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“Do you think I deserve one?” asked a clipped, patrician voice.
Emmie’s head snapped up. She was staring at a lean, tanned face, less haggard now than the last time she had seen it, but unmistakably the same. “You’re the man from the hospital.”
“I would understand if you would rather disavow the acquaintance.” With an effort, he added, “I saw you here—and saw my chance to make good on my bad behavior of the other day. To put it bluntly, I owe you an apology.”
He’d had a bath since she’d last seen him. Emmie could smell sandalwood soap, which made a rather nice contrast to some of the other smells in the room. He’d also shaved, but the mustache was still there, a thin dark line over his upper lip.
She probably shouldn’t be staring at his lips, Emmie realized, and hastily began rearranging her tray of cigarettes. “There’s no need for that. It wasn’t your fault we were blocking Dr. Blake’s office. I imagine it must be pretty maddening to be looking for someone and find three prone women instead. Are you sure I can’t interest you in a cigarette?”
“Only one of you was prone. And it was my fault that I . . . took out my ill temper on you and your friend.” There was something about his voice that demanded her attention. She could see the muscles in his throat work as he searched for the right words. “I was visiting a friend in the hospital. A man who ought to be at Oxford now, staring at bugs through a microscope and marveling at the miracle of wings, not blind in both eyes, staggering about on one leg.”
She knew men like that. The US hadn’t entered the war until the spring, but there had been Yale men who had felt strongly about protecting France any way they could, who had volunteered at the first word of war back in 1914, some in the air, some in the volunteer ambulance service, some in the French Foreign Legion. She could think of at least one cousin who ought to have been in New Haven right now, writing about the foreign policy of some long-ago King Louis, not buried in a graveyard somewhere in France.
But she couldn’t explain all that, so she said only, “It’s a horrible waste, isn’t it?”
The Englishman looked down at her, and she knew he wasn’t really seeing her at all. “We thought we’d blaze over here in a moment of glory, see off the Hun, and go home. We thought it was something like a holiday. And then to see you—more of you—going off, as we did . . .”
“Not in a blaze of glory, though,” said Emmie. At the farewell luncheon, a poem had been read to them, comparing them to the heroes of the old sagas, now reborn in female form. It had been lovely and terribly inspiring, but even at the time, Emmie had rather doubted its applicability. “We’re not looking for glory. Just to do something decent and worthwhile.”
“Does that still exist in the world?”
“I should hope so. I think so. I don’t know that we’ll accomplish anything particularly heroic, but if we get milk to even a handful of children, that’s something, isn’t it? At least, it is to those children.”
His dark eyes were fixed on her face, almost alarming in their intensity. At last he said, “Yes. It is.”
It would have been nice to think he meant it. Emmie set her tray down on a table. “You think we’re very naive, don’t you?”
He reached into his jacket pocket for a cigarette case, his eyes never leaving hers. He drew it out, a silver one with a monogram on it. “Would you rather I called it idealistic?”
“I’d rather honesty than flattery.” It was, she supposed, one of the benefits of being plain. One learned early on to discern flummery. She laughed at herself, her eyes crinkling. “You needn’t sugarcoat it. Sugar’s been rationed, and we’ve had our quota already.”
She surprised him into a laugh. It was raw and hoarse, but quite definitely a laugh all the same. “So it has. All right, yes. I do think it naive. You haven’t been to the front—you haven’t seen—”
“What the Germans can do?” Here, Emmie felt on firmer footing. “I’m not a hothouse flower, you know. I’ve spent the last five years doing settlement house work. I’ve seen more than you think.”
“Like the men at the American Ambulance Hospital?”
“No, nothing quite like that. At least, not on that sort of scale.” How could she explain to him? She’d seen women with hands mangled from being drawn into machinery. She’d seen a pregnant woman so badly beaten by her husband that she’d lost the child, and yet still gone home to him after. She’d seen a child whose arm was a mass of scar tissue from having fallen—or been pushed—into a coal fire. She’d seen cruelty, but this was different somehow. It was the impersonal nature of it that made it so horrifying.
“That wasn’t even the half of it. What you’re letting yourself in for . . .”
Unthinkingly, Emmie put her hand on his arm, trying to reassure him. “It’s kind of you to be concerned. We won’t be working with the ambulances at the front. We’ll be in a village well behind the lines. The conditions may be different from a city slum, but the needs are the same: shelter, clothing, food—affection. Those children need to know someone cares for them. The worse it is, the more that matters.”
“And you have affection to spare?”
Her hand was still on his arm. Emmie snatched it away. “The last I looked, kindness wasn’t rationed.”
“Are you quite sure?” The officer inclined his head, saying formally, “I wish you well, Miss—”
“Van Alden.” She had been rather enjoying the anonymity. People tended to react to the name Van Alden, because they were in awe of her lineage, offended by her mother, or, sometimes, both.
The British officer merely bowed over her hand. “Miss Van Alden.”
He didn’t seem to know who she was at all, and Emmie found that strangely wonderful. “Do you realize I don’t even know your name?”
“Perhaps I prefer to dwell in mystery, like the Scarlet Pimpernel.”
Emmie couldn’t quite hide her delight. She adored that book, had read it at least a dozen times, possibly more, no matter how many times Kate had protested it was all entirely improbable and anyone would have known who he was inside five minutes. “Do I find myself addressing Sir Percy Blakeney, baronet?”
