I swallowed. The boots had been a godsend; I’d no idea how I would have coped in my flimsy shoes. But I hated to appear a charity case. “I’ll pay you for them.”
“All right, then.” She leaned back on the bench, smiled at me again. “How are things at Portis House? You get along with Boney all right?” At my expression she laughed, an easy sound. “I can just imagine. The fireworks with an uptight girl like her.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You knew the Gersbachs, but you also worked as a nurse here. I don’t understand how the two are connected.”
The laugh faded, and something serious flitted across her expression, something that looked quite a bit like worry. “No, I suppose you don’t. I’ll start at the beginning. It’s what I came for.” But just then her gaze rose to look at something behind me. “Oh,” she said.
I turned. Jack Yates came toward us through the trees.
“Nurse Ravell, is it?” he said. “Good afternoon.”
“Oh,” she said again, speechless with surprise. “Mr. Yates.”
Belatedly, I remembered that she’d never had clearance. She probably recognized him from the newspapers, just as I had. “Maisey, this is Mr. Jack Yates. Patient Sixteen.”
Her mouth opened, closed again. The nonchalance, the easy superiority of a girl with a bit of money, had vanished. “I had heard—that is, there were rumors. But I never met—”
He was shaved and combed again, his sleeves rolled up as was his usual custom. His face was set in serious lines, and he nodded politely at Maisey. “A pleasure.”
I turned to him. “What are you doing here?”
Jack didn’t have what the girls I knew called movie star looks; the men I’d seen in pictures, with big, long-lashed eyes and sensual lips, looked nothing like him. His was a leaner face, as perfectly proportioned as a mathematical equation, the blue eyes striking and smart. A face that had been places, seen things, thought things, lived a life. And, I assumed, attracted a number of girls.
“You invited me,” he replied. “Remember?”
“Yes, but—how did you get away without Matron seeing? Or the orderlies?”
He didn’t take a seat on one of the benches but sat directly in the grass, his knees pulled up. “It’s after luncheon. We’re allowed to take the air. I’m supposed to exercise at the proper time of day.”
An uncomfortable prickle of warning rose on the back of my neck. Taking exercise meant wandering in the gardens or the near grounds, not coming all the way out here past the trees. Didn’t it? If someone saw him coming here unsupervised, wouldn’t they follow and bring him back? What if they noticed he was missing? Would an alarm go up?
I remembered Matron’s assurance that no man had ever escaped Portis House, as there was no means to get very far. And then I remembered Maisey’s bicycle.
I tried not to glance over at it. If Jack wanted to, he could get up and take it. He was strong enough. And then he’d be gone, and whose fault would that be?
He will say anything he can to gain your sympathy, and get himself a better chance of escaping Portis House.
Maisey had gone nearly green, likely thinking the same thing. She had less to lose than I did, but being instrumental in the escape of a mental patient, especially a high-profile one like Jack Yates, wouldn’t be good for her, either. As far as Maisey was concerned, she wasn’t even supposed to know he was here. Still, she swallowed gamely and said, “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”
“I take it the bruises have healed?” he said.
She shrugged, her eyes shadowed, and glanced at my neck again. “You heard about that, I suppose.”
“I did,” he said, gently. “Archie didn’t mean it, you know.”
“Maisey,” I said, “you can say anything in front of Mr. Yates. You have my word. Please start at the beginning.”
She gave me one last uncertain look, then shrugged. “All right.” She brushed some wisps of red hair from her face, tried hopelessly to tuck them up, and began. “Anna Gersbach—that’s the Gersbach daughter—and I are the same age. My papa is a magistrate in these parts and my uncle is a barrister in London—he met the prime minister at two separate suppers—so it was decided that I was an acceptable companion for Anna. The Gersbachs were so wealthy, but they were, you know, not English. It was hard to find someone equal enough.”
“Go on,” I said.
“It was a bit awkward at first, because Anna’s English wasn’t perfect, but she improved, and after a while we were friends. Wonderful friends. Like sisters, really.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth for a moment, then continued. “She was a sweet girl, and lonely. They’d moved here when she was a child, so she had no one. Her father wanted to live on a big English country estate, so he picked them up and moved them here. I don’t think they had anyone back home, either. They seemed . . . isolated, as if they lived in their own world. It was just Anna, her brother, Mikael, and their parents. I was Anna’s only friend.
“I came here almost every week, because Mr. Gersbach didn’t want Anna coming to the village. He was strange about rules—a little frightening, actually. He never came to see us when I visited, and neither did Mrs. Gersbach. She was always ill with something or other. Mikael was older—he’d come and spend time with us sometimes. He was sweet and kind, and I liked him. But mostly it was Anna and me. We’d go walking, or ride our bicycles, or read books to each other, or on rainy days we’d just sit in her room and talk—she had the nursery to herself; Mikael had a room on the second floor, where the men stay now. At first she liked to talk because it helped with her English, but after a while her English was just fine and we talked anyway. We talked about dresses and hairstyles and getting married. Girl things, you know.”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. Jack had stretched his legs out and was leaning back in the grass, listening.
“Then the war came,” said Maisey. “Anna barely noticed it. The Swiss were neutral, but the Gersbachs spoke French, and Mr. Gersbach saw himself as an English lord. He said the Germans were butchers, and that if he had been young enough, he’d go fight them himself. As for me, I waited until I was of age, and I told my parents I wanted to be a nurse.”
“So you really are a nurse?” I broke in.
“Yes, of course.” Maisey looked puzzled.
I felt myself going red. “It’s just—the book.”
“Oh, that. I knew they would only be shell-shock cases at Portis House, not casualty cases. I didn’t want my skills to get rusty, that’s all. Of course I’m a nurse. You can’t pretend that sort of thing—that would be mad.”
I said nothing, but I thought I saw Jack smile.
“I left for London in the spring of 1916,” Maisey went on, “to train. Anna and I wrote each other nearly every day at first; I was horribly lonely in London, and of course she was at Portis House with no companionship at all. We told each other everything. She wrote that Mikael had joined the army and was being sent off to Belgium, that he hadn’t wanted to go, but their father had told him he had no choice. He said his son would do credit to his adopted country and family name. There seemed to be some sort of awful scene over it, though Anna didn’t really explain. She was even lonelier after Mikael left. She seemed depressed. She said it was awful here. I asked her if there was anything else wrong, besides her worrying over Mikael, but she said no. She wrote me less and less often, but still she wrote. And then she stopped.”
“Stopped?” I said.
Maisey bit her lip again, her eyes worried. “Just stopped. Suddenly there was nothing. After all those letters, after years of confidences. Nothing.”
“So they moved,” said Jack.
“Moved?” said Maisey. “Mr. Gersbach built this place. This was his English estate, he called it. They’d lived here for only ten years. She would have told me something big like that. And she knew where to find me. Why didn’t she still write me?” She shook her head. “I wrote her letter after letter, but she never answered. That’s when I knew.”
“Knew what?” I said.