Mirror Image (43 page)

"I recognized the uniform, and the description." Penny Morrison had said
there was a very pretty young American who'd come over on the Lusitania,
and would probably stay for about ten minutes. But he didn't say that to
Victoria as he watched her.

"Am I supposed to stand up and salute you? " Victoria asked. She didn't
know the protocol yet, but at this moment in time they appeared more to
be a man and a woman, and not a captain and a medical assistant.

He smiled this time at her question. "Not unless you join the army, and
I think you really shouldn't. You can do just as well with what you're
doing, unless of course you feel a need for a rank, and you're not a
nurse, I believe, so you'd only be a private. Frankly, I wouldn't
bother." He spoke perfect English and had gone to Oxford and Harvard.

He looked older than Charles to her, though she wasn't sure how much.

In fact, he was thirty-nine, and very attractive. He looked extremely
aristocratic. "I'm Captain Edouard de Bonneville, by the way." He was
smiling at her now, and there was a light in her eyes that hadn't been
there since she left New York. She had scarcely had anyone to talk to,
except Lady Mackworth on the Lusitania. Ever since then, it had been
purely perfunctory conversations. But this man seemed different.

"Are you the commanding officer here? " she asked. "I suppose I should
stand up, but to tell you the truth, I'm not sure my legs would hold
me." Her eyes looked tired and her smile rueful.

"That's another advantage of not being in the army. You don't need to
stand up and salute, or stand at attention. I strongly suggest you don't
enlist, " he teased, and sat down on a log facing her.

"And no, I'm not the commanding officer at all. I'm third or fourth in
line, and of no consequence whatsoever."

"Somehow, if you signed my papers yesterday, I'm not sure I believe
that."

"It's close enough to the truth." But not really. He had gone to Saumur,
the cavalry school for nobles and gentlemen, and was career army. And
eventually, if all went well, he would be a general.

But he was far more interested in her than his own history. In the past
two days, he had heard about her from several of the men, and Penny
Morrison was intrigued by her. She was obviously well bred, and very
young and beautiful, and no one could imagine why she'd come here.

She looked like the sort of girl to be spending her summer dancing in
satin gowns and going to parties. "I hear you came over on the
Lusitania, " he said, watching her eyes. He could see all the sorrow and
the pain there.

"That's not much of a start to your trip, I'm afraid .. . but then
again, " he grinned almost impishly, "this isn't much of a finish.

Have you lost your way en route to somewhere rather more pleasant, or
did you do this to yourself on purpose? " She laughed at him, and
without even knowing him, she liked him. There was something very
straightforward about him, and even a little bit sharp, and she liked
it.

"No, I did this on purpose. It would be pretty awful if I hadn't." She
laughed at him, and then met his gaze. Their eyes were almost exactly
the same color, although her hair was so dark and his was fair.

Any one watching them would have thought they'd make an attractive
couple, although the captain was obviously considerably older.

Technically, though not easily at thirty-nine, he could have been her
father.

"Why is it you speak English so well? "

"I went to Oxford for a year after the Sorbonne, and then to adjust the
accent perfectly, " he grinned, and imitated a Boston twang perfectly,
"I spent a year at Harvard. Then I went to Saumur, it's a rather silly
French military school with a lot of horses." She loved the way he
described it.

Even she had heard of it, and knew it was very distinguished. It was the
equivalent of West Point in the States, but with horses. "And now I'm
here, and frankly, " he lit a cigarette too, she had finished hers by
then and she'd lit another, "I so.

wish I weren't." She laughed at his honesty. Most of the men would have
said the same thing. It was amazing to think she had come three thousand
miles because she wanted to be here. "And if you had any sense at all,
you'd get back on a ship, an American one this time, since your country
is sensible enough to stay out of all this, and go back to where you
came from. Where is that, by the way? " He knew she was American, but he
didn't know more than that, except that her name was Olivia Henderson,
or at least he thought "New York, " she answered cautiously.

"And you've run away from tyrannical parents? " He knew she was
twenty-two from her passport, but she was still young enough to live
with them, or want to leave them, for whatever reasons. Or perhaps a
broken heart had brought her here. It was possible, but would have been
extremely foolish.

"No." She shook her head. "I have a very kind father." Edouard looked
surprised by that. "And he let you come here?

What an odd man." But Victoria shook her head in answer. She liked
talking to him, and the odd mixture of his accent, mostly French,
somewhat British.

"I don't think I would allow my daughter to do that, I'm sure I
wouldn't, if I had one, which thank God, I don't." She looked at his
hand and there was no wedding ring. But there was none on her hand
either, and she was married to Charles. Olivia was wearing it for her.

"He doesn't know I'm here, " Victoria said honestly. "He thinks I'm in
California."

"That is not a nice thing to do." He looked at her with frank
disapproval. What if something happened to her? What about the ship?

"Does no one know you're here? " She was very bold for a
twenty-two-year-old girl, very brave, and very foolish.

"My sister does, " she answered him, leaning back against the tree
again. She liked talking to him, but she was very tired. And yet there
was something about him that made her want to tell him things she
wondered if she shouldn't. But he couldn't send her back now. She had
her papers. And she was over twenty-one. What could he do to stop her?

"We're twins, " she said quietly.

"Identical? " He was totally intrigued by her as she nodded.

"Completely." She nodded. "We're mirror twins. Everything I have on the
left side, she has on the right, and vice versa. Like this freckle." She
held out her left hand to him and he could see only the tiniest of spots
there, on her palm, just between her fingers. He glanced at it and
nodded. He had no real need for this information and identifying
process, since he was not seeing them together, but he could imagine it
could be quite a problem. "No one can tell us apart, except the woman
who took care of us when we were small. Not even our father."

She grinned mischievously at him, and he could just imagine all the
chaos she might have wrought, and had, with pleasure.

"That could be very complicated, " he said, envisioning it, and then he
smiled at her, "especially with men, no? Have you confused everyone of
your acquaintance? " He was very clever, more than he knew, and she
laughed at him. She didn't know it yet, but Edouard de Bonneville was
dazzled by her beauty. He had heard of her, and the words hadn't been
generous enough as far as he was concerned. She was gorgeous.

"We only confused some, " she confessed, looking very innocent, which he
did not believe for a single moment.

"The poor devils. How dreadful. I'm glad I have not met you together,
though I must admit, I would like to have seen it. What is your sister's
name? " he asked, and she hesitated, but only for a second.

"Victoria, " she said simply.

"Olivia and Victoria. It's quite perfect. So Olivia, " he went on, "you
are here as a mystery, and only your sister knows. And how long will you
stay with us? Till it ends? " He doubted it. Why should she?

She was obviously wellborn, well educated, well spoken, intelligent, and
very beautiful. She could go home anytime she wanted, and he was sure
she would the moment she was tired of the dangers there, and the
discomfort, and there were lots of both. He doubted that she'd be there
much longer.

"I don't know." She looked at him honestly, and her eyes told him a tale
he didn't understand yet. Perhaps she was running away from something.
"I'll stay as long as I can. It depends on my sister."

"On your sister? " That did surprise him, as he raised an eye brow and
watched her. "Why on her? " She was a rare and curious being, and he
would have loved to spend the day with her, talking, and getting to know
her.

"She's taking care of things for me."

"It sounds complicated, " he said discreetly.

"It is." She nodded, with an odd look in her eyes.

"Perhaps one day, you'll tell me about it." He vowed to follow her
career while she was at Chalons-sur-Marne. It would be interesting, he
was certain.

She stood up slowly then, and felt the ache in her bones she had felt
when she left the medical tent. She didn't want to leave him, but she
knew she could not stay awake much longer. But he surprised her by
walking her slowly to the women's tent. She had been sure he wouldn't
want to be seen talking to a lowly volunteer, and yet he didn't seem to
mind it.

In fact, he turned up frequently over the next week, in the medical
tent, watching her as she knelt beside someone vomiting their guts after
they were gassed, or crying as she held them while they died. He turned
up in the mess tent once or twice, and had coffee with her, and once he
sat with her long enough for her to inhale dinner, on a ten-minute break
before she went back on duty in the tent. They managed to talk, over the
constant rumble of the guns that they were all used to now, and the
occasional hissing sound that always reminded her of the sound when the
first torpedo hit the Lusitania. They talked of the greenish yellow
clouds of gas that had continued to hit near Dangemarck, and the
thousands of men who were being maimed, killed, and crippled.

And yet, interspersed with all that, they talked about foolish things,
lawn tennis, summer yachts, his love of horses that had actually led him
to the cavalry, and his time in Boston. They found that they even knew
some of the same people in Newport. It was all so strange talking about
it here, but most of the time, they spoke only about what they were
doing day by day.

He dropped by to see her at the barracks now and then too. She'd been
there for a month when he actually invited her to go somewhere.

There was to be a small dinner at the chateau given by the general for
the senior officers, and Edouard invited her to go with him.

"Here? " She looked shocked. She had nothing at all to wear. She had
lost everything on the ship, and what she had bought in Liverpool was
functional and ugly. All she had were her uniforms and her starched
aprons.

"I'm afraid Maxim's in Paris is out of the question." Edouard looked
amused. After watching her wear bloodied aprons for a month, and drive
ambulances to their makeshift morgue behind the lines, she suddenly
sounded very much like a woman.

"I have nothing to wear but my uniform, " she wailed, flattered that he
asked her, but surprised too. They had become friends in the past month,
but it never occurred to her that he might be attracted to her.

He was older than she was, of high rank, and this hardly seemed the
place for romance, although she knew others were romantically involved
here.

In some cases, the agony all around them brought people closer, in
others it seemed more sensible to keep one's distance. And she had
assumed that Edouard had chosen the latter tack.