Page 8 of The Baron Takes a Wife

When he next awoke, a new woman was standing in the sunshine. She was taller than Elena, but not by much, and she looked like she might be around fifty years old. She was also darker than Elena, her skin more a light brown than golden bronze. She wore a blue dress with an apron like Elena, though hers had a little dried blood on the corner of her sleeve. As her satchel was twice the size of Elena’s, he felt he knew who this was.

“Lord Grayston.” When she spoke, she had a slight lilt to her voice, likely somewhere in the Caribbean, he couldn’t quite place.

“Mrs. Raeburn.” He tried to stand and then remembered he could not do that.

She held up a hand to excuse him. “As no family can speak for her, I am here to represent Elena.”

He made a small bow, and, with a sharp glance, she strode over to stand next to him.

He gestured as well as he could. “She said you come almost every day. You supply what the army cannot from your hotel?”

The woman softened before him. “Elena helped me, you know. She could translate and knew a little about healing from her grandmother. My mother was a healer, so I understand learning it from your elders.” She paused as if uncertain if she should elaborate, then appeared to make a decision. “My mother was free, but she treated those who were enslaved on the plantations in Jamaica. Like me, she had her own hotel, too. If you can imagine, the disease there was sometimes worse than here with the heat, so I’m not unfamiliar. Thanks to my friendships with officers at that hotel, we were able to come here, as we have a decent supply of medicine, which the army--” She glanced around, then finished. “Does not always have at the ready.”

David thought back to reading the scathing articles about the lack of readiness for this war in the papers, but even more, her statement made him realize how small his world had been of late. He tried to make a joke and gestured to his legs. “I haven’t seen much of the world to tell lately.”

“It’s been better here than Scutari, I think. They are losing many to disease. Every day. As I said, I am no stranger to disease, but still.” She sighed a long, heavy sigh as if the weight of the world pressed on her shoulders, then squared her jaw and looked at him. “Let’s return to why I’m here.”

“When I found Elena, she had nothing, no one,” she began. “Thank goodness she wasn’t cut to the eye, and I was able to fix what I could. I have Elena to thank for communicating with local laborers to help us. We built the hotel from almost nothing.” Like Elena often did, Mrs. Raeburn looked out the window in the direction of the hotel. “She has some remarkable gifts, but…” She stopped for a moment, something he got the impression she did not do very often. She looked as if she was trying to find the right words. She turned her head sharply and looked him directly in the eye.

“Life had made her small. I will not let you make her small.”

“I would never dream of making her small. I do not think she would ever let herself be made small.”

“I know English society. I know how they can treat those on the outside. Those they consider inferior.” A flash in her brown eyes betrayed nothing else in her tone, but he got the deep and agonizing sense she spoke from experience. He remembered Elena said that her request to be a nurse had been rejected. How extraordinary that she still came into a war and built a place of refuge. He tried to find the words.

“I seek only to protect her. I know what the battlefield is like. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, let alone the woman that I--well, one who has seen me through my worst times.”

The look Mrs. Raeburn gave him was a little too knowing, but she seemed to let the moment pass.

“You will honor her terms?”

“Every one of them.”

“Even if your circumstances change? Don’t most aristocrats want an heir?”

He swallowed. He had been prepared for this question and knew his answer needed to be worded carefully but honestly.

“I’m not most aristocrats. I knew the risks when I went to war. If I do not have any offspring, a distant cousin will inherit the title, but my business and fortune will stay with my family. If my circumstances change I would only attempt to change my marriage if that were what Elena wished and desired. If she wanted an annulment, I would not object.”

“I have your word.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She scoffed at the honorific. “I think behind that bandage, you may be a charmer.”

He grimaced a little, remembering his old self. “Mostly a fribble.” He felt his mouth twitch slightly as he recalled his earlier conversation with Elena. “I imagined myself doing something good but never actually did good.” He shrugged, not knowing why he had shared so much with a stranger, then looked up at her. “Let me do this one good thing. Let me see her safe. Let my waste of a life mean something to someone of worth.”

Mrs. Raeburn regarded him slowly. “So poetic,” She gave a small huff and then looked up as if in thought, and he got the sense she was reasoning this with herself more than him. “I know we’re not quite so formal here as in Scutari, where they would discourage a union between an officer and a nurse. But I suppose Elena is not quite a nurse. And besides, the superintendent of the nurses has been after me about her, as, according to her, Elena is a distraction.” She muttered the last part more to herself, then turned back to David. “I would see her safe. She doesn’t need to add the battlefield to the horrors she has seen.”

She took a deep breath as if coming to a decision. “Never make her feel indebted to you. In a better world, she wouldn’t have to do this.”

David saw the wheels turning behind Mrs. Raeburn’s eyes and started to smile.

“You give me your blessing, don’t you?”

“You wipe that smirk off your face, or so help me, I will take it back.” She looked much younger when she smiled, as if that weight of the world slipped from her shoulders just a little, but she turned serious again. “I will likely go back to London when this war is over, and if I am still on two feet, I will seek her out and make sure she is happy.”

“I hope you do. I will see her situated, and then I want to travel. To find…” He felt foolish but didn’t know how to finish his sentence.