thrown up toward the Holmland direction, which was useful, but it was open to the Albion side, so they had to – perforce – come even closer to whisper in each other’s ear. To communicate, share intelligence, status reports, that sort of thing.
‘You were appalling,’ Caroline said and her breath on his ear nearly made him swoon. She, too, had used the burnt cork on her face and looked exotically adorable. ‘You may as well have worn a sandwich board saying, “I’m about to sneak off and risk my life to try to save you all.”’
He was moderately crestfallen; he found it hard to be entirely crestfallen with Caroline in his arms. ‘It was that obvious?’
‘Not to someone who doesn’t know you. Colonel Stanley probably assumes you’re following the orders he thinks he gave you.’
‘You noticed that too?’
‘Between the three of us, we have most things covered.’
‘I feel like I’m up on stage for you all to laugh at.’
‘No you don’t. You feel surrounded by loyal and concerned friends.’
‘One of whom followed me out here.’
‘Captain Robinson was kind enough to tell me where you’d gone. He’s a lovely man.’
‘I’m sure he is. And I’m sure he fell over himself to help you.’
‘Something like that. Or it may have been Sophie. We both questioned him.’
Aubrey spared a moment to feel sorry for the captain. The poor man hadn’t stood a chance. ‘But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing out here. This is magic. I know what I’m doing.’
‘That’s as may be, but the three of us agreed that someone had to be with you to take care of what you’d forgotten.’
‘Forgotten? What have I forgotten?’
She looked sternly at him. ‘We’re just taking it on past experience that you’ve forgotten something.’
Aubrey should have been offended, but couldn’t be. He was surrounded by faithful and concerned friends. ‘You know, this is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had in the middle of a battlefield.’
‘I want you to remember it, Aubrey. For a long time.’
‘I shall.’ Realising he was taking his life into his hands in a way he hadn’t been anticipating, he gazed into Caroline’s eyes and said: ‘I want you to go back.’
‘Go back? To our trenches?’
‘That’s right. I can’t take you into danger like this.’
Through a tilting of a shoulder and an abrupt shift of her hips, they were suddenly as far apart as they could be in a shell hole a few feet across. She crossed her arms and fixed on him. ‘And what makes you think that you have any say in my actions?’
Aubrey instantly decided it was a poor time to bring up small things like his being her commanding officer. ‘Now, I understand that you’re angry, having come all this way…’
‘Angry? If you think this is angry -’
‘Irritated, then. Annoyed. Miffed.’
‘Miffed? Miffed? ’
‘I didn’t mean miffed. What’s that word that sounds like miffed but describes exactly how you’re feeling right now?’
Aubrey could hear the slow breath Caroline took as she tried to control herself. ‘Aubrey, my being here is my decision to make, not yours. You simply have to overcome this desire to move people about to suit your own ends.’
‘It’s not that.’ For an instant, Aubrey felt as if he were balanced at the top of the world’s highest skiing slope, then he plunged. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’
Caroline was silent for a moment. She touched her cheek with a hand, then went on: ‘If I got in the way of whatever it is you’re planning, you mean.’
Aubrey realised that matters were well and truly running away from him, but in this unlikeliest of places he had a moment of insight, a moment of apprehension where he understood something that had been frustrating him for ages. ‘It’s your decision to make,’ he said slowly, ‘not mine.’
She speared him with a look. ‘What did you say?’
He grinned. ‘This is why some people back in Albion are so afraid of women’s suffrage, you know. They don’t realise that we all have the right to self-determination.’
‘Aubrey, you’re going off at a tangent.’
‘Not really. Thousands of men, oldsters mostly, take it for granted that they can tell women what to do. The idea that women should be in charge of their own lives is completely alien to them. It may as well be a foreign language.’
‘Ah. You’ve seen our problem.’
‘Independence. Freedom. Liberty.’
‘Well worth fighting for, I would think.’
He took her hand. He was pleased – and relieved – when she didn’t resist. ‘I’m sorry, Caroline. I shouldn’t order you about like that. I accept your decision, whatever it may be, but -’
‘I don’t know if I like buts.’
‘But please – can you accept that I feel protective toward you?’
She studied him. ‘I can.’ She paused and she touched her lips. ‘Probably because I feel the same way about you.’
Aubrey had never been punched so hard that it made him smile, but he imagined it was something like the sensation he had now. ‘You do?’
‘All in all, Aubrey, I’d rather be near you when you’re in danger than not. Especially since that might mean I could do something about it.’
It was difficult to talk, Aubrey found, when he was smiling as broadly as he was. ‘I understand entirely.’
He wasn’t exactly sure what happened next, but suddenly – without any apparent movement – he had an armful of Caroline.
They talked – in low, private voices – and waited for the right hour to come.
54
Aubrey reluctantly disengaged himself. ‘We have to move.’
‘Do we?’
‘Only if we want to win the war.’
‘Oh, very well then.’
Aubrey explained about the need to find the double shell crater he’d spied earlier. Then he had to detail his plan for Caroline. Carefully. Without leaving out anything, or covering up in obfuscation.
When he finished, she crossed her arms and studied him. ‘That is one of the more fanciful, flamboyant, outrageous schemes you’ve come up with.’
‘Ah ha.’
‘And probably the most heroic.’
‘It is?’ Aubrey felt the warmth of a blush creeping up from under his collar.
‘It’s one of the things I love about you, Aubrey. The extent of your imagination is only matched by your willingness to put yourself in harm’s way for the right cause.’
‘I do?’
‘That, and your penchant for two-word answers when you’re dazed.’
Dazed was a fair description. Aubrey was still lagging behind, trying to come to terms with what Caroline had said. ‘I don’t!’
‘And there you have it.’
Aubrey shook himself. ‘And here’s where you try to dissuade me from this course of action, correct? Where
