have access to one in Portsmouth. Too many ears, he said.”
I remembered his urgent need to reach England, and how I had given him morphine to keep him quiet. Biting my lip, I considered all the possible outcomes of gangrene.
“I’m going to Longleigh House.”
“Bess, is that such a good idea? Simon-”
“I’m a nurse, Mother, I am very good at what I do, as Dr. Gaines himself told me. I could be able to help. Can Father pull a few strings? I need an interim posting there while my situation is being considered. I can’t walk in and ask to be allowed to help with a single surgical case.”
“Yes, I’m sure he can see to that. If not, then I’m sure Dr. Gaines will be able to arrange it.” She started toward the telephone closet, then stopped. “If it’s any consolation, I think you’re doing the right thing. Simon made me promise, you see. And I don’t break promises to Simon Brandon lightly.” She turned on her heel and left me standing there.
Several hours and countless telephone conversations later, I was told to report to the clinic on Wednesday morning at nine. That was two days away. I didn’t know how I was to keep myself from pacing the floor into the night.
I found my mother in the kitchen, scrubbing the tabletop while our Cook stood there frowning at her, tight- lipped and clearly troubled.
I said, “We’re going to find Sabrina Morton. I don’t know how we’ll manage it, but we will.”
Her face brightened. “I believe your father left her direction on his desk. He hadn’t decided to give it to you.”
“Why not?”
“I think he was worried about this business with Major Carson. That you might discover something speaking to her that would take you back to France. Darling, Simon is fighting for his life, and that nice Captain Barclay has reinjured his leg. Your father is looking for some way to keep you safe. Until then, he wants you to stay in England.”
I remembered that arm around my neck in the darkness as I was about to wash my face. And the way the wing of that motorcar brushed against me in Rouen. But I said resolutely, “I don’t need protection. Dr. Hicks and his people were keeping an eye on me. They would again.”
“You might not be posted there next time. And your father has learned that you weren’t expected in Ypres at all. Once you left the security of Dr. Hicks’s aid station, you were vulnerable. And you said yourself that he believed the message was completely genuine. He could be wrong another time as well.”
Dr. Hicks had done his best for me, but he was overworked and exhausted like the rest of us. He couldn’t be expected to ward off every danger.
“Then let’s go speak to Sabrina.
And so it was that we found ourselves on the road to Cornwall. I’d thought that Sabrina lived in Oxfordshire, but my father didn’t often make mistakes, and if he said Cornwall, then Cornwall it was. Because of the distance, we had planned to stay the night.
We drove through Devon, crossed the Tamar, and set out across Cornwall to the seaside village of Fowey, which actually sat above the river for which it was named. Taking a room at the Fowey Hotel, we had dinner there on the charming terrace overlooking the estuary where the river met the sea.
Afterward, as the evening was fine, we walked down toward the harbor. Unlike other harbor towns, Fowey had very little flat land along the riverbank for a settlement to grow, and so it was built upward, a maze of gardens and paths and houses and cottages cheek by jowl and leading ever downward until we reached St. Fimbarrus Church, and from there it was only a few steps to the water.
The clerk at the hotel had told us that The Mermaid Inn was along the water, and more accessible by boat than by foot. But we strolled along the river for a bit and watched the ferry plow toward Polruan across the way, and then saw the sign for The Mermaid. A narrow walkway bridged the gap from the small restaurant where we stood to the entrance to the inn, and led up steep stairs to the doorway. From there I could see just below where boats could tie up.
The inn had seen better days, thanks to the war and the fact that many of the men who brought their own boats or yachts to this place were now fighting in France.
There was a woman behind the desk who watched our approach without enthusiasm, as if she knew we weren’t looking for lodgings. I moved slightly ahead of my mother and said pleasantly, “I believe Mrs. William Morton lives here?”
“And who would be wanting her?” the woman asked, her voice neither friendly nor unwelcoming.
My mother, just behind me, answered the query. “Mrs. Crawford and her daughter, Sister Crawford. We knew her brother and her parents. Since we were in Cornwall while my daughter is on leave from her duties in France, we felt we ought to pay our respects.”
The woman regarded us for a moment, then said, “I’ll see if she wishes to receive you.”
I thought at first the woman was being rude. But she walked into the dimly lit interior of the inn where I could just see a staircase leading upward and to one side, a tiny dining room down two steps. A potted palm stood next to the entrance to the dining room, and a table with fresh flowers in a green vase added a spot of color by the side of the stairs. Nice touches, but even these couldn’t eliminate the depressing air of the inn.
The woman returned shortly. “She’s in room seven. Just knock at the door.”
We thanked her and walked farther into Reception before taking ourselves up the stairs to the first floor. Number seven was at the end of the passage, and we knocked lightly, as we’d been told. My mother gave me a conspiratorial look, then faced the door as it opened.
Sabrina Morton had always been the prettier of the two Carson sisters, but in the late evening light she appeared to be the elder of the two rather than the younger.
“Come in,” she said, inviting us into a room looking upriver and set out as a sitting room. A door into a second room was open just a little, and inside we could see a bed and a crib. “I can’t think why you should wish to call on me. Did Valerie send you? Or was it Julia, having a sudden change of heart?”
“Neither, as it happens,” my mother said. “You weren’t at the memorial service for your brother, and we were sorry to have missed that opportunity to offer our condolences. You were fond of Vincent, as I remember.”
“Once upon a time,” she said.
“Yes,” my mother replied, as if Sabrina had agreed with her, then turned to me. “I think you remember Elizabeth? She’s a nursing sister, Vincent may have mentioned it. She’s currently on leave from France, and as we had a few days before she goes back, we decided to visit Cornwall again. I remember coming to Fowey as a small child. It’s hardly changed at all, has it?”
Sabrina greeted me coolly, then offered us chairs. “I can’t offer you tea as well. I’m afraid the restaurant has closed.”
“Thank you, but we dined at our hotel,” I answered, resigning myself to a difficult conversation. “It’s good to see you again, Sabrina.”
“Is it? I don’t recall a visit from you after my marriage.”
“You hadn’t invited us to the wedding,” my mother reminded her with a smile. “We thought perhaps you’d excluded us when you excluded your brother.”
“He was a hypocrite. Vincent. Brother or not. He could have made our lives a little easier after our father died by offering me my inheritance. He kept it instead, you know. My sister was given our mother’s inheritance as well- as the elder daughter, that was fair enough. I didn’t quarrel with it. But it was cruel to deny me
“He knew what his father thought about your marriage. Perhaps he found it difficult to go against
“He chose to do that. He didn’t like Will any better than our father did. And what had Will ever done to my brother? Or even my father, for that matter? He married me because he loved me, and I loved him. My father married for love. Vincent as well. Where’s the difference?”
The bitterness in her voice touched me. There was no polite way to point out that her choice of husband, however much she loved him, had not been quite the same as Vincent’s marriage to Julia. Or Valerie’s to her
