He’d sent her small gifts from time to time: a sandalwood fan from Hong Kong, silk shawls from Benares, and cashmere ones from Kashmir. A lovely woolen one from New Zealand, soft and warm as a Welsh blanket. Lacey pillow slips from Goa, a painted bowl from Madeira, its flowers rampant in the loveliest colors. Thoughtful gifts, including that small but perfect ruby, set in a gold ring he’d brought back from Burma.

She had asked, on his next leave after Timmy’s death, to go with him to his next posting, but he had held her close and told her that white women didn’t survive in the African heat, and he’d resign his commission before he’d lose her. She had loved him for that, though she would have taken her chances, if he’d asked.

She had kept back a new dress to wear for his homecoming, and each day now she must wash her hair in good soap, rinsing it in hard-to-come-by lemon juice she had also saved for the occasion. She could see too that she needed a little rouge, only a very little so he wouldn’t notice the new lines, thinking instead how well she looked.

She’d reread all his letters until they were as worn as her hands, and knew by heart every one of them. They lay in a rosewood box by her favorite chair, where she could touch them and feel his presence.

It occurred to her that she ought to do something—something so special that he’d always remember the day he came through the door and found her waiting. Something that would take his mind off her, and the changes he was sure to see first thing.

Another thought struck her. His letters had been fewer and the weeks between them longer in the past two years. And there had only been one this year. Was he concealing something? She had dreaded word that he was dead, even though he’d spent most of the war safely behind the lines at HQ. But men were wounded every day. Still, if anything terrible had happened to him, he would surely have told her—or asked the sister in charge of his ward to write to her if he couldn’t. He would never keep a secret from her. Never. They had always been close and truthful with each other about the smallest thing. Well, of course not about the difference in their ages! He’d always lived a charmed life—he’d told her about the tiger hunt that went badly wrong, and the African warthog that had nearly got him, and the storm that had all but wrecked their troop ship in the middle of the Atlantic, the volcanic eruption in Java when he was trying to bring the natives to safety.

But even charms ran out after a while, didn’t they?

His last letter had been written in early summer, telling her how enthusiastic the British were to have the Americans come into the fighting after long weeks of training. He’d told her that he’d soon be busy “mopping up.”