Angel of the Somme: The Great War, Book 1

by Terri Meeker

  “I’m hurting too, darling,” she said. “I understand.”

  But she didn’t. Couldn’t. He’d been the killer. While Lily had dedicated herself to saving people, he’d been murdering them. They were nothing alike.

  Lily leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Please don’t keep me out. They’ll take you away from me soon enough.”

  “No, Lily. Please.”

  She swallowed and took a deep breath. Still cupping his face in her hands, she reached down and brushed her warm lips against his. He shuddered, knowing it was their last kiss.

  When she pulled away, tears shone in her eyes. “I love you, Sam. Nothing is going to change that.”

  “I’m sorry for that.” It was brutal, but true. He might be a killer, but he could be honest. He owed her that much, at least.

  Her eyes widened as though he’d slapped her.

  “I don’t want to be unkind, but it is better if you leave me alone, Lily. It’s better if you forget me.”

  “What?” Her voice trembled. “Sam, you can’t…” She watched him guardedly, as though she was trying to work out the position of an enemy sniper.

  “I mean it. Stay away from me,” he said. Goddamn him to hell for saying it, but he would hurt her either way. Better to wound her with distance. A girl like Lily deserved better than…whatever he was.

  Killer.

  He turned to face the wall. After a moment, he heard her footsteps retreating. And then, silence.

  The hours crawled by. Unable to turn to look at the clock due to his restraints, Sam could only guess at the time. It had to be past midnight. The rest of New Bedlam’s inhabitants had fallen into a collective deep sleep—only instead of this being an enchanted slumber, it was a cursed one. In the corner of the room, the weary VAD on night duty had fallen asleep in a very uncomfortable looking wooden chair. Carrying sorrow was an exhausting business.

  Though the ward lights were off, the moon shone brightly through the windows. Gordy continued to stare out the glass panes as if Mr. Mesmer had put him in a trance. It was bloody unnerving. Sam clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, prepared to wait the night out.

  “Sam?” Gordy’s voice was whisper.

  “What is it?”

  “I need you to do something.” Gordy swung his legs around and stood beside Sam’s bed.

  “Anything,” Sam replied without a thought.

  Gordy leaned down and unbuckled Sam’s restraints.

  “I need you to come somewhere with me.”

  “Might that get us into trouble?” But Sam knew better. Since the bomb, New Bedlam was currently barely able to keep track of the severely wounded. Doing a bed count would be quite beyond their present capacities.

  “It’s important,” Gordy said. “Besides, from what I can see, those fits of yours come in through your eyes. Bright lights and such seem to trigger them—not walking about.”

  “That’s true enough.” Sam stood. His legs felt weak, but strong enough to support him for a brief while.

  Gordy didn’t waste any time. He walked quickly, if a little unevenly considering his bulky cast, ahead of Sam, waiting for him by the rear door. How strange for Gordy to head toward the kitchen. Perhaps he intended to lead them to the garden, toward that spot just beyond the window that he kept staring at. If it would bring some peace to the lad, Sam was more than happy to comply.

  They took a few steps into the kitchen, then Gordy stepped around Sam and pushed the door closed. When he turned to face him, Sam noticed that Gordy carried a small, canvas sack in one hand.

  “What’s this all about?” Sam asked.

  A storm of conflicting emotions played out in Gordy’s eyes and his head began to wobble from side-to-side.

  “Gordy, please tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’ve got a few things to say. But first, I want to thank you.” Gordy shifted the sack to his left hand and extended his right to shake Sam’s hand.

  Sam made no move to return the gesture. Oh, the bitter irony. “Believe me, Gordy. You don’t know what I’ve done. You have nothing to thank me for.”

  “You tried, didn’t you?”

  Sam could think of no response.

  Gordy reached out and gripped Sam’s uncooperative hand anyway. He shook it, his grip painfully tight. Sam was helpless to resist him. When Gordy dropped Sam’s hand, he began to speak, his voice low and measured. “I’m in the very next bed, Sam. I can’t help but hear what you and Lily talk about. And I know there was something funny going on with those seizures of yours. And that you went and had yourself another seizure to try to help Rose.”

  “But I didn’t save her.”

  Gordy shook his head. “I understand more than you think I do, Sam. In fact, I think I understand a great deal more than you do. You did your best. You tried.”

  “Trying doesn’t matter if you—”

  Gordy interrupted him. “Trying is the only thing that matters when you’ve got nothing left to do.”

  Sam opened his mouth to explain, but the words clung to his throat.

  Gordy pointed his wobbling chin in Sam’s direction. “Now, you’re going to do something else, whether you want to or not. You’re going to keep trying.”

  Sam gave Gordy a puzzled glance.

  “You’re going to talk to Bluebird.”

  “I’m going to do nothing of the kind,” Sam said.

  “We’ll see about that.” Gordy placed the burlap sack on the floor and it clinked in a strangely familiar way. He stepped toward Sam. “The way you talked to her today, it wasn’t right. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’re going to go down that hall and try to mend it.”

  “You don’t know what’s going on, Gordy.” Sam tried to step around Gordy, but Gordy thunked his cast to the left and effectively blocked the door. For a man with a leg in a cast, he was impressively mobile.

  “Don’t need to know what’s going on.” Gordy’s voice was as serious as a churchman. “If the war has taught me nothing else, I’ve learned that each day might be our last. I have regrets, Sam. Regrets about Rosebud. I’ll be goddamned if I let you have those same regrets about Lily. Telling her to leave you. Shutting her out. You hurt her.”

  “I’m only doing what’s best,” Sam said.

  “Bollox.” Gordy raised his fists in a fighting stance and leaned forward on his cast. If it weren’t for the burning intensity behind his eyes, Sam would have had to laugh. Gordy’s head wobble resembled a boxer, weaving in the ring.

  “I mean it, Sam.” The determination in Gordy’s eyes underlined his words and put an exclamation mark on them.

  “You don’t understand,” Sam said.

  “Stop saying that. I don’t need to understand.” Gordy took a step forward, his cast thudding on the kitchen tile. “You either talk to her or hit me.”

  Sam just stood there numbly.

  “Do you want me to take the first swing?” Gordy jutted his chin toward Sam. “‘Cause I’ll bloody well do it.”

  Sam took a step back. “I’m not going to fight you.”

  “Wise choice.” Gordy dropped his fists and relaxed his stance. Before Sam had a moment to react, Gordy picked up the canvas bag and gripped Sam’s elbow with his free hand, steering him down an unfamiliar hallway. Sam followed along. He could think of nothing else to do that wouldn’t cause a scene and result in a great deal of trouble for Gordy.

  They stopped in front of a nondescript door and Gordy placed the sack on the floor. He turned and gripped Sam’s shoulders. “You love her and she loves you, you bloody idiot. You might not have much time, but you have now. You have tonight.”

  Gordy turned, rapped twice on the door, then limped rapidly down the hall. Sam couldn’t move. He just stood there as still and mindless as a scarecrow.

  Lily opened the door.

  She w
ore only a nightgown, her hair done up in a braid. The moment she saw Sam standing there, her face fell. It was not exactly the expression that might inspire confidence.

  “I didn’t think…” Lily stammered. “That is…is everything all right?”

  “Oh no, Lily.”

  “It’s not all right?” She stepped out to the hall, her expression grave. She looked down the hall to see Gordy’s retreating form.

  “I mean, yes, rather. Everything is fine.” Sam rubbed his face with one hand. His beard stubble prickled against his palm. “I’m rather making a muck-up of this. It was Gordy, you see…”

  “Perhaps we should have this conversation in my room?” She gave a nervous glance down the hall. “Wouldn’t want to wake anyone.”

  He snatched the canvas sack and followed her through the door. She closed it behind them and lit the gas lamp on her wall. Her room was small, but very cozy. A pair of bright yellow curtains, which appeared to have been fashioned from bed linens, brightened the barred windows. One of the two beds was stripped bare and stared at him like an accusation.

  Rose’s bed.

  “Gordy?” She said at last, breaking the silence. He turned to face her. Dear god, sweet Lily. He’d never seen her out of her starched white apron. Her nightgown clung to the curve of her hip in a way that made his legs feel increasingly unsteady and he had a hard time maintaining focus.

  “Is something wrong with Gordy?” she asked.

  “Not precisely. He thought that you and I should talk.”

  “He thought we should talk?” Lily asked. Now that they were in her room he could see her expression more clearly—she looked so weary, her eyes full of sorrow.

  “I think we should talk.” He tried to find the right words to say to her, but damned if he could think of them. “That is, if you’d like to talk.” His tongue tripped over his teeth even when he was at his best.

  “Sam? Would you like to sit down?” Her pretty green eyes grew cloudy with concern.

  “Ah, yes. Thank you.” He perched on the edge of her bed. She settled in beside him, and a wave of relief splashed over him. Her warmth, her solid presence anchored him. He gripped Gordy’s canvas bag tightly, worrying the edge with his fingertips.

  “What do you have there?” she asked, glancing at the bag.

  “Ah, Gordy left it. I don’t know what’s in it, but I have my suspicions.”

  She slid her small hand in his, and he very nearly sighed with relief.

  “God, Lily. I’m so sorry. I was so unkind earlier today. I don’t quite know what to do and I…”

  She leaned over and brushed her lips against his in a tender kiss. Her soft lips utterly undid him. He let Gordy’s canvas bag drop to the floor with a plunk.

  “I’ve missed you, Sam. So much,” she whispered against his lips.

  He wrapped his arms around her. “Me too, Lily. God help me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lily wasn’t going to cry. She certainly didn’t want to cry. But it was such a balm, feeling his arms around her, his warmth, his steady heartbeat thumping comfortingly against her cheek, after the long day had whipped her about like a rag in the wind.

  He stroked her hair, tentatively at first, with careful hands patting down the length of her braid. She nuzzled up under his chin and felt him shudder.

  “Are you crying?” He tilted his head, his breath warm in her ear. “Darling, please don’t cry. I’m so sorry. I was a bloody fool. I just didn’t know what to do. I still don’t.” He pulled away from her, looking down, eyes full of regret. “If I had an ounce of decency, I’d stay away from you.”

  “Don’t say that. You must know how much I’ve longed to be with you, to really talk to you.”

  “I don’t know why, now that you know what I’ve done.”

  She reached out to clasp his hand in hers. She didn’t know if it was for his reassurance or her own.

  She stole a glance at him. Though he still looked like her Sam, he seemed different as well. There was a brokenness to him. Like a cracked mirror, with the frame still holding the shattered pieces together.

  He caught her looking at him and took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean a thing I said earlier, about staying away. I was simply trying to do the right thing and I…” He released her grip and ran a hand through his hair. “Trying to do the right thing keeps getting me into some pretty horrible situations.”

  She took his hand and held it gently. “With the seizures, Sam, you can hardly blame yourself. You didn’t know what you were doing. How could you have known?”

  “Does it matter if I knew? Really? I killed them. Now I see it. It’s why that Irish lieutenant treated me so oddly—he knew something was wrong with me. A few of the lads even knew what I was. How could I have not questioned it?”

  “What was your alternative?”

  “What do you mean?” He looked at her quizzically.

  “Well, the way you tell it, you had a seizure and ended up next to someone who was dying.”

  “Yes.”

  “At any point were you given a choice? Were there any other options to these trips? Did you have a say in your grim destinations?”

  Sam watched her carefully. After a moment, he shook his head.

  “And from what you’ve told me about the injuries, certainly from Rose’s case, they were all mortally wounded. Why do you heap all this blame on yourself?”

  “Because I was bloody well killing people, Lily! Even if I didn’t know what I was doing, I was arrogant enough not to question it. I simply wielded my power without thought, as though I was some sort of hero, or a god.”

  “I know exactly what you’re feeling because I’m guilty of the same thing.”

  He looked at her, at last. “You don’t. You can’t.”

  “No, I really do. If you’re going to hate yourself for this, you should hate me even more. What I did was worse.”

  “What are you talking about?” He narrowed his eyes.

  “Every time they send me down to the trains, I make life and death decisions.”

  Sam shook his head, dismissing it. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “Isn’t it? When I’m on triage, I make those exact choices. I decide that one soldier has a better chance of surviving and I put another man in the back of the line. I’m playing god every day.”

  Sam gripped her hand tightly. “You’re wrong.”

  “At least when you intervened, you didn’t know what you were doing, Sam. I knew all along.”

  “Doing triage is part of your job. You save lives. All I did was kill people. What I did to Rose…”

  “I’ve given a lot of thought about Rose, actually.” Lily squeezed his hand a little tighter. “I’ve thought about all of it a great deal and something occurred to me.” She turned to look at Sam. He stared at a fixed spot on the floor as if bracing himself for an incoming shell.

  “When you talked about Rose, you said that she thanked you.”

  Sam nodded.

  “Did any of the others thank you? Seem eager to touch you?”

  Sam tilted his head, sorting through his memories. “Some of them, yes. And Rose…she said something else.” He lifted his gaze to her. “She said, ‘I know what you are.’”

  “And yet, she still reached for you.”

  “That doesn’t excuse what I’ve done.”

  “You have to consider, Sam, that you don’t even know what you were. Maybe you weren’t an Angel of Death. Maybe you were sent as something else. Maybe these people were dying anyway, and you were a hand to hold when they most needed comfort.”

  He released her grip and rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin.

  “We have no way of knowing because I’m never going to do it again.” His voice shook with intensity. “Even if you’re right and I’m providing some kind of comfor
t. I won’t take another life, Lily. I can’t.”

  She inhaled deeply. No matter what she said, she knew he’d carry the responsibility with him, shoulder the guilt. It was just who Sam was.

  “But I can’t help but wonder what happens next. If you have another seizure and refuse to—do that thing you must do in order to end it…”

  “Take a life?” Sam asked, his tone bitter. “Become a killer again?”

  She looked into his mournful eyes. “How will your seizure end if you refuse to cooperate?”

  He squeezed her hand. “I have every motivation in the world to never induce another one. I shouldn’t think it would happen.”

  She pulled back. She nearly asked for his word of honor on the subject, but remembering the last time he’d given his word to not induce another seizure, only to break it a few hours later, she held her tongue.

  He wrapped an arm about her waist. “You understand that I was only forcing myself to seize out of a sense of duty in the first place. Laid up in the hospital, these trips seemed the only way to help my comrades. And when I thought I could save someone from New Bedlam—I had to try.”

  “I know, Sam. I truly understand. Had it been me, I’d have tried as well. I suppose I can’t help but worry for you should you have another one,” Lily said cautiously.

  “They seem to be only caused by light, and even then, they’re becoming more and more difficult to trigger. I nearly failed on my last attempt.”

  A tear trailed down her cheek. He lifted his thumb to her cheek and wiped it away tenderly.

  At that simple gesture, she flew apart—like a flock of birds breaking apart midair. All the sorrow and death of the last few days burst down in a terrific storm. As her tears began to fall, he gathered her in his arms. He held her tightly, rubbing a hand across her back in a there-there motion. He said nothing. He didn’t have to. It was part of their easy comfort that had been there from the beginning, inexplicably even when he’d still been sleeping.

  When her squall passed, he didn’t release his grip and she couldn’t pull away. She stayed there surrounded by his warmth, the thud-thud of his heart beating steadily. His fingertips rubbed little soothing circles on her back.