Chapter Twenty-Nine

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

DIANA NOVEMBER 1918

Diana woke Monday morning, grateful that her nightly tormentor had left her alone for once. Either the living person had left the school for the holiday or the nonliving whatever was as aware of the terrible tension as everyone else at Havencross. She really wanted to pull the covers over her head and go back to sleep, not to get up again until, preferably, the world had righted itself. But nurses ran on duty, so she rose out of bed.

Diana had just finished putting the last pin in her coiled hair when she heard a soft knock.

Joshua looked unusually remote, as though he either had no emotions or had buried them exceptionally deep. Diana's greeting died on her lips.

"Miss Somersby wants all the adults in her office in five minutes," he announced.

She started to ask why, but he shook his head. "I don't know."

They walked silently together through the bare, medieval corridors into the opulent Victorian ones. By the way Joshua kept clenching and unclenching his hands, Diana thought his tension was also at the breaking point.

Please , she prayed silently, please let this be what I hope it is .

Clarissa Somersby wore every bit of her headmistress, upper-class armor this morning. The five masters and staff currently in residence—Joshua, Weston, Beth Willis, the cook Mrs. McCann, and Diana herself—stood before her desk like soldiers on review while Clarissa sat, palms down on the desktop before her.

"I have been on the telephone for nearly two hours," she told them, "confirming the news from Newcastle to London. By every reliable report, an armistice will be signed by noon today."

The announcement dropped into perfect silence. Diana almost wondered if she'd imagined the words, dreamed them into an auditory hallucination. Then Joshua gripped her hand, uncaring of any audience, and she felt the same fine tremble in him that was running beneath her skin.

Clarissa cleared her throat to break the oppressive silence. "Our first thought is for the students still here. The vicar announced that there will be a service of thanksgiving this afternoon, and likely a parade and more secular celebrations tomorrow. I propose that the masters escort the students into Hexham for both." She looked down at her hands, her voice flat and tense. "Obviously this is an epochal moment in history, but it is also a personal one. Every one of you in this room has sacrificed a great deal in various ways the last four years—I regret that I have not the gift of acknowledging you as I wish to—but please know that I am aware of how … complicated this day is. For all of Britain, it is a day of both joy and grief."

The morning passed in a foggy haze for Diana, punctuated by a few clear moments. She sat with Jasper Willis for a bit. His cheeks had gained color, Diana noted; save for the broken leg, he appeared completely recovered from his ordeal. She showed him the coin she'd found. She had washed it to reveal the silver. It was not Roman—it had the face of a medieval king surrounded by Latin: EDWARD IV DI GRA DEI REX ANGL.

She let Jasper explain the abbreviations and translate, even though Joshua had already done so for her. "It says, ‘Edward IV de gratiam Dei Rex Angolorum' or ‘Edward the Fourth, by the grace of God, King of England.'" He was definitely pleased to be instructing the school nurse in Latin.

"Do you know where I found it?" Diana asked casually.

He shook his head.

"At the spot where Mr. Murray located you that morning." She watched him, his eyes downcast so that his long lashes almost swept his cheeks. "Why did you go all the way out there, Jasper? Did you know about the medieval icehouse ruins?"

He shook his head again. "No, miss."

"Then what was it?"

"I don't want to say it," he whispered. "You won't believe me."

"Let me guess. You saw … someone. Who said, ‘Come hide with me.'" She repeated the phrase Austin Willis had told them all earlier. "You think it was a ghost."

"I know how it sounds. I'm not stupid. I was staying in Austin's room last night, cause of half-term, and I didn't want him to be alone. I stayed awake, in case. And I was right, 'cause the ghost boy came back for him, but Austin stayed asleep and I went with him instead."

"You didn't think to alert an adult?"

"Adults don't see him. Adults don't see anything they don't want to."

Diana acknowledged the cynical accuracy of his statement. "That is too often true."

"I'm not making it up," he said defiantly. "I didn't dream it, or imagine it. I could feel him and the whole strangeness of things." He paused. "I don't know how to explain, miss, but it was like I was part here and part there."

Chills ran in waves down Diana's arms and spine. Most of her was in whatever moment of terror she'd been possessed by. Frantically, she counted the horsemen and searched for the identifying banner. She cleared her throat and banished the unsettling memory from the solar. "I don't think you're dreaming or imagining, or lying," she assured Jasper. "But you must promise me that you will keep me in your confidence. No more heroic endeavors without asking for help. Is that clear?"

After Jasper promised, she went into her office and made meticulous notes in her case diary. She read three or four medical journals and a month's worth of British public health updates. She also spent long periods simply staring into space. The clock seemed to stall and then lurch ahead until finally it was time for lunch.

She had just entered the vast dining hall, sounds from a small group of students echoing. Standing at the head table, wearing dark gray and with her hands clasped before her like a Renaissance saint, Clarissa swept the students and adults with her gaze across the room before announcing: "At eleven minutes past eleven o'clock this morning French time, an armistice signed by Germany and the Allied leaders took effect. The war is over."

In endless ways over the last four years Diana had thought about this moment. She'd imagined cheering or crying or both, hugging people and giving thanks to God. Now that it was here—

Diana fled. She couldn't even bring herself to go to her room for a coat—she just grabbed one hanging from a hook in the scullery and headed for the moor. There, she walked and walked and walked, afraid to stop for fear of what might catch up with her if she did.

She couldn't walk forever. When Diana realized she'd reached Hadrian's Wall, she looked for a good open spot from which to survey the expanse of nothing. She found a flat-topped rock halfway up a climbing path and, overheated from exertion, shrugged herself out of the oversized—what was it she had actually grabbed? She studied the caped shoulders and waxed cotton, the flannel lining—

"It's a stalking coat, for hunting."

Of course Joshua had followed her. Diana snapped, "Aren't you supposed to be on your way to the church service with the boys?"

"I told Miss Somersby I would prefer to be excused from that duty. Mrs. McCann agreed to go in my stead."

"Why?"

He just looked at her. "I imagine for the same reason you bolted from the dining hall and didn't stop for three miles."

"I thought … I thought all of this would be simpler. I thought, The war will end and it will all be over at last . Instead, I just feel …"

He dropped next to her, and bent his good leg as a prop for his arms. "Unmoored," Joshua offered. "Rudderless. Cast adrift."

"Exactly. As long as there was war, there were so few decisions to be made." Diana found herself leaning into him, searching his eyes as though they would have the answer. "So what do we do now?"

He blew out a sharp breath and said fiercely, "We say to hell with guilt. We say that we can remember the dead without making ourselves one of them." He put a hand to her cheek, his fingers tangled in her hair. "We live, Diana. We live in every way we can."

They moved together at the same moment and met in a kiss that exploded through her. She had never been so swept away by reckless desire and she didn't care; there was no one to watch them, nothing to stop them.

Except the damp cold and rocky ground of Northumberland. Even with her borrowed coat spread on the ground, it soon became clear that they couldn't move without courting disaster. Not to mention that they were brazenly exposed halfway up the hillside.

Laughing, Joshua finally said, "I think we'd have to be much younger to find this romantic. We're not sixteen years old and hiding from our parents. We both have perfectly good beds available to us."

"In the school," she reminded him.

"Which, at this moment, is empty of everyone except Clarissa and Beth Willis."

"And Jasper, who's lying across the corridor from my bedroom with a broken leg."

"My corridor is empty." He leaned over her and brushed his lips along her throat.

It drew a soft sigh from her, but she was afraid of … she didn't know what.

Joshua knew her better than she did. "You needn't worry that the moment will pass before we reach the house, Diana. I didn't kiss you just because we were in the open air and the war is over. I didn't start wanting you today, and I won't stop wanting you in the time it takes us to walk back."

He got himself standing and drew her up after. Then, his mouth against her cheek, he whispered, "I will never stop wanting you."

Wise Joshua, because Diana discovered on the walk back to Havencross that there was something to be said about a purposeful delay to a desired experience. With each mile her anticipation increased until, by the time they entered his bedroom and he pulled her to him, all she wanted was to lose herself in whatever followed.

Apart from a few hurried, desperate encounters in whatever private corner could be snatched at a field hospital in France, Diana's sexual experience was limited. She wouldn't have thought a schoolmaster's austere room with a single bed conducive to a high degree of pleasure. She would have thought wrong.

"You clearly know what you're doing," she laughed breathlessly, as he undid buttons and slid her blouse aside to kiss her bare shoulder.

"Are you flattering me, Nurse Neville?"

"It's only flattery if it isn't true."

His laugh had an edge to it she'd never heard before; it made her breath catch.

With a catch in his own breathing, Joshua said, "You are so beautiful."

"That is flattery. I'm not beautiful. Clarissa Somersby is beautiful. I'm simply passable."

Joshua held her face in both hands and forced her to look at him, his hazel eyes dark with passion. "There is nothing the least bit simple about you, Diana Neville. And I have never wanted anything or anyone in my life the way I want you."

After that, neither had breath enough for speaking.

When the world at last righted itself and Joshua lay propped on his side, watching her, he brushed a thumb over her wet cheek. "You're crying."

"Am I? I don't know why."

"You don't have to know."

It was such a relief not to have to explain or defend or even understand her own feelings. With Joshua cradling her close, Diana cried until she fell asleep with his hand resting on the curve of her hip.

They rose, reluctantly, when they heard the sounds of returning boys, voices high and excited.

"You're sure your corridor is empty?" Diana asked, buttoning the high collar of her blouse.

"I'm sure. All the masters who share this wing went home for the holiday."

He opened the door and checked, just to make sure. "Clear."

She stepped into the doorway and kissed him, not wanting to stop. But if she kept clinging to him, they were going to end up right back on the bed and someone was going to miss her before long …

"I already miss you," Joshua whispered into her hair.

"How sweet," someone drawled from nearby.

Luther Weston leaned against one wall, arms crossed and with a bitter smile.

Joshua stepped away from her. "What do you want, Weston?"

"I don't really remember now. What a pretty little secret I've stumbled upon."

"This has nothing to do with you."

"Maybe not, but I bet Miss Somersby would be interested. Doesn't set a very good example for impressionable schoolboys, after all."

"Enough," Diana said in the tone that brought threatening soldiers under control. "I will speak to Miss Somersby myself about my own actions. I'm sure you don't want to gain a reputation for carrying tales."

"No, I'd much rather have a reputation for screwing the school nurse."

Weston anticipated Joshua's punch but not the vicious twist of the arm that followed when Weston blocked him. With a shove, Joshua pinned Weston against the wall, arm at his throat. "Apologize, and get the hell out of here before I really lose my temper."

Looking over Joshua's shoulder, Weston said, "I apologize, Miss Neville. I'm sure your reputation is deservedly unstained."

Somehow the three of them managed to separate without further violence or insults. They even managed to appear at dinner, where Diana listened to the boys' happy chatter about Hexham and the mayor in his robe and chains of office, and the bells ringing for the first time that some of them could ever remember.

Though she would have liked nothing more than to attach herself to Joshua after dinner, Diana's exhaustion was real and urgent and she didn't want to give Weston a reason to go to Clarissa before she could talk to the headmistress. She bid Joshua a decorous good night in the dining hall—warmed by the positively wicked grin he gave her in turn—and checked that Beth Willis meant to spend the night in the infirmary with Jasper.

She reached her door ready to sleep for a solid ten hours. She was so tired that, at first, she couldn't properly take in the state of her bedroom. Drawers had been violently ripped open and their contents flung far and wide. Books and loose papers covered the floor and the contents of her wardrobe had been strewn about in trails of wool, cotton, and silk.

Diana thought it could have been done by Luther Weston. For whatever reasons, he detested Joshua and her, and seeing them together might have pushed him over some edge. But she didn't really believe it. Jasper's voice from earlier today came back to her: I don't want to say it. You won't believe me.

If she were brave enough to enjoy Joshua's bed, Diana decided she was brave enough to tell herself the truth: that the malice she could see in the attack on her bedroom matched the malice she'd felt on the solar stairs. Whatever invisible force had seized her in a vision and then attempted to push her down the stairs was the same force that had done this damage.

And yet, Diana was not afraid. She remembered the outside terror that had possessed her as she'd watched a band of hostile horsemen descending on Havencross some long ago century, and she felt only compassion. She knew about terror. She knew what someone might do in the grip of it.

With a sigh, Diana put her things back in a semblance of order. To her own surprise, she then spoke out loud: "I'm not your enemy, whoever you are. I don't want to hurt you, and I'd appreciate it if you'd just leave me be."

That speech—heard and understood or not—sufficed to allow her to fall asleep in peace, her body humming with memories of Joshua's touch.

She wasn't even surprised when she woke in darkness to the sound of knocking. When was the last time she'd simply woken up in the morning like a normal person? She checked her watch and saw it was 4 a.m.

She wouldn't say that she expected it to be Joshua, but the unpleasantness of facing Luther Weston served to fully wake her up. "What do you want?" she asked, keeping one hand firmly on her door, ready to slam it in his face.

The curl of his lip showed that he appreciated her suspicions of his intent, but he didn't offer the expected insults. "Believe it or not, your nursing skills are required. Lawrence Dean is unwell and running a noticeable fever."

"Which room is he in?" Diana asked. "I'll meet you there."

He told her how to find Lawrence Dean and left. Diana dressed quickly and snatched her medical bag from her office. Just a fever , she told herself. Boys get fevers all the time, especially after a day of overexcitement.

But keeping pace with her every step was a line from one of the health bulletins she'd read earlier today: an outbreak of epidemic influenza has been reported at Birmingham .