“Ivy.”
“Oh, fine, I’ll drop the accent.” She straightened the page. “‘But it has had an effect I never dreamed. The more I am without you, the more alone I feel, and the more the older grief comes upon me. You are right that it is a tragedy I have not fully grieved. To be honest, I am not certain I know how. Whenever I think of it, think of her, think of all the similar stories my colleagues in Russia no doubt have, I am overcome. I find myself crying out, as the psalmist did, for the Lord to fight against those who fight against me. I have been clinging these months to God’s command to be still and trust Him. I am clinging, Lily. But I could see no beauty left in the world. Not until I met you.’ Aww!” Ivy paused to slap a hand to her heart. “That is the sweetest thing in the world!”
Lily picked up one of the extra pillows and hugged it.
“Well.” Ivy laughed a bit as she scanned the next section. “This is not quite as sweet as I was thinking, though you might still think so. He says, ‘You have shown me the beauty in a thousand silent moments. A feather on the breeze. Sun breaking through the clouds. The way a child studies a flower. Moments I never saw before, much less appreciated, are now quiet reminders that God is there. That He has created a world of beauty, and that His will is for us to live in it. Live in this land of the living. Every time you pause to lift your camera, I know it is because you saw something beautiful that I would have walked by without a second glance. And I cannot tell you the difference that has made in my life.’”
Lily drew her lip between her teeth. Much sweeter indeed than praising her own beauty, which was probably what Ivy had assumed he was going to do. She knew her face paled in comparison to others’. But God’s world—that was an endless feast of the truest beauty.
Ivy scooted to her usual place beside her and nestled in. “There are only a few lines left. Here we go. ‘But I have been remembering not only the way you draw out your camera and find the beauty in the world. I remember too the way you looked at me and saw something far different. You saw an ugliness that you named hatred. That, my sweet one, has scarcely left my mind. I have tried to deny it. I have tried to excuse it. I have sworn to God and myself that I will make it right. But in all truth, I know only this: I am weak, and I am afraid. I fear what else I do not see, that you would. I fear the man I will become if you are not shining your light into my soul. How could I have come so quickly to need you so much? I do not know. But you have become for me the proof that God does indeed bring beauty from ashes.’”
Slowly, reverently it looked like, Ivy lowered the page. “Well.” Her voice was a mere murmur after her reading. “We knew he was a man of depth.”
“Mm.” He was more than that. He was a man who deserved to have someone fighting beside him. She pushed to her feet. “Help me get ready, would you? I intend to pounce on Blinker and Daddy the moment the Halls arrive.”
Ivy all but flew to the dressing table and brandished the brush as though it were Arthur’s Excalibur. “At your service, lady fair! We will wage a war of smiles and curls. And we will emerge victorious.”
Laughing, Lily settled on the stool. How could they possibly lose, with Ivy on her side?
SATURDAY, 8 JUNE 1918
Zivon folded the newspaper and checked his watch. He still had an hour before he was due at the office for his half day. Usually he’d have gone for a run with Clarke this morning, but the rain was coming down in earnest, rumbles of thunder punctuating the deluge. Not a day for running.
Nor a day for visitors. So why was there a knock at his door?
Zivon pushed to his feet. Probably a neighbor needing to borrow something. Or lend him something. Mrs. Hamilton, the landlord’s wife, often stopped by with a new armful of books from her secondhand shop. When she’d discovered that he liked to read but had none of his collection with him, she’d taken to acting as a lending library.
He swung open the door, blinking at the last person he’d expected to see. “Admiral?”
Hall lifted his brows. “May I?”
“Ah. Yes, of course. Apologies.” Zivon stepped aside and held the door wide. He gave his flat a quick glance, never more glad that Batya had drilled military precision and neatness into him while Matushka had him conjugating Latin verbs. The place finally looked lived in, but tidy.
The admiral’s gaze went unerringly to the walls, which boasted the Blackwell ladies’ artwork still. He’d half expected the captain to demand their return, but thus far he hadn’t spoken to Zivon again at all since the day after the air raid. Executing an about-face that allowed the admiral to take in the entire flat with that all-seeing gaze of his, Hall soon faced him again.
Much as Zivon wanted to ask his superior what he was doing here, he opted for holding his peace.
He didn’t have long to wait. Hall wasn’t one for wasting time. “Dilly told me what a help you were yesterday. We’ve been trying for a year to crack that code.”
Ah. He had expected Hall to mention his assistance at some point, yes. He just hadn’t thought it would warrant a house call. Zivon inclined his head. “It was my pleasure to assist, sir. We had, in Moscow, a codebook for that one.”
“Even so. You didn’t have to share your knowledge. And it is remarkable that you remember it.”
Zivon smiled. It was the code he had considered keeping to himself, so he could use it with the diplomats in Paris. But in light of the suspicions around him, he’d decided that withholding even the slightest information was not in his best interest. Was not honorable. “I admit it took me a while to piece it together again.”
The admiral’s blink looked amused. “Yes, an entire day. But that is not the only reason I’ve come.”
Zivon’s muscles stiffened. Was this it, then? Had he come to boot him to the curb? “Thanks for your help, old boy, but you’re too big a risk”?
Hall cleared his throat, turned, paced to look at the Eiffel Tower picture, as if this were just a social visit. “Mrs. Hall and I dined with the Blackwells last night. Lily—this is one of hers, correct?”
“It is, yes.” Zivon had spent countless hours over the last weeks staring at it. Studying it. Imagining Lily standing there at the base, in the same place Zivon had once stood, looking up in the way she loved best—through the eye of her camera. He imagined standing there with her in a year or two, when the war was over. Her hand in his. He imagined standing there in a decade, directing a child’s gaze upward and saying, “You know your mother’s photo of this? It was one of the first things she ever gave me.”
Sentimental fool, that’s what Evgeni would call him. But he’d say it with a smile and a teasing elbow in the ribs.
Hall nodded. “You have quite a champion in that young lady. You’d have been properly impressed with the arguments she presented in your favor last night, I think. Her photography equipment is, as a matter of fact, being moved back to the OB as we speak.”
Pulse kicking up as if he were halfway through a sprint, Zivon straightened. “The captain has permitted this?”
His guest chuckled. “By the time she finished explaining how her work is hindered by not having access to her archives, he was offering to transport it all back himself—with the stipulation that she promise to avoid you, of course.”