The Woman at the Front

by Lecia Cornwall

  “Steady on, Chastaine,” Findlay murmured from his bed, his voice thin with his own fear.

  Chastaine looked at him. “You think I should spare her, this delicate flower of English womanhood, a lass bold and brave enough to pierce a dying man’s chest with a needle? I won’t. You want to know, don’t you, El?”

  She swallowed and nodded.

  “Then I’ll tell her. It’s different on the ground,” Findlay said. “No angels, no heaven. The men in the trenches always know when there’s a show coming—at least the ones who’ve been here awhile.” He turned his head so he could see Eleanor, his hand closed in a fist against the white bandages that swathed his chest. “It’s the way the artillery sounds, you see, a feeling they get in their bones. A corporal told me he can read every order that’s coming up, even before they’re issued to the men, just by looking into the eyes of the officers—well, the officers who care about sending their men over the top, that is.” He looked away. “I hate to order them to go out there. I hate the tension, the smell of fear, the way some of them are so bloody cheerful, trying to encourage the others, give them hope. It’s harder when they fall.” He paused. “Most of the time, they don’t even see it coming.”

  David was watching Eleanor, wondering if she’d cry, or faint, but she was staring at Findlay, listening, her face bereft, but strong and compassionate. Chastaine was studying her, too, his eyes on her white face, his jaw tight, his expression expectant. David knew the bastard was hoping that she’d faint, show some womanly weakness, some emotion he could understand. He wanted her to suffer the way he was suffering, the way they were all suffering. “Did you know we’re only eight miles from the front here, Eleanor?” Chastaine said cruelly, but she didn’t look at the flier, or at Findlay. She looked at him.

  “What are the chances it will happen tonight, or tomorrow?” she asked. “Will they come here, since it’s only eight miles?”

  Findlay replied before David could speak. “Eight miles might as well be eight hundred. Advances are measured in yards. A few yards and a thousand dead, and they call it a success. The more dead, the bigger the success it’s deemed to be,” Findlay said bitterly. He shut his eyes. “God, I’m glad I’m out of it. I wish we all were.”

  But Eleanor was waiting for David’s answer as a surgeon, a medical officer. He realized she was trusting him to tell her the truth, a professional courtesy between colleagues. “We won’t know much until the wounded begin to arrive—that’s how we know what’s happening, by the kinds of wounds and the regiments the men are from. If you know where the Canadians are posted, or the Australians, or the West Yorkshires, then you know what part of the line is under fire,” David told her. “Have you seen battle wounds?”

  She nodded. “In Edinburgh, after the Somme while I was at medical school, in my third year. The wounded arrived there by train on their way to the hospitals. And on the way here, I saw wounded men in Calais and at the station in Arras.”

  Men already treated, David thought. Not the gory, dirty, terrifying sight of freshly wounded men, screaming, stinking, shell-shocked and bleeding, in agonizing pain or dying. He hoped she’d be gone before she saw such things. Perhaps Bellford understood better than anyone, and his edicts were meant to protect her as much as the soldiers.

  “The Countess of Kirkswell has a convalescent hospital for officers at Chesscroft—” she said.

  “My mother, my home,” Chastaine said sharply, reminding her of his presence.

  Eleanor spared him a quick glance. “Yes. She’s given use of the dower house for lieutenants and captains. Higher-ranking officers stay in a wing of the manor house.”

  “Of course they do. Most of them are probably friends of hers. It must be like a weekend house party that never ends,” Chastaine muttered.

  “Hardly that,” Eleanor said. “Some are very bad.”

  “How tiresome for the staff to have to look after the maimed, and the halt, and the blind,” he drawled. “They must hate the extra work.”

  “No one complains,” Eleanor said. “There are plenty of volunteers, and there are doctors on staff, RAMC men.”

  “Any female doctors?” Chastaine asked. He barked a laugh when Eleanor shook her head. “And I thought my mother was all about that, women’s suffrage and the equality of the sexes. She’s always longed to be in charge, and now she has her chance. It’s all for appearance, the great lady doing her bit for king and empire. I imagine she rules her hospital with an iron fist, the same way she ruled poor bloody Cyril, and my father. What a terrible disappointment I was to her—I never let her tell me what to do, and as long as I wasn’t the heir she ignored me. But now things are different. She expects me to come up to snuff, toe the line, do as she bids me. Isn’t that why she sent you? Tell me, am I to go home and be one more patient? Once we finish exchanging tales about how we got our respective wounds, am I to play host, tell the other gimpy officers amusing tales of my ancestors and the ghosts that walk the long gallery in the dark of night, warn the ones on crutches about the loose board on the sixth step on the back stairs?” He rolled his eyes like a peevish schoolboy. “How boring.”

  “It doesn’t sound so bad to me. Think of the ones who won’t go home at all,” David said sharply.

  “I’m one of them—I’m not going,” Chastaine snapped.

  Eleanor gasped. “What? But, Louis, your mother—”

  “Oh, just go, Eleanor. Get out.” He turned his face away and closed his eyes. “Send the damned nurse in with some morphine on your way.”

  David took her arm. “Come and eat, let him get some rest,” he murmured, and he led her out, silently cursing Chastaine. She’d borne the terrible descriptions of impending battle and personal harm, but her patient’s final pronouncement had been the thing that had shaken her.

  She followed him silently, her face pale, and he wondered what she was thinking, what he could say, and what she feared most of all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  March 10, 1918

  The big attack didn’t come the next day, or the day after that. Wounded and sick men arrived each day in manageable numbers. They were quickly and efficiently treated, then sent on to hospitals farther in the rear or returned to the front.

  Or so Eleanor heard. The colonel had called her into his office the day after she’d treated Captain Findlay. She was sternly reminded that she was not allowed to even look at patients other than Louis. Failure to comply would result in her immediate removal from the CCS, with or without Louis. She promised to comply.

  Louis was guarded and edgy. Sometimes he returned her smile, and other days, he was mulish and cranky.

  Today she was reading Louis an article in a censored copy of the Times, a piece about the Prince of Wales’s recent visit to France. Louis looked at the photographs of the young prince and sighed. “Poor David. I know exactly how he feels. He wants to serve, but they’re not going to let the heir to the throne get close to the front. All he can do is wave from the rear and smile and keep morale high.”

  She’d forgotten he knew the Prince of Wales well enough to call him by the name only his family and his closest friends used, that he attended the same parties and golfed, hunted, and sailed with the prince. Louis knew the king and queen as well, since his grandmother had once been one of Queen Mary’s ladies in waiting.

  She latched on to that to change the subject. “What was it like to meet the king and queen? Are they—”

  The cheerful chortle of a car horn outside interrupted her. It wasn’t the usual strident blare of an ambulance pulling up, but something jaunty.

  Louis lifted his head. “I know that sound—it’s the horn on a Vauxhall D. A colonel’s car or a general’s—even a field marshal or the king. It’s a surprise inspection, no doubt. Perhaps you’d better run away, Eleanor, before the brass hats stride in and make us all stand at attention. The officers always want to line up the medi
cal staff and whatever patients they can prop up so they can take pictures. I wonder what they’d make of you, the redoubtable Eleanor Atherton, lady doctor?”

  But it wasn’t a cadre of high-ranking officers who strode into the ward. It was a glamorous young woman, elegantly coiffed and lavishly dressed in pink silk, gleaming furs, and a king’s ransom in jewels. She was on the arm of a handsome young lieutenant.

  Eleanor gaped at the officer. “Edward!”

  Her twin brother looked at her in surprise. “Eleanor? What on earth are you doing here? Did you sign up as a VAD or something?”

  “She’s here for me,” Louis said.

  Edward looked at his friend in surprise. “You? And El?”

  But the young woman on Edward’s arm detached herself and squealed as she rushed to throw herself into Louis’s arms. “Budgie! Oh, darling, I was frantic when I heard you were injured.” She was covering his face with kisses, wriggling against him like a giddy spaniel, and Louis was laughing.

  “Budgie?” Eleanor asked Edward, who was grinning at the tender scene.

  “A pet name. Didn’t he show you his tattoo?”

  “He said it was a sparrow.”

  “Private joke,” Edward murmured. For a moment he stood and regarded her, still looking baffled by her presence. She wondered if he’d hug her or peck her cheek, but he merely gave her a half smile, and when she moved to hug him, he quickly stepped past her, out of her reach, to greet his friend, now buried under the woman in pink, who was covering his face in lipstick kisses. Eleanor let her hands drop to her sides, knotting them in the folds of her skirts. She was glad to see her twin whole and safe and in good health, and she should have remembered he’d never liked mixing family with friends. Still, she had a reason to be here, a job to do, and she stood her ground, even if that was off to one side, an observer instead of a participant, or a friend, or even a sister. She was still Louis’s doctor.

  Louis was laughing. “I’m not injured, darling Fanny—I’m wounded. Only civilians get injured nowadays. I’m a hero!” His eyes were bright with all the amusement and charm Eleanor hadn’t seen for a while. She felt her heart tumble into her sensible black boots, so unlike the fashionable and frivolous pink kid leather heels “darling Fanny” was wearing. Her pink silk dress was the only color in the room, so bright and sweetly feminine amid the gray and black of the ward. Her perfume—something heavy, sweet, French, and no doubt expensive—filled the ward with imitation springtime.

  She giggled and kissed Louis again, adding another smudge to his forehead. “Wounded.” She purred the word with a delectable pout. “Of course you are. Uncle Douglas sends his regards. I borrowed his car, and dear Edward. Reggie and Beatrice and Maud are outside, but a dreadful dragon of a nurse wouldn’t let more than two of us inside, even when I told her Papa was a general and answerable only to Uncle Douglas and the king himself.”

  Edward glanced at Eleanor. “Uncle Douglas is Field Marshal Haig,” he said. “She’s Lady Frances Parfitt, the Duke of Winslowe’s daughter. She heard Louis was wounded, and she showed up at HQ and insisted on coming to visit him.” He looked smug, proud of such high connections. “Uncle Douglas cannot refuse his beloved niece anything, and when she insisted I simply must be the one to escort her here, I was immediately ordered to do so.”

  Lady Frances shimmied out of her mink coat and laid it over Louis like a blanket. The pink dress clung to lush curves, a garment more suited to tea at Buckingham Palace or a garden party than a war zone. She plopped down on the edge of the bed and regarded Louis’s leg. “Is it very bad?” she asked, her eyes wide, her lashes working like fans.

  “A mere scratch,” he said with a disarming grin.

  “It’s broken in three places,” Eleanor said, but no one was listening, and Louis only had eyes for Lady Frances now.

  Lady Frances turned and waved a languid hand at Edward. “We brought three cases of champagne, but the dragon refused to allow me to bring them inside. Not even Edward could convince her. Have we anything to celebrate with? I’m utterly parched.”

  Edward reached into his breast pocket and laid a silver flask in her palm. It was engraved with her brother’s initials, and it was expensive. Eleanor had never seen it before. “I’ve got brandy, darling,” Edward drawled, his tone lazy, his plummy accent an exact copy of Lady Frances’s. “Quite medicinal, and I say that as a doctor’s son. Will it do?”

  He glanced at Eleanor from the corner of his eye and had the grace to blush at her look of surprise.

  Louis took the flask and drank. “Oh, you’re a lifesaver, old chap. I thought I’d die of boredom.” Eleanor felt a prickle of indignation. He reached up a hand to flick at the fluffy ostrich feathers that adorned Lady Frances’s ridiculously fashionable hat. “Yet another silly hat, darling?”

  She giggled as she plucked one of the feathers free and used it to tickle him under the chin. “You noticed! I wore it just for you, Budgie. I did try to get budgie feathers, of course, but the milliner said they don’t use those for hats. Something about it not being proper to skin people’s pets for fashion. You can get pheasant, or goose, or ostrich, or even eagle if you really want it, but not budgie. We shall have to give you a different sobriquet.”

  Louis made a face, his good humor fading. “Just not ostrich. They’re flightless, you know.”

  Fanny raised one eyebrow before replying. Then she pressed her cheek to his. “How silly you are.”

  Eleanor gaped at the giddy scene.

  Lady Frances took the flask from Louis, sipped, and passed it on to Edward, who did likewise. Eleanor glared at her brother, and he held it out to her.

  She shook her head. “This is a hospital,” she hissed. Society magazines at home were full of photographs of glamourous and titled debutantes visiting the front to help raise the morale of the troops or to visit wounded relatives. A number of upper-class ladies had volunteered as VADs or served at hospitals set up by their noble mamas or aunts. Some wore elegant uniforms that looked as custom tailored as a tea gown, wore pearls, and posed for pictures. Some worked as hard as anyone else. There were photos of the Prince of Wales in uniform, leaning on a cane with elegant insouciance as he chatted with white-clad aristocratic female friends at the Duchess of Sutherland’s hospital here in France. Some ladies visited the front to spread cheer and gifts on goodwill tours. Most of those scurried home as soon as the mud sprayed their frocks or they saw things they wished they had not. Fraser MacLeod had imagined she was precisely that, the delicate, curious, fainting kind. Looking now at the glamorous Lady Fanny, Eleanor suspected she was the type of visitor Colonel Bellford wished to bar—a frivolous, rule-breaking, outspoken, and titled female. It appeared she was here to raise Louis’s morale the way she might have done in England if he were bedridden with a slight cold.

  Sir Douglas’s flamboyant niece had not even glanced at the other patients, though she looked around now, her expression imperious, as if seeking a servant so she could order tea or looking for a phalanx of idle footmen to carry in the aforementioned champagne. Her blue eyes fell on Eleanor and slid over her briefly, taking in her plain blouse and dark skirt. Her lips tightened, her dismissal of Eleanor instant.

  “And who is this?” Lady Frances asked, looking down her pert nose at Eleanor. “Another dragon?”

  Edward chuckled uneasily, but didn’t reply. Louis did. “Almost. This is Eleanor, Edward’s twin sister. Eleanor, may I present Lady Frances Parfitt?”

  Lady Frances didn’t hold out her hand, and Eleanor didn’t curtsy. They simply regarded each other across the width of Louis’s bed. “I didn’t know you had a sister, Eddie,” Lady Frances said, her tone serious now, almost imperious. “Are you a nurse, then?”

  “She’s a doctor, as a matter of fact. My doctor,” Louis said brightly.

  “No!” Lady Frances said, looking horrified.

  “ ’S’truth—Mater sent
her to check up on me,” Louis said.

  Frances’s eyes narrowed again, and her nose wrinkled. “Like a nursemaid?”

  “More a valet,” Louis quipped. He had the audacity to wink at Eleanor. She regarded him soberly, not finding his jest at all amusing.

  Lady Frances laughed, a sound like silver spoons tinkling against fine bone china. “Really, Budgie, you’re too funny.” She kissed him again, on the lips this time. “It is good to see you able to make jokes. I feared—” She pouted and blinked hard until glossy tears sprang to her eyes. “I feared you were . . .” She swiped at the tears with a monogrammed handkerchief that was lavishly trimmed with alençon lace. She gave him a watery smile. “But you’re not, of course, so all’s well.”

  Louis smiled back, his lipstick-stained mouth almost as red as Lady Frances’s.

  “Miss Atherton, these visitors are disturbing the other patients,” Matron Connolly said, gliding up behind her shoulder with a terrifying glare.

  Dragon indeed.

  The matron’s eyes flicked over Lady Frances’s position on Louis’s bed, and the fur coat. Her lips rippled with disapproval.

  Edward quickly pocketed the flask and gave the matron a dazzling smile. “Good afternoon, Matron. I’m Lieutenant Edward Atherton, aide to Lieutenant Colonel Lord Petrie at HQ. This is Lady Frances Parfitt. She’s Field Marshal Haig’s niece and the youngest daughter of His Grace the Duke of Winslowe. Lady Frances is a very dear friend of Lieutenant Lord Somerton.”