She was ready for bed. She wanted to close her eyes, block everything out and think of nothing. But one thought kept circling her mind, one thing that she couldn’t shake no matter how much she tried.
Thomas would have made it home even without her being here. Eventually. The war would one day be over and he would have been found or taken into town by the nuns. Which meant the outcome would have been the same for her whether she’d personally found him or not. She would still be engaged to him, she would still be expected to marry him, and she would still be having to forget all about James and every thought and dream she’d had since being with him that maybe, just maybe, they would end up together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lucy
Lucy heard yelling. Something was pulling at her leg, tugging her, trying to move her. She tried to look up, but she couldn’t lift her head. The smell of smoke made her choke as it swirled around her, and as she tried to sit, tried so hard to move, blackness started to engulf her again.
The children. Where were the children? It was all she could remember; the children she’d been trying to save, the wound in the girl’s side, the supplies she needed. The pain hit her, an intense burning that raged across her skin. Why was her skin on fire? Why was she so hot?
She could still feel pulling; was someone trying to lift her? Lucy raised her hand, touched something on her neck, something that was making her burn so bad. She touched something gooey, the pain intensifying, like sandpaper over her nerves.
It was her. Where was her skin? What was that?
She screamed, the noise rasping her throat.
The pain swirled, like a knife edge across every inch of her skin. She felt like she was bubbling, boiling from the outside in, and when she opened her mouth again nothing else came out.
‘We’re getting you out of here, love.’
The muffled voice soothed her, reassured her that she wasn’t alone. Until the voice moved her, pulled at her again, and the scream that echoed from deep within her sounded more animal than human.
Lucy gasped for air, gulping frantically before everything slowly faded to black around her and breathing no longer seemed so important.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Scarlet
There had been moments at the convent and during their journey to Brussels that Scarlet had felt numb, but it was nothing to the numbness that had coursed through her body, through every vein and every inch of her, since she’d collapsed, puddling like water on the ground, when she’d been told that Lucy was gone.
She’d missed her by less than a day, and no one seemed to know if she was going to make it. She was being sent home by ambulance train, which by all accounts Thomas would be, too, depending on the outcome of his assessments. Instead of cherishing the fact that she was now working under a real roof, sleeping under a real roof, her heart was breaking open all over again. Lucy and Ellie meant everything to her, and now they were both gone. She needed them, and they needed her, and instead she had nobody. She’d already felt as if her heart had been ripped open, the pain so deep after finding Thomas – this new version of Thomas making it even harder – and she wanted her friends.
She touched her chest, feeling the tiny crinkle of paper there. It was the only thing that proved Ellie was real, that she hadn’t imagined her. She only hoped that she’d be handing over the letter to her sooner than later, and not passing it to her parents. Scarlet gulped. Or Ellie passing her letter to her parents. But what of Lucy? Why hadn’t they made her write a letter? Why had they seemed to think that because she was so strong and brave and capable, she was somehow not as mortal as they were?
Scarlet pulled herself together, changing her stance and straightening her shoulders. She had to put all her energy into Thomas. He was here and he was her responsibility, and he was the only person close to her that she had any power to help right now. She needed to be thankful for the small luxuries, the fact she wasn’t starving hungry every moment of the day as she had become so used to. Or the fact that they were in a proper building and weren’t trooping through mud into makeshift toilets, with a smell so foul she’d forever be able to recall it.
She turned around, and kept her chin up as she crossed the room. They weren’t full of patients yet, and she made herself appreciate the small things in here, too, like the fact that the cold air wasn’t lashing its cool grasp around her ankles as it had done when they were under canvas.
‘Thomas,’ she called out affectionately when she neared.
He gave her a half-smile that she took as a victory. ‘The doctors think that time should heal me,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘I don’t need an . . .’
She finished his sentence for him, returning his firm grip when he grasped her hand. ‘Amputation,’ she said, voice shaky as she said the word for him. ‘Thank goodness.’
She wondered if time would truly heal him, but she kept her thoughts to herself. She knew first-hand that doctors liked to keep morale up whenever they could.
‘Your eye?’ she asked, looking down at him and remembering how and why she’d fallen for him in the first place. He was handsome, undisputedly so, and even though he’d been cool and unpredictable since they’d been reunited, she knew it was the pain and fear talking. Beneath all that, he was the same man she’d desperately been searching for, the man she’d been so excited about marrying.
‘I can still see you out of my good eye just fine,’ he said, sounding more like the old Thomas for the first time, a hint of friendliness there instead of coldness. ‘That will have to do.’
She stared down at him, feelings she’d long thought abandoned coming back in a rush. Maybe it truly was possible to love two men, even though she’d never have believed it before now. If she kept seeing glimpses of this Thomas, if she could keep drawing on her memories and reminding herself of all the reasons why she’d loved him, why he’d make a good husband . . .
‘Scarlet, I’ve asked for an army chaplain to marry us at once,’ Thomas said, coughing as he tried to pull himself more upright. ‘I’m told you never gave up on finding me, and it’s proper that we’re married at once.’
Scarlet’s heart started to pound. The whooshing of her blood flooded her ears.
‘Pardon?’ she asked, voice shaky as she forcibly expelled the word.
‘I want us to be married at once,’ he said. ‘This war has taken everything from me already, but it seems the one thing it hasn’t taken is you. And besides, when I left I expected you to stay at home with your family. I don’t want you unmarried around so many men.’
‘Would it matter so terribly? Surely after all this time you can trust in me and my decisions.’ They were words that choked in her throat, but hearing him say that had made her blood boil!