Carla Kelly (20 page)

“I suppose you are expecting me to share with you,” Elinore whispered.

“I am. It’s the least you can do for an amazingly proficient animal doctor.”

She laughed and spread a smaller blanket by the fire and took off her shoes, then turned away from the sleeping men and unbuttoned her waist. She lay down then, and Jesse joined her, pulling the blanket over both of them. She turned to face him. “How far do you think we came today?”

He thought a moment. “Probably no more than ten miles.”

She was silent then, and he thought she had fallen asleep. He knew his own eyes were closing when she touched his face with her fingertips, and put her lips close to his ear. “Thank you for listening to me.”

“M’mm.” He wanted to say something profound that would melt her heart, but his brain seemed to be melting and sliding out his ears.

“Jesse?”

“Mmm.”

“Was that Randall luck? If so, I think it is odd, indeed.”

He woke, hours later, to the sound of horses. Whether they were across the river or closer he could not tell. He knew he should look around, but Elinore was close against him and his hand had somehow found its way inside her unbuttoned waist. If I move, I will wake her, he thought. He lay still, enjoying her warmth and the feel of her.

He listened more intently, and convinced himself it was but one rider, two at most. Senor Maldonado is a conscientious host, he thought. Let us pray, though, that he left the dog behind.

Jesse’s eyes began to close. Elinore sighed and burrowed closer. I must be imagining things, he reasoned, or Harper would be on his feet by now. Funny about Harper. Perhaps
I have been underestimating him. He breathed in the fragrance of Elinore’s hair and closed his eyes. I wonder, Hippocrates, how many others I have been underestimating. Am
I
in that census?

H
e decided in the morning that the horsemen had been his imagination. Elinore shook her head when he asked if she had heard anything. Harper frowned, and Jesse saw the concern on his face, and an even more unexpected reaction: shame. “Gor, Captain, I should have heard something. Some soldier I am.”

With surprising ease, Jesse resisted the urge to make one of his patented cuts at Harper’s military prowess. He knew that only yesterday he would have done so, but the sight last night of Harper alert at the campsite waiting for him and Elinore to return changed his mind. “Do not trouble yourself with it,” he said instead. “I could very well have imagined the entire episode. In fact, I think that likely.” He knew Harper was not convinced, but he noticed something else, too. He smiled. “We’re all a bit edgy, what?”

Harper smiled back. “Aye, sir,” he replied. He hesitated.

“Go on, man, speak.”

Harper looked at Elinore, who was folding the blankets, and lowered his voice. “Sir, if she gets tired, give me a sign. I can always carry her. She can’t weigh much.”

Oh, Hippocrates, who would call me sentimental after all these years of war? Jesse thought as the tears started behind his eyelids. He touched Harper’s arm and nodded. He realized with a start, that despite his closeness to the soldiers by the nature of his work, he was in deep danger at that moment of seeing this bumbling, inept scoundrel as a man. The moment was only reinforced when Harper cleared his throat again.

“Captain, I know you can throw me in the stockade for what I’m going to say.”

Jesse looked around elaborately. “Not a stockade in sight, Private.”

“Captain, I know you married her on the quick,” he whispered, “but I’m thinking—excuse me—that maybe…” He stopped, looked at the ground, and gave a short laugh. “Gor, who would think I would ever blush?” He looked Jesse in the eye then, his expression kindly. “You love her, sir, don’t you? We’ll see that she gets to the border, no matter what.” He looked down again. “Wilkie and I just wanted you to know.”

You’re a braver man than I am, Private, Jesse thought. I haven’t even the courage to look you in the eye after that statement. “Thank you,” he whispered, his eyes on the tree line beyond the river. “I can’t tell you what that means to me to know that.”

“Gor, sir, I think you just did. Like I said: she can’t weigh much.”

Then he was gone to help Wilkie with the bedrolls and argue about the remaining ham. Jesse watched him and thought of his
maestro
, who had reminded him, after he hooded him at graduation, to learn something new every day.

Senor Maldonado’s word was good. When they finished breakfast, the bailiff arrived with a wagon. “I can’t take you any farther than Torquemada,” he told Elinore, who translated. “Senora, but
mi jefe
wants his cart off the road if the French are nearby.”

“We understand, senor,” she replied, and favored him with her sunniest smile, which only made him blush, then tug at his collar, good Spaniard that he was. “Please tell Senor Maldonado that we are in his debt.”

“I didn’t mean to embarrass him, but it is so easy with Spanish men,” she said to Jesse as he helped her into the wagon, which was loaded with sacks of grain. She patted his cheek. “They are almost as shy as you are, Captain. Jesse.”

“Or you?” he teased in turn.

Or me, she thought, even as she nerved herself to smile at him, too, and wonder how shy he really was. She had wakened once last night to feel his hand inside her unbuttoned waist, next to her shimmy, his fingers warm. She could tell from his breathing that he was deep in sleep, and
she enjoyed the moment with its irrational sense again of safety in a world where there was no safety.

Before she returned to sleep, she had lightly traced her finger down one of his fingers, and wondered if a prerequisite to matriculation in medical school demanded that all surgeons have elegant hands. She had seen them wrist-deep in blood before, or spattered with less exalted detritus from the bodies of his patients, and there he was last night, his hand pressed to her stomach, holding her close. She didn’t know why it should touch her, but it did. How long have I
really
been in your care? she asked herself, then dismissed the idea as profoundly stupid.

She looked at his back as he seated himself beside the bailiff. He was not a tall man, or even particularly robust-looking. He took off his cap to scratch his head, and she admired the deep red of his hair, long now, and curling around his uniform collar. I should probably offer to trim that, she thought.

“From the way you admire him, I think you repose more confidence in Captain Randall than I do.”

“Beg pardon?” She looked in surprise at the Frenchman, who sat behind her, sacks of grain between them. When he did not reply, she said, “I did not know your English was so polished, monsieur.”

He shrugged, and leaned back against the grain, closing his eyes. “Life is full of surprises, Madame Randall,” he said, when she thought he was asleep.

She debated all morning if she should tell Jesse. He will think I am too suspicious, she decided, and resigned herself to the bumpy ride. It’s no crime to speak excellent English. She took another look at the man before turning her attention to the view.

She did take time to mention the matter to her husband when they stopped at noon, pulling him aside. He listened carefully, inclining his head toward her. In fact, they were almost touching, and she felt again that irrational comfort. “I suppose I am being foolish,” she concluded, aware of his proximity, rather than the message she carried.

“I’ve never noticed that foolishness was one of your traits, Elinore,” he replied.

What are my characteristics? she wanted to ask. Tell me
about myself, from your point of view. Do I look different from your perspective than I do from my own? “I just don’t like to feel suspicious,” she said, almost wincing at the lameness of her words, especially when his head was touching hers now. She put her hand on his arm to steady herself, and in another moment found herself in his embrace, there in the clearing at bright noon, with everyone looking on.

He didn’t do anything but hold her. Not that she was planning to kiss him, she told herself, but what a pleasure to stand so close. Why am I doing this? she thought. More to the point, why is he?

He offered no explanation, at least not until they realized that they were standing there with others’ eyes on them, and pulled away slightly. “Better?” he asked, and she nodded. He released her, then pointed her toward the trees. “Go on, now. I’ll stand here and give you a little privacy. Can’t be pleasant, being the only woman in this army.”

She did as he said, relieving herself in the shade of a tree nearly bare of cover, but sheltering, all the same. I wonder what it is like to have a room for a commode, and perhaps even a bath. As she straightened her skirts again, she thought of her mother and the other women of the baggage train, who would gather around each other in a circle on those long crossings of the Spanish plains, facing out and spreading their skirts while one of their number took a turn inside their protection. “Oh, Mama,” she murmured, even as the tears came. It was such a homely situation, but she suddenly wanted her mother.

She couldn’t hide the tears in her eyes when she left the trees and found the surgeon standing there, his back to her. “Thank you,” she said, and she knew her voice was unsteady. “I think this is when I miss my mother most and the other women,” she said, bringing up what she knew was a topic men and women left unsaid. He only looked at her, noted her tears, and regarded her with no embarrassment.

“If you need to relieve yourself oftener than we stop, just let me know,” he told her as he took her arm and walked with her back to the clearing. “Don’t hold back, just because you’re shy.” He nudged her, and she couldn’t help laughing.

She was still smiling when they started again. Jesse decided to walk, and Harper helped Wilkie into the wagon. “His wound’s plaguing him, Mrs. Randall. Right, Wilkie?”

“Bugger off,” Wilkie said succinctly. “Pardon me, Mrs. Randall.” He settled himself carefully beside a grain sack, tilted his cap over his eyes and was soon asleep. Or so she thought, until she noticed him raising up now and then to take a long look at Armand Leger, who glared back. Harper the slouch and cut purse, and Wilkie the malingerer and opportunist, Elinore thought, and both of you my protectors.

She watched the Frenchman, who sat, his knees drawn up, staring at nothing. When he helped her into the wagon, Jesse had asked her to see if she could draw him out, but there was nothing about the man that invited conversation. He even sat with one shoulder raised, as though ready to ward off inquiry. In for a penny, she thought. “Monsieur Leger, I suppose this is not my business, but since we must exist together until the Portuguese border, why is it that you are fleeing the French? One would think….”

He stopped her with a stare that could have drilled through iron. “You are right, Madame Randall; my affairs
are
none of your business.” He closed his eyes and turned away, shutting her off as surely as if he had slammed a door between them.

Her cheeks burned. Count to ten, Nellie. She did. “I apologize for intruding on your affairs, monsieur,” she said quietly. “I will not do it again.” She glanced at Wilkie, who shrugged and composed himself for sleep as well, now that his chief reason for riding was incommunicado.

The oxen were slow, but they traveled at least twice as far that day as they could have on foot. When dusk came—that time when she began to feel uneasy, despite the presence of the other men and the bailiff and his two riders—they stopped at a village not far from Torquemada. “I am going now to Baltanas,” he told her in Spanish, naming a village to the east. “I know that you wish to stay on the road to Valladolid.” Jesse helped her from the wagon, and she thanked the bailiff for his assistance.

They stood in the plaza, attracting a small crowd. She stood close to Jesse. No one looked particularly angry, but she could see no welcome, either. “I think they just wish we would all go away,” she whispered.

“I have been feeling that for two or three years now,” Jesse whispered back. He took her arm formally in his. “Come, my dear. There is the church. That is always the place to begin in Spain.”

The priest stood at the door of his sanctuary, from the look on his face no less wary than his parishioners. “Here I go,” Elinore said, and released her hold on her husband. With enthusiasm she did not feel, she introduced them, and invited the priest to summon his parish in the morning for sick call. In exchange for the services of the Royal Army’s Medical Corps, their only request was a meal, a place to spend the night, and perhaps some food in the morning.

When she finished, the priest invited them inside to share his evening meal of lentil soup, bread, and a small sausage shaved thin so all could have a taste. Another poor village, she thought. How they must dread it when even a remnant of the British army shows up like hungry relatives. She knew that Jesse suffered the same thoughts, from the way he refused seconds, even though she knew he must be hungry.

Through her, the priest asked Jesse if he could visit an old fellow that night who was troubled with boils. “He could wait for morning, senora—please tell your husband that—but I fear it would be like the crippled man at the Pool of Siloam. Others would rush in front, and he will never see the physician.”

The priest shook his head when she offered to interpret. “We will manage,” he assured her. “He has lived alone for years, and pretty ladies only frighten him.”

Harper insisted on accompanying the two men. Her cloak tight around her, she stood on the church steps until the chill drove her inside. Wilkie had spread out his bedroll and wrapped himself in it. In a few moments, he was snoring. She wished there was a spot with some warmth in the sanctuary, but there was none. She spread out their two blankets and sat down, hoping the cold from the stones would not seep into her dress.

“Mrs. Randall, may I join you?”

She looked up in surprise at the Frenchman, who had said nothing more to her all afternoon. She had almost forgotten he was even there. “Yes, certainly,” she said, knowing that she did not want him there and not relishing another rebuff.