Lavender Morning

by Jude Deveraux

  “Perhaps you could mail the magazine to him.”

  General Austin leaned back in his chair, his hands together. “Exactly what is it that you object to about this particular assignment? Are you afraid? Are you too cowardly to do something that our American boys do every day?”

  Edi didn’t answer him. She’d proven her lack of fear at every bombing raid. She was always the last one to go to the shelter, as she made sure that all the other women in the office were safe.

  “What is it?” General Austin barked.

  “Perhaps, sir, you could send me with another driver, or I could go by myself. You know that I often travel about the English countryside alone.”

  “A different driver? Are you saying that your objection to going on this mission is that you don’t like Sergeant Clare?”

  Again, Edi said nothing.

  General Austin got up from his desk, went to the window, then turned back and looked at her as though he couldn’t believe what she’d just said. “Like, Harcourt? All those men out there who run into enemy fire shouting ‘Better than Austin,’ do you think they like me? Hell! My own wife doesn’t like me. I don’t think like and dislike have a place in a war.” By the time he finished, his voice was so loud it was a wonder the glass didn’t break.

  “No, sir,” Edi said.

  “All right, Harcourt, I want you to pack an overnight bag and take something pretty. You’re a girl going off into the country with her soldier boyfriend, and you’re going to stop to see an old friend of a friend, Dr. Sebastian Jellicoe, and you’re going to give him a magazine. That won’t be the story that’s given out around here, but that’s what you’re going to do. Do you have any questions? Anything you don’t like about this assignment?”

  Edi kept her rigid stance, but she wasn’t going to be intimidated by him. “Yes, sir, I do have a question. What is this really about?”

  General Austin took a moment to answer. “In normal circumstances I’d not tell you, but Dr. Jellie is a retired professor—Oxford, I think—and he knows more about words than anyone else on this planet. We send him top secret documents that need to be decoded. The problem now is that we think he may have been found out. He’s good at playing the absentminded old man who’s too senile to even know a war’s going on, but someone has found out his lie, and we fear for his life. The magazine carries a coded message, so he’ll know it’s from me, and it tells him to leave with you and Clare. And as soon as you two get him back here, Jellie will be sent to the U.S.

  “Does that answer your question? Do you think Delores could handle this?”

  “Yes, sir, and Delores would be useless.”

  “All right, now go. Clare will pick you up at 0900 tomorrow morning. Be here at 0700 and I’ll brief you more.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Edi was in her tiny apartment and packing. Tomorrow she planned to wear a suit so severely cut it made her uniform look casual. The other women talked endlessly about getting out of the stiff uniforms and into pretty dresses, but Edi thought that the men didn’t need any more encouragement, so she stayed covered up.

  She had other clothes, some pretty civilian dresses, but she wouldn’t put them on until they—she and the odious Sergeant Clare—were out of sight of the soldiers.

  After she put the dresses and her underwear is a small case she was ready to go. If she overlooked the fact that she was going to be with the detestable David Clare for this assignment, Edi would have admitted that she was…well, excited about it. Getting out of that smoky office, away from the general’s never-ending bad temper…To go into the country! To see trees! She almost looked forward to it.

  On her rare days off, she wasn’t like the other girls, running to the nearest place where they sold drinks and played loud music. No, Edi hopped a ride with anyone she could and went into the English countryside and spent the day. Or if she was lucky enough to get away from the general, she’d stay for days. She walked, she sat under trees, and she watched the cows graze. To Edi’s mind, she wanted to be reminded why a war was being fought, to see what they were trying to preserve.

  Sometimes she’d spend the night at a farmhouse. She’d soon learned to lie and say she was a war widow and that her husband had been English. People were suspicious of a tall, pretty American woman roaming about alone, but a widow who wanted to see the country of her dead husband opened doors and made friends. When Edi returned to General Austin’s office after a weekend away, she’d have a list of names people had given her. They wanted to know the whereabouts of their sons and daughters. Illegally, but without guilt, Edi used General Austin’s contacts and his credentials to find out about the names on her list. Within an hour of her first misuse of her closeness to him, General Austin knew what she was doing. Nothing ever escaped his attention. But he just grunted—his own personal way of approving—then piled even more work on her. But it was a small price to pay for being able to help the people who’d been so kind to her. Twice, when she couldn’t find the sons of people she’d met, she handed the names to the general. Both times he found the answer. One young man had been killed in Italy, but the other was wounded and in a French hospital.

  After she was packed, Edi boiled herself an egg and heated some toast on the little electric hot plate in her room and tried to read the documents she’d brought from the office. But her mind kept going back to the assignment. If General Austin wanted a man with her then there was a lot more danger to the job than he was telling her.

  “So what did you do to PO Austin so much that he made you wear this thing?” the medic asked David Clare as he tightened the inset screws on the long leg brace.

  David was sitting on top of a surgical table, wearing only his shirt and his underwear, and the medic was fastening a hideous-looking steel cage onto his left leg. “You didn’t hear that I’m going with Harcourt?”

  The medic paused, and for a moment his mouth was open in awe, but then he closed it. “It won’t work. You’ll never get her. Especially not with this thing on.”

  Looking at the steel strips wrapped around his leg, David grimaced. He’d been told Austin was a bastard, but he hadn’t realized how much until early this morning. Last night a lieutenant told him he was to drive Edilean Harcourt into the English countryside to visit the wife of a friend of the general. Her husband had just been killed, and the general wanted to offer his personal condolences to the widow—“personal” meaning that he was sending his secretary.

  “Oh, wait,” the lieutenant said. “I was told to give you this.” He held out a white envelope, the kind that held an invitation.

  “What is it?” David asked.

  “I’m not sure, but I think it’s an invitation to the officers’ ball next month. You come back alive and you get to go. Last year Miss Harcourt wore a dress in an electric blue that…” The man shook his head to clear it. “If I were you, I’d hold on to that. You can’t get in without it.”

  “I’ll treasure it,” David said as he slipped it inside his shirt.

  David and Edi were to spend the night, then return the next day. David only hoped Heaven would be as good as his vision of those two delicious days.

  But this morning a smart-ass lieutenant had told him he was to report to a Captain Gilman, a doctor, on the double. Of course by that time everyone in London and probably half of France knew Sergeant Clare was going to be alone with Miss Harcourt for two whole days.

  David should have known there’d be a catch. The doctor told him the general said that an able-bodied soldier traveling around the country would engender too many questions. Why wasn’t he fighting?

  “I could be on leave,” David said. “Did he think of that?”

  The doctor looked at him incredulously. “Are you asking me to explain the inner workings of Bulldog Austin’s mind?” He went on to say that General Austin thought it would be better if Sergeant Clare were seen as unfit to fight, therefore he was to be fitted with a steel leg brace that went from his upper thigh down to his ankle. At the knee was
a four-inch round hinge that could be loosened or tightened with the use of an Allen wrench with an odd screw pattern.

  Ten minutes later, David was on the table, and a medic was clamping the torturous brace onto his leg.

  “Don’t lose this,” the medic said, holding up the little L-shaped tool. “Lose this and the only way that thing comes off is with a hacksaw.”

  There was some padding between his skin and the steel of the brace, but the fabric was worn and frayed, the cotton batting sticking out in places. “You couldn’t find a worse one than this?” David asked. “Maybe something a little older, a little more beat up?”

  “Naw,” the medic said, grinning, “that’s the worst one we had. It was left over from the last war.”

  “Would that be the Civil War or the French and Indian?”

  “War of the Roses,” said an English soldier passing through. “That thing was probably handmade over a forge. I bet there’s chain mail under there.”

  “I’ll donate it to one of your museums,” David called out after the man. “One of them we’ve saved for you guys.”

  The Englishman’s laugher floated back to him.

  “All right,” the medic said, “let’s see how well you can walk in it.”

  David turned on the table and gingerly put one foot on the floor, then the other. As he took a couple of steps in the brace, it was worse than he thought. It was heavy, confining, and the hinge moved only half as much as his knee did. “What the hell—!” David said as he lifted his leg. He could bend his knee only a few inches.

  “Sorry about that,” the medic said, but he was smiling. No soldier felt sorry for the man who was going to get to spend two days with Miss Harcourt. The medic inserted the Allen key into three inset screws on the hinge and rotated them about a quarter of an inch. The hinge loosened and David could bend his knee.

  “I hate this thing,” David said as he tried walking in it.

  “Be glad you don’t need it for real,” said a voice behind him.

  “Lord deliver me from do-gooders. You want to put this damned thing on—Oh! Sorry, Reverend,” David said. “I didn’t mean—” He didn’t know what to say.

  The reverend was smiling. “I’ve been called worse than a ‘do gooder.’ I believe there’s a car waiting for you outside and a young lady you’re to pick up.”

  “Yeah,” David muttered, wanting to curse the brace and especially General Austin for making him wear the damned thing. One of the men said it was a chastity belt, that David had to wear it to make sure he didn’t touch the general’s precious secretary.

  They’d all waited for David to make a smart reply to that, something about his leg not being the part he planned to use, but David said nothing. He didn’t want anything bad he said to get back to Miss Harcourt.

  It was impossible to wrestle himself into the trousers of his uniform, so the medic got him a pair that were two sizes larger. To hold them up, his belt made deep wrinkles in the waistband. So much for looking good to impress the most beautiful woman in the world, he thought.

  David was further dismayed when he saw the car the general had sent for their use. It was an old Chrysler, and by the sound of the engine, worn out. He wondered if it was made the same year as the leg brace.

  It took several tries to get the car started, and he wished he had half a day to work on the engine, but he didn’t. When he got it started, he found that even the steering was off. To make matters worse, the car was English right-hand drive, so that everything was on the opposite side of what he was used to. All in all, the car was a danger to drive.

  She was waiting for him, standing on the curb, and he could feel the eyes of the men around them on him.

  If possible, Miss Harcourt looked even more rigid than she usually did. Her dark hair was pulled back so tight it looked as though it were painted on, and her wool suit was stiff enough to have been carved out of wood. At her feet was a small brown suitcase, and from her shoulder hung her handbag and a black leather case that she was clasping as though it were a safe full of jewels.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it, Miss Harcourt?” he said as he opened the front passenger door for her.

  When she opened the back door and got in, David heard the laughter of what sounded like a hundred men, but he didn’t look up.

  It was hard to drive with the long brace on his leg. Pushing a clutch in as he shifted gears caused him pain at every move. Already, the padding had slipped to one side, and he could feel the steel rubbing his skin raw. If he had any sense, he’d pull the car to the side of the road and adjust the padding. But he glanced at Miss Harcourt in the rearview mirror, saw that her beautiful face was set, as though she knew he was about to do something awful, so he grit his teeth and tried to ignore the pain.

  “I was told you know the way,” he said, glancing at her in the mirror.

  She gave a brief nod, but that was her only acknowledgment that she heard him.

  “Do you think you could share those directions with me?”

  “When necessary, I will.”

  In the back of the car, Edi sat straight up. Just this morning she’d again suggested to General Austin that she go alone to Dr. Jellicoe’s house. She said she could do her usual pretend of being a war widow and she could make her way around the country by herself. But the general’s answer had been a single word: “No.” He hadn’t shouted or explained, but there was something in the way he spoke that made her know for sure that there was more to the assignment than he was telling her. Again, she knew that if he wanted a man with her, then that meant there was danger involved. The general had casually told her, as though it didn’t matter, that under the backseat of the old car were half a dozen M1 rifles and enough ammo to hold off most of a battalion.

  After that, General Austin handed her the magazine. It was a Time magazine, May 15, 1944, with Dr. Alexander Fleming’s portrait on the cover. It was a few weeks old but she hadn’t seen the issue.

  “Get it to Jellie,” General Austin said, then handed her a packet of English money and a map. If she was going to find Dr. Jellicoe, a map was essential. The English roads had been laid out in medieval times by wagons and animals. If a tree was in the path, or a hill, or someone’s house, the wagon went around it. Property lines were based on waterways or rock outcroppings or whatever a person could use for identification.

  In modern times, those roads were still used, and they rambled about as they twisted and turned around landmarks that had long ago disappeared. In peacetime, there were signs posted everywhere. If a person came to a meeting of eight roads, the signs were the only way to know what led where. But in wartime, as a precautionary measure, most of the signs around England had been removed. Without a map or a knowledgeable guide, no one could find anything.

  Edi tried to study the map—and to keep her mind off Clare’s driving. However, today he seemed to be more cautious. He wasn’t speeding, wasn’t darting in and out of traffic, and, best of all, he wasn’t smart-mouthing about everything.

  She spent an hour on the map and twice sketched it from memory. If it were lost, she didn’t want to not know where to go.

  As for the magazine, she was almost afraid to open it. Treating it with the reverence she’d have used if she were holding a Gutenberg Bible, she went through it page by page, reading that Dr. Fleming’s penicillin was going to be made available to the public, and that an American, Kathleen Kennedy, had married a man who was going to become the duke of Devonshire.

  What she was most interested in seeing was some mark made in the magazine, something in the text or in the margins, but as far as she would see, there was nothing.

  “Interesting magazine?” he asked, looking at her in the rearview mirror, but Edi was silent.

  “It’s going to be a long ride if nobody talks,” Sergeant Clare said from the front seat.

  “I see no reason for idle conversation,” Edi said. She could see the side of his face, and he was frowning. Let him, she thought. Let him frown all he
wants. She just needed to get the magazine to Dr. Jellicoe, then on the ride back, the doctor would be with them. That would put a further barrier between her and the obnoxious David Clare.

  They rode in silence, and at about 1 P.M. it began to sprinkle rain. Sergeant Clare pulled the car off the road and started down a gravel lane.

  “What are you doing?” Edi asked, alarmed. Was something wrong?

  He stopped the car in front of a little cottage that had a sign that said HOME COOKED LUNCHES AND TEAS. David put his arm across the back of the seat and turned to look at her. “Miss Harcourt, you may be so disciplined that you’ve trained yourself not to eat, but I’m human and I need food.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, but she didn’t meet his eyes. By her reckoning, they should reach Dr. Jellicoe’s by eight tonight. General Austin said the doctor didn’t know they were coming. “If he knows, he’ll hide,” the general said. “The element of surprise is important.” Even though she asked, he didn’t tell Edi how she was going to persuade Dr. Jellicoe to leave with her and Sergeant Clare—but then, wasn’t the magazine supposed to do that?

  As they got out of the car, Edi could see that something was wrong with Sergeant Clare, but she wasn’t about to ask him why he was limping and seemed to be in pain. If he’d been injured in an action, she would have known about it through the general’s office, so if he was hurt, it was because he’d tripped over something, or, more likely, banged a vehicle into something.

  She held on to her satchel and handbag as they entered the restaurant, which was actually the living room of a rose-covered cottage that was being used as a tearoom.

  “Oh, dearie,” said a plump, pleasant-looking woman as soon as she saw Sergeant Clare limping. “You’ve been wounded. You just sit down here and let me get whatever you need. Here’s a menu, and I’m Mrs. Pettigrew, and you two just take your time with whatever you want.” She left the room, leaving Edi and David sitting at one of the four tables. They were the only customers.