Page 33 of The Number of Love
She sighed. “Another hopelessly proper patient, I see. Very well then, Lieutenant. Your sidearm.” She handed him a spoon. “And your bayonet.” A knife, presumably to butter the bread she also slid onto his tray. “Use them wisely, or I shall strip you of them and submit you to the humiliation of being fed by a woman.”
It was all he could do to force his lips into a smile and keep his face clear of the wince that wanted to overtake him when he lifted his arm.
This was going to be fun.
He waited until she bustled to the next bed, the next patient, before he tried lifting his arm again. Never before had he been aware of all the muscles required to complete such a simple act. Dip the spoon. Raise it again. Aim it at his own mouth.
He managed the first spoonful all right. On the second, his arm shook. By the third, he’d worn it rather than eating it—good thing it hadn’t been more than warm.
Nurse Denler appeared at his side, her lonely dimple in place. She spread a napkin over his chest. “I know that look. But we cannot accept defeat so soon, Lieutenant Elton. You’ll not regain your strength by eating so little.” She pried the spoon from his fingers and sat in the wooden chair positioned between the cots, angling it toward him. “Besides, from what I hear, your sister will be coming soon to visit you. You’ll want to be finished and cleaned up by then, won’t you? Best to let me help.”
Of course Dot was coming. He hadn’t really paused to think about that yet—that Charing Cross meant London, the very neighborhood where she lived and now worked. Of course she’d come. Likely every day, while he was here.
She’d see him weak and in pain and no doubt want to know how he’d come by his injury.
He had no intentions of telling her. Let her assume he’d ended up in one of the many battles raging on the Continent.
Jaeger’s face filled his vision. Contorted with rage, closer than it had ever been in reality, obliterating all else in the room.
Across the aisle, the duchess shattered the illusion as she shouted something in a language that sounded a bit like French, a bit like Italian, but wasn’t fully either, to his ear. And the men laughed.
Nurse Denler did, too, low and warm. “Another reason she serves here, I think. To give the men stories to tell when they go back to the field, or home. Tales of the duchess who fed them, served them, and then yelled at them in Monegasque.”
Itwouldmake a good story. But Drake wasn’t sure to whom he’d tell it. “Back to the field” would mean Spain and Abuelo’s house—but if he remembered correctly the words Thoroton had spoken while Drake was being put on the train, his grandfather hadn’t been informed of his injury. Rather, Charles the Bold had sent a telegram in Drake’s name, saying he’d decided to extend the little trip he’d been on and was debating spending the winter in London with Dot.
Abuelo would frown—why would he choose to winter in England rather than the temperance of Spain?—but he wouldn’t think it out of character.
And when could he reasonably expect to go back to Spain, anyway? That same muddled recollection of his superior had contained some instruction about enjoying Christmas with his sister, hadn’t it?
Christmas. That was a month and a half away. So much would have happened in that time—the wolfram would have been loaded onErri Barro, and the frigate would have set out to sea. He’d wanted to be there, one of the team on the English ship sent to intercept it. Thoroton had told him he could be. That he could see it through, from discovery to confiscation.
No chance of that now.
“Finished?” Nurse Denler frowned at the bowl—still over half full. “Would you like the bread and butter?”
Solid food should sound good, shouldn’t it? But the thought of it just made him hurt. “No. Thanks.”
“All right.” She stood and lifted the tray from over his legs. “Try to rest until your sister comes. Do you want to lie back down?”
Move again? Only to want to return to this position so he could actually see Dot when she got here? He risked a shake of his head—a minuscule one.
Given the increased noise in the ward as men were roused for their dinners, he didn’t really expect to rest. But he must have dozed for a minute here and there, because it seemed like only a moment before he heard his sister’s familiar voice saying his name and felt her familiar fingers on the top of his hand.
He blinked awake, glad it wasn’t with a jerk this time. Saw Dot with her curls pinned back in their usual chignon, her smile obviously trying to strike a note between bravery and normality, the blue-grey eyes they shared suspiciously shiny.
Then his gaze tracked just past her, to a second figure hovering by his bed. He might have thought it another nurse, except instead of white, he saw blue. A blue dress under a belted blue coat. And above that, hair of dark chocolate pinned in a plain bun, a slender nose in a slender face, and those dark eyes that had haunted him for the last month.
Blast it all. Why today? When he was dressed in a soup-stained pajama shirt and couldn’t move without the risk of crying like a baby?
The ever-helpful Nurse Denler arrived with another chair, and Margot De Wilde sat.
Drake tore his eyes fromherand looked back to his sister. “Hello.”
Dot sighed and wove their fingers together. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better.” He couldn’t think of a time he’d beenworse, as a matter of fact, but he’d embrace the British stiff upper lip just now.
Dot, of course, saw through him. He could tell by the way she narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. But instead of calling him on it, she turned a bit to include her friend. “This is Margot De Wilde, my friend from the office. Did you get my letters? If so, you know who she is.”
