Page 9 of If You Were the Only Girl in the World
And oh, my, how she had enjoyed the feel of his arms about her. No man had ever carried her anywhere, save for her father when she was a girl. Certainly, no man had ever saved her from thugs. She’d walked Chicago streets and New York City streets and never been attacked. But now she was in a relatively strange city. Not hers. And one at war, too. She sat taller, admitting that she’d come voluntarily to this city and this war. She was going further too. Right into the thick of it. And the comfort and tenderness she’d felt in this man’s arms gave her courage to go on.
To accept this offer of his would be a welcome respite from her worries. Constant ones that had beset her ever since she’d boarded her ship in New York harbor four weeks ago and held her silent screams as the captain and crew dodged German U-boats and death. To be here with Nate meant she would live a few more days in the atmosphere she understood and was accustomed to. Wealth and servants to provide every amenity, those were the circumstances she’d grown up accepting as her norm. That she had chosen weeks ago to volunteer to live without them and to march into the abyss thousands of others chanced, was her next challenge. Would she be cowardly to shy from the independence she’d run toward to save others if she stayed with this man in this idyll of luxury? If only for a few days?
“I’d say you have done much for me already. And I am extremely happy you found me and saved me.” She eyed him and seized a breath. “There is not much more you can do for me other than tell me how I am so fortunate as to merit all your kindness.”
Relief changed his expression from the officer in charge to the dashing man about town. He threw her a sharp grin and rose. “Fitz, it seems there is not more to do other than to fetch us the ice.”
As his man took to the hall and gently closed the door upon them, Nate settled opposite her in the jade Chinoiserie settee. He took to pouring two generous brandies into little snifters and, handing her one, lifted his in a toast to her and said, “You changed my life. I can do anything for you.”
* * *
“As you changed mine.”
His beguiling firm mouth firmed. “How can that be?”
“Well,” she said as she shifted and sat back, wincing at the pain in her foot, “you recall that I left the country a few days after we talked on that veranda.”
“I do.”
“I left because of you.”
“Me?” He was bemused, his brows lowering. “How so?”
“You helped me to see that waltzing my way through life with a man I hardly knew was not—as you would say here in England—my cup of tea.”
Nate leaned forward, elbows to his knees. “Carterham.”
“The very one. He married not long afterward, my mother is very fond of reminding me.”
Nate got a far-away look in his eyes. “He did. He married the lady whom you saw him with that night.”
She blinked and turned away to ponder. “But wasn’t she your fiancée?”
“Right you are. We were about to sign all the documents, her solicitors and mine. I called it off. Talking with you made it seem a matter of life and death that I do so.”
She studied his face and detected amusement. “Marriage is such a business to you English.”
“Not all of us. Not me. Not after that night. I am grateful.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I assure you it was unintentional. But I am glad it worked out.”
“And for you, too.”
She gave him one big nod. “For me, too. I left here. Abandoned the entire rigamarole of the debutante in full husband-hunting mode and went home to do what I wanted.”
He was smiling. The humor on his face fell to something more bracing. Like pride. “And?”
“I wanted to go to school. And become a doctor.”
He took his time examining her expression of triumph. “I see. And that’s why I need not call for one?”
“Exactly. I did go to school. I am a physician.”
At once, the affirmative pride at her status fell to abject concern. His gaze darkened. His fabulous mouth set in grim lines. “Please don’t tell me you’re here in England to try to go to France.”
“I gather that’s not what you’d approve of for a lady from Chicago, Illinois with a medical degree.”
“A lady from anywhere with any degree.”
