Lavender Morning (33 page)

stood in front of General Austin’s desk.

“Harcourt,” he said in a voice of patient intolerance, “this is a war and you’ll do what you’re told to do—as

we all have to. If I send two soldiers to Dr. Jellicoe’s house, people will see them and suspect him. His cover will

be blown. Therefore, I want you, a woman, to go with my driver and deliver this magazine to Dr. Jellie. Do I

make myself clear?”

“Perfectly clear,” Edi said. “But I disagree with your decision about who to send. One of the other women,

Delores perhaps, would be better at this job than I would be.”

“Delores is an idiot. A flat tire would send her into hysterics. I need someone who can be cool under

stress.”

“Perhaps you could mail the magazine to him.”

General Austin leaned back in his chair, his hands together. “Exactly what is it that you object to about this

particular assignment? Are you afraid? Are you too cowardly to do something that our American boys do every

day?”

Edi didn’t answer him. She’d proven her lack of fear at every bombing raid. She was always the last one to

go to the shelter, as she made sure that all the other women in the office were safe.

“What is it?” General Austin barked.

“Perhaps, sir, you could send me with another driver, or I could go by myself. You know that I often travel

about the English countryside alone.”

“A different driver? Are you saying that your objection to going on this mission is that you don’t
like

Sergeant Clare?”

Again, Edi said nothing.

General Austin got up from his desk, went to the window, then turned back and looked at her as though he

couldn’t believe what she’d just said. “
Like,
Harcourt? All those men out there who run into enemy fire shouting

‘Better than Austin,’ do you think they
like
me? Hell! My own wife doesn’t
like
me. I don’t think like and dislike

have a place in a war.” By the time he finished, his voice was so loud it was a wonder the glass didn’t break.

D:/…/Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.…

124/176

3/16/2010

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html

“No, sir,” Edi said.

“All right, Harcourt, I want you to pack an overnight bag and take something pretty. You’re a girl going off

into the country with her soldier boyfriend, and you’re going to stop to see an old friend of a friend, Dr.

Sebastian Jellicoe, and you’re going to give him a magazine. That won’t be the story that’s given out around here,

but that’s what you’re going to do. Do you have any questions? Anything you don’t
like
about this assignment?”

Edi kept her rigid stance, but she wasn’t going to be intimidated by him. “Yes, sir, I do have a question.

What is this
really
about?”

General Austin took a moment to answer. “In normal circumstances I’d not tell you, but Dr. Jellie is a

retired professor—Oxford, I think—and he knows more about words than anyone else on this planet. We send

him top secret documents that need to be decoded. The problem now is that we think he may have been found

out. He’s good at playing the absentminded old man who’s too senile to even know a war’s going on, but

someone has found out his lie, and we fear for his life. The magazine carries a coded message, so he’ll know it’s

from me, and it tells him to leave with you and Clare. And as soon as you two get him back here, Jellie will be

sent to the U.S.

“Does that answer your question? Do you think Delores could handle this?”

“Yes, sir, and Delores would be useless.”

“All right, now go. Clare will pick you up at 0900 tomorrow morning. Be here at 0700 and I’ll brief you

more.”

Fifteen minutes later, Edi was in her tiny apartment and packing. Tomorrow she planned to wear a suit so

severely cut it made her uniform look casual. The other women talked endlessly about getting out of the stiff

uniforms and into pretty dresses, but Edi thought that the men didn’t need any more encouragement, so she

stayed covered up.

She had other clothes, some pretty civilian dresses, but she wouldn’t put them on until they—she and the

odious Sergeant Clare—were out of sight of the soldiers.

After she put the dresses and her underwear is a small case she was ready to go. If she overlooked the fact

that she was going to be with the detestable David Clare for this assignment, Edi would have admitted that she

was…well, excited about it. Getting out of that smoky office, away from the general’s never-ending bad

temper…To go into the country! To see trees! She almost looked forward to it.

On her rare days off, she wasn’t like the other girls, running to the nearest place where they sold drinks and

played loud music. No, Edi hopped a ride with anyone she could and went into the English countryside and spent

the day. Or if she was lucky enough to get away from the general, she’d stay for days. She walked, she sat under

trees, and she watched the cows graze. To Edi’s mind, she wanted to be reminded why a war was being fought,

to see what they were trying to preserve.

Sometimes she’d spend the night at a farmhouse. She’d soon learned to lie and say she was a war widow

and that her husband had been English. People were suspicious of a tall, pretty American woman roaming about

alone, but a widow who wanted to see the country of her dead husband opened doors and made friends. When

Edi returned to General Austin’s office after a weekend away, she’d have a list of names people had given her.

They wanted to know the whereabouts of their sons and daughters. Illegally, but without guilt, Edi used General

Austin’s contacts and his credentials to find out about the names on her list. Within an hour of her first misuse of

her closeness to him, General Austin knew what she was doing. Nothing ever escaped his attention. But he just

grunted—his own personal way of approving—then piled even more work on her. But it was a small price to

pay for being able to help the people who’d been so kind to her. Twice, when she couldn’t find the sons of

people she’d met, she handed the names to the general. Both times he found the answer. One young man had

been killed in Italy, but the other was wounded and in a French hospital.

After she was packed, Edi boiled herself an egg and heated some toast on the little electric hot plate in her

room and tried to read the documents she’d brought from the office. But her mind kept going back to the

D:/…/Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.…

125/176

room a

3/16/2010nd tried to read the documents she’d brought from the office.

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html But her mind kept going back to the

assignment. If General Austin wanted a man with her then there was a lot more danger to the job than he was

telling her.

“So what did you do to PO Austin so much that he made you wear this thing?” the medic asked David Clare as

he tightened the inset screws on the long leg brace.

David was sitting on top of a surgical table, wearing only his shirt and his underwear, and the medic was

fastening a hideous-looking steel cage onto his left leg. “You didn’t hear that I’m going with Harcourt?”

The medic paused, and for a moment his mouth was open in awe, but then he closed it. “It won’t work.

You’ll never get her. Especially not with this thing on.”

Looking at the steel strips wrapped around his leg, David grimaced. He’d been told Austin was a bastard,

but he hadn’t realized how much until early this morning. Last night a lieutenant told him he was to drive Edilean

Harcourt into the English countryside to visit the wife of a friend of the general. Her husband had just been killed,

and the general wanted to offer his personal condolences to the widow—“personal” meaning that he was sending

his secretary.

“Oh, wait,” the lieutenant said. “I was told to give you this.” He held out a white envelope, the kind that

held an invitation.

“What is it?” David asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s an invitation to the officers’ ball next month. You come back alive and you get

to go. Last year Miss Harcourt wore a dress in an electric blue that…” The man shook his head to clear it. “If I

were you, I’d hold on to that. You can’t get in without it.”

“I’ll treasure it,” David said as he slipped it inside his shirt.

David and Edi were to spend the night, then return the next day. David only hoped Heaven would be as

good as his vision of those two delicious days.

But this morning a smart-ass lieutenant had told him he was to report to a Captain Gilman, a doctor, on the

double. Of course by that time everyone in London and probably half of France knew Sergeant Clare was going

to be alone with Miss Harcourt for two whole days.

David should have known there’d be a catch. The doctor told him the general said that an able-bodied

soldier traveling around the country would engender too many questions. Why wasn’t he fighting?

“I could be on leave,” David said. “Did he think of
that
?”

The doctor looked at him incredulously. “Are you asking
me
to explain the inner workings of Bulldog

Austin’s mind?” He went on to say that General Austin thought it would be better if Sergeant Clare were seen as

unfit to fight, therefore he was to be fitted with a steel leg brace that went from his upper thigh down to his ankle.

At the knee was a four-inch round hinge that could be loosened or tightened with the use of an Allen wrench with

an odd screw pattern.

Ten minutes later, David was on the table, and a medic was clamping the torturous brace onto his leg.

“Don’t lose this,” the medic said, holding up the little L-shaped tool. “Lose this and the only way that thing

comes off is with a hacksaw.”

There was some padding between his skin and the steel of the brace, but the fabric was worn and frayed,

the cotton batting sticking out in places. “You couldn’t find a worse one than this?” David asked. “Maybe

something a little older, a little more beat up?”

“Naw,” the medic said, grinning, “that’s the worst one we had. It was left over from the last war.”

“Would that be the Civil War or the French and Indian?”

“War of the Roses,” said an English soldier passing through. “That thing was probably handmade over a

forge. I bet there’s chain mail under there.”

D:/…/Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.…

126/176

3/16/2010

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html

“I’ll donate it to one of your museums,” David called out after the man. “One of them we’ve saved for you

guys.”

The Englishman’s laugher floated back to him.

“All right,” the medic said, “let’s see how well you can walk in it.”

David turned on the table and gingerly put one foot on the floor, then the other. As he took a couple of

steps in the brace, it was worse than he thought. It was heavy, confining, and the hinge moved only half as much

as his knee did. “What the hell—!” David said as he lifted his leg. He could bend his knee only a few inches.

“Sorry about that,” the medic said, but he was smiling. No soldier felt sorry for the man who was going to

get to spend two days with Miss Harcourt. The medic inserted the Allen key into three inset screws on the hinge

and rotated them about a quarter of an inch. The hinge loosened and David could bend his knee.

“I hate this thing,” David said as he tried walking in it.

“Be glad you don’t need it for real,” said a voice behind him.

“Lord deliver me from do-gooders.
You
want to put this damned thing on—Oh! Sorry, Reverend,” David

said. “I didn’t mean—” He didn’t know what to say.

The reverend was smiling. “I’ve been called worse than a ‘do gooder.’ I believe there’s a car waiting for

you outside and a young lady you’re to pick up.”

“Yeah,” David muttered, wanting to curse the brace and especially General Austin for making him wear the

damned thing. One of the men said it was a chastity belt, that David had to wear it to make sure he didn’t touch

the general’s precious secretary.

They’d all waited for David to make a smart reply to that, something about his leg not being the part he

planned to use, but David said nothing. He didn’t want anything bad he said to get back to Miss Harcourt.

It was impossible to wrestle himself into the trousers of his uniform, so the medic got him a pair that were

two sizes larger. To hold them up, his belt made deep wrinkles in the waistband. So much for looking good to

impress the most beautiful woman in the world, he thought.

David was further dismayed when he saw the car the general had sent for their use. It was an old Chrysler,

and by the sound of the engine, worn out. He wondered if it was made the same year as the leg brace.

It took several tries to get the car started, and he wished he had half a day to work on the engine, but he

didn’t. When he got it started, he found that even the steering was off. To make matters worse, the car was

English right-hand drive, so that everything was on the opposite side of what he was used to. All in all, the car

was a danger to drive.

She was waiting for him, standing on the curb, and he could feel the eyes of the men around them on him.

If possible, Miss Harcourt looked even more rigid than she usually did. Her dark hair was pulled back so

tight it looked as though it were painted on, and her wool suit was stiff enough to have been carved out of wood.

At her feet was a small brown suitcase, and from her shoulder hung her handbag and a black leather case that