Page 35 of The Bachelor Spy
“I have no ill intentions, toward your patients or your staff, Nurse Wilson.”
“Whatever your intentions, then, if you harm these patients or my nurses, you’ll have more to worry about than maintaining your fictional injury. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal.” Blake held her gaze. “And I assure you, I am injured.” Just not in a way she could see. “And I am not avoiding returning to active service. Once my doctor”—or director—”releases me, I will happily quit your fine establishment.”
She stared at him a moment longer and walked away, her footsteps echoing down the corridor.
Blake remained motionless.
Wilson had just confronted him. Threatened him. Admitted to watching him. Mentioned protecting her nurses—especially the younger ones.And she’d been at the window overlooking the chapel ruins, something he’d noted earlier in the morning.
Perhaps Evie wasn’t the traitor after all.
Every instinct screamed that he’d just been confronted by the Midnight Angel.
She was warning him off. Letting him know she’d spotted him investigating. Establishing that she was aware, alert, and not to be trifled with.
The confrontation had many of the marks of an operative protecting her cover.
Didn’t it?
Blake’s suspicions grew stronger.
But then what the devil was Evie doing here?
He needed to talk to her. Discover her reasons.
But first—he glanced toward the room where he’d heard that cheerful voice asking questions—he should at least verify what the curious conversation down the hall was about.
Blake moved quietly toward the doorway, positioning himself where he could hear without being seen.
“And what was your commanding officer like?”
The question tightened every muscle in Blake’s body.
“I’ve heard they could be as strict as Nurse Wilson when someone wrinkles a bedsheet.” The chipper voice came again, the sentiment almost humorous if Blake wasn’t on edge about the hospital’s infiltration.
The male mumbled some response, barely audible.
“My brother writes to me, but he’s dreadfully vague about everything,” the woman responded. “The censors, you know.” Then she asked something else, her voice too low to hear.
Blake shifted nearer the doorway, angling to see inside.
A young nurse—who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three—sat beside Lieutenant Hargrove’s bed. Nurse Rivers, if Blake remembered correctly. One of the Voluntary Aid Detachment volunteers who’d arrived over a fortnight ago, from what Grace said. The VADs were full of patriotic fervor and boundless energy that the more experienced nurses found either endearing or exhausting, depending on the day.
Lieutenant Hargrove lay propped against his pillows, his eyes slightly unfocused in that telltale way that suggested he’d been given morphine recently. The man’s leg was elevated, bandaged from a shrapnel wound that had required surgery just yesterday.
“Gallipoli,” Hargrove murmured, his words coming slow and thick. “Heat. Terrible heat. And the flies … couldn’t escape the flies. They were everywhere, on everything …”
“How dreadful.” Nurse Rivers leaned forward and tucked the blanket more securely around Hargrove, her face rapt with interest. “And your regiment—the 29th Division, wasn’t it? My brother mentioned that division specifically in one of his letters. Were you involved in the August offensive at Suvla Bay?”
Blake’s eyes narrowed.
He’d overheard two similar conversations.
One from Evie and now this?
And of course, the question seemed innocent enough—a young woman interested in her patient’s service, perhaps trying to connect through shared knowledge of her brother’s experience.
