Coming Home for Christmas by Carla Kelly

Author:Carla Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

The requisition went on its way that afternoon. It was returned, rejected, in the mail pouch early the next week. Major Wharton brought it to her after she had finished feeding those men too weak to care for themselves and was tidying her small diet kitchen off the main hall.

Still impeccable, still dignified, he sat at the table and absently folded a pile of laundered dishcloths.

“Really, Major, I can do that,” she protested, but not too vehemently, in case he should think she actually meant it. With only French-speaking nuns around, she was coming to relish her encounters with the American, even if his English had a distinctly foreign sound to her ears. He was the first American she had ever met.

“Mrs Nicholls, I can no more sit idle than you,” he said, working his way quickly through the pile of dishcloths as she scrubbed the sink. “Is there anything else to fold? Tablecloths? Deck of cards? A tent, and silently steal away?”

She laughed, always appreciative of his droll wit, especially when compared with Captain Pompous, who wouldn’t know a joke if it barked in his face. Indeed, the physician had wasted a quarter-hour of her time only that morning complaining about Major Wharton’s levity in a place of contagion and disease.

You are a nitwit, she had thought, while fixing Captain Pompous with her blandest face. I appreciate a man who can make an entire ward roar with laughter and forget, for even fifteen minutes, that some of them are dying.

“Nothing else?” Major Wharton asked. He rested his hands on the table. “How about this? If I am not a dreadful nuisance or an opportunist of the grossest sort, would you object to a glass of champagne?”

She stared at him, wondering where his shyness had gone. Before she could say anything, he continued, his familiar blush back. This reassured her in an odd way, because it meant all was right in the major’s world again.

“I know it should be served in a flute, but I have only two drinking glasses, army issue.”

“Where did you…?”

“Acquire champagne?” He caught the tablecloth she tossed his way to fold. “It came in the same delivery that brought that prissy note from the commissary officer regarding our Christmas tree.”

“A consolation prize?” she teased in turn, catching the end of the tablecloth and folding her share.

He finished folding the cloth and handed it back to her. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, considering that Captain Pompous already thinks I am a vulgarian.”

“That has never stopped you before,” she said, amused. Her casual treatment of Major Wharton reminded Lily of her relationship with her own easygoing brothers.

He peered at the label. “A bottle of Perrier-Jouët came from General Albert Pasquier. He seemed to think I had something to do with getting most of his wounded troops transferred home to Paris ahead of schedule.”

“You know you did—what a nice effort that was, considering that his son was among the wounded,” she said gently.

He sighed. “I only wish we could have moved him sooner, so his papa could have had more time with him.

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