This story copyright © 2007 Mia McCroskey
Characters from The Avengers and other sources are the property of their respective owners.
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The cell door opened admitting a gentle gust of fresh air. Steed rubbed both hands over his face to try to clear his vision, which had been uncomfortably blurred for the last few hours. The short man in the lab coat set a tray on the floor and dropped a pile of rags next to it. The wisp of charcoal grey hair combed across his balding head flopped forward when he looked down toward Steed and he habitually adjusted it.
“Get dressed,” he said, then stepped back out between his flanking guards and shut the door. Steed waited for the telltale click of the bolt, then got to his knees. He paused there, gritting his teeth at the aches in his limbs, but determined to stand and walk, not crawl across the room. The tray held a pitcher and glass.
Water. That will help.
He glanced at the camera up in the corner, wondering what sort of torture was coming. The water only made sense – if they didn’t give him some soon he’d turn completely incoherent and go permanently unconscious after that, and what fun would that be? His clothes, for as he struggled to his feet he recognized the rags as the suit and shirt he’d been wearing during the hunt for the IRA bombs, were a puzzle that his strained mind could not begin to fathom.
He drank first, stopping only for a moment to consider whether the water might be poisoned or drugged. If he refused it, they’d have no trouble subduing him and administering their drugs intravenously. He nearly choked on the first sip as it tickled its way down his parched throat. After the second sip he inhaled a long breath, imagining the moisture being absorbed into the tissues of his mouth and stomach. He felt ridiculously invigorated all ready. He finished the pitcher, shutting his eyes to enjoy the sensation of long needed hydration.
Finally he lifted the clothes, giving each piece a desultory shake, his nose wrinkling at their creased, stained state. His briefs tumbled out of the pile and he picked them up with a wry smile. Even after that weekend with Bannister they were cleaner than the pajama bottoms he was wearing now.
Hating donning clothes – even these soiled ones – when his body was so unclean, he forced himself to replace the pajama bottoms with the underwear, suit, and shirt. It was one of his favorites – or had been: light blue with a white pin stripe, French cuffs and a narrow pocket in the collar next to the stay for a set of lock picks. He wasn’t surprised that the picks were missing. And so was the note that he remembered writing in the bar, then tucking into his pocket when he wasn’t able to leave it for someone to find.
But if they had the note then they knew the names of his weekend captors, why had they continued to question him? He stood with his back to the wall, the touch of his clothes unfamiliar against his skin, and tried to guess what was going on. Perhaps they had not found the note. Perhaps it had been removed in the hospital, or fallen out during his escape from Thomas. That was probably it – it was a scrap of paper in a gutter somewhere.
I’ll assume that for now, because it doesn’t make any sense for them to have held me this long if they already knew the answers. Unless they’re just sadistic.
The door opened once more and the man in the lab coat set familiar shoes and socks on the floor and nodded to Steed. This time he did not leave, but stood waiting with his two guardians flanking him.
“Perhaps I could have a chair?” Steed asked, reveling in the way that the water had revived his spirits.
The man’s eyes narrowed and Steed looked down at the shoes with an innocent shrug.
“A gentleman hates to hop on one foot while putting a sock on the other,” he said, “and sitting on the floor is for children.”
The man glanced over his shoulder at one of the guards, who left the room. Steed stood patiently watching the man in the lab coat, who grew increasingly fidgety. It was a small victory, but it further bolstered Steed’s improving mood.
The guard returned with a metal folding chair that he opened and set beside Steed. Steed promptly sat down and put on his shoes and socks, eager to show them that he was in a cooperative mood, false though that impression might be.
When he stood up the man in the lab coat gestured to the guard, who picked up and folded the chair.
“Out and to the right.”
Steed preceded his escort out the door and followed the man’s directions, his mind spinning as he observed doors, cross corridors, vent openings, and light fixtures. There was too much information after so long in the bare room. His addled mind could not begin to form an escape plan, and he knew that his body was too weak to serve him if he tried to overpower the guards.
They came to an intersection of several corridors with two lifts and a telephone on the wall next to them. A clock above the lift doors informed him that it was 1530 – half three in the afternoon. The man in the lab coat pressed the “up” button to summon the lift. Steed openly studied his surroundings, making a show of it because he was now certain of his location and knew that his odds of escaping without help were almost zero. Nutshell might not be invulnerable, but its defenses were certainly up to the task of detaining a single weakened man who was under guard.
The lift arrived and they all got in. Steed noticed that the guard had left the folded chair somewhere along the line and realized that his observational powers were weak – he hadn’t noticed when it happened. Another reason to cooperate. The lift started to rise.
They had started, he noticed, on the forty-second level – the very bottom of the place, and the most secure section. It was originally planned to be the PM’s fallout shelter, although he’d read a recent proposal to rely on airlifting the government out rather than sending them to ground in the face of disaster. For a moment he thought about the IRA bombs. Had government moved into Nutshell that afternoon? He could not recall if the order had been given.
The lift stopped at thirty-seven and they all got out. Once again the man in the lab coat guided him verbally as he walked in front of his escort. His lost memories were coming back now more vividly than they had under Bannister’s drugs. This was Disco’s level, where he had his control center and the security offices. Sure enough, they soon stopped at a closed door in a small seating area. The man in the lab coat picked up a telephone, spoke quietly for a moment, and then hung up the receiver.
The door slid open silently. The man in the lab coat gestured for Steed to enter. Steed looked from the man to the guards, then through the door. Disco’s control room – he remembered it well enough.
This is it then. He must want to do me in himself. And the suit is so they can dump the body without having to dress it themselves.
Belatedly he realized he was thinking of his own corpse.
The door slid shut behind him.
“Please sit down there.”
Disco came around from behind the bank of monitors that rose in three tiers above his desk. He was gesturing at a chair opposite a section of the counter-like desk. Steed sat and waited while Disco stepped into the U formed by the desk and sat down facing Steed, his back to the monitors.
The two men watched one another for a moment, Steed vacillating between curiosity and anger, Disco’s expression typically unreadable. Steed had not had contact with the man in years, but he remembered that about him: He was inscrutable – so much so that Steed had not suspected his involvement in the first security breach here.
“If I had my way, a proven risk like you would be put away forever,” Disco finally said, his hand resting on a thin stack of papers on the desk. Steed could not help looking at them and easily identified the letterhead of the top document: the Home Office.
“Yes, that’s right. A higher authority has intervened.”
“I believe that your investigators have learned all they can from me,” Steed replied. “I know nothing more, and so am no risk to anyone.”
“Is that so?” Disco’s mouth curled into an uncharacteristic scowl. “Is that so?”
Steed frowned, surprised by the other man’s seemingly rhetorical question, and that he’d repeated it as if ruminating on it.
“The security risk that was exploited years ago was also eliminated back then, and subsequent inspections of the facility have not revealed any others. My abductors learned nothing useful from me.”
Disco rose and the door slid open.
“You are free to go.”
Steed stood up too, stunned. One of the guards entered, stopping just behind Steed and to the side.
Disco turned and picked up a manila envelope from the counter behind him.
“Take this. Get out.”
Steed took the bulky envelope and turned toward the guard, who stepped aside to let him pass.
***
Steed blinked several times in the painfully bright light. His hand rose to his face, to stroke the unwanted beard that itched even more than his dirty scalp. By shading his eyes he managed to look around. For a moment he was disoriented – this was not the entrance to Nutshell he remembered. But then it came back to him, about five years ago they had expanded the entrances to allow the lucky ones to get inside faster. This was one of the new entrances.
He was at the top of a wide set of steps that dropped down to the sidewalk. Although it seemed to him from the bright light to be the height of the day, he noticed shadows that confirmed that it was mid-afternoon. Pedestrians in business attire walked with typical brisk gaits toward the nearest tube station a couple blocks away. Cars, lorries, and motorbikes competed for space on the street, moving along slowly between parked vehicles on either side. Still squinting as his eyes gradually adjusted he opened the envelope and found a collection of identification documents, all freshly minted, and his wristwatch. He flipped through the cards without removing them from the envelope, his eyes widening at the familiar crimson of his red top security clearance card.
“Stee-ed,” she drew out his name: part curiosity, part concern. His eyes snapped up to find the source of the voice. How had he missed her? She was standing next to her Range Rover – their Range Rover – which was parked at the curb. His heart began to race and he felt his throat tighten with kept emotion. Several pedestrians crossed between them, preventing her from coming toward him. He dragged his eyes from her to the ground to watch his footing as he negotiated the steps. All of his efforts to stretch and exercise had been countered by the lack of food, water, and sleep. It felt like it took forever to get down the ten steps to the sidewalk. But by then there was a gap in the pedestrians and Emma crossed to meet him, slipping her arm through his to lend him unobtrusive support back to the car.
She said nothing as she opened the car door and helped him in, then went around to the driver’s side and got in herself. He settled into the comfortable seat and let his head fall back, rolling it to the side to gaze at her once she was seated beside him.
“God you’re beautiful,” he said, although her face looked drawn and pale. There were dark circles under her eyes, concealed with makeup but visible nonetheless.
“So are you.” Her melodic tone was so joyful he had to smile.
Emma tried not to be shocked at how rumpled he looked, at the odor of sweat, fear, and tension that emanated from him, and at the salt and pepper beard and mustache that concealed most of his face. She knew he must hate it. Despite all of it she did what she had needed to do for the last week. She caressed his cheek with one hand and leaned in to kiss him. He stiffened for a moment as if he didn’t want her to come so close, but she insisted and as soon as their lips met he relaxed, responding to her kiss weakly, but with spirit.
She ended it, pulling away slightly to peer into his eyes from beneath her long lashes. Devotion, desire, worry, and relief were all there in her eyes. His heart ached with the realization that he was really, truly free.
She nodded silently, as if confirming his realization, then straightened in her seat and started the car.
“We’re going to the penthouse,” she said. “The children and Siobhan are there. I thought you might not be up to the drive home.”
“How did you know?”
“To meet you? I was informed.”
Emma was determined not to explain her role in his release until he had recovered. Although she had no regrets about her actions, she suspected that he would react strongly, and possibly negatively, to her use of his “insurance policy.” He was more likely to accept her judgment after a bath, a long sleep, and a meal.
She drove through the rush-hour traffic with detachment, very soon directing the Range Rover into the entrance to the underground garage at the Knight Industries building. She parked in the space nearest the lifts, labeled with her name, and got out. Before Steed had time to move she was opening his door.
“Forgive me Mrs. Peel, I’m afraid I’m not myself,” he said as she helped him out.
“You’re not quite well darling. No need to apologize.”
In the lift she pressed her thumb to the button labeled PH that had a lock next to it. The doors slid shut and the lift began to ascend.
“You left it unlocked?” Steed asked, knowing that the button would not work unless the lock next to it was set to allow it.
Emma held up her thumb and flashed him a puckish smile. “The button is a biometric sensor,” she replied. “It unlocks to my thumbprint.”
“Very nice,” Steed replied, more impressed at her personal use of the technology developed in her company’s labs than of the technology itself. “Pity I still have to carry the key.”
“In point of fact, you do not,” she replied, her expression turning ever so slightly guilty.
“Oh?” His voice was apprehensive.
“I had your thumbprint programmed as well.”
“And where did you get my thumbprint?” he asked as a matter of form. Of course she had more than ample opportunity.
“Off of a glass.”
“You know that it’s against the law to collect the fingerprint of a member of the secret service?”
“It is not!” she countered rather childishly.
Steed shrugged weakly. “Well it should be.”
Emma grinned again and slipped her arm around his waist as the lift stopped with a bounce and the doors began to slide open.
Steed felt a flash of guilt for being glad that the children were not in the large, raised sitting room, visible from the elevator vestibule. Emma helped him up the steps and across in front of the hearth to the alcove on the far side and into their bedroom.
“Bath or bed first?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“A shower. If I get in the bathtub I won’t get out. I can undress myself,” he said, pushing her hands away from his shirt buttons. She stepped back but did not leave.
“You’re going to watch,” he said wearily. There was nothing seductive in either of their behavior. He shrugged off his suit coat.
“I want your clothes.”
“You think I’m going to put them back on and leave?” he asked, handing her the coat and starting on the shirt buttons.
She did not reply.
“You do think that,” he said, accusingly.
“I do not, but I don’t want to take any chances. Do you know with certainty that they did not hypnotize you and plantinstructions in your brain?”
Steed glowered at her as he handed her his shirt and began on his trousers.
“No,” he admitted. She nodded, not victoriously but simply in acknowledgment.
“Someone else recently commented on my extreme caution. I’ll tell you what I told him: I was taught by the best.”
He dropped his trousers and underwear to the floor and stepped out of them. Emma bent to pick them up, careful not to examine his nude body for wounds and bruises – there was time for that later. He stepped into the shower and turned it on and she left with his poor clothes bundled in her arms.
She returned thirty minutes later. Steed was seated on the toilet, his torso wrapped in one of their oversized bath towels, his elbows on his knees, the small scissors from her dresser in his hand. He started as she came in, and she saw an alarming streak of desperation in his eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked, unwilling to believe he was contemplating self harm with the scissors.
“Mrs. Peel,” he sighed, his tone so unhappy it made her heart ache. “I can’t seem to do this.”
“Do what John?”
“Trim this disgusting beard enough so that I can shave. I’m so weak I can’t manage the scissors.”
“Is that all? Here, let me,” intensely relieved Emma took the scissors and dropped to her knees on the tile floor in front of him. She dragged another towel off of a rack and draped it over his knees. Then she took the scissors from him and tilted his chin with her left fingers so that she could trim away the half inch of beard. Completely comfortable with being barbered, he held perfectly still. He shut his eyes and she might have thought him asleep if he weren’t sitting up. When she had snipped off as much as she could she picked up the electric shaver that he’d left on the counter. When she flicked it on his eyes popped open and he eyed her warily, but his expression contained a hint of amusement this time.
“Hold still,” she warned him unnecessarily. He shut his eyes again.
“Perhaps a warm, moist towel first?” he suggested.
“Perhaps the shower provided enough steam,” Emma countered, pausing to regard the fogged mirror.
Steed smiled, deeply relieved to experience the familiar banter that was a hallmark of their relationship. They challenged one another’s affectations when they were excessive and encouraged them when they suited one another’s goals or desires. But no matter what was said, there was always underlying devotion and support.
Emma manipulated the electric shaver with an almost expert touch that made him wonder how she had learned it. He supposed that she was so intimately familiar with his face she must know it’s every curve and valley. He knew hers as well, he realized as she finished the job and shut off the shaver.
“See how that feels,” she said, getting to her feet. He rubbed his bare chin with both hands and sighed contentedly.
“Perfect,” he purred. A bottle clinked on the counter and Emma’s hands returned to his face. She patted his shaved skin with his favorite aftershave. He inhaled deeply of the crisp citrus scent and reveled for a moment in the tingling sensation.
“Thank you darling,” he said, looking up into her eyes. He saw that she was still concerned, but not terribly so. She smiled down at him even so, and the expression warmed him as always.
“Food or bed?” she asked.
“I can’t stay awake to eat,” he replied with a sad shake of his head. She nodded and offered him her hand. He started to rise, then stopped as he felt the towel on his lap shift.
“Oops,” she said, grabbing it by both sides to gather it without spilling his shorn beard onto the floor. She put it on the counter and helped him up, slipping her arm around his waist to walk with him out into the bedroom. A viewer at that intimate moment would not have known how much support she leant him as they moved across the room to the bed, which she had turned down for him. He dropped his other towel and got in between the sheets naked. Emma did not comment. He slept naked often enough, and she understood that his profound exhaustion made stopping to put on pajamas nearly impossible.
She smoothed the sheet and blanket over him and bent to kiss him.
“Lie down with me Emma,” he muttered.
“Go to sleep Steed. I have to see to the children’s supper.”
“I need you.”
“I know. I’ll be here with you in a few minutes. Go to sleep now.”
His eyes were already shut, his face assuming the innocence of a small child. She kissed his temple and straightened, switching off the light. The similarity to the ritual of putting their son to bed was not lost on her.
Two hours later she returned having nursed Elizabeth and helped Siobhan feed John. Both children were now in bed in the second bedroom. Elizabeth was fretting already for not being in her mother’s bed for the first night in more than a week. Emma felt a twinge of guilt about it, but not enough to regret her actions. Even if Elizabeth did give up and go to sleep, she would wake them all soon enough for her next feeding.
Emma changed into a thin negligee with lace and spaghetti straps, realizing it might as well be a flannel nightgown, and slipped into the bed. Steed was on his side facing away from her. She molded herself to his back, working her arm around his waist and up his chest, pressing her lips to the back of his neck. He was warm and solid, so much more satisfying than tiny Elizabeth. How amazing, she reflected, to be so accustomed to sleeping with him that it almost hurt to be separated.
***
“All right, patience my ravenous darling.”
Emma had piled pillows behind herself and was sitting up on her side of the bed, adjusting her dressing gown in order to nurse the fretful Elizabeth.
Steed lay quite still, eyes open only a slit as he watched in wonder. This was the finest dream yet, and the worst in that it would end in a flash and the bed would become the hard floor again.
Emma glanced down at him and smiled, able to detect his wakefulness despite his attempt to conceal it.
“Perhaps you are also my ravenous darling,” she said, adjusting her hold on the baby in order to reach over and caress his cheek.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?”
She smiled, lustrous eyes drawing him stiffly up onto one hand so that he could look down at his baby daughter. She held firmly to her mother’s breast, tiny cheeks expanding and contracting, eyes contentedly shut.
“She’s quite an eater,” Emma said, “and she just keeps growing.”
“Elizabeth,” Steed sighed, raising his hand to cup the back of her head, then withdrawing it, afraid to touch her. “My little girl.”
He looked into Emma’s eyes and saw joy, pride, and something else that he could not identify. It was a quick flicker of something close to fear, and it puzzled him. But then he looked back at the baby and forgot all about it. His mind was still too weary to keep track of more than one thought at a time. He was at his most vulnerable, and fortunate to be in Emma’s capable hands. There was, he realized with mild astonishment, no one else in the world he could trust as he trusted her.
***
“I don’t care to hear your objections to breakfast,” Emma set a bed tray over Steed’s legs. It was arrayed with fruit, toast, ham, scrambled eggs, fried tomato, and a bowl of oatmeal. It looked to his starved eyes like enough food to feed a small platoon.
“I’m not sure I can master all this --.”
“At least taste everything. It’s a balanced meal, and you need all of it. I know you’re not a fan of oatmeal, but at least have a taste.”
He dipped the spoon into the cereal first to get it over with. She watched him consume it and smiled happily when he took another bite. The flavor of bland oatmeal – no doubt prepared by Siobhan for the children – was heavenly. He had never noticed the earthiness, the dash of salt, the isolated sweetness of raisins against the texture of the softened oats. It was a revelation. He forced himself to stop after three bites and move on, appreciating Emma’s effort to provide balance and knowing he would not be able to eat much.
“When you’re through I thought we’d bundle everyone into the car and drive home.”
“Home,” he nodded, picking up the fork in order to try the eggs. Emma continued to watch him.
“You know where home is, don’t you?”
His head shot up and he frowned at her, but recognized genuine concern and considered her question. With it other questions popped to mind, about his release and detention. He shut his eyes, wanting to ignore them but knowing that he mustn’t.
“My memory is fine, Mrs. Peel. In fact, it’s better now than it was before I – before.”
“Before you allowed Bannister to inject you with experimental drugs.”
Steed managed to swallow the bite of ham in his mouth without choking on it. He picked up the glass from the tray and took a gulp of juice. Then he noticed that Emma had omitted coffee or tea from his meal – no stimulating caffeine. A new question rose to the top of the confusing pile: What was Emma’s involvement with his release?
“We need to talk.”
“We certainly do. But I have my priorities, and your recovery is at the top of the list.”
“But Bannister --.”
“Knows you are safe, and still in possession of your memory – you are, aren’t you?”
“I just said I am.”
“No need to snap,” Emma’s reprimand was mild, but stung anyway. He felt himself shrink against the pillows and recognized a Pavlovian reaction to an order. There’s a bad habit I’ll need to break.
“I contacted Bannister last night,” she went on, thinking of the surprise in the MI5 agent’s voice when she’d told him that Steed was now in her care. “There was a tape of your weekend ramblings that his friend Reggie Thomas got away with. Bannister still hasn’t recovered it, although he has Thomas. Without the tape and you Bannister had no credibility. Now that you’re free he can act on his hunch about Disco without having the tape.”
Facts started to spin in Steed’s head. Emma knew far more than she ought, but then, why did he think that she would not have been investigating while he was being held? Bannister had confided in her – surprising, but not impossible if he thought she might be of use. Hah – he was probably surprised at just how effective she was! But Steed himself still was not certain exactly what role his wife had played, or was still playing. That made him uneasy. In their working relationship, he was almost always the one with all of the cards.
“And what do you know about Disco?”
“I think he’s planning to hijack some secret files.”
“So did Bannister.”
“Yes. Do you agree with him?”
Steed sighed, a sharp exhale of frustration as he speared a piece of melon with his fork.
“It’s as good a conspiracy theory as any. Disco was certainly not happy to release me.”
Emma watched him pick another piece of fruit and stare into the middle distance as he chewed. She did not want him to think about this much more, or he’d begin to ask the questions she was not yet ready to answer.
“I’ll get some clothes out for you – I’ve sent your suit and shirt to the cleaners.”
“What day is it?”
“Monday – you turned up a week ago.”
“Only a week?”
“It’s like the old joke,” she said, opening the closet doors to survey the selection of clothes that he kept in the penthouse. Eveningwear for the most part, for going out in town.
“I spent a year inside Nutshell one week,” Steed replied.
She looked back over her shoulder with a surprised grin and he returned it. The food and rest are helping already they both thought.
She laid a shirt, cable knit jumper, and tweedy trousers at the foot of the bed.
“John wants to see you. Do you think you’re ready?”
“For my son? Certainly!”
Emma’s eyes narrowed at him as if she were wondering if he was really all there. But she picked up the breakfast tray and set it on the dresser out of harm’s way, then went to the bedroom door.
She returned a moment later, walking stooped as she held both of John’s hands above his head to help him walk awkwardly into the room. Steed watched mesmerized.
“Da!” the small boy cried out, pulling away from Emma. He took two steps, then his foot caught on the pile of the carpet and he toppled forward.
“Oops!” Emma intoned, her voice showing no hint of alarm. John’s small face scrunched up for a moment as if in preparation for a yell, but softened once more as she stood him back on his feet with a soothing sound and kissed his temple. Steed marveled at her influence over the child, then reconsidered. A soothing word and a kiss from Emma could stop him from throwing a tantrum too.
She lifted John up on to the bed and into his father’s arms, then busied herself removing the breakfast tray.
When she returned father and son were deep in conversation, one side expressed in deep, gentle tones, the other in little squeals and giggles, and through hands exploring father’s face.
Emma paused in the doorway watching. Just a few years ago it would have seemed the most unlikely reunion. But now it was a testament to the master spy’s flexibility and her own tenacity. John Steed had a lot to live for, and fortunately for him his wife had the wherewithal to help him do so.
***
The drive to their country house and subsequent installation of Steed in their bed wore him out. He drifted off to sleep before the questions that still nagged at him could be voiced, and awoke some hours later to find the room lit by a cheerful fire in the hearth, books and periodicals to hand and a plate of cold chicken and a glass of – shudder at the thought – milk on the night stand. The windows were dark and he realized with some annoyance that he’d been allowed to sleep the day away.
He threw aside the covers and swung his feet to the floor, then sat there waiting for his head to stop spinning. It had not occurred to him until that moment that he should see a doctor. But it was out of the question. He could not trust any ministry physician, and he was prohibited from using any others except in dire emergency.
Is it dire when your own people allow you to be betrayed?
It then occurred to him that he had not heard from Mother – unless Emma had not conveyed a message. That was the most worrisome thing of all. Am I still on the outs? Does he know that I’m here?
His increasing concern was interrupted by the door opening a crack, and then fully to admit Emma.
“How do you feel? Better I suppose, since you’re sitting up.” She said as she crossed the room. When she was half way to the bed Steed noticed the figure standing in the doorway. She noticed his glance and her expression turned ever so slightly defiant. Puzzled, he stood up and turned to face her.
“You have a visitor,” she said, reaching out to him. She took his hands in both of hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. “This is Doctor Bergman. I asked him to come see you.”
“Emma I can’t --.”
She interrupted his husky stage whisper by half turning and beckoning the man into the room.
“You have already been examined by Dr. Bergman,” she said.
“What?”
“Good evening Mr. Steed. I attended to you in the hospital last week. You wouldn’t remember,” the doctor explained as he set his black leather valise on the end of the bed.
Steed forced himself to relax. “Good evening doctor. Then I suppose I owe you my gratitude for your services.”
“Perhaps you should withhold it, for it was I who allowed those fellows to remove you from the hospital. I understand from Mrs. Steed that your care since then has been poor.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Why don’t you sit back down and let Dr. Bergman examine you, darling?” Emma suggested as if proposing a drive in the country.
Steed eyed her warily, trying to decide whether she was joking. But clearly she was not, and now he understood the defiance of a moment ago. She was determined that he be examined, but she knew that he would not visit a ministry doctor. Did she, he wondered, fully understand why? Didn’t she mention talking to Bannister? Could she know that he’d been brainwashed by his own people some time in the past? Had she mentioned speaking to this Dr. Bergman too? He still could not sort out the real memories of the last twenty-four hours from the dreams.
But whatever her motivation, Emma had found a solution for his problem of medical care. He sat down on the bed and gestured to the doctor. Emma smiled proudly as if he were young John behaving properly, and stepped aside.
“One of your associates helped me track down Dr. Bergman,” she said as the doctor took out a stethoscope and nodded for Steed to unbutton his pajama top. Steed cocked one eyebrow at her inquisitively, but she just smiled enigmatically. “Your trail had been obscured, but not completely so. Dr. Bergman expressed regret that you had been removed from his care. I thought he might be pleased to know that you were back at home.”
Steed looked curiously up at the doctor, who had finished pressing the cold plate of his stethoscope against Steed’s chest and was just removing a small torch from his bag.
“I knew who they were – that is, that they were security service of some sort,” he said as he gently turned Steed’s head to the side and had a look inside his ear. I didn’t like to think what they were going to do to you. And I knew what had already been done.”
“And what was that?” Steed asked.
At the foot of the bed Emma winced, knowing that Steed was testing the doctor. The doctor turned Steed’s head the other way to examine the other ear.
“You were administered quite a cocktail of somewhat experimental drugs designed to stimulate memory and suppress inhibitions. You had been in a fight, perhaps beaten. And you never regained consciousness while you were with us.”
“Dr. Bergman has consulted for some of your people,” Emma said. “Otherwise the compounds in your bloodstream would have been a mystery to him.”
“So of all the doctors in greater London, I happened to be taken to the one who could identify top secret experimental compounds in a blood test,” Steed summarized, facing the doctor who flashed the light directly into his left eye, then flicked it to the side.
“Not the only one, I shouldn’t think,” the doctor said. “But one of only a few.”
“I don’t like coincidences.”
“Steed.”
The doctor switched off his light and motioned for Steed to lie down. Steed stared at Emma.
“Do you know what they did to me?” he asked her.
“Last week?”
“No, before last week. Did Bannister explain?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Bergman’s head turned from one to the other, following the conversation without understanding it.
“How can I trust any doctor associated with the security services?”
“How can you trust any doctor not privy to your work? The Hippocratic oath does not cover confidential mutterings of a half conscious spy.”
“Perhaps I should come back another --.”
“No!” Both Steed and Emma responded in unison, and then smiled at one another.
“I’m being a fool doctor. My wife was right to contact you – after all, you have my most recent case history.”
“And your best interests in mind, Mr. Steed. I was sincerely unhappy about your predicament.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Three.”
Steed watched Emma watching him as he stretched out on the bed and allowed the doctor to continue his examination. He was poked and prodded, and asked a multitude of questions. Finally the doctor stepped away from the bed and looked up at Emma, who had moved to the opposite side during the examination.
“You are dehydrated, you have multiple healing bruises, your left hand is recovering from a sprain, and you are still suffering the residual effects of the drugs. But given that, you are in remarkable condition, Mr. Steed. I thought so a week ago, even though you were unconscious.”
Steed’s pride at this compliment that stroked a very sensitive portion of his ego nearly made him glow. He pulled himself up to sit against the headboard, face beaming.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to draw some blood – run those tests again and see if any of those drugs are left in your system.”
Steed’s glow dimmed just a little. He looked at Emma, who shrugged, eyes widening. Steed rolled up his pajama top sleeve and presented his arm to the doctor.
“Draw away doctor. I’m curious to know what you find myself.”
Dr. Bergman shot Steed a quizzical look as he took a plastic syringe and a length of rubber tubing from his bag. He wrapped the tube around Steed’s arm above the elbow, found a vein in the joint, and filled the syringe all so quickly it was done before Steed noticed the prick of the needle.
“Thank you doctor,” Emma said, noticing that Steed now looked a bit pale and forcing herself to look away. “If you’re through, I’ll show you out. Be right back darling.”
A few minutes later she returned and found Steed sitting in bed working on his second piece of chicken, a cloth napkin spread over the bedclothes.
“So what’s the real story?” he asked as she joined him on the bed.
“The real story?”
“What did the doctor tell you once safely out of my earshot? Why the blood test?”
She smiled at him and he could see she’d been expecting him to ask.
“That you should be kept in bed for a few more days and forced lots of liquid. And to come see him in a week’s time for the test results. And he said again that your excellent physical condition is what saved you from much worse injury and longer ill effects from the drugs.”
“Did he,” Steed sighed happily, setting the cleaned drumstick back on the plate. Emma smiled ruefully, regretting reinforcing that particular message. Not that she objected to Steed’s dedication to keeping fit. “And did he mention when I might be allowed to --?”
“No he did not, nor did I ask.” She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. “Somehow I suspect that you’ll know. And I’ll be waiting.”
***
Mother called the following morning and informed Steed somewhat tersely that he was officially on leave subject to a medical examination to be conducted on Thursday. He offered no other information, just a bleak silence when Steed asked about Bannister and Disco. Although he’d called on the secure line, Steed was left with the clear understanding that further discussion was either not desirable or simply not possible. Why no debriefing? He wondered anxiously.
He picked up the secure phone and dialed Bannister’s number; Mother had not prohibited him from contact with other agents. When an answering machine took his call he paused for a moment, considering, and then hung up. Time might be short, Disco’s plan could already be in motion. But for the first time in his career Steed didn’t care. If Bannister needed him he could seek him out. Otherwise let him handle his own case from now on.
Emma found him a while later sitting behind his desk in the study staring out the window at the bright spring grass. Despite her entreaties that he stay in bed he’d insisted on dressing and moving around the house. It seemed as if he was taking inventory of his life through the rooms that they had acquired and filled together. Sensing his contemplative mood she slipped in and settled, one leg under herself, on one of the chairs across from his desk. She was curious about Mother’s call; she would not ask, but she hoped he would tell her anyway.
“I feel suspended,” he said, turning in his chair to face her.
“Mother suspended you?” she misunderstood.
“No, he has put me on leave pending an examination. Standard procedure. I feel suspended – dangling between the past and a future I can’t control.”
A wave of apprehension shook Emma and she drew up her other leg, catching the heel on the edge of the chair and wrapping her arms around it. Steed was watching her, but his blank expression seemed not to see the awkwardness in her movements.
“You said they called to tell you when to pick me up.”
Emma nodded. She had to tell him – if only to clear her conscious. He would not let go of the puzzle of his release until he solved it, and if he guessed at her actions he would be far angrier than if she told him.
“I knew where you were, and that you were to be released,” she said. His brow creased in a slight frown.
“You knew where --,” he paused, and then smiled. “ – because of Bannister. He contacted you, told you his suspicions.”
“Yes. But even before that I knew about your meeting with him and Reggie Thomas in the bar in the docklands. Can you guess how?”
“I’m at a loss, Mrs. Peel,” Steed paused, considering the one possibility and then discarding it. “It’s impossible,” he said to himself, not to her.
“Not impossible, only improbable,” she replied. For some reason his use of her old name, not an uncommon event, warmed her deep inside. They were Still Steed and Mrs. Peel. Still the debonair, cunning, master spy and his brilliant, charming amateur partner. She felt herself smile at the mental image, not at all embarrassed at the self aggrandizement because it really wasn’t – the description had been used by their colleagues and enemies for years. She rarely identified herself as brilliant.
Steed’s curious expression made her smile widen, further banishing, if only temporarily, the anxiety over what she had to eventually confess. Why not share the pleasant news first?
“Before your mutual masters stopped him, Mike was able to find out where you were found. Do you remember?”
His eyes narrowed as he considered it. He was growing weary of her questions about his memory, but she was probably right to do it. A strange vision of his old flat redecorated surfaced and he shut his eyes to try to concentrate on it.
“Good lord, my old apartment. What did they do to it?” His eyes shot open wide, expressive brows arching in horror.
“A vision in florals,” she nodded, smiling that crooked smile of hers.
“You were there.”
“I visited Mr. and Mrs. Parks at five Westminster Mews. I think he was rather pleased to be living in the former home of a spy. She seemed more concerned about you.”
“I can barely remember --.”
“You barged in, asserted your claim on the place, and collapsed. I shouldn’t think the episode made much of an impression on you given your condition.”
“I shall have to send them a note,” he mused. Then his gaze refocused on Emma. “Mrs. Peel, you didn’t happen to find –.”
She was nodding, delighted by his enthusiasm as he understood what she was leading to. “Mrs. Parks had found a crumpled note under the hall table after they took you away. She said they’d gone through your pockets. She thought it must have fallen out and they didn’t notice.”
“But why didn’t they post it to you like it said?”
Emma chuckled, shaking her head at his absurd indignation. He frowned.
“Really Steed, a hysterical man who’s been taken away by the police drops a note on their floor and you expect them to post it because it says to?”
“Well, I suppose --,” his face turned determined once more, “why didn’t they turn it over to the police then? Did they explain that?”
“One would think you regret that it came into my hands,” she said quietly.
He sighed, relaxing back into his chair, picking up a gold pen from his desk and tapping it on the blotter.
“It’s all out of my control. Even my written instructions are ignored. I know,” he raised the hand holding the pen, palm out, to silence her, “I’m being unreasonable. Nobody in their situation would actually post the note. So they gave it to you.”
“Without, as Purdey observed, knowing that they were actually doing as the note asked. They knew me as Emma Steed, not Knight.”
He nodded, contemplating the string of coincidences and luck that had placed what he thought was his ill-fated note into exactly the hands he’d intended. For a moment an image flashed before his eyes: Emma in the distance, surrounded by fluttering scraps of paper. “I dreamt that you had it,” he said.
“Pardon?”
He peered up at her, realizing that he’d spoken aloud. “I had a lot of dreams,” he said in such a way that she knew not to question him about them. “I remember seeing you surrounded by scraps of paper like falling leaves. Probably just wishful thinking.”
She nodded, his somber tone rubbing off on her.
“You mentioned Purdey.”
His shift of topic and mood actually took her by surprise for once.
“Yes. Mike recruited her to act as a messenger when he thought they were watching him.”
“Just how deep into this did Gambit get?”
“I’m not sure. He said they caught him trying to find the Nutshell file.”
“That might explain Mother’s reticence. How many other of my agents did you use?”
His slightly amused tone did not support the confrontational nature of his words.
“Just Mike and Purdey. She’s a sharp one, but she needs to learn subtlety, by the way. I specifically told Sally to stay out of it.”
“Yes, she has great potential,” he muttered, obviously thinking about how much trouble his junior agents might be in.
“So you went to the pub?” he finally asked. She had expected it. He needed to reconstruct her actions for himself.
“Yes, with Purdey. We talked with the bartender – not very loquacious – and to a man who is obviously a regular.”
“Well into his cups, filthy raincoat?”
“You remember him!”
“I gave him the coins that I had planned to use to telephone you.”
Emma was silent for a moment, wondering how things might have been different if he’d made that call.
“Why?”
“Bannister asked me not to call anyone. Regrettably, I complied. The drunkard looked like he might remember me if I bought him a round.”
“You really believed what Bannister wanted to do was right?”
“I believed that there was a gap in my memory, put there by my own people. I can assure you I considered backing out more than once that evening. At one of those moments I had the opportunity to write the note. I had intended to leave it at the bar, but Thomas saw me writing it and I had to stick it my pocket like so much confidential trash.”
“It’s probably just as well. I doubt it would have found its way to me from that bar.”
“Perhaps not.” He drifted into contemplation again. Emma waited, arms still around her leg. After a minute or two Steed went on.
“So by the time Bannister contacted you, you already knew about him and Thomas.”
“Yes. And it’s a good thing for him. When he turned up at the gate demanding to see me I might have forcefully evicted him otherwise.”
Steed smiled thinly, knowing it was hardly an empty threat and wondering if Bannister had any idea. “So he told you what had happened – about the memory restoration and Thomas betraying him?”
“Yes, and at first I did not believe that you’d agreed to his plan.”
He nodded and made an embarrassed shrug. “As I said, I reconsidered several times. But I didn’t want to live with the gap in my memory. What else might they have repressed over the years without my knowledge?”
She easily understood his discomfort, which bordered on fear. Knowledge was his stock and trade. She wanted to ask if he regretted the choice now, but she didn’t think she wanted to hear the answer.
“Bannister told you he believed I was inside Nutshell,” he returned to his reconstruction of the events that had brought her to Nutshell’s door.
“And I confirmed it myself.”
“How?”
She glanced at the phone, “Mother created a legend for me. I went to Nutshell and reviewed Disco’s file transfer logistics with him.”
Steed was astonished, but not at Mother’s complicity. His supervisor had always had a soft spot for Emma’s charms. “Disco confessed to holding me?”
“Certainly not. He was barely tolerant of my use of his time. I saw you on the security monitors while I was entering the facility. By the time I left I knew that there was nothing Bannister could do about Disco as long as you were being held, and there was nothing Bannister could do to get you released. It was up to me.”
Steed straightened up, leaning his forearms on the desk. His expression was a mixture of confusion and pride: pride at her unflagging devotion, confusion at the larger situation.
She knew that he would never question her determination to fight for him, nor her ability to act. And she could tell he had not yet guessed at what she was about to confess.
“Reggie Thomas attacked me when I left Nutshell,” she said although she had not planned to. She immediately regretted it as manipulative, knowing he’d be concerned for her and that it might soften his reaction to her coming confession. As expected, his eyes widened with alarm.
“I sent him packing,” she said, seeing no need to explain about the other man who’d come along and interrupted their skirmish. “But I knew, then, that Bannister was right – Thomas was working for Disco looking for any agents who might know something about Nutshell that would interfere with their plans. I wasn’t sure whether they knew who I was, or if my cover itself was enough to threaten them. I’m still not sure. They have more authority than Mother – something is very wrong there, Steed: he could not speak of it with me openly. I could not see a way to foil them from within the intelligence community.”
Steed sat quietly for a long moment and she tried to guess what he was thinking: annoyance that she’d been running his agents in his stead? Or had he guessed at where she was leading the discussion?
“How did you make them release me?” His voice was flatter than she had ever heard it. She shut her eyes, constructing her response.
“You spoke to someone in the Home Office,” he went on as if to encourage her, although his tone was far from enthusiastic. He suspects. She swallowed hard and nodded.
“Sir Alec, the deputy minister.”
His entire body stiffened. Until she actually spoke the name he had been unwilling to believe what she had done. He still held out a shred of hope – that she had gone to that particular influence-holder for some other reason, and not the one that he suspected.
“What did you say to him?”
“I asked him to intervene on your behalf. He agreed based on the possible damage to his reputation.”
Steed’s face was a mask. His grey stare passed through her, unseeing.
“I showed him a photocopy. He returned it to me.”
There. She’d said it.
“My insurance,” he whispered, his bleak stare more painful than a blow. Regret flickered over his face – regret that he’d told her about it, she knew, and that hurt even more. Never before had he regretted giving her his trust.
“An extraordinary situation called for extraordinary measures.”
“It was my safety net. My last resort.” His voice rose in an anger that he had rarely directed toward her in all their years together. “Its true – I no longer have control. You cashed it in.”
Her anger suddenly expanded to meet his. Resentment combined with the growing dread she’d been feeling since she picked him up at Nutshell strengthened her defensiveness. Guilt for her actions despite her firm belief that she had done what she must compounded it.
“Yes, your last resort – or were you working on an escape plan that you could have executed while half dead?” She snapped. Releasing her anxiety felt good until his anger blossomed. His stormy expression was matched by a fearsome deep growl.
“I have succeeded for nearly three decades without resorting to using that document. I show it to you and within a year you have made it useless.”
“It is not useless just because he knows you have it!”
“I’m exposed now --.” She stood up abruptly and he stopped speaking. A shadow of what could only be fear crossed his face. She realized that she could probably best him at the moment. And then she pondered his apparent concern that she might be about to resort to a physical response. It was unthinkable, of course. How very male of him for it to even occur to him, she thought with uncharacteristic venom. She glared down at him. The anger of the moment seemed grossly incongruous in the face of the argument she was about to make.
“Perhaps I was selfish. But I have already faced this particular loss and I could not face it again knowing that there was a chance I could prevent it,” she said, biting back the further comment that sprang to mind: now I’m not so sure it was the right decision myself.
Steed peered up at her, his silence begging for an explanation, his anger at least temporarily moderated.
“The day that I left you for Peter,” she began and he winced as if her mention of losing him had not reminded him of that time, as if he’d forgotten it and the impact it had had on their lives. Emma turned away from him and strode across the room toward the cold hearth before going on.
“I sat in the dark on the front porch of the inn where he’d taken me. He was inside waiting for me to come to him. I would go – I had to. But I wasn’t ready. I sat on the porch watching the drive waiting for you to come, all the while knowing that for the first time you would not – could not – rescue me.
“I mourned you, Steed, for you might as well have been dead to me and I had loved you more than anyone, more than myself. It made no difference that it had been my choice. For that hour I regretted not rebuffing Peter and staying with you – if you might have had me – damn the gossips and scandal mongers. I would have done anything to avoid that grief. But there was nothing I could do but live through it, and swallow it down before going to my husband.”
“I was drunk that night,” he said, scrubbing at his face with his hands, the absence of the beard still a pleasant sensation.
“That’s me, you know: using numbness to avoid the emotional pain.”
“I know.”
He stared at her for a moment, recognizing acceptance, not accusation, in her reply.
“I had to face it eventually, and it was no less painful for having been deferred – only more hopeless. Perhaps if I had not been drunk that night I would have come for you, but by the time I was sober it was far past time for the ignoble gesture.”
“You would not have made it.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I know so. That’s why I grieved. And that’s why I loved you so deeply: you respect me too much to ask me to betray my wedding vows.”
“Loved me?”
“Yes, from nearly our first kiss.”
“And now?”
A frown flickered across her face, and then she understood. She had spoken in the past tense and he questioned her current feelings. Silly ass.
“And now I am so inextricably bound to you that love is an insufficient term.”
Satisfied with the hyperbole of her response, she watched him absorb it with mild amusement. He straightened, put his hands on his knees. But his internal struggle was still raging, and he could not yet come back to her.
“Do you resent it?” he asked, “being shackled to me?”
She cringed at his description. Never had she considered her bond to him to be a restraint. Anger rekindled, she flung a verbal slap back at him:
“No. Do you?”
He stood up, jaw clamped shut over the knee-jerk response that he would never, ever voice. She had broken into his safe, used his insurance policy without his permission. At that moment he wanted to be free, in control. But he would not resort to verbal bullets that could not be taken back.
“No.” He snapped, turning on his heel. He strode from the room leaving Emma wearing a confused frown.
***
Commander whinnied joyfully at the site of his master striding across the lawn to the paddock. Steed’s stride was drawing deep on the physical resources he’d managed to bank over the last three days, but he needed to feel strong. He dug into the pocket of the hacking jacket that he’d grabbed from a hook in the mudroom and pulled out a lump of sugar. Seeing the familiar gesture the stallion trotted over to the fence and extended his head over the high top rail. Steed offered the morsel on the flat of his palm, then reached up to rub behind the horse’s ears with the other hand.
His anger at Emma had already transformed into frustration and a sense of loss, and he could not keep himself from blaming her.
“How could she?” he asked the horse. Commander snorted and jerked his head out of Steed’s hands, sensing his turmoil. He stepped back from the fence, the whites of his eyes showing brightly against his dark coat. Steed climbed the fence and dropped down into the paddock, approaching the horse slowly, hands low and non-threatening. Across the paddock Dancer, Emma’s mare, watched him with what seemed to him to be suspicion. Or perhaps it was contempt.
Commander suffered his touch on his neck, ears swiveling with suspicion. Steed made the most of it, rubbing his hands over the sleek black coat. He worked his way down over the horse’s withers and then along his back. The skin beneath his hands flicked here and there as if his touch tickled.
“It was all that stood between me and them. The only thing I could count on preventing them from using me. Now I’m vulnerable.”
Commander raised one hind leg and dropped it heavily, then swung his head around to nudge Steed’s hip. Steed transferred his stroking to the horse’s favorite spot, just behind his ears.
A snort just behind him startled Steed. Dancer had approached, and now she nudged her head in under his right hand while he continued to stroke Commander with his left.
“Hello girl,” Steed murmured, rubbing the blaze on her forehead in the way he knew that she liked. Jealous, Commander butted his head at her and she half-heartedly nipped back. He snorted, turning his head away. She raised hers and lay it across his withers in a way that emanated affection.
Steed sighed, and turned to look back toward the house.
“We are like two halves of a whole,” he told the horses. “We understand one another, we know one anothers’ needs. But this time,” he shook his head slowly. She has never done anything that I would not do myself, so I have never questioned her methods. How can I doubt her now when I was not in her position?
She was right – he had not had a plan. He had been all but resigned to his failure, and never thought of using the contract. He wondered as he rested his forehead against Commander’s taught neck whether he would ever think a situation was serious enough to play his ace in the hole. Had he held it so close for so long that it had become a relic, too nearly holy to consider using? The very idea of its existence gave him secret powers. And now it’s gone.
No matter that Emma could be right: Sir Alec knowing of it did not alter the facts of his past. Steed’s sense of loss was palpable and he needed to mourn just as she had described herself that night at a country inn. Except she had mourned for loosing him – her lover, friend, partner. What was he mourning? Information?
Secrets. Secrets that I have guarded all these years, because that’s what I do. If she was capable of taking this, what else can she take?
Commander shifted out from under Dancer’s head and turned, putting his cheek next to hers and snorting gently. Watching Steed felt as if he were intruding on an intimate moment.
“I’m a bloody fool. She’s everything to me.” I must learn to accept this change, or lose her and everything we are together.
***
The distinctive ring of his secure phone seemed to be the only sound in the still house when he stepped through the front door a while later. Out of habit he diverted down the hall to his study. The ringing had stopped by the time he reached it and his voice had just concluded his pre-recorded instructions to the caller.
“It’s Bannister. Please call --.”
Steed lunged for the phone before the MI5 agent could finish and ring off.
“Bannister, I’m here,” he gasped into the receiver, shocked at how the quick movement, usually so natural for him, made his head spin.
“Steed, so you’re really there?”
Steed pursed his lips in annoyance and settled into a chair. “Yes Ben, I’m really here, removed from the clutches of the nefarious Disco. I did try to reach you earlier.”
“I’ve been busy, Steed. I recovered the tape from Thomas. The greedy fool was trying to get more from him. I have the green light to put surveillance on the file transfers.”
“Why did Thomas attack Emma?”
“She told you about that?” There was something in Bannister’s voice very close to guilt that puzzled Steed.
“Bannister, none of this makes any sense. Disco wasn’t trying to find out who held me over the weekend, he knew it was you and Thomas.”
“Is that all they asked you about?”
“Yes. Over and over.”
“Well,” Bannister paused leaving Steed to contemplate events with renewed clarity. His interest in Bannister’s current case was almost nil. If he caught Disco with his hand in the files good for him. But it was just as likely that Disco would call off his plot now that Emma had involved the deputy minister. Steed decided not to explain this to Bannister. Part of him was still angry about Bannister’s inept handling of the situation when he, Steed, had been drugged and vulnerable.
“Do you think it was his form of vengeance?” Bannister interrupted Steed’s thoughts. “You foiled his plans years ago, even if you didn’t know it.”
Steed rested his elbow on the arm of the chair, pressing the telephone receiver to his ear as he leaned his head against it for support. The walk back from the stable had been much harder than the walk out, and he had intended to go directly to Emma. Bannister was sapping his strength – stealing the energy that he needed to reconcile with her. And now he had to consider Bannister’s suggestion. Or not.
“Maybe so, Bannister. But what does it matter? You go after him, and phone me if you need me to testify.”
“I’m phoning you now, Steed. You deserve a piece of this.”
“I’m on leave. This is your case, Bannister. Run with it.”
“Seriously Steed –.”
“Good afternoon Bannister. And good luck.”
***
He found Emma in the bedroom, legs curled under her in one of the pair of club chairs facing the fireplace. She was staring at the cold, empty grate. She held a small volume loosely in her hands, open but unread, for the reading lamp between the chairs was dark. To Steed’s eyes the scene was desolate and his heart ached at having created it through his behavior.
He crossed to the mantel bringing the lingering odor of horses and maleness into the room. When her eyes met his their blankness was like a blow. There had been times when she had shut him out, when she had been genuinely angry, and her eyes had conveyed all of her fierceness. At those times he had often been angry as well, and he had feared her and wanted to appease her, to regain her good will, but he had also reveled in her energy and her focused attention.
But these eyes were empty: no anger, barely recognition, only the slightest shadow of fear. They were lifeless in a way that he had never before known. He shivered and turned away from her, immediately feeling like the worst kind of coward for not facing her.
His eyes fell on a pair of photos in a hinged frame on the mantel. Emma holding John; Steed holding Elizabeth. The life he had willingly accepted as the terms for also having her: this woman who had touched his heart at a time when he’d thought it was as dead as those eyes. She had given him new life more than once by challenging him to accept her on her own terms. Each time he had realized that her terms were also his, once he allowed himself to consider what she asked.
But this time – this time she had enacted the change without consulting him. And she had taken something of great value. Something he had never expected to have to sacrifice for her. He wanted the loss to be acceptable. He wanted her and their children, their home and their life together, to be worth the loss. He wanted it with all of his heart. But he needed time to accept it, to analyze his new position, to adapt his behavior accordingly. He could not contemplate what he might do if, after this analysis, he concluded that they were not worthy.
“I am most comfortable with secrets,” he said. “I am comfortable being smugly certain that I know what others do not. I release secrets only at the moment when they will ruin my victim. I use them like little bombs of knowledge that are of no value once they are deployed, so they cannot be turned against me.”
He half turned to look down at her. She was watching him, listening. But she did not react to his words. Her stare remained blank but now he suspected something more in it: expectation. It was up to him, then, to heal this rift. An hour ago he would have lashed out at her once more. She was the one who had sacrificed his greatest secret. But now he realized that she had acted as she thought he expected. And she had, except that he did not know until after she had done so that he might not wish it at all. Which was worse? Losing her and their children? Being held indefinitely? Or returning to his work without the safety net of the secret she had used?
“You are a negotiator,” he went on, accepting responsibility for the moment. “You parcel out bits of information at strategic moments, making your adversary gradually aware of your superior position.”
Her blank eyes followed him as he took the framed photographs from the mantel and carried it to the other chair. He sat down, looking at the pictures held in his lap.
“You did the right thing.” It was the hardest thing he had ever forced himself to say. He still was not sure, but he knew she must hear it or she would listen to nothing else. He looked up at her. The change in her expression was almost imperceptible, except that he knew her every emotion. He could see the relief around her eyes and mouth, and the minute flicker of life deep in her eyes. Guilt swept over him for speaking a half truth; for manipulating her, his one true love.
“I thought I had made this decision,” he said, looking back at the photographs.
“You regret it?” Her voice was an octave high and terribly thin. He had been wrong, he had not successfully manipulated her. She was still desolate, still miserable. His next words, if not carefully chosen, could destroy her world and his with it. I’m being ridiculous. Melodramatic. It’s just a snippet of information, not the secret of the universe.
“Not for a moment Emma,” he said firmly, afraid to look at her. But when he forced himself to do so he saw that she had truly relaxed a little. She shut the open book in her hands and set it in her lap. “It’s just I did not expect to face this; to have to give this up in exchange. It was never part of the deal.”
“That he knows of your information does not alter the fact that you have it,” she said, not for the first time.
He nodded, acknowledging that her argument was valid for a negotiator. But this was not a negotiation.
“He will act now to diffuse its value,” he explained.
“How can he? The facts are what they are. He ordered the execution. He will want to keep the information secret.”
“He is a politician. He will find a way, so that if I should decide to make it public it will not hurt him. And Emma, consider who the other signer is. Would you have him ruined as well?”
Emma’s expression shifted once more, from the heated debate that had returned life to her eyes, to anger – equally lively but also rather frightening.
“Do not suggest that your reasons for regretting the loss of this secret are because of the threat to Edmond,” she hissed.
“I am not,” he replied, failing to keep his voice from slipping into a growl. “It is an unfortunate byproduct. But we must consider it.”
Emma shook her head, lips pursed in frustration.
“Sir Alec knows that all you need to do is place a telephone call to expose his evil past. Whether he is able to diffuse the impact of the contract or not, it will open the flood gates of the fourth estate. They will believe it, and they will find more, and if they can’t they will invent it,” she said. “No, Steed, he cannot erase his signature on the contract and there will always be someone who would use it to destroy him. If anything he must appease you now to prevent you from revealing it. As for Edmond, consider this: he can verify that the contract was drawn, and he was a junior man when he countersigned it. He is as protected by it as you always have been.”
“No, Emma, Edmond has always been as vulnerable as I – we – are now.”
“Are you suggesting that Sir Alec would destroy all three of us to protect himself?”
“I fear that he might.”
They both fell silent, watching one another warily.
“I’m sorry, Steed,” she said at last, true pain in her eyes, which dodged from his down to her lap, and then to the fireplace. “I acted selfishly,” she paused, “They would have released you eventually – in time to take your son for his first term at Eton, or his last.”
Stung by her unexpected sarcasm, Steed looked again at the photographs. Captive he was lost to her, her children, and to himself. Freed he could act, share, love. For her, the sacrifice of his most vital secret was not a sacrifice at all. As he had said, it was simply a negotiating tool. What would her life have been if they had not released him? Raising their children alone in this big old house, that bitterness she’d just expressed would consume her and, in turn, their children. What would he have done were their roles reversed? An arrogant part of him insisted that he would have found some other way. But he knew that Emma was as capable as he, maybe more so, of analyzing every angle of the situation and trying every tactic before resorting to the contract.
“No,” he said, ignoring her sarcasm, “You did the right thing. I was powerless in their custody. Free, I can protect you, and our children, and even Edmond.”
Emma studied him, suppressing the urge to point out the circular nature of the problem once more. You would not need to protect us if I hadn’t revealed the contract. It would get them nowhere, going around and around. She was angry with herself for not seeing things as he would before acting. He was right: as a negotiator, revealing the existence of the secret had been an obvious ploy. She had not had to even hint at blackmail, the implication was obvious. But she had never considered Steed’s attitude –the spy’s attitude: that information is not only secret, but its very existence is confidential as well.
Steed rose and carried the photographs back to the mantel. He set the hinged frame in its place, folding the two halves just enough so that it stood on its own.
“Appropriate, isn’t it?” Emma said quietly, but startling him nonetheless because she had risen and was standing right behind him. The image of Dancer laying her head across Commander’s withers came to him.
The corners of his mouth curled. She had read his mind, or seemed to. He turned to her and they were in one another’s arms in an instant. She lay her head on his shoulder, face turned away from him. The argument was not over, but she wanted it to be.
“Emma please,” he murmured into her hair. “Please give me time to accept it. That’s all I ask.”
She was immobile for a few minutes, arms still holding him tightly, face still turned away. He held her, inhaling the herbal scent of her shampoo and the underlying musky, feminine odor that stirred him even now. He recalled, and squelched as inappropriate, that she had said once that she found him in riding gear, fresh from a ride, very seductive. He had not ridden that afternoon, but his jacket smelled of the horses.
“Please Emma,” he repeated, allowing himself to stroke her hair. As his hand cupped the back of her head she lifted it and turned her face to his.
Her eyes glittered with held tears. “So long as you promise you will,” she whispered huskily.
“I promise Emma.”