Wives of War

by Soraya M. Lane

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he said.

  ‘James!’ She slapped at his chest and he caught her wrist, eyebrows raised. It made her heart pound, wondering what that look meant, and knowing they were all alone . . . She gulped. His place was so pretty and overgrown that she couldn’t even see any of the neighbouring houses.

  ‘I never actually thought you’d come,’ he admitted, shrugging, as he reached for her case and then her bag.

  ‘You had me from the first day we met, James. You honestly did.’

  He grunted. ‘If only we’d known, huh?’

  He was right. Perhaps she should have made a different choice, but at least she could put her hand on her heart and know that she’d tried her best to be loyal and faithful to Thomas. To keep her word.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, walking ahead of her and using his boot to kick the door open. She hadn’t even noticed earlier that it wasn’t properly latched.

  ‘Are you going to show me around?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, dropping her bags to the floor. They landed with a thud on the polished wooden floor. ‘I’m taking you to our bedroom.’

  Scarlet felt her eyes go wide, worry streaming through her as he strode back the few steps between them and scooped her up in his arms. He kissed her again, his lips rougher this time as he claimed her mouth. If she’d pushed at him, resisted a little, she was certain he would have put her straight back down on her feet, but she didn’t want that. She’d dreamt of being in his arms for too long to let fear get the better of her now.

  ‘James,’ she murmured, his breath hot against hers when she pulled back a touch.

  He stopped walking, held her still in his arms.

  ‘What if we can’t ever get married? What if he comes looking for me?’ she whispered.

  ‘I can handle my own brother,’ he muttered, ‘and right now I don’t give a damn about marriage. All I know is that he hurt you and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve you.’

  She knew she would care, though, one day. That being a mistress, an adulteress, wasn’t something she could live with for ever, but for now, being in James’s arms was enough.

  ‘Scarlet,’ James called. ‘Scarlet!’

  She paused, stopping cutting the roses that curled out on to the path that led to the house. She’d been on her knees, settled upon a folded towel, but she carefully put down her cutting tools and stood, concerned by the worried tone in James’s call. It had been an idyllic week with him – almost like a holiday away from the life she’d been forced to live since arriving home from France.

  ‘I’m here,’ she called back, seeing him come through the gate.

  ‘Scarlet, I just received a telegram,’ he said, his face full of anguish like she’d never seen before. ‘It was from my father.’

  She crossed her arms and then changed her mind and wrapped them around herself instead. His words had sent a chill through her that she couldn’t explain.

  ‘What’s happened? Is it your mother? Oh no,’ she gasped. ‘Have they found out I’m here?’

  James shook his head, reaching for her and pulling her into his arms.

  ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘It’s Thomas.’

  She leaned back, pushed him away so she could look at his face. Her body went cold.

  ‘Tell me,’ she insisted, her voice sounding stronger than she felt inside.

  ‘He took his own life, Scarlet,’ James said as he blinked away tears, his body visibly shaking. ‘By his own hand, he killed himself. Shot himself dead. He’s gone.’

  ‘No,’ she gasped, falling, her knees giving way beneath her. ‘No!’

  She’d killed him. There was no other explanation. She’d left him, and as soon as she wasn’t there to care for him, to be the wife she’d promised to be, he’d blown his own brains out.

  She sobbed, crying as James dropped to the ground beside her and held her tight. She wanted to fight him, push him away and grieve alone. Because she shouldn’t have been here, she shouldn’t have put herself first, shouldn’t have given in and come to James instead of being there for Thomas.

  ‘This is my fault,’ she told him, wiping furiously at her face, refusing to cry any more tears even as emotion pulsed through her body. She’d made her choice, and she needed to live with what she’d done for the rest of her life. This was her punishment.

  ‘It’s not,’ he said gently. ‘Nothing about Thomas’s behaviour, now or before you left, is your fault.’

  ‘But he’s dead because of me.’

  ‘No,’ James said firmly. ‘He’s dead because of the war. That man I saw that day, in your home? He wasn’t my brother, and I’ll be damned if that’s the way I’ll remember him.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ellie

  ‘I’m worried that we haven’t heard from him,’ Ellie said, taking some scones from the oven and transferring them to a wire rack to cool. She sighed. Baking and cooking were the only things that calmed her these days, and with the baby so close to coming she knew she should be spending more time with her feet up instead of trying to find things to do constantly.

  ‘Ellie, you’re exhausting me with all that jittering,’ her mother-in-law said. ‘Now come and sit down.’

  She spun around, hands searching for the counter to hold on to as she stared back at Lily. She was going crazy. She was actually going stark raving bonkers thinking about Spencer, and the more she tried to stop thinking about him, the more she did the exact opposite.

  ‘You don’t think he’s . . .’

  ‘No!’ Lily set down her teacup with a clatter. ‘Don’t you ever say that, not once, do you hear me? Don’t even think it.’

  Ellie nodded. It was the only time her mother-in-law had ever spoken to her like that.

  ‘I don’t want to go back home and wonder if he might be here, if he’s going to surprise us. I mean, what if he comes for me and I’ve left?’

  ‘My dear, you make it sound like you’re leaving the country,’ Lily said, her voice full of warmth again, tone soft. Ellie had the feeling she was always trying to soothe her, knowing how rattled she was. ‘Your mother needs to see you, and you’re better being with her now you’re due. There’s no need to worry at all. And if Spencer comes home, then I shall whisk him straight over to you.’

  Ellie took a deep breath, ready to collapse. Her ankles were swollen, her stomach was huge and she was starting to breathe heavier than usual. They were all signs she needed to slow down, despite the fact that she was doing her best to ignore them.

  ‘I wish Lucy had written back. I would have liked to see her again before I go. But I can’t exactly trot off to see her at nine months pregnant!’

  ‘What of your other friend? Scarlet?’

  She nodded. ‘I’d hoped to see her, too. In fact, she’s said she will try to call on me tomorrow if she can. I don’t know where she’s been, but she mentioned in her letter coming back from somewhere and needing to see me.’

  ‘Well, you tell your friends they’re welcome here whenever they want to call. I can’t think of anything nicer than having my home filled with visitors and happy chatter.’

  Ellie looked back at her scones and decided to wrap them in a tea towel to keep them warm for tea before finally sitting down. She was desperately doing her best to knit for the baby, even though she’d never been talented when it came to homely tasks.

  Lily had gone and Ellie had only settled for a moment when there was a knock at the door. She set down her knitting needles, hoping for a moment that it could be Spencer, heart racing as she wondered if he might have come to surprise them. But she quickly pushed those thoughts away. Surely Spencer would have walked straight through the door without knocking.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Ellie called out, not sure where Lily had disappeared to.

  She walked to the door, waddling now, which infuriated her. There was a knock again and she wondered who would be so impatient.

  ‘Scarlet!’ She gasped her friend’s name when she opened t
he door, letting the handle go and opening her arms.

  ‘Oh, Ellie, look at you!’ Scarlet hugged her tight, their stomachs pressed together to allow them to do so.

  ‘Larger than last time you saw me,’ she joked, before noticing how drained Scarlet looked. Her friend’s cheeks were ghostly white, like chalk, and her eyes were hollow, her face thin. She didn’t resemble the Scarlet that she’d known for all those months, even when they’d both been at their thinnest on their substandard daily rations. ‘Scarlet, what’s happened? You don’t look like yourself.’

  Scarlet’s face crumpled as she lost her composure, but she quickly righted herself, reaching for Ellie’s hand and holding tight to it. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ Ellie closed the door and led Scarlet through the house to the kitchen, still holding her hand. ‘How about we have a cup of tea? I’ve made scones so we can have jam with them. It’s a little tart as we made it from our strawberries without a lot of sugar, but it’s still nice.’

  Scarlet had sat down at the table and Ellie kept glancing at her as she boiled water, made tea and prepared the scones. Scarlet was rubbing her thumb over a ball of wool that had been left on the table.

  ‘This is a beautiful home,’ Scarlet said.

  ‘It is,’ Ellie agreed. ‘I wish we’d been able to see more of each other, but with so much going on for you with Thomas and your nursing, and me with this huge stomach . . .’ Ellie laughed to herself. ‘Now the war is over we’ll have no excuse but to have regular get-togethers. How is Thomas getting along?’

  Scarlet stared down into her tea when Ellie set it in front of her. ‘Thomas is dead,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Dead?’ Ellie dropped into the seat beside Scarlet. ‘Dead?’

  Scarlet nodded, brushing tears from her cheek with the back of her fingers then picking up her cup and wrapping her hands around it. ‘We buried him only five days ago. I’m officially a widow.’

  ‘But, what . . . ?’ Ellie didn’t know what to say, whether it was even proper for her to ask what had happened. But Scarlet was her friend, and she’d obviously come here to talk. ‘Tell me everything, Scarlet. What happened to him?’

  Her friend met her gaze and even her eyes seemed paler than usual. ‘Thomas was unbearable, there’s no reason to pretend otherwise simply because he’s dead. He couldn’t live with himself, not being able to walk and stuck in that wheelchair with no answer about why his legs wouldn’t work. He hurt me over and over again, so I left and he . . .’ She swallowed. ‘He took his own life.’

  Ellie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘He didn’t!’

  ‘Shot himself, sitting there in his chair in the front room of our house.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Ellie whispered, reaching for Scarlet’s hand again.

  ‘I’d left him,’ Scarlet said. ‘I’d left him for James and he didn’t even know.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Ellie told her.

  ‘Isn’t it? James keeps telling me the same thing.’

  They sat there, sipping their tea, quiet for a long while.

  ‘You fell in love with James when no one else believed Thomas had a chance of being alive, and yet you turned your back on your heart and followed through with the promise you’d made. If he couldn’t see how lucky he was to have you, or he couldn’t live with his demons from the war, then that was his burden, not yours.’

  ‘You honestly believe that?’ Scarlet asked, chewing on her bottom lip the moment she stopped talking.

  ‘Yes, yes I do,’ Ellie insisted. ‘I’ve never met a person as loyal and loving as you.’

  Her stomach twinged, but she ignored it. She’d been getting small contractions for days and, as unsettling as it was, she wanted to give Scarlet her full attention.

  ‘I needed to tell someone, someone other than James. He keeps telling me not to blame myself, he wants me back with him, but I can’t pretend I’m staying with a friend any longer.’ She sighed. ‘He is mourning his brother, the brother he remembers from their younger years, and I’m mourning the husband I wished I’d had, but it doesn’t change the way we feel about each other.’

  ‘So don’t let it,’ Ellie said, grimacing as a stronger pain squeezed through her stomach. ‘Stay put, let yourself be the grieving widow for a time, and then let his family and everyone else see you slowly fall in love with his brother when you’re ready. No one but you, Lucy, James and me has to know the truth. And if you need time away from him, he’ll understand that. Heck, he’s already waited all this time, what’s a few more months?’

  A light came back into Scarlet’s eyes as she looked up, her shoulders rising, and what she could only presume was hope filling her friend’s gaze.

  ‘You honestly believe all that? Everything you just said?’

  Ellie smiled, but it was cut short by another tightening. ‘Yes. His family would probably be overjoyed at another marriage, so long as it all looked proper, and no one would ever guess the truth. But before that you need time to grieve. You both do.’

  Scarlet went to say something else but Ellie flapped her hand at her, trying not to moan.

  ‘I think I’m going to need some help here,’ she confessed, starting to think that the contractions were no longer false ones. ‘I have a feeling this baby has made up his mind that today is the day – and it’s not a day too soon for my liking.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Lucy

  10 September 1945

  Dear Scarlet and Ellie,

  I’m sending this exact letter to both of you, which is why I’ve addressed it as such. I’d best keep it short, otherwise my hand will be cramping when I have to write the second copy out!

  Would you believe that Jack turned up on my doorstep? I mean that literally. He sat there in the cold outside our house until I agreed to see him! So much has changed, so much has happened, but the one thing I know for sure is that I want you both here on our wedding day. Yes, you heard that right. He proposed to me, and we’ve already set a date, and I want you both as my bridesmaids. I have friends I’ve had my entire life, who I love dearly, but none of them know me as well as you do. We went through so much together, and I want us to be together when I marry Jack. I wish I hadn’t pushed you away, Ellie, with your baby on the way and all, but I was so down about my injuries, about my scars, and everything that had happened. I will forever be sorry, truly sorry, that we haven’t seen one another during the last months since I returned home. After your visit I think I was too ashamed to write to you, and now I’m worried I’ve missed news of your baby, Ellie! You must have had your little one by now, and I can’t wait to hear all about him or her. And Scarlet, I hope all is well with you. You’re in my thoughts constantly.

  I do hope this letter finds its way to you both easily enough, because if not, well, Jack will be furious as I’ve told him that without you both being able to attend, there will be no wedding. We survived the war, girls. We did it and we served our country well. Now it’s time for us to just be friends. Three young women with their lives ahead of them, even if we do carry memories enough for a lifetime of nightmares.

  Keep the date free, ladies: New Year’s Eve. I want us to celebrate the new year together. Please write back to me when you can.

  Much love,

  Lucy

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Scarlet

  Three months later

  ‘It’s so lovely to see you again, James,’ Scarlet said, letting him kiss her cheek as she greeted him with a quick hug, before smiling at his parents and greeting them with hugs and kisses, too.

  James winked at her, only for her eyes, and she knew a hot red flush had spread up her neck and no doubt across her cheeks. The first six weeks had been the hardest, full of tears and hatred, regrets and loneliness, but she was ready to smile again. She was ready to accept her feelings for James again now without guilt weighing so heavily on her shoulders.

  ‘It’s wonderful to see you looking so bright,’ his mother said, bustling pa
st her and through into the sitting room.

  ‘Well, I feel like I’ve mourned until I can’t cry any longer,’ Scarlet told them, without a hint of a lie. The fact that she was in love with James had nothing to do with the terrible grief she’d suffered over Thomas. She still cried for the man she’d once loved, furious that he’d had to lose himself during the war, but she no longer felt sorry for herself or blamed herself for what he’d done. She couldn’t, because then she’d become lost, too, and the men she nursed each day were suffering through so many traumas, many of them no longer physical, that she was gaining a stronger understanding of how affected these former soldiers were from what they’d seen.

  She cast a quick glance at James and saw he was watching her, and she was certain his mother had seen it this time. At least some time had passed now, and besides, Ellie had probably been right. She was starting to see that a new relationship with James might even be welcomed, so long as they went about it the right way, because as much as his parents were still grieving deeply for their lost son, they adored James and only wanted him to be happy.

  ‘James has been telling us that you nursed him at the front,’ his father said, stroking his moustache as he often did when he was talking. ‘It sounds as if he was rather fond of his pretty sister-in-law-to-be.’

  Scarlet did blush then, but it was only right that she did. James had been making it more than obvious that he enjoyed her company, and she was starting to feel more comfortable about it herself.

  ‘How about we let you two young people talk,’ his mother said, making a gesture at her husband for him to get moving. ‘We do want to walk in the garden and get some fresh air, don’t we, Roger?’

  Poor Roger looked as if he had no idea what was going on, and Scarlet stifled a laugh as he grunted and followed his wife, doing as he was told. It was freezing cold outside, which made it beyond obvious that they were being left alone on purpose. She stood still, not moving, hardly breathing until the room was empty, except for her and James standing on the far side. A door shut, the bang making her jump, but still she didn’t move forwards.