She hadn’t thought of that. What on earth would Louis say? “Yes,” she said again.
He stepped back. “I shall inform you if or when your assistance is required. We should go over the rules, of course.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Very good, then. Attend rounds this evening. I’ll have a list of expectations and restrictions ready for you then. Carry on with your day.”
He turned on his heel and walked away without another word, and she knew what it had cost him, or suspected she did—the colonel, a man of her father’s generation, believed a woman’s place was at home, safe and silent.
But she was here, and she had proven herself professional and capable, a good doctor after all. If she was needed, she’d be ready to help.
But for now, Louis was expecting her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Where have you been?” Louis asked shortly. He looked peevish and bored, and Edward and Lady Frances and his friends were gone, to Paris, maybe, or perhaps her brother had returned to duty. He hadn’t said goodbye, but she’d been rather busy. She hadn’t thought about Edward, or Lady Fanny, or even Louis, for that matter, since the influx of wounded had claimed her attention. She felt no guilt. The wounded had needed her more than Louis or his visitors. Still, she would have liked to have had a word with Edward before he left, if only to ask if he’d had any news from home.
“How are you feeling?” she asked Louis now, ignoring his question. How could she even begin to explain to him how she’d spent the last two days?
“Hungover. Can you make the dragon give me a headache powder?”
Eleanor leaned in to examine the whites of his eyes and feel his forehead, just in case it was something more serious. She looked at the splint and examined the tension of the wires. All was well. “You didn’t refer to Matron Connolly as ‘the dragon’ before your friends visited.”
“But she is, isn’t she? Is there any reason to deny me comfort for my pain? I suppose she thinks I should suffer for my sins. She probably considers this a self-inflicted wound, or she’s peeved that Fanny didn’t offer her any caviar.”
“Or because you frightened the other patients and made too much noise,” Eleanor said. She looked around the ward, full after yesterday. There were ten patients, two of them critically wounded. Private Gibbons sat beside one of the worst cases, a captain, patiently watching over him.
“Are you listening to me?” Louis demanded, drawing her attention back. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
“I’m sorry. I—I, um, had a conversation with the colonel this morning.”
The vicious delight in his eyes surprised her. “Sending you packing, is he? I heard all about you mucking in yesterday. Just be glad you’re not in the army—they shoot soldiers for disobeying direct orders. Not to mention my mother’s orders. Or mine.” He snapped his fingers in her face, and she flinched in surprise. “I want a bloody headache powder!”
She felt indignation rise in her breast. “They needed me. There were so many wounded, and you had plenty of company—”
“Were you jealous?”
Her cheeks heated with annoyance. He really was as thick as a bloody brick. “Not everything is about you, Louis. A medical officer was killed yesterday, a good man.”
“What do I care? I didn’t know him.”
“But it does affect someone you do know—Captain Blair must go and take his place at the front until they can get another doctor,” she said sharply. Nothing changed in his expression. She lifted her chin. “The colonel asked if I would—help out—while he’s away.”
“You?” Louis threw his head back and laughed. “You, heal wounded men, perform surgery, chop off limbs, pull shrapnel out of ruined bellies with your bare hands? Oh, they must be desperate indeed! Well, I won’t have it. You’re my doctor, or companion, or whatever it was my mother called you when she hired you.”
She felt the sting of his cruelty. There was no charm in Louis Chastaine now. She resisted the urge to snap at him again. Instead, she reached out to smooth the covers as she kept her expression flat. “You’ll be fine, Louis. It will only be for a week, and only if there’s another push.”
“Another ‘push.’ Picked up the lingo, have you? What’s next, bobbing your hair, asking for a fag, chatting with the lads as you singe lice, or singing “Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo” with your skirts kilted up to amuse Tommy Atkins?”
Eleanor turned away and picked up the chart hanging on the peg, her hands shaking. “Colonel Bellford has ordered another seven days of bed rest to let your leg mend. The burn on your arm is healing well. You are showing no signs of illness or fever—”
“I have a headache!” he insisted.
She put the chart back. “When you are ready to leave, I will be here to escort you home. I will be your doctor when—”
He grabbed her hand, suddenly contrite before her stiff tone. “Just my doctor? Not my friend?” He gave her a dazzling smile. “I was only joking, El. Come now, don’t be sharp. Read to me.”
But the curtain at the end of the ward parted, and David Blair walked in. He was dressed for travel, wearing his greatcoat and his cap, his boots and puttees. He looked every inch a soldier.
“There you are,” he said to Eleanor.
“Off to play hero at the front?” Louis asked him.
David flicked a bland glance over the pilot. “May I speak to you outside, Dr. Atherton?”
Louis gripped her hand tighter, holding her. “Don’t go! I’ve been without you all day.”
“I’ll be back directly,” she said, feeling David’s eyes on her. She plucked her hand free, her cheeks burning.
“Bugger it,” Louis cursed. “At least bring a headache powder when you come back, and a cold cloth, and see if you can find a copy of the Times that isn’t a month old!”
“He isn’t normally so—imperious,” she said to David outside. She wrapped her arms around herself, as much out of humiliation as from the cold.
“No need to explain. I wanted to thank you for agreeing to fill in while I’m away,” David said.
“I was just telling Lou—Lieutenant Chastaine—that you were going, and I—” She paused. “He doesn’t approve, I’m afraid.”
“Does it matter so much to you that he does? Do you have hopes of him?” Blair asked bluntly.
She looked up at him in surprise. “What? No! I had a crush on him when I was a girl, but I’m—”
His eyes cut into her like a scalpel. “Do you still? Is that why you came here, hoping?”
“The Countess of Kirkswell asked me to come!” she objected, flustered. “As her son’s doctor.” She was blushing. She could feel the hot blood burning in her cheeks. “She promised that—” Tongue-tied, she fell silent. It seemed trivial now, when David was leaving for the front, and danger.
Blair folded his arms over his chest. “Chastaine doesn’t need a private doctor. You’re clever enough to know that. And if the countess had checked, she would have found out that Bellford was one of the top orthopedic surgeons at the Royal London Hospital before the war. He’s done the very best for your flier. All Chastaine needs is someone to hold his hand, tip the porter, and mop his brow. He doesn’t need a doctor to do that.”
“It’s not like that,” she said. “She—the countess—knew he’d be stubborn, would refuse to come home if she came. She’s just concerned, you see—he’s the only heir now, and it’s time for him to take his responsibilities seriously, to go home and do his duty.”
He shook his head. “But that’s not medicine—it’s a carrot on a stick. You make a very pretty carrot, to be sure, but it’s a poor use of your skills. Why did you really come to France, Eleanor? Surely you weren’t so foolish as to pin your hopes on winning Chastaine, war hero, playboy, rascal, and earl’s son—unless you just wanted a bit of a fling.” He looked at her c
ritically, with speculation, as if to determine whether or not that was true. She held his gaze, her expression flat. He looked away first and sighed. “No. You’re not the type for that, are you? Not from what I’ve seen. You want to be a doctor, a real doctor.”
She raised her chin at his rebuke. “And I will be. Her ladyship promised she’d help me when I got home, recommend me to her friends. I will be a real doctor.”
“You’ll be a society quack.”
Suddenly it felt like a shameful reason to have come, especially when she stood surrounded by men in pain, dying, broken. “What other choice do I have? The options for medical women are limited. You know that. I would be expected to work with women and children, in public health, and always under the supervision of a male doctor. With the countess’s help, I’ll have a practice of my own.”
He studied her again, frowning. “I have a friend in psychiatry—fascinating to see how people tick,” David said. “The way the mind works—especially the female mind—is an interest of mine. You’re different from most of the women I know. You’re stronger, braver, keener than most. You don’t back down, or faint at the sight of blood and death. You carry on. I can’t quite figure out what it is you truly yearn for. It isn’t really Chastaine, or you wouldn’t have helped yesterday and left him alone with other company. You’d be playing by his rules if that was the case. You’d be content to fluff his pillow and hold his hand. And I can’t see you running homeward to dose titled biddies with patent tonics and calling it medicine. I suspect you’d never be happy with that, not now you’ve had a taste of real medicine, and nothing you do will ever be as real as this. It doesn’t matter that you’re a woman. No one can use that argument against you now. You’re good enough to be a surgeon, a fine doctor in your own right—and if anyone can change the minds of the men who say that a woman isn’t good enough, it’s you, Eleanor. So is that it? Have I figured out what makes you tick, Eleanor Atherton? Is it this?” He indicated the CCS with a wave of his hand. “Have you found what you really want?”
Every nerve in her body quivered. Yes, she wanted this, all of it. She looked up at him. There was a keen light in his eyes, so different from the witless flirtation in Louis’s insouciant blue gaze.
“And what will you find, at the front?” she asked.
“Oh, mud, blood, terror,” he said with sangfroid, but she noted the tension in his jaw. “You know, you’re very pretty when you blush.”
“That is not how one colleague speaks to another,” she said tartly.
“Ah, but yours might be the last tender blush I ever see.”
“Don’t say that,” she whispered. “Aren’t you afraid?” She listened for the sound of the guns, gauged the direction like an old pro now that she’d been here for nearly a month. She’d learned to ignore them unless the cadence changed. For now it was flat and low, far away, and only half-hearted.
“Oh, I’m afraid, and I’ll continue to be afraid, every second. Will you worry?”
“Of course.”
He smiled. “How fine you are, Eleanor Atherton. Don’t waste your time hoping for Chastaine. Don’t settle for less than you deserve. Choose someone worthy of you, someone who respects your talents, your brains, and your bravery, all of what and who you are.”
She scanned his face, saw something sharp and hopeful in his eyes, and it made her breath catch. She looked away.
He caught her hand and held it. “Look, I’ll be back before you leave for England. We’ll have a chance to talk then. Don’t worry about me too much. It will only be a few days, and—” He glanced at the ambulance waiting to take him to the front. “Oh, bugger it,” he swore. He swooped in and kissed her firmly on the mouth, his arm coming around her waist to pull her close for a brief instant. Then he stepped back and grinned. “That’s for yesterday, for helping out, for worrying, and just because I’ve wanted to kiss you since the day you saved Findlay.” He grinned. “Goodbye, Eleanor. I’ll see you when I get back. I fully expect you’ll be in command of this post by then.”
She gaped at him, speechless, her mouth still tingling from his kiss and the surprise of it. He smiled again and jokingly came to attention and saluted her before turning smartly on his heel and marching away. She watched as he swung up into the ambulance and drove away.
“Miss?” Private Gibbons caught her sleeve. “Captain Greaves on the officers’ ward is looking poorly. Will you come and see? Chaplain’s with him, but he’s wondering if there’s anything more we can do to make him comfortable.”
“Of course.” Eleanor hurried after him to check on the dying man. She glanced at Louis as she hurried past his bed. “Private Gibbons, will you ask one of the VADs to get Lieutenant Chastaine a headache powder? And plenty of water.”
An hour later, Captain Greaves died, the rattling breaths in his chest falling silent at last, his hand going slack in hers. Eleanor closed his eyes with her fingertips. Private Gibbons clapped his hands together and mumbled a prayer with the chaplain.
“What happens now?” she asked. She watched as Gibbons took a cloth bag out of his pocket and solemnly handed it to the chaplain.
“We gather his belongings—his watch, and his glasses, the book he had in his pocket when he came in,” the chaplain said sadly. “We pack everything up and send it home to his loved ones.” He sighed. “Greaves was engaged to be married, I understand. I’ll write a letter, tell them he died quietly, without pain, a hero.” It wasn’t true—he’d died slowly and in agony, despite morphine and the best efforts of the surgeons and nurses. “Some men struggle against dying if they have something important to live for. Still, we tell their loved ones that they were at peace, and that their last thoughts and words were of home and family.”
“I’ll write to his fiancée,” Eleanor said. “I saw him yesterday when he came in. Her name was Rosy. He kept saying it over and over again.”
“I heard him call you Rosy, miss,” Gibbons said. “He thought you were her at the end.” He held out a pocket watch and opened it so she could see the photograph of a young woman under the lid.
The chaplain nodded. “It comforted him to think so. Thank heaven you were here, Miss Atherton.” He turned to Gibbons. “Go and fetch the orderlies, lad, and we’ll take him out.” He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “Three more to bury this evening. It will be at sunset if you’d care to come.”
“I’ll be there,” she promised.
She took the photograph out of the watch. “I think he’d like to keep this close by,” she said, tucking it into his breast pocket next to his heart.
The chaplain smiled. Eleanor pulled the winding pin on his watch to stop it and mark the time, then she handed it to Reverend Strong to put in the muslin bag with the rest of the captain’s belongings.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Louis was reading a book when she returned to his bedside. He looked up at her, his expression neutral. “Dickens,” he said. “David Copperfield. It’s better than I thought it would be. Either that, or I’ve truly lost my will to live.”
“Don’t,” she said, her mind still on Captain Greaves’s death. “Don’t joke. You’re alive, Louis.”
He looked past her, watching the orderlies carry away the shrouded stretcher.
“I was a cad, wasn’t I?”
“Yes,” she said. She looked down, saw something under the bed, and picked up a pink silk scarf, heavy with perfume.
“Fanny’s,” he said. “I doubt she’ll miss it. She has a hundred others.”
“Will she be coming back?” She moved to hand the scarf to him, but he shook his head.
“I don’t want it. Keep it. It’s a pretty color. Wear it if you want. It would suit you.”
Eleanor stared at the pink silk. It was soft in her hands, unlike the rough blankets and boiled sheets, the washed and rewashed bandages that smelled of carbolic and disinfectant, or the plain wool a
nd linen of her own clothing. It was the one extravagant spot of color in the room, the color of a June rose, and it smelled feminine, exotic, and glamorous.
Eleanor folded it and set it on the table beside the bed. “You keep it,” she said.
“She’ll come back with a new one—bright blue, or yellow as a buttercup, straight from Paris, with a dress and hat to match, and shoes as well,” Louis said. “Not red. That would remind her of blood. She does have a soft heart, you know. She gives money to crippled soldiers, supports the war widows and orphans on her father’s estates.”
“Is she in Paris now?” Eleanor asked.
He grunted. “She’s off looking for more champagne. Other than silk, and perhaps me, that’s the one thing she can’t live without.”
“There’s a war on, you know,” she said with a rueful smile.
“Is there? I’ve been lying in this bed, bored witless, for weeks. How would I know what’s going on out there?” He tossed David Copperfield aside, looking peevish again.
“If the weather stays fine, you can get up in a few days’ time, go outside in a wheelchair, get some fresh air.”
“A wheelchair? Why not a pushchair? You really are my nanny, aren’t you?”
She remembered what David Blair had said and turned away to fidget with the splint. She turned back to find Louis staring at her—not with admiration, but with bafflement.
“Don’t you feel ill, or faint? Doesn’t it make you want to cry to see wounded men? How can you touch them, stick needles into their chests, operate on them?”
“It makes me feel alive and useful. I feel compassion, and a desire to help, to use my knowledge and my training to ease their suffering.”
He frowned. “How brave you are, then.”
“No braver than David Blair or Sergeant MacLeod—or you.”
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