by Brown, T. J.
Rowena smiled, remembering how the Coterie had fanned out and lit dozens of firecrackers in the grand ballroom at the very moment the Christmas-tree lights were flicked on. The ensuing mayhem amongst the gentry in attendance had been priceless. Then she sighed. “I wonder where everyone is now.”
Elaine echoed her with a sigh of her own. “I know that Kit, Seb, and Colin are all safe. I got a letter from Colin just yesterday, and he told me that both the Harris boys were killed at Ypres. You didn’t know them well, but they went to prep school with Colin and Seb and attended several of the Summerset hunts. Colin sounded rattled. I guess you never get used to losing friends so suddenly, even when you’re constantly surrounded by death. . . .” Elaine shook her head, as if to rid her mind of such gruesome images. “You know about Edward, of course. Victoria said he is about to be sent off to France again.”
“Victoria should be arriving in Calais today. She won’t be able to tell us where she’s at. Just somewhere near the front.” Rowena asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to come riding with me?”
Her cousin shook her head. “Thank you, no. You love riding much more than I do to want to ride in November. I won’t be taking to the saddle again until spring has sprung.” Elaine waved her off.
Rowena had sent a note to Cristobel yesterday and hoped the girl would be able to come out today. Rowena didn’t know when she would be back at Summerset and wanted to find out how the girl was faring . . . and perhaps how Jon was faring, as well. She thought of that emotionally turbulent afternoon often and still found it all as utterly confusing as she did then.
She and Sebastian had had a wonderful day at Brighton sightseeing and had toured the aquarium, played in the deserted arcade, and eaten fish and chips in the streets like urchins. He didn’t mention their previous conversation, but instead showed her what their life together might be like.
It warmed her heart that he was giving her so much room to breathe despite that she could at any moment trample on his pride—or his heart. She couldn’t deny her affection for Sebastian, but her feelings for him still didn’t match the passionate love she’d felt for Jon, as violent and devastatingly painful as that love had ultimately been.
But what if Jon could truly offer himself to her? Did he even deserve another chance after all he’d put her through? No, he does not. Nor could she trust him again the way she once had. So what was to stop her from giving her heart to Sebastian, who deserved it so fully? She shook her head, wishing she knew the answers to her questions.
Frustrated, she spurred her horse into a gallop, trying not to look at the ridge where she’d met Jon after his aeroplane crashed.
She guided her mount over a fence and splashed across a stream. She slowed when the barn came into view. Cristobel loved to gallop, and Rowena wanted to give her horse a chance to breathe before what would no doubt be a hard ride.
Rowena raised her hand in a cheerful greeting, but faltered when she spied Cristobel’s tear-streaked face. Her heart slammed against her chest. “What’s wrong?” she cried, reining her horse next to Cristobel’s.
“George was killed in Ypres. We just got word.”
Thank God it wasn’t Jon. Rowena tried not to let the relief show on her face. For Cristobel, who had already lost so much, losing her brother had to be devastating. “Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry. How is your mother?”
“She is holding up. Being brave.” Cristobel sniffled. “It’s just made worse because William is already in France and they sent Samuel to Africa and Jon . . .” The girl stopped and Rowena couldn’t help herself.
“And Jon?” she prompted gently.
Cristobel’s mouth tightened and she nudged her horse into a walk and Rowena followed.
“Jon came home last week. He asked his commanding officers to send him to France. He says he can’t train people to go die any longer and wants to go fight. Mother begged him to reconsider, but he was adamant. He said he could check on William that way, but he’s just so angry all the time now.”
Cristobel glanced over at Rowena, but Rowena wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m sorry.” Rowena didn’t know what else to say.
Cristobel looked down at her hands. “What if they all die? What if it’s just Mother and me left at Wells Manor forever? How could I ever get married and leave her?”
“I’m sure that won’t happen.”
Cristobel nodded, but looked unconvinced. The reports on the war were grim, and the major battles left few families unscathed.
Rowena’s stomach clenched. Who would be next to join the swiftly mounting body count this wretched war had already claimed? Sebastian or Jon? She knew she couldn’t ever be with Jon again, but still, she couldn’t see a world without him in it.
chapter
twelve
Victoria walked through the hospital, trying not to stumble from sheer exhaustion. Dame Furse apparently had the inhuman ability to stay awake for days on end without the need for sleep, but Victoria felt as if she had been awake for weeks. In reality, they had landed in Calais yesterday afternoon and had taken a train into Beauvais just last night. They’d had to wait for several hours for the train because the one they were supposed to take had been conscripted for military use. Victoria had half expected they would stay overnight in Beauvais after a day of travel, but it wasn’t to be. They had then climbed aboard a transporter wagon and rode a number of jolting miles to Chantilly, where the hospital was located. Now, instead of showing them where they would be staying, Dame Furse had one of the French nurses give them a tour of the hospital.
Victoria glanced at the four other women who were also on Dame Furse’s VAD team. Two were older women and two were about Victoria’s age. They all looked just as drained as she felt.
The hospital had hastily been built just outside Chantilly proper. It comprised half a dozen buildings with wooden floors, canvas walls, and tin roofs, none of which kept the cold out. Victoria shivered in spite of the woodstoves burning every twenty feet or so. They had gone through four of the buildings, each set up almost identically. As far as Victoria could tell, they were distinguished according to the wounds the soldiers in each had sustained, but she was too fatigued to be sure.
“Do you have any questions?” the French nurse asked in heavily accented English. She glanced at her wristwatch, clearly wishing she were somewhere else.
“Just one,” said the Yorkshire VAD on Victoria’s right. “Where are our beds and bathrooms?”
Victoria barely refrained from applauding.
The nurse laughed. “Not here, silly goose. You will be staying at a boardinghouse in Chantilly. You won’t live here . . . it will just feel like you do. Come. Let us go see your boss. Perhaps she will take pity and take you to your beds, oui?”
Oui, oui, please, Victoria thought. They sat on a bench as Dame Furse and the head of nurses talked. After one of the women fell asleep sitting upright, Dame Furse finally seemed to notice the state of her contingent. Victoria thought she spied disappointment cross the handsome older woman’s face, but couldn’t be sure. Was the woman even human?
They piled into a wagon that took them and their luggage back into Chantilly. It would be the only ride they would get to and from the hospital unless they could beg one off the soldiers going in those directions. Otherwise they would be expected to walk, no matter what the weather. The walk wasn’t so bad, less than a mile, and Victoria had often walked twice the distance to Nanny Iris’s home, but never after working a ten-hour shift.
She had a fleeting impression of a clean, rather cramped home turned into a boardinghouse by an enterprising Frenchwoman, before she was shown to a small room with two beds a mere twelve inches apart. She would be sharing with the young Yorkshire girl who had spoken up at the hospital. Victoria couldn’t remember her name and was too tired to care. After washing up in a small communal bathroom down the hall, Victoria collapsed on her bed and fell asleep fully clothed.
It seemed only minutes later that Victoria was awoken by a
loud rapping on the door. She sat upright and blinked. Her neighbor squealed, rolled out of bed, and got stuck in the narrow pathway between their beds.
“Breakfast in ten minutes!” a voice called.
Victoria wanted to cry.
After fishing the Yorkshire girl out from between their beds, they reintroduced themselves and took turns in the bathroom. Because both of them were still in their uniforms from yesterday, they made it downstairs on time.
The boarders were each given a large, round bowl of coffee with thick cream and a warm piece of bread with butter and jam. Victoria wolfed it down and, after wrapping herself in her coat and scarf, followed the other drowsy women out the door and down the road.
“How did I get here?” she whispered to herself as she and her roommate, Gladys, trudged down the road.
“I keep hoping I will wake up and it will be just a bad dream,” Gladys whispered back.
“Hush, girls,” Dame Furse said from in front of them. “You must never forget that we’re in a war zone.”
That snapped Victoria to attention. The reality of the past twenty-four hours stood in stark contrast to her romantic expectations. What was she doing in a war zone? Why had she thought this would be a great adventure? She was no wiser than the young men she’d met in the hospital in London who told her they’d had dreams of honor and glory as she dressed the stumps of their missing limbs.
The routine of the hospital wasn’t much different from what she had done back home. The similarity calmed her anxiety, and soon she was laughing and joking with the patients. Those who were able to muster a laugh. Some just stared at the ceiling looking at no one and nothing, and her heart ached for whatever their empty eyes were seeing. Others spoke nonstop about their experiences at the front, and Victoria’s stomach turned at the images they invoked, of tripping over scattered body parts in the field, of gut-wrenching dysentery, and of grown men crying out at night, racked by nightmares and overwhelmed by their own mortality. By noon, her feet ached and her mind was spinning. She walked two tents over to the mess hall, more eager to sit down than she was to eat.
Gladys was already seated when Victoria went through the line and got her food. The soup looked watery and smelled strongly of onions and garlic, but was served with a generous hunk of bread. Balancing the soup with the bread on top with a cup of strong coffee, she joined Gladys at the table. Gladys’s eyes were puffy and red and she stared at her soup with distaste.
“Are you okay?” Victoria asked.
Gladys shook her head and took a deep breath. “I was assigned to triage, and the men were coming in straight from the field hospitals.” She paused and Victoria saw her battling tears again. When Gladys got herself under control, she continued, “I can’t believe anyone survived the ride in. Limbs looked as if they’d been sawed off at a woodmill. There was so much dirt. So much blood. I was cutting clothes off of men.”
Gladys fell silent and stared at her hands. Victoria wrinkled her nose at her own food, her appetite diminishing. Instead of picking up her spoon, she put her arm around Gladys. “I’m so sorry. Do you want to trade assignments?”
Gladys shook her head. “No. They’ll be reassigning us every day. I don’t want Dame Furse to think I can’t deal with the work. If we work out well, then they’ll be bringing in more VADs to help the nurses. From what I’ve seen, they can use all the help they can get out here.”
“I’ve noticed that, too. They do seem to be shorthanded.” Victoria prayed she, also, could handle all the jobs she was assigned, physically as well as psychologically. So far she’d survived a grueling morning without so much as a sign of a breathing episode, but she knew that some of the horrors these nurses were exposed to left mental scars much deeper than any physical wound ever could.
She was given the opportunity to prove that she could rise to any challenge the next morning when she was assigned to triage. According to the nurse in charge, the fighting had slowed because of the bad weather, but was heating up again as both sides wanted to get their last licks in before the holiday. Horror crawled over Victoria’s skin like spiders as a wave of wounded were brought in. These men had not only been injured but had suffered from exposure to some kind of poisonous gas that Victoria was unfamiliar with.
“It’s xylyl bromide,” one nurse said grimly. “The Germans have started shooting grenades loaded with it into the trenches. It burns the skin, as well as the eyes and throat. So far, the blindness it causes has been temporary. Treat the skin like you would any burn, and place cold compresses over the eyes.”
Horrified, Victoria swallowed hard and did as she was instructed. Her mind could hardly fathom a world where men would toss canisters of poison gas at one another.
Victoria was aghast at the steady stream of casualties that passed through the triage tent, but she soon tucked her shock—and her modesty—into the far reaches of her mind as she cut clothes off men and washed their open wounds. At moments, though, she couldn’t keep her revulsion at bay and had to retch into a bedpan set to one side just for that purpose.
She soon forgot if she had even washed her hands between one patient and the next, and in all the filth she wondered if it would make much of a difference anyway. What was an actual field hospital like if the patients were coming to her in this condition?
One man was so still she wondered if he was even alive. His face was black with dirt and smoke and his leg was missing below the knee. Pieces of shrapnel peppered his ribs.
The nurse took one look and shook her head. “I don’t know how these men survive. They have to really want to live to endure this. Wash him up, and if he’s still alive when the doctors are ready for him, we’ll take him into surgery.” She nodded toward the pack that had come in with the solider. “See if you can find out who he is and fill out some of the paperwork before we take him in, all right?”
Victoria nodded. She cut his pants off his body, her stomach churning at the look of his leg. Helplessness swept over her. She poured alcohol over the wound and he didn’t even flinch. As she sponged off his face, she frowned. He looked familiar. Could he be a member of the Clever Coterie she hadn’t known very well? Her cousin Colin had so many friends . . .
Once she’d done everything she could for him, she knelt next to his cot and rummaged through his pack. Most of it was army issue, but then she found a picture that had been folded and creased. She unfolded it and stared, confused, at the pretty, dark-haired woman who stared back at her so somberly. It took her a moment, but then she cried out and clapped a hand to mouth.
Prudence.
Victoria stared at the man who lay so still before her. Andrew. It was her best friend’s husband whose life was ebbing away.
No. Oh, no.
She leaned close, her heart pounding in her ears. “Andrew, you must hear me. It’s Victoria. You are going to make it. I am going to take you to Prudence, I swear. You have to hold on.”
She took his hand in hers and called for the nurse. “This is my sister’s husband,” she cried out, her voice cracking in her frantic desperation. “We have to get him into surgery right away.”
The nurse put a hand on her shoulder. “As soon as the doctors are finished with the surgery they are working on, we will get him in.”
Victoria nodded shakily. She knew they couldn’t get him in any quicker. She only prayed it would be quick enough.
* * *
Rowena grabbed her satchel from the motorcar and waved her driver on. If she was to be truly independent, she would have to learn how to drive. But Mr. Dirkes had kept her so busy she hadn’t had the time. He had opened another plant near Surrey, and both factories were now running at full capacity. She was making aeroplane runs all over England. She hadn’t run into Jonathon again, but heard about him via the military grapevine. According to gossip, which was surely as popular a pastime among soldiers as it was with Aunt Charlotte and her set, he was known for his fearless flying, and between him and his gunner, they had shot down four German aeropl
anes. Rowena tried not to think of what else the gossips said—that as reckless as Jonathon Wells was, he would either become an ace or get killed before the spring.
She waved to a couple of the other pilots coming out the door. Mr. Dirkes was right. As more military and political heads saw for themselves just how valuable aeroplanes were to the war effort, demand had increased. They were sending their own pilots to pick them up because Rowena and the other pilots couldn’t keep up with demand.
“Where are you headed?” she called as they passed.
“Across the Channel,” one of them called back, and Rowena frowned. That was new. They usually flew the planes to the main naval ports and the boats ferried them across. The fighting must be heating up if they were flying them directly into France.
Mr. Dirkes was on the telephone when she walked into the office, and he waved at her to sit. She took the wooden seat across from his large, cluttered desk. Photographs and pencil drawings of aeroplanes in various stages of production decorated the walls. Books of all sorts were stacked haphazardly on every available surface. His office might look cluttered and disorganized, but Rowena would bet that he knew where everything was.
He hung up and smiled. “You’re always a sight for sore eyes, Miss Rowena. Like a breath of fresh air.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re being especially nice today. Why?”
“I’m always nice to you, my dear. Besides, I feel bad to have called you out on Christmas Eve. You should be at home attending balls or whatever you posh bastards do on high holidays.”
Rowena smiled at his jovial bluster. “Christmas is a sad affair this year, I’m afraid. No one is much in the mood for making merry with Victoria and Colin and most of our friends gone.” She changed the subject. “Where are you sending me now?” She held her breath praying he wanted her to fly across the Channel. She had yet to fly over water and longed for an opportunity. For Rowena, flying over the Channel had become a personal test of her piloting skills. It was also an indicator of Mr. Dirkes’s confidence in her.