The next day began for Josie as so many others had since the war began, and seemed to go on forever. Awake before dawn, followed by a dozen tasks that needed her immediate attention, never quite catching up with herself–seeing Gideon only from afar as she and the children were helping Mrs. Higgins chase the chickens into the secure yard for the night.

She shared dinner with Mrs. Tramble and learned all about the first day of school, the many successes (recess and lunch) and where the patient woman could use additional help. Especially if Nimway was adding four more school-aged evacuees.

A few hours later, Josie and Winnie were on their way back to the Hall from the dairy barn with time to spare and plans to prepare for her meeting with Gideon–more than prepare.

A quick bath and time to change into a soft blouse and wool flannel trousers, perhaps to dash on a bit of foundation powder to cover her freckles. Certainly to comb and style her hair into something less like a bird’s nest and more like a young woman who appreciated being noticed by a man. Even this particular man, who aggravated and attracted her like both poles of a magnet.

They had nearly reached the kitchen garden when she noticed a pale light shining through the trees, coming from the direction of the schoolhouse in the upper field.

With all the excitement and confusion of the first day of school, Mrs. Tramble must have left a light on and the blackout curtains open. Not wanting to suffer an encounter with the ARP Warden, Josie whistled for Winnie and the dog went loping up the path ahead. By the time Josie arrived, Winnie had bounded inside, the door was gaping open and a blue-white glow was spilling out onto the gravel stoop.

Even before she entered, she knew the light wasn’t going to be the golden glow of an incandescent bulb, it was coming from Aunt Freddy’s orb.

Oh, damn! Wanting no part of the devilish thing, Josie snatched it off of Mrs. Tramble’s desk, wrapped it inside the folds of her jacket and slammed the door behind her and Winnie.

“Let’s find a place to hide the thing, girl!”

Winnie took off down the dark slope toward the lake and Josie followed, slipping and sliding all the way to the bankside.

“As good a place as any, for now.” Certain she hadn’t seen the last of it, Josie gave the orb a wild toss through the darkness, hopefully toward the water, heard a great splash just as she felt her boots slipping out from under her. She wheeled her arms, tried to gain her balance only to have her legs slip out from under her and land on her backside into a cold, mucky patch of reeds.

“Oh, damn, damn, damn!” Mud from head-to-toe and late again for her meeting with Gideon! Still, with any luck, the orb would take the hint and stay put for a while.

Fifteen minutes later, Josie stomped into the library, dripping mud, teeth chattering, startling Gideon, who was lounging in the wingback chair in front of the brightly flickering fire.

“I’m late again. Sorry. Couldn’t be helped.”

Double damn the man for standing, as though she were a princess and he her subject, for that charming smile and those understanding eyes. “Somehow I was thinking you might need this tonight.”

He slipped her jacket off her shoulders and wrapped her in the blanket that had been warming on a footstool in front of the fire.

“How could you possibly know I would fall into the water?” Was he suddenly in league with the orb?

“Was that it?” He laughed, tugged the blanket closer around her shoulders and moved her closer to the fire. “It was raining earlier. I thought you might be cold when you arrived.”

“Well. Thank you.” She couldn’t help snuggling into his warmth, savoring his breath on her cheek as he looked down at her. “How does your tomorrow look?”

He smiled again, took a step back from her. “Certainly less interesting than tonight. And yours?”

“Apart from the usual, your mattresses. They’re arriving in the afternoon. Someone will need to sign for the delivery and move them into the upstairs rooms.”

“Consider it done. My men and I will be grateful beyond words. Your carpet is soft, but I’m a man of flesh and bone and I’m beginning to creak.”

Of course! Gideon had been sleeping on the hard floor. No wonder the girls had seen him limping! She’d be limping too if she couldn’t fall into her own comfortable bed every night and sink into an exhausted sleep.

“Ah, then, good!” she said, gathering her jacket from the floor and the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. “Shall we try this again tomorrow night.”

“Half-ten?”

“Absolutely.”

* * *

With the plans for the Operational Base complete and the construction materials in process, Gideon was able to spend the next evening working on his training notes for the Auxiliary Units and composing another reply to Arcturus’ most recent communique, the second exchange. A test of their codes, public news of the war in Africa, equipment requirements for the Aux Units. Soon he would request the roster of names so he could start building the unit.

He’d seen Josie only twice today, in the morning, hurrying toward the dairy barn and later with Isaac in the garage with the Fordson. Both distant encounters, but just the sight of her had made him glad all day that he would be seeing her again that night.

He’d arrived a few minutes early, was sitting in the library, absorbed in a book, certain that Josie would be late again.

But as the mantel clock chimed half-ten exactly, the door to the service corridor swung open and Josie ran into the library, her dungarees covered in straw and mud.

“I’m not late this time, Gideon. But I can’t stay. Jill is giving birth–“

”Good God, who is Jill? And why aren’t you with her!”

“Jill is a lovely young Guernsey and she’s about to calve. Let’s try to have our meeting again tomorrow night.”

“All right. Go.”

She reached the door, returned and touched his arm. “Would you care to lend a hand? Since the war has called up every man and woman, I’m always short on help in the loafing shed. Especially at this hour.”

It wouldn’t be his first calving, only the first spent in the company of the remarkable Josie Stirling.

“Let’s not keep the lady waiting.”

“Thank you, Gideon!” She grinned broadly, grabbed his hand and ran with him through the darkness all the way to the barn.

* * *

Gideon was still dazzled by the adventure two days later, still exhausted, still in thrall to a woman who had entered his days and his dreams like a whirlwind.

Her scent of mint one day and fresh lavender the next, her laughter, her bright eyes, her gentle encouragement to the calf and its mother at the birthing, the flush of elation on her cheeks as the cycle of life was made new again. He’d caught himself tearing up and turned away while he composed himself, and cheered along with her when the calf stood and began nursing like a champ.

The days went by quickly in the planning of the OB, and the nights as well. He was sleeping much better now, on the mattress with his knee propped on a pillow, the wound healed enough in his judgement to abandon the dressing altogether.

Their meetings in the library now started on time, but always seemed too short. Tonight he was going to suggest they play a game of cards, or something. Anything to keep her from dashing off to her office and leaving him alone.

Ten-fifteen. He switched off the lamp at his desk, plunging the room into darkness that would have been complete, had it not been for a throbbing glow around the margins of the blackout shades and shutters against the northwest windows.

When he opened the interior shutter and pulled aside the blackout curtain, a helpless dread ran through him. Bristol was aflame on the distant horizon. The pulsating orange glow was doubtless the docks again, the German offensive against English shipping went on nightly. There had been no local air raid siren warning of the action in Bristol, but crews from all over Somerset would be on their way to fight the fires and rescue people from the destruction.

He was about to close the curtain when another glow caught his attention. Much closer by, in the darkened garden that stretched beneath his window to the far hedge. A blueish glow moving like a ghost along the gravel paths. Not the faint amber of a shuttered torch lighting someone’s way, more like a ball of moonlight carried through the darkness by a fantastical creature.

Quite fantastical, he realized, as Josie stepped out from under the cover of an arch of lime trees and hurried along the pale gray pathway toward the back of the Hall.

As he watched, the brightness abruptly vanished, seemed to be absorbed by the woman as she tucked it beneath the folds of her coat. The very same device she had dismissed and tried to hide from him that first night in the library.

He’d thought of it often since then. The strong, white ball of pulsing light, embedded inside a milky oval of opalescent glass, encased inside a metal bracket of some sort, with a slightly pointed base that had caused it to roll and wobble across the floor like an American-style football.

It was the base that intrigued him most, the source of the power. An astonishingly new sort of accumulator, obviously developed by the military. But developed where? By whom?

If that was the case, what the devil was Josie doing in possession of such a powerful device?

Rather than waiting for Josie to meet him in the library, he went down the backstairs to the darkened utility room just outside the farm office, where he paused in front of the closed door. He raised his fist to knock at the very moment Josie yanked the door open.

“Gideon, hello!” she said, stepping back and smiling in surprise, the device glowing from somewhere behind her. “Am I late for our meeting? I was hoping to surprise you and be five minutes early!”

“Actually, I’m early.” Hopefully, just in time.

“Good, then. Shall we have our meeting here tonight instead of in the library? Then we’re both on time.”

“Agreed.” He followed her into the office, unsure what to expect. Certainly not to find the device sitting openly in a basket of onions on the worktable.

“Can I get you anything? Tea? A sherry?”

“No thank you, Josie,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant as he continued, “Oh! I see you found the device from the other night. Where has it been hiding?”

“I don’t know—” she shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on a hook by the exterior office door. “Around, I guess.”

“Do you mind if I examine it?” Do you mind if I kiss you, was his other thought, his most pressing desire.

She nodded. “Go right ahead, Gideon. Take the damn thing with you if you’d like.”

A bold offer, or a feint? No. Not his Josie. “You don’t mind?”

“It’s not up to me. Here, it’s yours.” She lifted the device from the basket with both hands, her face lit as though by the brightest moonlight. Its rays streamed through her hair, spilled across the floor onto his own trousers, his shirt, into the center of his chest, nearly blinding him to everything in the room except the woman who was now holding out the orb toward him. “Here you are, Gideon. Take it, please.”

His thoughts jumbled by the sight of her and suspecting the power source would somehow extinguish itself should he touch it, he took a wool scarf from the bar of coathooks and bunched it onto the desk blotter. “Could you please set it here?”

“Of course.”

He felt her gaze follow him as he bent closely to examine the thing under the tungsten incandescence of the desk lamp. The design surprised him, intricate and obviously crafted by an artisan of rare skill. The milky glass object was held in the fierce grip of a golden eagle’s claw, its base made of gold.

“How did you acquire the device, Josie?”

“I didn’t ‘acquire’ it.” She sat on her desk chair and dropped one of her wellies onto the floor. “It acquired me.”

“What do you mean?” He wanted dearly to look at her, to share this electrifying moment. But danger lurked there in her eyes, hidden and all-consuming.

“It’s been in my family for ages—” she dropped the other wellie “–but I’d never seen it myself before that first night in the library. With you.”

Another fantastical Nimway myth that had no basis in science, though the memory caused his pulse to race, his senses to rise.

The device was exhibiting energy properties completely unfamiliar to him. He was an engineer, deeply familiar with current military technology. A portable power source such as this could only have been created in a secret lab and must be returned immediately.

“Where did you say you found this?”

“In the yew hedge on my way back from checking on the new calf–who is doing very well, by the way.”

“Yes. Good.” Her smile was soft and lit her eyes, nearly distracting him from the track of his question. “You found this— this object lying in the hedge, where anyone could find it?”

“Not just anyone, Gideon. Me. Or possibly you.”

“Me? What are you saying? Who gave this to you?” He pulled her to her feet by her upper arms, brought her close, suddenly terrified by the implication. “Josie, did anyone—a stranger, perhaps—approach you about hiding the device until it could be collected by someone else.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

“Josie, there are German agents all over England, looking for people just like you–“

”Like me?”

“Innocent citizens who might inadvertently serve as a conduit for our country’s greatest secrets, stolen by our greatest enemies, and used against us.“

”Are you calling me an enemy spy, Gideon?”

“God, no.” Please no! “Just—”

“Just what? Stupid?” She flattened her hand against the middle of his chest and shoved him away. “A traitor?”

This wasn’t going well. “I didn’t mean to imply–“

”No. You meant to call me either a traitor or a useful idiot. I am neither. Here.” She picked up the device and the scarf and dropped it into his hands. “It’s yours, Gideon, take it wherever you like.”

“I will. Whatever its story, it cannot remain here.” The less she knew, the better for them both. He wound the scarf tightly around the device. “Just know that I am officially taking possession of the device and will deliver it to the proper authorities at first light.”

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Then good luck with your mission, Gideon.”

“It’s not a matter of luck, Josie,” he said, wanting desperately to believe that she was uninvolved with the device.

“I’m just warning you not be disappointed if you can’t find the orb come morning.”

He’d reached the door, his hand already on the latch, when he turned back, his heart sinking with dread. “Is that a threat, Josie?”

She sighed, herself again. “On the contrary, Gideon. A simple fact, is all. I can only warn you that the orb is part of the fabric of Nimway Hall. It won’t let you remove it from the property—”

He laughed, certain she was taunting him now. “Won’t let me?”

She smiled as she stood in the center of the room. “Good night, Gideon. Sleep well.”

The woman was as mad as she was beautiful. But that was for another time. Another day.

“Good night, Josie.”

* * *

“What a beastly little orb! And such a misguided man.” Josie could only watch helplessly as Gideon charged out of her office, the tell-tale orb tucked under his arm as though he were disposing of a ticking time bomb.

He was correct about one thing: The orb was powerful, all right, more powerful than any weapon of war. If what she understood about it was to be believed, it was fueled by the most powerful force in the universe. Love. Whether the two parties wanted it or not. Which she didn’t. Not now. Not this way.

But she and Gideon seemed to be a captive audience for the pesky thing. It had performed its magic tricks with a playfulness Aunt Freddy had never mentioned. Showing off with all the shameless melodrama of a primadonna. Appearing and disappearing at will, tantalizing them, making her laugh, him growl in frustration.

All she had ever known about the arbitrary thing was what Aunt Freddy had said with a nod and a smile, “your time will come, my sweet girl. You’ll understand then.”

Now she understood only too well. As she switched off the light beside the bed and burrowed beneath the bedclothes, she remembered her own father’s amusement over tales of the orb. He’d never said why he thought it so amusing, only that he seemed quite proud that her mother had found him without having to resort to the “mad orb business.” Might be good to ask him about it in the morning, maybe even let him know that the dreadful thing had begun targeting her and Gideon.

As she dropped off to sleep, Josie knew with the certainty of a psychic that she would be awakened at first light by angry knocking on her bedroom door. And the accusing glare of Gideon Fletcher when he discovered she had been right after all.

* * *

Josie’s alarm clanked her awake at five o’clock, well before first light, with no Gideon in sight. She dressed in her dungarees and cardigan and hurried up the backstairs to help Mrs. Tramble rouse the children for their morning lessons, then herded them down the stairs to the kitchen.

“Mr. Tramble and I were never blessed with children of our own,” the older woman was saying as she cut thick slices from a loaf of Mrs. Lamb’s bread.

“You certainly have your fill of children at the moment,” Josie said, putting a pot of brambleberry jam on the work table, “with four more on the way.”

“Quadruplets!” Mrs. Tramble laughed and her gray hair came loose of the paisley scarf she’d begun wearing after arriving at the Hall. She leaned toward Josie and whispered, “Don’t tell the children, but I’m rather enjoying taking care of them at night as well as during the school day. I’ve learned so much about each of them, more that I ever did when I just saw them in class.”

As Josie helped with breakfast in the kitchen, she watched the back court window for signs of first light and the kitchen doorway for sign of a very angry Colonel Fletcher.

He arrived on schedule, just after dawn, as the children were stuffing themselves with thick slices of bread laden with globs of farmer’s cheese and dolloped with jam.

Mrs. Tramble tapped her plate with her knife and trilled to her brood hunkered around the table, “Say good morning to Colonel Fletcher, children.”

“Gooood morrrrning, Colonel Fletcher.” Their voices rose as each child tried to out shout the other.

He didn’t notice. Clearly Gideon was seething, his gaze hot and fixed solely on Josie herself as she poured Geordie a cup of milk.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I will speak with you, Miss Stirling. Now.”

“About—” she asked as she returned the pitcher to the large refrigerator built into the wall.

“Please, Miss Stirling.” Gideon looked very like the enormous grizzly she remembered encountering on the camping trek she’d taken with her parents through the Canadian wilderness. The beast had stalked through their campsite early one morning as they lay quietly in their tent praying they wouldn’t become breakfast.

“The man wants you, Miss Josie,” Mrs. Tramble said, with a wry smile, her plump cheeks bunched beneath her gold-wire spectacles.

“And I know the reason why,” Josie said under her breath, untying her apron and wiping her hands on it as she tried to think of the best place to contain the conversation that was sure to follow. “Shall we step into the east parlor, Colonel Fletcher?”

“No, Miss Stirling, you’ll come with me.”

Gideon led her up the backstairs, through the common area shared by his men and motioned her into his sitting room. She entered like a prisoner to the dock, about to testify against her own best interests, and stood in the center of the yellow floral rug.

“Where is it, Josie, the power device?”

You obviously didn’t take my warning about the orb to heart, was what she wanted to say, but it wasn’t wise to taunt the beast, though he deserved so much worse for calling her a traitor. As though she were stupid or vain or would intentionally commit treason and betray her country to anyone. What would he think if he knew that the very opposite was true? Given his low opinion of a woman’s value to the war effort, not much at all.

She said none of this, only asked, “Where did you last see it?” As though he were a boy who’d misplaced his favorite cricket bat.

“I think you know.” He was close enough for her to marvel over the muscle that flexed in his cheek, his skin bronze and clean-shaven this dawn to within an inch of his life, the scent of bay rum wreathing her senses.

“Why don’t you remind me, Gideon.”

“It was in my safe, issued to me by the SOE, requiring my private combination to unlock it. How did you manage to sneak into my room, without waking me, and open my safe?”

“I didn’t.”

“Someone did. You or your confederate—”

“–or a phantom enemy agent, Gideon? I have no confederate. But I can guess why the orb left your safe after you locked it in.”

“You can guess?” He stepped to the window, dragged his fingers though his hair, then turned back to her. “Damn it, Josie, do you understand what you’re risking?”

Most assuredly, Gideon: Embarrassment. Disbelief. Rejection. The truth would hardly set either of them free. It would surely bind them forever–whether they agreed or not.

The man would scoff at the idea of a mystical matchmaker that glowed in the presence of true love’s potential. And that the diabolical object seemed to have identified a romantic coupling between them.

If Gideon believed her at all about the Orb of True Love, he’d laugh and run as far from her as he could. Which would make her heart ache more than a little, but…that might be the best thing in the end.

“Whatever you think of me, Gideon, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.”

“I’ve got evidence, Josie!” He pointed at the small floor safe tucked between his desk and a file drawer as though it meant something to her. He leaned down and blocked her view of him working the combination, finally standing and throwing a glare at her as he swung the door open. “Do you see what I mean?”

“Oh!” Admittedly she was surprised to see the orb sitting inside the safe, plain as day, glowing from beneath the same scarf as before. It seemed to have spent the night just where Fletcher put it. Was that a good omen or a bad?

“I do see the orb, Gideon, just where you say you left it. But I don’t know what you want me to say about it.”

He blinked at her, frowned more deeply than she’d ever seen, looked at the safe, then back at her. “Bloody hell, how did you do that? One of your father’s theatrical effects?”

“His what?”

He stared at the safe, checked behind it, gave the side a knock with his boot then frowned at her again. “Dammit all, Josie, the bloody device wasn’t here this morning when I went to fetch it.”

Of course, it wasn’t. She’d warned him. “Perhaps you overlooked it.” She bent down and peered inside. “It’s rather dark back there, beyond the glow.”

“I didn’t miss it. It wasn’t there when I opened the safe. I don’t know why. I don’t know how you managed to snatch it from inside this SOE-issued combination safe. But I don’t have time to investigate.” He grabbed the orb out of the safe, shut the door and spun the lock.

“Where are you taking it?” she asked as he wrapped the orb more securely in the scarf, then settled it into a metal utility box and latched the lid down tightly.

“I’ve already been in contact with the new air station at Yeovilton. Didn’t mention the device, of course; something as critical as this is to the war effort shouldn’t be spoken of over an unsecured telephone line. But the commander there is a colleague of mine and is expecting me this morning. Whether you approve or not.”

He stared at her, seemed to be waiting for her response. “I have no opinion in the matter. You do as you please. And so will the orb. But remember, I’ve warned you, Gideon.”

Another frown and a sharp exhale that sounded of misery. “Bloody hell, Josie, it pains me to the quick to think of the trouble you may have brought upon yourself and Nimway Hall.”

“Don’t worry about me, Gideon. Just be safe in your journey. And hurry back in time for our meeting.”

“Yes, well, thank you.” He straightened his shoulders, tucked the box under one arm and his hat under the other. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m already late for my appointment.”

Josie followed Gideon out of his sitting room and watched him hurry down the main stairs into the great hall with a firm step that bore no hint of a limp. He carried no cane, was too busy with his hat and the box. Indeed, Gideon seemed fit and able-bodied, quite the finest specimen of a man she’d seen lately. Ever, really.

Yet, as stubborn and obtuse as they came. Quite certain the orb wouldn’t allow him to take it off the grounds, Josie followed him down the stairs, through the marble entry and out onto the porch. She watched him drive away in the Austin, caught his scowl as he turned down the drive, wondering when ‘it’ would happen. When Auntie’s Orb of True Love would decide it was time to return to Nimway Hall.

She was just as certain that when he discovered it missing, he wouldn’t be pleased. But maybe then he’d finally be ready to hear the truth.

Question was: Would she be ready for him—this very bewitching man—to hear it?