Page 6 of The Baron Takes a Wife

“But he went crazy. He said that if he couldn’t have my love, he would make it so no one else would. So he pulled out a knife to carve up my face.” David was both chilled by how matter-of-fact she was in her retelling of this event and enraged that this had happened to her. “If I hadn’t turned my head, hadn’t run…” She touched her scar again, running a finger from the top to bottom. “He almost took my eye. But I got away. I ran for hours back to my family’s home to beg for forgiveness. But when I got there, they were all gone. They had fled. Or worse.” Her hands in her lap turned white from how tightly she gripped them. He wanted to reach out and touch her again, but he felt like she would break apart and dissolve into the air if he did. She shuddered and paused for a moment but then went on—

“I asked around for days, but no one knew whether they were dead or alive. Most of our neighbors had fled as well. I stayed until the Russians left Dobruja, then I fled to Varna. Eventually, I made it to Üsküdar, what you call Scutari, where I finally found work. Mrs. Raeburn found me as a washerwoman in Üsküdar. She helped treat my wound and took me with her when she came here. I started doing what I could to help her build the hotel, to organize and run it. I translated for her to deal with merchants, builders.” She stared out the muddy window in what he assumed might be the direction of the hotel, then glanced over at him. “She applied to be a nurse, you understand? But she was denied. She is not from England originally, but she didn’t let that stop her. If it wasn’t for her…I don’t know what would have become of me. But she never let me fall into my sadness. She always gave me something to do to keep me from despair.” She looked over at him, so brave and so sad. “You see, I know what it is to lose everything. It is not the same as you, no, but if I had people counting on me, people who loved me, I would give anything, anything, to get back to them.” Her mouth twisted ruefully. “So, find something that keeps you safe from your sadness. For them.”

He thought she might cry then, but she just bowed her head and stared at her hands again. He had never felt so humbled in his life. His self-pity and anger had slowly melted away in the presence of her honest grief and remorse, this sad, wounded angel. Warrior angel, more like, with her warm glinting eyes and her inability to give up, even in impossible odds. He couldn’t believe that she had made it all the way to Balaclava. He had not considered how she had gotten here, which he realized now had been from his own selfishness and focus on his own predicament.

Before, he had felt a thread beginning to weave in his chest, but he hadn’t known what it was. He now recognized the feeling, but the sudden realization crashed desperately into the despair of knowing he might never be able to act on it. To be able to express it. To know her as deeply as a man could know a woman. With that thread, she had pulled him back from the precipice, from the brink of something he might never have returned from. She seemed to snap out of her reverie, and he tried to pretend he hadn’t been staring at her. She pulled out a thick book from her satchel and looked over at him with her eyebrow raised in question. He swallowed and bobbed his head in response as she opened to a page she had marked, moving gingerly off the bed.

She read to him quietly until he fell asleep. Other than her slow reading, they spoke no more that evening, both lost in their own worlds. What an old chestnut this was, a wounded soldier falling for his nurse that he could never have. Would never have. Ah, well, she wasn’t technically a nurse, and he would likely forget her when he left, but somehow, he doubted that he ever would.

The following morning, he stared at his feet until finally, after several hours, he thought he could see a slight movement. It might have been nothing, just a trick of his eye or imagination, but it kept him from despair. He could do this. He could give himself small tasks to keep going. He had to. He had promised Elena he would. He grinned internally, knowing he should be excited to tell the doctor, but her smile was the first he wanted to see.

****

At this point, David had been there well over three weeks, though Dr. Austin conveyed to him that they would soon need the bed and he would be transported shortly. The scant few possessions he had brought to war had been collected from the hut in the camps that he had previously inhabited. He had a feeling that being here was different from the main army hospitals in Scutari. From what he had read in the newspapers before he left, the army had not been ready for the medical needs of the war. While chaotic, he was grateful for the informality of the space. Otherwise, he doubted Elena would have been able to visit him.

Elena came almost every other afternoon. He felt selfish for taking her away from her work or her time for herself, but the hours he spent with her got him through long, lonely days and the nights he spent anticipating talking to her and listening to her slowly read. She always read everything carefully, as if she wanted to absorb every word and every letter. It was slow going for the story, but he enjoyed her occasional comments or insights.

“These names do not make sense to me,” she muttered to herself one afternoon.

“The rest of the words are translated, but the names are mostly French,” he offered.

“Some make sense. You say it how it is spelled, Es-mer-eld-a. Quas-i-mo-do.” She pointed out the syllables on the page as she spoke them. “That I understand.”

“And Frollo? Is that too difficult?” He couldn’t quite keep the teasing out of his voice.

She gave him a look he had seen on his aunt’s and sister’s faces many times when he had vexed them, but it quickly passed. “Do you often read books like this? Novels?”

“I haven’t had much time for stories, really.” He had spent all the years since his father’s death wrapped up in his dual roles of gentleman and man of business. “When I was young, I liked hero stories. When I was older, there was a Classics scholar who often met with me and my friends. We used to call ourselves the Round Table.”

Elena’s clear confusion at this statement almost caused him to bark out a rough laugh, but he reined it in so as not to hurt her feelings.

“It’s from a story,” he explained, grasping in his mind for some way to describe something that seemed like common knowledge but would not be to her. “About a long-ago king of Britain, King Arthur. They tell stories about him and the knights of the Round Table.”

“They tell stories of the table?”

“No, they sat at a table. Look, the table isn’t important!” he sputtered at her bemused expression.

“And yet it’s what you called yourselves?” There was a mischievous glint in her eyes he didn’t see very often, but he definitely wanted to see more of.

David was halfway between irritation and amusement. “They sat at the table, and they discussed important matters of the day.”

“Sounds very exciting,” she said, though her tone implied the opposite.

“No. Yes,” he corrected, as amused as she was but trying to keep a straight face. “Yes, it was exciting. It was about justice and what was right, but also magic…it’s, why is it so hard to explain?” He looked at her in frustration but could tell from the appearance of her dimples that she was close to smiling.

“I do not understand this table, though I can understand having a hero to tell stories of. But I do not like your knights so much. My father always said that the Sack of Constantinople was the beginning of the end for the Byzantine Empire.”

He racked his brain for what he knew of the Crusades. “Well, I’m not sure how many Britons participated in the Fourth Crusade.”

She shrugged as if it made no difference. Likely, many Western Europeans were all the same to her, much as those who lived in the Ottoman Empire were all the same to him before he went to war. He hoped he knew a little bit better now.

“And the Ottomans did not take control until four hundred years ago when the Crusaders sacked Constantinople over six hundred years ago.” His good friend, Lord Michael Northam, was a human encyclopedia, so to keep up with conversations, it often benefitted David to stay abreast of his history.

“But the Crusaders still betrayed the Orthodox church, the Byzantine empire.” She then shook her head as if to clear it. “But I do not suppose it matters now. The Russians are supposed to be Orthodox, but they invaded my homeland. My religion and my home are now at war. I do not know what to think.” They lapsed into silence. He opened his mouth and closed it, wanting to say something profound or pithy about war, but nothing came out. It didn’t matter, as she suddenly stood and spoke.

“I ought to tell you. I will be gone for a few weeks, if not longer. I will not be able to read to you anymore. I am sorry we did not finish the story.” She gave him a small, sad smile. “You will likely be gone when I return.”

The warmth that David felt from their playful banter withered and died in his chest.