The shrapnel had been removed from his side and leg, but the injuries weren’t healing properly. This morning he had discovered that the skin around them was red and tight. The prospect of falling seriously ill in this place was frightening.

Yesterday, despite the outraged protests of the soldiers in the long row of beds, the orderlies had begun to sew a man into his own bloodstained blanket, and take him to the communal burial pit before he had quite finished dying. In response to the patients’ angry cries, the orderlies replied that the man was insensible, and was only minutes away from death, and the bed was desperately needed. All of which was true. However, as one of the few men able to leave his bed, Christopher had interceded, telling them he would wait with the man on the floor until he had breathed his last. For an hour he had sat on the hard stone, brushing away insects, letting the man’s head rest on his uninjured leg.

“You think you did any good for him?” one of the orderlies asked sardonically, when the poor fellow had finally passed away, and Christopher had allowed them to take him.

“Not for him,” Christopher said, his voice low. “But perhaps for them.” He had nodded in the direction of the rows of ragged cots, where the patients lay and watched. It was important for them to believe that if or when their time came, they would be treated with at least a flicker of humanity.

The young soldier in the bed next to Christopher’s was unable to do much of anything for himself, as he had lost an entire arm, and a hand off the other one. Since there were no nurses to spare, Christopher had undertaken to feed him. Wincing and flinching as he knelt by the cot, he lifted the man’s head and helped him to drink from the cup of broth.

“Captain Phelan,” came the crisp voice of one of the Sisters of Charity. With her stern demeanor and forbidding expression, the nun was so intimidating that some of the soldiers had suggested—out of her hearing, of course—that if she were dispatched to fight the Russians, the war would be won in a matter of hours.

Her bristly gray brows rose as she saw Christopher beside the patient’s cot. “Making trouble again?” she asked. “You will return to your own bed, Captain. And do not leave it again . . . unless your intention is to make yourself so ill that we’ll be forced to keep you here indefinitely.”

Obediently Christopher lurched back into his cot.

She came to him and laid a cool hand on his brow.

“Fever,” he heard her announce. “Do not move from this bed, or I’ll have you tied to it, Captain.” Her hand was withdrawn, and something was placed on his chest.

Slitting his eyes open, Christopher saw that she had given him a packet of letters.

Prudence.

He seized it eagerly, fumbling in his eagerness to break the seal.

There were two letters in the packet.

He waited until the sister had left before he opened the one from Prudence. The sight of her handwriting engulfed him with emotion. He wanted her, needed her, with an intensity he couldn’t contain.

Somehow, half a world away, he had fallen in love with her. It didn’t matter that he hardly knew her. What little he knew of her, he loved.

Christopher read the few spare lines.

The words seemed to rearrange themselves like a child’s alphabet game. He puzzled over them until they became coherent.

“. . . I’m not who you think I am . . . please come home and find me . . .”

His lips formed her name soundlessly. He put his hand over his chest, trapping the letter against his rough heartbeat.

What had happened to Prudence?

The strange, impulsive note aroused a tumult in him.

“I’m not who you think I am,” he found himself repeating inaudibly.

No, of course she was not. Neither was he. He was not this broken, feverish creature on a hospital cot, and she was not the vapid flirt everyone had taken her to be. Through their letters, they had found the promise of more in each other.

“. . . please come home and find me . . .”

His hands felt swollen and tight as he fumbled with the other letter, from Audrey. The fever was making him clumsy. His head had begun to ache . . . vicious throbbing . . . he had to read the words in between the pulses of pain.

Dear Christopher,

There is no way for me to express this gently. John’s condition has worsened. He is facing the prospect of death with the same patience and grace that he has shown during his life. By the time this letter reaches you, there is no doubt that he will be gone . . .

Christopher’s mind closed against the rest of it. Later there would be time to read more. Time to grieve.

John wasn’t supposed to be ill. He was supposed to stay safe in Stony Cross and father children with Audrey. He was supposed to be there when Christopher came back home.

Christopher managed to huddle on his side. He tugged the blanket high enough to create a shelter for himself. Around him, the other soldiers continued to pass the time . . . talking, playing cards when possible. Mercifully, deliberately, they paid him no attention, allowing him the privacy he needed.

Chapter Six

There had been no correspondence from Christopher Phelan in the ten months after Beatrix had last written to him. He had exchanged letters with Audrey, but in her grief over John’s death, Audrey found it difficult to talk to anyone, even Beatrix.

Christopher had been wounded, Audrey relayed, but he had recovered in the hospital and returned to battle. Hunting constantly for any mention of Christopher in the newspapers, Beatrix found innumerable accounts of his bravery. During the months-long siege of Sebastopol, he had become the most decorated soldier of the artillery. Not only had Christopher been awarded the order of the Bath, and the Crimea campaign medal with clasps for Alma, Inkerman, Balaklava, and Sebastopol, he had also been made a knight of the Legion of Honor by the French, and had received the Medjidie from the Turks.