He shrugged and reached for the ashtray. “I was also searching your papers, allowing you to continue serving as a courier for information that was more than your life was worth, at least to the men on either side of it.”

“But I knew. I let you.”

“I betrayed you.”

“And you hated yourself for it. And I loved you for hating yourself. I love both sides of you, the sweet, idealistic boy you were before, and the man you’ve had to become.”

Thorpe reached over to the ashtray and crushed out the cigarette. I glimpsed the side of his face as he returned his head to the pillow and folded his two hands beneath. “My parents are both dead,” he said, and though the thunder covered his words, I still understood him. “I was raised by my grandmother, who still lives in our old place in Scotland, outside of Inverness, with one of the maids who takes care of her. She’s going a bit soft in the head these days, I’m afraid, but she’s the sort of woman who will probably outlive us all.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He turned his head on the pillow and stared at me, though he couldn’t have seen much, just the reflection of light in my eyes and the bridge of my nose, my cheekbones, the way I saw his. “My half brother lives in Florida, up the coast. My mother’s son with her first husband, a German. His name is Johann.”

“Johann,” I repeated.

“My sister’s name is Margaret. Margaret Thorpe. She never married. She lives in London, Draycott Avenue, works for the War Office. If anything should happen to me, go to one of them.”

“If anything happens to you, I’ll track you down to the ends of the earth, by God. I promise you that.”

He was staring at me the way you stare at a painting, at an altar. He seemed to be straining for something. I thought, Just take it, for God’s sake. He looked nothing like the boy on the beach when we arrived a few hours ago. He cupped his hand around my jaw. When the lightning came, I saw a silver track along the side of his cheek, falling into the scar.

“I believe you,” he said. He dragged me over his hips. When we had fit ourselves together, from base to stem, he wrapped his arms around my waist, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, and so we remained, stock-still in the rumpled sheets, while the storm raged and crashed outside the window.