She placed the brush on the table and extinguished the lamp, berating herself for wasting precious paraffin. She walked to the tiny, deeply recessed front window, removed the black cardboard she used in lieu of a blackout drape, and pushed aside a corner of the lace curtain so she could see the cottage across the path. “That low-bred fisherman husband of Susan’s is home today, but I don’t see him out mending his nets, or her spinning. Most likely spending the day in their bed, doing unspeakable things beneath the covers.”
Her flesh tingled sinfully.
Had that Yank already sweet-talked Maggie into more than friendship?
She had grown weak-kneed when he passed by on that stretcher. Same brown hair, same hazel-brown eyes as—
She clamped her eyes closed. No time to linger on her own bitter betrayal. “It won’t do for that stranger to have his way with an Innisbraw lass, then leave her when he’s ruined her life.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “Stupid islanders. I’m the only one who knows what is going to happen. And with the help of those gullible widows who are always visiting, I’ll make sure it doesn’t.”
CHAPTER 14
Maggie walked slowly through her weed-infested garden, heart heavy. She stumbled over a clump of blackened foliage. A honeysuckle her mother planted as a newlywed, overpowered by native wild carrots and sow thistles with their invasive roots. Catching a glimpse of unexpected colour, she stopped and knelt beside a broad patch of purple vetch, pulling aside clumps of its tiny-leaved foliage. “Och, thank Ye, Faither,” she whispered as she uncovered a delicate purple orchid.
She studied its familiar broad lip, three lobes, and spotted leaves, a new resolve taking root in her mind. It would take time and labour, but before she had to leave in August she would have this garden well on its way to its former glory.
She stood and glanced toward the infirmary entry where Rob sat in his wheelchair. He looked dejected, jacket hanging loosely on his thin, lanky frame. Their lovely morning lay in ruins. It was so unfair. Coming home lifted her spirits to an all-time high, but how could she remain cheerful when he fell into another of his dark moods? Och, Heavenly Faither, I need Your help. Please give me Your strength to see him through this painful time.
Though he faced her, he appeared to be studying the cottage.
She turned and looked over the tiny stone building, trying to see it through the eyes of an incomer. Not a pleasing sight. The cracked, peeling paint on the deeply recessed door betrayed years of neglect. The two small, salt-encrusted windows at the front of the cottage, their lace curtains hanging limp, gave the cottage a sad, abandoned look. She eyed the stained thatched roof, crisscrossed with wires weighted down at the eaves with large, smooth stones. The soot-streaked stone chimney on the far side and front entry flags covered with soil and sand looked disgraceful. Och, what must he be thinking?
She had to push the sagging front door open with her shoulder. She eyed the interior, hand pressed to her lips in dismay. Thick dust covered the table, rockers, and every other flat surface and even the kitchen jaw box filthy with grit and dark stains where the faucet dripped over the years. No odour of mildew, but a musty, airless smell made her eyes burn. Och, she would have to scrub and air out the inside of the cottage before her father came.
She walked into her tiny bedroom and scooped up an armful of light summer clothes from their pegs along the walls. Too bad she hadn’t taken them when she left the island, but there hadn’t been room in her bags. Thank heaven Flora left several bars of handmade laundry soap in the largest infirmary bathroom. It would take several washings to rid the garments of their grimy shoulders and stale smell.
***
Intent upon depositing her dirty clothes in the large bathing tub, she only said, “Some summer things,” as she passed Rob. He didn’t even grunt an acknowledgement. She washed her face and hands and pinned some errant strands of hair into her bun before fetching him from the entry for his exercises.
He worked harder than usual, his face a mask of determination.
She gasped when he winced, his leg wobbling and dropping. “Och, you’ve done it now. Where does it hurt?” Without waiting for an answer, she levered the back of the chair until he was lying down and rolled him onto his side.
“I’m fine.” His clenched lips and pale face belied the first words he had spoken since her return from the cottage.
She took a pillow from the bed and pushed it behind his back to keep him from rolling over. “What’s the matter with you? You’re so crabbit and quiet I’m thinking I must have done something to make you angry.” When he didn’t reply, a flare of resentment ignited. She placed her hands on her hips. “You’re going to talk to me, or if this continues, Faither can send another nurse to take my place.”
His look of panic almost made her recant but she had to break through his recalcitrant silence.
“I ... I ...”
A sentence from a nursing lecture flashed through her mind. Touch is one of your most effective means of communication. She knelt beside him and took one of his clenched hands, straightening his stiff fingers until she could lace them through hers. Give me Your words, Faither. “Tell me why you’re in a fankle. And don’t mumble.”
He squirmed. “I ... I don’t like questions about my past.”
What was he talking about? “Och,” she exclaimed, remembering their last conversation. “You mean me asking about your mither?”
He raised his eyes. “Yes.”
Anger smothered to ashes of shame. “I shouldn’t have asked that. You told me you didn’t want to talk about it. Please forgive me.”
She watched the expressions flitting across his face. He was fighting the impulse to retreat within himself again. Who had wounded him so badly he couldn’t bear to talk about his own mither?
“I’ve hurt you again.”
His sudden words startled her. “Hurt me?”
“You’ve been upset since we ate dinner.”
Had she been that transparent? “Didn’t it occur to you I could be in a fash without it involving you? That I have guid reason to be unhappy right now?”
“About what?”
Perhaps if she continued to be open with him .... She stood and looked out the window. “Like finding the garden I’ve worked on for years in a shambles with only the hardiest of plants surviving. And walking into the home I was born in to discover it dusty and so rundown after the years I’ve been away, it’s only fit for beasties.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Who appointed you responsible for my feelings?”
“Don’t leave me, Maggie,” he said, voice husky. “I’ll never walk again if you go.”
Humiliation burned her cheeks. “I should never have said that about leaving.” She knelt beside him again. “I get so frustrated when you don’t talk to me, but I never should have said that.”
He groped for her hand. “I’m trying to talk more, Maggie. There are just some things I’m not ready to share with anyone.”
At least he was talking again, even if only to remind her of something she had already heard. “Then you shouldn’t. No’ until you feel the time is right.” She sighed. “Och, we’re a fine pair. You hold everything inside and I can’t help but show my feelings.” She sat him up. “You did far too much this time.”
“I always sweat when I’m exercising.”
She left him for a moment, found what she needed in the pharmacy, and returned to his side with two APCs and a glass of water from his bedside table. “To help with the sweating.”
“Why don’t I sit here in the chair for a while and then we can run through those exercises again?”
So impatient. “Twice a day doesn’t mean only an hour apart—and don’t interrupt. Angus is due back any time and you’ll take a nice rest in bed. This afternoon, he’s sending his youngest lad, Edert, to help you back into the chair, but it’s no’ for exercises. We’ll have our supper out on the entry and enjoy the sunset.”
“That’s a big imposition on the MacP
hees. If I could just get into that chair and back into bed without needing so much help …”
She decided to share part of a secret. “Malcolm made a run back into Oban last night. This een, he’s bringing something that should be the answer to all of your transfer problems.”
“A male orderly?”
“I said something, no’ someone.” She took his right hand and studied it for a moment. “You’ve calluses on your fingers. I didn’t think pilots did manual labour.” She pointed to a ring he wore, praying it wasn’t a present from his mother. “And that’s a verra fancy gold ring. Does it mean something special?”
“So you’re not going to tell me what he’s bringing, huh?”
“A little surprise spices the pot. First the ring, then the calluses.”
“It says ‘West Point’ around the sides and top of the stone with the year I graduated, ‘1937,’ at the bottom.”
“It must be verra special for you to still wear it.”
“The four years I spent there changed my life.”
“Why are those words there?” She picked up his hand and pointed to the side of the ring. “Country, Honor, Duty.”
“That’s what we stand for, what we swear to live by. It’s why we have to win this war and why I try my best to take care of my men.”
“’Tis verra admirable. Now the calluses.”
“Oh, all right, but this isn’t as simple to explain.” He looked out the window. “Look, a B-17 isn’t the easiest bird to jockey around in the air, especially when it’s loaded with a crew of ten, plus ten fifty-caliber guns and their ammo, enough fuel for a nine-hour flight, and a full load of bombs. We’re talking about sixty-three thousand pounds of plane to maneuver through all the flak and bandits—that’s enemy aircraft—and other Forts—Flying Fortresses—all going to the same place at the same time, stacked in the sky like cordwood.”
She felt a stab of guilt. It had not occurred to her that the calluses had anything to do with flying. “I didn’t mean to remind you—”
“You asked, so hear me out.” He took a deep breath. “Anyway, the B-17 doesn’t have power-assist or power-boost on the controls. It takes all your strength to keep that plane from bucking up and down if there’s turbulence, so you set your autopilot to free up your hands because when you’re flying at twenty-five angels—that’s twenty-five thousand feet—the air’s thin and the engines starved for fuel. So each one has to be individually adjusted to keep the correct pitch. Since there are four engines, even with your co-pilot helping, that takes a lot of pushing and pulling on knobs.” He held up his hands, waving his fingers. “So—the calluses.”
She had never seen him so animated. His face lit up, voice strengthened, and words flowed. No one-word grunts, no strangled voice as he searched to express himself. “I didn’t know any of that,” she said. “How do you remember to do so many things at once?”
“Training, training, and more training, like those exercises you have me doing, over and over again until you can do it in your sleep, because there are times when you’re so sleep-deprived, you doze off at the controls for a few seconds. Hopefully when you’re on autopilot.”
“That’s barbaric. How can they expect you to do your job if you haven’t had enough sleep?” Nursing became harder the less sleep she had.
“There’s a war on, remember?” He exhaled noisily. “And there are never enough airplanes or crews to fly them.”
She had never given a thought to what the pilots faced on every mission. “And you do this day after day, month after month? How can you take all that pressure without going daft?”
“You take it one mission at a time.” He leaned back and wiped his sweating forehead with his palm. “You learn never to borrow trouble by thinking about tomorrow because today will take all your energy and then some. And when you’re in command, you have too many men you’re responsible for.”
“I know you take good care of your men. Everyone at Edenoaks said so.”
“Like I said, I try. A language professor I had at the Point told us to give a lot of thought before asking anyone to do something we weren’t willing to do ourselves. That’s why I fly lead plane on the most dangerous missions.”
“What a strange thing for a language professor to say.”
“He was something of a philosopher too, and he was the only language teacher I ever had who could have you conjugating verbs in German or French and enjoying it.”
“So you speak both German and French?”
“Enough to get by. I also have enough Italian to do more than order a mean plate of pasta.”
“You’re fluent in a few languages, so it appears our language differences can be solved.”
“What language differences? What are you talking about?
“Dinna ettle tae sook iz, Rob, aw wull skelt it ye.”
“What?”
“Didn’t understand the Scots?”
“Of course not.”
“I said, ‘Don’t try to fool me, Rob, or I’ll swat at you.’ Surely now, you must agree we have a language problem.”
“It’s all right when you speak enough English for me to understand. I hardly ever had any trouble at the infirmary, and when I did you always explained the Scots you were using.”
Men. They could be so dense. “Is that fair?”
“What do you mean is that fair?”
“Just what I said. Why should I have to try to explain things just because you don’t understand them?”
He sat up straighter in his chair. “I always have to explain the idioms I use.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. American idioms are no’ the same as Scots or even English. If you’re going to understand most of the folk on Innisbraw, you must learn to converse in our language.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“I’m thinking ’twill be verra easy. You’re already fluent in four languages, counting American English. You’ll learn Scots, of course.”
He stared at her for a moment and then, for the first time since they met, he threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Maggie, lass, you got me.”
His laugh was so infectious she couldn’t help but join in.
***
A flurry of activity caught Rob’s attention. Elspeth stood in the open doorway, Angus behind her. He dropped Maggie’s hands and tried to compose himself, mortified to realize he had no shirt on and nothing to pull over his bare chest.
“Well, aren’t you going to ask me in?” Elspeth asked with a smile. She winked at Rob. “Don’t fash yourself. I’ve seen a few naked chests in my ninety-eight years.”
Maggie raced to the bed and grabbed Rob’s skivvy, slipping it over his head. “Of course we’re happy to see you. We were having a bit of a laugh,” she added, helping him into his sweater.
Elspeth hobbled in, extending her hand to Rob. “You look much better. Isn’t it grand what a guid night’s sleep can do?”
He took her hand. Was he hallucinating? It seemed to radiate warmth. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, surprising himself by how much he meant it.
“And ’tis guid to see you and our Maggie. She’s been sorely missed.” She motioned to a chair beside the bed. “If you would be so kind, lass, these auld legs don’t appreciate standing for verra long anymore.”
Maggie immediately brought the chair over and Elspeth sat, smoothing her dress over her knees. “Now, perhaps you would be so kind as to get Angus here something to eat. Having to pick me up cost him his dinner-time.”
“There is a bit of Scotch broth and bannock left,” Maggie said, eyeing Rob. “Is your backache better?”
Normally, he would have leaped at the chance to escape a conversation, but something about her made him look forward to talking to the old woman. “The backache’s a lot better, so don’t hurry on my account. I’ll be in that bed far longer than I want.”
Once Maggie and Angus had gone, Elspeth smiled warmly, her faded blue eyes sparkling. “You’re a c
annie lad, Rob Savage, and no’ one to run from a challenge.”
“I can’t run from anything right now.”
“Och, don’t play word games with me. You know exactly what I mean.” Another smile softened the stern words. She leaned closer. “I understand you’re an aviator.”
He nodded.
“And in the American Air Forces.”
“Yes.”
“And a colonel in charge of Edenoaks Airbase.”
“You know a lot about me.”
“There’s nowt I’ve said that shames you, is there?”
“No.”
“Then, perhaps you can help me know you better for I’ve a feeling we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time together. How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Och, so young to have so much responsibility. But war often brings out the best in our young folk. Where were you educated?”
“West Point Military Academy.”
“I’ve heard of it, though for the life of me, I cannot remember who from.” She tapped his knee. “And you luve flying.”
“Very much.”
“You’re a man of few words. That’s an admirable trait.”
“Used to be. I’m trying to talk more. Maggie doesn’t share your opinion of my one-word answers.”
She sat back in the chair with a chuckle. “For such a cannie lad, you’ve missed something verra important about our Maggie. It isn’t how many words you speak to her, but what those words are. Her heart is tender. She can be hurt.”
That struck an uncomfortable chord. He studied his hands. “I know.”
“Well, since you’re smitten with our Maggie and her with you, things should sort themselves out over time.”
He raised his head in alarm. What was she talking about?
“Don’t go getting all fashed.” She chuckled again. “Nobody’s told any tales on you. And there’s the little matter of you walking. I’m certain you don’t want to declare yourself until you’re out of that chair.”
He squirmed. This conversation was getting out of hand.