Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [179]
But before he could frame the words, he stopped himself.
What if this had nothing to do with the war?
After a very fine dinner with Elizabeth and three of her friends at the hotel just along the High Street, Rutledge drove back to London. Introductions and the subsequent settling into chairs as everyone exclaimed over the success of the evening had given Rutledge time to collect himself and present a polite, pleasant facade in spite of his unsettled state of mind.
It was something he was becoming increasingly good at doing, finding the right mask for his terrors.
Caught up in their own excitement, no one at the table noticed his long silences or made anything of his distraction. He was the outsider among them, and they included him from kindness, expecting nothing in return. He overheard one of the women as she leaned towards Elizabeth and murmured, “He’s absolutely charming! Where did you find him?” as if he were a new suitor.
His hostess had replied dryly, “He was Richard’s best man. I’ve known Ian for ages. He’s been a great comfort.”
For Elizabeth’s sake, he was glad to find himself accepted. He couldn’t have borne it if he’d embarrassed her. Yet it could have happened all too easily.
Frances had been wrong—he was not ready to meet old friends and pick up the threads of an old life. There were too many walls that shut him off from people who remembered a very different man called Ian Rutledge.
Still, Elizabeth had not let him go without making a promise that he’d be back on 10 November.
“You will ask for leave, I hope,” she asked anxiously, a reminder. “And Chief Superintendent Bowles will agree, won’t he?”
“I see no reason why not,” Rutledge responded, bending his head to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be here. If I can.”
What he didn’t tell her was that he’d have made certain that he was not in London on 11 November with or without leave.
But on the long drive home, watching the headlamps pick out the verges of the road and pierce the heavy shadows of trees and hedgerows, Rutledge had found himself seeing again and again the face he’d carried with him since the bonfire.
It lingered against his will, as if once having surfaced it refused to be stuffed down once more into the bleak depths from which it had risen. And there was no respite, for traffic was too light to distract him. The cloudy, moonless night seemed to be its ally, and even Hamish was silent. By the time Rutledge reached the outskirts of London, the shoulders and chest attached to the face had fleshed themselves out, bit by bit gathering substance like a reluctant ghost. They belonged not in the proper English clothing Rutledge thought he’d glimpsed tonight, but in a torn and bloody uniform.
And Hamish said, as if he’d been waiting for Rutledge to reach this point, “I’d no’ pursue it. There were sae many . . .”
In the pale morning light, as he made his way to Scotland Yard the next day, Rutledge realized he had arrived at the same conclusion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHARLES TODD is the author of A Test of Wills, Wings of Fire, Search the Dark, Legacy of the Dead, A Fearsome Doubt, and Watchers of Time. He lives on the East Coast, where he is at work on his next novel of British historical suspense, The Murder Stone.
ALSO BY CHARLES TODD
A Test of Wills*
Wings of Fire
Search the Dar
Legacy of the Dead*
A Fearsome Doubt*
AND COMING SOON IN HARDCOVER:
The Murder Stone
* Available from Bantam Books
This edition contains the complete text
of the original trade paperback edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
WATCHERS OF TIME
A Bantam Book
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2001 by Charles Todd.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001035272
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