Page 77 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“I haven’t been entirely myself.” And if he hadn’t been entirely himself before, he was even less so now. Every time he looked at Nurse Hayes, all he could think of was that kiss. That very brief, accidental kiss. “And now I know why.”

Nurse Hayes folded her arms across her chest. “Yes, because you were battling wound fever from the bullet hole you hadn’t bothered to get cleaned when the doctor told you to. Not because I removed that hideous growth from your face.”

“Was it really that hideous?” Holt had rather liked it. Particularly the way it hid his face. The way it made him feel like another person from that clean-shaved, brushed, and combed Harvard man.

Nurse Hayes snorted. “Are you looking for compliments? Let’s just say that your chin isn’t weak enough that you need to hide it.”

It wasn’t precisely the most fulsome of compliments but suddenly the air between them crackled and hissed like damp wood on a campfire. Holt couldn’t seem to look away. Neither could she.

Outside, something large crashed and someone cursed with great and inventive fluency.

“What’s going on back there?” he croaked.

“Oh, Miss Barton sent the State of Texas to Kingston for ice and to Tampa to pick up supplies. It must be back. Finally,” Nurse Hayes said with feeling, and Holt wasn’t sure whether the feeling was for the ice or something else entirely.

“In the middle of the night?” It was a perfectly natural question. It wasn’t as though Holt was trying to keep her talking, just so he could keep looking at her, at the way her hair exploded in wisps around her face, at the way she swished back and forth where she stood, as though keeping still were too much effort, at the bright spots of color on her cheeks.

“It’s hardly the middle of the night. It’s”—Nurse Hayes consulted the watch pinned to her breast—“four seventeen. They can only land the boats between three and six in the morning because of the tides. They figured that out after we came over and nearly wound up as matchsticks on the rocks. Going out to the boat isn’t such a problem; you can go out there pretty much as you please, but coming back here is another matter entirely.” Nurse Hayes bent over to retrieve her lantern, talking all the while. “I’ll just go see what’s come in, shall I? Private Clark still needs that ice on his eyes and we’re down to a fragment of a fragment.”

Holt pressed his eyes shut, wishing he’d been asleep when she made her rounds, wishing he hadn’t turned his head, wishing he could go back to yesterday.

“Nurse Hayes?” He wasn’t sure if saying something would make it better or worse, but he had to try. She paused, turning toward him, poised for a speedy exit. Holt didn’t know what to say, so all he said was “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Nurse Hayes bared her teeth at him in something like a smile. “Nothing to be sorry about. Except for getting yourself wounded in the first place. Do try not to do that again.”

“Not much chance of it flat on a cot, is there?” Holt nodded at the figure who’d just entered the tent by the flap nearest his bed. “Looks like your relief is here.”

“But Kit’s not supposed to take over until—” Nurse Hayes turned and went very, very white. “Ava?”

The lantern swung wildly as Nurse Hayes swayed on her feet. Holt tried to scramble up to grab her and wound up flopping back flat against his pillow, prone and useless.

“Stop that,” said Nurse Hayes, in a voice that didn’t sound like hers. “You’ll rip your stitches.”

But she wasn’t looking at Holt. She was staring over him, at the woman who had just come in.

“Hello, Betsy,” the new nurse said, in a voice that spoke of chowder and the bean and the cod, where the Lowells spoke only to Cabots and the Cabots spoke only to God.

Nurse Hayes lifted the lantern so it shone directly at her, illuminating a strong-featured face with a wide, thin-lipped mouth and a pair of the most emphatic eyebrows Holt had ever seen. Her uniform, with the white band on the arm, was pristine and crisply ironed, her dark hair pulled close back beneath her cap. This new nurse was taller than Nurse Hayes by several inches, but wiry, in a way that made her seem shorter than she was, while Nurse Hayes’s constant motion always made such small considerations as inches seem an irrelevancy.

Nurse Hayes gawked, the lantern trembling in her hand. “But you’re—how did you—I’m not hallucinating you, am I? Or dreaming? I might just be dreaming I’m on my rounds and none of this is actually real. I hope I’m not feverish. We don’t have enough staff left for me to be feverish.”

“You’re not dreaming—or feverish,” said Holt roughly. “I see her too.”

The other woman glanced down at him, taking in his various bandages with a clinical eye. “Who is this?”

“Holt. Private Holt. You might know him as Hold ’Em Holt. Scourge of the bandits of the West. Never mind,” said Nurse Hayes, never taking her eyes off the other woman. “Ava—you’re not meant to be here. You shouldn’t be here. I came to try to save you from all this. There’s malaria—and possibly yellow fever—and goodness only knows what else. You didn’t need to do this. I never meant—well, maybe I did mean—but . . .”

Holt had never seen Nurse Hayes at a loss like this. Not when she was haranguing him on the verandah of the Tampa Bay Hotel. Not with wounded coming in by the wagonload.

“You did. You meant it. And I’m here.” The newcomer spoke in a low, quick voice, so as not to wake the patients. “I got your last letter, Betsy.”

Nurse Hayes went very still. She didn’t say anything. She appeared to be incapable of speech. “I—Ava . . .”

Holt didn’t like the way she looked, not at all. “Maybe you should sit down,” he said brusquely.

“No. No. I’m fine.” Nurse Hayes gave a little shake, like someone coming out of cold water. She didn’t look fine; she looked like someone had punched her in the gut. She looked down at Holt and then back at the new nurse. “Not here. I need—I need to finish my rounds.”

Her voice was steady enough, but next to her, Holt could see the way she was shaking, shaking and trying to hide it.