Phoenix and Ashes by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

front
of the fire.
    And as she fell
asleep, she smiled to think she saw sleepy eyes blinking with contented
satisfaction back at her from the coals.
     

3
    March 10, 1917
First London General Hospital
    AT THIS TIME OF DAY,
the ward was full of people; relatives hovering over their boys—though
some of the boys were almost old enough to be Reggie’s father, had Devlin
Fenyx still been alive. Reggie was in the officer’s wards, which meant
that he had the luxury of being in the hospital building, and not outside in a
tent as the enlisted men were. He usually didn’t have any visitors, since
his mother was afraid to travel alone and to her, “with a servant”
qualified as “alone.” Today, however, was different. Two of the men
from 11 Squadron were on leave and had come to visit.
    “Dashed
handsome young fillies they’ve got hovering about you, Reg,” said
Lt. Steven Stewart, enviously. One of the “handsome young
fillies”—a VAD called Ivy Grove—clearly overheard him. She
blushed, bit her lip, and hurried off. Small wonder; almost any pilot got the
hero-treatment from the women, and Steven was an infernally handsome fellow,
who still hadn’t shaken the “Oxford manner.”
    Reginald
Fenyx could not have cared what the VAD nurses—or any others—looked
like. All he cared about was that they were
there
, they talked to him,
kept his mind on other things during the day—that they noticed when he
was about to “go off,” and came over on any pretext to keep the
shakes away. Because when they were gone—
    Tommy
Arnolds, Reggie’s flight mechanic and a wizard with the Bristol aircraft,
wasn’t nearly as subtle as Steven was; he stared after Ivy’s trim
figure with raw longing. He was a short, bandy-legged bloke, but what he could
do with a plane was enough to make the pilot lucky enough to get him weep with
joy when he took a bird that had been in Tommy’s hands up. “Blimey,”
Tommy said contemplatively. “Wish they’d send a trim bit like
that
over, ‘stead of those old ‘orses—”
    “They
do send the trim bits over, Tommy,” Steven said, fingering his trim
moustache with a laugh. “But the old horses keep them out of
your
way. Your reputation precedes you, old man!”
    Reggie
managed a real smile, as Tommy preened a little, but his heart wasn’t in
it. They’d generously spent five hours of leave time here with him, but
there was a limit to their generosity.
    “And
speaking of trim bits—” Steven tweaked the hem of his already
perfect tunic. Steven, like Reggie, did not have to rely on the fifty-pound
uniform allowance for
his
outfitting, and like Reggie had been before
the crash, he was never less than impeccably turned out. “If Tommy and I
are going to find ourselves a bit of company on this leave, we’d better
push off. Can’t have the PBIs showing up the Flying Corps, what?”
    “Thanks
for turning up, fellows,” Reggie said, fervently. “Give my best to
the rest of the lads. But not
too
soon.”
    “You
can bet on that!” Steven laughed, and he and Tommy sketched salutes and
sauntered out of the ward, winking at Ivy, the VAD girl, as they passed her,
making her blush furiously.
    Reggie
lay back against his pillows, feeling exhausted by the effort to keep up the
charade that he was perfectly all right, aside from being knocked about a bit.
It was grand seeing the fellows, but—it was easier when people he knew
weren’t
here and he didn’t have to pretend. He had more in common with the lad in
the next bed over, a mere second lieutenant by the name of William West, for
all that West was PBI and Reggie was—
had been
—a pilot, a
captain, and an ace at that. All the shellshock victims were in this end of the
ward, together. Sometimes Reggie thought, cynically, it was so that their screaming
in nightmares and their shaking fits by day wouldn’t bother anyone else.
    There
weren’t many shellshock cases in the Royal Flying Corps, anyway. The
pilots and their support crew