Temptation (2 page)

But in the meantime, there was a game of cricket to win. He swung the bat again, sending this next ball spinning high into the air. A fielder dived for it but missed, and it smacked harmlessly into the ground.

Dusk was falling before the cricketers called it a day, packed away their wickets, oiled their bats, and rewrapped them in their protective cloths for the following Sunday. “Good game,” he said to Clemens, as they strode back again to the barracks, his temper restored by the severe thrashing they had handed out to the other team.

The lad grinned at him, wiping the sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “I wasn’t out for a duck, so that makes it a good game in my books.”

“There’ll be a tot of rum on me tonight in the mess,” Carterton said. “Pass the word to the others while I go and sweet talk the keeper of the stores. Eight o’clock sharp, mind, or you’ll get nothing but water.”

Clemens shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “I ought to dash off a quick letter to one of my sisters first,” he said uncomfortably, “but I guess it can wait until next Sunday.”

Carterton sighed, the gloom of the morning starting to descend on him again at the reminder of his celibate state. “You’re damn lucky to have a sister who writes to you. I’ll save you a tot of rum and you go write to your sister.”

Beatrice refolded the letter and tucked it back into the pocket of her skirt. How she loved to hear Teddy’s news of his doings in faraway South Africa, even if he spoke of nothing but the mundane details of his existence there. To her, who had never traveled out of England, even his complaints of the heat and flies were imbued with an exotic allure. It was all so unlike the gray and the rain of London.

She would love to see the world as he was doing, to visit countries she had only ever dreamed of. But as a nurse, her work was here in London. She never regretted her chosen profession, but sometimes, just sometimes, she wished she had the freedom—and the money—to travel. How exciting it would be to get on board a steamship with her carpetbag in hand, and know that when she got off again, she would be in another land.

Of course, that was just dreaming. She could never be brave enough to toss away the security of a job she enjoyed to go gallivanting around the world.

Her short break over, she attacked her ward duties once again. One of the old men in the ward had soiled his bed linen, sending the acrid stench of stale urine wafting through the entire ward. She beckoned Lenora over to help her. Together they undressed and washed him, stripped his bed, and tucked a clean sheet around him with military efficiency.

Dr. Hyde was standing in the corner of the ward ostensibly examining the patient in the next bed over, but she could feel his eyes wandering over to where she and Lenora were bending over the bed. She and Lenora worked most of their shifts together, and Dr. Hyde seemed to find endless excuses to be in their vicinity. Though every word he spoke to them was professional, he could not stop his glance from darting in their direction more often than was strictly necessary.

Lenora smoothed her hand over the bedclothes. “He’s staring at you again,” she murmured. She could not keep a hint of envy from her voice.

Beatrice smiled a secret little smile, turning away from her friend so her satisfaction didn’t show too clearly. Although Lenora tried valiantly to hide it, she had not grown out of her obsession with the doctor. Listening to Lenora talk, you would think he was a saint. According to Lenora, every remark he made was somehow portentous, every action of his imbued with selfless concern for others.

Beatrice wasn’t as starry-eyed as her friend was—it wasn’t in her nature to be starry-eyed about men. She was a pragmatist, a realist, without a romantic bone in her body. She wasn’t even sure she believed in love. It was all very well for other people, but it was not for her. Still, as far as she was concerned, everything was turning out very well indeed.

Dr. Hyde had turned out to be a most satisfactory addition to the staff at St. Thomas’s hospital. Not only was he a dedicated and capable doctor with the knack of making his patients open their hearts to him, but he was also good company.

Though he was shorter and darker than Beatrice preferred her men to be, and his humor occasionally verged on the dry and sarcastic, he was the best marital prospect of any of the men she knew. He was young, single, and possessed all his own teeth. And, best of all, he had clearly taken a shine to her. If nothing else, she had to admire his taste.

Love or no love, marriage to a respectable man had to be every woman’s goal. She could not be a nurse forever, had no parents to leave her any money, and no desire to be dependent on her more fortunate sisters or brother in her old age. Somehow she had to provide sensibly for her future while she was still young. Marriage to a man like Dr. Hyde would be a very good thing—for both of them.

His first invitation to go walking in the park with him had turned into a second invitation, and then a third. They were now generally accepted to be walking out together. It was a measure of Lenora’s affectionate nature that she had never reproached Beatrice for snaffling the man she adored. Lenora seemed content to adore him from afar.

Beatrice glanced at Dr. Hyde out of the corner of her eye. Strangely, his gaze seemed to be focused on Lenora rather than on her. It must be a trick of the light, she decided. Even though it was painfully obvious to everyone in the hospital that Lenora was carrying a torch for Dr. Hyde, he had never noticed her in return. Unless avoiding being alone with her counted as negative notice.

They finished making the bed and both of them stopped to watch him for a moment. He was examining a patient with a large tumor in his abdomen, a tumor that was clearly eating away at whatever life the poor man had left. Carefully he palpated it, then murmured some soothing words into the patient’s ear.

Despite his obvious pain, the patient gave a genuine smile as Dr. Hyde spoke.

Dr. Hyde looked up at the pair of them. “Would you please assist me for a moment, nurse?”

Before Beatrice had taken in what he wanted, Lenora was there beside him. “Yes, doctor?” Her face bore a look of utter adoration as she gazed up at him, but he did not notice. He simply gave her a few instructions in a measured tone, and she nodded her head and hurried to do his bidding.

Beatrice left the pair of them together by the patient’s bedside, and walked moodily down the corridor to the storeroom to fetch another chamber pot for the elderly patient whose linen they had just changed. Odds were on he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in time to use it, but it helped his dignity to know that it was there.

Dr. Hyde was a good doctor, there was no denying it. He had the rare ability of putting patients at their ease, whatever anguish they were suffering. He even dealt well with Lenora’s obvious partiality, treating her with a respectful distance.

Annoyingly, though, Beatrice wasn’t the least bit in love with him—not as Lenora so painfully was. It would make her world immeasurably brighter if she could convince herself that she loved him. She liked him, she respected him, but that was all. She didn’t long to see him when they were apart, or dream about him when she was in bed at night. She wasn’t dying to feel the press of his lips against hers, or to enjoy the hardness of his body against hers.

It wasn’t that she found him repulsive in any way—she was merely indifferent to the idea of having him touch her. It might be pleasant enough in its own way, she supposed, but that was the strongest feeling she could summon about him.

The penny dreadful novels that she and Lenora devoured in the evenings waxed lyrical on the feelings that a woman should have for the man she was about to marry, but Beatrice didn’t believe a word of it. Pretending such feelings existed and were strong enough to make women throw caution to the wind sold more books, she suspected, but they were no more real than unicorns or fairies.

She squelched the little sigh of disappointment she couldn’t help but feel. For some reason she couldn’t quite fathom, Teddy’s latest letter had unsettled her.

She wasn’t a romantic, she knew that, but why couldn’t she fall in love with Dr. Hyde? Be dizzy in love, head over heels, full of passionate adoration? Even just fall in love with him a little bit? Her older sisters had all found men they adored. Louisa was mad for her Moroccan Bey, and Emily was just as crazy about her Yankee photographer. They had both braved the disapproval of society to be with their chosen partners.

Beatrice wasn’t nearly that brave. Fond of him as she was, she wouldn’t flout any conventions to be in Dr. Hyde’s company. Part of his attraction was how acceptable it would be to be his wife, for she would certainly have him on no other terms. She would never become his lover without the benefit of clergy. The idea would horrify him as much as, if not more than, it did her.

Dr. Hyde was eminently respectable, and as his wife, she, too, would be above reproach. Their union would establish her once and for all firmly as a member of the professional stratum of society. The doctor would not gamble away their money, or drink it, or lose it on unwise investments—like her, he was far too full of good sense for that.

The doctor would never lose all his money and then shoot himself in the head leaving his children to starve, as her own father had done. She would be able to rely on him. He would take care of her.

A good solid brown, like rich earth—that was the color the doctor reminded her of. No flashy scarlet or bright blue, but worthy, dependable brown. Such a practical, useful color. Perfectly suited to her practical, unromantic nature.

She supposed she would get used to the idea that, as her husband, he would have free access to her body. Even if she didn’t find much pleasure in it, she was prepared to do her duty without complaint. It was little enough to trade for a lifetime of security.

It was all so predictable, though. She scuffed the toes of her shoes against the rough floor. Was it wrong to want more excitement in her life? To travel to far-off lands? To be more than a nurse in a London hospital? To meet a man for whom she would be willing to throw away all her dreams?

She would write to Teddy’s friend she decided as she walked purposefully back into the ward, whistling under her breath, and slid a clean chamber pot under the patient’s bed. In her letters, a small part of her soul was free to go traveling the world and visit all the exotic places she could only dream about, while the rest of her remained grounded in respectability.

Then she could do the sensible thing and encourage Dr. Hyde’s affection for her, with the view to one day becoming his wife. She liked him quite well, she respected his intelligence and his ethics, and he would not beat her or treat her badly. She would be safe with him. Marrying him would be the most mature response to her situation.

Some dreams deserved to remain out of reach.

Percy Carterton sat in his tent, rereading for at least the hundredth time the letter he had received that morning. Though the sun had gone down and the evening gloom was descending so he could barely pick out the words, still he stared at the paper. Not that he needed the light to read by—he already knew each word by heart.

With all his heart, Percy wished that she was here with him, too. He would delight in showing her the veld, and seeing it anew through her eyes. She would see the beauty even in this harsh landscape, and he would love it for her sake.

Did she realize how much this short letter of hers had eased his heart of its burden of loneliness? Just to know that back in England, a beautiful young woman spared him the odd kind thought?

Beautiful she certainly was—he had seen the evidence for himself. After receiving the letter in the morning, he had quizzed Edward about his sisters until the lad had finally reached into his jacket pocket and drawn out the photograph of them all, which he carried close to his chest. The five young women looking out at him from the photograph had all been fine-looking, but he had known at once which one was Beatrice even before Teddy had pointed her out. There had been something in her eyes that had shone through even in the black-and-white image—a fierce compassion coupled with such tenderness that it brought tears to his eyes.

He knew at once that Beatrice was the woman of his dreams, the woman who would make his life complete. The feeling of her reaching out to him through the picture was so strong that he had to fight the urge to snatch the photograph away from Edward and tuck it into his own jacket pocket, next to his heart.

Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face, for the lad gave him an odd look as he put away the photograph. “I told you they’re a bit of a contrast to the dour-faced Boer women in these parts.”

“They certainly are.” None of the women he had seen in South Africa could come close to matching them. “Not a scowl among them.”

“Of course it is fairly old now. My sisters had it taken for me before I shipped out here. To remind me of my family back home.”

“Your sisters are very beautiful. Particularly Beatrice,” he could not help adding.

“You think so?” Edward tilted his head to one side in thought. “Dorothea has always been considered the beauty of the family, though she is such a hellion the man who took her on would have to be a brave soul.”

Percy disregarded Edward’s opinion. What did the lad know? He was only their brother. Dorothea was well enough in her way, but his Beatrice had the beauty of a saint.