GILL PAUL

NO PLACE FOR A LADY

Copyright

Published by Avon

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2015

Copyright © Gill Paul 2015

Cover Design © Lisa Horton 2015

Gill Paul asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008102128

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008102135

Version: 2019-03-01

Dedication

For my brother Gray and sister Fo, who mean the world to me.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map 1

Map 2

Prologue

PART ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

PART TWO

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

PART THREE

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

PART FOUR

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

PART FIVE

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

PART SIX

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

PART SEVEN

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

PART EIGHT

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Historical Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Enjoyed this book? Read on for the start of Gill Paul’s new novel, Another Woman’s Husband.

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Map 1

Map 2

Prologue

25th October 1854

Mrs Lucy Harvington stands shivering on a hilltop near the coast of Crimea, watching armies massed for battle below, waiting to find out if her husband will die today. Charlie is somewhere in the group to the far left: she has overheard Lord Raglan pointing out the Light Brigade when giving an order and she peers in the direction he indicated to see indistinct figures on horseback, cold sunlight glinting on the steel of their bayonets. All around she can see lines of men standing poised, waiting for the order to rush forward and try to kill each other – men who are sons, nephews, husbands and fathers, even grandfathers. She can hear the impatient whinny of horses and the squawk of a bird high above. It sounds like a warning.

Suddenly it seems incomprehensible that she should find herself in such a situation. In less than a year her entire fortune has turned on its head: she’s gone from being a young lady of just seventeen years who lived at home with her father and older sister, to being the wife of an army captain who has followed her husband to war in a remote, inhospitable land. She still can’t quite believe the change in her circumstances. In London she has a wide circle of friends and is used to attending balls and soirées wearing fashionable new gowns and the latest hairstyles. Now she has been wearing the same gown for almost a week without the opportunity to wash, her cloak is smeared in mud and her hair hangs in matted coils. She spends most of her time alone while Charlie is out in the field. She is cold, her clothes are damp – they never seem to dry completely – and she is very, very scared.

But her fate has been sealed since that first unforgettable meeting with Charlie Harvington, the beginning of a chain of circumstances that had led her to this godforsaken hillside.

It was a dull November day in 1853, when London was thick with sooty fog and the stench of the Thames. Lucy had called upon the Pendleburys, old friends of her parents, in the hope of seeing their son Henry, whom she knew was home on leave from the army. They’d enjoyed a brief flirtation during his last leave and she was curious to see where it might lead. Unfortunately, Henry was absent and she had to make conversation with his mother and father, a rather staid couple. Once they had run through the usual topics – the weather, plans for the festive season, health of respective family members – Lucy offered to play the pianoforte and sing for them, simply to pass the time until she could decently make her excuses and leave.

She picked a Mozart lied that suited her first soprano voice. Her singing teacher was critical of her pronunciation of the German lyrics, but she was fond of the pretty melody. As she was singing, she heard the drawing-room door open and glanced up to see Henry Pendlebury standing in the doorway with a friend, a very handsome friend, kitted out in a royal blue tunic with gold braid draped over the chest, who was staring directly at her. The attention made her sing a little more sweetly, play a little more precisely, while she felt herself flush at the unexpected audience.

When she finished, all clapped heartily and Lucy bowed her head.

‘Please don’t stop. I could listen to you forever,’ the stranger said. It appeared he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Henry Pendlebury laughed. ‘Miss Gray, meet my army colleague, Captain Charlie Harvington. Charlie, this is Miss Lucy Gray.’

Charlie came forward to take her hand. He raised it to his lips, kissed it, then fell dramatically to his knees. ‘I declare in front of all witnesses here present that I volunteer to be Miss Gray’s willing slave and do her bidding for as long as she will tolerate me. Please, Miss Gray, tell me some service I might perform for you. I ask nothing in return but the honour of being allowed to remain in the presence of such breathtaking beauty.’

Lucy laughed, startled by his unconventional forwardness. ‘Very well. I should like a cup of tea to wet my throat after its exertion.’

There was a pot of tea on a tray by the fire and Charlie bounded over to fetch her a cup, enquiring carefully about her taste for cream and sugar.

‘Now I should like you to bring my shawl,’ she said, enjoying the game with this lively stranger. She noticed a disapproving look pass between Mr and Mrs Pendlebury and knew she was pushing the boundaries of propriety but couldn’t help herself.

Charlie fetched her shawl and as he held it towards her their eyes met. His were a startling blue, an unusual combination with his chestnut hair. He was smiling, but behind the smile she could sense something sad about him. She felt a tug at her heart and knew in an instant, all joking aside, that she was going to fall in love with him, and he with her. It was as simple as that.

When she rose to leave, as the hour was approaching when she must change for dinner, Charlie escorted her to her carriage and asked if he might call on her the following morning.

‘What about me?’ Henry called from the front door. ‘Am I to be forgotten so readily, Miss Gray?’

‘You must come too,’ she insisted. ‘Of course you must.’

But it was Charlie she had eyes for now. It was what the French called a coup de foudre, a deep-rooted, certain knowledge that they belonged together.

Now, eleven months later, she is standing on a hilltop in the Crimean peninsula, and realising she might never see Charlie alive again. She could even be killed herself, or taken prisoner by the Russians – and she’s not sure which would be worse.

There is a bright flash down below, then a deafening explosion shakes the ground and she sinks to her knees in terror. ‘Dear God,’ she prays silently. ‘Please save Charlie and please save me. I want to go home again. I want us to go back where we belong.’

PART ONE

Chapter One

11th January 1854

Dorothea Gray watched as Henderson walked slowly round the dining table dispensing devilled kidneys with a clatter of cutlery on a silver serving dish. Her sister Lucy waved him away but Dorothea accepted a modest portion, while their father licked his lips and directed the butler to heap his plate with spoonful after spoonful. The meaty, tangy smell mingled with that of freshly baked rolls and a certain mustiness that permeated the dining room, a mysterious odour no amount of spring-cleaning could shift. The girls’ father lifted The Times, neatly folded into quarters, intending to peruse the front page as he ate, but was interrupted by Lucy, who lobbed a question across the breakfast table with studied casualness.

‘Papa, would it be acceptable if Captain Harvington comes to call on you around eleven this morning? There’s something he wishes to discuss with you.’

Dorothea looked up, instantly suspicious.

‘What’s that? Captain Harvington? Do I know him?’ He frowned and peered over the rim of his glasses.

‘Of the 8th Hussars. You’ve met him several times, Papa. He joined us for dinner the evening before last. Remember he made you laugh with his witty impression of Lord Aberdeen?’

Still her father couldn’t recollect the man and he screwed up his eyes with the effort.

Dorothea interrupted: ‘What might Captain Harvington wish to see Father about?’ As soon as she said the words, the answer came to her: ‘You’re not planning on getting engaged, are you? You’ve only known each other a matter of weeks. Besides, he may have to go to war soon if the Russians don’t withdraw from the Turkish territories on the Danube.’

Lucy tilted her chin defiantly. ‘No, we’re not bothering to get engaged; we plan to marry straight away so that I can sail with him if he has to go to the Turkish lands. He says officers are allowed to take their wives along.’

Dorothea gasped and put down her fork. ‘But that’s ridiculous! What gentleman would ask his wife to go to war with him? It’s an appalling idea.’ She glanced at her father but he was savouring a bite of kidney, oblivious to the storm brewing between his daughters.

‘We love each other with all our hearts. It’s been nine whole weeks since we met and both of us agree we’ve never felt as sure of anything in our entire lives.’ Lucy spoke passionately and in her words Dorothea could hear echoes of the romance novels she loved, full of chaste young girls and brooding heroes.

‘What do Captain Harvington’s family think of this idea? Surely they’ll see that it’s silly to rush into marriage while war looms? Everyone says it’s inevitable after the Russians destroyed those Turkish ships at Sinope last November. Why not wait till he comes back? It’s bound to be over quickly. The Russians are no match for us, especially when we are in alliance with the French. It would make much more sense to wait.’ Dorothea cast around for further arguments that would carry weight with her flighty younger sister. ‘We could plan a beautiful ceremony and there would be time to invite all the family members we haven’t seen for years. You could have a dress especially made, and use Mother’s Chantilly lace veil. Think of it, Lucy; a proper wedding, not something rushed and over-hasty …’ She tailed off at the determined glint in Lucy’s eyes.

‘Our minds are made up, Dorothea. Fortunately it’s not up to you. It’s between Papa and Charlie.’ She turned to her father. ‘Papa, you will listen favourably to his request, won’t you? We are so much in love and he needs me to go with him and care for him. Besides, you don’t want to be stuck with two old maids on your hands, do you?’ She looked pointedly at her sister, unmarried at the age of thirty-one, who tutted at the rudeness of her jibe.

‘What’s that you say?’ their father asked, exasperated that his poor hearing meant he had missed much of their conversation. ‘What must I do?’

Lucy spoke slowly and clearly: ‘Captain Harvington will come to see you at eleven. When you speak with him, just remember that I love him very much and want to be his bride.’

After breakfast, Dorothea followed her father down the hall to his study, where he liked to spend the morning snoozing over his newspaper. She waited till he was settled in his comfy leather armchair, with a view over the leafless trees of Russell Square, before speaking.

‘Papa, I hope you agree that Lucy’s ridiculous scheme to get married and go to war with the troops would be disastrous.’

‘Quite.’ Her father nodded in agreement.

Dorothea wasn’t convinced that he understood the gravity of the situation, so she continued: ‘She and Captain Harvington are both good-natured, happy-go-lucky characters, but neither has a practical bone in their bodies. And Lucy is far too young and giddy for marriage.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ He opened the newspaper.

‘You have to stop them, Papa. I know it puts you in an awkward position, but I have a suggestion. Don’t refuse permission outright, but play for time by telling them they can marry on Captain Harvington’s return from war. Doubtless Lucy’s head will have been turned by some other charming fellow by then and the marriage won’t go ahead. Only a couple of months ago she was smitten with Henry Pendlebury, and before that it was Alexander Gwynn Jones. Make them wait and I’m sure this one won’t last.’

‘I expect you’re right. Remind me: what is it that I am to do?’

Dorothea explained again, speaking slowly and clearly until it seemed the message had got through. The carriage clock on the mantel chimed ten, meaning she would be late for her work unless she got a move on. She was a member of the ladies’ committee at a small charitable hospital in Pimlico and counted herself fortunate to have an occupation, unlike most ladies of her social class who spent their days sitting idly at home or calling upon friends for tea and gossip. If Chalmers had the carriage ready and traffic was not too heavy around Covent Garden, there was still a chance she could make it on time.

‘Thank you, Father.’ She leaned in to kiss his brow and he murmured his goodbyes before opening the newspaper and closing his eyes.

Looking back, Dorothea couldn’t put her finger on a time when her father’s mental acuity had begun to decline. In her youth he had run a thriving bespoke furniture business and was clearly an astute businessman who had earned enough to buy a large house and employ five members of staff, as well as keeping a carriage. Russell Square was not a fashionable area of London but it was convenient for the City, and therefore popular with merchants such as her father. He’d often been away from home during her childhood, but when he was there he used to regale his girls with tales of explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook, a subject that held endless fascination for him. There was a globe in his study on which he showed them the countries to which these pioneers had sailed, some of them right on the other side of the sphere. But since he sold the business – there being no son to inherit – it seemed his brain had shrunk. When had that been? Maybe six or seven years ago, she thought. A couple of years before his wife – Lucy and Dorothea’s mother – had lost her long battle with illness. Were these events linked, she wondered? It was hard to remember why he’d made the decision to stop working although still only in his early fifties. Maybe it was grief, or perhaps he already felt his abilities lessening and had bowed to the inevitable. Either way, the man who shuffled around the house, snoozing his days away and rarely receiving company, was a pale shadow of the fine gentleman he had once been.

When Dorothea returned, exhausted, from her work at the hospital, Lucy was sewing by the fireside in the drawing room with a half-smile on her lips.

Dorothea chose a chair closest to the flames so as to warm her frozen fingers.

‘Did Captain Harvington call today?’

‘Yes.’ Lucy looked demure.

‘Did he accept Father’s decision?’

‘He certainly did.’ Lucy beamed in triumph, the smile lighting up her face. ‘And he’s delighted. We plan to be wed as soon as we can arrange it after the reading of the banns.’

‘Father consented?’ Dorothea felt a kick in the pit of her stomach.

‘Please be happy for me,’ Lucy entreated. ‘I know you are opposed to the match, but you can’t deny you like Charlie. Everyone likes him! We’re so happy together.’ She threw down her sewing and clenched her fists in excitement.

Dorothea was momentarily lost for words. ‘I’m not opposed to the match, Lucy. It’s just too soon. You scarcely know each other.’

Lucy leapt from her chair and came to kneel at Dorothea’s feet, head tilted, her clear blue eyes peering up, her pretty lips pursed with the same endearing expression that must have swayed their father earlier. It always made Dorothea want to kiss the flawless skin of her little sister’s cheek and stroke that soft strawberry-blonde hair. Lucy’s was a beauty that turned heads in the street and made it hard not to stare.

‘Oh, but you’re wrong! It’s because you’ve never experienced that glorious feeling of falling in love and finding you already know everything about the other person because you are so perfectly matched. We laugh at the same things, cry at the same things, think the same way about simply everything … You’re soon going to learn to love Charlie as I do. I know you will.’

Dorothea stood abruptly and stepped over her sister’s legs, ignoring the disappointment that clouded her expression. ‘Forgive me,’ she murmured. ‘I really must change for dinner. We’ll talk more later.’

As she climbed the stairs with leaden feet, one thought was foremost in Dorothea’s mind: the marriage must be prevented, one way or another. She was the only responsible guardian the girl possessed, since she could patently wrap their father around her little finger. It was up to Dorothea to take action and she felt the weight of the responsibility keenly. If Lucy wouldn’t listen to her, who else could she appeal to?

Chapter Two

The following morning, Dorothea left early and asked Chalmers to take her via Lincoln’s Inn, where a gentleman of her acquaintance was a barrister in chambers. Mr William Goodland was the brother of her friend Emily and around a year ago he had begun to call on them for tea every Sunday afternoon. He would ask after their father’s health and Dorothea’s work, comment on the weather, then Dorothea would struggle to maintain a conversation of sorts until he wished her good day and left after barely an hour.

Behind his back, Lucy made fun of him for his bushy side-whiskers and social awkwardness, and was rather good at imitating his tedious conversation: ‘These scones seem to me the perfect combination of lightness and sweetness. It is quite some time since I have encountered such a sublime scone. You must compliment your cook on their sublimity.’

‘Don’t be so cruel, Lucy,’ Dorothea had chided, unable to suppress a smile. ‘We can’t all have your conversational skills.’

Dorothea was unsure of the purpose for Mr Goodland’s regular visits. Did he feel protective towards them as two women living under the roof of a father whose mental capacities were failing? Or did he consider himself a potential suitor for one of them? If so, he had never made his intentions clear. However, she had decided to seek his advice about the legal position regarding Lucy’s proposed marriage.

‘She is still two weeks shy of eighteen,’ she explained to him now, ‘and I consider myself to be in loco parentis. Is there anything I can do?’

Mr Goodland pursed his lips. ‘I’m afraid, Miss Gray, that if your father has given his consent, upon reaching her eighteenth birthday your sister may legally marry; unless there are any grounds for objecting, perhaps because of a prior engagement by either party. What impressions have you formed of this young man?’

Dorothea frowned. ‘He seems very affable but Lucy is young and I am concerned by the speed with which they have made their decision.’

‘Do you know much of the family?’

‘Nothing at all. I believe they live in Dean Hall, Northampton, but there have been no introductions as yet.’

‘Perhaps it would be worth writing to introduce yourself and to ascertain their views on this – may I say – precipitate courtship. If they support Captain Harvington, they can perhaps bring some financial pressure to bear and urge him to behave with less impetuosity.’

‘Yes, that seems a sensible idea.’ Dorothea was glad of the suggestion, which seemed likely to help.

‘As for going to war, I can’t believe the army would give permission for such a young girl to accompany them. Perhaps Captain Harvington has not told his superior officers quite how tender in years she is. If I might make a suggestion, you could write to his company – the 8th Hussars, was it not? – and make your objections plain.’

Dorothea hesitated. ‘I don’t want Lucy to hate me for my interference. She is such a passionate girl and feels things so strongly … I don’t suppose I could ask you to write to them discreetly, as a friend of the family?’

He sat up straight, puffing his chest out: ‘Indeed, I would be delighted to perform this service, Miss Gray. Do not concern yourself overmuch; I’m sure common sense will prevail.’

That evening, Dorothea wrote to Charlie’s parents telling them of her fears for her sister if she went to war, and asking them to consider putting a restraining hand on their son’s shoulder. Perhaps, she suggested, the families should meet to discuss what was best for the headstrong pair.

She gave the letter to Henderson to post straight away. There was no time to waste. With any luck Lucy would never find out it was she who had curtailed their nuptial plans – but even if she did, Dorothea didn’t doubt she was acting for the right reasons.

A reply came from Mr Harvington of Dean Hall three days later and it struck alarm into Dorothea’s heart.

‘We have washed our hands of our erstwhile son Charles,’ the letter read, ‘and we sincerely advise you to prevent your sister from marrying him. He is a scoundrel of low morals, a wastrel who will never be sufficiently practical to look after a wife, and all in all a man who is not to be trusted.’ Mr Harvington added that although they had bought Charlie his commission as a captain, he could expect no further support from his family but was quite alone in the world, with no one to blame but himself.

Dorothea read the letter several times, agonising over what to do next, and finally she decided she had no option but to show it to Lucy. She knocked on the door of her sister’s room, and opened it to find Lucy engaged in brushing out her waist-length hair in front of her dressing table. It was a cosy room, with heavy drapes and a fire in the grate. Candles flickered by the bedside and on the dresser, making shadows dance on the walls.

‘I wrote to introduce myself to Captain Harvington’s family,’ Dorothea confessed after a moment’s hesitation, ‘since we must soon be kin. This reply has recently arrived.’

Lucy grabbed the letter and her cheeks reddened as she perused it. When she reached the end she screwed the paper into a ball and flung it across the room. ‘You had no right to contact them!’ she hissed. ‘I could have told you his family hate him! He explained to me all about it. They disinherited him over some stupid argument five years ago which was not his fault in any way and it is a source of great sadness to him. How dare you go behind my back and write to them!’

It was just the reaction Dorothea had feared but she tried to stay calm and reasonable. ‘Of course I had the right. It is a serious matter if Captain Harvington has no family backing. I’m surprised Father didn’t ask about his prospects. You are too young to know what it means to marry for love to a man without a secure income; you’d have six months of happiness followed by a lifetime of worry and petty resentments.’

Lucy was intractable. ‘Charlie will make his own money. Major Dodds speaks highly of his prospects in the army and he’s extremely well liked in the regiment. Extremely.’ She swept her hairbrush off the dressing table, her temper clearly building by the minute.

‘He can’t advance up the ranks without family money to buy another commission. You know that, Lucy-loo.’ Dorothea used the childhood pet name and reached out to touch her sister’s shoulder in a conciliatory gesture but Lucy batted her hand away.

‘This is my one chance to be happy and I will not have you spoil it. You’re jealous and bitter and I hate you!’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I wish Mama were here. She would love Charlie as I do, and she’d be happy for me.’ Lucy turned her back but Dorothea could tell that she was crying.

She paused: their mother had been very similar in character to Lucy – lively, gregarious, but hopelessly impractical. No doubt she would have reacted with frenzied excitement to the marriage announcement and would already be planning dress fittings and floral arrangements. But that didn’t make it the right thing to do.

Dorothea tried another tack: ‘Have you thought about the danger you would be in overseas, with Russian guns aimed at your living quarters, wherever they might be? There would be none of the amenities you take for granted. Imagine – no running water, no clean, pressed clothing, no meals served at a dining table or servants to serve them. Lucy, do you even know where the Turkish lands are? They are fifteen hundred miles distant, across rough seas. And once there, perils lurk all around: vapours that rise from the land and cause fatal disease; snakes and scorpions that kill with one bite; not to mention the horrors of battle. It would not be some nursery game of soldiers.’ She stopped, wanting to comfort the sobbing Lucy, but the set of her sister’s shoulders did not invite affection.

Lucy’s words were muffled by tears. ‘Don’t you think I’ve considered all that myself? Charlie will protect me now. I’ve had a lifetime of being patronised by you and I’m fed up with it.’

Dorothea tried once more: ‘I’m not saying that you shouldn’t ever marry Captain Harvington. I’m just saying wait till after the war …’

‘Don’t you understand that I can’t be happy for a single moment without him?’

Dorothea sighed. ‘You know I have to show Father this letter, don’t you? He will have to rethink his decision once he knows Captain Harvington’s precarious situation.’

‘I see you are determined to ruin my happiness. Well, get out of my room. Just leave me alone.’ Lucy was shouting now, completely beside herself.

Dorothea paused in the doorway, but could think of nothing more to add and so she closed the door softly behind her. She could only hope that her father would see sense and, if not, that Mr Goodland’s letter would have the desired effect and Major Dodds would talk some sense into Charlie. It seemed Lucy wouldn’t listen to any point of view that didn’t agree with her own.

The next afternoon, Dorothea returned from her work at the Pimlico hospital to find an agitated Henderson waiting by the door.

‘Apologies, Miss Dorothea, but I didn’t know how to contact you. Captain Harvington came around noon with a coach and four and Miss Lucy asked me to carry down her trunk and help the driver to load it on board. Your father did not seem to appreciate …’ He paused, trying to find a tactful way of expressing himself.

‘My father didn’t try to stop them, you mean. Did she leave a letter?’

Henderson handed her an envelope and Dorothea hurried into the drawing room, threw herself into an armchair, and tore it open. Lucy’s normally pretty handwriting scrawled all over the page with rage emanating from every line. ‘I will never forgive you for trying to stop my marriage,’ she wrote. ‘Never. I am going to stay in lodgings with Charlie and as soon as I turn eighteen we will be wed without your presence since we are to be denied your blessing. I’m sorry that your jealousy led you to try and ruin our happiness but our feelings for each other are so strong that was never a possibility.’ At the end, she wrote the most hateful words of all: ‘I want nothing more to do with you. Charlie is my family now.’

Dorothea buried her face in her hands and curled forward into a ball. ‘Oh God, no. What have I done?’ She wanted to cry but all that came out was a keening sound. How could everything have gone so badly wrong? She’d only acted as she did because she loved Lucy more than any other human being on the planet. Now she had caused her to run off into goodness knows what kind of danger. Anything could happen. Her good name would be ruined, and her very life might be at risk. All she could hope was that war could be avoided, or that Major Dodds would forbid Lucy from accompanying the troops. While Charlie was away, she would surely have to come home again and that would give Dorothea a chance to repair the damage she had caused. Oh please, let that be the case.

An agonising four weeks later, Mr Woodland received a curt reply from Major Dodds and he called round that evening to share it with Dorothea. It read that Lucy and Charlie had been married on 20th February in Warwickshire and that the Major had been honoured to act as Charlie’s best man. The regiment was still waiting to hear if they would sail for the Turkish lands – the decision was in the hands of politicians – but in the event they did, he would be happy for Mrs Lucy Harvington to accompany her husband.

‘Your sister is a foolish young girl,’ Mr Woodland began. ‘I shall reply to Major Dodds in the sternest terms insisting …’

‘No, don’t.’ Dorothea rose to her feet, suddenly finding his pomposity unbearable. Whatever he had written to Major Dodds had clearly exacerbated the problem. Had he been more tactful in his letter, she was sure the reply would not have been so abrupt and unhelpful. ‘You must forgive me, but I find myself quite overcome. I must be alone. Perhaps …’ Tears were not far away and she was unable to finish the sentence. She turned and fled from the room.

‘Of course,’ Mr Woodland said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’ Though by then there was no one to hear.

Chapter Three

During the winter months of 1853–1854, Dorothea had a particular favourite patient at the Pimlico hospital. Edward Peters had been a soldier at the Battle of Waterloo almost forty years before but had since fallen on hard times. He had no children and no family members came to visit but Dorothea enjoyed the company of this softly spoken old man whose health was slowly but surely failing. Every day she brought him her father’s copy of The Times from the previous day because he liked to keep up with the news. He had trouble reading because his spectacles were not strong enough (she guessed he couldn’t afford another pair), so she would sit and read aloud the articles that interested him most, namely those about the impending war in the Turkish territories – which were, naturally, of great concern to her as well. Mr Peters interjected his own comments as she read, fiercely critical of government procrastination: ‘All this time we could be preparing for action and instead the politicians sit chin-wagging. They’re yellow, I say.’

‘We’ve given them an ultimatum and with any luck the Russians will comply,’ Dorothea argued.

But they didn’t, and on 28th March news broke that Britain and France had jointly declared war on Russia in support of the Turks.

Mr Peters was excited: ‘About time,’ he exclaimed. ‘Now we’ll stop those Russians invading their neighbours.’ Dorothea could tell he wished he himself were going to fight, a young man once more.

‘My sister’s husband is a Captain in the 8th Hussars and bound to be sent to fight. She is hoping to accompany him.’ She asked the question that was foremost in her mind: ‘Do you think she will be safe?’

‘Who can say? Wives have accompanied troops to battle for centuries past, and they had their uses in cooking and doing laundry for the men. But times are changing and it’s damn foolishness that they still take them now the new longer-range guns are in use. Commanders’ attention is diverted from the battlefield to providing suitable accommodation for ladies, and extra food is needed. I always thought it was madness.’ He coughed with the effort of this speech. ‘The 8th Hussars, you say? Part of the Light Brigade. Safer than the Heavy Brigade, at least. The Heavies lead the attacks but the Light are mostly used for reconnaissance. Who are your brother-in-law’s family?’

‘The Harvingtons of Northampton.’

‘Are they a military family?’

‘I’m afraid I do not know. I haven’t made their acquaintance.’ Dorothea coloured. ‘I regret to say the marriage was somewhat hasty, arranged so that my sister might go with the army and remain at her husband’s side.’

‘You must be very concerned,’ Mr Peters said in a hoarse whisper.

‘I am.’ Dorothea blinked back a tear. ‘I’m terrified for Lucy but I cannot write to her as I don’t know where they are lodging.’

‘If you write on the envelope “Care of Captain Harvington, 8th Hussars” and send it to the regimental headquarters, they’ll pass it on …’ he rasped, then a tickle caught in his throat and he began to cough with a nasty hacking sound. He closed his eyes as his ribcage heaved with the effort. His lungs often became congested, causing him to choke and struggle for breath but he never complained. Dorothea thumped his back to dislodge the phlegm and held a bowl for him to spit into, noting that his sputum was an unhealthy greenish-yellow in colour. Earlier she’d noticed that his feet were turning black from lack of circulation. She hoped the principal physician would look in on him later.

When the hacking cough had at last subsided, Dorothea saw that Mr Peters’ lips had a bluish tinge and his skin was pale. He seemed to summon every effort to say one more thing to Dorothea. ‘If you’ll excuse me saying, Sister, it’s best to make peace while you still can,’ he whispered, then closed his eyes to rest. Every coughing fit drained his remaining strength.

‘Would you like me to fetch a vicar, or a priest?’ Dorothea asked, wondering if that’s what he was hinting, but he shook his head vehemently. In earlier conversations he had expressed a low opinion of religion but she often found patients changed their minds as death approached.

The physician who came to examine Mr Peters later told Dorothea that he thought the end was near. ‘Can you contact his family?’ he asked.

‘There are no close relatives, I’m afraid. I asked him who I should contact if his condition worsened but he said there was no one.’

Perhaps that will be my situation one day, Dorothea mused – especially if this terrible rift with Lucy is not healed. At thirty-one, she was too old to marry and have children. The thought filled her with sadness, but she comforted herself that at least she had her work. She loved being useful to her patients and knew she was good at easing their suffering and making them feel they were not alone. Hospitals were terrifying places, where you were surrounded by strangers, with doctors whisking in to perform painful procedures before disappearing again. Dorothea tried to make patients feel she was a friend, someone on their side, and their heartfelt thanks were gratifying.

She decided to spend the day sitting with Mr Peters, whose breathing was now tortured and shallow. He clearly didn’t have long to go and she couldn’t let him pass away on his own. She made herself a cup of tea and pulled up a chair by his bed, then wiped his brow and offered him a sip of water but he shook his head. Each breath was an effort and before long he drifted into sleep. There was a rattling in his throat, the noise some called the death rattle, caused, she knew, by saliva gathering once he could no longer swallow. She kept wetting his lips so they didn’t crack and holding a cool cloth on his brow. Although he was unconscious she hoped he could sense her presence.

At four-thirty he opened his eyes one last time, choking from the fluid in his lungs. His hands were freezing cold and she could smell the sharp chemical scent she often noted right at the end. Dorothea slipped the pillow from beneath his head because death would come quicker if he was lying flat. ‘Goodbye,’ she whispered. ‘You are a good man and I’ll miss our conversations.’ She squeezed his shoulder as he took one last virtually undetectable breath, just as she had done five years earlier on the night her mother died.

That had been a cruel death. Her mother had been in hideous pain as the cancer gnawed through her insides. She could keep nothing down, not even the laudanum that could have offered some relief, and her opium enema seemed to do little good. Towards the end the disease had been in her spine, making it impossible to find a comfortable position whether sitting or lying. She was terrified, yet strove to muffle her cries of agony in the blankets so as not to waken thirteen-year-old Lucy, who was asleep in her bedroom down the corridor. Dorothea could see the fear etched in her mother’s eyes, could hear her whispered pleas for help, and was powerless to do more than hold her hand, moisten her lips and soothe her with whispered endearments. The doctor came and went, leaving further useless supplies of laudanum; their vicar came to pray. Her father couldn’t bear it and retreated to his study, leaving Dorothea to witness the final throes of the awful death struggle on her own. It was an experience that scarred her, something that would never leave her. Her mother’s last breath when it came was a blessed release from acute torture and the expression caught at the moment of death was one of horror. Thankfully Lucy had not witnessed any of it. By the time she came to see the body the following morning, their mother’s features had settled into a peaceful repose. Lucy complained of not being called to say goodbye but Dorothea knew she was too young for such a distressing sight.

Mr Peters, by contrast, had a peaceful death, the best he could have hoped for. Dorothea sat with his body for half an hour watching the tightening of his features, the blanching of his complexion, then she helped the orderly to wash and prepare him for the undertaker. It was five-thirty in the evening when she walked out into the street in her dark wool cloak and climbed into a Hansom cab the hospital porter had called to take her back to Russell Square.

Covent Garden was abuzz with costermongers dismantling their fruit and veg stalls under the metal and glass awning, and flower girls with a few remaining pink, white and yellow blooms in their baskets. Some ladies of the night hovered on street corners, hoping for an early piece of business. Nothing shocked Dorothea after her work in the hospital. She had seen all types pass through its doors.

Back in her bedroom, she started to change for dinner but she was too agitated to fiddle with all the buttons on her gown. Instead she sat at her dresser to compose a letter to Lucy. She told her she was sorry for her actions, that she hoped her marriage would be a very happy one. She was sad to have missed the ceremony but perhaps once they were reconciled she could host a celebration for them … Suddenly Dorothea dropped the pen and a great sob tore from her chest. She gasped and tried to control herself but emotion took hold and she shook with intense grief.

‘Please God, don’t let any harm come to Lucy,’ she prayed, squeezing her eyes tight shut. ‘I’ve let her down and I will never forgive myself if anything bad happens to her.’

She laid her head on the dresser and fell asleep, waking an hour later when the bell rang for dinner to find her tears had soaked the writing paper and blurred the ink.

PART TWO

Chapter Four

24th April 1854

Plymouth Dockyard was teeming with people bustling between precarious stacks of luggage. Tall-masted ships stretched as far as the eye could see. The noise of ships’ horns sounding, street traders crying their wares, and the anxious chatter of bystanders was overwhelming. Lucy worried that they would never find their way but when Charlie hailed a porter and asked him to take them to the Shooting Star, the man seemed confident about finding it. He loaded a trolley with their steamer trunk, all their bags stuffed to bursting, and their large tin bath, and set off. Charlie clutched Lucy’s arm tightly and hurried them through the throng in pursuit of their luggage.

Before long, he spotted some comrades in royal blue and gold Hussars uniform and hailed them, pulling Lucy forwards to introduce her. She shook hands with several gentlemen and was pleased to note their appreciative glances. She had dressed with care in a wide-skirted soft wool gown with cascading ruffles in the skirt, and a warm fitted jacket, both of a deep blue very similar to that of the Hussars’ colours. A prettily trimmed bonnet framed her face.

‘I think you have new admirers,’ Charlie winked, squeezing her hand.

As they approached the ship, she noticed several women sobbing, with young children clinging to their skirts, and asked Charlie what ailed them.

‘These are the soldiers’ wives who can’t come along,’ he told her. ‘There was a ballot and only a few won a place. You’re lucky to be the wife of an officer, as we can all bring our wives, if our commanders agree.’

‘What will become of them while their husbands are away?’ She felt alarmed for their plight. She had no idea what would have happened to her if she hadn’t been allowed to accompany Charlie because his wages were not sufficient, after stoppages for uniform and so forth, for him to have supported her in lodgings like the boarding house where they had been living in Warwick for the last three months. She suspected from the haste with which he insisted they leave that he owed money to the landlady there. If a captain couldn’t manage, how could the soldiers, who earned so much less?

‘I expect their families will look after them,’ Charlie said, as if the question hadn’t occurred to him.

Some called out – ‘Miss, can you help us?’ ‘Need a lady’s maid, Miss?’ – and Lucy cast her eyes down, feeling guilty that she had a place while they did not.

They walked up the gangway onto the ship and followed their porter down to the officers’ deck, where Charlie located their cabin. Lucy swallowed her surprise at how small it was, barely six paces wide and ten long, with a bunk so narrow they would be crushed tight together. There was hardly any hanging space for her gowns, and only one tiny mirror above the washbowl.

‘This is one of the better cabins I’ve seen on a military ship,’ Charlie remarked cheerfully. ‘It’s very well appointed.’

Lucy kept her thoughts to herself. ‘I’ll just unpack a few things, dearest, to make it a little more homely.’

‘In that case, I’ll go and check on the horses on the deck below.’ He kissed her full on the lips and grasped one of her breasts with a wink before he left.

Lucy felt her cheeks flush and she hummed as she arranged their possessions. She liked having someone to look after, loved the intimacy of sharing a bed and eating meals with Charlie. ‘You see, Dorothea?’ she thought. ‘You were wrong!’

Before long, she heard women’s voices in the corridor and popped her head out. The first woman she saw introduced herself as Mrs Fanny Duberly, wife of the 8th Hussars’ Quartermaster. She seemed rather superior in attitude, and moved off after only the briefest ‘hallo’ but not before Lucy had noted that her gown was plain grey worsted and not remotely fashionable. The other woman, Adelaide Cresswell, had a kind face and shook Lucy’s hand warmly.

‘Charlie is a good friend of my husband Bill, so you and I must also be friends, my dear.’

‘Yes, please,’ Lucy cried. ‘I would love that. We women must stick together. I need your advice on how I can support my husband. We are so recently wed I don’t yet know what is expected of an officer’s wife.’

Adelaide smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘I was overjoyed to hear about your marriage. Charlie is a very lucky man. Look how pretty you are! Such lovely china blue eyes.’ She glanced past Lucy into their cabin. ‘Goodness, you’ve brought rather a lot of luggage.’

Lucy looked at the pile. ‘In truth, it was hard knowing what to bring. I’ve had to leave many of my possessions in store,’ she explained. ‘Charlie told me I would need summer clothes, but I also tried to think of items we might need if we have to sleep in a tent.’ She couldn’t contemplate quite how she would manage to change her gowns and perform her toilette in such a cramped space but she was prepared to give it a try if that’s what being an army wife entailed. As well as the tin bath, she had brought some soft feather pillows and a pale gold silk bedspread that used to be her mother’s, so they would have some home comforts.

‘Of course you did – and I’m sure they’ll come in very useful. It’s just that we may have to carry our own luggage at times and your trunk looks rather heavy …’ Seeing Lucy’s alarmed expression, Adelaide added quickly: ‘I expect Charlie will find someone to help you. Now, I was on my way below deck to introduce myself to the women travelling with Bill’s company, the 11th Hussars. Perhaps you would like to come and meet the wives of Charlie’s men? There’s plenty of time as the ship won’t leave harbour till after dinner.’

Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘I’d love to!’ It hadn’t occurred to her that Charlie had men beneath him, men who obeyed his commands, but she supposed as a captain that he must. She was anxious to give the right impression and decided she would follow Adelaide’s lead.

Two decks below their own, there was a strong smell of rotting vegetation, which Adelaide told her came from the bilge. The soldiers’ wives were in a shared dormitory and Adelaide greeted them, explaining who she and Lucy were, and saying that they would be happy to offer assistance if any was required. The women looked doubtfully at Lucy, who was by far the youngest of the thirteen wives accompanying the 8th Hussars. Most were rough, sturdy women, with ruddy faces and cheap gowns; none looked a day under thirty.

‘What an exquisite shawl,’ Lucy commented to one woman, who was wearing a gaudy, paisley-patterned garment round her shoulders. ‘Are your beds comfortable? Ours is so narrow I think my husband will knock me to the floor if he turns in his sleep.’

‘Make sure you sleep by the wall so he’s the one that falls out,’ one suggested, and Lucy agreed that would be the sensible course. She asked about children left behind, about where the women normally lived, about their husbands’ names and duties, and she felt by the time she and Adelaide left that she had made a good first impression.

‘We will all be good friends after this adventure. I am sure of it,’ she called back.

That evening she and Charlie shared a table in the officers’ dining hall with the Cresswells. Lucy had changed into a blue and purple silk taffeta evening gown with smocked bodice, and dressed her own hair in the absence of any apparent ladies’ maids, but she noticed that Adelaide wore the same plain serge gown as earlier. Looking around, all the officers’ wives were in day dress; it seemed dinner was not a dressy occasion.

‘Why didn’t you warn me not to wear evening dress?’ she whispered to Charlie, feeling embarrassed.

He grinned. ‘I love to see you all dressed up. You are by far the most beautiful woman on the ship and I’m so proud to be with you.’

The food was plain cooking: soup, stew, pudding, with not even a fish course. The conversation was lively, though, with the men talking of war, and the belligerent stance of the Russian Tsar Nicholas I who dreamed of creating a huge empire in the East from the remains of the tottering Ottoman Empire.

‘Do you have children?’ Lucy asked Adelaide, and realised she had touched a raw nerve when tears sprang to Adelaide’s eyes, which she blinked away before replying.

‘We have a little girl called Martha, who is four, and a boy, Archie, who’s just three. I’m sorry …’ She closed her eyes briefly to regain control. ‘It was a wrench leaving them behind, although they are with my mother and will receive the best of care. I decided that Bill needed me more. I want to make sure he has a clean uniform and decent food as well as a woman’s comfort while he is out fighting for us.’

‘Well, of course,’ Lucy agreed. ‘All the same, I can imagine how difficult it must have been to leave your little darlings.’ Adelaide must be in her twenties to have such young children, she guessed; she looked older, her face tanned and lined by the sun.

After dinner, Lucy and Charlie strolled out on deck to watch as the Shooting Star pulled out of harbour then promptly came to a halt while they waited for the wind to change. She felt a thrill run through her: it was the first time she had left English soil. She felt so lucky to be there, with the man she loved. In their cabin, Charlie poured glasses of some rum he had brought along and they toasted the voyage: ‘We’re on our way!’ He raised his glass and she did the same. ‘This is where the adventure begins! And I am the happiest man alive that you are here by my side.’ He gazed at her and despite his words she could see the sadness in his eyes. She knew his loneliness after being cast off by his family still haunted him, although it had happened five years earlier. ‘If you had been unable to come, I swear I would have deserted from the army. I couldn’t bear to be without you now, Lucy.’

His words caught in his throat and Lucy knew how deeply they were felt. It was part of what made her love him so wholeheartedly: the sense that beneath his confident manner there was a vulnerable man who needed her in a way she had never been needed before.

‘I know, darling, and I couldn’t be without you either.’ She stroked his dear face with the tips of her fingers.

‘We are so lucky to have found each other,’ he breathed. ‘Before I met you, I was nothing, a hollow shell of a man. I had no family, just some friends who enjoy me larking around: “Good old Charlie, he’s always up for some fun.” But with you I can be myself and know you love me no matter what.’

‘I will always love you …’ she began to say but Charlie silenced her by covering her mouth with kisses so tender that her heart almost stopped. They fell onto the bed and while they made love she marvelled at his passion; she loved the way he lost himself completely in her, loved the amazing secret of married love into which she had now been initiated.

He fell asleep straight afterwards with his arm wrapped around her neck. She would have to wake him later because both were still half-clothed: her petticoats were twisted beneath her while he still wore his dress shirt, but she would let him rest awhile.

When she opened her eyes the next morning, Lucy could sense from a gentle rolling motion that the ship was on the move and she felt a quiver of excitement. That rolling became less gentle as the day progressed, and she had to press a hand to the corridor wall for support as she and Adelaide made their way to luncheon. Charlie’s day was spent trying to settle the horses, who neighed and whinnied, terrified of their enclosure in this rocking vessel, so Lucy and Adelaide strolled the deck gazing at the grey-green seas that surrounded them and took meals together. They went down to visit the soldiers’ wives again and Lucy was astonished to find some standing around in drawers and stays without a hint of modesty but she chatted as before, asking if their food was adequate and whether they saw more of their husbands than she was seeing of hers. She joked that Captain Harvington seemed to care more about the horses than his new wife, but in fact she loved the caring way he spoke of those magnificent creatures, particularly his own horse, Merlin, and his determination that he would do all he could to see they survived the journey unscathed.

On the second day, as they entered the Bay of Biscay, the sea became choppy. Loose objects fell from shelves and a little flower vase of Lucy’s was smashed on the cabin floor, startling her. After dressing, she made her way to Adelaide’s cabin to find her friend vomiting into a bedpan, her face bleached of colour and eyes sunken in their sockets. Lucy gave her a handkerchief to wipe her mouth, then went to find a steward who would empty the bedpan and bring a fresh pitcher of water.

‘All the other ladies are sick as well, Ma’am,’ the steward told her. ‘You must have a strong constitution.’

Sure enough, she heard retching sounds from Mrs Duberly’s cabin, although the quartermaster’s wife came to dinner that evening and remarked to Lucy she thought it a poor show that Adelaide didn’t make the effort to join them.

In fact, for the next three days poor Adelaide couldn’t keep down more than a few sips of water and Lucy was concerned for her. There was no doctor on board but the steward found a supply of Tarrant’s Seltzer so Lucy fed Adelaide teaspoonfuls of it, trying to keep her spirits up by telling her that the rough weather must pass soon; everyone said it must. She herself remained miraculously immune to the seasickness, and was able to go down to the soldiers’ wives and dispense fizzing glasses of seltzer to them too. It was good to feel useful, and as Adelaide began to recover Lucy sat and read to her, growing fonder by the day of her sweet nature. She was the kind of woman who would never hear bad of another; a woman whose outlook was sunny even while she was feeling so ill.

On their fourth night at sea there was a horrendous storm. Waves crashed against the side of the ship, lightning crackled and lit up the entire sky, and the frightened whinnying of horses filled the air. Lucy couldn’t sleep a wink but sat petrified by their porthole, watching the violence of the storm outside, while Charlie spent the night down below, sponging the horses’ nostrils with vinegar in an attempt to calm them. At one stage there was a terrible cracking sound, like an explosion, and for a moment Lucy feared they had been attacked by the Russians. She wrapped the silk bedspread around her, rubbing it against her lip for comfort as she used to do as a child when she fled to her mother’s bed after a nightmare. If only Charlie would come soon. There were a few terrifying hours before the worst was over, but as soon as dawn broke with a pale pink shimmer, the storm passed and the ship stopped rolling.

Charlie returned with some awful news: ‘The mizzen top and the main top mast broke at the height of the storm and crushed a man’s leg as they fell to deck.’

She was shocked. ‘Will he be all right?’

He shook his head. ‘He’ll lose the leg, for sure. Two of our horses – Moondance and Greystokes – perished. I couldn’t settle them and the poor creatures raved themselves to death.’

‘Is Merlin all right?’

‘Yes, thank goodness. Biscay is always rough but this is the worst storm I’ve experienced and it followed us right down the coast of Spain and Portugal. At least we’re through it now.’

Spain and Portugal: names Lucy had previously only seen on her father’s globe. She knew that Columbus had sailed from Portugal and imagined it as being very exotic. ‘Will they be able to mend the ship?’

‘Yes, the carpenters are hard at work.’ He noticed Lucy’s anxious expression and pulled her in for a hug. ‘Everything will be fine, my love. And you have been extraordinarily strong in the face of adversity. I knew you would be.’

She was thrilled with the compliment. ‘You must be exhausted. Why not lie down and rest awhile?’

‘I think I will. Come lie with me.’

Lucy held him close until he fell asleep and then she rose, dressed quietly and slipped up on deck to gaze out at the millpond sea glittering in the early morning light. The ship was close enough to shore for land to be visible and she shivered at the thought they were getting ever-nearer to the mysterious Turkish lands.

‘What is that huge black rock?’ she asked a passing sailor, and he told her ‘The Rock of Gibraltar, Ma’am.’

She stood watching as they pulled up beneath it then came to a halt, becalmed in the Straits. The Rock’s sheer slopes towered high above the ship’s main mast, like an ominous shadow against the sky.

On the 8th May, the Shooting Star docked at Valletta in Malta and all were allowed to go ashore. Adelaide had fully recovered and she and Lucy, along with Charlie and Bill, descended the gangway to the dock, the ladies sheltering beneath parasols from the heat of the sun. ‘What larks!’ Lucy cried, scarcely able to contain her excitement as she set foot on foreign soil. Locals flocked around trying to sell them hand-coloured cards, china knick-knacks and bonnets made out of scratchy straw. They sat in a café near the dock sipping tea and watching fishermen drag boxes of fresh fish up the slope. One man was pounding a freshly caught octopus against a rock – to tenderise its meat, Charlie said – and Lucy flinched at the blows. They dined well in a local hostelry, with fresh fish in a cream sauce, tender lamb chops, and delicate little custard puddings. A fiddler played in the corner and once they had eaten Charlie persuaded the waiters to clear some tables so there was room for dancing, which he led in high-kicking style, pulling Lucy up to join him in a lively polka. Bottles of jewel-coloured liqueurs were produced, made from fruits Lucy had never heard of: prickly pear, pomegranate and carob. The ladies tried delicate sips but found them over-strong.

They were joined by Major Dodds, who challenged Charlie to drink a shot of each spirit behind the bar and said he would do the same. Their aim was explained to the bartender who lined up glasses in a row, which they supped in carnival style. A game of cribbage was initiated and Lucy could tell from Charlie’s excited whoops that he was winning.

‘They call him Lucky Charlie,’ Adelaide told her. ‘No matter what the game, he seems to have a knack with cards.’

Lucy hadn’t known that her husband liked gambling. Dorothea was very disapproving of gamblers and would have considered it a black mark against him, but Adelaide didn’t seem to see any harm in it. Lucy was learning more about her husband all the time. It wasn’t just his funny dancing style, and the fact that he was said to be lucky; she had never realised how popular he was with his fellows and it was heart-warming to watch. She had no regrets about coming away with him; she just wished it had been possible for her older sister to share her joy.

The next day she wrote to her father. Charlie had asked her not to write before they set sail in case Dorothea made one last attempt to stop them, but she missed her papa and now they were on their way she could see no harm in it.

‘The soldiers’ and officers’ wives are one happy family,’ she wrote, ‘linked by a warm camaraderie and eagerness to explore our new surroundings. We are enjoying the foreign aspects of Malta, with its fragrant flowers trailing up the walls of houses and twining round balconies, the dark-eyed children who follow us in the street, and the uncannily bright blue of sea and sky sparkling in sunlight.’ She sucked the end of her pen then continued: ‘I hope that you are in good health, Papa, and that your back is not troubling you. I will write again when I can, but do not worry if you don’t hear for a while as we may not be able to post our letters when in the field.’ She signed the letter ‘Your loving daughter’. She didn’t ask after Dorothea, still cross whenever she thought of her meddling. Her sister had believed she was behaving as a mother to Lucy, but in fact their real mother, the irrepressibly gay woman who had died when Lucy was thirteen, would have been wildly enthusiastic about this trip. Lucy imagined her crying, ‘My darling, what fun! Be sure to write and describe all the details. And bring me back a Russkie’s helmet!’

Before they set sail from Malta, Lucy was astonished to hear that five out of the thirteen Hussars’ wives had asked to be sent home to England. The rigours of the voyage had been too much for them and they did not want to continue further. She remonstrated with one woman.

‘Won’t you stay to support our brave troops? Think how much comfort it would bring your husband to have you with him. Please say you will reconsider.’

The woman shook her head, a little shamefaced but determined. ‘It’s too hard on the ship. You have a nice cabin but we’ve been stuck in that awful dormitory listening to the sounds of each other vomiting, and breathing smells the like of which I hope never to come across again, while being tossed around in an old wooden bucket.’

‘But the war will not last long. With the British and French joining the Ottomans, it is three armies against one. The Russians can’t possibly hold out.’

‘All the same, I can’t take the risk, Ma’am. I have four children. I have to get myself back to them in one piece.’

Lucy bit her lip, thinking of the sobbing women in Plymouth Dock who would have given anything to be there. It was incomprehensible to her that someone could decide to leave just as the adventure was commencing. Granted, the voyage had been unpleasant but now they were all together, exploring the island by day and throwing impromptu parties every night, she was filled with excitement at the prospect of the coming months. She was doing her duty to her country and to her new husband; who would have thought it would turn out to be such fun?

Chapter Five

After Malta, the Shooting Star sailed into another storm, so violent the ship keeled onto its side and the horses were hurled off their feet. It passed quickly, leaving a fierce heat like the inside of a bread oven, and an overpowering stench that resembled (and possibly was) rotting sewage. Lucy spent much of her time leaning out of her porthole to catch the breeze, gazing at the hazy contours of the islands and coastlines they passed and the fishing boats painted in vivid blues and turquoises like the colours of the sea.

At cooler times of day, she and Adelaide strolled on deck and exchanged confidences. One morning, Adelaide asked how Lucy and Charlie had met, and Lucy described it with animation, enjoying reliving the moment.

‘Him declaring that he would be my slave was a bit of fun, but I knew from his eyes he was serious as well. He said he would give me his heart and I could do as I wished with it, even trample upon it.’ She smiled fondly. ‘When he called on me the following morning, we couldn’t stop talking. He told me about being in the Hussars, about his love of horses … and then he asked about my family. And when I told him that my mother died when I was thirteen, I swear there were tears of sympathy in his eyes. I think that’s when I truly began to fall in love with him. He was so compassionate.’

Adelaide took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your mother, my dear. Thirteen is very young to be without a mother’s guidance. Do you have siblings with whom you can talk, perhaps an aunt to advise you?’

Lucy grimaced and turned to look out to sea. ‘I have a sister, Dorothea, who is thirteen years my senior, but she is a stern old maid, who took against Charlie and tried to prevent our marriage. She said we hadn’t known each other long enough – but we knew from the start we were perfect for each other. Both of us are outgoing on the surface but lonely underneath. We were instantly as close as close can be.’

‘How long had you known each other before you got engaged?’

‘Nine weeks.’ Adelaide raised an eyebrow and Lucy hurried on. ‘For some people that might not seem like much but when you are in love, why wait? I couldn’t bear him to go off to war without me. Even an hour apart is difficult, a day unbearable. Don’t you feel the same way about Captain Cresswell?’

Adelaide cocked her head to one side. ‘My story is quite different because Bill and I grew up knowing each other. We lived nearby, our families were friends, and we played together as children. The realisation that we loved each other came gradually, and I think our families knew before we did. We married around your age – are you eighteen or nineteen, my dear?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘And it was blissful. But then we had some difficult years when I lost four babies in a row …’ She stared out towards the horizon, her voice flat. ‘I felt terrible for Bill. Such a fine man should have a son, and it seemed I would not be able to give him one. I became very ill and almost wished I would die so he could be remarried to a woman who would be able to give him an heir. And then, at the age of twenty-eight, when I had long since given up hope, along came another pregnancy. I rested all the way through, never venturing out of the house, and my daughter Martha was born hale and hearty, followed a year later by little Archie.’ She turned to Lucy, eyes glinting. ‘Bill was beside himself with joy when he held his daughter for the first time. He was nervous as he cradled her tiny body in his big hands,’ – she curved her own hands to demonstrate – ‘and I have never loved him as much as I did at that moment. You see, love changes through the years. We had our childish love, when we played together as youngsters, then the love of sweethearts and the thrill when we were newlyweds, but going through adversity together deepens love and makes it more true. You’ll find this with Charlie, my dear. You’re only at the very beginning.’

Lucy was enthralled. ‘What an inspiring story! You make me want to be a better wife to Charlie so as to earn this deeper love you talk about.’

‘I’m sure you will. And in time you will prove to your sister Dorothea that Charlie is a worthy husband for you. She’ll come round, I know she will. If nothing else, she is going to want to meet her nieces and nephews one day.’

Lucy blushed. ‘That blessing, I hope, is a little way off.’ Charlie had assured her he was taking precautions, although she wasn’t entirely sure what these might be.

‘Of course,’ Adelaide teased, ‘but babies have a way of surprising you, just as my two did.’

‘I realise now why they are so precious to you, after such a long wait and so many disappointments.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Adelaide blinked hard. Evidently it was difficult to talk of them. ‘If only your children could one day help to heal Charlie’s rift with his own family. I wish that could be so.’

‘Do you know the Harvingtons?’ Lucy was keen to hear about them. Charlie had painted them as heartless but surely they couldn’t be all bad.

‘Bill has met them and told me a little. It’s such a tragedy.’

‘They must be very harsh people to cast off their own son. Charlie told me it was over some debt or other. Why do his brothers not forgive him at least? I know he feels desperately sad about it.’

Adelaide’s eyes widened, and she seemed lost for words. ‘At least he has you,’ she said finally. ‘He told Bill he loves you so much he would do anything for you. Already we can see how much you have helped him to overcome his grief. Now I think it’s time to prepare for luncheon, my dear. Shall we go down?’ She offered her arm.

When Lucy reached the door of her cabin, one of the soldiers’ wives, a Mrs Williams, was hurrying along the corridor towards her. ‘May I come into your cabin for a moment, Mrs Harvington?’ she asked, her tone urgent, and Lucy replied ‘Yes, of course,’ thinking that perhaps the woman wished to borrow some item she had forgotten to bring herself.

‘Sorry to intrude, but Mrs Duberly is after me,’ Mrs Williams whispered and put a finger to her lips.

Just then they heard Mrs Duberly charging along the corridor, calling for Mrs Williams. Lucy quickly pulled her cabin door closed and the two women stood quietly until her footsteps had passed.

Mrs Williams gave an indignant snort. ‘I agreed to act as her lady’s maid on the ship but I didn’t think that meant I had to be her general skivvy. She wants me up all night laundering whatever lace handkerchief she might have blown her dainty nose into during the day, then woe betide me if it is not dry by morn when she wants to use it again. The woman’s a battleaxe. Not a human bone in her body. She’s only interested in her beloved horse.’

‘Can’t you resign from your position?’

‘I tried, but she threatened to have me put off the ship. Says I only got a place on board because of her. So it seems best I just stay out of her way.’ She cackled. ‘I’m rather enjoying making her charge round huffing and puffing with ill temper.’

Mrs Williams winked at Lucy before opening the door a crack and peering out to check it was safe to leave.

‘Thanks, Ma’am,’ she said. ‘I reckon as far as officers’ wives go, you’re one of the decent ones.’ She slipped away and Lucy smiled to herself, while hoping that Mrs Duberly never found out about her complicity.

On the 18th May, the Shooting Star entered the Dardanelles, an enclosed channel with high rocky coast on either side, thickly covered in dark green trees running from just above the waterline to the top of its slopes. The ship was becalmed for two days while awaiting a steamer to tow them to Constantinople and the ladies had ample time to view the cattle and mules grazing wild in the forests. Lucy borrowed a pair of binoculars and peered with curiosity at a Turkish fort high on a rock, with some camels at the gate and soldiers in bright red uniform milling around.

They arrived in Constantinople at sunset on the 22nd and Lucy’s first impression was of tall slender towers (Adelaide told her they were minarets) standing stark against the rosy-orange of the sky. As they admired the view, a melancholy chant echoed round the town, and Adelaide told Lucy it was the Muslims’ call to prayer, an exhortation that was repeated five times a day. Lucy was thrilled at the exoticism of it. They hadn’t even disembarked but already she could tell that this city was much more foreign than Malta. Once they were at anchor, hawkers paddled out on boats that looked little more than large wicker trays, holding up goods for sale: bales of fabric, live chickens, and unfamiliar fruits. It was too dark to see but still they called out in English: ‘Hello lady, beautiful things, very cheap.’

By daylight, Constantinople was impressive, with houses painted in pretty shades of mustard, terracotta, pale blue and mint green, surrounded by dark green trees and masses of purple flowers. Adelaide explained that the city was sliced in two by the Bosphorus, the wide strait in which they were at anchor. One side was Europe and the other Asia, making the city unique in straddling two continents.

It was a disappointment when they disembarked to find the quay was made of rotting planks on which they had to tread carefully for fear of falling into the foul water below, where a dead dog floated amidst some yellowish foam. The water in Malta had been clear turquoise, but this was murky brown.

For three nights they were to stay in the Selimiye barracks, a fine building from the outside, built of brick around a huge quadrangle with turrets on each corner. But as they entered they were assaulted by a fetid smell of unknown origin that had the ladies covering their noses with handkerchiefs. The rooms they were shown to were filthy, with a thick layer of dust on each surface and stains of an alarming nature on the walls. During the first night, Lucy provided sustenance for a number of insects who seemed to find a way to bite her skin even when she swathed herself from head to toe in her mother’s bedspread. Next morning she had eighteen angry red lumps on her skin, which itched like the devil, including one on her cheek about which she was particularly self-conscious. For some reason they had left Charlie alone.

‘Your blood is so much sweeter than mine,’ he soothed. ‘I’ll find a net to cover the bed before night falls.’

Lucy attracted more bites during the day, and the itch became fiercer if she scratched them. Adelaide advised that she cover her skin with lemon juice to deter the creatures and went to the barracks’ kitchen herself to procure some lemons. It made Lucy feel sticky but she didn’t get any more bites and the itch in existing ones lessened a little.

The ladies were too nervous to venture outside the barracks by themselves, but in the late afternoon when Charlie returned from his duties they went exploring, taking a small boat known as a caïque across the water to the European side of town. They lay back on cushions, barely higher than the water level, while a dark-skinned sailor, in an open white shirt that showed off his chest, steered them around the huge ships traversing this international shipping channel. On arrival they hired a guide who took them by landau to a magnificent mosque, where gilded domes were balanced on top of each other like oranges in a bowl; to the Sultan’s Topkapi Palace set in lush pleasure gardens; and to Lucy’s favourite place of all, the Grand Bazaar, a maze of stalls under a wooden roof selling more goods than she could ever have dreamed of. The guide warned them that it was easy to get lost so they concentrated on keeping their sense of direction, but even so within ten minutes had to admit, giggling, that they were completely disorientated. The stallholders wore flowing robes and a headdress, and many were smoking hookah pipes that gave off aromatic scents. Lucy saw a few women wearing loose-fitting gowns of Eastern colouring, their heads and faces covered in veils; they flitted into doorways and through archways like elegant tropical moths.

On one stall Charlie spotted an intricate ship in a bottle with a painted backdrop of the minarets of Constantinople and he picked it up. ‘How much?’ he asked the stallholder and when he heard the price, he mimed great shock. ‘That’s over a shilling,’ he told Lucy. ‘They must think me a fool.’ He put the trinket back, upon which the stallholder lifted it and pressed it into Lucy’s hands, naming a figure that was about half of the original offer.

‘Lucy, put it down,’ Charlie instructed in a low voice. ‘We’re going to walk away and see what happens.’ She did as he asked. Instantly the stallholder came after them, grabbing Charlie’s arm and indicating in mime that he was a poor man, that he had children to feed. He caught Lucy’s eye, making a sad face and miming the rocking of a cradle and she flushed. Charlie shrugged with open arms; it was none of his concern. The stallholder suggested another price. Charlie shook his head. It was a good-natured game and it seemed to Lucy that Charlie’s gambling skills came in handy: he could keep a straight face and not give away his tactics. Eventually a price was agreed that was about a tenth of the original and Charlie counted out some coins and handed them over, whereupon the stallholder wrapped the ship in a bottle in fine tissue paper.

Lucy and Charlie chuckled as they walked away. When she turned back, the stallholder was watching them with an inscrutable expression. She got the feeling he didn’t approve, whether of her or of both of them she couldn’t tell, and it made her nervous. She knew that Muslim women covered their hair with veils, and wore high-necked, long-sleeved tunics to disguise their figures, yet here she was wearing a short-sleeved gown patterned with rosebuds, her blonde hair visible beneath her bonnet. Did the market stallholders look down on her? She didn’t like all the stares she was attracting, sensing an element of hostility in them.

‘I have some news, darling,’ Charlie told her, ‘and I don’t want you to worry about it. Promise you won’t?’ He made her swear with hand on heart before he would continue. ‘Lord Lucan wants to leave women behind in Constantinople when we sail to Varna.’

Her consternation registered on her face but all she could say was ‘Oh.’ She would be scared in this city without him. She was even nervous by his side. She couldn’t bear to think of them being separated.

‘However, I think he will face a mutiny if he tries to enforce it. Bill and I have discussed it and decided that if you and your lady friends board the ship tomorrow morning, take up residence in your cabins and refuse to leave, I can’t believe he will dare to drag you off, petticoats flying.’

‘Why does Lord Lucan not want us to come?’

‘We’re going to be camping at Varna and I suppose he imagines the conditions will not be suitable for ladies. But I think you have proved on the voyage out here that you are remarkably resilient.’

Lucy hesitated. She had never slept in a tent before and wondered whether it would be safe. Would they have to sleep on the ground? How would she manage her toilette in privacy? She did not want to lower his opinion of her resilience so she simply asked, ‘Will Adelaide be coming?’

‘Bill certainly hopes she will.’

She nodded. ‘Then of course I will. I’ve brought many home comforts to turn our tent into a palace where you can relax after your duties. This is exactly what I came for. I’m not about to turn back now.’

Charlie grabbed her and pulled her to him for a kiss, his arm curled around her waist. She sensed rather than saw the disapproval of the Muslim stallholders who surrounded them. When she looked up, their expressions were blank but they were all watching in a way that definitely didn’t seem friendly.

Chapter Six

The quayside at Varna was milling with soldiers of different nationalities – noisy Greeks in olive green, golden-skinned Ottomans in purply-blue tunics with a red fez cap, the French in red trousers with blue jackets, plus others whom Lucy couldn’t identify – and everywhere there were piles of cannonballs and shells. The town itself was small and whitewashed, its pot-holed streets broiling in fierce heat. While Charlie oversaw the disembarkation of the horses, Lucy and Adelaide strolled along the main street purchasing supplies to supplement the army rations they would receive in camp later: a loaf of black bread, a side of ham, a bag of lemons. Lucy hesitated over a bottle of milk because Charlie didn’t like tea without milk, but Adelaide warned her that in this heat it would surely turn before they could pitch camp.

A much-decorated officer scowled at them as he hurried past. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and they could see that the top of his head was quite bald while hair grew profusely down the sides and around his chin in an elongated U-shape.

‘That’s Lord Lucan, commander of the cavalry,’ Adelaide whispered. ‘His plan to stop ladies accompanying the army has been sorely thwarted. I don’t think any women stayed behind – certainly none of the Hussars’ wives.’

‘I hope he has more influence over his men than he does over us,’ Lucy giggled.

Charlie ordered two of his men to bring their luggage ashore and load it onto a gun carriage, which was a relief to Lucy, who had a niggling worry about bringing too much, especially in comparison to Adelaide who had only a modest bag. That night they were to sleep outdoors on a large plain alongside a lake, before travelling north the following day. It was a pretty spot as the sun began to set, with flocks of graceful white birds swooping down to rest on the water then lifting off in a giant cloud. Some folk set about erecting tents but Charlie peered at the sky and decided there was no need for shelter that night.

‘I don’t expect you have ever slept under the stars, my dear. It’s a glorious experience in a climate as temperate as this. Everyone should try it.’ He began arranging their bedding underneath a sprawling bush.

‘Will we be safe?’ Lucy asked, all kinds of worries simultaneously crowding her brain: snakes, scorpions, Russian soldiers …

‘We’re surrounded by the bravest and best of the British army, my love. What could possibly happen?’

He built a little campfire on which to boil water for tea, and in lieu of milk he added a glug of rum to his cup.

‘Anyone care to join our party?’ he called to those round about. ‘Bring your own hooch!’

Bill and Adelaide joined them, and several of the men, all passing round their bottles. Mrs Williams and her husband Stan perched on the edge of the group, and she and Lucy exchanged smiles.

‘What about a sing-song?’ Charlie suggested, and burst into a tenor rendition of the popular ballad, ‘Thou art gone from my gaze, like a beautiful dream’. He sang the first verse, then turned to Lucy: ‘I don’t know any more of the words, my dear, but perhaps you do?’

She took over – ‘In the stillness of night, when the stars mildly shine’ – and the group fell silent as they listened to her pretty singing voice, quite the finest many of them had heard. For years she had been studying under an Italian singing master, hired by her mother so that there would always be music in the house. Lucy put her heart into it, wanting Charlie to be proud of her.

When she reached the end he cheered ‘Bravo!’, and the others joined his applause. One soldier piped up with the lively ‘Cheer, boys, cheer!’ and Charlie rose to his haunches and began a clumsy Cossack dance, hopping, kicking and falling over in a parody of the well-known Russian dance style. Everyone laughed until their sides hurt. It was clear he was the company jester and Lucy suddenly felt a pang of sadness that her mother never met him. Their characters were so similar she was sure they would have got along famously. Mama would never have allowed Dorothea to cause this horrid rift in the family. She would instantly have welcomed Charlie as one of them.

When Lucy crawled into her bedding later, Charlie was inebriated and keen to make love. He cupped her breast, squeezing it a little too hard, while trying to push up her skirts.

‘We can’t,’ she shushed. ‘Others will hear.’ The nearest men were only ten paces distant and although they appeared to be asleep, Lucy didn’t want to risk them seeing or hearing anything compromising. Charlie grumbled but soon gave up, fell back on his bedding and began to snore.

Lucy lay awake, alert for movements on the ground. Dorothea’s words about scorpions and snakes echoed through her head, but all she saw in the moonlight was a large beetle with yellow markings and sharp black pincers. She watched it for a while, wondering if it might bite her in her sleep. And then she reminded herself that she was a captain’s wife, who must be strong to survive this extraordinary experience. She picked up a rock and crushed the beetle, then settled down to sleep.

Bugles sounded at daybreak and everyone rose to pack any belongings that had been unpacked the night before. Lucy washed her face and rearranged her hair, smoothing down the creases in her pale blue silk gown as best she could. They were travelling eight miles north to a place called Silistria, where the Russian forces were under siege by the Ottomans, and Lucy felt a knot in her stomach when she thought about that. But for now, Charlie helped her and Adelaide to climb onto a gun carriage to ride with their luggage and they enjoyed the drive through the countryside while it was still early enough to escape the glare of the sun: the sky was cloudless but a light breeze made the temperature pleasant.

Adelaide transpired to be something of an expert on wildflowers and plants and she identified the blooms they passed in fields and hedgerows: wild roses, larkspur, borage, even purple heather, which Lucy had always thought to be uniquely Scottish. ‘I enjoy gardening,’ she explained. ‘We have a pretty garden at our house in Oxfordshire.’

When they arrived at Silistria, the French had already set up camp on one side of the plain, and Lucy caught sight of the red fezzes of the Turkish soldiers further off. The area left for the British troops lay on swampy ground near a river and black clouds of flies rose into the air as they stepped on it.

‘We’ll have our work cut out making this a home from home, but I’m sure we’re up to it,’ Adelaide called cheerfully.

They chose a patch that was slightly drier than the rest and some soldiers helped to unload Lucy’s trunk and bags onto the ground. Charlie and Bill approached, joshing each other.

‘I’ll put a plug in your nose if you snore as you did last night,’ Bill told Charlie, while Charlie insisted that Bill’s socks must never be allowed in the tent.

‘What’s going on?’ Adelaide smiled at them.

Charlie answered: ‘They brought four-man tents. Bill and I have decided we’d rather share with you ladies than with any of our men – if that’s acceptable to you, of course.’ He bowed theatrically.

‘I’ll hang a sheet down the middle so we have a modicum of privacy,’ Bill added.

Adelaide and Lucy looked at each other and agreed. In fact, Lucy felt greatly relieved that her friend would be so close at hand, even during the night. It would make her feel safer. She wondered what Dorothea would make of her sleeping under canvas. She would be forced to revise her low opinion of her younger sister if she saw how well she was coping with army life. Just the thought of Dorothea made her feel cross. Lucy shook her head, trying to erase the memory of their argument.

The men erected the tent in minutes then had to return to other duties, so Lucy and Adelaide began arranging their possessions, agreeing where the food store should be kept, where the washbowl should sit. There was nowhere to hang clothes so they had to stay folded in the trunk. Lucy’s tin bath could be used for bathing and also for washing clothes.

‘Isn’t it strange to think the Russians are so close, perhaps just a mile away?’ Lucy mused. ‘I haven’t heard any sound of their presence. Have you? I thought maybe there would be gunfire …’

They both stopped to listen but the only sound was the chirruping of insects in the long grass and the idle chatter of soldiers as they set up camp. The sun was a huge white orb and there was no shade from its unrelenting fire except inside the tent, where the air was stuffy and close. The ladies drank some tea, then loosened their corsets and lay down on their bedding rolls to snooze through the hottest hours of the day.

Chapter Seven

Two weeks after their arrival at camp, Charlie and Bill returned from the front with news that the Russians had abandoned Silistria and pulled back across the Danube. ‘We could be on the move again soon,’ Charlie warned, but they waited and no orders came. Meanwhile, the women had slipped into the rhythm of camp life. Every morning, before the heat grew too fierce, Lucy and Adelaide walked out to nearby farms to try and purchase fresh food to augment the chewy salt pork and tasteless dried biscuits distributed by the army. They didn’t speak the language, of course, but the local men seemed receptive to Lucy’s pretty face and Adelaide’s friendly smile and they were usually able to buy a loaf of sour black bread, gritty with sand from the floor on which the dough was kneaded, and perhaps some butter. Occasionally they were offered a few eggs or a scrawny chicken, but the only vegetables available seemed to be onions.

After a nap during the hottest hours, Lucy would venture out to call on some of the other women and chat to them as they washed clothes in the river or sat in the shade of a stand of trees. She began to know several: Mrs Williams, who had now resigned as lady’s maid to Fanny Duberly – ‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ Lucy told her with a conspiratorial twinkle – and Mrs Blaydes, who had taken her place; Mrs Jenkins, a forthright Welshwoman, and Mrs Higgins, who was said to have too much of a taste for alcohol but whom Lucy found shy and very companionable. She noticed that the women had shed their corsets and petticoats in an attempt to keep cool; in fact, she caught a glimpse of Mrs Williams’ bare leg one day and realised she wasn’t even wearing drawers. Lucy still wore all her layers in order to maintain a fashionably full skirt; she was determined not to let her standards slip, even though the intense heat meant her undergarments were often drenched in perspiration. In her head, she frequently argued with Dorothea: ‘You see? I am sleeping in a tent, making tea on a campfire and, contrary to your expectations, I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.’

At night, they dined with the men on greasy communal stews doled out with slices of gritty bread, unless they had procured a chicken that day, in which case Adelaide roasted it over the fire with great competence. Lucy had never learned to cook and she watched carefully, eager to learn. After dinner, Charlie usually instigated the entertainment: sometimes it was a card game or a musical evening, but he also developed the raucous new sport of beetle racing. The men prowled the undergrowth collecting beetles then raced them along a length of sheet. They placed bets on the likely winners then cheered on their own creatures, to whom they gave names: Horatio the Horrible, Nimrod, Lucan and Raglan (the last two named after the cavalry commander and the army’s elderly general).

Bill didn’t care for gambling so he kept the ladies company on these evenings, conversing about books and music, or telling them what he had learned about the progress of the war: there were other fronts being fought in the Baltic, in the Eastern parts of Turkey and in Crimea, and it seemed possible they might be redeployed to one of them now the Russians had left Silistria.

‘I wish they would make their decision soon so we can fight our battles and go home,’ he told Lucy. ‘I can’t tell you how much I miss our little ones bouncing on my knee, or climbing all over me while pretending I am a big bear.’ He chuckled. ‘I love to hear them chattering in their serious little voices. Martha has an opinion on everything and is not shy of expressing it.’

‘He can never deny her,’ Adelaide smiled. ‘If I have refused her anything, she will go to her father and extract his consent in an instant. He can’t resist her.’

‘It’s true,’ Bill grinned. ‘You remind me of her, Mrs Harvington. I think you have steely determination beneath that pretty exterior.’

Lucy laughed. ‘Thank you for the compliment, sir. I certainly hope I am more than merely decorative.’

At bedtime, Charlie returned to their tent and they made love quietly but Lucy blushed scarlet the next morning when Adelaide and Bill greeted her; she could hear when they had marital relations, just from a change in breathing pattern, a slight shifting of bodies, so she knew they must hear Charlie and her as well.

Weeks passed, June turned to July, and the men had little to do but tend their horses and race beetles. It felt like an anti-climax after all the excitement of the journey and Lucy wondered about the cause of the delay in getting new orders. Meantime, she was concerned that the horses drank from the river they used for their own drinking water, and she had been disgusted to see some soldiers urinating into it. She began to venture further afield to a spring where she collected buckets of water for drinking, enjoying the walk in the cooler hours of early morning. However, one day after she returned from such a trip she felt movement on her legs and lifted her petticoat to find a slimy black slug about two inches long stuck to her calf. She lifted the hem of her drawers to find another. She shrieked hysterically and couldn’t stop shrieking.

‘Get them off me! Get them off me!’

Adelaide came running at the sound of Lucy’s terror: ‘Those are leeches,’ she quickly identified. ‘Don’t worry, they won’t harm you.’ She pulled a stick from their woodpile and used it to flick the creatures from Lucy’s leg to the ground. A thin trickle of blood ran down from each of the bites. ‘Perhaps you should check the other leg,’ she suggested, and when Lucy rolled up her drawers she screeched anew to find four leeches attached there as well. Adelaide removed them then picked them up one by one on her stick and tossed them onto the fire, where they squirmed and crackled.

When she had done, Lucy burst into hysterical tears, still patting her legs in case she had missed one. ‘I’m sorry …’ she sobbed. ‘I didn’t mean to make a fuss. I wanted to be brave.’

‘You are extremely brave, my dear. For all you knew they could have been poisonous. In fact, they have long been used in medicine for bloodletting and their bites do not have any harmful effects but it’s understandable you got a fright. Go lie in the tent and I’ll bring you some tea.’

‘Please don’t tell Charlie. I don’t want him to think I can’t cope.’

Adelaide put an arm round her shoulder. ‘Of course I won’t tell him. And I think you are coping extraordinarily well, given your tender years and sheltered upbringing. Every morning you manage to look so spruce and well turned-out you put me to shame! And every day I find you chatting to someone new; you are one of the most popular women in the British camp and an inspiration to all. I’m proud to call myself your friend.’

Still Lucy was ashamed of her outburst and determined to be stronger when next she was challenged. She wanted Charlie to think her a worthy officer’s wife. And although Dorothea wasn’t there to witness it, she was determined to prove herself to her as well.

On the 19th July, Mrs Blaydes came to Lucy and Adelaide’s tent with some alarming news: a soldier in the Royal Horse Artillery had died of low fever.

‘Oh my goodness!’ Lucy panicked. ‘There must be poisonous vapours in the earth here. What can we do to avoid them?’

‘Perhaps we should stay out of company until we can be sure there are no further cases,’ Adelaide suggested. ‘We could halt the beetle races and card games, just for now.’

‘Seems a shame,’ Mrs Blaydes said, ‘but I ’spect you’re right.’

Four days later sixteen men had died and it was confirmed as an outbreak of the deadly cholera. Lucy listened with shock to Charlie’s description: ‘I’ve heard a man can drop dead within hours of the first bout of diarrhoea, and his final hours are spent writhing on the floor with liquid spewing from both ends.’

Adelaide admonished him for scaring Lucy, but he continued: ‘It’s the truth. One captain in the Horse Artillery took an overdose of laudanum after his diagnosis as he couldn’t face the horrors of such a death.’

‘We must all keep out of harm’s way,’ Adelaide said firmly. ‘If we are careful, I am sure we will avoid it.’

Lucy wondered if Dorothea had encountered any cholera sufferers in her hospital and might have some advice. If only she could write to ask! But even if her sister replied, the letter would take too long reaching them to be of use and Dorothea would probably just tell her to come home. She had not received a reply to the letter she sent her father from Malta. She knew some letters were getting through to the troops because in Constantinople Adelaide had been handed several, with coloured drawings made by her children, which had left her withdrawn and silent all afternoon.

In camp, there were whispers about those affected by fever, and Lucy steered well clear of sufferers’ tents, anxious about vapours. She stopped wandering out to chat with other women at the cookhouse or down by the river, keeping close to the area around their tent in the hope that they had chosen an area of healthy soil. But her precautions were in vain. One evening, Bill was unable to eat his dinner but rose unsteadily and lurched towards the latrine trench where they emptied their bedpans. Shortly afterwards they heard him throwing up. Adelaide’s face turned pale as she rushed to help him. His forehead was hot and his eyes glassy. The diagnosis seemed clear.

‘Should I take him to the hospital tent?’ she asked Charlie.

‘Don’t,’ was his advice. ‘No one who goes there comes out alive. I hear it’s best to nurse patients in isolation. Lucy and I will move out of the tent to give you space, and will leave supplies for you outside.’

Lucy’s throat was tight with fear – what if their patch of land was poisoned? What if Charlie caught the cholera? – but she was determined to be strong. ‘Don’t worry about anything but caring for your husband,’ she told Adelaide. ‘I’ll bring water and food, and will empty bedpans if you leave them outside. Tell me whatever you need and I’ll find it.’

Adelaide helped Bill to lie down in the tent and moistened a cloth to wipe his brow. ‘A cure,’ she said, her voice choked up. ‘I need a cure.’

Charlie and Lucy retrieved their bedding and slept under the stars, as they had done on the first night in Varna. They clung together, both terrified but unwilling to put their fears into words. Lucy decided she would write to her father asking if he knew any remedies and presumably he would then ask Dorothea’s advice. Perhaps she would send some miraculous medicine post-haste.

Next morning, Lucy called to Adelaide from outside the tent and was relieved to hear that Bill’s condition was not any worse. She set off to get fresh water, the legs of her drawers tied tight to deter leeches. While she was filling her bucket, she saw one of the Sisters of Charity who accompanied the French army and in her best French asked for advice on treating cholera.

‘The doctors give calomel for purging,’ the Sister told her, ‘but we believe it only increases the agony. Keep your friend’s temperature down with cool cloths and feed him tiny sips of water and chicken broth. May God be with you all.’ She made the sign of the cross.

Lucy took a bucket of fresh water back to their tent and called to Adelaide, telling her the advice she’d received and adding that she was setting out to beg for a chicken from one of the farmers. At the same time she would post the letter she had written.

‘Don’t take any risks on our account,’ Adelaide called. ‘Stay well clear of others. I couldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to you …’

Lucy had never made chicken broth before but with Adelaide calling instructions from inside the tent, she managed to produce a palatable brew and she left a large bowl of it by the tent flap, along with half a loaf of black bread.

For two days and two nights, neither Bill nor Adelaide emerged and there was little sound from inside the tent but Lucy could tell from the contents of the bedpans that the illness continued. She felt desperately lonely and scared during the day when Charlie went about his duties, and every evening she examined him for possible symptoms – was his brow slightly warm, his complexion pale? – but he seemed fine. Fatalities multiplied and coffins had to be constructed from any materials that could be found: Lucy saw one that read ‘Bass’s Superior Pale Ale’ on the side, which seemed horribly disrespectful to the dead. Was life really so cheap that a man could be full of life one day and buried in a beer crate the next?

On the third day of Bill’s illness, Charlie went hunting and brought back four quail. He plucked them then Lucy roasted them, following Adelaide’s method, and she was delighted to hear that Bill had managed to eat a small portion. He must be on the mend, and, thank God, Adelaide was showing no signs of having caught the disease.

Only when she and Charlie lay down to sleep that evening did Lucy dare to put into words the fearful thought that had been in her mind these last days, making her chest tight with nerves: ‘Promise me you won’t die out here,’ she whispered.

‘Of course I’m not going to die,’ he replied, stroking her hair back from her face. ‘I’m Lucky Charlie! I didn’t catch the cholera and I’ve got you for a wife.’

They made love for the first time since Bill had fallen ill, and Lucy clung to him, feeling the warmth of his skin, the beating of his heart, the rise and fall of his chest, all the signs that his body remained healthy. He stroked her hair and kissed her eyes, her nose, her neck. ‘You are extraordinary,’ he whispered. ‘Lord knows, I don’t deserve you but somehow I am lucky enough to have you in my arms and nothing could make me let you go.’ His voice cracked with emotion and Lucy had never loved him more; this must be what Adelaide meant when she said love deepens in times of adversity.

During the night she woke to hear Charlie mumbling in his sleep. She leaned in to listen and suddenly he grabbed her in a tight embrace and whispered ‘Susanna’ with such longing in his voice that her blood froze. The name had been clear, no question. Her insides twisted with jealousy. Who was Susanna and why did it sound as if Charlie felt so passionately about her? Was she a woman with whom he had been in love before he met her? If so, why had he not mentioned her? Perhaps he loved her still. She dismissed the thought – Charlie’s love for her seemed beyond question – but all the same she found it hard to get back to sleep.

Chapter Eight

Once Bill had recovered sufficiently to emerge from the tent and rest in the nearby shade or go for gentle strolls to regain his strength, Adelaide was able to keep Lucy company once more, and the women became closer than ever. They were chatting together when Mrs Williams came by to ask after Bill.

‘He is much better,’ Adelaide replied. ‘Thank you for your concern.’

‘The 8th has been hit bad,’ Mrs Williams told them. ‘We’ve lost several men, and poor Mrs Blaydes has perished.’

‘Mrs Blaydes? Oh no!’ Lucy was distraught to hear of the loss of someone she had known, albeit slightly. ‘And some of our men? Which ones?’

Mrs Williams rattled off a list of names, and tears filled Lucy’s eyes. ‘Their poor wives. What will they do now? I must visit them.’

Adelaide extended a restraining hand. ‘Perhaps you had best not visit. I’m sure Mrs Williams will extend your heartfelt sympathies and let you know if there are any services you can perform for them.’

‘Of course,’ Mrs Williams agreed, her head bent.

After she left, Lucy told Adelaide about her letter to her father and her secret hope that Dorothea would write with advice that would help all cholera sufferers in the camp.

Adelaide poked the fire with a stick to stir the embers. ‘My dear, if it is a painful subject then you needn’t answer, but I am curious to know more about the argument with your sister. Was it simply because of Charlie or were you never particularly close?’

Lucy tried to answer truthfully. ‘I think we were close once but it changed after my mother fell ill when I was seven years old. Dorothea appointed herself chief nurse and I was only allowed to see Mama when she said it was convenient. She often scolded me for making noise while Mama was trying to sleep and I suppose I began to resent her for keeping me away. Whenever I visited, Mama seemed cheerful and pleased to see me so it didn’t appear I was doing any harm. She always liked me to play and sing for her, right up to the end …’

‘How many years was she bedridden?’ Adelaide touched Lucy’s arm with empathy.

Lucy tried to remember. ‘Six years, more or less. Sometimes she came down to the parlour but such occasions were rare. They scared me because she looked so frail that I worried she would slip on the staircase. She seemed safer in bed, propped up on her pillows, and that’s where she spent most of her time until she died. Dorothea didn’t waken me that night but told me in the morning.’

Fresh tears came to her eyes, even five years on. ‘I had no chance to be there as she passed away, to hold her hand and tell her how much I loved her, but Dorothea thought I wasn’t old enough, that it would be too distressing for me. She made that decision on my behalf.’ Lucy was surprised how angry she felt talking about it, even now.

‘I expect she did what she thought was best.’ Adelaide pursed her lips.

‘No doubt she would say she did what she thought was best when she wrote to Charlie’s family trying to prevent our wedding, and got a barrister friend of hers to write to Major Dodds.’

An intake of breath signalled Adelaide’s surprise at this disclosure. ‘Goodness! I can understand her trying to persuade you that eighteen is rather young to come to war, but perhaps she went too far. I’m sure she only did it because she loves you.’

Lucy shook her head. ‘She has to be in charge. After Mama died, she was constantly scolding and correcting me. I was always in trouble for taking my gloves off when etiquette said I should not, or wearing a coat she thought was not warm enough, or talking too much in company. But although she may be thirteen years older, she is not my parent and does not have the right. So I often disobeyed, knowing Papa would take my side.’

‘And he consented to your wedding?’

‘Of course! He likes Charlie. Why wouldn’t he?’ Lucy felt defensive.

‘I suppose he too must have worried about you coming out here with a man you haven’t known for terribly long …’ Adelaide’s voice trailed off.

Lucy looked at her. Was she taking Dorothea’s side? ‘Papa simply wants me to be happy.’

‘So Dorothea was twenty-six when your mother died? I suppose devoting herself to nursing her meant she had missed her opportunity to marry. Such a shame.’

‘I’m not sure Dorothea was ever interested in men.’ Lucy picked up a stick and began to trace a pattern in the dusty ground. ‘She’s too domineering. She volunteered to work at the Pimlico Charitable Hospital after Mama died, where I imagine she is very bossy. She has no time for anyone who doesn’t agree with her.’

‘It’s good that she lives a useful life. I hope she enjoys her work?’

Lucy pondered this. ‘I suppose she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t enjoy it. She talks about it a lot. I only hope she writes soon, and maybe she will be able to send us some medicine to cure cholera. I expect it will be accompanied by long lists of instructions about what to do, what to avoid; you can count on that.’

‘A family rift is such a sadness. I worry about you and Charlie both being estranged from your kin. Promise me you will make peace with Dorothea after the war.’

‘Only if she will respect our marriage and treat me as an adult.’ Lucy folded her arms, determined that any apology should come from her sister since she had done nothing wrong.

That evening, Charlie and Lucy went for a stroll in the moonlight, arms linked, and she mentioned that she had written to her father and very much hoped that Dorothea would send advice on preventing cholera.

Charlie seemed hurt. ‘Why did you write to them? We have each other now. Dorothea only ever caused trouble for us and, to be frank, your father doesn’t know the day of the week. You and I don’t need anyone else.’

Lucy squeezed his arm. ‘Of course we don’t, darling. I only wrote because of the cholera. Don’t be cross with me.’

He fell silent and she could tell from the way he stiffened and peered into the distance that he was cross about it. He wanted her all to himself. Perhaps he was worried that Dorothea would try to persuade her to return home again – as no doubt she would. But nothing would make Lucy leave now. How would Bill have survived cholera without Adelaide’s tender care? If anything should happen to Charlie, she wanted to be there to offer the same comfort.

*

The summer passed slowly and Lucy grew increasingly frustrated with the delay in any fresh orders coming through. She missed her home, her friends and her father, and the novelty of living in a tent had long since grown tiresome. Towards the end of August, rumours began to spread that the troops were set to sail for Crimea but that officers’ wives must be left behind in Varna, since there would be no decent accommodation for them once the army was on the move.

‘I am not staying behind,’ Adelaide declared firmly. Although Bill had returned to his duties he was still weakened by his illness and she could not contemplate waving goodbye to him. ‘I will go along by hook or by crook.’

‘And I’ll come too,’ cried Lucy. She could think of nothing worse than being left alone in this land of cholera and leeches.

Charlie told them that Lord Lucan intended to patrol the quayside watching every person boarding the ship, and they tried to think of ways to avoid his eagle gaze. Lucy suggested she could hide in her trunk, but Charlie pointed out that she would soon suffocate.

‘Why don’t we dress as soldiers?’ Adelaide suggested. ‘We could borrow some trousers and tunics and hide our hair under busbies.’

Lucy laughed at first but her friend was serious. She rushed into their tent and emerged some minutes later wearing Bill’s spare uniform. While the blue tunic was baggy on her, and the red trousers with a yellow stripe threatened to fall down at any moment, she could have passed for a man if you didn’t look too closely.

‘Charlie’s would be far too big for me. Perhaps I can borrow a spare uniform from Mrs Williams’ husband Stan, who is slighter,’ Lucy suggested, feeling a surge of excitement. ‘I’ll ask her. It doesn’t seem fair that soldiers’ wives are allowed to go along while we are not.’

‘They plan on putting the soldiers’ wives to work, cooking and laundering clothes,’ Adelaide explained, ‘but we can do that just as well.’

At daybreak on the 31st August, when the Hussars struck camp, Adelaide and Lucy were already dressed in their borrowed uniforms. It meant they couldn’t beg a lift on a gun carriage for the eight-mile march to Varna and even had to carry a bag apiece (although Charlie managed to arrange transport for Lucy’s trunk, the bath and her heaviest bags). Their feet blistered in army boots several sizes too large, stuffed with socks so they didn’t fall off, but both marched with determination and kept up with the others, chatting along the way.

‘By the by, there is something I wanted to ask you,’ Lucy said. ‘Did Charlie ever mention a girl called Susanna? He called that name in his sleep. I don’t want to embarrass him by asking about her, but wondered if she was perhaps a lady he used to be enamoured with before he met me? He is a man of seven and twenty years and must have courted other ladies before we met. Perhaps Bill knew her?’ Sensing Adelaide’s discomfort with the line of questioning she continued hurriedly, ‘Don’t worry; I am not a jealous type of woman.’

‘I … I think I have heard the name,’ Adelaide told her, hesitantly. ‘I believe there may have been ladies before you, but you must know you have nothing to worry about. Charlie dotes on you.’

‘I’m not worried. It’s just that he seemed to feel so passionately about her.’

‘I’m sure one day he will tell you about her.’

‘Won’t you tell me?’ Lucy pleaded.

‘It’s not my place …’ Adelaide began, then cried, ‘Look! I see the ships ahead. We are almost there.’ None of Lucy’s questions could induce her to say any more.

On the quayside at Varna, crowds were milling and amongst them Lucy recognised Lord Lucan standing by the gangplank watching those boarding. Shoulder to shoulder, she and Adelaide pushed forwards, trying to adopt a masculine style of walking, keeping their heads down, and the Major General barely glanced at them as they hurried on board. They asked directions to the officers’ quarters, and were momentarily surprised to find Fanny Duberly there, already having commandeered the best cabin. She glared at them in their uniforms.

‘Hardly dignified, ladies,’ she remarked, making them burst into fits of giggles.

‘How did you get past Lord Lucan?’ Lucy snorted, looking at Adelaide in her trousers and fur busby.

‘I simply walked past. He wouldn’t dare to stop me. My husband and I are terribly good friends of Lord Raglan’s.’ She looked them up and down. ‘I must say, you two look ridiculous.’

This made Lucy and Adelaide laugh anew, partly with the relief of having achieved their aim and avoiding separation from their husbands. Charlie and Bill arrived later and congratulated them on the success of the ruse.

The crossing to the Crimean peninsula was only supposed to take around thirty-six hours and they decided to keep a low profile and eat in their cabins rather than in the officers’ dining hall. However, the ship was almost instantly becalmed in the waters of the Black Sea. It was twelve days before Lucy saw the coast of the Crimean peninsula, an ominous, shadowy vision through torrential gusts of diagonal rain.

PART THREE

Chapter Nine

15th September 1854

The Pimlico Charitable Hospital was situated near Westminster Cathedral and every day Dorothea’s driver took them on a route that passed the Palace of Westminster, still in the process of being rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1834. Heaps of bricks were stacked in Whitehall, where builders always seemed to be standing around smoking and passing the time of day, reluctant to shift aside to let a carriage pass. From their accents it was clear many were Irish, refugees from the Great Famine that had recently swept that land and decimated the population. Dorothea often looked at them out of her carriage window, singled out one man in particular and wondered about his story: whether he had been able to bring his family over, or if he was here alone and attempting to send back money to his loved ones. The busy streets of London must feel very strange to these peasants who had earned their living from the soil until their potato crop failed catastrophically.

Dorothea was kept very busy at the hospital. Her role was to chat with patients, read to them and try to raise their spirits, but she was fascinated to learn the basics of wound dressing, and assisting doctors in blistering, cupping and blood-letting. Although it was not usual practice for ladies, the matron, Miss Alcock, realised that Dorothea was competent and allowed her to help with medical care, and she had rapidly become one of the most knowledgeable of the nursing staff. The patients were all destitute folk who required a letter from the charity commission guaranteeing their good character before they were admitted, so as to weed out the drunkards and criminal classes.

On her ward there was great interest in the progress of the war and Dorothea often read the newspaper to her patients, just as she had for Mr Peters. They cheered at the news that their brave boys had arrived in the Turkish lands then became frustrated at the delays in engaging in battle, wanting to crush the Russkies as soon as possible. In the final week of July, reports began to appear in The Times about a cholera outbreak amongst the troops at Varna. Dorothea followed the movements of the 8th Hussars with special interest and knew they were there. At first there was a short paragraph mentioning four deaths, then there were another six, most in the French camp, but by the second week of August it was reported that five hundred had died and Dorothea became seriously alarmed.

At breakfast the next day, she saw her father was reading reports from Varna and couldn’t help asking the news about the cholera. ‘I’m so terribly anxious about Lucy!’ she said. ‘We’ve had no word about how she is or whether she’s affected by the outbreak.’

Her father looked up, surprised. ‘But she is very well! I have received a letter from her.’

Dorothea was astonished. ‘What? A letter? Are you sure?’ She thought for a moment that he had imagined it. Since Lucy had left he was increasingly prone to believing his own flights of imagination and she had become convinced that the mental infirmity of old age had affected his reasoning.

‘Of course I’m sure. I read it myself. I have it in my study.’

‘Why on earth did you not tell me?’

Mr Gray returned to his reading. ‘It didn’t occur to me, I suppose. The letter was addressed to me.’

A wave of anger and hurt flushed Dorothea’s cheeks but she bit back a rebuke. Despite her certainty that he was senile, it was hard not to get cross with her father sometimes; she was still furious with him for giving his consent for Lucy and Charlie’s marriage. Dorothea had given him many strong reasons against the match and still he had agreed to it. He had always liked Lucy better; that was the honest truth. Perhaps it was because she reminded him of his late wife, or maybe because she was so pretty and blonde and far more adorable than plain, dutiful Dorothea with her dull brown locks and sharp features.

These days she found herself irritated by her father’s hypochondria. Every day he had some new symptom he wanted her to ask the hospital physicians about: a painful toenail, a slight rash on his chest, or difficulty with his bowel movements. She knew this was most likely a symptom of his senility, but found it hard to empathise. He was only in his mid-fifties. Surely, if he but tried, he could pull himself together?

‘Might I see the letter?’ Dorothea asked, her voice a little tetchy, and he sent Henderson to fetch it from his study with lengthy explanations as to its precise location.

When she at last held it in her hands, she read it rapidly. Lucy wrote gaily of the female friends she had made on the ship; she had always possessed a facility for female friendship, with her outgoing nature and lively conversation. Even as a child, whenever there was a guest in the house Lucy would be nearby, asking questions and charming them with her pretty manners. She loved to be in company. It cheered Dorothea to read the letter until she checked the date and realised that it had been written three months previously when their ship stopped off in Malta, long before the cholera outbreak.

‘Did you reply?’ she asked, but her father shook his head. His mouth was full of buttered roll so she had to wait for his reply.

‘I didn’t know where to write,’ he said, wiping buttery crumbs from his lips.

Poor Lucy! She must think they had both abandoned her. Dorothea had not written again after the impassioned letter she sent on the eve of their departure had received no reply, but now she decided to try once more. She had no idea if the letter would get through to Varna but she could at least attempt to reach her sister.

‘My dear Lucy,’ she wrote. ‘Father and I think of you constantly and pray for your good health. We have read of the cholera affecting our troops and are anxious to know you are safe.’ She advised her to avoid foul, stuffy atmospheres or handling the bodily fluids of infected patients, then added more tips such as cooking fruit before eating it and drinking plenty of water to avoiding overheating in the warm weather. ‘I will ask at the hospital about the treatments they use for those who fall ill, and will write again anon. But of course prevention is by far the best course.’ In the last paragraph she sent her warmest regards to Charlie, and said she wished them both well. ‘Please take care of yourself,’ she wrote, closing her eyes in silent prayer that Lucy would be spared.

She sent Henderson to post the letter, addressed care of the 8th Hussars, and instantly felt a wave of relief that communication was once again opened between them, albeit one-sided. Perhaps she would write every week so that Lucy would receive regular correspondence from home. Even if she chose not to reply, she would know that Dorothea still loved her and was thinking of her.

As chance would have it, a letter from Lucy arrived just a few days later, crossing hers in the post. Yet again it was addressed to their father but this time he showed it to Dorothea at once. She could read her sister’s anxiety between the lines and felt an acute pang of missing her. It was clear that Lucy wanted advice from her. ‘If there should be some medicines available in London both to prevent and to cure this dreaded cholera, I would be most grateful if you could procure supplies and send them over. The doctors here seem at a loss,’ she wrote.

At the hospital the following day, Dorothea asked Miss Alcock, her ward matron, for advice and was told that the physicians in Pimlico Hospital sometimes gave opium for the pain, but they no longer believed in the use of calomel, a purgative. The best thing was to keep patients hydrated with sips of water and cool their heads until the fever passed. The sister told her that there was currently an outbreak in Soho and they were refusing to take any patients from the area for fear of it spreading within the hospital.

‘What is the mortality rate?’ Dorothea asked, and wished she hadn’t when Miss Alcock replied that it seemed as high as twelve per cent in some areas. Pray God it did not kill twelve per cent of the army in Varna. Pray God Lucy was safe.

Normally the physicians didn’t deign to speak with the nurses. However, that afternoon, Mr Clarence, a particularly amiable young physician, came to visit the acute cases and on his way out, Dorothea was bold enough to accost him and ask his views on cholera prevention and treatment.

‘It’s interesting you should ask,’ he said, ‘as I was discussing it this very morning with Mr John Snow, a colleague at University College. He has analysed the Soho outbreak with great rigour and become convinced that every single sufferer had drunk water from the pump at the corner of Broad Street and Cambridge Street. He has long believed cholera is not an airborne disease; otherwise it would surely affect the lungs in the first instance. I can see his point there.’ He paused to ensure she was following.

Dorothea frowned. ‘Whereas it affects the digestive system, so that points to the cause being something ingested?’

‘Precisely.’ He nodded eagerly. ‘Mr Snow persuaded the Board of Guardians of the parish to remove the handle, thus making the pump unusable and, lo and behold, cases of cholera infection dropped away rapidly. His own analysis of the water found white particles of unknown origin. Of course, much more research is required but it seems to me prima facie evidence for a waterborne illness. It could also be borne by contaminated foods, I imagine, especially those in which water is used during preparation.’

Dorothea was alarmed. ‘My sister is in Varna with the troops. What advice should I send?’

‘Instruct her to boil all water before use. And if infection occurs, keep the patient hydrated with sips of cooled boiled water. That’s all that is being done with the Soho victims and so far the recovery rate is much improved on previous outbreaks.’

Dorothea was horrified: in her previous letter she had advised Lucy to drink lots of water, not considering that their supplies might be contaminated. If only the new telegraph line the army was constructing were ready, she could have sent a telegram to warn her. She hurried home as soon as she could and wrote with all the advice she had gathered, then she ended the letter with an emotional plea from the heart.

‘Lucy, please at least consider coming back on the next available ship. I hear the army is moving north to the Crimean peninsula and an ex-soldier in my hospital last winter, a very sweet man, told me that wives will only drain supplies and get in the way.’ She commended Lucy for her bravery so far but said: ‘Now the real battles with big guns will begin, it is no place for a lady. It says in The Times that the war will be over in a matter of weeks, then Captain Harvington will be following you home. Please consider my suggestion and be assured that Father and I would welcome you with open arms.’

Dorothea read and re-read the letter, making revisions to the tone so that she could not be accused of being patronising (a word that had passed Lucy’s lips several times during their bitter argument), then she made a fair copy and sent Henderson to post it.

From that moment on, her first thought when she got back from the hospital each day was to ask if another letter had arrived from overseas. But weeks went by and there was no word. Had Lucy succumbed to cholera? Was she dead already? Dorothea had no way of finding out and the waiting was intolerable. While working at the hospital, or spending evenings at home, her impetuous, warm-hearted, adorable little sister was always at the forefront of her thoughts.

Chapter Ten

A reporter for The Times newspaper, a plain-speaking Irishman called W.H. Russell, was living close to the troops in Varna and he sent back dispatches that described conditions as he saw them. Dorothea followed the news stories with mounting anxiety. Russell informed the British public that over a thousand men had died from cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery before a single shot was fired and that medical facilities were scandalously inadequate. Instantly there was an outcry, with government ministers scurrying around looking for someone to blame and worthy gentlemen writing to the papers asking what could be done.

On the 9th October, six months since Lucy had embarked, Mr Russell’s story in The Times told of the army’s ‘glorious victory’ at the Battle of Alma but said there were few surgeons and no hospitals so those requiring anything more than a simple battlefield dressing must sail south to Constantinople aboard what he described as ‘fetid ships’. He wrote there was insufficient linen for bandages and that conditions were those of ‘humane barbarity’, with some injured men waiting forty-eight hours or more for treatment. Soldiers’ wives who had accompanied the troops were helping to look after the less seriously wounded, but officers’ wives had been encouraged to stay at Varna or Constantinople. Dorothea had no idea where Lucy might be; only that she was far from home and in mortal danger.

Her fear increased as the autumn air turned chilly and she thought of Lucy out there with only her summer wardrobe and some evening gowns. Should she send some warmer clothes, perhaps a coat? Or would they get lost along the way? It was dark when she left the hospital each evening, underlining the changing of the season. Most of her time was spent at work or at home with her father, but she sometimes went with her friend Emily Goodland, the sister of William, to hear concerts given by the Royal Philharmonic Society at Exeter Hall or to view the paintings in the Royal Academy of Art in Trafalgar Square. She often discussed her worries about Lucy with her friend. One chilly October evening Emily mentioned she had heard that a Miss Florence Nightingale, who was superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Harley Street, had been asked by the government to take a small party of nurses out to the Turkish lands to see what could be done to relieve the suffering of the wounded.

‘Perhaps you could ask one of Miss Nightingale’s party to look out for Lucy?’ she suggested. ‘They could pass on a message if they see her.’

Dorothea’s heart leapt. ‘I am a great admirer of Miss Nightingale’s. Do you know which nurses she will take?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Emily replied, ‘but I did hear that she wants mature women with nursing experience.’ She looked at Dorothea with a peculiar expression. ‘Why? You wouldn’t consider volunteering, would you?’

Instantly, Dorothea felt she should, and not just so that she could look for Lucy. Something else tugged at her heart. This was her chance to see a little more of the world and make a difference to it. She had no illusions about the awful injuries she might have to treat in a battlefield hospital; she had dressed some terrible wounds sustained by the men building the new railways, who got crushed by hefty metal rails, had limbs mangled in unfamiliar machinery and were severely burned when boilers unexpectedly exploded. She knew she could cope with virtually anything after that. She could be useful in Crimea; she knew she could.

‘Yes, I would. Do you know how one should apply to be amongst the party?’

‘I don’t know any more than I told you. I assumed you would feel your ties at home would prevent you from making such a trip.’

‘On the contrary, I should be most interested in finding out about it.’

She sensed Emily disapproved but could not work out why. Maybe it was because her friend didn’t entirely approve of her working in a hospital. They could be dangerous places, and many of the nurses she worked alongside were rough women who drank on duty and treated patients with disdain. Most lady volunteers didn’t so much as soil their begloved hands, but Dorothea loved to learn about medicine and often shocked Emily with her tales of procedures she had carried out.

Next morning, she rose early and skipped breakfast in order to make enquiries about the party of nurses going to the Crimea. Her matron, Miss Alcock, found out on her behalf that the final interviews were taking place that very morning at 49 Belgrave Square, the house of the Minister for War, Sidney Herbert, so Dorothea rushed straight there.

A line of chairs was set out in the grand entrance hall and she was invited to take a seat. No one else was there when she arrived but as she waited, an Irishwoman who looked to be in her fifties or sixties came in and sat with a groan, one hand clutching her lower back. They greeted each other but did not have a chance to make conversation before Dorothea was called in to an adjacent room. At a long table sat four women, who were introduced as Mrs Herbert (wife of the minister), Mrs Bracebridge and Miss Stanley (both friends of Miss Nightingale) and Miss Parthenope Nightingale (Florence’s sister).

‘What experience could you bring to our party?’ Mrs Bracebridge asked.

Dorothea explained about her work, and told them that she knew all about wound dressing and care of fevers.

‘How did you come to learn of such things?’ She peered at Dorothea as if reassessing her.

Dorothea coloured, then said that her matron, Miss Alcock, had encouraged her to learn.

It seemed Mrs Bracebridge knew Miss Alcock and they conversed for a while about that decent soul. Her manner warmed somewhat and Dorothea gained confidence.

‘Before I started work in the hospital, I spent years nursing my mother through breast cancer and other complaints that arose from her condition.’ Dorothea hurried on so as not to dwell on this. ‘The experience gave me a keen insight into care of the dying.’

‘What age are you?’ Miss Stanley asked in a friendly tone. Dorothea told her and she wrote it on a sheet of paper. ‘Are you married?’ she continued, and when Dorothea said she was not, she asked, ‘Do you hope to marry?’

‘No, I do not,’ Dorothea answered truthfully. Any such hopes she might once have harboured had long been extinguished.

‘Good,’ Miss Stanley nodded. ‘Women who intend to find a husband among the wounded soldiers are no use to us. Worse than useless, in fact. There must be no fraternising of any sort with the patients.’

‘I understand. Of course not.’

‘How many years have you been a nurse?’ Miss Nightingale asked, and Dorothea said she’d spent six years nursing her mother, then another five working at the Pimlico hospital.

‘What is your religion?’

‘Church of England.’

‘Who will care for your father if you are chosen to come on our expedition?’ Mrs Herbert took over. ‘Do you have siblings?’

‘My father has servants to care for his physical needs, and is quite content with the company of his butler. I’m sure he will manage perfectly well without me.’ Dorothea paused. ‘My only sibling, my sister Lucy, is already out East; she accompanied her officer husband. I am concerned because we do not hear from her regularly and she was in Varna during the cholera outbreak. Perhaps I would be able to reunite with her at the same time as helping …’ Her voice tailed off as she saw the looks the women were exchanging.

Mrs Bracebridge pursed her lips. ‘We are not here to help families be reunited. The women we choose must be totally dedicated to nursing injured soldiers and will probably never set foot outside the hospital … I’m afraid you are not suitable.’

Dorothea panicked: ‘I only meant that perhaps while I am working out there I might hear word of my sister. I certainly would not shirk my ward duties to look for her. I have never missed a day since I started volunteering in Pimlico. You can ask Miss Alcock; I’m sure she will tell you I am utterly dedicated.’

‘All the same, your mind would be on family matters. I’m afraid we must say no, Miss Gray. Now, if you don’t mind we have other candidates waiting to be seen.’

‘Please reconsider,’ Dorothea begged, struggling to stop herself bursting into tears. ‘I should never have mentioned my sister. Of course it is unlikely I would see her amongst all the thousands of people out there. I want to nurse, to relieve suffering and to serve my country.’

Mrs Bracebridge was immovable. ‘Send in the next candidate please, Miss Stanley.’

Miss Stanley, the youngest of the four interviewers, stood and moved to the door, opening it and holding it for Dorothea to pass.

As Dorothea rose, she gazed from one face to the next, desperately looking for a sign of sympathy, a weakening of resolve, but their minds were made up. She wasn’t going.

She was distraught during the carriage ride along Birdcage Walk to the hospital. The trees had turned golden brown almost overnight, and falling leaves swirled high in the air carried on fierce gusts of wind. If only she hadn’t mentioned Lucy. What a fool she was.

She confided in Miss Alcock, who sent a personal note to Mrs Bracebridge arguing Dorothea’s case and her hopes were raised once more. But the reply came back promptly that they had received 617 applications, many of them from highly qualified women, and had already chosen the nurses they were taking.

Dorothea wept as she read in The Times of Florence Nightingale’s band of thirty-eight women setting off to Paris on the 23rd October then overland to Marseilles and on by ship to Scutari. Her one chance of leading a life of some value was lost. Instead it was back to reading to patients, dressing their wounds and helping them to eat their meals in the same old London wards, then the stultifying atmosphere of evenings spent with her father in a house that was too big for them, where her footsteps echoed and everything reminded her of the absence of Lucy and the emptiness in her heart.

PART FOUR

Chapter Eleven

14th September 1854

At sunset, the ship carrying the Hussars and their wives anchored off the Crimean coast by a long sandy bay near a town called Evpatoria. The water was filled with ships and landing craft stretching in all directions, each with multi-coloured lamps decorating their masts as if they had arrived for a festival. Wind whistled through the rigging, causing a clanking sound. Onshore, the French were busily setting up camp; it seemed they were always first. The beach was deserted but in the distance Lucy could see the outlines of the town’s buildings against the darkening sky. What would the inhabitants think of this mass invasion? There was as yet, thankfully, no sign of any resistance.

Charlie and Bill attended an officers’ briefing in the dining hall then came down with the news that men were to disembark first. Women were strongly advised to stay on the ship but if they must come ashore with their husbands, they should bring only what they could comfortably carry, since there was a long march ahead and no one to help them. Men had been ordered to carry nothing but their weapons and three days’ rations. Lucy looked in alarm at her trunk and bulging bags. There was no way she could manage them herself. Adelaide had just one bag and was keen to follow her husband, and Lucy was determined to go wherever her friend went. She guessed Fanny Duberly must have more luggage than average so she knocked on her cabin door to ask what she planned to do.

‘My horse has not yet arrived from Varna,’ Mrs Duberly told her when Lucy asked if she planned to disembark, ‘and I am certainly not going to march on foot. I have been quite unwell these last days, and my servant Connell died just last night after a long struggle with fever.’ She looked grey, with pinched cheeks and pale lips, and wore a white nightgown that had seen better days.

‘I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘I rather doubt it; not unless you have medical training.’ Her tone was unfriendly.

‘Will you stay on this ship?’ Lucy asked, thinking perhaps she could leave some of her luggage behind in that case.

‘I believe I am being transferred to the Shooting Star tomorrow as this vessel has to make another journey. Once my horse arrives, I will ride ashore daily to catch up with the troops.’

‘I will see you then perhaps. I am planning to go ashore today.’

Mrs Duberly looked her up and down with disdain. ‘You think you are up to it, do you? You don’t seem the hardy sort to me. Well, good luck to you.’

Further along the corridor, Lucy bumped into Captain Henry Duberly, Fanny’s husband, and offered condolences on the death of their servant. He was more courteous than his wife and when Lucy asked if she might leave behind some belongings to be transferred to the Shooting Star, he promised to arrange it personally.

‘Leave them in your cabin,’ he said, brushing away her thanks. ‘It’s no trouble at all.’

Now all she must do was decide what to take with her. Adelaide suggested she bring her warmest clothing as the night air was becoming chilly although the days were still hot, so she chose a heavier gown of forest-green wool with a floral pattern on the edge of the flounces, her brown boots and a green cashmere cloak, and left behind the eveningwear.

As they prepared to disembark the following morning, the wind picked up, the sea became choppy and heavy clouds scudded in front of the sun. Light drizzle began to fall as Lucy and Adelaide were ferried by rowing boat onto a sandy beach crowded with red-coated soldiers carrying rifles and bayonets, and dozens of fully-laden horses and carts. There was no sign of their husbands and no shelter so after trying fruitlessly to find someone to ask what they must do, Lucy and Adelaide began to march alongside the troops heading for the first night’s encampment. They each clutched their one bag and an army-issue blanket, hooded cloaks wrapped around them against the increasing downpour. They had brought some rations of black bread and salt meat from the ship, so they ate as they walked and drank water from wooden flagons.

The men came to a halt on a barren plain and began to set down their weapons, but there was no sign of any tents and Lucy and Adelaide asked a passing captain where they should rest.

‘You must find shelter where you can, Ma’am. The tents have not yet come ashore.’

‘Do you know where our husbands might be? They’re with the Hussars.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have that information. It’s possible they have been sent ahead on reconnaissance.’

Lucy felt a quiver of panic. No one was looking out for them. They had been warned this might be the case but the reality was terrifying. It seemed they were to sleep out of doors in a hostile land, where Russians might arrive to kill them in their bedding rolls if the elements had not first given them a fatal chill.

‘The French camp was erected last night,’ Adelaide protested. ‘They are preparing dinner at this very moment, while we must survive on cold rations in the open air.’

‘I am sorry, Ma’am.’

Adelaide shook her head crossly. ‘We must make the best of it then.’

Some folk were fashioning improvised shelters out of brushwood, but Lucy and Adelaide found a wagon that appeared to have been abandoned, and placed their blankets and bags underneath to lay claim to it. Adelaide tried to start a small fire in a sheltered spot by a bush but it sparked then fizzled out, creating a column of smoke but no heat. When darkness fell they crawled under the wagon and wrapped themselves in their blankets, using their bags as pillows, but the noise of the rain pounding on the wood and the groans of those who had failed to find any shelter combined to make sleep fitful. It was the most uncomfortable experience of her life, but Lucy told herself she could put up with it for one night. She must.

When the bugles sounded at daybreak, they emerged stiff, cold and bedraggled. The rain had eased enough to strike a fire from some kindling Adelaide had thought to place beneath the wagon to dry out. Being able to boil water and brew tea made them feel a little more human. Mid-morning, Charlie came riding up and Lucy screamed with delight. He leapt from his horse and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her face to his.

‘Look at you! A night on the road and you are as beautiful as ever. I’m so proud of you, my adorable wife.’

She felt like bursting into tears, telling him how scared she had been and begging him not to leave her again, but she swallowed the words. She was an army wife now and must not swamp him with her fears. ‘Will you be staying with us tonight?’

‘I think it’s unlikely, my dear. My men are riding ahead to establish where the Russians are holed up and I must be on hand for them to report to. Bill is in the same position. But you two seem fine on your own. As soon as we can, we will return.’

‘Must you leave straight away? Is there no time for some tea?’

He shook his head with a regretful smile, then gave her a lingering kiss on the lips. ‘I can’t wait to lie with you again,’ he whispered. ‘We must be patient. Remember that I adore you.’ With that he leapt onto his horse, saluted them and rode off. Adelaide had been hanging back to give them some privacy but now she called after him, ‘Tell Bill I am well and miss him dearly.’

Some of the tents arrived later that day and a couple of soldiers took pity on Lucy and Adelaide and erected one for them. For the next two days they stayed in camp, with occasional visits from Charlie or Bill to reassure them, until on the morning of the 19th September they were told to pack for the long march south towards Sevastopol, where the Russians were at last to be defeated. A vast column formed, with French troops to their right and Turkish bringing up the rear, and Lucy listened with interest to the babble of languages being spoken as these men from quite different backgrounds joined cause against a common enemy. Amongst the British ranks, everyone’s mood was lifted by the music of the regimental bands playing patriotic classics such as, ‘Cheer, boys, cheer’. It was hard for the women to keep pace with the marchers as their boots slipped on rough scree and their long gowns became entangled in thorny bushes. Lucy and Adelaide found the Turkish troops starting to overtake them. Two dark-complexioned Turks – men of whom Lucy would normally have felt nervous even though they were allies – took pity and carried their bags for a while, until their commanding officer shouted something and they handed them back apologetically.

Lucy’s limbs ached and a blister on her right heel became more and more inflamed as the day wore on, but at least she was not afraid of ambush by Russian troops with so many soldiers around them. There was general grumbling, with many wondering why they had not landed closer to Sevastopol and attacked immediately, but Adelaide assured Lucy that Lord Raglan and the French commanders must have some clever plan in mind.

In the afternoon they reached a stream and stopped to drink. Lucy removed her boot to bathe her poor heel in the cool water. A whisper went round and, looking in the direction others were peering, she saw the hazy shape of a gathering of people on a ridge ahead.

‘Are these … are they Russians?’ she asked a nearby soldier and he confirmed they were.

A thrill of fear ran through Lucy and she clutched Adelaide’s hand.

‘I hope we’ll get a chance to fight them,’ the soldier said. ‘The cowards have been retreating but I hear they are encamped just a mile ahead at the River Alma and we plan to attack them there.’

Now the troops had reached this point, it seemed inhumane, outlandish even, to Lucy that the men around her were going to attempt to kill those who stood on a distant ridge. Could they not sit down and talk through their differences, as women would have done? But she didn’t voice her thoughts, not even to Adelaide. She was an army wife and this was what armies did.

Charlie and Bill returned that evening and Charlie brought out a bottle of porter he had purloined from somewhere. The ladies accepted a glass each, as did Bill, and Charlie entertained them with stories of the rivalries between the Earl of Lucan and the Earl of Cardigan, who were brothers-in-law yet hated each other vehemently.

‘What is the source of their quarrel?’ Adelaide asked.

‘Cardigan thinks Lucan doesn’t treat his sister well enough,’ Charlie replied. ‘Marriages can bring out the worst in families.’ He caught Lucy’s eye and winked. ‘It’s rather alarming that our commanders don’t get along but one can only hope it won’t affect their judgement.’

At that moment a messenger came to summon Charlie; Major Dodds wished to have a word about plans for the morning. Adelaide went into the tent to prepare for bed, leaving Lucy and Bill chatting by the fireside. Emboldened by the porter, she took the opportunity to ask about Charlie’s family.

‘Adelaide tells me you have met the Harvingtons.’

‘Yes, on a few occasions.’

‘What manner of people are his parents? His two brothers?’ She was curious to hear everything, since Charlie would never speak of them.

Bill paused. ‘I didn’t know them well. His father is a stern, rather old-fashioned man.’

‘I hope when we return from war, I might meet them and we will be able to repair the rift that has distanced them.’

Bill poked the embers of the fire warily. ‘Charlie has not told you of the tragic circumstances of the rift?’

‘No, not really! At least, all he told me was that it involved an argument over a debt. What happened? Pray tell.’ She watched him eagerly.

‘It is for him to tell you. I’m sure he will one day, but for now all you must do is give him as much love as you possibly can, because he needs it and he deserves it. Fate has dealt him a cruel blow in the past. But I have observed you, Lucy, and I think you have the right mixture of qualities to be an excellent wife for him. I’m so glad he met you.’

She was rendered momentarily speechless by this puzzling outpouring. ‘Thank you. I hope I will do my best. But …’

There was no time for further questions as Charlie rushed back with news: ‘Four a.m., Bill. You and I are on the right flank.’

A shiver went down Lucy’s spine.

This was it.

The two men spoke head to head for a few minutes, serious, professional. She rose and went into the tent to prepare for bed. When Charlie came, they lay with their arms round each other, faces close, but she knew his thoughts were elsewhere – as were hers. Her heart was pounding with the knowledge that next day he must fight and there was a chance he might not return. How did any wife cope with this? All she could do was breathe slowly and remember that he was Lucky Charlie who did not catch cholera when all around him were falling sick. He may have had a difficult past but now he had her and she would look after him. She breathed in his scent to memorise it and clung to his warm flesh, as if trying to imprint it on her own.

Their husbands rode off at the crack of dawn. Lucy could still feel Charlie’s hurried last kiss on her lips, and wondered if she would ever have a chance to kiss him again. As she and Adelaide made tea they were uncharacte‌ristically silent.

Some women were climbing to a ridge from which they could view the battle so Lucy and Adelaide followed. From the top they were close enough to see the main Russian encampment just across the River Alma, close enough to make out smoke from their fires drifting into the air. It was eerie to think of them sleeping in their tents and heating food, just as in the British camp, perhaps some of them also accompanied by their wives. Yet soon they must be attacked and driven back; soon they must be killed.

The British, French and Turkish armies had superiority in numbers but the Russian army was on a raised plateau and they’d had time to dig in their gun emplacements. Suddenly Lucy was deafened by a wall of noise: explosions from big guns and the pop-popping sound of small guns mingling with the eerie sound of the bagpipes played by some regimental bands. The fighting had started. Dust rose in the air blurring individual forms and Lucy wondered how the men could tell who was friend or foe. She was horrified to see bodies fallen face down in the river and to realise they must be dead. The Russians appeared to be advancing down the hill, and suddenly her heart was filled with such fear for Charlie that she could no longer watch. Sick to her stomach and overwhelmed with the awfulness of the scene before her, she turned and hurried down the hill to sit on her own, hands covering her face. She’d thought she could cope but nothing in her upbringing had prepared her for witnessing such carnage. After a while Adelaide joined her, reassuring her that already the British and French appeared to be prevailing.

Back at camp, Adelaide decided to occupy herself by cooking and somehow turned their dried pork rations and some herbs picked in the undergrowth into a fragrant stew.

‘Won’t you try some?’ she asked.

‘I feel too sick,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ll wait until the men return and I can breathe easy again.’

She considered asking if Adelaide knew about the tragedy in Charlie’s life that Bill had alluded to – those two seemed so close they must have discussed it – but it hardly seemed the right time with their husbands in battle facing a deadly foe. Besides, she felt embarrassed that Charlie had not told her himself. Instead she asked Adelaide about her children, knowing she always enjoyed talking about Martha and Archie.

But as Adelaide spoke, Lucy realised she was only half-listening. Her brain focused on the booming of the big guns in the distance and her constant churning fear for Charlie.

Suddenly, at around four-thirty in the afternoon, the gunfire ceased. They looked from one to the other. Half an hour later the first souls came down from the ridge to announce victory for the allies, and Adelaide and Lucy hugged each other. Lucy found another bottle of porter in Charlie’s bedding roll and poured them each a small glass to toast the troops. Men began to trickle back to camp, weary and dirty. The wounded were carried on the shoulders of their comrades, since no ambulance carts and insufficient stretchers had been brought along. The women went to offer sips of water and words of comfort while they waited for a doctor.

Charlie arrived around eight in the evening, and Lucy dashed up to him, almost pulling him from Merlin in her joy. Her chest had been tight with fear all day but now at last she could breathe easily. With him he brought a ladies’ parasol of black lace over ivory silk, a wickerwork picnic basket and a bottle of wine he had found abandoned on the Russian side.

‘Their wives were watching behind the lines,’ he said. ‘It was a day out for them.’

‘Where is Bill?’ Adelaide asked, her voice tight with nerves.

Charlie grinned reassuringly. ‘He was helping to round up prisoners but should be back before too long. Shall we open the wine now or do you want to wait for him?’

They agreed it was fairest to wait. An hour went past, then another. Finally Charlie offered to ride out and see what was keeping Bill.

Half an hour later, they looked up to see Charlie galloping across the field towards them. He leapt from his horse, eyes wide with shock and his whole body shaking. ‘I’m s— so sorry.’

Adelaide screamed and clapped her hand to her mouth.

Charlie struggled to speak: ‘One of the prisoners had a pistol and when Bill tried to disarm him he was sh-shot through the h-head.’ He broke down and sobbed so hard the last words were virtually indistinct: ‘He died instantly.’ Adelaide’s legs buckled and she sank to the earth with a cry, her face buried in her hands. Charlie leaned his face into his horse’s flank, his body trembling with violent sobs, and Lucy looked from one to the other, so shocked she couldn’t react. Bill had gone. He wasn’t coming back, although he’d been the picture of health when he rode out that morning. It was unfathomable. What about his children? What about Adelaide?

Lucy realised she must comfort her friend but what should she do? Charlie had fallen to pieces. If only Dorothea were there. She must comfort people who’d lost their husbands all the time. She would know what was needed, but Lucy didn’t have the first idea.

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