"You read the letter," Anne said. Fatigue or satiation, both he hoped, had dampened the glee he'd earlier heard in her tone but he could still make it out, seeping around the edges of the words.
She didn't care to nestle after they'd made love, but Byron could still easily reach for her and she didn't generally rebuff him. This was a time for idle talk between lovers, unrecognizable from the life before the War or from anything that happened during the day, on the wards or the dining room. Sometimes, she would let him call her darling Nan and very occasionally, she would talk about her childhood in England, how little she had liked London but had wished to live in the country, "I should have liked a garden and maybe a rabbit-hutch. They are dear little things, aren't they?"
Byron had had no opinion on rabbits, hutches or gardens, but he did like Anne to keep talking in such a pleasantly domestic vein, so he murmured an assent, and it had been enough for another quarter-hour's reverie about hop fields and thatched cottages. Tonight, the air finally balmy after the sweltering day, she was determined to return to the topic that had so stoked her ardor. It had been… impressive and yet also somewhat daunting.
"Yes, of course. You asked me to, so I did, my dove," he replied, striving to both appease and soothe her, wishing it would be enough to end the discussion and proceed to something more satisfying. He knew her well enough to suspect the direction she would take but he had not managed to find a way to command or even divert her consistently.
"Was it not delicious? I couldn't believe my, that is, our luck. Such candor, such affection… such imminent disgrace!" It was a little hard to tell with only the moonlight in the square window, but Anne's cheeks seemed rosy with delight and she wet her lips with her tongue as delicately as Nurse Mary's pet calico.
"Mm," he grunted, trying to sound non-committal and yet simultaneously completely loyal to her.
"Byron! You did read the letter, didn't you? You mustn't lie to me, we must be as one," she exclaimed, turning on her side and pushing back the dark hair that streamed over her shoulder. He tried to appreciate the enticing, heavy curve of her bare breast where the sheet dropped away from her, tried to remember how she felt under his hands, sweet, healthy flesh he never had to cut, but she was nearly glaring at him now and the tenor in the room had shifted, perhaps irrevocably.
"Yes, I read it, God help me, of course I did, Anne. You insisted, didn't you?" he said.
She'd presented it to him just as she would a sweetmeat, some sugared confection he would savor, and told him to be discreet, "for we need one surgeon here to understand the meaning of discretion!" and so he'd waited until he could occupy the worn wing chair in the far corner of the officers' lounge while Foster and McBurney were operating. He could admit he liked a piece of juicy gossip as much as the next man, but after reading only a few words, he started to regret listening to Anne and taking the letter.
Byron had known it was Foster's work at a glance; the man had a copperplate hand that Summers had often remarked on despite Hale's own reminders that in the field, in Mexico, the value was always found in the speed of the amputation, not the elegance of the surgical notes. He'd unbuttoned his coat and dragged a hassock over with a booted foot, settling in to read his colleague's private correspondence.
"My dearest Mary," the letter had begun and Byron's eyes had raced ahead, disconnected from his conscience and entirely beyond his control.
"Oh my sweetest, my loveliest girl, I cannot sleep for thinking of you. I lie in my bed and wish my outstretched hand might find yours but there is nothing but shadow and moonlight; I am alone but not entirely, my heart beating your name, Mary, Mary, Mary through the night. I love you, so deeply and truly, but even to write it seems to make it less than it is to me, though you've told me what it means to have the words before you, to read again when there is no other way for me to tell you. I wish I could find better ones, to be a poet instead of a surgeon, so that what I wrote was always as fresh and exquisite as my affection for you, as your fair face and your loving heart, your graceful, ardent soul. I can't help recalling the uncertain look in your soft eyes, how still you were when I touched the curls loose around your face, that I wanted to see unbound, your dark beauty—how close you were when I held you in my arms, my beloved. This is my admission, my confession, the only promise I may make to you but not the only vow within my heart…"
There had been more, the words crowded together but each formed carefully, nothing blotted, but Byron had stopped reading. He saw the signature at the bottom, only Foster's Christian name, as informal and damning at the end as the salutation had been. He and Foster loathed each other and Byron wished with all his heart the letter had been addressed to Mademoiselle Beaufort, her dark eyes and curls the object of Foster's devilish, adulterous affections for then he and Anne would have been in perfect synchrony. He would not have hesitated to make the letter public, to bring it to McBurney and demand Foster's immediate, ignominious removal. Mademoiselle Beaufort was a foreigner and already suspect, such a letter would not destroy her reputation and character the way it would the Head Nurse's.
But Nurse Mary! Anne had taken against her from the start and he had understood, even more when Foster had been elevated above him, given Byron's rightful position. But there was something gentle and kind and courageous about Mary Phinney von Olnhausen that had appealed to him from her arrival, when she had looked so puzzled as he spoke to her in the best German he knew, and when he had seen her scrubbing the filthy feet of an old soldier, like the Magdalene the Papists loved so, and talking so easily, so humbly to the old man. He was charged to hate her by Anne but he couldn't manage it. It wasn't just that she was pretty, wholesome and engaging, though he was a red-blooded man and could hardly fail to notice her appearance, her slender waist, her dark eyes Foster had been snared by. How many times had she assisted him in a surgery, so patient and uncomplaining? And then made sure he got his dinner, no matter how late? She had a title but she was unconcerned with it, put him in mind of the ideal his mother had described to his older sisters, a true gentlewoman. What a smile she had given him when she came upon him singing after Morris survived the night, how she had complimented him! He had listened for her voice in the weekly hymn and thought he heard her, a little uneven, a throaty contralto he might prefer to Anne's strong, sure soprano. And then, she tried to conceal it, but he had found her sitting alone in the room Chaplain used for the Sunday service, and she had admitted she still mourned for her dead husband. That day had been his birthday and she observed it with a few stolen moments in an Alexandria hospital, her collar fine black lace. He had offered his condolences, of course, but her tone when she accepted was sincere and open, more than pure etiquette.
Revealing the letter, parading it through the halls, making a public exhibition of it and what it meant—it would ruin her. Foster might be demoted, reassigned, disparaged, but they were at war and he was an expert physician; he could be sent elsewhere and there were even some who would think more highly of him for trifling with a female nurse who had no business leaving her home. He was married and he'd stay married. Would it break his heart? Byron couldn't say though he'd been shocked to read the letter, to see the undisguised passion coupled with such tenderness, to know that Foster, acclaimed for his quick wit and cutting sarcasm, was capable of such expressive devotion. He really didn't care, not a whit.
But for Mary, it would be the end of everything. She would be disgraced and labelled a slut, sent back to Boston with far less than she'd come with and he imagined she'd be grieving twice over when she was back in her home, alone again. He wanted Foster to suffer but not Mary and he wanted to stay in Anne's good graces; it was a dilemma. He shifted in the bed, moved an arm behind his head, wished it would be enough for Anne that he'd read the letter, wished she would be tired enough by now to fall asleep. She looked younger then, more vulnerable, her white shoulders visible through the tangle of her hair.
"Shall we bring it directly to McBurney tomorrow, then? Or perhaps drop Foster a hint, let him stew a bit?" she asked.
He didn't want to know how she'd gotten the letter, though nothing could stop her if she decided to tell him. Had it slipped from the man's coat pocket as Foster absently shrugged it off for an emergency surgery? Had he left it tucked part-way under a French physiology or anatomy text in the library, one he could rightly expect no one else to read? Had Anne actually gone into Foster's room to search for something, anything to use against him or taken it from the pocket of Mary's pinafore that she left off when she served dinner in the officers' dining room or poured out the after-dinner coffee? Thank the Lord, he hadn't asked her when she first gave it to him.
"I don't think," he began, not sure what he could say that Anne would allow.
And yet, he thought of Mary's hands folded in her lap while she sat very quietly, praying for her dead husband's soul, how tense her neck had been, glimpsed beneath the netted chignon. He'd heard Foster talk enough to hear the man's written words in his voice, some version of the softer tone he saved for the sickest boys, serious and thoughtful, perhaps with some of the urgency he used when arguing, "the only promise I may make to you…"
"Let's not dilly-dally, I think. Tomorrow, first thing, before McBurney makes his rounds. He takes such a long time for the few patients he has, it'll be noon before he's done if we don't find him early. And then, he locks himself away with his paperwork. I shall sleep well tonight! We'll go together, he'll think nothing of it to give you the Executive Officer position then and there, Byron, I'm sure of it! You ought to give him the letter, quite gravely, and in full uniform. I'll wear my blue challis, it suggests the Union so charmingly. I'll polish your buttons before we go down," Anne said. He had no choice then.
"I burned it," he said flatly and waited. He knew her well enough.
"Byron! Byron Frederick Hale! You didn't! Whyever would you have done it, you stupid man?"
"I, I read it and I couldn't… it disgusted me, to think… to think he would be so brazen, it had no place in a proper Union hospital. I, it was a dishonor to the United States Army," he fumbled.
"Oh, Byron. You great fool, you haven't the sense… You would, you would burn it, our best hope! God help your Union Army if the commanders are anything like you… the Rebels will be right, you'll be overrun in thirty days. Disgusted? I'm disgusted, to be saddled with such an addlepated horse's ar-," she went on and on and he knew he had to stop her now.
"Anne! That's enough. You need to remember who's your lord and master. And, what's done is done. There will be some other… contretemps for Foster, an opportunity we'll be sure to seize, have no fear. We don't want anyone to, to question whether we have our advancement stepping on the necks of anyone else, it wouldn't do, you must see, my dear," he asserted.
It worked as it usually did; she liked a strong hand, his Nan, for all her faults. He didn't need to speak of it directly, but exposing Foster's adultery, how he had compromised a well-respected widow, would naturally induce unwanted attention to their own… unconventional arrangement. Matron turned a blind eye and there had been a time when there were looks, whispers as they walked the halls, but nothing significant. However, he couldn't count on Bridget Brannan to remain silent if she felt her pet Foster, for so he was, might suffer and she seemed fond of Nurse Mary as well. And that servant, Samuel Diggs, was ever-present, the most observant freeman Byron had ever met, and virtually Mary's deputy since she'd arrived. They'd both go to McBurney and then where would they be? Anne's plan was dangerous to them as well but she wouldn't like to be told so; it was enough to allude… She blew out a frustrated breath but he heard in it that she wouldn't return to her haranguing; she was tired enough he could sweet-talk her a little and then they could finally sleep.
"My darling, you're such a treasure, you needn't be… sullied by them. Soon enough, McBurney will see just how valuable, how precious you truly are, just as I always have. Though not everything I've seen, I have some special privileges, haven't I?" he said, cajoling her.
"Byron," she said, this time mollified. "I still think it was a waste, a horrid waste, but spilled milk, I suppose. I'm so sleepy now and soon enough, the cock will crow, whether we want it or not," she replied and turned over. He liked this, liked to rest his hand on the rise of her hip, let it drop onto her rounded belly, feel her breath move in and out.
He knew Anne didn't think much of his intellect or cunning, so she wouldn't imagine he'd done anything other than burn the letter. She believed only she was capable of competent deceit. It would allow him time to decide whether to slip the letter under Mary's bedroom door, sometime when everyone was busy on the wards, or if he should try and replace it in Foster's coat pocket. He'd rather know she'd gotten it and he'd noticed that there was sometimes a light fragrance right outside her door; her room was quite sunny and the heat amplified the smell of roses from the scent she sprinkled on her handkerchiefs. It must cling to her bed linens too, her dresses in her wardrobe. It was enough that he had read the letter—he would not try to imagine her face when she found it, when she sat on her spare bed to read it and trace Foster's words with one finger. It was little enough, hardly more than the ash he'd made Anne think it was; she might as well have it.