“And you, Alice. I’ve heard a lot about you.” He had, but those descriptions didn’t seem to fit the young woman standing in front of him. Her hair wasn’t styled, just pinned casually back, and her clothes were loose-fitting and unflattering. She had lovely features—a heart-shaped face and unusually deep blue eyes—but her style didn’t match those of the rising stars he knew in the New York publishing world.

“So, what are you doing here?” she asked Ursula.

“I remembered you talking about Penny and visiting her. We have been trying to find you, Alice. You did just vanish!”

“I’m sorry. Things have been . . . well, difficult.”

“Is your cousin’s baby all right?”

“The baby is fine.” Her gaze darted to the floor. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry to just turn up like this, but Theo wanted to meet you, and—”

“I can’t really talk now. I’m just on my way out.”

“You must have a few minutes, surely. We’ve come all this way.”

Alice gave Ursula an unfathomable look, then glanced at Theo. “All right, a few minutes. Do you want some tea?”

“It’s fine. We don’t want to hold you up, do we, Theo?”

“No, of course not,” he said, and smiled again, hoping it wasn’t going to be a wasted journey.

They found a table by the window, and Ursula launched into conversation, not leaving it to him to do the talking as they’d agreed beforehand. He waited, controlling his instinct to interrupt and hurry them along, while he smoked a cigarette. His mind turned to the difficult phone call he’d had the day before with Walter, which the switchboard operator had abruptly ended at the predetermined five minutes. Walter had wanted an update on George’s office, but Theo had barely had time to formulate an opinion, let alone one he was prepared to share. Walter’s impatience had already forced Theo to take a meeting at the Ministry of Supply, where Sir Duncan Castles had told him that the Board of Trade’s priority was supplying books to the Commonwealth to keep up the flow of knowledge and ideas, but that they faced obstacles like lack of shipping space. Theo had listened even more intently as he spoke of the opportunity for American publishers to satisfy the hunger for books in countries that Britain no longer could because they were under-resourced, and an island under siege. There wasn’t time to relay the information before the operator cut them off, but he recalled Walter’s earlier words fading in and out as the line crackled. You need to consider yourself part of the family already, Theo. That way I know you’ll make the right decisions when you’re there. Theo pictured Virginia sitting beside her father, head tilted up and smiling at Walter’s sentiment.