He waited until she bustled to the next bed, the next patient, before he tried lifting his arm again. Never before had he been aware of all the muscles required to complete such a simple act. Dip the spoon. Raise it again. Aim it at his own mouth.

He managed the first spoonful all right. On the second, his arm shook. By the third, he’d worn it rather than eating it—good thing it hadn’t been more than warm.

Nurse Denler appeared at his side, her lonely dimple in place. She spread a napkin over his chest. “I know that look. But we cannot accept defeat so soon, Lieutenant Elton. You’ll not regain your strength by eating so little.” She pried the spoon from his fingers and sat in the wooden chair positioned between the cots, angling it toward him. “Besides, from what I hear, your sister will be coming soon to visit you. You’ll want to be finished and cleaned up by then, won’t you? Best to let me help.”

Of course Dot was coming. He hadn’t really paused to think about that yet—that Charing Cross meant London, the very neighborhood where she lived and now worked. Of course she’d come. Likely every day, while he was here.

She’d see him weak and in pain and no doubt want to know how he’d come by his injury.

He had no intentions of telling her. Let her assume he’d ended up in one of the many battles raging on the Continent.

Jaeger’s face filled his vision. Contorted with rage, closer than it had ever been in reality, obliterating all else in the room.

Across the aisle, the duchess shattered the illusion as she shouted something in a language that sounded a bit like French, a bit like Italian, but wasn’t fully either, to his ear. And the men laughed.

Nurse Denler did, too, low and warm. “Another reason she serves here, I think. To give the men stories to tell when they go back to the field, or home. Tales of the duchess who fed them, served them, and then yelled at them in Monegasque.”

It would make a good story. But Drake wasn’t sure to whom he’d tell it. “Back to the field” would mean Spain and Abuelo’s house—but if he remembered correctly the words Thoroton had spoken while Drake was being put on the train, his grandfather hadn’t been informed of his injury. Rather, Charles the Bold had sent a telegram in Drake’s name, saying he’d decided to extend the little trip he’d been on and was debating spending the winter in London with Dot.

Abuelo would frown—why would he choose to winter in England rather than the temperance of Spain?—but he wouldn’t think it out of character.