She would keep him safe, her Sir Nicholas.
* * *
Melinda, Ben, Adam, and Dr. Marin joined their small party back at Drummond House in Westminster. Nicholas saw Adam had moved away from the group, trying, he knew, to protect the fresh, hot chips Cook had made especially for him.
Nicholas nudged him with his shoulder, nodded toward Ben and Melinda. “Hey, you’re getting to be an old man, already twenty. Ready for a girl of your own, Adam?”
“I sort of like that one with Ben.”
“She might be a whisker too old for you. No, better to let my mother find someone your age. What do you think?”
Adam appeared to give that some thought, but he said, “Oh yeah, Nicholas, I forget to tell you, they got Ardelean’s right hand, a man named Cyrus Wendell, and he evidently won’t say a single world. So, Ardelean did have someone loyal to him. The coppers also arrested Ardelean’s manager at his main installation in North Berwick, Scotland, Raphael Marquez. Unlike Wendell, he couldn’t wait to tell everything he knew, which is plenty. Now about your mom on the hunt for me? Okay, maybe.”
Dr. Marin stood nearby, listening and nursing a vodka tonic. Mike said to her, “Do you think Adam will let Mrs. Drummond set him up?”
Isabella smiled. “He did say maybe, and if he’s smart, he’ll at least consider it.” And then her smile fell away, and Mike knew she was thinking about her fiancé and the subsequent nightmare she’d survived.
“When do you plan to go back to work?”
“Next week, I think. There’s so much to do, and glory of glories, Persy didn’t fire me.” She smiled again, and this one wasn’t forced. “Imagine, you found the loose pages beneath the mattress of Radu’s bed. And now we’ve restored
the Voynich to the Beinecke. Since I’m the one who made the ‘discovery,’ they’ve asked me to come to Yale and personally inset the pages. They’re talking a big ceremony. They want me to read from the Voynich,” she said, more to herself than to Mike. “The pages will like that. After so many hundreds of years, they’ll finally be together again, back where they belong.”
Mike didn’t want to go there, so she said, “That will sure put the Beinecke on the map. Are you ready to be a world-recognized celebrity? The only scholar ever to decipher the Voynich?”
Isabella shrugged. “Here’s the question. Do I tell them the truth? The whole story going back to Vlad Dracul?”
Mike said, “That’s up to you, but perhaps it’s time. And perhaps there’ll be other special twins of your line to read the Voynich.”
“I do wonder about that. But if I did tell the whole story, they might lock me up in an institution.” And she laughed, a small laugh, but it was a start. “Oh yes, I’ve got something to show you.” Isabella reached into her black handbag and pulled out a piece of newspaper, handed it to Mike.
Mike read, then raised amazed eyes to Isabella’s face. “They’ve found Dracula’s tomb, in Italy, near Naples, of all places? Why in heaven’s name would Dracula visit Naples, much less die there? Not Transylvania? And how did he even die?”
“We’ll see. It’s still more supposition than fact.” She paused a moment. “I wonder what Roman and Radu would think of it?”
Nicholas came up to Mike, took her elbow to take some of her weight off her foot. “How’s the boot?”
“Getting heavier and heavier.”
“Hang in there, as you Yanks say. Not much longer.” He spoke to Isabella, then guided Mike away.
She fingered the medal over her breast. “I sent photos of the medal to my parents. My dad texted to congratulate me and I know he was bursting at the seams. My mom now, I bet she was already out the door showing it to the neighborhood. Hmm, so now I’m to call you Sir Nicholas? Not, say, Sir Lamebrain?”
He smiled down at her. “Both have a ring to them. I was thinking we need to run away from home for a while.”
What was this all about? “As in no bombings, no guns, no birds, no drones for a week or two?”
“Not a one.”
“Yes, Nicholas, that would be grand.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope, waved it in her face. “I spoke to Savich and Zachery, and they’ve given papal dispensation for all of us to take some time off. I’ve already booked us a flight. Since you have to stay off that foot for a while longer, I thought maybe floating around some islands on a yacht for a few days, something calm and sedate. Near Santorini.”
“Santorini. Oh yes, Nicholas—ah, Sir Nicholas.”
There was a flash from the window, and Mike started, her heart going into overdrive. “What was that?”
He lightly ran his fingers over her cheek. “Only a swallow from the tree outside. Only a swallow.”