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In his middle thirties, he wore a cashmere coat draped round his shoulders and a smart, dark suit.
    As he snapped his fingers and the head waiter scurried over, Phoebe smirked at Michael. ‘Well, you’re a deep one, Rose,’ she grinned. ‘I never knew you ’ad a feller, ’specially an ’andsome one like this! You goin’ to introduce us, then?’

Chapter Five
    ‘What was her name again?’ asked Michael, as he and Rose walked up the steps towards St Benedict’s.
    ‘Phoebe Gower,’ said Rose.
    ‘Phoebe, the chaste goddess of the moon. I doubt if it’s appropriate.’ Michael grinned sarcastically and shook his golden head. ‘How did you meet somebody like that?’
    ‘She’s the sister of a nurse who works with me.’
    ‘She was with a desperate-looking chap.’
    ‘Yes, he did seem rather rough.’ Rose hadn’t liked the look of Phoebe’s friend. Dark-haired, saturnine and heavily built, he had merely nodded when Phoebe introduced him as Mr Daniel Hanson, and proudly announced he was in property.
    He had let Phoebe flirt and chatter for a minute or so, and brag about her spot at the Haggerston Palace Music Hall, then he’d stalked over to a private booth, and she had scuttled hastily after him.
    ‘So you’re not coming back to Dorset?’ Michael asked, as they stood on the top step.
    ‘No, I’m staying here.’ Rose looked up at him beseechingly. ‘Please, Michael, try to understand. You’ll be going away.’
    ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘So you’ll have your chance to see the world.’
    ‘Rose, I’ll be going to fight! It won’t exactly be a holiday. I’ll probably be wounded. I might even be killed.’
    ‘I know.’ Rose hung her head. ‘But I’m not going back to Dorset, to be buried alive.’
    ‘I see,’ said Michael. He looked Rose up and down. She could see him taking in her scuffed and battered boots, cheap cotton uniform and the cloak she’d bought from Staff Nurse Pearson second hand. ‘What are you doing for money?’
    ‘I’m managing,’ she said. ‘I have most of my meals in the hospital canteen. My lodgings are quite cheap. I have some savings.’
    ‘I don’t know what’s come over you. Everyone in Dorset thinks you’re mad, and I’m beginning to agree with them.’ Michael took out his watch and frowned at it. ‘I have to go and see my tailor now.’
    ‘I must get back to work. But, Michael?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Please don’t think I meant to hurt you. I–’
    ‘I’m late already,’ Michael interrupted. ‘Goodbye, Rose.’
    Rose watched as Michael strode off briskly down the busy London street. The city was full of men in uniform, and soon he was just another smudge of khaki, lost among the crowds.
    As she walked through the lobby, she was mulling over what he’d said. He’d told her Lady Courtenay looked as if she’d suddenly aged ten years. Rose’s father never mentioned her, or not in public anyway.
    But still she couldn’t regret what she had done.
    She wondered about Michael. If he still wanted her to marry him, and if she did become his wife, how was she going to live with him, go to bed with him and have his children, when she didn’t love him and hardly even liked him any more?
    ‘I must be very wicked,’ she told herself, as she went up the stairs to Stafford Ward. ‘I have no conscience, I don’t care whom I hurt. If my parents cut me off without a penny, it will serve me right.’
    She walked in through the double doors and down the ward towards the sister’s office.
    ‘Excuse me, Sister Courtenay?’ Corporal Anderson was grinning. ‘What did I do, to make you run away from me like that?’
    ‘You didn’t do anything, as well you know.’ Rose smiled back at him. ‘Somebody came in to see me, and–’
    ‘Yeah, so we heard,’ said Private Floyd. ‘Some young feller, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Some ’andsome captain, I’ll be bound,’ said Private Coleman. ‘Look, lads – Sister Courtenay’s blushing!’
    ‘You mustn’t call me sister,’