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“I never promised you it was going to last.” Philip dropped down beside her, linking his hands between his knees. “You’re too good for me by half—”

“That is a bunch of noble bloody rubbish. Another way of saying ‘You’re not good enough.’ But I am, Philip. I’m of age, I’ll have money of my own, I run in the same circles as you, and I’ve always been good enough. Yet I’m still just the one you telephone for a night out.” She lifted her chin, refusing to look away. “It has been four years. Why did you never—”

“Be fair. I never took things far enough in the first place to raise your expectations.”

“You mean because you never took me to bed, you think you’re in the clear. Well—”

“Keep your voice down!”

“—there are other ways of raising expectations, Philip.”

They were both shaking. Philip looked, Osla thought, like he wanted to give her a good slap. She wanted to claw his face bloody. But it wouldn’t have taken much for them to fall into each other’s arms, either. It never had. She tore her eyes away, staring at the tracks as another train rushed in. They both sat waiting as another flood of passengers jostled off, pushing for the stairs. Waited until the train pulled away and the platform was empty again.

“Maybe you should go home.” Philip’s voice was back under control. “We’ll talk when I get more than a night off from the Whelp.”

“And go back to how things were, is that what you’re suggesting?”

“How they are, Os. You know how I feel about you. Nothing has changed.”

“Sorry, Philip. Having already given you four years, I don’t really feel like pouring more of my heart into you.” The words scraped out of her throat like broken glass. “Not when I know you’re ready to put on royal racing colors the minute Cousin Lilibet trots to the starting post.”

“Don’t talk about her like she’s a horse,” he flared. “She’s got feelings, you know.”

“So do I.” Osla tried to swallow around the spike in her throat. “Do you love her?”

“I was curled up around you at Christmastime—you think I’d bounce from that to falling for a girl barely out of the schoolroom?”

“I don’t know. What would your family expect?” Pause. “Could you love her?”

The longest silence yet. Osla’s heart contracted as if it were shrinking away from him.

“I think that might be a yes,” she managed to say.

He looked at the ground between his feet, as if seeing something else. “The world she lives in . . . At Christmas I got to see them all behind the scenes a bit more. Her family’s not like mine, scattered and quarreling. Us four, the king is always saying, so proud. Just a man and his wife and his two daughters—that’s what they are, by themselves. Not grand.”

“Not grand? A family with what, ten palaces?”

“You know what they do in those palaces? They drink tea and listen to the gramophone, and laugh while dogs flop about on everyone’s shoes. Margaret reads a magazine while her mother talks horses and Lilibet and her father go walking . . . I could be part of that,” Philip finished, low voiced.

That’s the honey in the pot, Osla thought sickly. Not just a princess who was a suitable match for a prince . . . not even the fact that his relatives approved. Princess Elizabeth brought the one thing those without homes couldn’t resist—the thing Osla herself wanted desperately. Lilibet came with a family ready-made, close-knit, and loving. A family, all tied up in a bow with the future queen of England, who was a serious girl rather than a silly deb.

An oasis in the desert, surely, for a boy raised without a home. A boy who’d grown into an ambitious man . . . Osla knew Philip so well; of course he was ambitious. What man in his lonely, barebones position would turn down such a chance—status, wealth, power, allied to a loving family and a girl he thought he might very well be able to love?

No one, Osla thought.

“I can’t think about any of this yet,” Philip went on. “Not until the war is done. There’s not room for it. But Lilibet said she’d keep writing. She’s never stopped.” He looked at Osla. “You stopped.”

The breath left Osla as if she’d been punched.

“I’ve told you things I never told anyone, Os. About Cape Matapan, lining up targets in the dark and watching them go down. Then I go off to sea again and you stop writing. So I think you’re cooling off, you’re backing away, and I should let you because you’re right—I didn’t get into things with you thinking it was something for the long run. So if you want to back off, it’s only fair to let you. But I get home and you’re in my arms at Christmas like nothing’s happened, and you’ve got my head spinning all over again, but you won’t tell me why you went off me, or even that you’ll write again . . . I may have misled you, but we’re pots and kettles here. You’ve misled me, too.”

That’s not my fault, Osla wanted to snarl. I’ve protected you—I stayed away to keep London intelligence off your back—but she couldn’t say any of that. He waited for explanations, but the Official Secrets Act sat around her neck like a lead collar.

“At least with Lilibet,” he said at last, “I know where I am.”

“Do you know who you are with her?” Osla lashed back. “With me, you’d simply be Philip. With her you’d always be the queen’s husband. Do you think you’re built for that, playing Albert to her Victoria? I don’t think you are. You’ll be dead of boredom in three years.”

Now he was the one who looked like he’d been hit.

The silence stretched, endless, taut, terrible. Somewhere distant, a clock chimed. Finally Osla rose, unpinned the naval insignia from her dress, and placed it in his palm. “Good luck with the Whelp.” Avoiding his stricken gaze, she walked carefully, one step after the other, across the platform toward the ticket booth, where she could find out what the next train was back to Bletchley. Part of Osla hoped Philip would come after her—that the pull between them would defeat the promise of a family, and a royal one at that. But she knew he wouldn’t.

She knew something else as well. If she put enough steps in line, one after the other, she would get there—to the ticket booth, to Bletchley, to the rest of her life—without crumbling into pieces. In the grand scheme of things, losing Philip wasn’t remotely important. Not in a world where there were invasions of Europe being planned, where millions around the globe were dying. It didn’t matter at all that she felt like she was being torn apart inside by white-hot pincers.

You’ll get over it, Osla told herself. There’s a war on.

Philip’s voice came softly behind her: “Let me at least take you home, princess—”

Osla flinched like a lash had torn across her back. She turned in time to see Philip frozen midsentence, visibly realizing how ill advised that choice of endearments had been. She stood, spine straight, letting him get a good look at the rage in her eyes.

“I’m no princess, Philip,” she said at last. “You’ve already got one.”

Chapter 58

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, APRIL 1944

A thought, boffins and debs, and BB is aware it’s a radical one: can we all perhaps retire the word wog from our vocabularies? Such an amusing term, such a joke, such an affectionate bit of slang to toss about in a moment of high-spirited fun . . . yet BB does not find the term particularly entertaining, and neither do those who hear it aimed at them, judging from their expressions.

Get off—” Beth waded into the scrum of children, grabbing a towheaded boy and a redheaded boy. They had Christopher Zarb on the ground in his own front yard and were pelting him with mud.

“He won’t fight,” the redhead jeered. “Just like his dad—”

Beth hauled off and smacked him on the back of the head. “Get out of here.”

The boys ran. “My mum says you don’t deserve to live in England if you won’t fight for it,” one yelled over his shoulder. “Stupid wogs . . .”

Christopher sat in the dirt, trying not to cry, brushing mud off his braces. Beth’s heart squeezed. “Don’t listen to them.” She held out a hand, rather awkwardly, to her lover’s son. “Come on, we’ll get you cleaned up.”

Sheila was inside laying out bread and marg for this month’s Tea Party, but she swooped down on her muddied son. “Was it that Robbie Blaine again? The little bugger . . .”

“You take care of Christopher,” Beth said, “I’ll finish up here.” She was early, the first one arrived. Harry came in as she was putting the kettle on, and he looked grim as Beth told him what had happened.

“Those little bastards have been after him for months. When I bang their heads together, their fathers come at me.” Harry passed her a tea towel. “With luck, it’ll slack off by next week.”

“What happens then?”

A long pause. “I leave.” He looked her in the eye. “I’ve enlisted, Beth.”