“How do you do?” He nearly choked on a chip of ice, garbling the question.

“How polite you are. But as I am far better than you, please don’t feel you must engage in such niceties for my sake.” When she smiled, a single dimple appeared in her left cheek. The unevenness brought interest to her otherwise plain face. “Where are you from, Lieutenant?”

He had to cough to clear his throat of the vicious ice chip. And of course the coughing lit his entire torso on fire. Which should at least melt the ice. He made no objections to being settled back onto his pillow, knowing well his face had contorted with pain. “Here,” he managed from between clenched teeth. “London. And Spain.” After he had spent the last seven years of his life in a place, he could claim it as his own, couldn’t he?

“Oh, how interesting! When you’re well enough, you can tell me all about your foreign travels.” She tucked the sheet up around him, precise and efficient, and gave him the single-dimpled smile again. “Have a few minutes’ rest, Lieutenant. We’ll be bringing your dinner round shortly.”

He blinked by way of answer, afraid to loosen his jaw enough for more words lest a moan escape—and the ward was already full enough of those. His fingers dug trenches in the mattress again, though at some point the remnant of drugs in his system must have stolen him away. He jerked to alertness when a clatter sounded at his side, hot words wanting to blister his tongue at the new pain inspired by the abrupt motion.

He would never take movement for granted again. Never.

It was a different nurse this time, this one a bobbed blonde who was beautiful, where the first nurse had been plain. Her sharp green eyes seemed to size him up in a heartbeat too. “May I help you sit up, Lieutenant?”

Risky . . . but no more so than the risk of choking on every sip of broth if he didn’t. “Yes, please. Nurse . . . ?”

“Stafford.” She slid an arm behind his back and levered him up a bit, fitting another pillow behind him with her other arm in a slick move that proved she did this many times a day.

The chap in the cot across from him laughed. “Call her ‘Nurse Stafford’ and you’ll get a lecture from the ward matron. It’s Her Grace.”

A duchess? Of Stafford. That made something try to click into place in his head, though he couldn’t quite be sure what. “What’s a duchess doing here?”

Her Grace finished fluffing his pillow and gave him a small smile a second before sending an exaggerated glare to the fellow across the aisle. “My bit, that’s what. And you, Corporal Henderson—I warned you about outing me to the new arrivals. Just see if I bring you an extra biscuit today.”