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Kate had caught it as a child, in a building Emmie would undoubtedly have considered a tenement. Kate remembered her mother sponging her head with a damp cloth, wringing it out, and starting again. She remembered how her eyes had stung and the soft sound of her mother’s voice, singing to her.

“Do we know how many of our people have had it?” Kate asked.

“Gwen’s been working in the infirmary,” said Alice, fidgeting in her chair. “She must have seen hundreds of people last week. She might have given it to any of them.”

“Not the children, though,” said Kate. Gwen was an excellent nurse—with adults. Children she saw as small, inferior adults who behaved in unpardonably irrational ways, and had no patience with them. “Emmie’s been seeing to the children.”

Kate looked at Emmie, feeling absurdly like she was trying to curry her favor, to make up for everything she wasn’t ready to admit to doing wrong.

“Hands up,” said Julia. “Who here has had it?”

Everyone raised their hands except Nell, who bit her lip and fiddled with her coffee cup. “I haven’t. My brother got it, but my mother sent me away in time.”

Kate put down her napkin. “The first thing to do is get Gwen into quarantine. I can run Gwen over to the Red Cross hospital in Nesle. If everyone agrees,” she added belatedly.

Julia pushed back her chair. “I’ll come with you to see Gwen settled, and then Emmie and I can start making the rounds of the villages to check everyone with whom Gwen came into contact over the last two weeks. If our interim director permits this alteration of the schedule?”

“Your interim director applauds this alteration of the schedule,” said Kate. “Nell, if you wouldn’t mind . . .”

“I’ll take over Emmie’s classes for the next two days,” said Nell promptly. “Don’t worry.”

“There’s always something to worry about,” said Florence, placidly eating bread and jam. “If it’s not measles, it’s the big drive.”

“On the plus side,” Alice said brightly, “it’s hard to worry about the big drive when we have a measles epidemic to worry about. My mother always used to say that if your head hurt, you should stamp hard on your foot.”

Julia stared at her. “That’s dreadful advice.”

“It does stop you thinking about your head,” said Alice.

“Yes, until you break a toe.” Julia looked hard at Alice. “Don’t break a toe.”

Gwen would contract measles the day Mrs. Barrett left, thought Kate, bitterly and unfairly, as she drove to the Red Cross hospital in Nesle, Julia in the back with Gwen, who was covered in raised red spots and running a worryingly high temperature.

Alice was wrong, Kate decided. It was quite possible to worry about both a measles epidemic and the big drive. If this hit their villages—if this hit the troops . . . The planes thrummed overhead, the noise making Kate’s back and shoulders tense, smoke like candy floss spinning through the air as men high in the clouds did their best to murder each other in the name of king and country.

It was a relief to arrive at the hospital, to hand Gwen off to a nurse in a white apron, who said cheerfully that she’d seen worse cases. The hospital had been a tuberculosis pavilion before the war. There was something about the airy rooms, the large windows, and the garden around it that made one feel inherently peaceful.

It was certainly better, decided Kate, than putting Gwen into quarantine in one of the barracks, where the thin walls and small windows let in a great deal of cold but very little light or air. She’d be more comfortable and better cared for here.

“Now let’s just hope she didn’t spread it,” said Julia as they headed back out to the truck. “It’s the nearer villages that are the concern—”

She broke off as a man stopped in front of them, on his way to the ward. “Hello!” said Dr. Stapleton. “I thought that was the Unit truck out front. Missing me already?”

It sounded so charming the way he said it, with a big, self-deprecating grin. If Kate hadn’t known better, she would have smiled back.

Instead, she stepped in front of Julia, shielding her as best she could. “We just dropped off a measles case. Gwen Mills.”

“She’s worn herself out, I see,” Dr. Stapleton said gravely, but he couldn’t quite hide a hint of smugness. “I would have been happy to continue visiting. . . .”

“But we weren’t happy to have you visiting,” said Kate bluntly. It would have been easier to simply walk away, to pretend this wasn’t her quarrel. But it was. She’d promised Julia. “You aren’t wanted, Dr. Stapleton. You aren’t wanted and you aren’t needed.”

He looked over Kate’s head at Julia, then back down at Kate. “You’re not listening to sour grapes, are you? If Julia’s been talking nonsense . . .”

“I’ve known Dr. Pruyn for over a decade,” said Kate sharply. “I’ve never known her to speak nonsense. And I’ll tell you something, Dr. Stapleton. We know. We know what you are. If you ever prey on another woman again, we’ll be sure every hospital in America knows it. You won’t find a single practice to employ you. You’ll be lucky to get a job as a navy surgeon in the South Seas, where there’s not a woman within a hundred miles and nothing to stare at but the bottom of a bottle.”

Dr. Stapleton’s face was as white as his collar and cuffs. He gave an entirely unconvincing laugh. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But you certainly have a picturesque way of expressing it.” As two nurses in Red Cross uniforms passed by, he added loudly, “You don’t need to worry. I’ll look in on your measles case for you.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Julia said from behind Kate, sounding remote but entirely in possession of herself. “Measles can make you sterile—or worse.”