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“Yes, because Mrs. R—” Alice looked at Kate, flushed, and broke off, looking guilty. Kate had never asked, but she strongly suspected that Alice had been part of Maud’s cabal to oust Mrs. Rutherford, not out of any personal animus, but because Maud had asked and Alice wouldn’t have liked to say no.

Kate wondered what they had been saying of her in Paris. She knew that Maud had been writing to the committee again, writing about her.

“Did you see Margaret in Paris?” asked Kate, swinging down from the truck.

“Only briefly.” Alice stepped down somewhat more gingerly, wincing as her Paris boots sank ankle-deep in mud. “She didn’t stay at the Quai Voltaire—I don’t think she wanted to be around the Unit after—well, after whatever happened. I bumped into her once shopping, and she seemed awfully broken up about breaking her contract and leaving.”

“Well, thank goodness you’re back,” said Kate honestly. “No one has a way with the motors like you do. We’ve been relying on the engineers to fix our engines, and they’re not nearly as good at it as you are.”

Alice’s head popped up, a gratified expression on her face. “It’s just a knack; I can’t think where I got it. . . . Do you mean the 11th Engineers—the ones we met before I left?”

“Those are the ones. They’ve taken to inviting themselves over at odd hours, along with half the other men on the front. We’ve been overrun by American engineers and Canadian foresters—and even some Quakers. They’ve got a base near Ham.”

Maud had tried to send the Quakers packing, on the grounds that they didn’t want a pack of pacifists hanging about, but Kate had overruled her, on the grounds that whatever the Quakers’ principles, they certainly had better carpentry skills than the Unit. Maud was still simmering over that.

“Goodness.” Alice sat up straighter, unconsciously adjusting her hat to a more flattering angle. “I hadn’t realized it would be so social.”

“Neither did we,” Kate said wryly. “We’ve had to ask them to confine their visits to weekends. The engineers had us to supper at their camp last weekend—which means we’ll have to reciprocate at some point, although goodness only knows how. We haven’t nearly enough cups and plates to go around.”

Or enough food, or enough coal to cook with. The cold had set in with a vengeance, but the coal delivery they had been promised had yet to arrive.

Kate was finding it very hard to untangle Mrs. Rutherford’s systems. Mrs. Rutherford had procured supplies from all sorts of places, getting the Unit classified as an infirmary so they could receive more than the usual ration of sugar, and as a military unit, so that they might qualify for an allowance of essence, but not everything had been properly recorded; some transactions were with the civil authorities, others with the military, and others still with the American aid organizations: the American Fund for French Wounded and the Red Cross. Mrs. Rutherford seemed to have managed almost entirely on force of personality. Lacking that kind of charisma, Kate would have been glad for some nice, plain record keeping.

Ledgers, for instance. Ledgers would have been marvelous. Not just piles of letters and receipts and carbons typed too thin to read.

It was all impossibly knotty and Kate never seemed to have enough time to tackle the paperwork to even try to untangle it. With only two drivers left at Grécourt, she spent her days in the White truck, driving the social workers and doctors from village to village. By the time Kate settled down with Mrs. Rutherford’s records, it was usually past nine and freezing cold, and she was more likely to fall asleep on the papers than read them.

But now that Alice was back . . . she might just possibly be able to clear a day. Even a few hours would help.

“Alice!” Emmie was skimming and sliding through the mud, embracing Alice with a force that nearly sent them both flying. “Welcome back!”

Alice disappeared in a welter of greetings, Miss Ledbetter waxing poetic about returned warriors.

In the midst of the hubbub, Anne Dawlish quietly touched Kate’s shoulder. “Kate. The coal came while you were away.”

Kate let out a long breath. “Thank goodness. Dr. Stringfellow told me she has enough to do without tending to frostbite.”

Two worried lines appeared between Anne’s eyes. “You might want to come see it.”

“Did I hear coal?” asked Liza, detaching herself from the scrum around Alice. “Oh, goody. I’m freezing. And we haven’t been able to do any baking for days.”

“I had them put it here,” said Anne, pointing to a crate next to the barrack they used as their dining room. It was not a large crate.

“Is that for the week?” Kate had thought Mrs. Rutherford had arranged for monthly deliveries, but maybe . . .

Anne shook her head, looking like she was about to cry. “They said it’s for the month.”

“For the month?” Liza turned too fast and nearly landed on her bottom in the mud.

“I don’t know how I’m meant to keep the children warm during lessons,” said Anne, her voice scratchy. “I’d hoped they could at least be warm with us before they have to go home to the damp and the cold. And not a decent coat among them.”

“We could burn wood,” said Liza hopefully.

“No. Not if we want to try to provide any shelter for the villagers.” The Germans had felled as much as they could, sending it back to Germany to fuel the German war effort. Wood was desperately needed, for rebuilding, for furniture, for heat. To burn it for themselves would be selfishness beyond countenancing. Although if it got much colder, Kate might just be willing to live with the guilt. “I hope you brought extra sweaters. And warm socks.”

“We could, like the medieval peasants, burn the dung of the cow,” offered Miss Ledbetter. “One takes the hardened pats and—”

“No,” said Maud firmly. “I don’t care what the peasants do, I’m not scenting my room with cow dung.”