Georgianna was impressed that Annabelle had been training to be a doctor, and they talked about it for a few minutes. Both were bone tired. The nurse was a pretty girl with big green eyes and bright red hair, and she laughed when she admitted that after two years here, she spoke execrable French, but Annabelle knew, from what she’d heard of her, that in spite of that she did her job well. She had never known so many conscientious, competent, dedicated people in her life. They gave it their all.
“Do you think you’ll finish med school?” Georgianna asked her, and Annabelle nodded, looking pensive.
“I hope so.” She couldn’t imagine what would stop her, other than being killed.
“Don’t you want to go home when this is over?” Georgianna couldn’t imagine staying there. She had family in Alabama, three younger sisters, and a brother. Annabelle didn’t want to go back to New York. She had nothing there, except punishment and pain.
“Not really. I don’t have much there. I think I’m going to stay.” She had thought about it a lot recently, and made up her mind. She had five more years of medical school ahead of her, and after that she wanted to go to Paris, and work there. With luck, maybe even with Dr. de Bré. There was nothing she wanted now in New York. And she would have had to train for another year there. She was almost convinced now that her life in the States was history for her. The only future she had was here. It was a whole new life, where no one knew her past, or the shame of her divorce. In France, as far as everyone knew, she had never been married. She was turning twenty-four in a few weeks. And one day, with hard work and some luck, she’d be a doctor. All she would ever be in New York was a disgrace, through no fault of her own.
The two women went their separate ways outside the dining hall and went back to their respective barracks, promising to get together sometime, if they ever got a day off, which even if they did, they never took. Annabelle hadn’t taken a day off from her duties as a medic since she’d arrived.
The Third Battle of Champagne ended in disaster for the French in late April and brought them a flood of new patients, which kept them all busy. Annabelle was ferrying men constantly from the front. The only encouragement they had was a Canadian victory at the Battle of Vilmy Ridge. And due to enormous discouragement among their ranks, there were outbreaks of mutiny among the French all through the early weeks of May. There were also ongoing reports of the Russian Revolution—the czar had abdicated in March. But anything that was happening farther than the trenches and the front nearby seemed very remote to all of them at Villers-Cotterêts. They were far too deeply involved in the business at hand to care about much else.
Annabelle forgot about her birthday completely. One day bled into another, and she had no idea what day it was. She only realized a week later, when she saw a newspaper someone had brought from Paris, that she had turned twenty-four. A month later in June, everyone was excited to learn that the first American troops had landed in France.
It was three weeks later, in mid-July, when a battalion of them came to Villers-Cotterêts and set up camp on the outskirts of the city. They were joined within a week by British forces, all of whom were preparing for an offensive at Ypres. It livened up the area considerably to have British and American troops roaming around everywhere. They were happily seducing all the local women, and military police were constantly dragging them out of bars and off the streets drunk, and delivering them back to their camps. If nothing else, it provided a little distraction, and despite the inevitable rowdy soldiers, some of them were very nice. Annabelle saw a group of American soldiers one day, walking along with some very young French girls, as she rode back with the ambulance from a field hospital nearby. She was in no mood to banter with them, as the man they were carrying back to the hospital in Villers-Cotterêts had died on the way. But as the ambulance drove past the Americans, they shouted and waved, having seen two pretty women in the front. And for an aching moment, she had an intense longing to hear American voices. She waved back and smiled. One of the men in uniform ran along beside them, and she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Hi.”
“Are you American?” he asked in amazement, and the driver of the ambulance stopped and smiled. She thought he was cute. She was French.
“Yes,” Annabelle said, looking tired.
“When did you get here? I thought the nurses weren’t coming over till next month.” It had taken them longer to organize the women’s volunteer units than the conscripted men.
She laughed at the question. There was the sound of Boston in his voice, and she had to admit, it was nice to hear it. It felt like home. “I’ve been here for two years,” she said, smiling broadly. “You guys are late.”
“Like hell we are. We’re going to kick the Krauts right back to where they came from. They saved the best for last.” He looked like a kid and was, and as Boston Irish as they came, and it reminded her of her visits to Boston, and summers in Newport. She was suddenly homesick for only the first or second time in twenty-two months. She couldn’t even remember the last time she felt that way.
“Where are you from?” he asked her, as one of his friends chatted up the ambulance driver, on the other side of the truck, but they both knew they had to get back. It wasn’t right to hang around talking with them, with a dead man in the back, although others had done worse. At some point, the horrors of war no longer shocked you as they once did.
“New York,” Annabelle said quietly.
“I’m from Boston,” and as he said it, she could smell the alcohol on his breath. As soon as they left the camps where they were billeted, most of them drank a lot. They had good reason to. They drank, and chased every girl that crossed their path.
“I could tell,” she said, referring to his Boston accent, as she gave her colleague the signal to get started again. “Good luck,” she said to him and the others.
“Yeah, you too!” he said, and stepped back, and as they drove back to the hospital, a wave of nostalgia for her own country washed over her, and she had never been so homesick in her life. She missed everything familiar that she hadn’t seen or allowed herself to think about in two years. She sighed as the two of them carried the dead man on the gurney into the morgue. He would be buried on the hills with countless others, and his family notified. There was no way to send the bodies home. There were just too many of them. And makeshift cemeteries covered the countryside now.
Thinking of the Americans they had seen that afternoon, Annabelle went for a short walk that night, when she got off duty, before she went back to her room. They had lost every man they had driven back from the field hospitals that day. It had been depressing, and although it was a common occurrence, it upset her anyway. The boys were all so young, many of them years younger than she was. Even many of the nurses were younger than she was now. At twenty-four, with a year of medical school behind her, she didn’t feel like a young girl anymore. Too many difficult things had happened to her in the past few years, and she had seen far too much pain.
She was wandering along, thinking about her lost life in the States, with her head down, not far from her barracks, on the way back from her walk. It was after midnight, and she had been working since six o’clock that morning. She was tired and not paying attention, and she gave a start when she heard a British voice behind her.
“Hey, pretty girl,” he said softly. “What are you doing out alone?” She turned and was startled to see a British officer walking along the same path on his own. He had obviously been drinking, and had left a nearby bar without his companions. He looked very dashing in his uniform, and very drunk. He was a good-looking young man, about her own age, and he didn’t scare her, particularly once she saw that he was an officer. She had seen plenty of drunken men in the past two years, and she had never had any trouble keeping them in line.
“Looks like you need a ride,” she said with a matter-of-fact smile. “Go that way,” she pointed to one of the administration buildings where they often handled matters of that sort, since
it was a common occurrence. It was wartime, after all, and they dealt with thousands of men on a daily basis, many of whom caroused at night. “Someone will give you a ride back to camp.” Particularly given that he was an officer, there would be no questions asked. Sometimes they gave the enlisted men a slightly rougher time. But officers were always given the respect due their rank. She could see from his uniform that he was a lieutenant, and hear from his accent that he was an aristocrat. It didn’t stop him from being as sloppy as anyone else while he was drunk, and he was reeling slightly as he looked at her.
“I don’t want to go back to camp,” he said stubbornly, “I’d much rather go home with you. What do you say, we stop off and have a drink? What are you anyway? A nurse?” He was looking down his nose at her somewhat haughtily, and trying to focus.
“I’m a medic, and you’re going to need one if you don’t go lie down somewhere.” He looked like he was about to pass out.
“Excellent idea. I suggest we lie down together.”
“That’s not an option.” She looked at him coolly, wondering if she should just walk away and leave him to it on his own. There was no one else on the path, but she wasn’t far from the barracks. By then, everyone had gone home for the night, except those who had the late shift and were driving ambulances or working in the wards.
“Who do you think you are anyway?” he asked, as he lurched forward to grab her, and she stepped back. He stumbled and nearly fell, and looked angry as he righted himself. “You’re nobody, that’s who you are,” he continued, looking suddenly nasty. “My father is the Earl of Winshire. And I am Lord Harry Winshire. I’m a viscount,” he said grandly, but slurring.
“That’s good to know, your lordship,” she said politely, responding to his rank and title. “But you need to get back to camp before you get hurt. And I’m going to my barracks. Goodnight.”
“Bitch!” he said, spitting the single word at her, as she moved past him. The exchange had gone on long enough, and she didn’t want to linger. He was obviously drunk, spoiled, and getting unpleasant from the quantities of alcohol he had consumed. She wasn’t afraid of him, she’d dealt with worse before, but she didn’t want to press her luck. But before she got more than a step farther on the solitary path, he grabbed her and spun her around hard into his arms and tried to kiss her. She pushed him away firmly and fought hard. He was surprisingly strong even though he was drunk.
“Stop that!” she said loudly. But she was shocked by his strength, and the force of his arms.
Suddenly she realized that she was being overpowered by him. He covered her mouth with one hand, and with the other dragged her to the dark doorway of a nearby barracks. There was no one around, and he was covering her mouth so hard that she couldn’t scream. She bit his fingers, but it didn’t deter him, and she fought like a cat, as he knocked her to the ground and lay on top of her with his full weight. He had knocked the wind out of her when she fell, and the hand not covering her mouth had yanked up her skirt and was pulling her underwear down. She couldn’t believe what was happening, and she used all her strength to fight him, but she was a small woman and he was a large, powerful man. And he was suddenly driven by rage and drink and was determined to have her. She had infuriated him by dismissing him before, and he was going to make her pay for it now. All she could see was the black fury in his eyes as he continued to grab her and press her down. He never took his one hand from her mouth, and all she could make were muffled guttural sounds that no one could hear.
The night was quiet all around them, except for the laughter of women and drunken shouts of men as they left the bars. Whatever sounds she made were far too slight for anyone to hear them, and there was terror in her eyes. By then he had unbuttoned his pants with his free hand, and she could feel him hard against her. What Josiah had never been able to bring himself to do, this drunken stranger was about to take from her by force. She did everything she could to stop him, to no avail. He kicked her legs apart with his own, and in an instant, he was inside her, pumping violently and groaning while she kept trying to fight him, but he pressed her hard to the ground, and each time he drove farther into her, she winced with pain, and he smashed her back against the doorstep where they lay. And in an instant it was over, he released himself with a shout, and then threw her away with such force that she lay huddled in the doorway like a battered doll. She couldn’t even scream then, or make a sound. She was too afraid to. She turned over, vomited, and choked on a sob. He stood up, buttoned his pants, and looked down at her with contempt.
“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll come back and kill you. I’ll find you. And they’ll take my word over yours.”
She knew that that was probably true, he was an officer and not only a gentleman, supposedly, but a viscount. Whatever she said or did, no one would ever dare to challenge him, much less punish him, for an incident like this. To him, it meant nothing, and for her, the virtue she had kept all her life, and upheld even through two years of marriage to a man she loved, he had taken and disposed of like so much garbage, which was how he had treated her. She pulled her skirt down as he walked away, and she lay on the doorstep sobbing, and then finally got up, feeling dizzy. He had banged her head on the stone step too as he raped her.
She was in a daze as she walked back to her barracks, and stopped again to throw up, grateful that no one saw her. She wanted to hide somewhere and die, and she knew that she would never forget his face or the look of murder in his eyes as he took her. He vanished into the night, and she almost crawled up her barracks steps and went to the bathroom, relieved that no one else was there. She cleaned herself up as best she could, there was blood on her legs and skirt since she had been a virgin, which mattered nothing to him, she was just another whore he had taken after a lively night in the bars. And there was a terrible throbbing ache between her legs, to match the pain in her back and head from where he had banged her into the stone step, but all of it was nothing compared to the ache in her heart.
And he was right, if she tried to tell anyone, no one would listen or care. Girls claimed that soldiers raped them every day, and no one did anything about it. If they persisted with the authorities or a military tribunal, they were humiliated and disgraced, and no one believed them. They were instantly accused of being whores who had encouraged their attackers. And with a British lord being accused of having perpetrated the crime, she would have been laughed out of any official office. Worse yet, this was wartime, and a medic getting raped by a British officer was the least of anyone’s problems. All she could do now was pray that she didn’t get pregnant. She couldn’t imagine that fate could be as cruel as that. All Annabelle could think, as she crawled into her bed that night, running her mind over what had happened, was that nothing and no one could have been as cruel as the viscount. And as she lay there and sobbed, all she could think about was Josiah. All she had ever wanted was to share a life with him and have his babies. And instead this bastard had turned an act of love into a travesty and raped her. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, except try to forget.
Chapter 18
In September, the Germans were soundly beating the Russians. And in Villers-Cotterêts, Annabelle was throwing up every day. The worst had happened. She hadn’t had her period since July, and she knew that she was pregnant. She had no idea what to do about it. There was no one she could tell, no way to stop it. Her back and head and other parts of her had taken weeks to heal, but the effects of what he’d done would last forever. She thought about finding an abortionist somewhere, but she didn’t know whom to ask, and she knew how dangerous it was. Two of the nurses had died of abortions since she’d been at the hospital. Annabelle didn’t dare risk it. She would have preferred to just kill herself, but she didn’t have the courage to do that either. And she didn’t want that monster’s baby. As best she could figure it, the child was due in late April, and she would have to leave the hospital as soon as it began to show. Fortunately, so far it didn’t. And s
he was working harder than ever, carrying men and heavy equipment, bumping along the rutted roads in the ambulance. She was praying that nature would be kind to her and she’d have a miscarriage, but as time went on, it became increasingly obvious that she wouldn’t. And as her waist and body began to thicken, she stole strips of linen from the surgery, and bound herself as tightly as she could. She could hardly breathe, but she was determined to work as long as she was able. And she had no idea where to go once she couldn’t.
At Christmas, it still didn’t show, but by then she could feel the baby moving gently inside her. She tried to resist it, and told herself she had every reason to hate it, but she couldn’t. The baby was as innocent as she was, even if she loathed its father. She thought of contacting him to tell him what had happened and force him to take responsibility, but she knew that given what she’d seen that night, he would only deny it. And who knew how many women he had raped before, or since? She was just a piece of flotsam that had drifted past him on the sea of war, and he would cast her away just as he had that night, and his baby with her. She had no recourse whatsoever, she was only a woman carrying an illegitimate baby in wartime, and no one would care for an instant that she had been raped.
In January she was still working. She was six months pregnant, and she covered her thickened midsection with her apron. There was no bulge because she was still binding herself so tightly, and from worry and the poor food anyway, she ate very little. She had gained no weight, if anything she had lost some. She had been deeply depressed since July when it happened. And she told no one.
It was a bitter cold, rainy day later that month when she was working in the men’s surgical ward one afternoon, to fill in for someone else, when she heard two of the men talking. Both were British, one an officer, the other a sergeant. Both had lost limbs in the most recent awful battle in the trenches. And she stopped in her tracks when she heard them mention Harry. She didn’t know why, it could have been anyone, but a moment later the officer said that it was a terrible loss that Harry Winshire had died. They talked about what a good man he was and how they would miss him. She wanted to turn and scream at them that he wasn’t a good man, but a monster. She stumbled from the ward, and stood trembling outside in the cold, gulping air, and feeling as though she were strangling. Not only had he raped her, but now he was dead. Her baby would have no father and never had. She knew it was probably better this way, and he deserved it, and as the enormity of what was happening to her hit her again, she was suddenly so overcome by a feeling of raw terror that she staggered slowly like a willow in the breeze, and fainted into the mud around her. Two nurses saw her fall and came running toward her, as one of the surgeons leaving the building stopped and knelt beside her. As always, everyone was terrified of cholera, but when they touched her, they saw that she had no fever. They suspected it was too much work and too little food or sleep, a condition from which they had all been suffering for years.
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