Silence for the Dead(109)

“No.”

He groaned gently. “Dear God. Give me a moment.”

“You don’t have a moment. Take it off.”

He pulled it up to my waist. “Just your legs are killing me.”

I was laughing now. “Jack, stop it.”

“Any higher and I may die.”

I pulled the fabric from his hands and wrenched the entire nightgown off over my head, dropping it to the floor in one motion. And then I was on the bed with him, on his lap, my legs wrapped around his waist, and we were kissing again, and his hands were traveling everywhere on me. I wanted them everywhere at once. His skin was beautiful in the dimmed, lazy morning light, and I felt the muscles move in his back, the bones of his shoulder blades. His hands cupped my breasts and I laid my cheek on his shoulder, reveling in the sensation of it, the scent of his skin.

He lifted my head a little and kissed his way up the side of my neck, under my ear. He was very, very good at this, I was noticing. “Jack,” I whispered, “I’m nervous. You’re going to have to be gentle with me.”

His teeth scraped my earlobe, and if I hadn’t already been sitting, I would have dissolved into a heap of wet lust. Well, perhaps not exactly gentle. “I mean it,” I said. “I didn’t think I would ever do this, so I haven’t practiced.”

“That makes no sense,” he pointed out. Before I could argue, he tenderly nipped the skin behind my ear, and when I shivered and moaned, he slid his hands under me and pulled me even closer, wrapping my legs more tightly around his waist. “I think you’ll be very good at it,” he said into my ear, and then he pulled away and looked at me. I thought I was about to die. “But you know,” he said, “if it makes you feel better, there’s a way that we—well, that you can be on top.”

I stared at him. “There is?”

He watched as the possibilities struck me, and the smile he gave me was slow and nothing if not wicked. “Oh,” he said. “This is going to be fun.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN


The ambulances arrived before supper. We were ready, all of us: the sick prepared for evacuation, the staff and the able-bodied patients standing under the front portico, waiting. Nina and I had even emptied Matron’s safe and the cabinet of the men’s belongings, putting all of it in a box that now sat between us. A second box contained some of Matron’s most important files. When Matron was well, she would want them.

This time, when the ambulances pulled up, we had no argument. Paulus helped the attendants load the sick as the sun stayed high in the clear sky of the long summer day.

An ambulance attendant balked when he saw our boxes. “No one said anything about this,” he said. “Are you sure it’s important?”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“If it’s so important,” another attendant broke in, “just come back for it. This place isn’t going anywhere.”

I glanced at Nina, and then at the others. We were all thinking the same thing. Jack’s blue eyes were dark. Even Paulus looked a little pale.

“We won’t be back,” I assured the attendant. “Load the boxes.”

We pulled away in a convoy down the long, muddy drive. I didn’t look back as the house receded behind me. And even though I couldn’t see them, I knew none of the others looked back either.

? ? ?

In the end, we lost four patients.

It was the likely outcome of influenza. Everyone knew that. I knew that. Twenty-one had fallen sick. That seventeen had recovered was a good ratio. We’ve seen waves of it over the last year, the doctor at the hospital in Newcastle on Tyne told me. It’s different strains, I think. This one was not particularly bad.

Four men buried. Not particularly bad.

George Naylor, with the gap in his teeth, was one of them, his weakened constitution having done him in. The ones who didn’t die were sick, or weak, for weeks. Matron had a constitution of iron and was one of the first to recover; Boney, ever her faithful servant, followed shortly after, sitting up in bed with flushed cheeks and trying to give orders before passing out into sleep. I nodded at her and told her I’d do everything she said. She never remembered what she’d told me, anyway.

Martha was one of the sickest. We thought, for a long time, that she wouldn’t make it. But Martha had always been stronger than her fragile body appeared.

Matron had Nina and me sit at her bedside. Even in sickness, she knew everything, absolutely everything. “Paperwork,” she told us. “Each man must have a transfer form.” There was separate paperwork for the men who had died, arrangements to be made to send their bodies back to their families or, if their families refused, to have them buried.

Matron was concerned about Douglas West, Archie Childress, and Captain Mabry, whose flesh wound required only a bandage and a pair of crutches. The hospital had discharged Mabry as quickly as they could, claiming it needed beds. We’d put the three of them in temporary housing under the supposed care of Paulus Vries.

“I do hope he is maintaining their routine,” Matron fretted. “Rest and routine are essential to their mental state.” Nina and I nodded, not bothering to tell her that Paulus’s “care” translated to drinking in the pubs of Newcastle on Tyne and trying—with what success I had no idea, nor did I ask—to pick up girls, while West and Archie smoked cigars and played cards, gambling matchsticks back and forth.