over a pillow . . . And her oath meant she’d have to do it.

Philip’s face shuttered as she remained silent. “Thanks for playing nurse, princess.”

“THOUGHT YOU OUGHT to hear it from a friend,” the voice on the telephone said.

“David, what on earth are you blathering on about?” It was the day before New Year’s; Osla had been working up this week’s BB with a razor-sharp lampoon of the Bletchley Park dramatic society’s Christmas revue when her landlady had called her to the telephone. Osla had been puzzled to find Philip’s chum David Milford Haven on the other end. “I know Philip went to Windsor for Christmas after the pantomime. It was in the papers.”

“What’s not in the papers is that he and Princess Elizabeth sparked like a bonfire. Charades with the family after Boxing Day dinner, dancing to the gramophone—”

“So? Philip and Lilibet have been pen pals forever. Charades—that’s something you play with your little sister.”

“Not so little—she’ll be eighteen this April. Solemn, wants to join the ATS, blue eyes, lovely legs. Philip got an eyeful of those when she was prancing round the panto stage in tights.”

“Do you have to slaver quite so audibly?” Osla wrinkled her nose.

“I’m serious, Os. All through Christmas, our princess was looking at Philip like he was God, and he wasn’t exactly looking away. There’ll be gossip soon; I thought you might want to hear it from me first.”

“Out of the goodness of your heart? That’s just topping of you.”

“Fancy drinks at the Four Hundred? Just you and me—”

Osla rang off. She stood in the passage a moment, looking at her own legs, which were rather sturdy and wouldn’t be much of a sight in tights.

Princess Elizabeth. The future queen of England. And Philip?

He calls her Cousin Lilibet. He thinks she’s a child.

“Osla!” Beth’s voice floated in from the front gate. “The bus—”

“Coming!” Osla flashed out the door for work, where she tried all day not to think about princesses with big blue eyes.

Chapter 55

* * *

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, JANUARY 1944

* * *

What is the worst toll taken by BP’s necessary secret-keeping? The worry of disclosing information while under anesthesia at the dentist, the pressure of lying to one’s friends? No, according to an informal BB poll, it’s having to bite one’s tongue when Cousin Betty purrs yet again over the Christmas roast, “At least my husband/brother/father is in uniform, unlike yours!”

* * *

Beth sat in one of the listening booths at Scopelli’s, earphones clamped over her ears, chin on her folded arms. Harry wasn’t coming today; he had a pack of six-year-olds coming over for Christopher’s birthday, so he’d given Beth the music shop key for herself. Bach’s parallel lines of melody were pouring into her ears now, precise and rippling, and behind closed eyelids Beth saw the new cipher. The cipher Dilly had been working on before he died.

Who knew what the Soviets were sending over their captured Enigma machine, or why—Beth knew it was probably dummy messages, but the cipher itself fascinated her. It seemed to have been sent over a three-wheel German army Enigma machine, but it was somehow different from the others she’d seen. Dilly was right about its spiraling inward; it seemed downright hostile to being wedged open.

“Why waste time on that?” Peggy asked one slow night shortly after the year turned. “We’ve got stacks of more recent unsolvables if you’re bored.” As long as Beth had worked in Knox’s section, there had been a basket heaped with the messages that couldn’t be broken—you worked on the duds when you were at loose ends, but no one had much free time now, with the Allied invasion of France looming. “Why waste time on Dilly’s old stuff?”

“Because it was his last work.” On and off since bringing it from Courns Wood, she’d turned back to it whenever she had a spare moment, working her way patiently through all the exercises she knew. Nothing to show for it, but being stalled didn’t give her the colossal, mind-shattering frustration Harry had experienced with the U-boat blackout. Maybe because Dilly’s discarded traffic hadn’t been deemed critical—no one was dying in the cold waters of the Atlantic because Beth couldn’t crack this cipher; it was merely a puzzle. She was starting to have dreams where a rose bloomed into lines of Enigma that then folded up on themselves like a bud flowering in reverse.

She was turning the record to the second side when the shop door banged open. Harry came in like a thunderstorm, hands balled into fists.

She pulled her earphones all the way off. “Is it Christopher? His party—”

Harry slammed the door so hard the frame rattled. “I’ve been uninvited.”

“What?”

“Christopher asked me not to be there. He says his friends will tease him. Because he’s the only one whose father isn’t in uniform.”

That little brat, Beth barely managed not to say. She hoped Sheila had smacked him.