Carla Kelly (2 page)

As he watched, Sheffield had eased himself onto a stool and took Nell on his lap. “I have a better idea,” he told her. “You can come to work for me. We’re always in need of a good sweeping out, and Will could carry rubbish to the burn pit.”

She nodded, the shame gone, but replaced by hesitation. “I might be afraid,” she said.

“No need, lass,” the Chief had told her. “You and Will may only come here when I say so.” He seemed to understand her hesitation. “I need your help! So does our good king.”

Jesse had watched in amusement then as she seriously considered Sheffield’s adroit appeal to her patriotism.

“You are certain?”

“Never more so. You must come when either I or Captain Randall here call you.”

She had nodded and left the tent then. Sheffield held up his hand, ready to ward off an argument. “Jesse, don’t tell me they’ll be seeing life in the rough in Number Eight!
They will be warm here and dry, and we always have food, even when Bertie Mason gambles away his pay.”

“But…”

Sheffield only shook his hand, the gesture as clear as yesterday to Jess as he sat staring at the papers in front of him. “No arguments! A marching hospital is not a bad place to grow up. You might, too. Stranger things have happened.”

I
must ask you, Chief, if I grew up, he thought, returning to his paperwork. He stirred the ink, cursed the titans of red tape, and glanced down the tent to Nell Mason, eighteen now, as she warmed a bit of plaster on the portable hob. Two parts each of powdered lead monoxide, pork lard, and olive oil, he thought, and one part Nell Mason.

He got up and walked the length of the tent to observe as she efficiently rolled the plaster pill around the hob with a wooden spatula until it was the right consistency. She flipped it onto the little slab of marble, then flattened it onto the two layers of gauze that he obligingly anchored with his fingers. Two strokes measured the precise thickness. She looked at him then. “Should I?”

“Of course,” he told her. “Private Hornsby would be dashed disappointed if I applied that plaster, Nell. He might decline and die.”

She laughed. “Doctor, no one dies from a plaster!”

He smiled, and watched as she sat on a stool by the lucky private. Carefully she drew the edges of the wound together, then applied the little plaster down its length. While she held the plaster in place as it hardened, she kept up a soothing conversation with the private, which rendered him speechless with shyness.

When the little plaster was hard and firmly in place to Nell’s satisfaction, she stood up, and remained there a moment, her hands together. Jess smiled. The private practically writhed like a puppy under her calm gaze. When she could see nothing else to do, she twitched up the blanket a little higher around the man’s shoulders, then returned to her perch by the medicine chest.

He hadn’t been around to watch her turn from a fetching little girl into a lovely woman. Before another month was out in Canada, Jess found himself on a frigate bound for Jamaica with a portion of the division. The rest of Picton’s Third had been posted to Portugal after Boney started taking such an interest in the place. Like the others in Jamaica, Jess chafed to follow the action. The call came finally.

He went home to Dumfries briefly, grateful to be free of the feverish islands after four years. He happily became reacquainted with his parents, admired the family estates, kilted up and danced a jig with his older brothers and their pretty wives. He couldn’t tell them why he liked his army life, so different from their own quiet ways; they never expected much eloquence from him, so it hardly mattered.

His arrival in Lisbon couldn’t have been better timed. Wellington and his army were chafing behind the lines of Torres Vedras, eager for spring and another chance at the French. There was the inevitable typhus to contend with, and what David Sheffield always called “stupid wounds” from an army careless and tired of inaction.

And there was Nell Mason again. He had thought of her now and then in Jamaica. Sheffield had given him a blue bead from his stash when he left Canada for Jamaica, with the mild reminder to look at it occasionally and remember to help others.

He had met Sheffield in Lisbon, and spent a pleasant evening drinking port and catching up on division news. “Will and Nell?” he asked finally.

Sheffield leaned back and shook his head when the waiter offered more port. “Will’s at Cambridge.”

“What? Surely Bertie Mason never came out of an alcoholic stupor and noticed that he had a son with brains?”

“Alas, no. Bertie’s parents told their son that they would educate Will, perhaps in the hope that he might amount to something.” He stared at the port remaining in his glass. “He won’t disappoint them.” He sighed. “Nell cried to see him go.”

“Surely she’s married by now? Or maybe not. She’s but sixteen, eh?”

“Aye, lad. No, she’s not married, even though she is the prettiest little thing.”

“Why ever not, then?” Jess remembered her earnest blue
eyes, and the intense way she swept the tent, as though the fate of nations depended upon it. Charming in that way of eleven-year-olds, but he couldn’t really see her as grown up.

“Would
you
want Bertie Mason for a father-in-law?”

“Good God, no,” Jess said fervently. “Poor Nell.”

“You understand.” Sheffield leaned back with a sigh. “Now you’re going to ask me if she still sweeps out the hospital tent.”

“I suppose I am,” he said, amused.

“She does more,” Sheffield said simply. “At Talavera, I had such need of her.”

“God, no!” Still in Scotland, peacefully fishing his father’s favorite stream, he had heard of Talavera: three days of heat and death, with fires licking at the wounded.

“The assistant surgeon who replaced you froze and couldn’t do a damned thing,” Sheffield said, his eyes stern with the memory. “Dan O’Leary—you remember my steward?—edged him aside and took over, and Nell took Dan’s place with me.”

Jess was quiet for a long moment. “It’s so irregular.”

“It’s damned irregular!” End of outburst. Looking slightly embarrassed, Sheffield, stared down again. He spoke after a long moment. “We’ve been training her to do Dan’s little jobs, and he’s been assisting me. I know you’re here now, but I want Dan to help both of us. He has the gift, lad, same as you.”

It was a compliment of blinding proportions, unlooked for, and in Jess’s opinion, undeserved, but he knew better than to protest. Savor the moment, Jesse, he told himself with a smile. You know that Sheffield will be on you first thing in the morning for some infraction or other.

Or maybe not, he thought, as he looked at his mentor. Maybe I did grow up. He thought about the earnest little girl he remembered. And maybe I should allow Elinore Ophelia Mason the same opportunity.

Sheffield was right, he had discovered the next morning, when he entered the little church housing Marching Hospital Number Eight. There was Dan O’Leary grinning at him, hair as red as ever, Irish eyes bright with good humor, looking six years older, but none the worse for wear. And there was Nell grown up, smiling at him and coming forward with her hand outstretched. She gave him a firm handshake;
as he looked into her blue eyes, he knew he would never love another.

It was that simple. His university training in Milan, that mother of universities, had taught him to be skeptical and to trust nothing he could not prove. But here was Nell standing before him, not much taller than before, but with a womanly shape now, possessing an indefinable something even medical training could not explain. He knew that he could never leave her again.

It was more than the way she looked, and he knew it, even as he admired the beautiful woman before him. She was quiet, but everything about her was confident and capable. Her own lovely character sparkled before him, and it spoke louder than words. He knew how good this woman was, because he knew the child inside her.

So the matter stood for two years: the triumph of Bussaco, then back to the lines of Torres Vedras, through grubby sieges at Badajoz, that damned town, the storming of the walls at Ciudad Rodrigo, then on to the brilliance of Salamanca. He looked, he admired, but looming behind Nell like a cloud was Bertie Mason, all smiles and trouble, and Jess’s own shyness.

He admitted it. He chafed at his shyness. Even more, he chafed at his inability to find a moment for Nell and no one else. When he chose his life’s work, he knew that he would be busy, but he hadn’t counted on Napoleon’s genius for stirring up Europe. There was no balance in his world of war, and Jess knew he needed time he would never have to convince Nell of his devotion. He decided that war was no place to woo.

Not that he didn’t seriously consider courtship with Elinore, despite the terrors of Bernie Mason as a potential father-in-law. He even went so far one day early in the Burgos siege, when he had a free fifteen minutes, as to park himself in front of the mirror for an assessment. He knew he had enough height to please ladies fond of tall men. His hair was that shade of red the people were prone to call handsome, because it was dark instead of carrot-colored. What a relief not to be mistaken for a root crop, he thought, and smiled to himself. He frowned in the mirror next, wondering why an ordinarily merciful God had chosen him to have curly hair, which was such a bother on
campaign because his comb always went right to the bottom of his trunk and stayed there, resisting all discovery.

His face was just a face. He had grown up among thin-lipped, tight-nosed folk, Scots frugal physically as well as economically. One of the first things he had noticed about Spain was the full lips of the Spanish beauties, whether flower girl or
marquesa
. Ever the anatomist, he admired the deepset, dark eyes of men and women alike, and the effect of a nose with character. Ah, well. At least his teeth were all his own, with none of the gaps he saw in the local population. He knew his mother would credit that to oats for breakfast.

The mirror was small, but he backed away from it and turned sidways. He patted his waist, noting that it was especially easy to maintain a flat stomach during a siege. No one was well-fed on either side of the walls of Burgos, except the regimental quartermaster. Suspicious, that. He sat down again in front of the mirror. His father and brothers were all lean men, too; he had no reason to fear that he would someday run to fat and make his wife uncomfortable.

With growing impatience—and the realization that it was almost time to administer powders to the fever patient in cot three—he stared at himself. You, sir, who are so eloquent when describing diagnoses and prognoses, tighten up like a clam when a healthy female is within at least a three-hundred-yard radius. You, sir, who can deliver babies, and deal with private female functions without a blush or murmur, turn into a bumbler when a disease-free lady even glances in your direction. Too bad you never learned a remedy for shyness at the University of Milan.

He turned away from the mirror in disgust.

And now it was Burgos in late autumn, only one tantalizing river away from the French Pyrenees, but too far. They would begin a retreat soon and retrace their steps of summer through Salamanca, and back to Portugal. He did not fancy it, but he fancied Burgos even less, and the dismal little village close by where the regiment was quartered. Here Number Eight waited with its military cover for the retreat.

He looked up from his paperwork to see David Sheffield glaring down at him. “Yes, I’m wasting time,” he said.
“There is something about reports, especially this one.” He gestured at the paper in front of him, the one describing the death of the toddler yesterday.

Sheffield rested his hand on Jess’s shoulder for a brief moment. “Just finish it, Jess,” he said gently.

He did as Sheffield directed, his heart heavy, then looked around the tent, soothing himself with the order he saw. As a reward, he gave himself permission to seek out Nell Mason with his eyes. She was scraping lint with Dan O’Leary, no one’s favorite job. The lint would be stretched into long rolls and sandwiched between sheets of paper, ready for use at the next battle. The lint clung to everything; Jess was sure he could taste it in his food, lurking among slabs of dreary beef and great whacking hunks of squash.

Nell must have sensed he was looking at her, because she turned his way and nodded. “Join us?” she teased, holding up a fistful of lint. He could see it in her dark hair.

“In a word, no.” He smiled at her. “You know how I love my paperwork.”

They both laughed. Then he stopped, put down his pen, and rose, every nerve on edge, because Major William Bones had entered the tent. A chair scraped behind him, and he knew that Dan was on his feet, too, not out of deference but caution.

He also knew that Dan stood for the same reason. There was something about the way the major looked at Nell Mason that set off warning bells jangling inside his head. He had never really voiced the matter with Dan; it was something they understood.

Curious about instinct: every man who came into the tent unconsciously sought out Nell Mason with his eyes. In their hard world of bad water, poor quarters, seething latrines, and terror around the next hill, beauty was as rare as roses in January. After his return to the regiment, Jess learned quickly that most men wanted to look and admire. With Bones it was different. “It’s like he takes her clothes off with his eyes” was the only comment Dan O’Leary had ever made about the matter.

And
I
don’t? Jess had thought at the time, and wasted a useless evening contemplating the sin of hypocrisy. Even his overactive conscience had to yield to the fact that Major
Bones was an ugly customer. I have cleaned up after your too-frequent floggings, he thought, even as he watched the man now. No telling what you would do to a woman, given enough rage or spite. So he stood up, keeping himself between the major and Nell, even as Daniel did.

“Afternoon, gentlemen. Miss Mason.”

Jess winced. Anyone else saying that would sound perfectly unexceptionable, except that Dan O’Leary was no gentleman, which rendered the salutation condescending, even cruel. “Major, may we help you?” he forced himself to say.