The door jarred as it opened, and Theo appeared, looking around until he noticed her. “There you are. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m just not very good in enclosed spaces.” She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned on them. “What’s the news? Is the book going to live?”

“Sure hope so. They haven’t been able to maintain the machinery properly, and there’s been no investment. That’s what’s so frustrating—it’s all avoidable, it just needs more oil and servicing.”

“At least they know what’s wrong with it.”

“Doesn’t help, though. They need to take it apart and clean it before they can get the press rolling again. Hughes says it will delay us by another day.”

“A wasted journey, then.”

“Not at all. Nobody’s been up here to see them in months, not since Rupert left. Besides, I got to show off my driving skills.” He kept a straight face as he lit a cigarette, and she tried not to smile either.

“You know,” she said, “London’s on the lookout for ambulance drivers.”

“Pity I’ve already got a full-time job.”

“Ah yes, well, there is that,” she said, picking up a long stick and scratching a circle in the dirt.

There was an awkward silence as he watched her, then he joined in, adding a nose to the face she’d etched. After she embellished it with ears, they stood back and smiled at their unlikely creation.

“So, who is it?” Theo asked.

“Maybe George.”

“The smile’s too wide for him, surely. . . . I mean, George is more serious than that.” Theo’s lips tightened around his cigarette.

Alice realized Theo didn’t know George all that well, and she studied him for a moment. What kind of man is Theo Bloom? The best of men . . . or the worst of men, like Rupert Armstrong-Miller?

She asked, “What are you really doing here?”

He didn’t look surprised, just tilted his head up, smoke trailing into the sky before he returned her gaze. “What I told you in the meeting,” he said. “Helping work through the mountain of rules and regulations. Every minute it seems as if there’s a new guideline or practice.”

“So you’re not here to close us down?”

He took a beat too long to respond, and when he did, he didn’t look her in the eye. “I’m here because with Rupert gone, George has got a lot to handle. Possibly too much.”

“Maybe.”

“You must all be missing Rupert.”

It was all she could do to hold on to the stick and not hurl it across the yard. “Yes . . . of course we are. Although George and Tommy have taken on his workload so well that they haven’t had to replace him.”

“But maybe it would have been better if they had.”