With This Ring Read Online Free

her
parasol.
    Other ladies were hanging back, and
none of the gentlemen looked eager to proceed. It was an easy
matter to join the group.
    In a moment Kitty relaxed and looked
around her. “Lyddy, we are mingling!” she whispered in some
awe.
    Some of the bolder young ladies
stepped forward finally, and they trailed after them into the nave.
Lydia looked around her, careful to raise her hem above the reeking
straw that should have been replaced weeks ago. I would take it all
out and give everyone such a scrubbing, she thought, looking at the
men, some of them still stained with dirt from the battlefield.
Then I would shave them and make them brush their teeth. Their
clothes would be burned, of course, and their hair cut
short.
    Thinking about what she would do
gave her the courage to move forward. She left the group, which
huddled together at the sight of all this misery, and stood staring
thoughtfully at the sight before her. I wonder if there is
something I actually could do, she thought as, almost without
realizing it, she loosened her bonnet strings and let her hat hang
down her back. In another moment she had pushed up her sleeves and
handed her parasol to Kitty, who, white-faced, was clutching the
arm of an elegant length of Bond Street savoir-faire.
    “ Lyddy, what are you doing?” Kitty
gasped.
    “ I don’t know,” she said over her
shoulder. “I can’t just stand here.”
    It appeared that the others could.
With one last look at them, she started down the row toward a man
who looked as though he could be in charge.
    He was standing by the cot of a
young man even more pale than Kitty. As she looked on, horrified,
the last of his blood drained out of a neck wound and seeped into
the straw. With a sigh that went on until she wanted to cover her
ears, he died.
    The doctor stood there, a frown on
his face as he tapped a silver-handled scalpel against his open
watch. “Time of death, 3:30,” he said, more to himself than her.
“If anyone cares.”
    He noticed her then, and she knew
she must look as pale as the dead man, because he took her arm, sat
her down on the cot next to the soldier, and pushed her head down.
“Stay that way until you feel better,” he said brusquely as he
closed the soldier’s eyes and covered his face.
    “ I’m better,” she said finally as
she raised her head, wishing that her voice did not sound so remote
to her own ears.
    “ I doubt it,” he said. He noticed
the question in her eyes, because he gestured to the corpse. “I do
not understand why it is, but twice his neck wound granulated and
then opened. It was only a matter of time. Well, then, what am I
supposed to do with you?” It sounded abrupt, but his eyes were
kind.
    “ May I help?” she asked.
    He smiled, wiped his scalpel
absently on his coat sleeve, and looked at the ladies and
gentlemen. “You will be the first who has offered. Damn them all!
War is not a fad!” In that abrupt way she was already becoming
accustomed to, he took her arm and lifted her to her feet,
gesturing with his scalpel. “D’ye see that shaggy man over there?
The one hunched over?”
    She nodded. A man with his long hair
pulled back from his face sat on a soldier’s cot. As she watched,
he tried to sit up straight, but only succeeded in wincing with the
pain.
    “ That is Major Reed, Lord Laren. I
want you to march up to him and tell him to go lie down, and that
you will be happy, no, ecstatic, to take his place and hold that
dying man’s hand.”
    “ Sir?” Lydia asked in amazement.
“Will he let me?”
    “ Ask anyone, ask Major Reed! A
surprise attack is worth a frontal assault squared and cubed. Do
try, please. I’d rather not have another casualty. He may look like
a troll at the moment, but he means something to me.”
    Surprised at herself, she did as he
directed, skirting another doctor and an orderly who were trying to
hold down a soldier and lance a boil. She looked down at her dress
as she passed the men. To her chagrin,