While I feasted in the elegant dining saloon on board, partaking of lamb potpie, succotash, and galantines of turkey with aspic jelly, Miss Sloane had been quite unable to keep anything down. Not even her indignation. Looking back over her shoulder, she glared. “Are you sketching me while I retch at the rail?”
It was too late to hide my charcoal pencil. “You know I hate to keep idle!”
“You might’ve kept more usefully employed by reading handbooks on nursing, in case we’re asked to render assistance to the soldiers for whom our Lafayette kits are intended.”
I ignored this, shading in her jawline. “I’ll do my best not to make you look too thin, but we need to get a little food into you.”
Miss Sloane groaned. “You must have an iron stomach to talk about food while the sea roils beneath us.”
“Oh, but I enjoy tumultuous seas,” I said brightly. “It brings back memories of my honeymoon. Did I ever tell you how Willie and I got caught in a storm? We were trapped in that sloop, flinging our sodden bodies against the keel to keep the boat from capsizing. We came ashore on some hellish beach infested with stinging red ants—”
“That sounds abominable,” she said.
I smiled almost against my will at the memory. “Oh, but it was the time of our lives . . .”
I remembered using gas lamps to flush out alligators. Willie taught me to shoot them right between the eyes and roast them over a fire. We made love to the music of marsh waters against the side of the boat, and what a man he was, all hard-bodied, every glorious muscle straining. He made me feel like a wild adventuress, game for anything. Like we were perfectly matched, an unbreakable team. Like we could fight the whole world together and win . . .
How could a fire that had burned so hot now be reduced to such cold ash? This was not, of course, a question to be ruminated upon. Especially not with my in-laws on board. As they approached our sunny spot on deck, Emily said, “Mrs. Chapman, would you inform your sister-in-law that it’s ill-mannered to sketch a woman in digestive distress?”
“You poor dear,” said my sister-in-law, fluttering over Emily with nurturing concern. “Fortunately, we’re nearly ashore.”
The Chapmans were eager to see Victor. What’s more, they expected my assistance in convincing him to accept a transfer to the air corps, but I doubted I’d remain his favorite aunt if I were to involve myself in this scheme. No, I was neutral in this respect, and so I was determined to remain!
“I’m hoping Willie’s driver will take us straight to Paris,” my sister-in-law was saying.
And my pencil came to a standstill. I glanced up, a little perturbed. “Willie sent his driver?”
“Hasn’t he?” my sister-in-law asked. “Why, Beatrice, I assumed you’d cabled ahead.”
Though she knew perfectly well that Willie and I lived separate lives, she’d deluded herself into believing otherwise. Now it was my unhappy duty to remind her—and myself—of the truth. “Mr. Chanler is occupied with his own affairs, and I shouldn’t like to trouble him.”
Jack Chapman growled, “If the railway is clogged, his motor would be useful.”
Well, then, perhaps you should have arranged for it, I thought. This was, of course, uncharitable. With a son at the front, the Chapmans had enough on their minds. Had I been selfish not to warn Willie we were coming? But, no, if I’d told my husband I was returning to France, he’d have forbidden it, and that I could not risk. It’d been difficult enough to leave my boys behind with their governess; it would’ve been so much worse to do so against their father’s express command.
Bordeaux was the center of aid shipments from America, and in disembarking, we navigated a veritable maze of wooden crates and iron-banded barrels—most destined for mule-driven carts, because horses had been requisitioned by the military. Since every able-bodied Frenchman was at the front, most of the loading was done by old men and women in clogs—and it was slow going. The American Relief Clearing House—or ARCH, as we called it—wanted us to unload our Lafayette kits for transport to the front lines as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, hours passed before Emily and I finished the necessary paperwork and received the appropriate permissions. Our only consolation was that amongst those on hand to greet us and get us settled into war relief work in Paris were two impressive Frenchwomen who offered to take us, and our ambulance, to Paris.
With a hand on her hip and a foot propped on the running board of a gray military lorry, the elder introduced herself as Marie-Louise LeVerrier, vice president of the Union Fran?aise pour le Suffrage des Femmes. In no-nonsense boots and with her hair in a bun, she explained that before the war, she had been both an educator and staunch suffragette. Now, in the cause of helping war refugees, she’d teamed up with the elegant Clara Simon, who had married into a family with ties to the Rothschilds and served as editrix of a women’s magazine. Both women shared our sensibilities about the war and had even less patience for the Woman’s Peace Party than we did.