by Leda Swann
Though her duty was to save lives, she hated having to save his. He was so badly burned he was unlikely to live for long, and even if he did, his injuries were so severe he would never work again. When he was awake, he moaned with pain and begged to be set free from his suffering. All she could do was give him enough laudanum to dull his pain and to send him off to sleep. At least in his sleep, the pain and horror of his burns was masked from him.
How she hoped that if Teddy or the captain were to die in battle, they would find a swift end. She hoped they would not know such pain, and the agony of knowing that it would end only with their death.
When she was halfway through her task, the screen was moved aside and Dr. Hyde poked his head through. His eyes widened with displeasure when he saw her. “Beatrice, why have you closed the curtains? It is not seemly that you should be alone with a male patient. Particularly not one who is in a state of undress.”
She dragged the screen back around her patient again. “He is badly injured and deserves his privacy.” She was too tired and overwrought to mince her words. “It is less seemly that he should be exposed to the gaze of whoever passes by.”
“Safety in the hospital is paramount. Hiding behind screens is a foolish act, and puts you at unnecessary risk. You could be in danger from him, and no one would see what was happening until it was too late.”
Sometimes Dr. Hyde could be so annoying. Annoying and impractical. She wiped a loose strand of hair off her face with the back of her hand. Her shift had barely started and already she was exhausted. “He is badly injured, and what’s more, he’s taken enough laudanum to knock out an elephant. I am in no danger from him.”
He did not back down. “Your reputation is.”
“I am a nurse,” she snapped. “Of course I see naked men in the course of my duties. I can hardly wash a patient with all his clothes on.”
That made him take a step backward. “You should not talk of such matters.” His voice, though controlled, vibrated with anger. “It is unseemly in a young woman, even if she is a nurse.”
Oh dear, she had really offended him now. She suppressed a sigh. She would have to flatter him and make him feel like a hero again, or he would sulk for a week. “But we are both professionals, aren’t we,” she said with a tired attempt at a winning smile. “I can say things to you that I would not say in society. You are quite different from the common run of men.”
Her words had the desired effect. His face lightened and he gave an almost-smile of approval. “You’re right, of course. Doctors have to see the bigger picture. We cannot be bound by the same rules as the rest of society.”
“Indeed, no,” she agreed, wanting him only to go away so she could carry out her duties in peace.
“You were right to remind me of the special position we hold. I shall leave you to your task. But may I call on you this Sunday afternoon for a walk in the park?”
Beatrice smiled dutifully, though the thought depressed her. Why couldn’t he do something different for a change, instead of being so predictable? “That would be lovely.” He took her acquiescence for granted. Couldn’t he ask her what she wanted to do for a change, instead of expecting her to accede to his wishes all the time?
Dr. Hyde smiled. “I do like to get out of the hospital on Sundays, and be surrounded by fresh, green nature. I’m so glad you enjoy it as I do.”
He withdrew his head from the curtain and Beatrice listened to his footsteps walking away down the ward. Ha, if only he knew how much she was bored of the park and had spent all year wanting to go to a comedy musical show instead. But she had never brought up the idea and he had never bothered to ask her what she wanted to do.
He thought she was happy with his choice of amusement, and so he was happy, and even applauded her for her superior tastes that exactly matched his own.
Really, men were so easy to manipulate, and Dr. Hyde, for all his book learning, was easier than most. Being married to him would be easy enough as long as she took the trouble to make him think he was in control.
Easy, but dull. Marriage to him would condemn her to sedately promenading in the park with him every Sunday for the rest of her life. Had she been too hasty in encouraging his courtship?
She sighed and went back to caring for the ruin of the man in front of her.
He was young and had been handsome once, more’s the pity. She could trace his once fine features through the ruin of his face. It was so badly maimed now that even his mother would be hard-pressed to recognize him.
If the war in South Africa continued to go badly, there would soon be many more such casualties hitting the hospital for her to care for. Young men with broken bodies and broken minds, reliving their worst moments over again in their nightmares.
Some of the older nurses had told her stories about the men that had come back from the Crimean War. Some of them, though their bodies were unmarked, had damaged souls and would never be the same again. A few had been unable to bear the strain of what they had become, and had done what the enemy had failed to do, and killed themselves.
It was a tragedy, a double tragedy, that even when the war was over, young men continued to lose their lives.
How she hoped neither Teddy nor Captain Carterton were among the dead or wounded in this war they were fighting in South Africa. She was worn out from hoping it. Until yesterday she had consoled herself with the thought they were far away from the fighting and were sitting out the war barricading a fort in relative safety. Now she knew without a doubt they had been given their marching orders.
There had been no point in her writing a reply to the captain’s letter—she would not have known where to send it.
Even when she had thought Teddy and the captain were safe, she had scanned the pages of the daily newspapers every evening, hoping to find only the names of strangers in the growing list of soldiers killed in the line of duty. So far, she had been lucky. After receiving yesterday’s letter, she was terrified that her luck would not hold.
Her patient groaned, the noise bringing her back to reality. Carefully, she spooned another dose of laudanum into his partly open mouth with shaking fingers, and stroked his throat until he swallowed. Then she pulled the sheet back over him and removed the screen. She had done all she could for that poor man to ease his passing.
There was no use in fretting over what she could not change—it was a foolish indulgence of sentiment and did no one any good.
She would heal where she could, and comfort where she could not heal.
And only hope that death was merciful and passed her loved ones by.
Percy Carterton clambered onto the deck of the ship, then turned and waved with his good arm to the few soldiers who stood on the docks. Only those in his regiment who had remained unscathed were remaining in South Africa, the rest were being sent home to England to recuperate. He was one of the lucky ones—he had walked up the gangway under his own steam, with only an arm in a sling. Most of his comrades, if he hadn’t left them buried in the dusty soil of the Transvaal, had been carried on to the ship in stretchers, groaning under the burden of shattered legs or gaping head wounds.
He spied Teddy Clemens on the dock. The boy had Lady Luck in his corner. He’d come through their first encounter without a scratch, and was now joining another regiment that was off to keep the peace in Pretoria. The lad should be safe enough there, whatever happened in the interior.
“Go see my sisters in London,” Teddy shouted at him above the din. He could just make out the lad’s words over the racket of the docks. “Tell them I miss them, and I’d be coming home, too, if I could.”
Carterton waved back in acknowledgment of the boy’s request. He had every intention of fulfilling it at the earliest opportunity. Meeting Beatrice was the only good thing that had come out of this blasted war. And now he was going home to claim her.
Beatrice sat on the rug on the grass and picked idly at the daisies. The band in the rotunda played a jolly marching tune, but her spirits did not rise to match t
he musicians. They remained as wet and downtrodden as the small patch of lawn on which she was perched. She still had heard nothing from Teddy and she was worn out from worrying over him.
Dr. Hyde sat next to her on the rug, his legs stretched out in front of him, pulling uncomfortably at his goatee. His brown pants clung tightly to his thighs, and he had dispensed with formality just enough to take off his jacket and roll up his shirtsleeves. His arms were covered with fine brown hair that looked soft enough to run her fingers through.
He caught her looking at his arms and a slight frown creased his forehead. With a deliberate motion he rolled down his sleeve and refastened the cuffs.
Beatrice’s face blazed with a sudden heat. So what if she had been looking at his arms? It was hardly a crime. Anyone would think they were merely casual acquaintances, instead of a couple who had been walking out together for nearly a year now. She wasn’t a nun—she was planning to marry the man if he would ever get up the courage to ask her. There would be something wrong with her if she didn’t want to look at his bare skin when she had the chance.
A shimmer of irritation with him floated down and settled on her shoulders like a dark cloud. He was not usually such a dull companion. Usually his quick wit would allow her to overlook his formal manners and his stiff-rumped propriety. But this afternoon he was so ill at ease that his sharp brain seemed to have turned quite to mush.
Sometimes, when his humor was especially entertaining, she was almost sure that she was on the way to falling in love with him. This afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure that she even liked him. It was an uncomfortable way for a woman to feel about her prospective husband.
Dr. Hyde pulled at his goatee again, until Beatrice wanted to slap his fingers away. How could a respectable doctor have such irritating personal habits? He would pull out all the hairs until he had none left, and his goatee was ridiculously sparse to start with. If she were ever to marry him, she would insist that he shave it off. Before their wedding night.
If she were ever to marry him? She gave an inelegant snort that caused him to look at her as if she had just sicked up something nasty in the presence of the Queen. Her worry over Teddy must be turning her brain to mush. Of course she was going to marry him. It had been her dream for most of the last year that the revered Dr. Hyde would fall head over heels in love with her and ask her to be his wife. He was a respectable man and a good doctor, and she liked him very well—most of the time, that is.
As his wife, she would be free to continue to work as a nurse until she was to fall in the family way. He approved of women nurses. That in itself was enough to make him stand out from the crowd. Most of his colleagues acted as if they were doing a favor to the women to allow them to work at the hospital, despite the fact that they worked twice as hard for a fraction of the pay.
Though it had taken her months to break through his reserve, their friendship was now reaching a crisis point. As the daughter of a bankrupt and a suicide, she knew just how important it was to be considered respectable. Without it, a woman had less than nothing.
Annoyingly, the way she felt about the doctor this afternoon, she would be quite happy if he were to announce that he had become engaged to the hospital charwoman and was emigrating to Africa to become a missionary. Even if it meant the end to all her dreams.
He cleared his throat awkwardly. The noise was at least as vulgar as her snort had been, but did she glare at him? No, she did not. Her manners were better than his.
“Beatrice—” He stopped speaking and cleared his throat again. “Beatrice, I have something to ask you?”
Had he always been this irritating, and she had just never noticed? Surely not. She must simply be tired and out of sorts. The afternoon sun was too weak to be warm, the grass was too damp to be comfortable, and the wind was too brisk to make sitting outside a pleasure. Even the band was playing out of tune. It was no wonder she was out of patience. “Ask away.”
He frowned at her flippant reply. “It is a serious question.”
“To which I will give a serious answer.” She laid her hand comfortingly on his thigh, feeling guilty for having vexed him yet again. He had been a good friend to her and she ought not take her ill humor out on him.
He picked up her hand in his and held it there. “Beatrice, we have known each other for a year now.”
His remark did not call for a reply, so she remained silent.
“From almost the moment I met you, I was impressed with your dedication to your work and your devotion to your patients.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, feeling more in charity with him. It was always nice to be appreciated.
“And for some time now we have been growing closer.”
She smiled at him as if she agreed with his every word. She’d practiced the smile in the mirror in her lodgings until she had it pitch perfect. Men being what they were, she expected to have to use it often.
“We have.” She infused the words with the feeling that in doing so, all her dreams had come true. The truth was, they had been getting to know one another at a snail’s pace, despite her best efforts to hurry him along. His courting was frustratingly slow and wishy-washy.
Captain Carterton, wherever he was, would not be such a namby-pamby. He was a man of action who would whisk her off to his private harem and make love to her for three weeks on end, given the chance. His last letters had been quite disturbingly warm.
“…and I have become very fond of you.”
His words broke into her daydream about her soldier. When she was married, she wouldn’t have time to write to him anymore, even if he were to survive the war. Marriage would truly spell the end of her naughty fantasies, for she would no longer be able to write to him or to receive his letters. “That’s nice,” she said weakly. It was a pity that marriage would be so restrictive. Writing to the captain and receiving his letters in return had been the highlight of her days.
“…as I hope you have of me.”
“Indeed.” His careful manner was hardly conducive to a rhapsody of love from her in return. She wasn’t in the mood for rhapsodies anyway.
Married women shouldn’t write such familiar letters to men, she knew. Not that unmarried women should write such letters, either, but as an unmarried woman she was more free to please herself. Fornication was only unforgiveable if one was caught out in it, while adultery was always severely frowned upon.
“And I was hoping you would consider doing me the inestimable honor of becoming my wife.”
She let out the breath she didn’t even know she had been holding. This was the moment she had been waiting for. To her astonishment, she didn’t feel overwhelmed by happiness, or passion. She didn’t even feel so much as a nervous butterfly in her stomach. All she felt was a vague sense of irritated letdown. Is this all there was to life? Where were the fireworks that Louisa had described to her, the sense of rightness, of inevitability?
She meant to say yes. She tried to say yes, but her mouth refused to form the word. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You could accept my offer for a start,” Dr. Hyde remarked, with a flash of his usual wit returning.
“No.” Where had that word come from? She hadn’t meant to say that. “I mean, not yet,” she said hastily, covering her mistake as quickly as she could. What was wrong with her? She meant to marry the man. She had meant to marry him for months. Why was she getting cold feet just as his had finally started to get warm?
“Not yet?” He raised his eyebrows for an explanation. “Does that mean maybe, or is it a kinder way of saying no?”
She had none to give him. “It’s all rather sudden,” she lied, not knowing what else to say. “Marriage is such an important step for a woman. I need some time to think about it.”
He tugged on his goatee in thought. “That is fair enough. Come walking with me next Sunday, and let me know your thoughts then.” He rose to his feet and held out his hand to assist her from the ground. “Come, I shall escort you ba
ck to your boardinghouse.”
Beatrice was thankful that she was wearing cotton gloves. Her skin was cold and clammy. It frightened her, how close she had come to throwing away everything she had worked for in the past year.
They walked the two miles back to her boardinghouse in near silence. Clouds covered any hint of sunshine and Beatrice shivered in her light cloak. Her Sunday outing had turned into a disaster. A disaster completely of her own making.
When they reached the door, Dr. Hyde bowed over her hand. “I shall see you on the wards in the morning, I trust?” His words were as courteous as ever, but he looked as sour as if he had eaten a peck of lemons. Sour enough to curdle milk at ten paces.
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Who knew what might come out of her mouth?
Not until she reached the safety of her room, did she burst into noisy tears. He had proposed to her, and she had almost refused him? Really, she was barking mad and ought not to be allowed out of the house without a keeper.
What would Mrs. Bettina say, or Lenora? They liked Dr. Hyde and would be horrified to think she had just been trifling with his affections.
She was mad to secretly think about waiting to see if the captain survived the war. Even if he were to present himself at her door tomorrow with a bunch of flowers in his hand and beg her to marry him, she would refuse. She knew practically nothing about him. She would never marry a man she did not know to be good and honorable. He might turn out to be an arrant scoundrel, and then where would she be? All she knew about the captain was that he wrote to her in warmer terms than any man ought to write to a woman who was not his wife.
And that his words made her feel warm and loved, as Dr. Hyde’s presence did not.
She threw herself full length onto the bed and wept harder than ever. Her obsession with the captain had to stop. Now, before she ruined the reality that lay in front of her. The captain was a fantasy, a figure her imagination had created out of his letters.
She did not know who he was. Not really.