Shadowed by Grace (26 page)

“If the father’s correct, we won’t head back. If we had our things, we wouldn’t drive back now.” He rubbed his hands with the glee of a child at Christmas. “We’re getting close.”

“About time,” Tyler grumbled. “I’m ready to get this assignment behind us.”

“Not sure I can accomplish that, but if we reach the art storehouses, our real work begins. Pray the Germans didn’t take anything.”

“Waste of breath.” Tyler harrumphed and pulled out a cigarette. He jammed it between his teeth but didn’t light it.

When they returned to headquarters, Tyler dropped Rachel off at her tent. Seeing the heavy canvas ruffled by the wind brought back a heavy sense of loss. She rubbed her upper arms, then forced her steps inside. She needed to face the reality the sketchbook had disappeared.

It was just a book. She’d watched men die today, so this shouldn’t upset her. The small battle gave her perspective she’d lacked.

After she pushed through the flap, she approached her cot. Her bags sat on the cot, the bedroll in a neat roll. The other cots held bags and bedrolls too, except for one tucked in a corner. A nurse lay curled up on that one, catching a little shut-eye before her shift.

Rachel’s respect and admiration for the women who served as nurses had elevated during her time sharing quarters. Their dedication to their patients humbled her. The conditions they lived and worked in were so far below what they’d find in the States, but they hadn’t complained.

Who had packed her things? Did everything look so tidy because the nurses were moving out?

That news would be what Scott wanted. The skirmish and whatever the priest had said had transformed him from the lost man of the morning to one energized.

She sank onto the cot, ignoring the unique squish of the taut canvas stretched on the frame. She pulled out a V-mail letter and drafted a few lines for Momma, her thoughts turning home.

If she found her father, she could finally ask him why he never came. Would his answer fill the hole in her heart? The ache of never having a daddy?

She’d watched other students at her school interact with their fathers. Watched families in their building. Always the outsider. Always longing to know the hug of a father. Always wondering why she didn’t have one.

She imagined her father as a famous painter who’d dislike having a child show up. Without the journal could she find him?

Her eyes closed, and she wondered if she should pray, but she couldn’t force any words so she waited. For what she wasn’t sure. Maybe for peace. For the thought that her time in this war-torn place wasn’t wasted. That in the midst of it all there was purpose and meaning.

God, are you even here? Sometimes I wonder how all of this must grieve your heart. This can’t be what you intended.

She slumped to her side across a bag. All this introspection wouldn’t change a thing. The tent flapped open, and a group of gals waltzed into the room.

“Keep it down over there.” The words came from the nurse who huddled on her cot. “Not all of us feel joy today.”

“Come on, Annie. It’s a gorgeous day.”

“It’s just another one.”

“Leave her alone.” A new nurse nudged Heidi, a bouncy redhead who always smiled. “She lost a patient today.”

“At least we’re alive and the birds are singing. That makes it glorious.” Heidi tugged her fellow nurse up. “Come on. We’re moving out in the morning.”

Annie flopped back down. “I need to sleep while I can. The wounded don’t stop arriving.”

Heidi sank next to her. “Fine. I’ll join you in your doldrums. Will that make you happy?”

“Sure, honey. Misery loves company.” Annie stretched out her lanky form. “Hey, Rachel, ready to move again?”

“As long as it’s north and not to the rear.” Her editor’s note reinforced her need to keep moving with the army.

“I kind of liked it here.” Annie harrumphed and sat up.

Heidi nudged Annie and pushed her off balance until the girl slid to the floor. “Ignore her. She’s not always this insufferable.”

Rachel stifled a laugh at the girls’ pointed banter. While it might seem intense, an underlying affection for each other was clear. “Are you sure you didn’t know each other before enlisting?”

“Are you kidding?” Heidi poked Annie with her toe. “We’d kill each other if we had history.”

“What do you call this?” Annie tugged Heidi’s shoe off and tossed it toward Rachel.

“Sisters in arms keeping each other sane.”

“I always wanted a sister.” On all those long days and nights when Momma worked and Rachel was alone in the small apartment, she’d wondered what little brothers and sisters would be like. Even one annoying sister would have made the loneliness bearable. The neighbors were older with busy lives. While kind, they often forgot she lived there too. “So where are we headed?”

Heidi leaned across the space between the cots and lowered her voice to a whisper. “The medical unit is headed due north about twenty kilometers. I’ve heard you’re headed somewhere different. With a certain handsome escort. You have to tell me how you ended up with a designated assignment versus floating like so many correspondents.”

“I wasn’t looking for it.”

“I would have.” Heidi waggled her eyebrows and slipped closer. “Haven’t you noticed how easy on the eyes he is?”

“Scott?”

“My, my. Don’t you mean Lieutenant Lindstrom?” Annie laughed as she grabbed her shoe. “This is cozy.”

“Not really.” She hadn’t thought her consistent assignment with Scott unique. It was a way for higher-ups to keep her out of the way. It didn’t hurt there was something magnetic and compelling about him. Heat traveled up her neck, a color she hoped the girls couldn’t see.

“The girl protests too much.” Heidi settled back on the cot. “What’s he like?”

Rachel shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.” Except that his kisses could bring her to her knees.

“After all the time you spend together? Not buying it. You’ve learned something worthwhile.”

“He’s dedicated to preserving art.”

Annie groaned and pantomimed throwing the shoe at Rachel. “You’ve got something better than that. Who cares about art when they’re under attack?”

“Scott does. He gave up curating a museum in Philadelphia to come here.”

“You mean Uncle Sam invited him.”

“I got the idea he made the first move.”

Annie snorted. “Typical man. Creating a better story than reality. Nobody enlists to parade around a war zone and find art.”

Rachel had thought that at first. “With him it’s different. He’s a gentleman committed to his assignment. Even when the general gives him impossible ones like me. He does what’s asked.”

“The girl is smitten.” Annie faked a swoon worthy of a film star and then jumped back to her feet. “Time to eat some of that junk they call grub.”

Part of Rachel wanted to deny she was smitten. But the words lodged in her throat, and she knew the larger part of her wanted to accept the words. All that was good in Lieutenant Lindstrom drew her, even when she wanted to resist a relationship. Annie and Heidi had shone a flashlight into the deep corners of her heart and seen something Rachel wouldn’t admit.

A tumble of thoughts and emotions coursed through her as she followed the girls to the mess tent. She wasn’t hungry, but maybe she’d see Scott’s face, and her heart would tell her if the words it whispered were true.

Chapter 24

August 1

THE CHATTER OF THE
nurses and zips of their bags woke Rachel the next morning. “Come on, sleepyhead.” Annie clapped next to Rachel’s head. “I have it on good authority your man is pacing out there, waiting for you. And don’t bother denying he’s yours.”

Rachel tried to open her eyes, but a night of restless dreams with images of the skirmish colliding with Scott left her unprepared to meet the day. Instead, she wouldn’t mind being back in Rome or Naples with the comfortable hotels and bed. The opportunity to block out the fact she was preparing to chase the front lines again.

Annie grabbed a tin cup of water and held it over Rachel.

“You wouldn’t!”

“Try me.” Annie cocked an eyebrow.

Rachel kicked the bedroll away from her feet and tried to stand. Instead, she rolled to the ground and collided with a bag as the bedroll encased her feet. “Okay, you got me.”

Annie laughed so hard water tipped from the cup and splattered against the worn grass. “Glad to know that old trick still works. Seriously, the man is creating a path out front.”

“I’m half tempted to leave him pacing.”

“You could. But the soldiers will be here to tear down this tent in fifteen minutes. You might as well get up.”

As they packed, Rachel asked the gals if they’d seen her sketchbook. “I had it in my bag but it disappeared.”

Heidi and Annie looked at each other. Heidi frowned. “You don’t think we took it?”

“No.” That was the last thing Rachel believed. “Have you seen anyone with it?”

Both shook their heads. Annie rolled up a stained pair of trousers and shoved them in her bag. “But when I’m here I tend to sleep like the dead.”

Heidi nodded. “Me too. The rest of the time I’m eating or at the hospital.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Ten minutes later Rachel collected her bags and bedroll and said good-bye to Annie and Heidi. She doubted she’d bunk with them at the next stop. Still she’d miss the way they kept her days interesting.

Scott grabbed her bags when she exited. His continued chivalry in the face of war honored her. When they reached the jeep, he set the bags in back, then turned to her. Her mouth dried as he helped her into the vehicle. He held her hand a moment longer than needed, but she didn’t want to end the connection. Tyler cleared his throat, and Scott dropped her hand like he’d touched a pot of boiling water.

The kilometers clicked by as they joined another convoy headed north through a fog that settled over the area. A fog that surrounded her inside and out. Rachel scanned the surroundings, imagining the enemy watching and waiting for the perfect shot that had missed her the prior day. The eerie feeling settled along her spine. After they’d driven in silence awhile, Rachel leaned forward. “Where are we headed?”

“A villa. Or castle. It’s called Montegufoni, located in the heart of Tuscany about twenty kilometers from Florence. The father told me it’s a repository for some of Florence’s treasures.” Scott stared through the spiderwebbed windshield.

“It can’t be good people know where those paintings are.”

“Perhaps statues and other antiquities too. I don’t like the idea of the knowledge floating around. I doubt there’s great security.”

The jeep traced a bend in the road. The vista opened and Rachel couldn’t stifle a gasp. A beautiful, utterly old castle graced the horizon. With yellow stucco walls soaring stories into the air, it had an imposing tower that stood point over the middle of the building.

“It’s beautiful.”

The words had slipped out when a plane flew in at great speed and overtook the castle.

“Don’t drop anything!” Scott moaned as he rubbed his shoulder.

“Maybe nothing’s there.” Tyler ground the gears and edged toward the side of the road under the meager protection of a cypress. “We’ll wait until the plane’s gone.”

Scott’s mouth opened, then closed. His gaze never left the plane as it soared and then circled back. “Is it coming for us?”

Rachel shuddered. She’d heard stories of pilots on both sides of the fight using their machine guns to strafe those unlucky enough to be on the road when they flew overhead. She didn’t want to become a target. Staying in the vehicle would paint a large circle on her in the middle of a shoot-me zone. “We can’t stay in the jeep.”

She started to climb out but noticed the plane turning around again. “Is it headed for the castle?”

Her heart ached at the thought of that gracious building taking a hit. Forget the art; the building itself was worth preserving.

“Come on.” Scott pushed harder against the floor of the jeep. “Get us there now, Tyler.”

“You want to be plane bait? You’re nuts.”

“I have to be there.”

“Then you might want to run. I’m not approaching until the plane disappears.”

If Scott had to sit here and watch that plane bomb the villa, he might throttle Tyler. Then he wouldn’t need a driver because he’d spend the rest of the war in a cell.

“Tyler, the plane’s gone.” Rachel’s voice soothed him.

Scott searched the sky afraid the plane would circle or come back with friends. After the plane didn’t reappear, he thumped the dashboard. “Let’s move.”

Tyler grunted. “You’re explaining to my family if I’m killed.”

Scott ignored the comment, instead praying for protection as they approached the estate. The castle didn’t grow closer as they drove. The way it sat on a slight rise with a road winding around it lengthened the journey. He couldn’t tear his gaze from the ochre tones contrasted against the vibrant grass and pale sky. It looked like the plaster-covered walls were intact. He focused but didn’t hear the drone of a plane. Instead, the song of a bird chased by the laughter of children reached him. Children? God help them if they remained when the plane returned.