Free Blue Damask by Annmarie Banks

government can do to a man?  Prison.  Or an asylum.  Death is better.”  She saw him struggle to keep his face together, but the fractures were there in the way his eyes deepened with memories and his mouth turned down at the corners.
         His voice was soft when he continued.  “They cannot hurt me any more than they have.  I am beyond their threats.  What they will do, however, is hurt my honor.  I am responsible for my actions as they pertain to me.  But France and England have now made me responsible for innocent people.  Family I have never met and never will meet.  They have made my compliance necessary to my honor.”  He unclasped his hands and set them on his knees.  “Did you write all that down, fraulein ?”
         She looked down at her lap.  She had not.  She had been watching his face and the way his brown eyes glistened as he spoke. “No.”
         He curved one side of his mouth and straightened in the chair.  The train whistle blew.  “Oh well.  I hope you have a good memory.”
         She nodded.  “I do.”
         The train jerked, making them both sway as it picked up speed.  He turned to glance out the window as the station moved away to be replaced by the trunks of trees.  “Bucharest, I believe, is next.”
         They waited in her compartment at Bucharest.  She combed her hair and rolled it into a chignon and he watched.  She tidied her bunk.  She wrote up her notes.  The train whistle signaled the end of the stop and she looked up to find him still watching her.
         He spoke when she met his eyes.  “Why are you not married to some Austrian brewer raising a pack of howling boys in lederhosen ?”
         She blinked at him in surprise.  She tried to suppress a laugh, for the look on his face was sincere.  “My sister is,” she answered truthfully.   “Though Augustus is not a brewer, but a grower of hops.”
         “And you, a nurse, they tell me.”
         Elsa paused.  It was not acceptable for the therapist to share personal information.  He was interested, though.  His eyes had lost the vacant stare they had earlier and his voice was warm and relaxed.  This was progress.  She would give him a little, but tried to keep it professional.  After all, her patient had the right to know her credentials.
         “I graduated from school just as the war began.  It was an easy decision to enter training to be a nurse.  The newspapers were clamoring for nurses, encouraging young women to enter the schools and hospitals.”
         He nodded.  “Those same newspapers also encouraged the young men to become soldiers.”
         “Yes.  That is true.”
         “Did your young man become a soldier?”
         Elsa put down her pencil.  “That is a personal question, Mr. Sinclair.”
         “Henry,” he said and his smile was silky smooth.
         “Are you thinking to seduce me now, Mr. Sinclair?”  She asked in a professional voice.  She tapped the end of her nose with her pencil.
         His smile faded.  “No.  Not really.  As I have said before, I am not Siegfried.  You deserve a hero for your bed, fraulein , not a madman.”
         She softened her expression, “Let us talk about you, then.  Is there a young lady now who wonders where you are?”
         He did not react as she expected, but merely shrugged his shoulders and looked at his hands.  “No.”  He raised his eyes and there was a bit of humor in them. He said, “Mothers are not inclined to give their daughters to a madman or a bastard.”
         Elsa nodded, making notes.  “I was led to understand,” she said carefully, “that your doubtful parentage was a family secret.”
         His face hardened then.  She noted his eyes.  She had begun to recognize the particular cast in them she associated with mention of his mother’s infidelity.  He stared at her.  She moved her eyes over his face,