Page 75 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Much good it had done her. Betsy blinked back another betraying wave of tears. She couldn’t, wouldn’t give in to them, to any of it.

“You go back?” Charles asked.

Betsy swallowed hard. “In two days.”

Charles gestured to the seat beside him, silently inviting her to sit down. “You don’t have to. No one would blame you if you didn’t.”

“I would blame me. I’ve started this, I need to see it through.” Betsy plunked down on the settee, feeling the exhaustion seeping through her. “It’s all right when I’m in it. It’s when I step away from it—here with you—back in civilization—”

She broke off as Georgios came in with the coffee tray.

Charles fixed her a cup the way she liked it, with a great deal of cream and sugar, before pouring his own, more Spartan beverage. “Shall I slurp my coffee from the saucer to make you feel less à l’ouest?”

“In English we would say ‘less at sea.’” Betsy didn’t want to think about being at sea, the rocking of the ship, the stench of the dying. “No, there’s no need to go to such lengths as that. I don’t think you could do anything inelegantly if you tried.”

Betsy sipped her coffee in silence, under the watchful gazes of Charles’s ancestors. The house boy had brought with him a little plate of macarons. Betsy nibbled a corner of one, just so Charles wouldn’t fret. When it didn’t taste entirely of ash, she took a second nibble, feeling the warmth return to her fingers and toes.

Betsy finished off her coffee, feeling infinitely restored, and set the elegant cup back down on the tray. “Thank you. I needed desperately to say all that to someone.”

“I’m glad I might be that someone.” There was a note in his voice that made Betsy turn sharply to look at him. He countered her with smooth urbanity. “Would you like more coffee?”

Betsy leaned closer, looking searchingly at him. She had hurt him and she hadn’t meant to. She never meant to, but she did anyway, that’s what Ava would say. “I didn’t mean it that way. That you were just any someone. You do know that, don’t you?”

A wry expression crossed Charles’s face. “Perhaps it is safer not to know.”

There was no safe. Those villagers thought they were safe—a hospital ship was meant to be safe—Betsy was sick of safe.

Betsy cupped Charles’s face in her hands, so he couldn’t avoid looking at her. His skin was very smooth. He smelled faintly of expensive shaving soap, overlaid by the insistent aroma of very strong coffee.

“But you do know,” she said seriously. “You know what you are to me.”

He lifted his hands to her wrists, as if to draw her hands away—but didn’t. “I know what I cannot be to you.”

“Why not?” Betsy demanded recklessly, the vision of all those men rising before her eyes. In three days—no, two now—she’d be back at the front. In two days. Facing death and suffering.

Charles closed his eyes, removing her hands with a great effort of will, leaving them clasped in his own. “You know why.” A faint smile touched his lips. “You’ve said it to me yourself. With great force.”

And so she had. But Betsy couldn’t remember now why she’d felt it was important. Ava would, she knew, but Ava wasn’t here. Ava wasn’t even answering her letters.

Betsy leaned forward and kissed his lips, right on that smile. “I was wrong.”

“No—no.” Charles’s hands tightened on hers, whether to hold her close or hold her back, she wasn’t sure. “You can’t—I can’t—”

“Why not?” All the frustration and fear Betsy had been feeling spilled out of her. “I could be dead tomorrow. You could be dead tomorrow. And we’ll have let everything we could have had go to waste for the sake of a woman in Paris!”

“Not just a woman. My wife. I can’t wish her away.” With a sigh, Charles let go of Betsy’s hands. He traced the path of a loose lock of hair against her cheek. “I wish I could. But I can’t. If I could . . .”

“I know.” Betsy turned her head and kissed his palm. “I don’t care.”

“Betsy.” She could see him trying to stay firm and the effort it was costing him. His chest rose unevenly beneath his expensive waistcoat. “You say that now . . .”

“And I’ll say it tomorrow”—Betsy punctuated her words by leaning forward and kissing him—“and the next day”—another kiss—“and the day after that.”

“I can’t think. Tu m’éblouit. . . . Tu m’enivres.”

“Am I melting your head of wax?” Betsy asked huskily, pressing a kiss to somewhere in the vicinity of his ear. He was right; it was intoxicating, intoxicating being this close to him, getting to touch him, kiss him; it drove everything else away, all the death and defeat and despair.

“Like Icarus next to the sun. Such a fall as that . . . I will not ruin you,” he said desperately, holding her and holding her away at the same time. “Betsy! I will not make you a—how do they say it? A fallen woman.”