Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [26]
Prentice was livid, but he forced himself to relax his body, shifting his weight to stand more elegantly, as if he were perfectly at ease. “Actually what I came for, Uncle Owen, was to ask you to give me a letter of authority to go forward to the front lines, or anywhere else I need to, to get the best story. I know correspondents are a bit limited, and pretty well any officer can arrest them, even the damned chaplain, who probably doesn’t know a gun from a golf club. This one actually threatened me!”
“No,” Cullingford said without needing even to consider it. “You have exactly the same privileges and limitations as all other correspondents.” He was not going to be twisted by family loyalties into giving Prentice an advantage. Abigail should not expect it. The boy had lost his father a few years ago, but he was thirty-three, and indulgence would not help him.
“I imagine you know Captain Reavley,” Prentice said without making any move to go.
“You’re mistaken,” Cullingford replied. “I’ve met him a couple of times. Two divisions is over a hundred and thirty thousand men. I know very few of them personally, and those I do are the fighting officers and the senior staff officers concerned with transport and replacements.”
There was a slight smile on Prentice’s face, no more than a sheen of satisfaction. “I was thinking of a more personal basis,” he answered. “He must be related to your VAD driver, isn’t he? Reavley’s not such a common name, and I thought I detected a faint resemblance.”
Cullingford felt a sudden wave of heat wash over him. There was really very little likeness that he could see between Judith and Joseph Reavley. He was dark and she was fair, her face was so much softer than his, so feminine. Perhaps there was something similar in the directness of the eyes, an angle to the head, and a way of smiling, rather than the structure of bones.
Prentice was watching him. He must answer. He was conscious of guilt, and being desperately vulnerable. He was not used to having emotions he could not control, or defend.
“They are brother and sister,” he answered, keeping his voice level, not so casual as to seem forced. “If you think that means he is around here any more than his duties require, you have very little grasp of the army, or the nature of war.”
“She’s beautiful,” Prentice observed. “In a kind of way. Very much a woman. If she were my sister, driving a middle-aged man around, I’d be over here pretty often—out of concern for her.” He shifted his weight to his other foot, and smiled a fraction more. “In fact, since she’s a volunteer, and could do or not do whatever she wanted, I’d make sure she didn’t get into that sort of position.”
Cullingford felt the heat rise up his face, and was furious with himself for not being able to hide it. He knew it was burningly visible because Prentice recognized it immediately. The triumph was brilliant in his eyes.
“But then perhaps the good chaplain doesn’t know that you’re married,” he said quietly. “And I don’t suppose for a moment that he’d connect Aunt Nerys’s previous tragedy with you. After all, her name was Mallory then, and it was more her husband’s name and poor young Sarah Whitstable whose names were spread all over the newspapers. They can be very cruel: Middle-aged man runs off with sixteen-year-old daughter of Tory peer; double suicide leap off cliffs at Beachy Head, or wherever it was. Bodies dashed to pieces on the rocks below. Poor Aunt Nerys! If she knew you were being driven around by a beautiful, hotheaded twenty-three-year-old, she’d start the nightmares all over again. But I’m sure Captain Reavley doesn’t know that!”
Cullingford