Page 82 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Princess Sophie, who was rather a darling despite being the sister of the kaiser, was nodding thoughtfully. Prince Nicholas looked bored.

“Is it a question of morale?” asked one of the military men. Betsy had forgotten his name, or perhaps she had never heard it, too busy watching Charles while pretending not to watch Charles.

“That’s it exactly. We’ve had men in a reasonably decent state who have fretted themselves to nothing, and others we thought we’d see in a box who had the most remarkable recoveries.” Betsy sat up straighter, remembering the many men who had passed through her care, but particularly the ones who had defied the odds to stagger away on their own two feet again. “If kissing an icon makes them believe there’s hope, I’ll carry it myself and light the incense too.”

“And say a prayer to the blessed Virgin?” teased Charles. At least, she thought he was teasing.

“If she’ll hear me.” Betsy took a gulp of her wine. Perhaps she ought to be addressing her prayers to the Magdalen instead. Not that she could say that. Not here. Why on earth did they have to have this conversation here?

Because she hadn’t gone back to Athens.

Because she’d spent three days in his bed—well, the better part of three days; some of it had been spent touring hospitals and sending sharp reports back to the war office, and she’d always gone back to Aikaterini’s at night, to avoid the servants talking—and then she’d gone away and not come back, even when she was offered the chance of a furlough.

Because there was a war on, Betsy told herself self-righteously.

But that wasn’t the whole reason. Was it because to fall into a man’s bed once—well, several times in the space of one week—could be accounted as carelessness, but to do it again would be to form a practice? She loved Charles; she was in love with Charles. But to love someone and to be someone’s mistress were two very different things entirely.

It was much easier to run about being noble and avoid the whole question.

Like she ran away from everything, Ava would say. Betsy grimaced into her wineglass. That was only part of what Ava would say if she were here. If she knew. If she had answered any of Betsy’s letters.

A servant was making the rounds with a box of Egyptian cigarettes, of the sort the royal ladies smoked—and the faster girls at Smith.

Defiantly, Betsy reached for one too.

“You don’t have to,” said Charles, in an undertone.

Betsy ignored him, waving her cigarette about in the air. “How does one light one of these things?”

Betsy was rather the worse for wear the next morning when it came time to appear for her shift.

Mornings always began with the making up of beds, with orderlies helping to shake the great sacks of straw. The mattresses felt even heavier than usual, the sheets more unwieldy. The smells of the ward made Betsy’s stomach turn.

That’s what she got for drinking too much of the royal family’s Burgundy last night. And attempting a cigarette. Betsy grimaced at the memory. She’d done it partly to annoy Ava (even if Ava wasn’t there to see it) and mostly to show Charles how worldly she was, although coughing herself sick while half the party pounded her on the back and the other half offered helpful tips probably hadn’t made that point quite as well as she would have liked.

At eight, the bell rang, heralding the doctor, there to make his rounds. It was Betsy’s turn to escort the doctor, answer his questions, and write down his instructions. They’d just finished their tour of the ward when the bell rang again. But this time it wasn’t a doctor or a delivery.

It was Charles.

He stood in the corridor, looking entirely out of place in his summer suit, shifting his hat from one hand to the other.

He smiled crookedly. “I’ve come to see this cursed bed of yours.”

“Not cursed anymore,” said Betsy as the doctor barked her name, impatient with visitors. “Doctor, this is Monsieur le Baron de Robecourt, who is visiting with Their Majesties.” Nothing averted censure like a few noble titles tossed about.

Charles bowed to the doctor. “Her Majesty and Their Highnesses”—oh dear, she’d got the titles wrong again, hadn’t she?—“spoke of their pleasure in touring the hospital and suggested I do the same.”

The doctor was clearly not amused, but one didn’t controvert a royal order. Betsy couldn’t remember the queen saying anything of the kind, but, then, she didn’t remember much of the end of the evening, and what she did remember she wished she didn’t.

“All right, then,” said Betsy. She turned away, wishing her hair were cleaner and her uniform didn’t have quite so many stains on it. “This is the typhoid ward. We have thirty-eight patients at present. All the men’s personal belongings are taken away when they arrive, particularly hats and belts. Some of these men are so weak that the pressure of a belt or the weight of a standard army blanket would be an impossible burden to them.”

Sister Psara called it a white ward. White sheets, white pajamas, everything light and easy to boil.

“Why is that man strapped to his bed?”

“Some of the men grow violent in the extremes of fever.” Poor Protopappas was sleeping peacefully now with the aid of chloral. But yesterday he had smashed a medicine bottle and tried to cut his own throat. “They think they’re being attacked by the enemy or they try to break out and get home. I was on watch at midnight one night when one of the men tried to get through a window with his mattress and two of the planks of his bed still bound to his back.”

Charles looked at her with concern. “You weren’t hurt?”