A Rose in No-Man's Land (8 page)

Within a short time they pulled up in the courtyard of an imposing white hotel. A slight gust of wind rustled the wispy silkiness of her robe as Mark helped her alight. She gasped with pleasure. Palm trees swayed in the breeze, and the perfumes of exotic spices permeated the night air. The massive front entrance hall was tiled in blue and white interlocking triangles.

They handed their shawls to a young English soldier, who also took the men’s caps before escorting them into an enormous ballroom.

Amy clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, this is pure magic. Everything and more than I dreamed it would be.”

English and Australian officers and their ladies sat at tables set out at various intervals around an oval dance floor. Nurses, from their own and the English hospitals, made up the majority of female personnel, and she waved to several girls she worked with.

Their table, situated near double glass doors, overlooked the garden. The high domed ceiling was frescoed in several shades of blue, highlighted with gold leaf. Flickering flames in braziers along the walls added a pagan beauty to the whole scene. Amy had a sense of living in a past millennium, as if they had been transported back in time. If Cleopatra suddenly appeared it would not have been surprising.

“Oh, Mark, I can hardly believe it.” Excitement surged through her. “It’s like something out of the Arabian nights.”

“This place used to be a palace many years ago, then a hotel, and now the British have commandeered it to house some of their senior staff officers.”

The orchestra sat on a raised platform at one end of the room, and when they struck up a tune, Mark asked, “Would you care to dance?”

Such pure magic being held in his arms, feeling his warm breath lifting her loosened strands of hair, smelling the fragrant spicy scent of his skin. Unthinkingly, she melted into him, and pain drove lance-like through her heart when he stiffened away.

“Amy, please. Someone might notice.”

“I don’t care if they do, but if you’re frightened of your reputation…” Raw hurt edged her voice.

“Damn it. I’m thinking of your good name.”

“Are you?” She danced liked a wooden doll.

“Somehow word got out about some of my, um, previous activities. I met a couple of English officers I knew from Kent, and one of them obviously couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

“Oh, I see.” She tried pulling away, but his fingers biting into the flesh of her waist stalled her escape.

“For God’s sake.” The metallic ring to his voice deepened it. He shook her slightly. “Your reputation would be ruined if we were seen to be keeping company.”

“I don’t care.” She tossed her head defiantly. “We could be in battle soon. Please, Mark, there’s so little time for us.”

“My lovely, lovely Amy.” His voice roughened. “Right from the very start we had no future together. I should do the decent thing and stay away from you.”

The music stopped. As he escorted her back to their table, Ella, accompanied by an English colonel, waylaid them.

“Amy, Captain Tremayne, isn’t it a grand evening?” Her greeting sounded formal and correct if taken on face value, but Amy felt the undercurrents rippling near the surface.

As Ella stared into Mark’s face, Amy’s stomach curdled with distaste. Burning hunger and sheer carnal desire darkened her eyes to a deep jade.

“Colonel Justice, let me introduce you to Captain Mark Tremayne and Sister Amy Smithfield.”

“Good evening, sir.” Amy forced the words past a gigantic lump in her throat.

“Good evening, Sister. Are all your nurses as lovely as this, Ella?”

The oily tones and knowing smile of this middle-aged lothario nauseated Amy, but she couldn’t let it show. The four of them exchanged polite chitchat. Wasn’t it hot during the day, but yes, they were compensated by such wonderful evenings. All the while, Ella’s hungry gaze devoured Mark. A black satin gown with low-cut neckline displayed her perfect cleavage. Her full lips, colored in bright red paint, made Amy feel as drab as a little field mouse.

“The music has started again.” Ella gave a tinkling laugh that slithered like icicles against Amy’s heated skin. “Clive, dear, you dance with Amy. I’ve something to discuss with Captain Tremayne.”

“My pleasure, Sister Amy.” The colonel clicked his heels. “Shall we?”

She wanted to snap, “No, we shan’t.” She could do nothing but accept with as much grace as possible and accompany him back to the dance floor. As they joined the waltz, she tried to hold herself away from him. She gasped in shock, then quickly turned it into a cough, on seeing Mark following Ella out onto the terrace.

She forced herself to follow the colonel’s lead and answer the questions he kept firing at her. What slack, over-moist lips he had. Revulsion crawled over her flesh as his hot, sweaty hand touched her bare skin.

When he escorted her back to where Guy sat with another captain whom she didn’t know, Mark had still not returned. The way Ella stared at him… The possessive way she annexed him… Were they lovers?

She loathed herself for thinking such vile thoughts, but jealous suspicion seeped into every core of her being, poisoning her mind. Mark did love her, she dared not doubt it, but Ella was an alluring, experienced woman. How long could a man not used to denying himself female pleasure remain immune? How long could their doomed relationship last? When, not if, would Mark decide he no longer wanted the celibacy Amy’s career imposed upon him? Her dreams of marriage and children had been cast to the four winds because she chose the wrong man to love.

“Are you all right?” Guy stared at her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m just a little hot. Colonel Justice is an energetic dancer.” She disguised the anguish in her voice.

Ella, with flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes, glided in from the terrace. Passing Amy without acknowledging her existence, she made straight for a table on the far side of the room. Amy waited a few moments, but when Mark did not appear she excused herself to Guy and drifted toward the terrace.

A cool breeze caressed her burning cheeks as she ventured into the darkness.

“What are you doing here?” She jumped when Mark spoke almost at her elbow.

“Searching for you.”

“Did you think I’d deserted you?” His voice held a soft intimacy.

“No, well, yes. You were gone a long time.” It sounded pathetic, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “When Ella came back without you, I thought…”

“Yes?” He stood so close his warm breath brushed her cheek.

“Oh, I don’t know. That’s a lie. I was jealous. Ella is so beautiful, and she likes you a lot.”

“The only person Ella really likes is Ella. I swear to you, she means nothing to me. My darling, you have to believe me, she only wanted to discuss a patient with me.”

“You’re not a doctor.”

“No, but she thinks Major Vincent and one of the nurses covered up a self-inflicted wound. Some young private shot himself through the kneecap. She wanted my advice.”

“What did you say?” Amy grabbed at his arm. “What did you tell her?”

She heard his sudden, sharp intake of breath. “You were the nurse?”

“Yes.”

“Hell, don’t you realize what a risk you took?”

“I don’t care. I’d do it again if Major Vincent asked me.”

“Don’t be foolish. You could be dishonorably discharged from the nursing service.”

“He wanted to go home.” Her voice wavered, and tears burned her eyes. For the teenage soldier and for the hopelessness of her love for Mark.

“You have to be tough to be a nurse out here.”

“You mean hard and unfeeling like Ella?”

“No. You’re gentle, warm.” Feather soft, his fingers caressed her cheek. “You feel things too intensely. What am I going to do with you? I really fear for you sometimes.”

“Shh.” She pressed a fingertip against his lips. “I’ll be safe with you here to take care of me.”

“I better get you inside,” he rasped. “I wish we could go away somewhere together, leave the rest of the world with its restrictions and narrow-minded attitudes behind.”

Love welled up in her breast until she felt like drowning in the tumultuous sweetness. Her whole body trembled with an emotion too great for mere words.

Stepping inside, he put out his hand to assist her. The light spilling over his face turned her heart to stone. Ella’s bright red lip paint! Smeared all over his mouth!

“Amy, what is it? Are you unwell? You’ve gone so pale.”

For a moment she stood rigid with shock, struggling to speak, but no sound would pass out of her paralyzed vocal cords. Shaking her head made the blood drum in her ears, and life filtered back into her frozen limbs. From a hundred miles away she heard herself saying. “You’ve got red paint all over your mouth.”

His face blanched. The white sickliness about his mouth caused the ugly red smudge to stand out more vividly than before.

“It is not what you think.” He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand.

“You lied to me.” She walked away with her head held high, her heart shattered into a million fragments.

At their table Millie, Dick, and Guy ate supper, dainty sandwich triangles and fancy pastries. The sickness of betrayal crept up into her throat. With a huge effort, Amy swallowed it down. Her head ached with the effort not to cry. Tears burned at the back of her eyes, unshed, because pride would not allow them to fall.

Their glasses were already filled with champagne, ready for one last toast to 1914, when Mark returned.

“Where have you been?” Guy asked with a grin.

“Here and there.” Mark sat stony-faced as Guy laughed and joked, oblivious to the frigid atmosphere between her and Mark.

Amy answered a question from Millie with forced gaiety, and when an English officer asked her to dance she accepted with indecent haste. He was young, cheerful, and she laughed at his jokes as they waltzed. To any casual observer, no one was having a more enjoyable evening than Sister Amy Smithfield.

Mark’s hard gaze battered the protective wall surrounding her heart, reducing it to rubble. She pretended not to care, in case someone else noticed the shocking hurt he had inflicted.

After dancing several times with an English artillery officer, she wondered in a detached kind of way why he failed to notice how brittle and forced was her laughter. Four glasses of champagne helped dull her pain, though, making the pretence easier to carry off.

They welcomed 1915 with a loud fanfare from the orchestra and rousing cheers from the assembled crowd. Everyone started kissing and hugging each other, yelling out good wishes.

A dozen different young men kissed Amy before her arms were captured in a masterful grip. She was roughly swung around and dragged up against Mark’s rigid body.

“Must be my turn to taste your lips.” His eyes glinted dangerously. “You’ve given them to just about everyone else here tonight.”

His mouth swooped on hers. He kissed her with a savage ruthlessness that brought tears to her eyes.

She kicked him a couple of times before he loosened his grip.

“Will you let me go? People are staring at us.” She hissed like a feral cat as she raised her hand to slap his face.

He grasped her arm in midair, twisting it until she was brought up hard against him once more.

“And I suppose they haven’t been watching your sluttish behavior?”

He almost floored her with the savagery and unfairness of his attack. Only the iron grip of his hands on her shoulders kept her upright.

Life drained out of her body. Through a veil of tears the moving throng became a blurry mass. She closed her eyes so the tears would not fall, but whimpering sobs escaped before she could stop them.

“I don’t feel well. Please ask Guy to take me back to the hospital.”

Without a word he led her to a secluded seat almost hidden behind a huge marble pillar, and she huddled there trying to block out the wrenching pain. She didn’t know how she had expected their relationship to end, but it certainly wasn’t like this, with Mark walking away from her with a rigid back, and her devastated because he had kissed another woman.

She felt her shawl being laid gently across her shoulders but did not look up. “I’m sorry about taking you away from the party, Guy.”

“It isn’t Guy.” She cringed away from Mark’s voice. “I told him I’d see you back to the hospital.”

“There’s no need to bother.”

“Isn’t there?” He dragged the words out from between clenched teeth. “Do you feel like walking, or would you prefer me to get us a carriage?”

“Whatever you like.” She was too distraught to care what happened to her.

“Then we’ll walk.” He made no move to touch her, just kept a respectable distance away as they left the hotel.

The evening breeze cooled her fevered brow and the robe rustled against her legs as she walked. An owl hooting from somewhere close by and the spitting snarls of two fighting alley cats broke the ominous silence that bore her down into the black depths of despair.

They passed a group of boisterous soldiers toasting the New Year with native beer, their high spirits a marked contrast to her utter misery.

“You didn’t need to leave Ella just to escort me back to the hospital,” she muttered.

“I was not with Ella.” He hammered the words out one by one. “Amy, please.” He stopped suddenly. “I wasn’t with Ella.”

“The red paint?”

“I could explain if you give me a chance.”

“More lies?” Away from the main thoroughfare it was quieter.

“Amy, Amy.” His voice roughened. “Why are we tearing each other apart like this? I went outside with Ella because she wanted my advice, and I gave her some. If the major said the soldier shot himself accidentally, then she should forget all about the affair, and that’s what I told her. She kissed me. I didn’t ask her to.”

“But you kissed.”

“No, there’s a difference. I said she kissed me. She means nothing to me, hasn’t since I went home with you and Guy that weekend. Amy, listen! I love you. Only you. Why can’t you trust me?” His words grated along her shredded nerves.

“It’s probably another aspect of my sluttish behavior.”

His body went rigid. She felt it even though a foot or more of empty air separated them. A space that might as well be filled with barbed wire.