The Woman at the Front

by Lecia Cornwall

  “You as well,” she said, and blushed. “No, that’s the wrong thing to say. Handsome? Braw? Bonny? What is the right word?”

  He laughed. “Ye babble when you’re nervous.”

  “I’m not very good at—at flirting. I’ve never really done it before. I mean, flirting is an expression of—of interest, isn’t it? I—” She bit her lip. “I haven’t had very much experience—well, none, really. With flirting, that is. It feels . . .” She turned serious again, as if she were considering a medical issue.

  “Nay, lass. Ye can’t diagnose or cure this. It’s attraction. Nay, don’t think about how it feels, lass. Just feel it.” He was gratified that her fingers tightened on his, and her smile turned his heart upside down.

  Oh, Fraser MacLeod, you’re a daft lad, he chided himself silently as he felt her charm and beauty and sweetness seep past his own armor and into his bones, even though he knew she would leave and he would return to the front. He was tempting fate, pushing his luck. There was no future for them. But for the moment, he was warm and clean and safe, happy in her company, and she was all that mattered.

  Just for now, and nothing more. His heart gave a lurch of longing and regret.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Eleanor? Or a bite of supper?”

  She smiled at him, and that was warmer and sweeter than any cuppa. “I’d like that very much,” she said without specifying which she wanted, and he let it lie, and smiled at her again.

  * * *

  • • •

  What on earth was she doing? She should be packing, writing to her parents or the countess, getting her life back in order, making decisions. Instead, she sat at a simple plank table with Fraser MacLeod, sharing thin soup and tepid tea, basking in his smile and smiling back. Hours passed. Or minutes. She didn’t care. His eyes softened when he spoke of his home, told her stories about his kin and the village he came from. He made her laugh. He was handsome and charming, and for the first time in her life she felt the thrill of a man’s company in her breast, a delight and desire and yearning that was entirely different from a girl’s crush, and yet brought out the same butterflies to flutter against her ribs.

  He held her hand all the while they sat together, leaning across the table, the dim lamp above casting a warm glow over them. It felt as natural as breathing to have his fingers clasped around hers, their palms together. She could feel his pulse under her fingertip.

  When Corporal Swiftwood walked into the tent and fixed his sharp eyes on them, Fraser pulled away at once and dropped his hands into his lap. His smile faded to wariness as he nodded at the orderly. Swiftwood poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down, not to join them, but close enough to listen and watch. The orderly was a notorious gossip.

  They fell silent.

  “It’s late,” Fraser said. “I’ll walk ye back to the visitor’s quarters and say good night. Ye still need to pack.”

  So soon?

  She felt bitter regret as they rose and walked out of the tent.

  Fraser walked beside her, his hands at his sides. She measured her pace, counting her footsteps. The visitor’s hut was past the sick ward, just beyond the officers’ ward. She stared at the tiny building, wishing it were a dozen yards farther away, or a hundred, so she could have Fraser next to her for just a little longer. He’d made her forget Edward and Louis and the whole world. Nothing else had mattered. There was nothing to prove, and nothing to fear.

  They reached the door all too soon.

  She turned to look up at Fraser. A lock of dark auburn hair had fallen over his brow, casting a shadow across his eyes. Without thinking, she reached up to brush it back. He caught her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed her palm. Warmth flooded all the way to her toes.

  She stepped toward him, or perhaps he stepped toward her, but suddenly she was wrapped in his arms, held tight against his body, his heart beating against hers, and his mouth was on hers, and she was kissing him back and never wanting it to stop.

  He broke away, stepped back. “Someone might see.”

  She didn’t want to let him go, watch him walk back down the duckboards and away. Tomorrow they’d have no choice, but now, tonight, they did.

  She reached behind her, found the latch, and opened the door. The hinges gasped as it swung wide. “Then come inside.”

  He was silent for a long moment standing there on the doorstep, in the dark. She held her breath and waited.

  “Oh, lass,” he said softly at last. He made no move to step inside or to go, just stood looking down at her.

  She took his hand in her own and stepped over the threshold, and he followed. Inside, she held up her arms, and he came into them, kissing her again, harder this time, as desperate as she.

  She reached for the buttons on his shirt, her skilled fingers clumsy now.

  He broke the kiss and caught her hand in his. “Are ye sure?” he murmured. “I mean, I want ye, want this, but—”

  “I’m sure,” she said. She curled her hand against his naked chest and felt the hard muscles under his warm skin, the steady beat of his heart, the softness of his breath on her hair. Her body throbbed, turned liquid.

  He turned away, and her heart sank, but he only closed the door and locked it. For a moment they stood in silence and darkness, with only the faint glow from the lamps in the ward tents lighting the small room. He leaned on the door, halfway across the room, watching her, or waiting.

  “I don’t know where to start,” she said. Her face flamed in the dark. She was glad it was dark. “I mean, I know how it works, of course, but I haven’t—” She stopped.

  He walked toward her and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Och, it’s not a medical procedure, lass. It’s . . .” He took a breath and spread his fingers wide enough to reach her mouth, ran the tip of his little finger over her lips. “It’s more akin to dancing, or poetry, or music. Even magic, if ye do it right.”

  “I want to . . . do it right. Is there time? I’m—uh, I’m not much of a dancer.”

  She saw the gleam of his smile in the dimness. It faded almost as quickly as it had come.

  “I wish I had longer to show ye. Not that I’m an expert. I—” He looked helpless.

  “We only have tonight,” she said. “Is it enough?”

  “It will have to be. That’s all there is,” he said, his voice ragged. “Are ye sure?” he asked again.

  She reached up to undo the pins in her hair. “Very sure. Show me all the poetry, music, and magic you can, Fraser. Teach me how to dance.”

  And when he drew her back into his arms and held her, she felt like this choice was the right one, the best one, and for a time she forgot the war, and Louis, and the whole rest of the world, and only the two of them mattered.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The Ritz Hotel, Paris

  March 13, 1918

  Somerton!”

  Louis tried not to grit his teeth at Fanny’s call. She insisted on using the title—he was a viscount, the heir to an earldom, a hero with two medals pinned to his chest. She believed he’d earned the right to it. But had he?

  Cyril had been the one raised to all the pomp and pride and responsibility. Louis had simply had it thrust upon him, and being a viscount seemed so much less important than being a pilot, or a soldier.

  The suddenness of his brother’s ignominious death had hit him hard, shocked him more than he let on, hurt him more. He couldn’t just step into Cyril’s shoes, suddenly be all that history and the future demanded. It made him sweat. He was an imposter, not a real viscount, and not a real hero, either. But his whole life had changed the moment Cyril’s bloody horse unwisely put its foot into a rabbit hole, and now the rightful heir was moldering in the family crypt, and like it or not, Louis Patrick Allenton Henry Chastaine was Viscount Somerton.

  Toll the bells, lower the curtain, snuff the candle, The End, d
ust to dust, nothing to be remembered for. Poor bloody Cyril. And poor him.

  Louis looked around Fanny’s grand Hôtel Ritz suite—his was right next door, luxurious and huge, fit for a viscount, made for indolence and the pursuit of pleasure and pretending that there wasn’t really a war going on less than seventy miles from the hotel’s gilded front doors.

  “Somerton!” She said it again, more insistently, and still he ignored her.

  He didn’t want it. Not the title, not more champagne, not more caviar, and not her. He drew on the cigarette, sucked the smoke into his lungs, and remembered the flames as his plane went down, the acrid smoke, the fear. He was the one who should be dead, not Cyril.

  Every day here was a party. Champagne flowed like water, and there was steak and fresh eggs for breakfast, and gâteaux of the kind he hadn’t seen in nearly three years. It wasn’t even noon and he was drunk. Again or still? Did it matter?

  “Which is the illusion, the war, or all this glamour?” he asked Fanny.

  She looked up from considering a list of invitees for tonight’s do. “Don’t be silly, darling. This is what’s real, of course. The war won’t last forever.”

  God, he’d die of boredom if this was how he was to spend eternity! He read the newspapers, current ones, saw the reports of skirmishes and battles, and scanned the casualty lists when Fanny wasn’t looking. She didn’t like to be gloomy. He wondered if Eleanor had made it home to Thorndale safely and what she’d told his mother. He felt a twinge of guilt—her ladyship didn’t like it when she didn’t get her way. What might she do to Eleanor in reprisal? Poor El—she’d never get Mama’s patronage now. Quite the opposite. She’d likely be lancing boils on the backsides of the tubercular poor until the end of time if the countess had her way. He should write at once, tell her his escape from 46/CCS wasn’t Eleanor’s fault, but he was a poor correspondent. Edward had signed the order for his release in the end. Eleanor wouldn’t do it. Her stiff-necked sense of honor and duty was inspiring—or shaming, perhaps. He hadn’t cared which. Edward said it would make a fine prank, and Louis was so bloody eager to leave the CCS, come to Paris, return to wine, women, and song, and get away from the dead and dying. Still, as they’d fled in the night, he’d realized he hadn’t even said goodbye. It didn’t matter. She was a big girl, and not his concern. He frowned and took another drag on his cigarette and blew smoke—palest blue, not black—into the air.

  “Is there more champagne, darling?” he said, holding up his empty glass. There was nothing bloody else to do. Fanny retrieved the bottle from the bucket and filled the delicate flute to the brim.

  She was clad in some lovely slip of a dress made of clouds and stars, and she smelled divine. He was stuck on the chaise, his splinted leg stretched out before him, well padded with satin pillows stuffed with swansdown. He curled his hand around her calf and let it slide slowly upward.

  “Shall we invite Dinsy Montrose tonight?” she asked, unaroused.

  Louis removed his hand. “He’s a subaltern at HQ. He might find it hard to get away.”

  She smiled archly. “I’ll simply ring Uncle Douglas and ask if Dinsy can drive in with Edward. Sunny Kerridale is coming. Edward will like her.”

  “Sunny? What happened to Maud?”

  Fanny rolled her eyes. “It was all too much for her. She’s gone home, too saddened by the sight of the wounded. She’s thinking of training to be a VAD. Can you imagine Maud a VAD? She’ll never do it. She hates dirt and blood and the downtrodden poor.”

  “I’m not sure Edward could see Maud as a VAD, either. He can’t even see Eleanor as a doctor,” Louis replied.

  Fanny’s smile faded. “Poor Eddie, having a sister like that.”

  She crossed to wind the Victrola and put on one of the cylinders. The jumpy, jolly, tinny sound of American rag filled the room. No sad, patriotic songs for Fanny, no “Danny Boy,” or “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” or “Tipperary.” You wouldn’t even know there was a war on here in Fanny’s cocoon if not for the uniforms her bright, elegant, titled companions wore to her parties. All officers, of course. If they’d seen battle, or blood, or the ugly side of things—and most of them hadn’t—they never let on. They were as gay as a sunny summer day in England. Well, he’d seen it, and firsthand, on the front lines, the sharp end. He was starting to hate them all. Every night they filled this room, dancing, drinking, and laughing while Louis lay on the chaise like an effigy, unable to dance, his aching leg stretched out in front of him, his burned wrist chafed by the gold cuff link and the starched and monogrammed linen of his shirt. The ladies paid homage to him by tying colorful silk scarves around his splint and pinning them with diamond brooches until he glittered like a cancan dancer. He gritted his teeth, smiled, and charmingly kissed their fingertips. He missed his uniform and felt out of place without it, or perhaps just out of sorts. Christ, he couldn’t believe he’d lived for these puerile pleasures before the war, for nights of wild drunken abandon and endless merriment.

  He lit another cigarette, one of the good ones, proper Turkish tobacco that Fanny bought on the black market. He blew another plume of smoke into the air and saw more clouds, imagined aircraft.

  He should be there, not here.

  “All right, Budgie, darling? You’ve turned pensive again,” Fanny said, and he forced a grin and raised his glass. He could still play the game, and surely the game was a damn sight more palatable than reality. There was no chance of dying here, unless it was la petite mort. Even inside his head, that joke fell flat. When had he become so stodgy, so dreadfully dull?

  Fanny put another disk on the Victrola, and Billy Murray’s fine tenor voice filled the room, crooning “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.” He should have kissed Eleanor when he had the chance, should have taught her how, made sure she’d never forget him. She’d probably go to the marriage bed of some worthy chap like David Blair or Lancelot Findlay, an untouched virgin, prim and proper and far too smart for her husband. If she married at all, of course—she could end up as a bluestocking spinster, a do-gooder running a charity hospital in some dank city, the kind of careworn crusader no one would want to kiss.

  “More champagne, darling?”

  “No thank you, I’m flying,” he murmured, even as he let Fanny refill the glass. The clouds and the planes and the thoughts of Eleanor disappeared, and he was all quip and no substance once again. “I think I’ll go to my own room and take a bath,” he said.

  Fanny had turned to the guest list again, and she barely glanced up. “Yes, do. Shall I order oysters for luncheon?”

  And what were the poor lads at the front eating now? Maconochie’s tinned meat, and bloody Tickler’s plum-and-apple jam on stale biscuits that tasted more of gunpowder and mud than anything else, with rats the size of badgers for dining companions.

  “Whatever you like,” he said. He shoved the crutch under his arm and hobbled out.

  In his own room, he limped over to look in the mirror, where he saw the lines around his mouth and under his eyes, the new light of sober care in his gaze. He wasn’t the carefree, adventuresome lad who’d joined up. He was all grown up, or halfway to old, rather. Like all the other young men in this war, he stood with one foot in the grave while the bell tolled.

  He rang for the concierge and sat down to wait.

  This dissatisfaction, this restlessness, was all Eleanor’s fault. She’d made this life—his life—seem small next to her own.

  She hadn’t turned a hair when she stuck the needle into Findlay’s chest. She’d looked as avidly interested in stabbing him as Fanny looked when contemplating a tray of sweets or a book of the latest dress designs.

  Eleanor was prettier than he had remembered. A beauty, in fact, even with that needle in her hand. If she changed her hair, wore more fashionable, less conservative clothing—and lost the needle—she’d be stunning.

  Even more so than Fanny?

&n
bsp; Fanny had seven generations of aristocratic breeding on her side, and she’d inherited her mother’s beauty. But long nights of drinking and dancing and going from party to party took their toll, and he suspected she now owed her fresh-faced loveliness more to her maid’s clever tricks with paint and powder than nature.

  Perhaps seeing Eleanor after so many years apart and then being close to her for all those weeks, it was natural to think about her, to notice that she’d grown up slender and strong, clever, elegant, and keen.

  Fanny was soft everywhere, well curved, lushly feminine, and purely decorative. Aside from riding to the hunt or dancing, she was a languid creature. She ruled her world with a charming word and a coy smile. Her wit was invisible until she needed it, like a dangerously sharp blade in a hidden sheath, suddenly drawn and pressed to your throat.

  Eleanor had a kind of restless energy, something to prove to the world. Even when she sat still, he could tell her mind was moving at a hundred miles an hour. Did she ever allow herself to be languid? He couldn’t picture it. He suspected that if she ever was properly set alight, the intensity would burn a man to cinders.

  He’d caught a glimpse of that fire when the brash sergeant had stalked into the ward and demanded she help with the wounded. It was as if a trumpet had sounded. Eleanor had mounted her chariot like Boudicca and rushed away to meet the challenge, purposeful and sure, her eyes bright.

  She mucked in, got dirty and bloody, and saved lives.

  It had rather shamed him to see Eleanor Atherton as such a marvelous heroine. Edward had been embarrassed by his twin. Fanny had giggled and made a tart little jest about Amazons and suffragists and poured more champagne. They’d laughed, and drunk, and stayed where they were. No one had gone with Eleanor to help. Would he have, if he could walk? He didn’t know. She frightened him. No, it wasn’t fright—it was awe. She had courage. His medals were earned for a lucky accident, but her mettle was innate, and as true as any blade, and never, ever hidden.