The Woman at the Front

by Lecia Cornwall

  She stopped walking. “No,” she whispered aloud, fiercely.

  Her desire to be a doctor had led her here—her own determination and her skills.

  She stood still and listened to the distant guns, felt the cold March wind on her hot cheeks. She thought of David Blair at the front, in danger, counting on her to stay and help if she was needed. Without her, they’d have only one doctor if there was an attack. The wounded, desperate for treatment and comfort, for a chance to be safe and clean and out of pain, would have to wait, would suffer, die. Surely even Matron Connolly understood that.

  She damned her brother again, then Louis, then Edward once again. This wasn’t a game. This prank had terrible consequences that went far beyond hurting her.

  I don’t regret it, you know—not choosing the safe path. Not a minute of it, especially if I’m to die young, Louis had said. How could she ever have thought him bold and dashing? She’d been here for a short handful of weeks, and she knew that war wasn’t a game. Life was fragile, precious, easily snatched away, and snuffed out in an instant, and luck was fickle. Louis had been lucky and squandered it. He’d end up forever addicted to laudanum for the pain in his half-healed leg, living in twilight, bitter with regret, wishing— What would he wish? That he’d stayed, chosen her over his friends? Never that. It wasn’t his style. He’d probably forgotten all about her by now.

  She knocked on the colonel’s door and entered at his command. He was seated at his desk, writing letters. He frowned over his spectacles at her, then set the pen down and looked up at her with a guarded expression. “Dr. Atherton.”

  She clasped her hands before her, stood at attention the way a girl did when called before the headmistress—or her father—to discuss a misdeed.

  He folded his hands on the desk and peered at her, waiting. “Lieutenant Chastaine has—left,” she said.

  The colonel removed his spectacles altogether. “Left? On whose authority?”

  “There was an order. It was signed by . . . by . . . E. Atherton.”

  He glared at her. “You?”

  She swallowed, shook her head. “Lieutenant E. C. Atherton. My brother. He’s an adjutant at headquarters, on Lieutenant Colonel Petrie’s staff.”

  “I saw no such order. I gave no approval.”

  She blinked, holding back tears, too proud to let them fall. “Matron Connolly saw the order and approved it. He—Lieutenant Chastaine has gone to Paris.”

  “Paris.”

  Eleanor noted the pile of letters on the colonel’s desk, and she knew he’d been writing to the families of the dead, trying to explain, give comfort, ease their pain with mere words since he’d been unable to save their lads with all his medical skills. That was the true torment of this war—skill could never be enough, and young men would continue to die, and more and more letters would need to be written.

  “It means you cannot stay.”

  “I’m willing to, of course—”

  He shook his head. “No, not now. I still need a physician. We cannot do without one. But under the circumstances, I cannot keep you here. Before Lieutenant Chastaine’s departure, there was a reason, but now . . .”

  “I don’t wish to return to England.”

  He frowned. “You are without a doubt one of the most stubborn, difficult, bloody-minded women I’ve ever met.” She didn’t reply, and he sighed. “You’re also a good doctor, and there aren’t enough good doctors. If you wish to stay in France, there are several hospitals run by female surgeons at the behest of the French Red Cross. You could continue to do good work, I believe. Important work. There are plenty of refugee women and children to tend to. It’s a bloody disaster.” He regarded her. “It’s just something to consider, but if you take my advice, you’ll go home, forget this place and the terrible things you’ve seen. I suggest—I hope—you will. I hope you will have a long career healing the most mundane of illnesses, somewhere safe.”

  She hesitated. “If I stay, I can help make sure others can go home, too.”

  “Is your sanity worth that?” he asked. He looked tired, a mountain worn down.

  She looked at the letters on the desk and at the little piles of forlorn personal belongings, all that remained of individual lives and loves and ambitions. “I think it’s why we choose to become doctors.”

  “We’re still human, Dr. Atherton. A medical degree doesn’t change that. We bleed, and suffer, and feel pain just like our patients, and when we fail them—” He lowered his eyes to the items on his desk. “When we fail them, with all our skill and our training and cleverness, we suffer even more. I remember the face of every man I’ve operated on. I think they’ll haunt me for the rest of my days. This war has gone on too long.” He drew himself up and looked at her again. “I’ll bid you good night, and if I don’t see you in the morning, have a safe journey.”

  He sat down again and picked up his pen, and there was nothing to do but go.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Eleanor ducked into one of the ward tents. She took the letter out of her pocket and made use of the lamp hanging above the supply cupboard. It was addressed to E. Atherton, not El or Eleanor, or Miss. The pointed reminder wasn’t lost on her. Her fingers shook as she tore open the envelope and took out the letter.

  We’ve gone on to Paris. I gave the orders to the dragon myself, duly signed and official. Lt. E. C. Atherton, this time. The dragon was most willing to accept the orders, and to release Louis at once into my care. There is no need for you to follow or raise a fuss. Fanny will ensure that Louis receives the best medical care possible from here out. I daresay Louis will be able to talk his way out of any bother in Paris, being a hero and the son of a peer of the realm, and Fanny will convince her dear uncle Douglas to excuse any difficulties this might cause with the Flying Corps. Don’t poker up— If Louis is going home anyway, then what’s the real harm? I can read a medical chart as well as any doctor’s son, (or any doctor’s daughter), and the reports have all been good, so we saw no reason to leave our hero lying there fretting. Erringdale (another of Fanny’s admirers, and also a lieutenant) and I carried him to the car and saw him settled comfortably in Fanny’s lap, with her furs tucked around him.

  Mother wrote to me at HQ and asked me to convince you to come home. Since there’s no further reason for you to remain in France, I suggest you do exactly that.

  It was signed simply E, without regards or love.

  There was no message at all from Louis.

  Eleanor stared at the supplies on the shelves in front of her—bandages and basins, splints and syringes in orderly array. What was she to tell the countess? Dear Lady Kirkswell, this is to inform you that your son, Lieutenant Lord Louis Chastaine, has found a prettier, richer, more amusing caregiver, and she has taken over all matters relating to his care, prescribing champagne thrice daily, as much merriment as possible, and the company of his own kind . . .

  Eleanor resisted the urge to tear Edward’s note into a thousand pieces. She folded it instead, precisely and crisply. Mother asked me to convince you to come home. Since there’s no further reason for you to remain in France, I suggest you do exactly that.

  She could still go back, still take up her life. It wasn’t too late. Her mother would find her a husband. Her father would allow her to clean the surgery . . .

  But it would be an ordinary life, and she knew she couldn’t go home and be that woman again, couldn’t try to step back into shoes that no longer fit.

  The colonel was right about her determination to practice medicine. But her father would never forgive her if she stayed and took a posting with the French Red Cross. Someday the war would end, and what then? Would she even be able to go home? Would her mother ever speak to her again if she stayed now? Who was she, what was she, if she couldn’t practice medicine? The questions made her breathless, and she put a hand to her chest, like Findlay, but there was no one to save h
er. She was alone, and any decisions were now hers and hers alone. She stood stiffly, Edward’s letter clutched in her hand, looking at the scrawled address, the cruel reminder that she’d failed yet again.

  “Miss? Doctor?” She turned to find a VAD standing behind her. “Is everything all right?” She pointed at the letter in Eleanor’s hand. “Is it bad news?”

  Eleanor blinked at the young woman and the concern in her eyes.

  She wiped away her tears with the heel of her hand. “No. All is well,” she lied. “Thank you for asking.”

  The young woman smiled at her. “I saw you with the wounded. It made me feel proud to see a woman taking charge, pitching in. I’ve decided that when I go home, I’ll ask my father if I can go to medical school and become a doctor.”

  “It’s not easy.”

  “But it will be a different world after the war ends. My cousin works in a factory, and my sister is in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. She says there’ll be lots of opportunities for women after the war.”

  “Miss!” a patient called, and the young woman smiled as she hurried away to see to her patient.

  Eleanor watched her go, then slipped out of the tent. She stood in the chilly darkness for a moment. A different world.

  Perhaps it already was.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Fraser made the plate of soup last, sipping it slowly, watching the door for Eleanor. She was late, or perhaps she’d changed her mind and wasn’t coming. Perhaps there was an emergency, or her flier needed her, or just wanted her. He pictured their heads together, hers red, his blond, laughing at some intimate joke. He pushed the cold soup away.

  And why wouldn’t she choose an aristocrat over a gamekeeper’s son? A woman like Eleanor Atherton wasn’t for the likes of him. He’d climbed above his station again. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been reminded of his place before over a woman. He rubbed the wee scar under his chin. He’d fallen hard for the laird’s youngest daughter, the fair Catriona, when they were both sixteen. He’d spent weeks making eyes at her whenever they chanced to meet. She’d smiled back at him, too, and he’d stupidly imagined he had a chance, that she felt what he felt. At the next village ceilidh, he’d worked up the courage to ask her to dance—just that, but it was enough. Her brothers caught him by the collar and dragged him outside. Catriona MacLeod was meant for a much better man than the son of a gillie. They’d punished Fraser’s presumption with a beating that blackened his eyes and bruised his ribs before Angus MacLeod, Catriona’s eldest brother, had knocked Fraser out with a hard punch, splitting his chin open with the jeweled signet ring he wore, leaving the scar to remind Fraser to stay where he belonged.

  When he married, he’d choose an ordinary village girl of his own kind, someone plump and plain. Perhaps he’d wed a war widow. There’d be plenty of those. If he married at all, of course—he’d never felt the kind of attraction that would carry a man through a lifetime with one woman. Well, not until now.

  He worried a bit of bread between his fingers. Ach, he was still daft, still pining for lasses meant for better men. The crumbs got caught in the bandage. It would need changing if he got it dirty. Perhaps he should dunk it in his soup just so Eleanor would have to tend to it. He could watch her do it, smell the sweet, feminine scent of her hair as she bent close to him, imagine . . .

  No, better not to.

  “Fool,” he grumbled under his breath, sure she wasn’t coming. He needed sleep. He rose to go.

  “Hello.” She was nearly breathless, as if she’d been running. Just the sight of her made his heart kick, and his own breath turned ragged. Looking her in the eye had the intensity of being struck by a bullet, a hard punch of awareness, the sudden heating of his flesh. Time stopped, and he stood there, struck dumb and staring across the table at her like a ninny.

  “How’s your arm?”

  “Fine, just fine,” he said, sinking back onto the bench as she sat down. “Have you eaten?” He could have cursed himself for the daftness of that question. “Ach, ye probably ate with your lieutenant.”

  “No, I didn’t. He’s gone.”

  He gaped at her. “Gone? What, dead?” he blurted. It happened. One moment a man seemed fine, and then—

  “No, gone to Paris.”

  He frowned. “Paris? And you’re not with him?”

  “I wasn’t invited,” she said quietly. She tried to keep her face blank, but he could read her emotions anyway, in her blush, the hard set of her jaw, the glitter that showed through her lowered lashes. Hurt, he surmised, shocked, and disappointed.

  He swallowed, considered what to say. “What will ye do now? Surely Bellford will be glad to—”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s against regulations for me to stay. I’m to leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” He gaped at her, struggling to contain the raw outburst of his own disappointment. “But surely that’s good news,” he said at last. “Anyone would envy your good luck, and—” He saw that the shimmer of tears in her eyes was brighter now. “Are ye not happy to go?”

  She wiped away the tear with an angry swipe of her wrist. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  He closed his fist on the table. The stitches in his forearm pulled, and he forced himself to relax. “But you’re needed here, surely. Ye promised to stay until Blair came back. Nothing’s changed because one patient has gone.” Perhaps his tone was too raw, too gruff. She looked hurt, indignant.

  “It is not my choice. I gave my word to the colonel, and the countess, and to Captain Blair. I would keep it if I could.”

  She was pale, and lovely, and he wanted her to stay. She looked so stricken, so damnably fragile that he leaned in. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just—” Disappointed? Frustrated? He settled for “Tired. What if there’s an attack? There’s talk of something coming, something big, and soon. Can Bellford truly do without ye?” It was selfish of him. He knew it even as he said it. Her eyes widened, and he saw torment in the soft depths.

  He wished he could touch her, take her hand, but that was strictly against regulations. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I did. Perhaps because I’ve never met a woman like ye, and I wish—” He knew he shouldn’t go on, shouldn’t say it, but she was leaving tomorrow, and he’d likely never see her again. “I wish I had time to know ye better, Eleanor Atherton.”

  She stared at him in surprise, so still she might have been carved out of wax. He’d offended her, he thought, biting his tongue. He began to rise. “Look, if I don’t see ye in the morning, I wish ye a safe journey home. You’re a fine doctor, and—”

  “Don’t go.” Her hand shot out to catch his, a staying touch on the fingertips of his bandaged hand. He stared down at those fingers in surprise as he felt electricity and heat run through his body. He glanced around to see if anyone was looking, but the tent was nearly empty. He stayed perfectly still, holding his breath, as if a wild creature had come to him, one he didn’t want to frighten.

  “I—I can’t bear to be alone just now,” she admitted. “Perhaps we could talk awhile—if you wish to. You’re supposed to be resting while you’re here, and I should pack, but—” She looked up at him, the fierce desire for his company clear in her eyes. He felt the same longing, but he could only stare at her in surprise, the silence stretching between them. Her eyes flicked to their joined hands, and she tried to withdraw hers, but he held it tight as he sat down again.

  A flash of uncertainty flickered in her eyes. She gave a nervous laugh. She had all the confidence in the world as a doctor, was bold and brave, but under that armor, she was as shy as any lass.

  “Of course, if you truly are tired, or in pain, or if you have other things to do, letters to write, or . . . or . . .” she said again, as if she’d forgotten she’d already said that, as if she was flustered in his company. She shut her eyes, but not before he’d seen the glitter of tears.
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  “What is it?” he asked. “Is it your pilot?”

  She opened her eyes and scanned his face as if she was searching for something, her eyes bereft and clear and, for once, utterly lost. “Not Louis. I had . . . a disagreement with Edward.”

  “No one fights like family,” he said. “The closer the kin, the more bitter the arguments.”

  He waited, giving her space to tell him what had happened. For a long moment the silence grew between them, pregnant. Then she shook her head slightly. “I don’t want to talk about it tonight.”

  “Then what shall we talk about? Tell me about Yorkshire.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that, either. Home. Or me. I want to forget the rest of the world, and tomorrow, and . . . everything.” That last word was heavy, full of bitterness, or sorrow, or something deeper than that. If anyone understood the need to forget the war, the sights and sounds and smells of it, the tragedy of the whole damned thing, he did. Dwelling on it only made it worse. It was why soldiers sang and whored and made terrible jokes. He squeezed her hand instead, offering comfort and understanding in that simple touch, and the sharpness in her eased, became round and soft and feminine, and she forced a smile. He felt a ball of heat in his chest, an expanding of his heart and lungs. It was the way he’d felt standing on a high cliff over a deep glen, the world spread out before him, with the sun warming him at the same time as the wind chilled him. It was the purest joy, connection to the land and to himself. He’d never felt it with another person before, but he felt it now. He realized he’d felt it the first moment he met her.

  He stared at her in surprise, and she stared back. Perhaps she felt it, too, and was just as surprised by the heat that flowed through their joined hands and was reflected in their connected gazes. He felt her sorrow that it could not be more, that there was no time, and that there was a war on and all was lost, not just for them, but for the whole damned world. They had minutes, a scant few hours at best, but he’d take it, use it wisely, snub everything that stood against them. Instead of withdrawing his hand, and himself, he ran his thumb over her knuckles, gave her a smile. “You’re pretty,” he said instead. “More than pretty.”