by Brown, T. J.
“Good morning!” She kept her voice soft as many of the men were still sleeping. She didn’t subscribe to the military method of waking the men to the piercing sound of a bell, as many of these men would not be returning to active duty. Those who were, she reasoned, would do well with a break in structure and would far rather awaken to the sound of a woman’s voice. Some of the patients were already dressing themselves the best they could. Others of those awake were awaiting help.
Victoria went to the large floor-to-ceiling windows and opened the heavy, deep-red, Roman-style velvet drapes to the dawning morning outside. Dust motes whirled and eddied in the air, looking like tiny sun-dipped Milky Ways. “Good morning, good morning,” she trilled a bit louder.
Some of the men groaned while others answered in kind. The library was spacious with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls. All but a few books had been packed away, and the shelving was used to hold supplies. A large marble fireplace warmed the room.
Many of the men had never seen a room as luxurious as this one, she mused, let alone lived in one. But all the things that made the home rich and lovely also made it hard to keep clean, and she and the housekeeping staff were hard-pressed just to keep it dusted.
She walked between the iron beds and put the towels on the end of the beds of those men who would be bathing this morning. They alone would be excused from being dressed before breakfast.
“I don’t see why I have to dress,” a sergeant grumbled as he strained to pull himself up. “It isn’t as if I’m going anywhere.”
“Maybe if you’re lucky, you can take a turn in the garden,” she told him briskly, reaching out a hand and gently pulling him upright. One of his feet had been amputated just above the ankle and he was having trouble adjusting. Because Victoria knew he would be leaving for home within a week, she tried to get him to do as much as he could for himself.
He reached for an olive-green shirt hanging on his bedstead. “I would hardly call myself lucky, miss.”
She heard the pain in his voice, and though she sympathized, she could not afford to vocalize it. Going home would be difficult enough; he didn’t need to be coddled. “It could be worse. You could have no legs at all. At least you will be able to get around.”
“She has a point,” a voice said from several beds down. “Quit your whining.”
The young sergeant shoved his arms into his shirt, his jaw tight. “And who are you to tell me to quit whining?” he called back.
“A man with no legs, you young fool.”
That shut the sergeant up, and Victoria gave a wink to the man who had spoken. He would be going home, too, but had adapted surprisingly well to his new situation. “I can see my wife and hold her with two arms, and I don’t have to go back to hell,” he had told Victoria. “The way I figure it, life isn’t too bad.”
His bravery humbled her.
The rest of the morning passed quickly. Breakfast, baths, assigning tasks, changing dirty linens, and fetching took all her energy, and by the time someone came to spell her, she was exhausted. She tucked a book under her arm and left for lunch gratefully.
The VADs and nurses usually took their meals in the servants’ hall, which was clean and spacious and certainly nicer than the servants’ hall at Summerset. The cook patted her back and told her to sit, she would bring her plate, but Victoria shook her head. “I’ll take mine outside, if you don’t mind. I want to get the last of the sun before the rains come.”
She balanced her bread on top of her stew and carried a cup of tea out to the garden, where several soldiers lounged in the sun. Some of the neighboring women had shown up and were writing letters or reading to them, and Victoria found a quiet spot in a corner of the garden with a small iron table and chair.
She ate the hot, tasty stew with relish, savoring each drop and reading her book, a collection of sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She was trying to commit some to memory, but finding time was more challenging than it used to be. The exercise kept her from worrying about Kit, whose departure to the front had been delayed by some sort of training. He wouldn’t tell her what it was, and she didn’t pry. The less she thought about his going off to war, the less time she spent lying awake at night, her stomach churning with anxiety. As terrible of a tease as he was, his absence made her life far less intriguing than when he might show up at any minute, ready for some sort of adventure.
“Victoria?”
She glanced up, a bit annoyed at the interruption, but her eyes widened at the sight of the young soldier in front of her. “Edward!” She leapt up and was about to wrap him in a hug, then realized he had a cast on one arm and a brace on one leg. She satisfied herself with putting both of her hands on his shoulders. “Whatever are you doing here?” she cried, then blushed, taking in the sight of his crutches. It was obvious what he was doing here.
His mouth twisted in a wry grin. “I heard this was the place where they patched Humpty Dumpty back up so I thought I would make a reservation.” His cavalier tone was edged with pain.
Her chest tightened. “I’m so sorry you had a great fall.”
He shrugged and then grimaced. “I’m one of the lucky ones. They’re going to patch me back up and send me back to the front.”
“Would you like to sit down? Are you hungry?” She pulled out a chair.
He sat with a sigh and propped his crutches up against the table.
“Is it so very bad?”
The bleakness of his blue eyes told the tale and her stomach knotted, thinking of Kit, Colin, Sebastian, and the rest of the Clever Coterie.
“Bad enough,” he said. “You know, our fathers often spoke of going off to war as if it were a romantic, noble thing, but it’s not really. Of course, we should have known better after Sebastian lost his father in the Boer War. But we didn’t. We thought it would be one more adventure that we could write home about. But it’s not. It’s filthy and wretched, and just when you think you can’t stand the tedium anymore, your mate is blown up just feet from where you’re standing.”
Victoria gasped.
His handsome face fell into contrite lines. “I am so sorry, my dear. I shouldn’t be telling you all this.”
Victoria reached out on the table and squeezed his hand. She didn’t know Edward that well, but it seemed that war had made all the little societal niceties crumble. Maybe honesty would take their place.
“I am just so dreadfully sorry that you and all our friends have to see this. Summer picnics were so much more to our tastes, weren’t they? Has war always been so destructive?” Victoria clapped her hand to her forehead. “Do I sound impossibly naïve?”
“You sound charming, as always. And I think war is more destructive because our weapons are more destructive. But let’s not talk of war. I will have to talk about it soon enough when I rejoin my regiment. Let’s talk of other things. Like our friends and pleasant picnics under the trees. You know I think of that time often, how beautiful it was.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “And just how is Kit anyway?”
She ignored the look. “Fine, last I heard. I haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks. Apparently he’s getting some kind of specialized training somewhere outside of Bath, for what I know not. He’s supposed to be getting a quick leave. I’m sure he’ll land on my doorstep, hungry and ready for trouble. Have you heard from your friend, the one who was sweet on Daphne? What was his name?”
“Albert?”
“That’s the one. Albert.” Her diversion was successful and they spoke of other mutual acquaintances until Victoria had to return to her patients.
Edward’s nurse, a young woman Victoria only knew by sight, came and collected him. After saying good-bye Victoria finished the rest of her shift, strangely depressed. Even praise for her first solo day by one of the nurses couldn’t lift her spirits. Seeing one of her friends join the ranks of these previously anonymous broken men only further underlined how devastating war really was. She didn’t even bother to chat with the k
itchen staff on the way home, but instead just met her driver down the block as usual.
When she’d first begun working, she’d had Pete, her driver, drop her off in front of Blackmore Manor, but after a few snide comments from the other VADs, she’d asked him to drop her off and pick her up off-site. She’d tried walking it, but an asthma attack at the halfway mark convinced her that it was just too far.
Eleanor visited her mother on Tuesday nights, and Susie took Tuesday evenings off and wouldn’t be home until late. Victoria wondered what Susie did on her evenings off, but had as yet been unsuccessful in prying it out of her. It must be something juicy, but tonight Victoria was too tired and too disheartened to figure it out. At least she had Nanny Iris’s visit tomorrow to look forward to.
The driver dropped her off in front of her flat and she trudged up the stairway. Coming home wasn’t as nice without a warm fire and some hot tea to hearten her and drive off the chill. The scent and feel of winter’s bite hung in the air, and she shivered to think about all those soldiers at the front. Or fronts. So many countries were at war, she sometimes lost track.
Just before she reached the landing, she looked up. It took her several moments before her eyes made sense of what she was seeing, but then it came to her in a welcomed rush that left her breathless. “Kit!”
He was sitting with his back against her door, his eyes closed. His head jerked up at her voice, and a tired smile lit up the handsome features of his face. “Am I dreaming? Is it really you? ‘Now I will believe there are unicorns.’ ”
She held out her hands to help him up, joy bubbling up in her chest. “ ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.’ ”
He laughed as he arose. “Just when I think I might have you stumped, you throw it back in my face.”
She laughed. How wonderful it was to see him! “I just finished rereading The Tempest again.”
Unlocking the door, she went into the flat and he followed.
“Where’s Susie?” he asked, shrugging out of his warm woolen peacoat.
“Night off. I think she has a lover.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And Eleanor?”
“At her mother’s. If you start a fire in the sitting room, I will make us some hot tea. Or would you rather have a brandy?”
“Tea is fine.”
He turned into the sitting room while she continued down the hall into the kitchen. After starting the water to heating, she pulled out a tray and added the cups and saucers and the sugar. As neither of them took cream, she left it off and added the egg-and-cress sandwiches Susie had left in the icebox. Eleanor would just have to forgive her for giving Kit Eleanor’s share.
Once the tea was ready, she added a pot and a plate of the chocolate biscuits she knew he had a weakness for.
Another overwhelming gale of happiness overcame her when she entered the sitting room and saw him standing over the fire, an intent look on his face.
“You’ve gotten better at starting fires,” she teased.
“If I told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: the chimney wasn’t drawing properly.” He grinned. “I miss that room. You have no idea how many times I close my mind and try to remember all the good times we had there.”
Victoria smiled at the memories. When she’d first moved to Summerset after her father’s death, she’d longed for a place where she could escape. She’d found a room in the closed-up wing of Summerset and had made it her own. The first time Kit had found her there, she had screamed, but their friendship had really begun there in that abandoned study.
His eyes took on a sentimental look and she quickly held the tray up. “I hope you’re hungry; look what I’ve got for you!”
“What a little domestic you’re becoming. Next thing you’ll tell me is you can make your own bed.”
She snorted. “I can. I learned how in prison.”
He hooted. “I’d forgotten about that. What other useful things did you learn in Holloway?”
“How to dump a pot of hot tea over the heads of those who annoy me. Now, be a dear and take the tray, will you? I’ll pour us tea and thereby shatter any illusions you may have about my domesticity.”
He took the tray from her hands and she cleared the books from a side table. “What? You were never taught how to pour tea in hopes of luring in an innocent young man?”
“You’re forgetting that I was raised by a man. He neglected to teach us the finer art of being useless.”
“Ouch. I think you just slandered your entire generation. Thank you,” he said, taking the cup of tea she poured.
“Not my generation, just my class. Susie and Eleanor can both cook, and trust me, that’s a far better skill than pouring a fancy tea.”
“So you’re learning to cook?”
“Don’t be silly.” Victoria took a seat in one of the wingback chairs nearest the fire.
“It’s hard to be anything but silly or to take you seriously while you have that ridiculous cap on.”
She put a hand to her head, realizing that she still had her VAD headgear on. She set her tea down and took the cap off, inadvertently loosening some of the pins that held up her hair. She took them out as well and then quickly recoiled her hair and pinned it into a messy knot on top of her head. “There, that feels much better anyway.”
Her breath caught from the look of longing she caught on his face before he turned back toward the fire. She picked up her teacup and a sandwich. “Oh, why don’t you sit down,” she snapped, her heart dipping with frustration. She had been so happy to see him, and now he was going to ruin it by getting all soppy.
He raised a quizzical eyebrow? “Rough day?”
“No, you just make me nervous lurking about.” She added in a milder tone, “Sit and eat.”
“I didn’t know you suffered from nerves.” He sat and took a biscuit. Dunking it into his tea, he took a bite and stared moodily into the fire.
She blew out her breath in exasperation and fell into silence. He’d been her best friend for over a year, but she still didn’t understand him. “Oh!” She sat up straight. “Guess who showed up at the hospital today? Edward!”
The look he gave her was unreadable. “Did he come for a visit or was he injured?”
“Injured, sadly. Why would he come to the hospital for a visit?”
Kit shrugged. “He seemed a bit smitten with you last summer.”
Her jaw dropped. “Oh, please! You’ve gone beyond silly into the realm of Never Never Land. Perhaps you’ve been concussed while off in the war.” She dismissed him with a wave of a hand.
Rather than get angry, he laughed. “I only wish I were in Never Never Land. You would make a charming Wendy.”
“I most certainly would not! Imagine me taking care of children. The Lost Boys wanted her to be their mother. Could you see me as someone’s mother?”
She realized her blunder then when Kit looked at her, his blue eyes burning. “Maybe, Maybe not. You certainly couldn’t be any worse than my mother.”
She jerked up straight. Certainly, she had been right to not trust him. “Have another biscuit and stop your nonsense.”
“So you’re not the motherly type. But I could see you as Tinker Bell. And don’t you think I’d make a dashing Peter Pan? Second star to the right and straight on till morning and all that.”
He sounded tired and she shot him a look. He was thinner, even though it had only been a month since she had seen him, and shadows darkened his eyes. Pity and tenderness stabbed at her.
He stood and poked the fire, and the sadness on his face was more than she could bear.
She joined him then, placing her hand on his shoulder. “You need to get some sleep. Would you like me to call my driver? He can take you to your mother’s house.”
He reached up and covered her hand with his own. He didn’t look at her, and shadows from the flame of the fire flickered across his face. “I’m not going home. I have to return directly to headquart
ers. I had an errand to run and am leaving for Calais on the ferry in the morning. I only had a few hours.”
His hand tightened on hers and they stood silently as the light from the windows dimmed around them. Victoria knew she should move to light the lamps—standing in front of the fire and holding his hand like this was dangerous, he might get the wrong idea—but she was strangely reluctant to break the spell. “Are you being sent to the front?” she asked quietly.
The look he gave her was unreadable. “I’ve been handpicked for other duties.”
Fear shot through her and she didn’t have to ask what duties. He wouldn’t be able to tell her, and she could imagine the type of duties a young man with a perfect grasp of the German language would be asked to do.
“When do you have to leave?” she asked instead.
He glanced at the large clock over the fireplace. “I should go to the railway station in a couple of hours.”
Victoria tilted her head back and looked at his profile. He’d always been handsome, in his own way, with his dark-auburn hair and sharp blue eyes. His features were more intelligent than conventionally handsome, but looking at him, she realized that Kit had changed. Whereas his mouth had often been twisted with a cynical derision or his eyes mocking, he now looked pensive and unsure. Less cocky.
Or maybe it was just a trick of the light.