“Since I was on my way here anyway, I offered to escort them. Yet this is my final day in Wessex until the autumn comes. Miss Jones, I want you to know that I sincerely wish you well. And I hope you know what you’re doing.”
I definitely, definitely don’t.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again,” Westcliffe said, and gave my elbow one last squeeze before moving off.
“This is very hard, I know,” I heard Chloe saying. “But you’re a good man, a strong man. You’re going to be fine. Look at me, now. You’re going to be fine.”
“Oh God, oh God, I wish I were dead. I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
“No, of course not,” lied Lady Chloe, and smiled.
Chapter 14
Sophia was here now. Chloe was here now.
So, naturally, dinner became an exercise in exquisitely mannered persecution.
For evening meals the dining chamber was aglow with candlelight, twelve silver, twisty-armed candelabras stationed in a row down the center of the table, twelve more reflected back at us from the shiny black windows, countless dancing bright flames. There were vases of flowers dotting the table as well, along with salt cellars and frilled glass dishes holding rainbows of perfectly arranged hard, round candies that I was dying to taste but knew better than to try. They seemed like someone’s idea of cheerful decoration.
At Iverson, Sophia had been at the far end of our table and her stepsister at another table entirely. But tonight Sophia sat directly across from me and Chloe was just two chairs to my left, a hapless young army fellow stuck between us. It was clear by the time the soup was served she’d already fixed stars in his eyes.
To my right was yet another officer, but silver-haired and mustachioed, who’d granted me a nod and a grunt before getting down to the business of eating.
Mrs. Westcliffe would not have approved of dining sans conversation, but I did. If only I could as easily avoid Sophia’s knowing gaze, and Chloe’s light, venomous chatter, which kept floating my way.
“ … so happy to be here, of course! To do my part. It’s the least one might expect of a girl in my position. After all, you boys are doing all the real work. Only a fool would imagine that a mere summer of volunteer nursing would compare to your sacrifice.”
“Er,” said the man.
“But I told Mamá I simply had to do something. I simply couldn’t spend the summer acting as if everything was normal. You know, attending dances and dinner parties and all those silly things. So I told her I was coming here to help, and no argument about it, if you please!”
“That’s awfully kind of you, my lady.”
“Oh, it’s nothing! Nothing at all! And naturally my little sister had to come along, too. She’s so adorable, simply has to follow wherever I go! Isn’t that adorable?”
“Quite,” replied the man, practically melting in his chair.
“But both of us followed Eleanore,” pointed out Sophia, smiling with exaggerated benevolence over her sauced turbot. “And that’s even more adorable, don’t you think?”
“Who?” said the fellow.
I concentrated on my own turbot, taking apart the fish flake by flake with my fork.
Chloe murmured something, and the army man said, “Oh!” and shifted and darted me a look.
“ … rather a wretched case, really.” She slanted closer to the man, ensuring that neither of us would miss a word. “I heard she had nowhere else to go. Poor dear, she’s just the most piteous creature. A charity girl, you know. It was either here or the streets for her.”
“A shame,” said the man.
Chloe shook her head sadly. “And she’s just so hopeless, you know? Of course, I don’t mean that in an unkind way!”
“Of course not!”
“It’s just … well, did you see what happened today? When I first arrived?”
“No.”
“She made a huge mess of things in the induction room. Couldn’t listen to anyone, couldn’t follow orders. Even at school, she was always the girl who couldn’t manage to get anything right.”
“There’s always someone like that around,” whispered the man conspiratorially.
“True,” Chloe agreed, pouty and ravishing, batting her comely brown lashes. “There’s always someone.”
I leaned out of my chair, pried loose one of the decorative hard candies from its place, and popped it in my mouth.
It tasted a lot less like sugar and a lot more like salt, but I kept eating it. It was either that or chuck it at Chloe.
Across the table, Sophia only smiled.
He watched her at dinner.
He watched her all the time, he supposed, but dinner was easiest, because they were both stationary at the table, trapped for five full courses at least, and even though he could no longer seat her at his side—the chief nurse now had that honor; Lottie Clayworth, who seemed thoroughly happy to remain at Tranquility for the duration of the war, as long as she got to complain about it, had his other elbow—anyway, even though he could no longer have her next to him, Lora was still at the table, which was good enough.
So he could watch her. Providing he was stealthy about it, he could do it for minutes at a time.
Armand had perfected his stealth years ago. He knew all the tricks: how to keep his lashes down but his gaze up; how to smile without smiling; how to listen without reacting. How to walk without sound, to embrace the shadows. He even knew the trickiest trick of them alclass="underline" how to shine in public so brightly no one noticed what he was really about, because all they saw was dazzle.
He was especially good at that.
Every evening, Armand and the officers and doctors and nurses gathered at the table to enjoy Cook’s best efforts. The conversation tended to be vague and genial and unequivocally impersonal. Charts, medicines, village life. Most of the men balked at discussing anything more serious with the women around. Had Mandy nothing else to consider, he’d be bored out of his skull.
But he had her, just seven chairs down to his left. Eleanore Jones, who ate with such a tension about her he wondered that she didn’t crack apart into pieces, and even that was fascinating. Head down, unspeaking, quick small bites. Like someone was always about to snatch away her plate.
He’d noticed how she winced at the electrical lights, so he’d banished them from the meals, relying upon candles instead. He’d told the colonel in charge of the hospital that he thought it best if they reserved the generator oil for the soldiers’ needs, which got him another Dashed good thinking, old chap from the military machine.
But Armand was a charlatan, a dazzler. The soldiers could have all the oil; he didn’t care. He’d wanted the candles for her. Because she winced at the electrical lights. Because when they were on, she wouldn’t look at them or walk beneath them.
And because, for some reason, that hurt him. The lights themselves never hurt him—he had no notion why they bothered her—but watching her having to be so careful, watching her eat like a starved dog on a chain, watching her coiled so tight in her chair and avoiding the eyes of everyone around her, finishing first, waiting without words, never asking for more—
It hurt him. It infuriated him. He wanted her to have everything she ever wanted, and he wanted to be the one to give it to her. And how delightfully ironic, how ridiculously sidesplitting it was that the only thing she really wanted was something—someone—Armand could not give.