Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [88]
But the core of it was true, and it had not taken him to London. That was a dream he was keeping ahead of him, for before he finally went back to Missouri—London and Paris.
He was grinning at her now. “Aw shucks! I can read. I’ll get there one day. You’ll take me. You want your job back?”
“Yes.” She had said it too quickly, and it alarmed her.
He raised his eyebrows. “Can’t you make up your mind, then?”
She gave him a light punch on the arm, suddenly feeling tears prickle her eyes. “I can’t have it, Wil. He’s got a driver.”
“A greenhorn!”
“A what?”
“A guy who knows nothing,” he explained. “Still wet behind the ears. C’mon! Let’s get cleaned up and onto the road. We’ll find out where this guy is and get rid of him.”
She had a sudden stab of alarm, thinking of Prentice, “Get rid of him! How?”
He half shrugged. “I dunno, but we’ll think of something.”
“Actually I do have a letter I have to take to the general,” she said, walking beside him toward the water and soap. “And since it’s personal, and I should tell him about his sister, I really do need at least to find him.”
“ ’Course you do,” he agreed. “Never explain.”
She flashed him a broad smile. “Never. We aren’t army, right?”
“Right!” He saluted smartly. “Let’s go look for the general!”
It was a long task. The day before there had been a large offensive that had failed and the losses had been very heavy. General Plumer had been forced to retreat and there was a considerable amount of disorder; it was hard to battle against anger and despair. The second German use of gas had made it even worse.
“General Cullingford?” Wil asked a harassed sergeant major.
The man wiped his sleeve across his brow, leaving a smear of dirt and blood. “Jesus, I don’t know! Leave it to this lot and they’d ’ave all the bloody generals six feet under! And I’ll not argue with ’em. What d’yer need ’im for anyway? The injured’ve bin evacuated from ’ere, and most of the dead are buried—at least those we can find.”
Wil stood very stiff, his face pale. “Cullingford’s not bad, as generals go. We have a message for him. Lost a member of his family.”
The sergeant major’s eyebrows rose. “Go on! You mean generals have families? An’ here we was thinking they crawled up out of an ’ole in the ground.”
“Someone should teach you the facts of life, Sergeant Major!” Judith snapped. “Unlikely as it may seem, even you had a mother once, who wiped your nose—and the rest of you. And probably even thought you were worth it.”
The sergeant major blushed dark red, although it was impossible to tell whether it was shame for his attitude, or embarrassment at what she might be imagining about him. “Yes, miss. I ’eard he went toward Wulvergem, but I’m not sure.”
“Thank you,” she said stiffly.
The next person they asked was a major, and considerably less willing to help. Instead he directed them to take half a dozen men with shrapnel wounds or broken limbs back to Poperinge.
It was strangely familiar to be dealing with injured men again, ordinary soldiers who obey orders, made no decisions except to steel their nerves and go forward, live up to what was expected of them, not by the army or those at home who loved them, but by the men they lived with every day.
She had not meant to do it, except as a necessary act of obedience. Her mind was filled with finding Cullingford, telling him of her visit with his sister, the beginning of a softening in her, the first steps forward. She did not try to consider what she could do to replace his new driver, that was Wil’s idea, perhaps his way of making her feel better.
Among the wounded was a ginger-haired man with a head wound. His right ear was torn off and there was a deep gash across his cheek, but the side of his face that was still visible under the bandaging was cheerful enough. If it cost him