His body relaxed, his face softening. “I knew you’d come.” His words slurred as he seemed to drift back to sleep, still holding my hand as a drowning man would grasp a rope.
I turned to the nurses. “You may go see to the other patients. I’ll stay with him for a while to make sure the nightmare doesn’t return.”
Nurse Mary Houlihan—or was it Margaret?—looked scandalized, but Nurse Hathaway pulled on her arm. “It’s all right, Bridget. Dr. Schuyler knows what she’s doing.”
I wasn’t all that sure I agreed as far as Captain Ravenel was concerned, but I nodded my thanks and watched as they left the room.
I sat on the side of the bed and continued to hold his hand while he slept. I told myself that it was because he was gripping it so tightly that I would have awoken him if I’d pulled away. But I knew there was something else, something in the way he looked at me. Something about the way he recognized something in me. His face relaxed in sleep, making him no less handsome but more boyish, less troubled. More intriguing. But it seemed that it was more than the war that had added the lines to his face and the shadows in his eyes. There was perhaps something before that, perhaps even in his boyhood, that made him look out at the world, searching for the familiar.
And there was the miniature, of course. The painting of the woman that was as familiar to me as my own face. I should go, I told myself. I even tried to extricate my fingers from his, but he held firm. I resigned myself to a night spent staring at the blacked-out window, waiting for dawn to emerge around the edges. I’d awaken him then, after I was assured he’d had a restful sleep and before anybody realized I was in there, dressed in only a bathrobe. I sat back against the headboard, trying to find a comfortable position, and began to count the scrolls on the tin tiles of the ceiling.
For an indeterminate amount of time, I rotated between counting scrolls and tiles, allowing my gaze to drift downward to the captain’s face, and then forcing my eyes upward again to begin counting over. Every once in a while I tried to pull my hand free, vigilantly aware that the light outside had shifted and that I’d have to awaken him soon. I’d just started with another round of counting tiles when I was interrupted by a decidedly masculine voice.
“Dr. Schuyler?”
My time spent with mostly men in medical school and then soldiers for the last few years had taught me several expletives of which my mother certainly wouldn’t have approved. But I used several of them then as I jerked my body off the bed, managing to slide onto the floor, taking most of the bedding with me.
“Didn’t mean to startle you, Doctor. I was just going to say that if you want your bed back, I’ll be happy to move over.”
“I thought you were sleeping,” I said through gritted teeth as I hastily rearranged the bedclothes, doing my best not to notice the unclothed captain or his long, muscular legs. I gave up trying to tuck everything in with jittery fingers and just focused on covering up anything I shouldn’t be noticing.
“I was, but when I awakened I didn’t want to interrupt your counting.”
I glared at him. “I’m sorry, Captain. I shouldn’t be here—not dressed like this at any rate. You were having a nightmare again that the nurses weren’t able to pull you out of, so they came and got me.”
“No apology needed, Doctor,” he said, his morning stubble doing nothing to detract from a grin that Margie would describe as wicked. “There are worse things than waking up in bed with a beautiful woman.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” I said in my defense, and realizing my error too late. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to block out his grin, then jerked them open again as I raced to the window and pulled away the side of one of the blackout shades. I hoped it was light enough outside already or that the civil defense warden didn’t happen to be looking up at the moment to see a contraband sliver of light, but I needed to know how much time I had to race back downstairs to change my clothes before anybody saw me.
The sky was still dark, with tiny pinpricks of stars shooting a feeble light down upon the sleeping city. The moon was a slender fingernail nudging its way across the horizon, with no sign of a rising sun to ruin its fun. I let the shade fall back, then pressed the heel of my hand against my chest to slow my hammering heart.
“It’s three twenty,” he said with a slow drawl. “You could have just asked.”
I looked back and saw the captain holding up his GI-issued Bulova wristwatch.
Despite my best intentions, I barked out a laugh. “Captain Ravenel, you are incorrigible.”
“Thank you,” he said with a quick bow of his head, as if I’d just given him the most sincere compliment. His smile softened. “I’ve missed you. You seem to have deserted me, leaving me at the mercy of the much less attractive Dr. Greeley. I hope there wasn’t any misunderstanding.”
Had he forgotten? “You kissed me.”
“Not properly, but I enjoyed it. And if you keep avoiding me, there won’t be a chance for another.”