Angels in the Gloom by Anne Perry

hands up and smiled broadly. “Sorry! Shouldn’t have asked. I’m Irish—you’d hardly tell me.” There was laughter in her eyes. And then she did laugh. He had realized weeks ago that the hunt, the battle, was part of her life. The legends of Celtic conquest and mysticism, the heroes of the past with their love and their loss woven together inextricably, were part of her identity. If she won this struggle, she would have to find a new one. She needed to seek the unattainable, to voyage beyond the known. Her crusades fed her dreams, and starved her heart.
    If she were more realistic, if the fire in her burned under control, he might like her just as much, but the magic that enchanted him would be gone, and the vulnerability that made her so very human.
    “If it were a secret I wouldn’t tell you, even if you were English,” he replied, smiling at her as she winced at the insult. “But it’s only the obvious,” he went on. “Just what you would do yourself: Follow the flow of money. If we get agents into the banking system at all the right points, we can prove to the Americans exactly what is happening. And the other thing, of course, is to put pressure at the right places, at exactly the right time, and turn one of their agents. Or should I say one of yours?”
    She shook her head. “Not ours! I’m strictly for freedom of my own land from British oppression, that’s all.”
    He did not challenge her. He might get into an argument in which he would say too much and give away more of his purpose than he could afford, or too little, and make his reason for being with her obvious. Nor did he want to quarrel with her. He smiled. “All right, not yours,” he conceded. “German.”
    The girl in blue was singing again, this time “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,” with its injunction to “smile, smile, smile.”
    Detta looked at her glass, twisting it slowly in her fingers. “Do you think you can turn people’s loyalties?” she asked with a lift of doubt. “How would you know if you had, and they weren’t just feeding you the information their masters wanted you to have? Even taking back bits and pieces about you?” She lifted her eyes quickly to meet his, bright and dark, full of a hidden laughter that was always on the edge of sadness.
    He smiled back, a wall of humor against reality. “I don’t.”
    She gave an elegant shrug. Her shoulders were beautiful. He had no idea whether she was conscious of it or not.
    “There are ways,” he added, aware that he had not said enough. “You measure one against another, advance information against what actually happens. But it’s pretty hard to turn people. You must have powerful information to do it, and unless they’re stupid, they know the risks. Their own people will kill them if they’re caught.”
    She looked away across the room. “Part of the price. I can’t imagine betraying your own like that. I’d rather die.”
    He said nothing. The Irish did not kill their traitors easily; more often they made examples of them by breaking their knees. Many a man never walked again. But this was not the time to tell her how much he knew about that.
    “Probably spies for money rather than passion,” he said instead.
    She did not answer. She was staring somewhere into the hollowness and hurts of her own mind.
    “It’s nasty to turn someone,” he went on quietly. “But then if you see what’s happening in the trenches, that’s also pretty nasty. We need ammunition we can rely on.” He thought of Joseph, and allowed the pain to show in his face. He knew she was watching him.
    “I can’t imagine you related to a priest,” she said softly. “Actually I’m not sure I can imagine an English priest at all. You haven’t the fire or the mysticism for it.”
    “Is that what it takes?” He let the slight banter back into his voice.
    “Isn’t it?” she countered.
    “There’s not much room for mysticism when men are cold and frightened,