Where Love Shines Read Online Free Page B

that her Lancer would still be alive in the morning. Then her thoughts returned to her conversation with Florence Nightingale. If only God would speak as clearly to her. What was she to do about the Honorable Arthur Nigel Merriott? He was such a good man. He wanted her to marry him. Her family wanted her to marry him. Was she being wicked and prideful to hold back? Or was she merely feeling normal maidenly shyness?
    She knew it was evil of her to think of the horrors of the Crimea lasting one day—even one hour—longer than necessary just so she wouldn’t have to return to London and make that decision. And yet she dreaded the prospect of returning.
    A soft plop followed by the sound of scampering feet just inches from her ear told her that a rat had narrowly missed falling on her face. Still, she did not want to return to London.

Three
    T he next morning Jennifer sped through her duties. She and Sister Mary Margaret were assigned to take breakfast to the men in the corridor below the nurses’ tower and to the ward above and help feed the men not capable of feeding themselves. Although the patients in neighboring beds were always willing to help, Jennifer preferred to do it herself although she could never explain her instinctive dislike of the practice of men with fever and dysentery feeding others. So this morning, in spite of her desire to hurry, she took time with each patient.
    Then the slops must be carried out and dumped in the latrines in the yard and the floors scrubbed. Miss Nightingale was fanatically insistent upon cleanliness, although the professional nurses from London hospitals laughed at her finicky ways. “Newfangled ideas. Never did it like this at Saint Bart’s, I can tell you. But what can you expect from one who’s always lived in fine houses? She’ll learn.” In spite of her grumbles Edith Watson stuck her brush into the soapy water and attacked the excrement on the floor with vigor. Rats squeaked as they fled from her splashing brush.
    Jennifer finished her duties by midafternoon. She would not be required to assist a doctor in changing dressings for an hour yet. She tucked loose strands of her thick brown hair back into her cap and hurried to the ward where she had spent so much time last night.
Please let him be alive
, she prayed.
    She had heard the nurses who had been there longer than herself refer to some of the beds as death traps. “That’s one o’ them fatal beds.” Mrs. Watson had nodded toward one they were scrubbing near a few days ago. “Every man put in it sickens and dies. Mark my words.” Jenny noted that the sulphurous stench of the ward seemed stronger there. Or was it merely her imagination?
    And she had recalled Mrs. Watson’s words a few days later when she found the pallet empty. Remembering that, Jenny slowed her steps now as she approached the Balaclava ward. She nodded to Sister Mary Margaret and three other Catholic sisters who were just leaving their duties there, carrying scrub brushes and pails. Inside the door Jennifer’s eyes ran down the row of cots along the wall facing the tall, arched windows. Had it been the fifth down? Or sixth? No, those men were amputees. Seventh? Eighth? Her heart lurched. Both cots were empty.
    She felt a sob rise in her throat. Clamping her teeth shut, she suppressed the cry. Among so many, why should she care so much about that one? She forced herself to go forward. She was here. She might as well see if there was anyone else she could help. She felt the pencil and thick pad of paper she carried in her pocket. There was never enough time to write all the letters the men would have sent home for them. She recalled how much her cousin Colin’s letters had meant to all her family. Before they ceased coming.
    This was what she had originally thought she would do here. Mary Stanley had painted a romantic picture of holding the hands of brave men, soothing their fevered brows, and writing letters for them. Jennifer would never have