She hugged the books tighter to her chest, her fingernails digging into the bindings of the stack she’d brought for Wyatt.
“Excuse me, miss. They’re sending someone over. If you’ll just wait.”
“I don’t understand. May I not just go in and make my way to the library?”
“No—they have someone coming from the interior gate. Just a moment and they’ll take you where you’ll need to go.”
A jeep cut down the road toward them, dusting the way though it was drizzly outside. Just for a moment, Amelia thought the uniform-hatted man behind the wheel could have been Wyatt. She held her breath. Hoping. But as he neared, the halo of overcast skies darkened behind shoulders that were not broad like his, and a youthful face took shape over the top of the windshield.
“Lieutenant Hale!” Relief washed over Amelia to see a familiar face among the mass of uniforms and cutouts of army buildings.
“Milady. Come on then.” C. B. had jumped down from the jeep and now held out his arm for her to climb into the front seat. Amelia did, so fast the stack of books nearly tumbled from her arms, and he had to help catch them or their bindings would have been soiled in the slush.
“What’s happening?” Amelia whispered, righting the books in her lap.
C. B. didn’t wait, just hopped back in and shifted the jeep into gear, sweeping them off down the road. “The cap wouldn’t let us send for you,” he shouted over the roar of the engine. “If you come on your own though, that’s a different story.”
“So he’s . . . ?” Her voice quivered—where were they going? “Please say you’re not taking me to speak with a chaplain. I’m not sure I could handle that.”
“Don’t worry. The cap’s alive.” C. B. smiled, though concern haunted the corners of his mouth.
Amelia could breathe again, even in the blast of icy air hitting her face. She glanced over her shoulder, watching as the gate grew smaller behind them and the young soldier watched them go. And all she could think was why Wyatt hadn’t come himself.
If he’d been able, wouldn’t he have come?
“He’s been injured then?”
“Yes, milady. I’m sorry to say.”
“What happened?”
“I can talk a bit now that it’s over. Supposed to have been low priority—a routine mission to bomb out an underground oil storage unit on German soil. But nothing’s routine around Berlin these days. We took massive flak over Derben. Didn’t expect such a great resistance but had to battle through something fierce. And our bird just took more than she could handle.”
He turned them down a road past a gaggle of buildings, one a massive H shape with scores of men lined up out the front doors.
She sat straight and held on to her hat, though her insides felt like the mush beneath the jeep tires. “I’m sorry. What is flak? I’m afraid I don’t know the right words.”
“Just a fancy word for enemy fire,” he tossed back as they passed brick buildings, scores of trucks and trailers carrying munitions, and men hurrying about like working bees in the estate hives. “In the end, we lost nine planes to the Boches. It was a bad outing. We’re still reeling from it, milady.”
Oh my word . . .
If they were all fortresses, was that ninety men? Or fighter planes with only one pilot apiece? Any one loss was too much. But she understood now why the pub was rife with talk of it. It was too terrible to imagine.
Nine planes, just . . . gone.
Another building came into view—a brick-faced front with square window cutouts and round-roofed buildings stretching far behind. Two army-issue trucks were parked at the curb out front, with heart-sickening white crosses branded over green on their sides. One had doors open at the back and insides exposed, as if it had only just been deserted as the wounded were carried inside.
She tore her eyes away, the sight of white crosses and hospital wards an induction to panic if she let it overwhelm her.
“This is it—Station Sick Quarters,” C. B. said, wheeling them to a stop and hopping out before the tires had time to make treads in the snow.
“He’s here?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He offered an arm to take the books so she could step down without slipping on the ice.
When Amelia felt certain of her footing, even in heels, she took them back. It was the first time she’d looked at C. B.—really seen his face—and noticed cuts, bruising over one cheek, and a wrist that was wrapped with white gauze under the sleeve of his uniform coat. But he stood tall and, for the young chap he was, gave the impression he’d grown inches since she’d met him back in September.
“C. B., whatever’s happened to you?”
“Just a scratch or two, milady. But you’ll need to know the gist of it before you see the captain . . . We went down on the coast. Lost seven of our crew, including Lieutenant Barton. But not for Wyatt not doing everything he could to save them.”
Oh no.
The smiling, jesting member of the crew? Dead. And the rest of the boys—one by one she thought of them, remembered their faces. Seeing them about town. At the Castle House. Asking the girls from town to dance at the USO events. Stopping by Parham Hill though only the officers stayed on nights there.
Which ones would only live in her memory?
Amelia stared through the darkness beyond the window cutouts on the hospital’s façade, as if she could see all the way through to Wyatt’s bed. She grasped C. B.’s arm, holding tight. “How terrible is it? Please, tell me.”
“Burns to his right side—arm and neck. Hit his head hard in the crash, but they say he’ll heal. Seems he’s more busted up inside his heart than anything. He’s taken it on himself hard. Like I’ve never seen. This time it may well have broken him.” C. B.’s voice choked and he righted himself, with as stiff an upper lip as any RAF pilot could have mustered.
He cleared his throat. “We couldn’t bail out—happened too fast. We saw England. Thought we were home. Then flak hit off the water and the wing was gone, and down we went. Cap pulled us out, milady. Went back to the wreckage onshore over and over, battling for each man on his crew, dragging us from flames. Lieutenant Colonel says it’s a miracle any of us made it. Miracle or not, I’m standing before you today because of Captain Stevens. I’d never have gone against his wishes by bringing you here, but seeing as you came on your own . . . this is where you should be.”
It was the one time Amelia wished she hadn’t an imagination.
C. B. recounted what happened with just enough grim detail to make her feel like she’d been socked in the gut of her pretty coat as he led her down the hall. It was busy—too busy for her liking, with uniforms buzzing about. Nurses moving through the halls. Even a medical team wheeling a gurney and soldier so fast that C. B. had to yank her against the wall or both of them would get flattened.
She caught her breath as he slowed them near the end of the hall.
“Here we are, milady.” He stopped at a door that opened wide to a room with a host of beds lined against the metal walls.
There was space between beds and officers spread out among them—not with crowding like the general wards they’d passed by. The hum of quiet hung on the air as C. B. pointed her to the far corner and a bed by a window, where the cool light of morning sun shone down on a figure leaning his back against the white metal frame. He looked away from her, staring out the window like something was there, though she could see the glass was frosted over.
“Will they let me in?” She eyed what she assumed were surgeons who flitted a glance up at them and nurses who pretended not to notice them standing in the doorway.
“It’s an officers’ ward, and I’m letting you in,” C. B. whispered, as if that explained it all. “I’ll just wait outside.”
The sound of Amelia’s heels clicked on the floor, echoing off the ceiling like they were all packed up in a tin can. She unbuttoned her coat with her free hand, one button per step, gazing past the lot of officers and beds, swallowing hard as she drew nea
r to his side. “Wyatt?”
He turned at once, slow, like he was lost in a dream, revealing red blotches of burned skin that snaked up from gauze to the underside of his right jaw. Skin around his eye was bruised a wretched purple and black, with an angry cut over his brow stitched but raw. It might have shocked her to see him in such a state had she not been warned. And had his eyes not softened when they rested upon her, Amelia might have been more devastated at the physical damage done to him.
But he was alive.
And breathing.
With blood pumping warm through his veins. And Amelia couldn’t be sorry for feeling joy. Thinking of all the young boys who had been lost broke her heart—but she hadn’t lost him.
“I told them not to telephone you,” Wyatt said, his voice rougher, as if it had been raked over gravel.
“They didn’t,” she whispered, readjusting the stack of books cradled in her arms. “You never came back. I was worried you’d miss out on your reading. The library seems empty now if it’s not being used. I know how fond you are of it.”
“Fond. Yes. Of books? I suppose I was once.”
It wasn’t boldness that drew her—Amelia wished she could claim that. Maybe relief more than anything. It had been four years in coming, and she’d not so much as looked at another man since Arthur, let alone danced with one. Until Wyatt. And now she was the one coming to his sickbed in the way a fiancée or wife should have. She hadn’t a clue what that meant, but Amelia stepped closer, watching him for any sign he wished her to leave. But he didn’t bristle. Didn’t move, actually. Not even when she sat on the edge of the bed.
Amelia placed her hand to the blanket, just shy of grazing his. “I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”
“I have no use for books today.”
Was that his way of telling her to leave? This little game of books and notes and Christmas Eve dances in liquid-satin gowns was over—just like that?
“Why is that? Have books offended you in some way?” She’d meant it as lighthearted banter. Something to ease the heaviness in the room. But Wyatt had never looked at her like that, as if he was exposed. Broken, even. And she was certain somehow that it was not from the burns or the bump on the head.
Instead of giving a reply, he leaned over to the bedside table, taking a Bible from the top. Without words, he turned to a page from somewhere in the middle and pulled a photograph from the binding.
He offered it to her.
Amelia took the snapshot in hand. Looked at the smiling face of a woman with sculpted curls at her crown and an exquisite smile that brightened her face. In her arms, wrapped up in a fur-collared coat, was a mirror image of the woman—a little girl with a dimpled, missing-toothed smile, and the same sugared plait that left no room for error that they were mother and daughter.
“Abigail, uh, my wife. She never wanted to move to New York. She thought we could live on my family’s land . . . work the farm . . . be content with Iowa sunsets for the rest of our lives.” He raked his good hand through his hair, pausing every couple of words. “And then Susan came along . . . and something changed. Abby agreed to give it a try. We wanted more for our daughter and the city seemed the next big step—even if her husband had to work his way up from a lowly publishing clerk to make it. We both believed it was right. She knew I wanted to escape and that books were our ticket. So we went.”
The beautiful smiles and happiness were so bright, the photo should have felt like sunshine in Amelia’s palms. If he’d mentioned anything else but having a wife, it mightn’t have been so tough to swallow. She glanced at the ring finger on his left hand, panic telling its own story in her middle.
Empty.
Heavens—what was he trying to tell her?
Wyatt had never gone this far. Never opened the book of his heart to tell her anything about his story. Even when she’d told him about Arthur, and the library, and got this close to trusting him enough to share her own brokenness . . . To hear him talk of it felt as holy as if they’d stepped under the vault of a grand cathedral, instead of sitting in a tin can that vibrated as plane engines roared overhead.
“And what happened?”
“I was late for dinner—again. The all-consuming business of the publishing world and a man climbing the ranks of his own selfish ambitions had become a habit. I aspired to be the youngest publisher in Houghton Mifflin history, so much I’d almost become sick with the chase. I didn’t show for Susan’s birthday night out—five years old and she wanted to go to a hole-in-the-wall shop in Little Italy because I’d made a flippant promise once that someday we’d go there for meatballs and cannoli. She must have figured if she chose that, I might actually come.” He let loose with a smile, shaking his head at the memory. But it faded away like a shot, and he grew somber again. “They waited but I never showed. Or showed too late, rather. They tried to hail a taxi and never made it home. I got there in time to find twisted metal and a box of cannoli spilled on the corner of Mulberry Street. One accident. One decision and my life was over.”
“Wyatt, is that why you—?”
“Why I run toward flames instead of away?” He nodded, bruises illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. “Wouldn’t you?”
“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known what would happen that night.”
Amelia clutched the treasured photo in her hand, feeling the prickles of guilt that she’d only ever seen her pain. Felt her wounds. And all the while, Wyatt had remained quiet about how close he was to completely understanding the heart’s worst devastation.
“I enlisted, came here thinking I could battle my enemies until the war took me out too. I’d volunteer for every mission that might end the pain with a single bomb blast. Imagine wanting to die and you battle for years, only to be the one man God doesn’t choose to take. It’s the worst kind of flipped fate. But then I walked into a library one day and found the only person I’ve ever met who might understand. And books had the audacity to try to befriend me again. So much so that I no longer wanted the bombs. Instead, I wanted them. And her. And I wanted to ask if she could ever dare to care about someone again.”
He swallowed hard and his eyes glazed. “Books almost killed me. Then they saved me. Now I don’t know what to do.”
“No?”
“I so wanted to kiss you on Christmas, but I felt . . . It felt wrong. I wasn’t ready. And I may not be ever.” He stopped. Started again, chin heavy in the sunlight. “I’m dead inside.”
“Dead doesn’t feel, Wyatt. And you still do,” Amelia whispered, battling tears like a schoolgirl. “What happened up there is not your fault either. You did everything you could. You’re in this bed right this moment, and C. B. is waiting outside the door—alive—because of you. There’s something beautiful in that. Even this horrible loss has something in it that can be redeemed because you had enough feeling left inside to do what you knew was right. You’d have given your life for any man on your crew. There’s beauty in that willingness to sacrifice.”
“But how do you ask someone to forget their pain, to dare to heal when you know how deep it goes and how unforgiving it can be? I have no right to do that. Not for myself. Not for them. Not even for you, though God knows I want to.”
Amelia returned the photo, just brushing her fingertips against his empty ring finger as she turned his hand and placed it in his open palm.
The books she set on the bedside table so she could shed her coat. And pulled the pin to release her tam, then set the red felt hat on the stack so it became a siren that said she was staying put. As long as he wanted her, she wasn’t going anywhere. She looked around, spying a metal chair under the window, and dragged it over to his bedside.
There was something about the power of silence to punctuate what the heart couldn’t say. Amelia felt it as she cleared her throat, composing herself though tears tripped over the edge of her bottom lashes.
She slid the top book from the stack, opened the cover, and flipped to the first page.
No explanation was needed. No words of affirmation to pretend grief didn’t slay like a rabid beast. It was just wrapping his good hand in hers, the photo perched under his fingertips, and holding on for dear life as they clung to the moment—both desperate to heal.
“Chapter One,” Amelia began, her voice a soft song against the metal roof. “‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife . . .’”
Wyatt smiled at the opening line.
Amelia held his hand, reading Austen’s classic aloud with a soft cadence of words long after exhaustion had swept him into sleep. And when evening drew near and she finally gathered her things to leave, Amelia brushed his hair back, kissed his bruised forehead, and left a note on the top of the stack where he’d find it when he woke.
One word penciled, meant only for him:
Yes.
Twenty-Four
June 9, 1843
St. James’s Park
London, England
“Why am I never allowed the same maid for more than a few months before she is replaced?”
Ma-ma barely looked up in her flitting about, adjusting the tiara of diamond-encrusted ivy and fine gauze veil that iced Elizabeth’s honeyed locks and filtered sunlight from the chamber window in a halo around her.
“What did you say, dear?” Ma-ma muttered, completely absorbed in smoothing the ivory trail down Elizabeth’s back so that the veil stretched out in a liquid train on the chamber’s hardwood floor.
“I said, why do none of my maids stay on more than a few months?” Meeting her mother’s glance in the gilt floor mirror, Elizabeth challenged her with a fierce stare.
It had been but days since her unexpected visit to the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane, but the odd encounter with the theater owner there had awakened questions Elizabeth hadn’t been willing to explore in the years after her father’s death. She’d pushed back grief. And loss. Instead allowing herself to be driven by justice alone. Even memories she should have been able to look back on with fondness—taking walks in the gardens, sketching at the mill, seeing real life for what it was, with her father’s gentle coaxing and welcoming smile always at her side—they’d been buried under by her pursuit.
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