It was only natural that they got to know one another. She didn't seem fond of anyone else in Wickerwill, not even the female secretaries who worked on the ground floor; he didn't want her to be lonely; and they were both the youngest of those working in the main office. His guilt over the way Archie had captured her faded somewhat as early summer grew into late. It had been helped by the fact that Eleanor didn't blame Halston for what had happened to her.
"Life is luck," she had once told him, when he'd admitted how he felt responsible for her situation. "Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Eleanor Easton has it pretty good, overall, and you weren't the one who led her here by gunpoint." Patting his hand, she had added, "And she doesn't regret saving you."
She spoke often in that way of herself, as if Eleanor Easton might be a girl that she wasn't, one of the many oddities about her that so thoroughly transfixed him. Her being a year older than he was also lent to his hopeless fancy for her, as it had seemed then a tragically wide span of time between the two of them.
They became unofficial partners, which had also seemed natural. Their desks were already right next to each other, so they might as well be, too. Unless they had gone off to their respective bedrooms for the evening, or Eleanor had to have one of her frequent medical examinations, one of them could never be found far from the other — so much so that those who weren't close to them called them Eleanor and Halston, while those who were close to them preferred Ellie and Hall.
"It makes us sound like a vaudeville act," she said, one rare afternoon when they had time to stroll the estate. The two of them had elected to go along the dirt road that led to one of the farms. The sun was shining, and the few clouds above looked like balls of cotton that someone had shredded and strewn across the sky.
He almost stumbled over his own feet. "You can't mean that."
"Well, it's true."
"Neither one of us is a fire-breathing contortionist, or a ..." Mentioning half-naked women would've been crude, so he changed course. "Or anything like that."
She pursed her lips in the way that she sometimes did when thinking. "Is this one of those moments where we realize that what I mean by 'vaudeville' and what you mean by it are two different things?"
"I should hope so," he said.
Her elbow bumped against his side. "Well, tell me what your version is."
"I-I'd rather not say."
"Oh, that must mean it's something scandalous." She glanced slyly up at him through her eyelashes. "How often do you go see the shows?"
Eleanor laughed and ran away when he protested, saying that she couldn't trust him now. He gave chase, hunting her deep into the greenery that had grown thick and dark and deep half a century ago. She slipped around trees, then between the posts of a broken fence that led to the western pond. He caught her where the willows swayed over the water's edge, taking her around the waist without thinking. She twisted in his hold, and they tumbled together to the grass, the dripping branches closing like a verdant veil around them. He'd only just kept himself from accidentally crushing her.
Had she always been so frail, or did she only seem that way when beneath him? Staying like this wasn't proper. He needed to move, yet he found that he couldn't. Not when her eyes held him as they did. There was a great deal of green in them, those eyes. Green like the leaves around them, and brown like the bark, with a dozen other little flecks of color that he could stare at until the night came.
She stared right back. Her arms and dark hair were sprawled loosely above her head, and her chest rose to press his at the height of her every breath. "You're not the first man who's looked at me that way."
"You're not the first woman I've looked at this way," he said, though that tasted like a lie. The beating of his heart, the hot and cold prickling of his skin, the uncertainty trembling in him like a spiderweb in a gale — all felt new.
Her gaze issued a challenge, as did her next confession. "You're not the first man who's kissed me."
He dipped his head down. But he didn't kiss her. The moment he cherished best was the one before the kiss, when he could see his own anticipation mirrored in the face of another. "I'd like to be the last."
She drew upward. "They usually want to be the first," she said, her breath hot against his mouth.
"That's always seemed dreadfully unfair to me." He brought a hand to the side of her face, stroking her temple with the backs of his fingers. "How could I ask you to wait for me before we'd ever met?"
Someone called his name, then hers. Not far, that voice. Just by the road.
"We could run away," he said. What he had intended as a simple joke took on another meaning as he finished saying it.
Yes, they could run. All she needed to do was tell him to take her from this place. She didn't even have to say it aloud. He would hear it, then they would go. It would be the easiest thing he had done in his life, no matter how hard it would be. They'd leave together. She'd be free of everything.
"They'll find us," she said, and it didn't seem as if she was talking of the voice calling from the road. "Wherever we go, they'll be looking."
"Then we'll run when they think we shan't. When enough time has passed for them to think us loyal. When their eyes turn to other things."
She flung her arms around him, crushed herself to him. Asking him without saying a word if he could promise her the things that he had said. He pressed a kiss against the top of her head to give and seal his oath, one that he should have given months ago. Then the voice called again, and they untangled from each other. They rose, brushing off their clothes. They both had earned grass stains. "We'll tell them we fell," he said. "Like angels."
"Like angels," she agreed, and took his hand. She only let go just before they left the cover of the trees, but he felt it long afterward.
Later, when he would be locked in a dark cell with nothing to do but think, he would know how wrong he had been. The easiest thing he had done in his life wouldn't have been running away with her; it had been falling in love with her. That had been so easy that he hadn't even realized what had happened for months.
* * *
Summer fell into autumn. Throughout all that time, Halston and Eleanor had stolen little more than glances and brief brushes of the hands. Anything more would have been too much of a risk. Others were always milling about, or always needing something to be done. He seemed to be the favored target of such requests. Eleanor was within their sights just as often, having showed herself capable many times in both mathematics and science. She had little squeamishness as well, which was how the two of them had ended up dissecting frogs in one of the smaller wet laboratories during the first week of December — wet laboratories being where wet and disgusting things were examined.
"I'll never get used to the smell," she said, cutting into a fresh specimen on her side of the work table.
He had ceased smelling anything at all, thank God. Occupied by his own frog, he didn't look up from it. "We wouldn't have had to smell this if you hadn't volunteered us for it." He probed the frog with a gloved finger. "Does this stomach look desiccated to you?"
She peered at him, only her eyes showing above her face mask. "Mm ... It looks wrinkled."
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"The insides of things are always wrinkled, in one way or another." An inescapable truth after he had looked at dead things all day. "This one looks like it might be slightly worse off."
She squinted. "It does. A little. Maybe."
"Thank you," he said, "for being completely unhelpful."
The corners of her eyes crinkled. She had to be smiling under her mask. "You're welcome."
He sat back from his table. "Well, that makes it, what — six damaged frogs out of five hundred? Not a bad number."
"Four hundred and ninety-seven," she corrected, "but yes, not a bad number, even if those are just short term effects. There's no telling what will happen on longer dosages, or even if they'll do to humans what they've done to frogs." She sighed, setting her scalpel onto a tray. "That's the trouble with these things you researchers are making from our blood; none of you imagine what might happen fifty — no, not even five years from now."
" 'You researchers,' Ellie?" he said. "We're not your enemies. You and the rest of the volunteers, you're all working with us, so there are no sides to take."
"I'm on your side, and you're on mine," was her instant reply, yet she didn't quite meet his eyes. "As for the rest of the people here, they just need to be careful, that's all. Civilizations have fallen for less."
On her side. Did she really think that? No matter how much he fancied her, he hadn't forgotten that she hadn't really volunteered for any of this. It loomed over him, holding him back from her. How could he ask anything of this girl when he had done so little for her?
"Yes, well, that's why we're testing these new medicines before we use them on people," he said. "So civilization doesn't fall."
His attempt at humor didn't work for either of them, so he returned to cutting open more frogs. She did the same, with less enthusiasm. They finished their work well into the evening after having dissected the last of their dearly departed amphibians, then trudged off into the changing room.
The protective attire they were required to wear had been modeled after what surgeons and nurses wore in operating theaters, which necessitated a place to change in and out of such things. In their case, it was a small changing room located at the entrance of the Fifth Laboratory. Several female researchers had been added to the staff of the first story since he had arrived to Wickerwill, requiring that all changing rooms be divided for the use of men and women. Any time Eleanor had to work in one of the wet labs previously, she had to change solely by herself without anyone being in the lab. Before being divided, the changing rooms had offered little protection from prying eyes. Anyone could've opened the door.
When Halston left his changing room, he found Eleanor ready for him in the narrow waiting area. She gave her hair a sniff, then shuddered. "Frogs," she said. "I smell like frogs. This is horrible."
"If it's any consolation, I can't smell a thing."
She headed out the door first; it led directly into the hallway. "That's because you smell like frogs, too."
"A bath is in order, then."
"Oh, I never like sharing my bathtub."
He jumped, alarmed. "I hadn't meant — that is, I hadn't been implying that you should, that we should —"
She drifted into him, weaving her hand into his. No one else would be in the main office, not at this hour, so they had no reason to fear being seen, but her touch brought him to a standstill, regardless. "You're wonderful when you're flustered," she said, "even if you smell like frogs."
Onto tiptoes she went, and he leant down to meet her. She kissed him until he was dizzy from the touch of her. Then, as always, she ran off before things between them could grow more dangerous than they had already become. As the lift carried them to the ground floor, she clung to him for another kiss, then whispered against his cheek about how her room had a private bath attached to it.
It was with tremendous regret that he turned down the invitation. When she asked him why, he told her that he wished to marry her.
"We might not have the chance for that," she said
His heart rose, because she hadn't objected to his rather unromantic proposal. "We'll be married," he said. "You'll see."
She smiled fondly at him, in the way that a mother might have smiled at a child who still believed in fairies in the bottom of the garden. Her doubt made him more determined than anything else to do right by her. When they left this place, they could follow their hearts.
* * *
In the days that came, they said silly things on their breaks together. "I'd like to see the Alps one summer," or, "I want to visit the Pacific Ocean," or, "It'd be lovely to stroll under cherry trees in the spring."
If they had been anywhere else in the world, all of those sentences would have ended "with you." Instead, they had to imply them by look alone. It was a difficult thing to do when you wanted to wed a girl, or she you. Their closeness only grew more intense as the weather cooled. The staff would be allowed to go home for the holidays. Several of the volunteers, Eleanor included, didn't bother signing the forms to let them leave. In her case, she couldn't, which he hadn't known.
"You can't be serious," Halston said to her, over drinks in the tea room.
"I am," she said, upon which she explained that she couldn't even go into any nearby villages, reminding him again that she wasn't truly a volunteer. The most she had done was walk the grounds outside Wickerwill, something she could do little of in this season.
Halston sought his uncle out at once. "She's leaving."
Archie stood outside his office, looking out at the people working in the main room, though not at anyone in particular. The only one he didn't look at was his nephew. "We both know that shan't happen."
"If she's not a prisoner, then she should be able to at least visit one of the villages." If she could be allowed that, it would make taking her away from this place that much simpler to do.
The word prisoner drew their colleagues' attention. "The work she's doing here is too important for that," Archie said. "Besides, we can't risk her being seen."
"What risk? She's never tried running away, and she's never hurt anyone."
The glare Archie gave him would have made another man give up. But his uncle knew better, so he doled out a meager explanation. "Those of us who aren't besotted fools know that letting her leave this estate is an immeasurable danger."
Besotted also drew attention, much to Halston's dismay. A few snickers joined the looks as well. He hadn't done as good a job of hiding his affection for Eleanor as he'd supposed. Since he was already found out, there was little danger in being direct. "To whom?" he said. "To her? The only danger she's in is by staying here, in a place she's forced to be."
That wiped the smirks off dozens of faces.
Archie folded his arms. "Once again, you've failed to see the larger picture."
"Why don't you enlighten me?"
"Her power is unlike anything this department has encountered," Archie said. "You don't know that because you haven't bothered to learn of it's history. Few of you have done." Several researchers sunk into their chairs, or occupied themselves with work that hadn't been important mere seconds ago. "Even fewer of you even know that this place has a name. It's not official, of course; nothing about us is. But we're called the Cloakroom, for this all started in an office nearly the size of one." He smiled thinly. "It's also a nickname for Churchill's alleged birthplace."
Halston said, "That doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about."
"History is important, especially when you're in the midst of it." Archie leant against the wall of his office. "For as long as mankind has existed, it has sought power. The power of Miss Easton could change the face of this war, not to mention the fate of this world."
The large room had quieted as people listened to Archie speak; of them, only Eleanor kept working, as if she had heard such a speech before. Perhaps she had done.
"Imagine, if you can do so, an army of soldiers with the ability to heal themselves," Archie said. "But shall those soldiers be ours, or Hitler's?" He paused. "That is what is at risk if she is let out of our sight."
A bitter look passed over her face.
"Is that what you've told Churchill?" Halston said.
Archie returned to looking at those in the main office, which set everyone to work again.
"So, you haven't told him." Halston should've known; it was another of Eleanor's truths coming to light. "What would happen if he learnt of it?"
This time when Archie smiled, it was much colder. "Miss Easton isn't here, officially," he said, "so if someone were to tell the old hussar that she were, no one would find a trace of her having been here. She'd simply ... disappear."
The last of any trust or admiration Halston had for his uncle — the barest of threads remaining — now snapped. Madmen had an excuse for any awful things they might do, but Archie was perfectly sane, and completely convinced of what he was saying.
"People would say something," Halston said. "They would remember her."
"The people working here stand for this country," Archie said. "You've let yourself forget that, for some strange reason." His gaze landed on Eleanor for a brief moment. "I suggest that you remember your loyalties — immediately."
In Archie's vocabulary, suggestions were always orders. Halston had no power to contradict them. He had no power at all. None to free Eleanor, none to protect her. They had no chance of running away, not now when everyone was against them. She had understood that long before he had done the same. How useless she must think him. Worse than useless. A man should protect his girl, and yet he could do nothing.
He left the main office, heading into the reference library. He checked every foot of it to make sure that no one was around, then sank into the closest chair. The door opened and closed a few minutes after he had shut himself up in the quiet.
A hand alighted onto his shoulder, frail as a bird.
Halston leant over the table, trying to free himself from her touch. He didn't deserve anything that she could give him. Her fingers hung on gently. "I don't know how you can stand to look at me," he said. "I can't do anything for you, and the bastard keeping you locked up here, he's my uncle. The sight of me must make you sick."
"I'm not the only one he's threatened in this room."
How could she have known that?
"It's in the way you act around him," she said, picking up on the thing he hadn't asked, as always. "But it's all right. I have a plan. We're going to escape."