March 1918, Beaufort War Hospital, Bristol, England
Warren and Julian were sent to a British hospital in Southern England and shared a room with a handful of other patients. The room had no mirrors, for which Warren was grateful. Seven weeks had passed since the crash. Six and a half weeks had passed since Warren had come out of a morphine-induced haze and the doctor had told him he hadn’t been able to save his eye. Gone was his right eye and, with it, his flying career.
He tried to keep it in perspective. Better to be permanently injured than executed by the firing squad, and he shared the hospital with patients who had lost far bigger pieces of themselves. Some days were easier than others, but the nights . . . the nights were always bad.
McDougall came to see them that afternoon. He’d come before, but Warren had still been dealing with the pain at its worst, so he barely remembered the visit. Most of the information McDougall needed was from Julian anyway, so they hadn’t talked much back in February.
The three of them went out to the hospital’s garden. It was a pleasant March day, the sun shining brightly, the wind cold but weak. “I hear the Germans are driving us back,” Warren said. He no longer limped, but sometimes his leg still hurt. A black patch covered his injured eye.
McDougall frowned. “Like 1914 all over again. They don’t have to worry about the Russians anymore, so they can transfer men west. Even with help from the Americans, our men are being overwhelmed.”
“It will work out,” Julian said.
McDougall scoffed. “Paris is being shelled. That’s how far they’ve come.”
“This is their last effort.” Julian looked south, toward France. “Like a wave washing up on the sand just before the tide turns.”
“If the tide turns,” McDougall said.
“The Yanks are coming, remember? The Germans have no new allies. I read Sauer’s diary. The territories Germany took from Russia will take more men to control than originally thought. If they shift too many men west, they’ll appear weak, and their allies in the east might demand part of the spoils.”
“I hope you and Herr Sauer are right.”
“You said Paris is being bombarded?” Warren broke in.
McDougall turned to him. “Yes.”
“Is Claire all right?”
“Why don’t you write to the bonnie lass and ask?”
Warren didn’t answer. He’d received a handful of letters from her, forwarded from his old aerodrome, but hadn’t answered them. If he wrote back, she’d know where he was. What if she came to visit? He wasn’t ready for her to see him like this. He supposed he would have to face the world outside the hospital eventually, but he needed more time. He hadn’t even written to his grandmother, knowing how quickly news would spread from her to Claire. It wasn’t right to keep his loved ones in the dark, but every time he grabbed a sheet of paper, he felt sick to his stomach.
“Any word on when either of you will be released?” McDougall asked.
Julian glanced at Warren. When he didn’t answer, Julian did. “The doctors think my lungs have scarred over. I might not make any more progress.”
“When they release you, write to me. I have connections in the French Army. We can find something that doesn’t require much physical exertion. Translation, liaison duty. Things of that sort.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Flynn, when will they release you?”
He wasn’t sure. The scar running from his eyebrow to his cheekbone had healed in a permanent sentence of mutilation. “Soon.” The word was terrifying.
* * *
Several weeks later, a dark-haired nurse looked up from a file of papers and turned first to Julian, then to Warren. “Why isn’t your friend in the gas ward?”
Panic welled up inside Warren’s chest. In Germany he’d learned to distinguish Julian’s waking breath from his sleeping breath. When Warren was having a bad night, knowing Julian was awake brought comfort, even when no words were exchanged. He didn’t want Julian transferred. “This is where he was assigned when we came.”
“Hmm. Strange that they shipped a Frenchman all the way to England.” The nurse moved to the next patient, but that didn’t mean the matter was settled.
“Maybe I should go back to France,” Julian said after Warren translated the conversation.
“You still have coughing fits.”
“And they aren’t getting any better. I’d rather take a few weeks of convalescence leave with my father. I haven’t seen him in years . . .” Julian’s words trailed off, tinged with melancholy.
Warren knew why. Julian’s mother had died during his first winter in Germany. Julian, unlike Warren, had written to his family immediately after their escape. Warren had finally posted a letter to his grandmother last week, four months after his disappearance.
“This is a nice hospital,” Julian continued. “I didn’t know hospitals could be so nice . . . but it isn’t home.”
“Weren’t you in hospital before?” Warren thought back to the first time they’d met, the day he’d crashed his old B.E.2.
“They called it a hospital. It felt more like a butcher shop. It was filthy and crowded, and the staff would only help the men they could send back to the front.”
That explained why McDougall had sent Julian to England. “I’m sorry. If I’d known more about French hospitals, I would have had you sent to a British one with Boyle.”
“That probably would have been against regulations. But maybe I should see about being discharged before that nurse asks too many questions and gets me kicked out. It’s probably still against regulations.”
Warren knew he too should see about leaving. He glanced at the eye patch on the bedside table. It wasn’t so horrible, was it? Just a bit of black fabric.
“Warren?”
He recognized the soft voice instantly. How did Claire get in here? How did she even know where he was? He reached for the patch and yanked it on before turning. Even with only one eye to see her, she was beautiful. Her red curls were pinned up, giving him a clear view of her creamy skin dotted with freckles and her blue eyes currently fixed on him. She stepped forward cautiously, as if unsure she was welcome.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Your grandmother told me.”
That didn’t surprise him. Claire probably wrote to his grandmother more than he did, especially lately. “So news from the single letter I wrote her made it all the way to Paris, did it?”
“You aren’t angry that I’ve come, are you?” Her lips turned down but not in the exaggerated pout he was used to seeing. This was a more subdued sign, one of unconscious worry rather than of purposely displayed displeasure.
Warren stood. If he was going to have a conversation with Claire, he didn’t want to do it in front of five other men, even if they were pretending to start a card game. “No. I’m not upset. I just wasn’t expecting you, and I suppose I’ve gotten out of the habit of smiling. Let me show you the garden.”
She nodded her agreement, and they walked silently through the hall and down the stairs to the ground floor. Stairs still made his leg twinge, so he took them slowly. Claire noticed. “Your grandmother didn’t say what happened.”
“I didn’t tell her.”
“Will you tell me?”
Warren studied her face. He wasn’t used to Claire being timid, but it had been a while since they’d seen each other. He waited until they were outside. “I was shot in the leg. And took some shrapnel to my eye. It’s gone now.” He let out a huff. “The shrapnel and the eye.”
He sat on a bench, and she sat next to him. “I’m sorry, Warren.” She hesitated, then slipped her arm through his.
He watched her as the seconds ticked by, unsure what to say. It was good to see her, but this wouldn’t change the past, couldn’t change his dismal future.
“I was so worried,” she said. “At first I thought you were ignoring my letters because you were angry. You had every right to be, but I still hoped for forgiveness. Then I heard you had disappeared. You have no idea how relieved I was to find out you were alive. I came to England as soon as I got your grandmother’s message.” She smiled through a few tears. “Papa must have been so confused. He’s been trying to send me to London since the Germans started shelling Paris, and I kept saying I wasn’t going to run away. I didn’t tell him the real reason I finally came.”
“Is the shelling bad?”
“It’s . . . it’s scary more than deadly. They’re firing from behind the front lines, so we never hear any warning. At first everyone suspected bombs from an airplane or a zeppelin, but the skies were clear. Evette and Lieutenant McDougall were running ragged those first days, thinking it might be sabotage.”
After McDougall’s visit, Warren had found newspaper accounts of the Paris bombardment. He didn’t want Claire to go back while the huge gun was in range. “Will you stay in London?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t like the idea of being here where it’s safe while my father and Evette and Franke are all suffering through the barrage.” She glanced up at him, her eyes seeming to memorize every detail of his changed face. “But if I was wanted here, I might could prolong my visit.”
Warren didn’t answer.
“Will you be released soon?” Claire pulled her hands into her lap and stared at them. “If you were to recover for a while at your grandmother’s house, I had thought . . . I had hoped we could see more of each other. Maybe start again where we left off.” She peeked up at him. “I know things didn’t work out like you were hoping last year, but I didn’t see that as an end to our future, just a delay. I was scared, but I never stopped caring for you, Warren. When your grandmother wrote to me, I knew it didn’t matter how badly you were injured—I would still love you.”
“My face is destroyed, Claire. It’s not the type of face you want to look at over tea or have escort you to the theater.”
“It’s the face of a hero.”
Warren shook his head. “No, all the real heroes are dead.”
Slowly, hesitantly Claire lifted the patch on his eye. He didn’t stop her. She would see it eventually, and it was better to get it out of the way before he let his hopes build more than they already had the second she appeared again. He expected her to gasp, to recoil, to show some sign of distaste, but instead she stood and kissed his empty eye socket. “I’m not so sure. I think I’m sitting with a hero. One who I hope will forgive me.”
“Claire, I—” He broke off, still at a loss for what to say. He still cared for her as much as he had when he’d proposed. “Claire, I love you more than airplanes.”
She gazed down on him, a smile pulling at her lips. “Is that the best thing you can come up with?”
He was speechless. Didn’t she realize what he was saying?
“It’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
He took her hand and pulled her toward him until she was balanced on his knees. Then, despite the string of patients, doctors, orderlies, and nurses passing the bench, he wrapped an arm around her, ran a hand along the back of her neck, and kissed her.
* * *
Warren spent two weeks with his grandmother, wondering why he hadn’t left the hospital earlier. His Grandma Beatrice and Claire’s Grandma Huntley spoiled him completely, and the kisses he stole from Claire whenever they were alone helped convince him that a lost eye wasn’t the end of the world.
She caught him rubbing his good eye early one morning while he read the paper. “You might shouldn’t read three newspapers every day. You’re straining your eye.”
Warren turned the page. “Two, not three. And after sitting in a German jail without access to any news at all, I want to read all I can.”
“Any good news?”
“No.” Warren folded the paper. Claire was easier on his eye than the newsprint was anyway.
“You were in a German jail?”
It wasn’t the first time Claire had asked about Germany, and as usual, Warren tried to change the subject. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“But what about the man you went to rescue?”
Warren hadn’t thought Claire knew his purpose in going to Germany, but he supposed Evette had told her. “It turns out I’m not very good at rescuing people. The man I went after ended up in jail with me, both of us injured. Then he got shot when we finally escaped.”
Claire hung her head as if mourning Julian’s hardships. Warren was about to ask her how much she had learned of Spider when his grandmother’s butler interrupted them.
“Sir, an officer is here to see you.”
Warren followed the butler into his grandmother’s sun room, where a Royal Flying Corps lieutenant waited.
“I have orders for you, sir.”
Warren nodded and motioned for the man to be seated. “Thank you for coming.”
The man remained on his feet. “First, I am to inform you that you are no longer a member of the Royal Flying Corps.”
“What?” Ousting him from the corps completely? They might as well tell him he couldn’t eat. “I can still fly. My eyesight might not be sharp enough for dogfights, but I could train new men or pilot reconnaissance flights or—”
“The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service are now the Royal Air Force. You’ve been transferred, but you’re no longer a captain.”
“Oh.” Warren wondered if the merger had created too many midlevel officers.
“You are now a major. Congratulations on your promotion, sir. You are expected at your new squadron in three days.” The lieutenant handed him some papers. Warren had been promoted out of routine flying duty, but he would still be on the front lines, still breathing the scent of castor oil, still hearing the buzz of engines and feeling the blast of propellers. And plenty of squadron leaders still flew from time to time.
The young lieutenant saluted, turned sharply, and walked from the room.
It was probably the best Warren could have hoped for, given his handicap. He’d always known he wouldn’t be able to fly every day for the rest of his life, especially when the war ended. Claire came into the room, and he wondered how Mr. Donovan would react to his new situation. He was permanently mutilated, but his new job would be less risky, and with the promotion would come a pay increase. Would it be enough to win Donovan’s approval?