Page 3 of The Baron Takes a Wife

He looked up and pressed his lips together. It still hurt to smile, but the familiar story made his lip curl up a fraction. He had always loved stories of the Greeks as a boy. True, the gods were often petty and cruel, but it made the heroics of men all the better. What an interesting lady she was. While many women might be pleased to be compared to Helen of Troy’s beauty, she was concerned about being connected to a wake of death and destruction. For the first time since he had woken up, he felt like his old self for a moment, even as the strangeness of this conversation, discussing the causes of the Trojan War with a foreign woman he had just met, did not escape him.

“I’m not sure Helen had much choice in the matter. In most versions, it resulted from a contest amongst the gods,” he offered.

She looked unconvinced. “Well, I do not think I was named for that Helen, but the mother of Constantine. I have—” She seemed to catch herself as something like resignation covered her features. “I used to have a beautiful icon of her. She had a crown and a scepter and the deepest red dress.” She looked away.

He realized he had not introduced himself, “I’m Bar—I’m David.” Here, his title would not really matter. Here, he felt he could just be himself.

“I know,” she said, and he caught a hint of a smile as her eyes returned to meet his own. “Like the Hebrew king?”

“Yes, though I did not hear the call to fight Goliaths until recently. Before I got through life on my silver tongue.” Seeing her confusion as she tried to puzzle through the expression, he clarified. “An ease with words. Back before, when I was something of a fribble.”

Her brow crinkled in greater confusion still, and her dimples appeared as if she was trying to hold in a laugh. “What kind of word is fribble? Is that a title? Like sultan? Truly, English is so strange!”

“Yes, I do believe it was devised to confuse.” It was so wonderful to talk like this with her and forget his horrible reality for a few minutes. He felt himself genuinely smiling now, however painful. “No, a fribble is not an honorific, more someone of no great worth or import.”

He grimaced, as his face did really hurt now.

“Are you in pain?” She moved toward him. “Your bandage has been changed. It is looking much better.”

He thought to ask her for a mirror but could not muster the courage. In his previous life, he had not thought much of his face, as being relatively handsome was something he had taken for granted. He felt like the worst coward, but he wanted to put off thinking about his face for as long as he could—the possibility of losing the working of the lower half of his body already devastated him. He did not think he could handle learning that he was now a monster. The angel gently touched his bandage. Elena. She had a name now.

“Does it hurt?” she asked softly.

Her hand felt so gentle that he wanted to lean into her palm for her to cup his face. As if sensing his intention, she drew her hand away and straightened.

“I think you must resemble the David who fought Goliath much more than a fribble.” She shook her head while she said the word as if she couldn’t believe she was saying it, as if the words and letters were never meant to blend in such a way. “You have the scars to prove it.”

“Yes.” He suddenly began to feel weary from the day, from everything. “Well, there must be some truth in names.” His eyelid grew heavy. He could barely hear her reply as he drifted away to sleep, but he couldn’t miss the bitterness in her voice.

“Yes, yes, there must be.”

****

David did not see Elena for several days. Orderlies and nurses came by, and occasionally Dr. Austin, who would just prescribe more laudanum. The minutes turned into hours, turned into days, but no one compared to her vibrancy. He somehow sensed a great sadness in her, but one that he inherently felt was matched by a great capacity for joy. He longed to see her again. For some reason, he did not feel so completely hopeless in her presence.

He was able to drink a little beef tea, but not much, and he recognized that he was rapidly losing weight. He felt sweaty and restless, waking up from dreams of cannons, from lifeless eyes staring up at him. His perspiration reminded him of the mingled smell of dirt and blood and sweat in the trench, of being cramped, and the waiting and waiting on end. He would try to stretch his legs, but they would not move, and then, in despair, he remembered they would not work at all. He fell into this cycle every time he woke up, unable to decide what was worse, the dreams or the reality. Often he heard distant booms from what he imagined was Sebastopol, and the sounds permeated his nightmares. He would wake up in a frenzy, then realize where he was, far enough from the battlefield to be safe but close enough to hear the reminders of war. Sometimes, the screens were down, and he could see the other cots throughout the ward. Most of the other men were unconscious or sleeping most of the time, but occasionally, he saw movement or others trying to sit up. The worst were the moments when the sounds of someone begging to spare their limb drifted over him, and then he heard the unmistakable sound of cutting bone and flesh. He supposed in some odd way that he had indeed been lucky to be unconscious after the initial battle, as he had likely missed most of the immediate amputations. It was strange to think of himself as lucky in such a place as this.

Finally, after several days, he caught a hint of gold out of the corner of his eye and smelled a faint vanilla and amber. It was an unusual scent for such a clinical place, where the smell of alcohol and ether seemed to war with the overwhelming odors of injury and sickness, often fighting a losing battle. He knew it was the angel. Elena. She was regarding him with an expression he could not quite name. It was not pity, for he did not think he could have withstood pity. It was a more dispassionate observation, which he appreciated.

"You should try to move your toes," she ordered gently.

"My toes?"

"My bunica, or, uh, grandmother, she has—” Elena paused as something shot across her face and quickly vanished. Her scar rippled as she swallowed and began again. “She had trouble walking, she had pain. Sometimes, her legs would not move. But she knew the old ways, my grandmother, so she had me rub her legs with herbs she made me gather, and she would practice moving her toes, then her feet, then her ankle…and after time, she could move her legs again."

"That does not sound the same."

"No, it is not, but it is worth trying, no?"

He felt his lip curl up, unbidden, at her stern expression, which he realized that she likely had to put on to set down the other officers. In the hours she was gone, he worried about how she was treated both at the hospital and the hotel, as rowdy English soldiers would see her as an exotic woman to cater to their needs, all golden and voluptuous. When he saw her with the doctor, she seemed like she wore a mask of cultivated reserve. But he had seen that reserve crack when he got her to talk about her family or made a joke about himself. It warmed him immensely that she could show him this side, and the melancholy he had been feeling began to ebb away as warmth filled the room, not stifling like the dead summer heat but soothing, like sinking into a bath after a long day. All at once, he felt the need to come up with a reason for her to visit him more often, to have her nearby.

“Do you read?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.

“Read?”

“Yes, read, you know, letters, words?” He did not want to insult her, but he had been surprised that she spoke English at all. He knew so little about where she was from.

“Yes, of course I read. My father made sure we could all read.” She looked as if she