The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(18)

“What the—?” Maggie said, still disoriented. “No, I don’t need a bath—no, thank you!” The cat’s tongue was starting to catch on the long red strands, and he couldn’t get them out of his mouth. He shook his head repeatedly. She pulled out the offending hairs from his mouth and sat up. “Are you trying to groom me?” she demanded of her small companion. She had to admit it was pleasant to have company; no more Sister Anne in the Tower.

The cat regarded her with concerned eyes. “Meh.”

She scratched him under his chin and he leaned into her, purring. “Look at us,” Maggie said, unsure of what to say to him. She’d never had a pet before. “Two broken-down and battered creatures. Red-haired strays. Kindred spirits?”

The creature blinked, not at all impressed with her self-pity or sentimentality.

“Oh, so it’s stiff-upper-lip then, I see. Good, you’re a proper British moggie through and through—I like that.” Maggie reached for her tattered flannel robe. It was freezing in her small bedroom. She stood up and put on heavy slippers, then pulled the blackout curtains open.

It didn’t make much difference to the way the room looked: It was bare as a nun’s cell, with only a postcard of Robert Burns’s Diana and Her Nymphs that the previous occupant had left, and E. T. Bell’s Men of Mathematics, an old battered volume of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and a borrowed copy of T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. On the floor next to the bed was a bag full of the knitting Maggie had started since she’d returned from Berlin—socks for soldiers, which she knitted with the Morse code for “victory” around the cuff.

The clock on the night table said it was just before 6 A.M., but it would be at least two more hours until the sun rose. This perpetual darkness of winter in Scotland isn’t helping things … Her fingers found the hard outline of the bullet. It was still there, becoming even more prominent as it worked itself closer to the surface of her skin.

The higher-ups at Arisaig House said that she’d earned having a private flat in the gardener’s dwelling, as opposed to rooming with the other instructors in the main house, because she was the only female. But Maggie knew it was also because of the nightmares.

And the screaming.

The rooms were over the gardener’s flat, but had its own entrance. Maggie had three rooms: a bedroom, an efficiency kitchen and small table with two chairs, and a W.C. During the short winter daylight hours, she could look out mullioned windows for a view of one of the sheep-dotted fields, as well as the snow-covered mountains in the distance. If she craned her neck a bit, she could see the blue-gray waves and rocky shore of the loch.

The tabby peered at Maggie with large green eyes. “Hmm,” she said to him, peering back. “I suppose you’d like your breakfast now?”

The cat blinked, and rubbed against her. “You know that word, don’t you?” Maggie asked, petting his coarse fur. He was rough to the touch, unkempt, but warm. No wonder Mr. Churchill so often slept with Nelson.

She remembered how the Prime Minister had once barked at her, when she was being slow: “This feline does more for the war effort than you do! He acts as a hot-water bottle and saves fuel and power!” She now saw the P.M.’s point. She gathered the cat in her arms and pressed her cheek against his furry back. He had a faint scent, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Like freshly washed sheets hung outside to dry in the summer sun.

She set him down and headed for the loo, closing the door firmly behind her. “Excuse me, I do need at least a moment of privacy, if you don’t mind.” But apparently, the cat did mind, for he scratched at the door until she was finished. When she was washing her hands, he jumped up on the toilet seat and squatted over the bowl.

Maggie was speechless. She stared, and he stared right back with his glowing eyes, as if saying, Woman, did you actually think I was going to use a box? Like an … animal? Maggie shook her head in disbelief, then—giving him the privacy he’d denied her—went down the narrow hallway to the kitchen.

She turned on the kettle and looked through the icebox. There was some leftover stew she’d saved; it would have to do.

The cat trotted out to meet her, proud as could be. “Meh.”

“Here,” she said, putting a saucer of it on the worn wooden floor. “It’s cold, and the cook wouldn’t know what to do with a clove of garlic if one magically appeared in front of her. But—” Maggie turned on the wireless on the kitchen counter. BBC. “—in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war on, Cat.”