Free With This Ring by Carla Kelly

know that? she asked herself. I
just know it.
    “ Mama says if I am lucky, I might
find a vicar, or perhaps a widower who is not too choosy,” she said
as she concentrated on that spot beside the major’s mouth, where he
had, drat it all, another mole. “Oh, do hold still,” she ordered as
she navigated the razor around the obstacle. “I do not know why you
are so grim about the mouth. My job would be less onerous if you
would relax. I have not killed you yet.”
    “ Perhaps it is because I do not
precisely understand why your mother has such a low opinion of you,
my dear,” he said, then tilted his head so she had a better view of
the problem mole.
    ‘ Thank you. Sir, I am not beautiful
enough for Mama to bother with,” she concluded in a matter-of-fact
voice, then stepped back. “I believe you are done, Major.” She
wiped the soap off his face, admiring her handiwork.
    To her amazement, she heard applause
behind her and whirled around to see all of the major’s men who
could walk standing or sitting at the entrance to the lady chapel.
She blushed and frowned at Major Reed. “Sir! You could see them!
Why did you not mention that my first-ever barbering had an
audience?”
    “ Perhaps I wanted witnesses, in case
you slit my throat, Miss Perkins! Well, lads, will I
do?”
    They cheered this time, which
brought over the surgeon and one of the aproned matrons, who shooed
them back to their cots. “You’re next, lads,” he called after them.
“Mind you, behave yourselves!”
    She laughed and cleaned his razor,
then handed it back for him to strop again. He obliged her, then
ran his hand over his face and sighed with contentment, to her
amusement. “I am amazed what a difference this makes in my outlook.
Anything is possible now. Perhaps I will even be able to walk
upright soon, and not drag my knuckles like an ape.”
    “ You will if you stay in bed and
mind yourself,” Lydia admonished him. She was still smiling as she
patted his face with cologne, an overpowering lemon fragrance that
no Englishman except a soldier would wear, and even then only on a
foreign shore.
    He sniffed it. “Better and better,
Miss Perkins. I almost cannot smell myself now. Let us devoutly
pray that the tin tub rumor is true, or I’ll be out of my stash of
Limon de Aranjuez much too soon, and you will run in
terror.”
    “ You may be out of it sooner than
you think, sir,” she replied as she stoppered the bottle. “I intend
to use it on your men, too.”
    “ Madam, it is two quid a bottle!” he
protested.
    “ Thank goodness that you get a
major’s pay,” she declared as she held it out of his reach and
gathered up his shaving gear. “Now, take a nap and behave
yourself.”
    There were ten wounded men in
Battery B, and she took her time with each one, shaving him, and
chatting such endless trivialities that she knew she was related to
Kitty. The ones who were too broken to shave, she sat with, holding
their hands if they had hands, or just resting her own hand on
their chests when they did not. She knew she was boring them with
her homely stories of Devon and the seashore, but no one objected.
When she finished with Battery B’s wounded, she continued down the
next row, tending to the shattered men as best she
could.
    Other women were doing what she did,
working quietly among the rows. She wondered at their serenity,
then discovered late in the afternoon when her back hurt so much
from bending over that she wanted to cry, that it was her serenity,
too. She decided that it was a day’s work to be proud
of.
    “ I have learned a trade,” she teased
when Corporal Davies came to find her. “Where have you
been?”
    “ Finding tubs.”
    “ And pine tar soap and fine-tooth
combs, I trust,” spoke up one of the other ladies. “There’s not a
man here who isn’t lousy.”
    That gives me pause, Lydia thought
as she returned to the lady chapel. If I bring home lice, Mama will
not be placated, even if Major Reed were to buy