Read A Rose in No-Man's Land Online

Authors: Margaret Tanner

Tags: #romance, #vintage, #spicy, #wwI, #historical

A Rose in No-Man's Land (2 page)

BOOK: A Rose in No-Man's Land
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After dessert, several male officers drifted over to join the nurses.

“Welcome to Broadmeadows, ladies.” The middle-aged colonel greeted them with a smile. “Unfortunately, the brigadier is unable to welcome you personally. He’s tied up in conference with some of our politicians. Most of our junior officers are out on maneuvers, but I’ll introduce you to those of us who are here. Captain Tremayne will act as liaison officer between you ladies and the rest of the military.”

A young lieutenant gave an envious laugh. “You’re a lucky dog, Mark.”

Captain Tremayne’s scowl made it obvious he didn’t think so.

Ella introduced the nurses and, after only a cursory glance at the other officers, focused her attention on Mark Tremayne.

“She’s setting her cap at him,” whispered Millie, Amy’s roommate.

When several young officers strolled over and sat at their table, Amy tried to join in on the good-natured complaining about the weather. She glanced in the captain’s direction. Their gazes locked and held, and for a split second they were the only occupants of the room. Time hung suspended, as motionless as the hands of a broken clock. Ella’s shrill laugh broke the spell.

Amy got up from the table. “I might go to my quarters. I’ve still got some unpacking to do. Anyone coming?”

“I’ll come with you,” Millie volunteered. “I want to write another letter to Dick.”

“You write to him every day,” Amy teased her friend. “Goodnight, everyone.”

Captain Tremayne rose to his feet, and Amy, in her haste to escape, collided with him. Once again he saved her from sprawling in an undignified heap at his feet.

“This barging into me is becoming a habit, Sister Amy.”

Did anyone else notice the soft intimacy in his voice when he spoke her name, or the way his hand lingered on her arm? His touch was light, but it scorched through to the bone. This man was danger personified.

****

Their accommodation could be classified as primitive. Two single beds covered with gray army blankets, and a wooden wardrobe and dresser. The fly-specked, oval mirror had a crack in one corner. A rug running between the beds ungraciously adorned the bare floorboards.

“It isn’t much.” Amy flicked her hat carelessly onto the dresser. “Don’t want us getting used to luxuries, I suppose.” She laughed, tossing back her head so her loosened hair tumbled down over her shoulders.

“I’ve never seen a woman with such blonde hair before.” Millie tugged the pins from her own mousy locks.

“We’re all fair in our family.” Amy ran her fingers through her hair. “Maybe there’s Swedish blood in us somewhere. How’s Dick liking the army?”

“Not much. He’s sorry he joined up in Western Australia—we might have been together, otherwise.”

“I’m sure you’ll catch up with each other soon. I envy you, Millie. I’ll probably end up an old maid.”

“No you won’t. You’re too pretty.”

Frail, Mark Tremayne had said. Wretched man.

Amy hung up her uniform. The drab gray didn’t suit most of the girls, but it did her because of her blonde hair. Oh, and Ella, of course. A chaff bag would look becoming on the senior sister.

They took turns at splashing their faces with cold water from a battered tin basin. Would she ever get used to sharing with so many others?
Being brought up as an only girl has made me selfish.
She brushed her hair in long, even strokes.

The blankets smelt musty, and the sheets scratched her skin as she wriggled around to get comfortable.

“I hope I don’t disturb you keeping the lamp on,” Millie said, “but I want to send this letter off in the morning. Dick will be surprised when I tell him we got tickets to Dame Nellie Melba’s Patriotic Concert. How many of those Belgian rosette things did you end up buying?”

“About six.” Amy sighed with resignation. “What could I do? Those ladies do their best for the war effort, and I didn’t have the heart to refuse them.”

Amy closed her eyes and Captain Tremayne’s face floated into view. Why did he have to intrude on her thoughts? Guy laughed and teased everyone all the time, whereas, on the surface at least, Mark Tremayne appeared grim and forbidding, morose almost. What would it take to make him smile?

Guy and Sophie adore each other. That’s how it would have to be for me. But I have to do my bit for the war effort before I think of myself.

With no male heir to uphold their military tradition, she had to carry the family’s standard into battle. Her father had been killed in the Transvaal, fighting the Boers. She had been brought up with Guy, and Uncle Frederick, her mother’s brother, had encouraged her reckless, boyish pursuits.

Those Germans storming their way through Belgium, crushing everything in their path, had to be stopped. The Kaiser being related to the English Royal family made such infamous treachery even more unforgivable.

Within a couple of days of war being declared by England, Australia pledged to supply the mother country with an army, and volunteers poured into recruiting depots all over the land.

How dashing the young men looked in their khaki uniforms, shiny brown boots with ankle-to-knee cloth puttees, and slouch hats worn at a rakish angle. Millie’s fiancé Dick, a Light Horseman, cut an even grander spectacle, with ostrich plumes in his slouch hat, and shiny leggings over his khaki breeches.

Amy punched her pillow a couple of times, willing herself to go to sleep. Who knew what tomorrow would bring?

****

Reveille, 0600 hours. The mournful sound of the bugle had Amy tumbling out of bed in the chilly darkness. “Millie, wake up,” she called to rouse the softly snoring girl.

As she sponged her shivering body she wondered when they would be allowed to bathe fully. Her hair hung in a tangled mass about her shoulders, so she briskly ran a brush through it before screwing it up into a roll.

Millie rose groggily from her bed and groaned loudly.

“Come on, we don’t want to be late,” Amy urged.

“You go ahead.”

“No, I’ll wait. I’ll make the beds.” She wanted to scream at Millie to hurry.

Amy dashed around, rejuvenated after a night’s rest. A glance out the window showed a weak sun trying valiantly to part the clouds. The early morning call of a magpie mingled with the sounds of an awakening camp. This sprawling canvas city stretched endlessly. Young soldiers laughed and called out to each other from one end of it to the other.

After roll call, the nurses presented themselves to the officers’ mess for breakfast. Ella seemed in high spirits, her sparkling green eyes enhancing her beauty.

“Have an enjoyable evening with Captain Tremayne?” Jane, an eyebrow cocked in her sharp face, asked Ella.

Ella laughed, a low seductive gurgle coming from deep within her throat, but her face gave nothing away.

Amy ate the thick, lumpy porridge hungrily, then accepted a plate of chops, bacon, and eggs.

“My goodness, you have a most unladylike appetite, Amy.”

“Do I, Jane?” She watched the other nurse nibble at a piece of toast.

“Good morning, Mark,” Ella greeted Captain Tremayne huskily.

“Good morning, Ella, ladies, Sister Amy.”

Amy’s lips snapped together. Singling her out like that, as if she weren’t one of the “ladies,” made her feel about twelve years old. “Good morning, sir.”

His dark eyebrows quirked in surprise at the formality of her greeting. With a shrug, he turned his attention to Ella, who put her tongue out in a slow, sensual movement to lift some toast crumbs off her lower lip. Amy’s stomach curdled with disgust at such a blatantly seductive ploy.

Although freshly shaved, a faint shadow darkened Mark’s jaw line, and his short hair, still damp, somehow managed to curl. Ruggedly handsome, and the arrogant devil knew it, too.

Amy forced herself to concentrate on eating. She must rid herself of any foolish notions. She had no time for anything but a casual interest in men, even a handsome one like Mark Tremayne. Was there a slightly melancholy droop to his well-shaped lips? Maybe. No, definitely. She saw a fleeting look of indescribable pain in his startling blue eyes, as if he suffered the agony of the damned.

Intent on keeping her glance from straying to him again, she didn’t watch what went into her mouth, and something caught at the back of her throat. A choking cough rose in her throat, and she spluttered and gasped.

Millie slapped her on the back. When this didn’t dislodge the object, Amy staggered outside. Another couple of forceful slaps dislodged a lump of gristle from her mouth, followed by breakfast.

“Thanks, Millie.” Amy glanced up, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

Embarrassed heat flooded her face. Captain Tremayne, not Millie, had come to her aid. From the corner of her eye, she saw him waving Millie back into the mess hall, and then, without a word, he wiped her mouth on a neatly folded handkerchief. His face was so close she could see his navy irises dilated with concern and, like a mesmerized rabbit, she couldn’t turn away.

Using the flat of his thumb, he lifted a teardrop from her cheek. He scrutinized it momentarily before raising it to his lips. What a shockingly intimate thing to do. It made her stomach turn cartwheels—nothing to do with her previous nausea, either.

“Feeling better now?” Like a soft caress, his voice washed over her.

“Yes, thank you, Captain.” She had never felt so humiliated. “If you give me your handkerchief, I’ll launder it for you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He stepped back a pace. His lips thinned, and anger chased away his compassion. “You don’t fit in here. You look about eighteen and should be home with your parents.”

“I happen to be a qualified nurse.”

“Then act like one.”

Turning on his heel, he stalked back inside. Churlish pig. She bunched her hands into fists and walked toward her own quarters, angry at him for his boorish behavior, and at herself for being upset by it.

An overladen cart rumbled past, and as she glanced at the thin, miserable horse straining between the shafts, her blood ran cold. The driver flailed the beast with a long cane. Several times in quick succession the punishing rod fell on the laboring animal’s back as he struggled to pull the cart through the mud.

She dashed over to the man. “You stop that this instant, or I’ll have you arrested.”

“Clear off, lady.” The driver raised the cane again, and she grabbed at his arm.

“You callous beast!”

His virulent abuse shocked her almost as much as the swipe of his beefy paw, which sent her sprawling. She scrambled to her feet and launched herself at him again.

“What the hell’s going on?” Captain Tremayne’s fingers biting into the flesh of one arm stopped Amy’s maddened onslaught.

“This crazy woman attacked me.”

“He wouldn’t stop flogging his horse.”

“Put your shoulders to the wheel, men,” the captain ordered several soldiers who had gathered. “Get the cart back on the gravel.”

“Plucky thing you did, Sister,” one of the soldiers growled. “I would have flattened him if I’d got here first.”

“Unload your wagon and get out of here.” Captain Tremayne reached across, grabbed the cane from the man and snapped it in half across his knee. “Overload your wagon like that again, and you’re out of business. Permanently.” He flung the pieces to the ground.

Amy quaked at the savagery in his voice.

“I’ll leave you in charge, Corporal.”

Captain Tremayne strode over to where she waited. “What on earth possessed you?”

“I can’t stand cruelty to animals.” Her lips trembled, and her eyes filled with tears.

With a muffled oath he peered into her face. “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t cry again.”

“I’m not.” She scrubbed at her eyes with her fingertips.

His long lashes fanning out over his eyes hid his innermost thoughts, but she watched in fascination as a pulse convulsed at the side of his jaw.

“Here, into my office.” A firm hand in the middle of her back propelled her forward. When they arrived at his office, he dropped his hand, and she crossed the threshold a couple of steps ahead of him.

“Would you like me to send my orderly out for some tea?”

“No, thank you, sir. I’m glad you broke his whip.”

“He’s lucky I didn’t smash him across the head with it first.”

“You cared too?” Her heart skipped a beat.

“I don’t like seeing animals mistreated.” He ran a fingertip along her cheek before stepping away.

The male scent of him, the heat of his body, his featherlight caress almost had her reaching up to touch his face. Curling her fingers into her palms to keep them from straying, she fought to get her emotions under control. She didn’t want him to know how his touch affected her. How it burned through the layers of skin and seared her soul.

“If you’ve recovered, Sister Amy, I’ll escort you back to your quarters.” His tone sounded all army captain now, unemotional, brusque, as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of her.

“No, thank you, I can go alone.” The quicker she escaped his disturbing presence the better. She couldn’t understand what was happening. Didn’t want to understand.

“As you wish. Sister?”

“Yes?” She turned toward him once more, focusing on a wall map just beyond his shoulder so he wouldn’t see the turmoil that would surely be etched on her face.

“If I had the power, I’d transfer you out of here.”

The harshness of his voice scraped at her nerves. Forcing a level tone, she managed. “Why? What have I ever done to you?”

“You are a threat to me.” He dropped the words with slow precision into the charged air between them.

She adjusted her hat, pulled her shoulders back, and made for the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned slightly and gave a brief nod. “Captain.” And fled.

Leaning against the outside wall, she took in several deep breaths, trying to recover from the emotional mauling she had just received at the hands of Mark Tremayne.

A threat? To her knowledge, she had never been a threat to anyone. She didn’t even know this man, yet in their brief encounters, he had become a threat to her. A threat to her previously stable emotions, to her well-ordered life. She almost wished he did have the power to transfer her.

BOOK: A Rose in No-Man's Land
4.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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