Merline Lovelace (13 page)

“Oh, Sam!” With a sigh, Victoria searched for a way to make him understand. “Perhaps my dirty skirts and untidy hair should tell you something.
I’m a different woman from the one you knew in Cheyenne.”

“That’s the first thing you’ve said this morning I agree with!”

“I’ve set out on a journey I didn’t quite plan but now must see through. For my sense of self-respect, if for no other reason.”

Gripping the locket in a tight fist, she tried to put into words the confused impulses that had driven her aboard the
Star of Texas.

“I’m a journalist. My credentials give me the same status as correspondents like Richard Harding Davis and Anna Benjamin. I’m present at one of the turning points of history and I want to record it. I don’t need your approval or permission for that. No, please! Let me finish!”

Crossing his arms, he waited with obvious impatience for her to get on with it.

“I know I’m not essential to the war effort like you or—or Mrs. Prendergast. Nor am I as brave as Mr. Davis. I have no desire to march on Santiago with the army and dodge bullets, as he did during the battle of Las Guásimas. But I can contribute in my own small way. By describing Cuba to the people back home, so they know what their sons and husbands are going through. By telling them about the heat and the mosquitoes. The incredible beauty of the mountains. Those—those scaly, spiderlike creatures.”

“Encountered a land crab, did you?” Sam’s brow hooked. “If nothing else, that should be
enough to send you down to the docks straightaway.”

Victoria decided not to mention that it had. Or that she’d spent untold minutes on the quay feeling more lost and desolate than she’d ever imagined she could.

Nor had she ever imagined that she’d have the inner fortitude to offer the only compromise she knew Sam would accept.

“I appreciate your need to protect me. You’d feel the same concern for any woman, whether she was your fiancée or not.”

“Not quite the same,” he drawled sarcastically, but at least he was listening.

“If it will ease your worries about my being in Cuba, I’ll go up to the hospital and beg a bed. As a journalist,” she added, swallowing the bitter pill of her pride. “I know I’m not qualified to assist the nurses in their duties, but I can follow up on the story I wrote about them in Tampa and perhaps garner them a little of the credit they deserve.”

“You can’t have any idea what conditions are like in a field hospit—”

He caught himself, remembering she’d observed those conditions firsthand yesterday. What she’d seen there hung between them now, as thick and dark as the clouds that dropped over the mountains and deluged the island yesterday afternoon.

Victoria would be a long time forgiving him for that kiss, he knew. If she ever forgave him. And Sam couldn’t take the time now to convince her she
should. Wincing at the discomfort his wound caused, he reached out and curled his hands around her upper arms.

“Listen to me, Victoria. Most of those men at the hospital are down with fever. You’ll be in as much danger from them as you would be from Spanish bullets.”

“Mr. Davis said the only fever that’s struck so far is malaria. He very kindly gave me a supply of quinine tablets.”

“Did he?”

“He also gave me his spare cork helmet, some mosquito netting and a rubber ground sheet. Mr. Davis understands why I want to stay in Cuba, Sam. He’s been most helpful.”

“Too damned helpful, if you ask me. I’ll have a word or two to say to Richard when I see him.”

“You may have all the words with him you wish. Now, I’d best pack my things if you intend to see me to the hospital before you rejoin your company.”

His hands tightened on her arms, holding her in place. “You’re determined on this?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll agree on two conditions,” he said after a long, tense moment. “First, you must promise to evacuate with the nurses should it become necessary.”

“No.”

“Dammit, Victoria!”

“I won’t make any more promises I may not
want to, or be able to keep. But I’m not a fool. And I don’t have any particular wish to die. I’ll take every possible precaution.”

“Will you at least agree to keep up the pretense of our engagement for the time being?” he ground out. “Let my name and rank afford you some measure of protection?”

They’d come full circle, Victoria thought. From a sham engagement to shield her reputation to a continued pretense to protect her person. The irony of it drew a long, ragged sigh.

As she’d stated only a moment ago, however, she didn’t completely lack for sense. She was a woman alone in a country at war. Wearily, she nodded.

“Yes, Sam, I’ll agree to the pretense.”

When he left her at the hospital tents set up amid the stubble of the sugarcane field some hours later, Victoria carried only her valise and wore the protective sun helmet Richard Harding Davis had given her.

She also wore Sam’s standard issue U.S. Army service revolver strapped around her hips.

M
ary Prendergast accepted Victoria’s presence in Cuba more readily than Sam had. She would, of course. She was braving considerable hardship herself to perform what she considered her duty.

After a short, private colloquy with Sam and a hasty consultation with the surgeon in charge, she escorted Victoria to one of the Shelby tents set aside as nurses’ quarters.

“You must know the situation here. Sam said you came up to the hospital yesterday.”

“Yes, I did.”

Lifting the tent flap, she held it up. The air inside was suffocatingly hot and smelled strongly of mildew. Rows of cots marched down either side of the tent. Mosquito netting was gathered above each, ready to drop downward with a tug of a string. Small wooden boxes sat at the foot of each cot and
held, Victoria guessed, the nurses’ personal belongings.

“Take the third cot,” Mary instructed. “The nurse who occupied it is down with the fever. We moved her to a ward tent so we could care for her round the clock.”

Dipping a towel in a bucket of water, she waited while the younger woman dropped her valise onto the designated cot and removed her cork helmet.

“Here, drape this cloth over the back of your neck. Your face is quite red.”

With a murmur of thanks, Victoria sank down beside her carpetbag. The water soaking the cloth was tepid at best, but provided welcome relief. The dizzying spots caused by the heat and the mule ride up to the hospital faded.

Sliding her hands into the front pockets of her soiled white apron, Mary regarded the newcomer. “When we spoke a few moments ago, Sam told me you witnessed the kiss he gave me in the hospital tent.”

Victoria rubbed the cloth over her neck and made no response. What was there to say?

“It meant nothing, you know. He was only trying to comfort me after a rather brutal day and night.”

“So he informed me.”

“Did you believe him?”

With a sigh, Victoria dropped her hands to her lap. A few months ago, the girl she’d been might
well have shied away from such a painful question. The woman she’d since become wouldn’t allow such evasions.

“Yes, I believed him.” Feeling unutterably weary, she laid her heart bare for the second time that day. “I also believe he holds you in a deeper regard than perhaps either of you have acknowledged.”

“I can see how you might think so,” Mary said slowly. With a rustle of her skirts, she sank onto the nearest cot. “I won’t lie to you. Before I went East, there
was
something between Sam and me. A spark, a tug of attraction, if you will. I felt it every time I visited his parents’ house. Then cholera claimed my mother and most of my tribe and I took the loss so keenly I had to go away to heal. And to learn. I was determined to learn all I could about the sicknesses the white men had brought on us. That’s when I met John.”

She fell silent, reliving her memories.

“John Prendergast was gruff and short-tempered,” she said after a moment. “And quite the most annoying man I’d ever had to deal with. I must have packed my bags and marched out of his house a dozen times the first year I spent under his tutelage.”

He must have been annoying indeed, Victoria thought, if he’d driven this seemingly indomitable woman out of his house.

“The dratted man never made the least effort to stop me,” Mary continued, “but I always went back. Always. I never really understood why until after we married. It wasn’t the passion that drew me, although it was quite intense with a man like John, I assure you. Nor even our shared interest in medicine.”

Her gaze drifted to a hazy corner of the tent.

“It was sensing that I’d found an eagle,” she murmured, more to herself than to Victoria. “One who would soar on the winds with me.”

Slowly, she brought her glance back. “Eagles mate for life, you know. Although I had John for only a few years, he was my mate. He will always be my mate. Just, I suspect, as Sam would always be yours if you’d but let him.”

“I have no desire to mate for life with a man who longs for another woman.”

Silenced, Mary stared at her.

“I can see that you would not,” she admitted after a moment. “No woman would.”

“You, at least, understand that.” Despite her every attempt to keep it out, a note of bitterness crept into Victoria’s voice. “Sam seems to be having some difficulty.”

The older woman hesitated, then chose her words with obvious care. “Sam might long for me in some distant corner of his mind, but you’re the woman
he wants to spend his life with. He asked you to marry him, after all.”

Only because circumstances obliged him to.

The brutal truth would remain forever carved into her heart, but pride kept Victoria silent.

“Well,” Mary said with a shake of her head, “I’m hardly the one you’d want advice from on this matter.”

That, at least, they could agree on.

“I’ll get back to work and leave you to settle in.” Rising, she smoothed her sweat-dampened hair under her limp linen cap. “I’m on duty until—Well, until I’m not. Meals are whenever you can catch them at the kitchen tent. If you want anything, come find me.”

She started for the entrance, then swung back. “Oh, and I would recommend you leave that revolver here. Hopefully, you won’t need it. You might also want to shed your corset and your petticoats. The corset will give you a prickly rash in this heat, and we’ve found our skirts catch on the cane rubble and appear to provide the most irresistible attraction to beetles and earworms.”

With that bit of practical advice, she ducked out and disappeared into the blinding sunshine. When the flap dropped down again, Victoria’s shoulders slumped. Between her wrenching meeting with Sam earlier, this interview with Mary and the torpid heat, she felt drained of all energy.

She allowed herself a moment to indulge in a fierce longing for Cheyenne’s clean, biting winds and crab-free streets. But only a moment. She and she alone had made the momentous decision to travel to Cuba, and the equally momentous decision to stay. She refused to give way to doubts or panicky second thoughts.

Resolutely, she scrubbed her face with the damp cloth and pushed off the cot. Moments later, she’d shed several layers of fabric, steel and bone. Rolling the discarded garments into a tight ball, she bent to stuff them into her carpetbag.

A small square of neatly wrapped handkerchief tucked just inside the bag gave her pause. Setting aside her undergarments, she lifted out the handkerchief and slowly peeled back the folds. In the diffused light, a rim of sapphires glowed along the edge of the gold, heart-shaped case.

Swallowing, Victoria pried open the locket’s lid. Sam stared out at her from the photograph she’d begged from his mother. She stroked the grainy portrait with her fingertip, then sighed and snapped the lid shut. Replacing the locket in the bag, she pulled out her notebook.

With Sam’s service revolver tucked in the valise beside the locket, Victoria settled her borrowed cork helmet on her head once again and went out to record her impressions of the war as seen through the eyes of those who tended the wounded.

It didn’t take her long to discover why correspondents in Cuba not only reported on events, but plunged right into them. Why Harry Scoval of the
World
had hired a boat just moments after the
Maine
exploded and rushed out to help. Why Frederick Somerford of the
Herald
had spent the months prior to the invasion with the rebels and sent cables advising Washington of their will to fight. Why Richard Harding Davis had gone into the jungle with the Rough Riders and used his glasses to spot enemy troop emplacements while bullets ripped through the leaves above his head.

It was impossible to merely observe.

Impossible to remain detached.

Victoria’s stomach heaved each time she entered a hospital tent to record her impressions of the medical staff at their tasks, but she soon grew used to the stench of vomit and human excrement. She couldn’t, however, grow used to standing idly by while the nurses and male hospital orderlies sweated and strained and worked themselves to the point of exhaustion.

She’d been in camp less than two hours before she slid her notebook in her pocket and approached a haggard nurse who was sitting on an upturned bucket, bathing the face of a malaria patient.

“I could do that while you tend to the others.”

The woman didn’t hesitate. Relinquishing her bucket, she passed Victoria the damp cloth.

“He’s had a heavy dose of quinine. If his fever doesn’t break within an hour, come fetch me.”

It was, the reporter-turned-medical-attendant soon decided, one of the longest hours of her life. Burning with fever, the trooper tossed and flailed his arms. One caught Victoria square in the chest and almost knocked her off the bucket. Sweating almost as much as her patient, she dunked the cloth in tepid water and drew it over his face, his arms, his chest.

He wasn’t much more than a boy. Close to her own age. When he cried out for his mother in his delirium, Victoria answered as calmly as she could and counted the minutes until the estimated hour had passed. Her heart wrenching at his pitiful condition, she went in search of the nurse as instructed.

By the time dusk began to purple the sky, she’d bathed a half dozen more troopers. She’d also emptied slop buckets, changed soiled sheets and scraped a razor over a number of bristling cheeks. Mary found her sitting on another bucket, writing a letter for a man too ill to pen it himself.

“Have you eaten today?”

Victoria looked at her blankly. “I don’t remember.”

“I’m on my way to the kitchen tent. Come with
me. You’ll be of no use to anyone if you faint away from heat and hunger,” she added to forestall protest. A smile softened her face. “And from what I’ve heard, you’ve been of great use.”

Meals, she informed Victoria as they walked to the kitchen tent, consisted of beans, beans and more beans, supplemented by indigestible army rations and the ever-abundant local plantains. The mess tent was like an oven, so the two women took their tin plates to a fallen log beside the creek that provided the camp with fresh drinking water.

To Victoria’s amazement, several of the nurses were sitting in the rock-strewn creek fully clothed, splashing away their sweat and grime and gore.

“The women bathe in the evening,” Mary explained. “The men in the morning. We keep our clothes on both to preserve our modesty and to wash them. As hot as it is, they dry right on our backs.”

“How practical.”

“You should take a plunge after you eat. You’ll sleep better.”

Despite her unorthodox bath, Victoria barely slept at all that night. She spent the first hours in the tent composing the dispatch she didn’t have time to write during the day. It took every bit of her skill to compress the wrenching sights and sounds and emotions she’d experienced that day into a hundred sparse words.

The rest of the night she spent jerking in and out of sleep. Patients required care twenty-four hours a day, and the constant coming and going of nurses jarred her awake every time she dozed off.

“You’ll soon grow used to it,” the exhausted woman stretching out on the cot next to hers murmured before she dropped into instant sleep.

The next afternoon Victoria begged a place on a supply train going down to the docks and made the arduous mule ride into Siboney to send her dispatch. As before, she found the cable office jammed with journalists. Many, she discovered, offered outright bribes to the harried telegraph operators in hopes they’d relax the hundred-word limit.

“Damned nuisance,” a veteran correspondent ahead of her in line complained bitterly to the man behind him. “If the War Department hadn’t issued credentials to every man jack who got it into his head to grab a pencil and traipse down to Cuba, the real members of the press among us could get our stories through.”

Naturally, his comment elicited a round of hisses and boos. Victoria said nothing, but endured a good number of stares and sidelong glances before she got her turn at the window.

Escaping the crowded office, she walked next door to the taverna where she’d met Davis, Crane and Remington the day before. None of those dis
tinguished correspondents were present, but the ones that were filled the air with excited talk of the imminent advance on Santiago.

She returned to the hospital to find it, too, buzzing with rumors.

“Fightin’ Joe Wheeler and old man Shafter ain’t about to sit ’n’ stew,” a feverish sergeant predicted confidently. “Our boys will take Santiago, you watch my words, and damned soon now that they’re all ashore and in position.”

Sam echoed the trooper’s prediction when he appeared in camp that evening and found Victoria at her evening meal, such as it was. She heard him inquiring for her and clutched her spoon in a tight grip. A moment later he approached the fallen log where Victoria and two other nurses were seated.

Tipping his hat, he gave them all a polite greeting. “Ladies.”

“Good evening, Captain,” the younger responded. “Can we help you?”

“No, I’ve just come to have a word with Miss Parker.”

“Oh, of course.” The two nurses rose. “We’ll leave you alone, then, shall we?”

Obligingly, they deposited their plates and spoons in the bucket of water standing ready beside one of the cook fires. As they moved away, Sam raked Victoria with a hard glance. She resisted the urge to smooth her wrinkled skirts.

“You look like the devil.”

“Thank you.”

She could have said the same of him. If he’d snatched any more sleep than she had last night, Victoria would be very much surprised. And the way he favored his right shoulder told its own story.

“Does your wound pain you?”

She’d learned enough about bullet wounds in the past twenty-four hours to appreciate the truth of Miss Barton’s observation. Mauser bullets quite often went in and right out again, then scabbed over quickly. But as one patient had sardonically advised, the hole it left behind burned like hell on fire.

Sam shrugged aside the query. “I’m all right. You’re taking your quinine pills, aren’t you?”