Dropping his hand to his pocket, a weary smile slid across Gerard’s face. “Do you always have to have the last word?”
Wynn couldn’t stop his own smile from creeping out. “Only if it’s the right one.”
“Speaking of which, how’s that lady of yours?”
Smile fading, Wynn toed a rock embedded in the dirt. “She’s not mine.”
“I thought you were courting her.”
“Courting would involve agreement from the lady. At the moment it’s a one-sided pursuit.”
“Then why persist?”
“Because I’d like it to become two-sided.”
Gerard sighed as if the entire situation weighed him down. Which wouldn’t take much in his case. The man was as lanky as a tattie bogle scaring off the crows.
“There are any number of women in this sweltering metropolis, or London or Edinburgh, for that matter, who would adore nothing more than to acquire the title Marchioness of Tarltan. Why must you chase after the one who doesn’t want you?”
“Precisely for that reason.”
“Because you’re a glutton for punishment? Because you have to do everything the hard way?”
How many times had Wynn asked himself that very question only to be stumped by the mystery? He couldn’t ignore the inexplicable draw he felt toward this woman. As if there were a piece of her calling to him, pleading for discovery. Any woman in her position would’ve given up long before now, but not her. There was a fierceness about her pride that refused to accept defeat. Nothing was more admirable.
Wynn kicked the rock across the grass patch. “Because she intrigues me and I need to find out why.”
“Like I said, reckless.” Gerard started for the door, his feet dragging on each step. Surgery was an exhausting business. “Up for a game later tonight? Your choice after you nodded off during chess last time.”
“Too much sitting for me, but we’ll need something to keep us awake while we adjust swinging onto the night shift.” Wynn checked his wristwatch, a gift from a colonel whose leg he’d saved from being amputated after the Somme. The handy timepieces were a brilliant advancement deployed by the men in the trenches to better synchronize tactics and were far more maneuverable than bulky pocket watches. Perhaps in time, their uses would prove a trend far from battle. “I need to check on Leonid Sheremetev first. His bandages are about ready to come off.”
“Odd company you keep. I realize the Russians are allies, or they were until the country turned on itself in civil war, but they’re not like us. A whole other culture. Bears, beets, and a sentimental longing for misery.”
“Don’t believe everything you read. Leonid Sheremetev has an unbeatable zest for life in his bones.” Despite his initial concerns—after all, upstanding citizens didn’t get into alleyway shootouts—Wynn had come to like his gregarious patient since meeting him nearly two weeks ago. He had heart.
Gerard snorted. “Alexander Pushkin is said to be the greatest Russian poet who ever lived. If he stakes a claim of his own country, then I am faultless to believe him.”
“As I am faultless if I fall asleep during your waxing of poetry. A fate I cannot succumb to for the sake of my patient who happens to serve delicious beets.”
It was nearing ten o’clock by the time Wynn left the hospital. He hurried down the street as the streetlamps flickered one by one to douse the City of Light in darkness. They, too, well-served as beacons for German zeppelins and their Fokkers mounted with deadly machine guns swooping in on nighttime raids. It was an eerie experience walking through the great city in absolute obscurity when it should be teeming with life. As if he were trespassing on her hesitant breath of survival.
Arriving at Leonid’s flat, Wynn reached for a note stuck between the door and the frame. He pulled the note out and scanned the uneven writing.
Mac,
White Bear. Come join.
L
The club was the last place he wanted to go, much less attend a patient, but said patient wasn’t making recovery easy. Two nights prior Leonid had engaged in a one-armed fist fight with a man who insulted the vodka being served by not taking a fourth glass. Why he’d taken three before deciding it was beneath his taste buds Wynn couldn’t puzzle out, but it had earned the man a bloody nose and Leonid bruised knuckles.
Wynn glanced at his wristwatch, calculating how long it would take him to rush home, change, and get to the club. Too much time. The stuff-shirted men and glittering ladies would have to find another direction in which to look if his working clothes offended them. Hopefully he’d managed to avoid any unseen blood splatters today.
The White Bear’s guard opened the door without a word, and once more Wynn found himself swept away to another world. One clogged with thick smoke, chilled bottles, glittering gold, and weeping music. A world desperately trying to spin itself into resurrection and teetering from its pinnacle like a top with a faulty axis. Truth be told, he felt a wee bit sad for them all swanning about as they once had in courts of royalty.
A woman with too much rouge painted on her cheeks and smelling heavily of violets draped herself across Wynn’s arm and whispered in his ear.
Wynn turned his nose from her sour breath. “Sorry. I don’t speak French.”
“Buy drink.” She jabbed a gloved finger into his chest, then into the creased flesh of her sagging bosom. “Thirsty, oui.”
“Nyet. Em, non.” Once more his mind had to rework itself in speaking French to a Russian.
“I countess. Command you.”
“Apologies, your ladyship, but I believe you’ve had enough to drink and I’m fresh out of vodka.”
“Never run dry in Russia. It flow like River Neva to Petersburg palaces. It still Petersburg. No call Petrograd. War never changed that. It no change me countess.” She poked herself again. “Countess Pletnyovna. You kiss.” She swung her hand up to Wynn’s face, smearing her fingers across his lips.
“A pleasure to meet you, Countess, but I have a rather important matter to attend to.”
“I many important matters in Russia. Balls, parties, operas. Here, nothing. Sit. Wait for home return. Live in palace with many jewels. All gone now.”
“My sympathies for your loss, Countess. Please, excuse me.” Wynn tore himself away as a far-off mist clouded her eyes. Whether from the drink or the memories of diamonds lost, he couldn’t decide. Most likely both if forced to give his professional diagnosis.
Wynn angled his way to the VIP table where Sheremetev was customarily found holding court. Dodging a harried waiter with a loaded tray, he sidestepped into a cluster of men smoking cigars. He could handle all manner of smells from gangrene, to putrid flesh, to chlorine gas bubbling first thing in the morning, but being able to endure cigar smoke was not one of his nasal-suffering attributes.
“Vrach.” One of the men’s arms landed across Wynn’s shoulders and tugged him close. Much too close as he felt perspiration seeping through the man’s dinner jacket. “You here, vrach.”
It hadn’t taken long for Wynn to decipher that Russian word and the universal response being announced as a physician achieved. An unequal mixture of awe and suspicion that undoubtedly led to—
“Vrach, here bump. You look.” Warning given, the man hiked up his shirt and pointed to a dysplastic nevus below his third rib. “It turn red.”
“It’s turning red because you’re touching it.”