Just Ella (17 page)

“I remember,” I said softly.

“And when I was given permission to build the camp, all I wanted to do was come and tell you, but I knew if I did, I'd forget myself and throw myself at your feet and beg you to come along. So I didn't even say good-bye—”

“I noticed,” I said drily. “You would have had trouble finding me in the dungeon.”

“I'm sorry,” Jed said. “I didn't know. Obviously. . .”

He shook his head, as if trying to shake off the past.

“But that's over, and we're together now.” His eyes shone with hope, waiting for my reply. Then he winced, and I realized he'd been crouching on the floor for an awfully long time.

“Why don't you get up?” I asked. “I think you only have to make the proposal on bended knee. You can be comfortable to hear the answer.”

“Oh. Okay.” Jed sounded relieved as he got up and sat beside me. He started to reach for my hand again but stopped himself. “And the answer is?”

His hands were suspended, midreach. I thought about it. I had to believe he really did love me. Did I love him? I didn't feel for him the way I'd felt for the prince, back when I thought I loved him. But I knew now that that had been infatuation with an ideal, not love for a real human being. Jed was real. I knew his faults as well as his virtues and didn't mind them. I enjoyed being with him. I'd certainly rushed to find him as soon as I could. Of all the men I'd
ever met, he was the one I'd want to marry the most. But I was only fifteen. I hadn't really met that many men. And, beyond that, I hadn't really figured out what I wanted to do with my life. Marriage could determine what was possible or impossible. What if, after a few years, Jed and I turned out to have goals as mismatched as my father's and Lucille's?

I looked away, because I couldn't bear to watch Jed's face when he heard what I had to say.

“The answer is, I don't know. Or—” I made the mistake of turning toward him. I caught a glimpse of his crestfallen face. I looked down at my hands, still alone in my lap. Jed had drawn back. I made myself look directly at him. “The best thing I can say is, I can't make any promises yet. I thought I loved the prince, and I thought I was doing the right thing agreeing to marry him. So how good can my judgment be?”

“But you learned from that,” Jed protested. “You know me better than you knew him.”

“True. But when I agreed to marry him, I was thinking mainly of getting away from—and getting back at—Lucille. Now I'm trying to escape the prince. If I were to marry you, wouldn't you rather it be because I'm trying to get
to
you, instead of
away
from someone else?”

“Why can't it be both?” Jed joked.

I only shook my head, then added, “Can't you give me six months and ask again?”

There was a tap at the door before the formerly cheerful Mrs. Smeal poked her head in. “I know this will amaze you,
Chief, but we still have 402 blankets stacked up in the supply tent. Same as yesterday.”

Jed blinked.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought we had a new shipment in. Wasn't there a royal proclamation to that effect?”

I barely listened to Mrs. Smeal's answer. I had to figure out where I would go and what I would do now. Under the circumstances, it seemed too much to expect Jed to let me hang out at the camp. Then I heard him say, “Mrs. Smeal, may I introduce Ella Brown, our new medical and agricultural adviser?”

Mrs. Smeal's jaw dropped, and her eyes seemed to come very close to jumping out of their sockets. But she was polite enough to say only, “Welcome. We're glad to have you.”

I looked at Jed, instead of her, as I replied, “Thank you.”

As the next few months passed, I splinted an amazing number of broken arms. I treated everything from bee stings to gores from a wild boar. I ladled out gallons of soup in the camp's kitchen. One incredible rainy night in a far pasture, I delivered a calf that was trying to be born hind end first. I worked harder than I'd ever worked for Lucille.

And every evening I spent hours talking to Jed.

At first we were awkward together. What hadn't been decided stood like an uninvited guest between us. But then we agreed not to speak of love or marriage or the future until the six months were up. Those subjects still crept into our conversations occasionally. Jed would say, “When we're running the camp as partners . . . er, I mean—” and, “When we have children—that is, uh . . .” Or I'd say, “What if I decide I want to go learn more about being a doctor? Could I do that and be married?” Jed
would assure me, “We can work it out.” But because we weren't going to make any decisions for six months, most of the time we just talked and talked, as good friends do. Jed treasured the philosophy book I'd brought him, and we took turns puzzling out its meaning. Sometimes, when we were both too exhausted to think, I read stories to him out loud. We debated good and evil, argued about how the Sualan War could end.

I was, strangely enough, happy.

Then one day, while I was checking on patients in the makeshift infirmary, a girl summoned me to the office.

“Can't it wait?” I asked. I was trying to decide if the feverish baby lying listlessly on the table in front of me had a disease that could spread through the whole camp.

“No,” the girl said. “Master Reston said now.”

I turned. Except for the war-haunted eyes, the girl reminded me of Mary.

“All right,” I said. “He'll be fine,” I told the baby's mother, with a confidence I didn't feel. “But keep him away from the other children.”

She stared at me hopelessly. How to keep a baby away from other children when their entire family was sleeping in one bed?

I worried about that as I walked back to the office. But I forgot my worries when I arrived and Jed wordlessly thrust a card into my hand. It was thick and luxurious, its words in such fancy script that it took me a few minutes to read them:

 

 

By proclamation of
King Charming XXIII

“Oh, Jed, I'm sorry,” I said, echoing the useless words that Jed had said to me all those months ago when I'd told him of my father's death.

“Why?” Jed said in a choked voice. “Why does it hurt so much? I didn't even like him.”

“But he was your father,” I said.

“Couldn't they have broken the news in a nicer way?” Jed asked plaintively. “The king could have offered his condolences or something.”

I thought of Lucille sneering at me, “Your father's dead. Get to work.” Essentially, that was the king's message too, only in fancier language. I felt grateful once again that I was away from the so-called Charmings. But I still felt bad for Jed. He didn't even seem to have absorbed the second half of the message.

“It doesn't matter how anyone says it,” I said gently. “It still hurts.”

“When does it stop hurting?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “It takes longer than three years.”

And then I hugged him, and he hugged me, and it wasn't the least bit romantic—not like dancing under the stars on a rose-scented night—but it was still the most romantic moment of my life. He pulled back first.

“I want you to run the camp while I'm away,” he said. So he had read the whole note.

“Why me?” I asked. “Why not Mrs. Smeal? Why not one of the men?”

“You know,” Jed said. And I did—Mrs. Smeal was too cheerful, unable to understand true problems. The refugees made fun of her behind her back. And the two male workers at the camp had only contempt for the refugees, as though it were their fault for being displaced by the war. So I might be the best choice. But could I do it? Did I want to?

“You'll have to let them think they have some control,” Jed continued. “They don't know how young you really are, but still—”

I nodded knowingly. I'd learned a lot more diplomacy at the camp than at the castle.

“For how long?” I asked. “Are you—are you coming back?” Something crept into my voice—a hint that I wanted him back for more than the smooth running of the camp.

“Absolutely,” he said firmly. “If nothing else, I'll write you for escape tips.”

And so he rode away, and I missed him, and I waited for him to come back. I remembered what one of my attendants back at the castle had said the day of the tournament: “This is what women do. We wait.” I'd vowed to have none of that. But here I was, waiting.

Only I wasn't sitting around doing pointless needlepoint. I was binding wounds, ordering supplies, standing up to bitter refugees who questioned why a mere girl should be able to tell them how much firewood they were allowed to have. I fell into bed many nights too exhausted to think. Every once in a while, a strange thought drifted into my head:
If I have no life's goal of my own, is it such a bad thing to do the life's work of the man I love?

I didn't quite allow myself to think the word
love.
I thought
respect, care about.

After a month, a letter arrived from Jed. Though it was the middle of the day, and I had about ten days' worth of work to do in the next hour, I immediately shut the door of the office and sat down to read.

 

 

I dropped the letter in astonishment. After I picked it up, I rubbed my eyes for several minutes hoping to get them to read properly. But when I looked at the letter again, it still distinctly said “Corimunde.” I read on.

 

 

Corimunde always had been a little quicker on her feet than Griselda.

 

 

So had I actually changed Madame Bisset, instead of the other way around? Was she even becoming flexible? But no—I read on—it sounded like this beauty standard was being enforced as rigidly as the last one.

 

 

I leaned back to absorb this incredible news. I could imagine Lucille gloating at the thought of being with her “real” daughters in the castle while I was who knows where—on the streets, perhaps even dead. I furrowed my brow, trying to figure out what I felt. Was I jealous? I remembered my last taunt to Lucille: “I hope you and Corimunde and Griselda die in your own filth!” But I had been angry then. I no longer wished them ill. I certainly had no desire to be in the castle, and if Corimunde and the prince were well suited, more power to them. It was just that, by Lucille's terms, she had won and I had lost.

Only I had no desire to judge myself by Lucille's terms anymore.

I skipped ahead, more curious about what Jed was doing than about the Step-Evils.