After several hours of listening to the rest of London be bombed, a sound so commonplace, it faded to the background like static, and their own sector remaining quiet, Grace could stand it no longer. “I presume you heard about Charing Cross,” she said finally.

He pressed his lips against one another in the moonlight. She marveled for a moment in his thoughtful pause at how adept she had become at seeing in the blacked-out London streets. She could even make out a slight nick on the side of his jaw that he’d sustained in the blast the night before.

“I heard,” he said, his voice gravelly and hoarse. He swallowed. “Those poor people.”

And that was it. No terrible details of dismemberment or smoke-belching destruction. No destroyed homes and victims blasted to gruesome states.

They didn’t speak again for a long time. Not until they strode past Mrs. Driscoll’s townhouse. The widow’s remains had already been seen to by one of the rescue services and removed. Mr. Stokes stopped in front of the still-standing townhouse and looked at it for rather a long while, his hands thrust in his pockets.

“I didn’t thank you, Miss Bennett.” He lowered his head. “For last night. I... I nearly forgot myself, and you reminded me what we were there for.”

His humility struck Grace even more fully than had his silence earlier. “We’re partners.”

“You kept a level head and people are alive because of you.” His gaze shifted toward Grace. “I admire your ability to stay so focused.”

“I suspect,” she said slowly, unable to help herself, “it’s because I’m a woman.”

A slow smile crept over his mouth. He gave a mirthless laugh. “I am a lout, aren’t I?”

She tilted her head, declining to speak when he already knew the answer.

From that night on, they got on quite well with one another, finding something of a friendship amid the shared danger and tragedy they encountered together.

And they had need of it, for just a week later, on a night heavy with fog and anticipation, more bombs fell in their sector. The damage was great, the casualties high. On and on the Germans dropped their explosives into the early morning hours.

As slivers of sunlight jabbed through the smoky air, the all clear sounded. Grace paced before a fallen home, knowing the occupants had sought shelter in a basement beneath. There was a chance, however small, that they might still be alive.

The men of heavy rescue pulled up in a battered lorry, though most vehicles were battered these days, and approached her with grim faces. Those men saw the worst the bombing had to offer. They were large, all of them, their bodies bulky from the weeks of shifting rubble, their eyes as hollow and empty as the gaping windows of blasted homes.