Secrets of Nanreath Hall by Alix Rickloff

my heel, still high on the drama of the moment, and set off down the gravel path.
    â€œYou want to be independent?” Mother called after me. “To step foot into the world? We’ll see how long you last. I’ll wager you’re back by the time dinner is served.”
    Her words fell like a gauntlet at my feet. I lifted my chin, squared my shoulders, and continued walking.
    Too bad I had no idea where I was going to go.

Chapter 7
    December 1940
    N ovember rains were gentle, a drizzle that silvered the air and greened the park until it glowed like an emerald carpet. December rains turned the park into a sodden mess of drowned shrubbery and hip-deep mud. After a day, the tennis court flooded. After three days, part of the nurses’ showers collapsed. After an entire week, a tree fell across the main drive, causing no end of headaches for vehicles. From her window at the top of the house, Anna looked out on the white-capped froth of ocean beyond the rows of razor wire and the ominous ugly hump of pillboxes. The surf’s dull roar echoed like constant radio static. The damp seeped cold and clammy against her skin.
    Despite the best attempts at insulation, drafts infiltrated every crack and wind whistled down every chimney. The patient wards were kept warm, but the staff was left to shift for themselves as best they could on the upper floors. Anna’s attic billet had a wheezing, clanking radiator that either gave off sauna heat or none at all. Shenever knew whether she would be pulling on the extra layers or shedding garments like a soldier’s pinup.
    In the months she’d been at Nanreath Hall, she’d seen little of Hugh beyond a nod when they met in a corridor or a few moments of small talk when to ignore him would be outright rude. Hugh’s mother, Lady Boxley, made only one appearance to the hospital while Anna was on duty. As if on regal procession, she swanned through the wards accompanied by Captain Matthews and Matron, dispensing pained smiles and stilted conversation, though her permanent expression of displeasure contradicted her otherwise encouraging words.
    Anna could have sworn Her Ladyship’s hard gaze sought her out where she stood half-hidden behind a trolley of magazines and newspapers. But when Matron brought her forward to be introduced as their newest VAD, there was not even a flicker of recognition nor the barest twitch of an eyebrow.
    So much for the idea of approaching Lady Boxley for information about her mother. It was clear she wanted nothing to do with the consequences of the family’s scandal.
    Downstairs, Anna’s life had fallen into a routine that allowed the sharp edges of her grief to smooth until she could remember Graham and Prue without feeling as if she’d taken a bullet to the chest. Up at six to wash and dress and eat in a hasty clatter before reporting to the wards by seven. Once on duty, there were endless rooms to scrub, equipment and instruments to sterilize, bandages to cut and prepare, laundry to wash, fold, and put away, and meals to arrange and serve. But it was the time she spent attending to the patients that filled the empty places inside her.
    Anna listened to their jokes as she handed out squill oxymel or the ubiquitous M. & B. 693 tablets, learned of sweethearts and family back home as she took daily temperatures, removed stitches,or checked bedpans, and heard more than one heart-thumping tale of life at the front during afternoon tea or one of the countless cutthroat games of cricket the men engaged in on the small patch of lawn cut and rolled smooth for the purpose.
    â€œNurse Trenowyth’s got pluck. She served in France before it fell,” one of the orderlies volunteered with pride as a lanky sergeant with a wrenched ankle recounted a dogfight over the Kentish countryside. She’d been handing round cups from a loaded trolley, the setting winter sun casting a stark light over the room. But as all eyes swiveled