The Kingdom of Night (Book 3)

Fifteen - Ties That Bind

Alice

It was all over the news when we rose that morning: Leningrad was relieved after a staggering nine-hundred days under siege by Hitler's army. I heard the other nurses talking about it in hushed voices, and once I got a chance to sit down and eat something, I read over it in a discarded newspaper. The people had resorted to cannibalism, it said, eating the frozen bodies on the streets of those unfortunate enough to not have survived. My stomach turned at the thought. It was enough to make me lose my appetite.

     'Al?' Iz panted up behind me.

     I swung around in my seat on the bench, noticing she appeared quite flustered. 'Iz, I was going to join you in a moment...'

   ''S all right, I'm already here. Got a visitor. Says he knows you.'

   His head poked around the doorway, and automatically I felt my shoulders tense. It was Lieutenant-Colonel Marcel Denis. He was friendly enough, I suppose, but we were just that for now: friends.

     'Lieutenant-Colonel, this is certainly a surprise.' I rose halfway from my chair, casting a confused look at Iz.

     'I'll leave you to it, Al,' Iz said, and before I could protest, she was gone.

     'I was headed this way, so I wanted to stop in and see how you were, Mademoiselle Bishop.' He took his cap off and bowed his head to me, eyes sorrowful. 'Your friend tells me you have been recovering from a great loss recently.'

     'Yes, I...' I thought of Rory, just briefly. It was still fresh enough that my throat caught. 'I have. It's kind of you to do so, Lieutenant-Colonel.'

   'I must ask you...' He shuffled his feet and bit his lip, most likely trying to formulate his question carefully. 'He was your husband?'

     'What?' That assumption caught me completely by surprise. 'I never said anything about...'

     'When we met on the road...you were rubbing a ring that you wear on a chain. I had a feeling it was completely unconscious.' His expression was sheepish, and he backed up a step. 'I did not want to ask, you see, until we knew each other a little better.'

     'No, no...he wasn't my husband.' Even though by the painful punch my heart gave to my ribs, I knew I wished he was. 'He was going to propose. I suppose you could say he was...almost my husband.'

     'May I ask...who was he?' His expression turned sympathetic, and pain entered his eyes.

     'His name was Rory Donahue. Irish Guards. I met him when he was injured and was here in our care. After he left we sort of...I don't know...found our way back to each other, and...' I broke off. Reliving every interaction I'd had with Rory was too painful for me to bear.'

     'That happens with those we love, ma cherie.' He smiled sadly, and the way his native language rolled off his tongue made my chest ache inexplicably. 'I loved my wife very much for the ten months we were married. We were happy...so happy...c'est incroyable. I almost believed she would be the only one I would ever love.'

     'Only ten months?' I said. That was longer than I'd known Rory, but our relationship had grown so fast in the short time we knew one another. 'That's not even long enough to build a life together.'

     'Alas, we never even were given the chance to be a family.' He shook his head. 'She died in childbirth. Preeclampsia, according to the doctor. As for the child, he was a stillbirth. Had both of them been alive today, she would be twenty-five, and he, four. I miss them every day.'