Page 32 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer (The Marlow Family #7)

Not long after the clock had chimed four times, Ellen’s gaze lifted from the sewing she was attempting. A movement outside had caught her attention. Speaking with Mistress Peeters had calmed her nerves, and since then she had tried to distract her thoughts by keeping her hands busy.

She put down the sewing and went to the window. A few women were running through the street.

Ellen did not hesitate, she ran to the front door and pulled it open, hoping to stop one of the women. ‘What is happening!’ she shouted at a young woman, who was probably her own age. ‘Tell me, please!’

The woman slowed and looked at Ellen, ‘They are bringing wounded soldiers into the city on carts.’ Her breathing was ragged from running. ‘They have not lost! I am going to look for my husband.’ The woman did not wait for acknowledgement but ran on.

‘Thank you!’ Ellen called after her.

Ellen rushed to follow, hurrying upstairs to the bedchamber and pulling on her pelisse, images of Paul in her mind. Then she joined the women in the street and went to the gate leading onto the Nemur road.

There were wounded men everywhere, they lifted them onto the ground as the carts full of men with limbs missing or torn open were emptied. She watched an emptied cart leave the city, she presumed to gather more wounded.

Dear God. Her gaze scanned the men as women and servants, and the men of this city, carried them into houses, her heart pounding as she looked for Paul.

She did not see him. But as she glanced over the men, she was drawn forward.

She remembered the young soldier she had waved to from her window. So many were young.

She knelt beside one young man who was crying with pain, holding his damaged leg. ‘What do you need?’

‘Water,’ was all he asked for.

‘If you can help, I have a dozen things you might do…’ Ellen turned as a woman spoke. ‘There is water, and bandages, and we are looking for people to hold men who require treatment. Will you come?’

Ellen rose, and turned. ‘Of course, but let me bring water to this man first.’ Like so, she was swept into the mayhem of war. It was beyond anything she might have imagined as hundreds of men were brought back into the city, and as she worked, she constantly looked for Paul in each new cartful.

It was early evening when the first men arrived at the city gates on foot, hobbling, exhausted and bleeding.

Her heart beat out a steady rhythm, the pace of the drum the men had marched to, a beat or two away from panic as she waited for Paul to come back and helped those who had made it. Her panic was held at bay only by the need to do something for these men who had survived but were in agony.

‘Madam!’ The doctors and surgeons worked at the far end of the drawing room, where two dozen men lay on the floor.

She was kneeling beside a man with many wounds, holding his hand.

‘Madam!’ As the shout came again, and the doctor waved a hand, beckoning Ellen, the soldier’s hand fell slack in hers. She looked down. His eyes looked at nothing.

Her heart missed a beat, and sickness threatened, as she pressed a hand over his bloody coat. There was no sense of his heart beating, and no feeling of movement in his lungs.

‘Madam!’

She stood, not knowing what to do, and walked to the doctor as though she were sleepwalking. ‘I think the man I was with is dying.’

He looked over but when he looked back at her there was no hope in his eyes. ‘There is nothing I can do. I must help those who have more chance of survival. This man needs his arm taken off, and I need someone to hold his shoulder while I cut. Will you do it?’

A soldier who had a bloodied bandage over one eye but in all other ways seemed well, was already kneeling, holding the man’s legs down. Their patient looked up at them with wild terrified eyes. But the bone in his forearm was protruding from an open wound, shattered and in splinters.

Ellen’s stomach turned again, but she bit her lip and nodded. She would do anything to help these men – in the hope that someone would do the same for Paul if he was wounded, somewhere, needing help.