Her friend grinned. “Good morning, Margot. Stay dry—and put a bit of honey in your tea, if you have any. You sound hoarse.”

“Yes, Mother.” She issued the tease knowing well it would make Dot laugh—rare indeed was the occasion that her friend got to take care of anyone else now that her aunt had left the city.

Then came the draft trying to hold the door shut, the first gust of wet wind lashing against her, the quick snick of her umbrella going up, and the drumming of rain upon it. Margot set off with her coat cinched tightly around her waist and her head down as she fought the wind that snuck under her brolly.

Gentle rains were entertaining. She could count to the patter, try to find the pattern in the falling droplets. From the safety of her window, she could even imagine that, were she an inch tall, she could map out a path around them.

Rain like this was too complete. A solid wall, moving in sheets, the drops tripping and pushing one another in their haste to find her umbrella. And her shoes. And the hem of her skirt.

What she wouldn’t give just now for a pair of trousers and some boots. Perhaps one of those so-dubbed trench coats that, according to the chattering secretaries, were now all the mode since they were introduced in the military.

Not that she’d had a new coat since her first autumn here, when it had been necessary. Also not, for that matter, that Maman would ever consent to her daughter wearing trousers.

And not that Margot would waste any more than those thirty seconds thinking about, of all things, fashion. Good grief, she could only imagine the way Maman and Dot would laugh if they knew.

Thunder rumbled across the sky as Margot hurried around the last corner. She hadn’t passed her mother anywhere along the route. That and the throat that really was more than a little sore, now that she thought to pay attention to it, made her think Dot was likely right about Maman having caught the cold or flu or whatever it was going around. It seemed Margot had, and they were always in the same places.

Agent Eighteen. Wolfram. Anthrax.

As if a cold was anything to really fuss over these days. Hurrying through a wet English autumn wasn’t exactly unpleasant compared to what those field agents faced on a regular basis. She shuddered at the memory of some of the words she’d decoded an hour ago. They reported enemy agents—opposite numbers, Thoroton had called them once, which had made her smile—stealing from them, chasing them. Agent Twenty-two, whoever he was, had been arrested last week in Morocco.

Margot wouldn’t snivel over a cold or a broken umbrella. She wouldn’t.