Page 73 of Two Wars and a Wedding

She’d tried. She really had. They just hadn’t listened.

And six men were dead because of it.

And here she was now, not in her Red Cross uniform, but in her most elaborate Parisian walking dress. Battle armor, just of a different sort.

As soon as it was decently light, Betsy had dressed and sallied out to beard Aikaterini’s friend the minister of war. He had, of course, been delighted to see Miss Hayes—one always had time for Miss Hayes! Coffee, perhaps? He was clearly miffed at being interrupted at so early an hour, having to shrug rapidly into his coat before she could glimpse the bands that held his sleeves, but he was gentleman enough not to show it.

Betsy had forgotten that there was a world where that sort of thing still mattered, where men still wore their hair slicked and parted in the middle and had starched high collars and gold pocket watches.

The minister, bless him, had done an admirable job of not consulting his watch as she’d poured it all out, the mismanagement, the waste. But when she was done, he only spread his hands and said, what could he do? The ship was the gift of a foreign power. The medical officer, the staff, the British MP who had chartered it . . . they were well outside his jurisdiction. It would, of course, be noted. She might write a letter to the men in question, a strongly worded letter—although perhaps not too strongly worded. One didn’t want to discourage acts of charity in future.

Would she like to tour some hospitals while she was in Athens?

Betsy left with letters of introduction and a feeling that her time had been wasted.

And here she was now, in the middle of Syntagma Square, trying to figure out what on earth to do with herself. She could go straight to the hospitals, she supposed. The wounded from the Albania—the ones who had survived the voyage—had been transferred to the military hospital. Some of her boys were there. She should see how they were getting on.

“Betsy?” The sound of steps quickening as they approached her, a familiar hat yanked off a familiar head. “Betsy!”

As always, her name sounded foreign and exotic and altogether more special when Charles said it, the emphasis on both syllables rather than just the first.

“Charles,” she said, and couldn’t seem to make herself say anything more. Hello might have been appropriate. Or goodness, fancy meeting you here! But she was numb with grief and guilt, still half on board the Albania. Charles was like a vision from another world, in his gray suit, with his ivory-topped walking stick.

“You did not tell me you were at home.”

“I’m not. I mean, that is, I just got back last night.” Betsy gave her head a little shake. “I’ve just been to the war office to complain about the shambles on the Albania.”

“The Albania?” Charles cocked his head, prepared to listen.

Of course Charles wouldn’t know what the Albania was. She wouldn’t either, if she hadn’t been on it, if she’d been here in Athens, translating inscriptions and going to teas.

“It’s a ship.” Betsy found she didn’t want to tell Charles about it, not any of it. Charles was Athens. Charles was Delphi. Charles was mystery and wonder and sophisticated banter; he was ancient digs and modern drawing rooms, and Betsy didn’t want to sully that. “How has Athens been since I left?”

“Dull without you.” Charles offered her his arm and she took it, strolling down Panepistimiou as if this were any other day in any other time. “Athens has been . . . unsettled. The people blame the retreat from Larissa on the crown prince. There have been marches and demonstrations and the usual cries for heads on a pike.”

Betsy wasn’t above picking up a pike herself.

When she thought about the men in her care, what had happened to them, even before the Albania, she felt decidedly bloodthirsty. If the crown prince had bothered to acquire proper advisers—if he’d consulted anyone who had half an idea how a battlefield worked—so many of those men might have been spared. She was still as much in favor of the cause as she had ever been, but the manner of its execution was another matter entirely.

But Betsy found she couldn’t say that any more than she could tell Charles about the Albania.

So she said instead, “Shall we see a revolution, then? Is there a Bastille to storm?”

Charles shrugged. “Not at present. If they lose the war . . . perhaps.”

Betsy tilted her head up at him. “Don’t you mean if we lose the war? This is your adopted country too.”

“I am still a citizen of France. France sees this as a rather awkward little squabble and hopes it will go away.” He said it as if it didn’t matter at all, as if this weren’t a grand struggle between democracy and tyranny but just another European war, a skirmish for the history books. “The king has called on the opposition leader to form a government, in the hopes that Monsieur Rallis might prove even less popular with the people than he is himself.”

Betsy couldn’t get those words out of her head. A rather awkward little squabble.

She didn’t realize she had stopped walking until Charles stopped with her, one hand on her arm. He leaned over to see her face beneath the brim of her hat. “M’amie, what troubles you?”

It wasn’t Charles’s fault. He didn’t know; he hadn’t been there. The world was still all camellias and champagne for him. And he was French. The French saw things differently. Betsy drew in a shuddering breath, trying her hardest not to cry, but it was so hard, so very hard; the tears kept threatening despite all her best efforts.

“I’m just tired,” she managed. Her face crumpled. “Oh, Charles.”

He took her quickly by the arm, hurrying her out of the path of other pedestrians. “Did you eat anything at all this morning? Or did you go immediately to bedevil the minister?”