Promise Me This (44 page)

When Elisabeth did not appear at mess, Matron demanded an explanation. Judy whispered that it was “Elisabeth’s time, poor thing, and she cannot eat a morsel.”

Michael learned enough from Annie not to write the Spragues or Aunt Maggie and Uncle Daniel, nor to mention his great find to Mrs. Vanderbilt or A. Piatt Andrew, though he was determined to convince Andrew to reassign him to the Verdun sector.

“I’ll desert if he won’t transfer me.”

Annie spread her hands. “It’s not that simple, Michael!”

Michael squared his jaw. “I was charged by Owen with your care and deliverance to America. I lost you once. I searched until I found you. I love you, Annie Allen, with everything that is in me. I won’t lose you again.”

“I sense you are no longer telling me everything, Michael Dunnagan,” Anne Vanderbilt observed on the morning of their second full day at the field hospital.

Michael did not answer but continued to grease the engine of his Ford.

“Is there something I should know?”

Michael straightened. Carefully he wiped the grease from his fingers. “There is something you would like to know. There is something you deserve to know. But I’m not at liberty to say.” Every line in his face begged for understanding.

Anne Vanderbilt was not used to guessing games, and she would have been vexed were it not for those magnificent blue eyes. She tilted her head. “You’ve found her.”

Michael looked away.

“There’s more to the story,” she guessed. “The girl’s in trouble, isn’t she?” Anne could not keep the edge from her voice.

“Not in the way you’re thinking.” Michael’s face hardened. “She’s not that kind of girl.”

“I’m sorry.” Anne softened. “I should have known better. You love her, don’t you?”

Michael did not answer, but his silence told Anne Vanderbilt all she needed to know.

“What can I do to help?”

“Get Mr. Andrew to assign me here—to Verdun, to this hospital. But I beg you, Mrs. Vanderbilt, don’t let him know that I’ve found Annie. She doesn’t even go by that name.”

Anne sighed.
What good it will do, I cannot tell. The chances of either Michael or his lady living through this awful shelling are not high.
But she knew that she owed Michael this. She’d brought him this far; she had been instrumental in accomplishing his purpose, and now she must help him complete it.

“I can do that. But you won’t like the way I do it.” Michael blinked. “I trust you, Mrs. Vanderbilt. And I thank you for helping me. God bless you, mum.” He extended his hand.

She looked down at his greasy nails, smiled, and pressed his large, strong hand in her small one. “God bless you, Michael Dunnagan.”

“What has he done?” Andrew threw down his dinner serviette. “Has the cad insulted you?”

Mrs. Anne Harriman Vanderbilt straightened her spine. “Mr. Andrew, I am not accustomed to being questioned. I am accustomed to having my wishes granted.” She looked over the table of ambulance drivers at mess. “I rather like that young man.” She pointed appreciatively to an athletic and flirtatious young driver intent on catching the eye of a table of pretty VADs.

Andrew blinked. He held Anne Vanderbilt in the highest esteem. Such a request seemed entirely out of character for her. “It would mean a reassignment.”

She shrugged. “Should that concern me?”

“No, of course not. But it will mean leaving Dunnagan here.”

She shrugged again.

Andrew frowned. He did not like Dunnagan; that was true. But they had come this far looking for his girl; shouldn’t they finish the job?

“I shall be packed and ready in half an hour.” Anne Vanderbilt rose and walked from the mess.

“As though she owns us,” Andrew whispered under his breath. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I suppose we’re lucky if she thinks she does.”

Annie never knew that love could so change a person, but Elisabeth Hargrave, the reserved young nurse with the sad violet eyes, had disappeared. In her place, in the midst of the most horrific days of the Battle of Verdun, blossomed a vibrant young woman.

Wounded men in the wards feasted their eyes on her bright cheeks and soft, honey-gold hair. Surgeons looked twice at the nurse who could not hide the spring in her step or the smile that played round her lips.

VADs were forbidden to socialize with soldiers or medical personnel or the few stragglers of men left from the deserted town—men in any form. Dating was forbidden, dancing forbidden, walking out forbidden, sitting together in mess forbidden.

Neither Annie nor Michael knew when they stole a kiss or a brief embrace behind the mess tent if they would be caught or if it would be their last.

They and half the VADs—at least the ones who were not mad with envy—did all they could to hide the romance, but it was like a fire set on a hill. By mid-September even Matron suspected and called Elisabeth Hargrave to her tent, demanding an explanation.

“My brother, who died on
Titanic
, left my welfare in Michael’s hands. When I disappeared from London—when Aunt Eleanor sent me to France for the duration of the war—he came looking for me. I did not contact him.” The facts were simple. Annie did not know if Matron believed her, what use she would make of those facts, or what forces those truths might set in motion. But Annie was jubilant in Michael’s pursuit, and there was no way to hide it, no use in denying it.

Matron tapped her pencil against the edge of her makeshift desk. “You know I am bound to report this.”

“It has nothing to do with my work, Sister.” Annie had never dared speak up for herself. But silence had not served her well.

“No. And your labor is needed, impertinent though you may be.” Matron frowned. “Do you know that your aunt’s last solicitor sent me a letter, written in her own hand, to be delivered upon her death?”

Annie felt herself pale. “No, I did not.”

Matron continued to tap her pencil. “Your aunt left instructions for me to put you in harm’s way.”

Annie felt her eyes grow wide.

“I asked you once why she hated you so, and you replied, ‘Because—’”

“Because I was born,” Annie finished.

“I believe you.” Matron cocked her head. “She paid me handsomely. And there are others I report to in this situation.”

Annie held her breath.

“But I find, as inconvenient as it seems, that I cannot carry out those orders. I thought I could—when I believed all she wrote me.” Matron shook her head. “I no longer believe the things she wrote about you. In any case, I cannot do it.”

She stood and took a moment to frame her words. “Do not flaunt your relationship with this young man. Do not write to these Spragues your aunt referred to in my letter or whatever relatives you have in America. Do not repeat what we have said here. I have the power to change my mind and the influence to have your Irishman reassigned. I do not have the power to stop others your aunt arranged to watch over your affairs, nor do I know who they are.”

“Thank you, Sister.” Annie could not believe such unexpected mercy.

“Do not thank me. None of us are likely to leave Verdun alive.”

Michael wrote to Aunt Maggie:

The French fight like demons for every centimeter of ground, and I say, “God bless them!”

Through the autumn they gained an upper hand, despite their terrible losses—wounded men, dead men, missing men by the scores and hundreds and thousands.

Rules of shift orders and leave in the field hospitals and ambulance service mean nothing. Neither I, nor any other ambulance driver or stretcher bearer, nor any of the medical staff proper expect to sleep through the night.

I miss your fine dinners, Aunt Maggie, and the aroma of Uncle Daniel’s pipe by the fire of an evening. I miss the rattle of his newspaper and the way you push your hair from your eyes after a long day.

And yet, I tell you, these are the best days of my life, with more to come. Someday I’ll explain. For now, know that I love you with all that is in me. Know that I will come home to you at war’s end.

Your Michael