Page 33 of The Unknown Birds

He tilted his head, curious.

“Don’t you feel it?” she asked, clutching his sleeve, unwilling to lose him a second time. “The inevitability that it’s all happening again?” Which meant just like the last time, war could find a way to steal Rook from her yet again.

“No. For the first time in decades, I feel hope.”

She tried to smile at his optimism, but she couldn’t muster it.

He peered at her through long, dark lashes. “Are we downhearted?” he teased.

“No, sir,” she replied with a trace of sass.

He raised his eyebrows, disbelieving, and she shrugged one shoulder.

“Maybe just a bit,” she amended with a smile when he squeezed her hand.

Chapter 12

Pas-de-Calais, September 1916

Battle hardened after two months at the Somme, Ash no longer jumped at every whistling, thundering shell, nor had she wet her pants since that very first run.

B Company lost a great many soldiers in those long weeks, but Ashley and her friends had so far made it through mostly unscathed. Blake spent some time in the field hospital recovering from a gunshot wound, but by September, and despite many new faces, they were all back together again.

Near Morval, they took over trenches unlike the ones Ash had grown used to. These were the deepest she’d ever seen—permanent trenches lined with drains, concrete walkways instead of mud-slick duckboards, and dugouts reinforced with more concrete instead of crumbling clay.

It might as well have been the Savoy Hotel. Ash would be very happy to stay there for the remainder of the war.

“It’s a captured German line,” TomTom whispered.

“It never is,” Coop argued in disbelief.

“Hand to God. Heard it from the Old Man himself.”

“Mercy,” Ash breathed, because if Captain Davies said it then it must be true. She tiptoed down the trench half waiting for a trap to spring, half wishing Tom hadn’t shared this bit of news. Everywhere she looked, there were remnants of lives interrupted—discarded tobacco tins and old, tattered books.

German lads had eaten and slept and dreamed and died there, same as the Surreys planned to do. They were all cogs in the same machine, far greater than themselves, no more at fault for what was happening than a rifle used to down a pheasant from the sky.

“What do you make of this?” Blake asked, interrupting her heavy thoughts and holding out a tiny, folded slip of paper. “Found it pinned up in our dugout.”

Ash reached for it and he snatched it back, holding it over her head. “Read it to us then,” she said, irritably.

Cooper grabbed it from him and handed it to Ash, ignoring Blake’s angry protests as they all crowded around to see, surrounding her like a fortress, so close she could feel their breaths. TomTom’s hit her full in the face. Stew’s tickled one ear and Blake’s the other, while Cooper’s danced gently across her arm. But it was Rook’s solid form behind her that raised the hairs along the back of her neck and sent warmth trickling down her spine.

Kitchener is buggered.

Falkenhayn is buggered.

You’re buggered. We’re buggered.

Let’s all bugger off home.

“Well…” Tom said.

“About sums it up,” Stew agreed.

“Kind of poetic.” Ash folded the note and offered it back to Blake, who shrugged, so she put it in her breast pocket where she kept the book that Rook had given her.

“Is it just me, or is Fritzie’s English getting better?” Cooper teased.