Promise Me This (42 page)

Annie breathed deeply and turned to face Matron. “I was born.”

Matron blinked and walked out.

The operating theatre whirled for Annie; she steadied herself against the instrument table.

Scrubbing down the table at last gave her a sensation of freedom, a symbolic scrubbing away of her doubts.

Her answer to Matron had been truthful. Annie had only to look in the mirror to see the reflected image of her mother at eighteen—her mother, happily married and with child. Aunt Eleanor, trapped at home and rejected, the overlooked older sister, had forged a chained life from her jealousy and venom and made a lethal weapon of her power and money.

And when she had destroyed her own family simply because they lived and were happy—Annie’s mother, father, and brother—there was only Annie and those who had been kind to her, those who might even love her.

Annie beat the table with her rag. Bottling the tears that threatened to flow, she vowed, beneath her breath, “I will abide by your terms, Aunt Eleanor, for the sake of those I love. But there is a timeline. This war will end, and I and all those I love will go free.”

Seated across the desk from A. Piatt Andrew, Anne Harriman Vanderbilt drummed manicured nails on the arm of her chair. She would wait as long as it took.

The opportunity for a woman to tour the Verdun sector, no matter how great her fortune and influence, did not come every day.

Andrew’s secretary stood, blinking and clearly tense, awaiting his supervisor’s decision.

“He left his post; there is little to decide,” Andrew maintained.

“Yes, sir,” the young secretary replied. “But what shall I do with him, sir?” And then more quietly, “He’s one of our best drivers and mechanics.”

“Crazy Michael Dunnagan is the last thing I need this morning,” Andrew said, not quite under his breath, and ran his fingers through his hair. He stood, tugged his jacket into place, and cleared his throat as if ready to make a proclamation.

The door flew open before he opened his mouth.

A dashing young man, brushed and combed, red faced, with striking blue eyes and broad shoulders, marched in, twisting his cap between his fingers, and began a tirade about having applied repeatedly for immediate transfer to a new sector.

Andrew’s color heightened. His attempts to get a word in edgewise failed so miserably that Anne was tempted to laugh. It was the first time she had witnessed Andrew in anything less than total control of a situation.

“I’ll go anywhere, sir—Verdun, if you’ll let me. She’s not in the Vosges area. I’ve asked everyone—everywhere! No one’s seen her.”

The young Irishman, or Irish-American, as Anne learned, begged only for permission and the requisite papers to search for a missing young nurse, someone named Annie. Having received no response to his daily letters, he had come to deliver his urgent request in person.

But Andrew, Anne saw, clearly embarrassed by the upstart, would go hard on the fellow. Anne realized, too, that the driver was a man determined.

Graciously, simply, Anne relieved them both. “Mr. Andrew, I believe I would like this young man for my driver.”

“Your driver?” Andrew stared. “But Rogers is your designated driver. Dunnagan has no formal education, and our drivers are typically from the best sch—”

“Your secretary said he is one of the best drivers and best mechanics, both, did he not?”

The secretary arched his brows and gave a small nod out of Andrew’s line of vision.

A vein in Andrew’s neck throbbed visibly.

“Is that not correct, Mr. Andrew?” Anne Vanderbilt persisted.

“Michael Dunnagan—” Andrew protested, but Anne cut him off.

“I would appreciate the best protection and precautions you might afford. I really do care more about my safety than I do any discussion of the classics. And it would give Mr. Dunnagan the opportunity to view each of the hospitals and their medical personnel in the Verdun area.” She flicked a stray piece of lint from her skirt. She smiled. “I do like a good love story,” she said, at which Michael Dunnagan blushed brightly. “I daresay you might consider his transfer while we are away.”

A. Piatt Andrew looked as though he might burst a rivet. Anne knew he was a man who did not like to be crossed. She also knew he dared not cross her.

“Bring me the papers,” Andrew ordered his secretary.

Anne studied her driver and smiled.

It was the first week of August before Mrs. Vanderbilt, disguised in a nurse’s white Red Cross uniform to protect her from advances—both by the enemy and by solicitous French soldiers—accompanied Andrew on their tour of the Verdun front. If Andrew was still angry with their driver, Michael Dunnagan, he hid it well.

Anne Vanderbilt found the young Irishman intriguing and the story of his desperate search for Annie Allen pitiable but charming.

Their first stop was Revigny, the beginning of the Sacred Way. Like every French soldier, they sought the comfort of the
Café Gratuit
or
La Cantine de Dames Anglaises
.

When Anne Vanderbilt reached over the counter to accept the offered cup of coffee and two cigarettes, Karen’s eyes widened. Anne followed the young woman’s gaze and winced. There was not a nurse in France with painted fingernails. The eyes of the women met.

“You won’t give me away, will you, dear?” Anne asked.

“That depends on your game . . . my dear,” Karen replied.

But a word of explanation from Andrew, well known to the ladies of the canteen, gave Anne a ticket to hospitality.

“Any friend of Mr. Andrew’s is a friend of ours. Would you like to come inside and see our operation?” Kimberly pushed between her sister and Mrs. Vanderbilt. “Men,” she said significantly to Andrew, “are not allowed.”

“I am honored!” Anne sang.

Kimberly whispered to her sister in Anne’s hearing, “She may be a bit of a toff, but I think she’s all right, don’t you?”

Karen shrugged and continued to offer coffee and cigarettes through the canteen window to the passing troops.

Kimberly gave Anne the grand, one-minute tour of their volunteer operation.

“And who are all these young nurses?” Anne pointed to the groups of pushpinned photographs hanging on the wall beside the door.

“All the VADs who pass through and the Red Cross workers—and the sisters, if they’ll deign to have their photographs taken. It’s our little way of honoring them. Those ladies don’t get the recognition they deserve, you know, and some—like the soldiers—never make it home again. We’re bound to watch our own.”

Anne nodded, unsettled once again by the determined service and willing sacrifice of so many.

“Ours is an operation of cheer and comfort—nothing more, nothing grand like the nurses do. But if it helps those poor men go back and fight again, if it cheers them even a little—torn from their homes and loved ones as they are—well, then, it’s worth it, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes it is,” Anne answered. “And who posts your picture, Kimberly? Yours and Karen’s?”

“No one, that I can think.” Kimberly blushed. “It’s such a little thing we do.”

Anne laid her hand on Kimberly’s arm. “Kindness is never a little thing.”

Kimberly’s blush deepened, and she smiled.

“I wonder . . .” Anne paused at the door. “There is a young man—our driver—who has been searching everywhere for a young nurse—”

“Aren’t they all?” Kimberly quipped.

Anne smiled. “Might he come in for just a moment and look at your photographs to see if she passed through here?”

Kimberly glanced nervously at her sister’s back by the open window. “Well, I don’t know. We’re really not supposed to let anyone in here—not soldiers, certainly.”

“He isn’t a soldier; he’s an ambulance driver and a very good one.”

“One of Mr. Andrew’s? An American?”

“One of his best—an impeccable record.” Anne thought it unnecessary to mention Michael’s Irish roots.

“Well, if you’re here with him, and if it’s only for a moment, I suppose . . .”

“That’s wonderful! I’ll call him and we’ll return right away!”

Karen bristled when Anne Vanderbilt appeared at the side door and openly fumed when she came back and boldly walked in with an ambulance driver in tow.

“See, just here, Michael. Kimberly said that these are all the nurses—well, nearly all, I suppose—who have come through the canteen on their way to . . .” She turned to Kimberly and Karen. “On their way to where? Verdun? Did they all go to Verdun?”

“Not all,” Karen answered, taking a step toward Michael.

Anne ignored her cold stare and gracefully, quickly, stepped between Michael and the sisters. “Is she here, Michael? Do you think any of these nurses look like her?” She pushed him closer to the photographs.

But he needed no urging. He squinted into the grainy black-and-white images, searching each one for any likeness of Annie. He shook his head. “I can’t tell. I’ve never seen Annie in uniform. I don’t know if I’m looking at her and not seeing her.”

He sounded so miserable that Anne slapped his arm. “Give me your photograph.”

“What?” He pulled back, gripped Annie’s photograph, and looked as though nothing in all the world could make him turn it loose.

“Give me your photograph, or show it to these young ladies. They may remember her.”

Michael laid Annie’s picture on the counter before them. “She’s pretty and young and kindness itself. Her name is Annie Allen.”

Kimberly shook her head slowly, then stopped and studied the photograph again. It was the image of a girl—perhaps sixteen or seventeen—with an older girl and, presumably, their mother and father. “I don’t remember anyone by that name. Why are you looking for her?”

“She is family,” Michael said. “I’ve bound myself to find her.”

Kimberly frowned but hesitated. “There was a girl who looked something like this, but . . .”

“Is her photograph here?” Michael held his breath.

Kimberly searched the wall and pointed to a group of VADs. “We snapped this one in February.” She pointed to the girl who had called herself “. . . Elisabeth something or other.”

“Elisabeth Anne Allen!” Michael nearly shouted. “That is her name!”

“No,” Karen answered, barely looking at the photograph. “There was no one here by that name. We ask all their names. We would remember.”

“But neither of you could have been on duty every minute of every day!” Anne protested.

“We are the only ones with a camera.”

Michael’s face fell.

“She rather looks like her, don’t you think, Karen? What was her surname?”

“I don’t remember, and neither do you.”

Kimberly glanced at her sister.

“Did this lot go to Verdun?” Michael asked as calmly as he could.

“We don’t know where they were sent,” Karen insisted.

Neither Anne nor Michael missed the almost-imperceptible nod that Kimberly gave.

That night Kimberly turned her back on her sister, not caring that she snubbed her only confidante in France. “You should have told them.”

“It wasn’t the right name; you know that.”

“No, but they—”

“He said she was family,” Karen interrupted, “and Elisabeth said she has no family—no one at all; don’t you remember? She said her name is Hargrave.”