Dancing in the Rain

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Text copyright © 2003 by Christine B. Tayntor
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Montlake Romance
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140

ISBN-13: 9781477832776
ISBN-10: 1477832777

For Donna Marie Tayntor, with thanks for so many things, but especially for being my friend as well as my sister-in-law.

This title was previously published by Avalon Books; this version has been reproduced from the Avalon book archive files.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

O
ctober 1917.

It was not the first mistake she had ever made, but it just might be the worst. Carolyn Wentworth stared at her reflection in the mirror as she pinned the starched cap onto her head. Her face looked the same as it had every other day: heart-shaped like her mother’s, with her father’s deep blue eyes and golden blond hair. Her appearance hadn’t changed, but the way she felt most definitely had. Never before had she experienced the horrible sinking sensation that now lodged in her stomach. Never before had she been convinced that she had made an irreparable mistake.

Carolyn frowned as she turned away from the mirror. What on earth had convinced her that she could do this? Why had she believed that she, who had never worked a day in her life unless you considered planning a ball at the country club work, would be able to succeed at an occupation that many women considered daunting? Perhaps everyone at home was right, and it was insanity that had provoked her actions. Perhaps.

Carolyn shook her head as she grabbed her last clean apron. She would wait until she crossed the courtyard before she put it on. That, she knew, was the only way it had a prayer of remaining clean for more than a minute. She shook her head again. Coming to France was not a mistake. It couldn’t be.

Though her sisters had predicted that she would regret her impulsive decision, Carolyn had refused to listen to their nay-saying. It was true that she knew little of her destination other than the fact that it was home to some of the most beautiful castles in the world. It was also true that she knew nothing of the war that had ravaged Europe for years, save the reports in the
Canela Record,
which were sketchy at their best. Her sisters were right about that, but what they hadn’t realized was how strongly Carolyn had believed in her decision. And now?

She shivered, as much from nerves as from the cold that seeped through the stone walls of the castle that was now her home. From four thousand miles away, France had sounded beautiful, the cause glorious. Reality, Carolyn had discovered, was far different. Reality was a countryside decorated with hedges of rusted barbed wire rather than evergreen shrubs. Reality was towns whose beauty had been devastated by years of battles. Reality was seemingly endless rain and its companion, mud.

Carolyn hated mud. Though it rained in Texas, the soil near Canela was sandy enough that puddles were rare and mud even less common. She frowned as she reached for her cape. Wouldn’t the old biddies at home laugh if they could see her now? Carolyn Wentworth, the girl who spent half her clothing allowance on pretty dancing shoes, was wearing boots that a lumberjack would be proud to own and slogging through mud that, no matter what she did, slopped over the boot tops and slid down to her toes, making her feet squish with each step. The same girl, whose party frocks were the envy of her friends, now spent her days in dismal gray cotton uniforms with white cuffs and collars that were impossible to keep clean. Even the shapeless white aprons, the sole part of her costume that was laundered regularly, were stained within minutes of starting work.

Oh, yes, the biddies would laugh, but they’d also nod. “I told you so,” one would announce to the other biddies, the way she had that day when the Ladies’ Auxiliary had met at the Wentworth home and no one had realized that Carolyn was close enough to hear their words. “She might be the prettiest of the Wentworth girls, but she certainly wasn’t blessed with brains.” “A beautiful but useless decoration,” another had said.

They were wrong! Carolyn hurried down the steep stone staircase, pausing momentarily when she reached the ground floor. She could hear the rain pounding, and even though it was only a hundred feet across the courtyard, that was enough to drench her. So what? The men she was going to see had endured far more than cold, soaking rain.

Carolyn straightened her shoulders and prepared to dash across the courtyard. The Ladies Auxiliary was wrong. Her sisters were wrong. The whole town of Canela was wrong. She might not be as bright as her sister Martha, as clever as little Emily, or as brave as their brother Theo. But she was still a Wentworth, and she was not—she most definitely was not—useless.

Carolyn sprinted across the expanse of mud that had once been a formal garden, her eyes focused on the wooden door leading to the east wing. Tonight she would write to her sisters, describing the elegant chateau that served as staff housing as well as a hospital, rather than alarming them with tales of the suffering she had witnessed. In the meantime, she would show everyone that she was not useless. Perhaps that would dissolve the knot of fear that had taken residence in her stomach.

Carolyn had come to France to prove that it wasn’t just Theo and Ed and all the other men who had joined the Army who could make a difference. If this was truly the war to end all wars, she would do her part. And right now that part meant proving that she hadn’t made a mistake. Carolyn Wentworth was going to be the best nurse’s aide anyone in Goudot, France had ever seen. She wrinkled her nose as a raindrop slid down it. Why stop there? She’d be the best aide in all of France, not just in this town thirty-five miles southeast of Dieppe.

She tugged the heavy door open and let herself into the east wing. What had once been a grand ballroom and several smaller reception rooms had been turned into an operating theater and wards for the non-ambulatory patients. Carolyn donned her apron, then forced a smile onto her face and sauntered into the first ward, pretending she was walking into the Canela Country Club for the most important dance of the season. Despite the heavy boots, her step was light, and she let her skirts sway ever so gently. Sodden cotton didn’t drape like silk, but even the slight swirl added to the illusion. Perhaps if she could convince herself that this was not a mistake, the men would never know how close she was to fleeing like a frightened rabbit.

“How are my favorite beaux today?” Carolyn asked. The low murmur stopped, and she felt twenty pairs of eyes focus on her. “As you can see,” she said with a rueful glance at her mud-spattered skirt, “this is not Goudot’s driest day.” Thank goodness, her voice sounded as carefree as if this were indeed a party and the men were her dancing partners. Maybe those years of planning parties and learning to treat even the most difficult guests’ demands gracefully were more valuable than she’d realized. At least her horror at the suffering that surrounded her wasn’t audible. Now, if only she could keep smiling, it wouldn’t be visible, either.

“I told you she’d come,” one man announced to the patient in the bed next to him. Though Carolyn could see only the back of the second man’s head, it was swathed in a bandage. He must be a new patient, someone who had been brought in after her shift ended yesterday. Perhaps in a day or two she would know the men’s names, but yesterday the wards had blurred into a single image of nameless men.

Another patient made a show of consulting his watch. “She’s five minutes late, Henry,” he said to the man with the head wound. “I was sure she didn’t want to see us no more.”

Still another man nodded. “C’aint blame her. This place is enough to make a man sick, let alone a purty gal.”

Carolyn tried to keep her smile from fading. Though she had thought that she had camouflaged her feelings yesterday, it was obvious she had not. These men had realized that she was appalled by the sights and sounds of the hospital ward, and they had been betting on whether or not she’d return. How shallow she must have looked! Here they were, soldiers who had been wounded, and she—an able-bodied woman—was so weak that she couldn’t face them. Perhaps the Ladies’ Auxiliary had been right. Perhaps she had been useless. But that was about to change. These men deserved the best care, and she would give them nothing less.

“Now, gentlemen,” Carolyn said with the smile that had never failed to charm the young men of Canela, “don’t tell me y’all would hold it against a girl if she spent a couple extra minutes primping.” As she had hoped, the men exchanged grins. Carolyn lowered her voice to a conspiratorial level. “I shouldn’t tell you this. My granny would say that I was destroying the mystery, but the fact is, I wanted to wear my best perfume for you, and I had to look everywhere to find it.”

The man named Henry gave a triumphant crow. “I told you! You fellas were wrong.” He turned his head toward the doorway where Carolyn still stood, and her heart plummeted with pain as she realized the nature of his injuries. “C’mon over, honey. Let me be the first to smell that perfume.”

Carolyn kept the smile fixed on her face as she approached the blind man. Although Henry could not see her, the other patients could. “Here I am, Mr. Phillips,” she said, reading the name on the chart at the foot of his bed. She stood at his side, hoping that the scent that she had so liberally sprayed on her wrists and throat would overcome the smells of the sickroom.

The room itself was lovely, its walls covered with a delicate green wallpaper, its oak floors gleaming from years of polish, its windows long and perfectly proportioned. Even crowded as it was with beds, the room was still beautiful. What was not beautiful was the stench of illness, medicine, and harsh cleaners.

“I’d be honored if you’d call me Henry,” the man said. He was older than the other patients, perhaps in his thirties, his accent telling Carolyn that he was English like her new roommate.

“I couldn’t do that, sir.” She stuck a thermometer into Henry’s mouth. “My granny wouldn’t approve. She always said a girl shouldn’t be too familiar with a gentleman the first time she met him.”

One of the other men chuckled. To Carolyn’s relief, the mood in the ward had lightened. Laughter, she had heard, was a healing force. Perhaps she could use that to help these men.

“Say, Nurse, can you settle an argument for us?” The man who asked the question lay two beds away from Henry.