Sometimes I counted them as they roared above the rooftop. More often I leaned forward and concentrated ferociously on the words before me, because mistakes were made when you weren’t paying attention, and you couldn’t afford mistakes in a gossip column, believe me. One misplaced letter or, God forbid, number might cause the guilty to go free or the innocent tossed in the slammer, metaphorically speaking. Or worse, might bring the wrath of Wallis upon your head. So I concentrated on the typing and blocked out not just the noise of the Liberators but the thought of them. Their existence altogether. It was better that way, right?

Every so often, I rose and went to check on the man sleeping in my bed. A racket like that, surely it would wake him. But poor Thorpe was so exhausted, he didn’t even flinch. So I went back to work while the sun climbed carefully above the palmettos of Hog Island. I was due for the morning shift at the duchess’s canteen at eight o’clock sharp, and the “Lady of Nassau” column was due in the post at high noon, and something had to give. My hours of rest, apparently.

I finished the column with just enough time to spare. In the bedroom, Thorpe still lay in his torpor. I shrugged off my dressing gown, sank back down on the damp sheets and curled myself around him once more. He was here, that was all. Had come to life in my bedroom in the middle of the night, still wet from a bath—I smelled the soap on him—and from the squall that had drenched him on the way across the harbor. He’d stopped on Hog Island only long enough to drop off his kit and clean up, he said, and then he had come to me, to Lulu, his Lulu, at last, my God, had spent himself in less than a minute and dropped senseless on my pillow. Just like that. Where he’d slept the night before, I had no idea. Where he’d slept the previous twelve nights, I had even less idea. He was here, that was all. His heart still thudded away, thank God. A snore rasped in his nose. He was alive. I gathered him in my arms and listened to the sounds of his sleep, which—unlike the noise of the airplanes outside—belonged to me, and only to me.

That was all.

I was just drifting off again when he woke. For an instant, his body went rigid, and then he recognized the room, the bed, the whore at his back. I felt his relief like a downpour. He turned in my arms and apologized.

“For what?”

“For last night.”