Chapter 23
23
It was still dark when Inga awoke in a bad mood, which was ridiculous. She ought to be on her knees and giving thanks for the miracle of diplomacy that had just spared millions of Americans from being flung into the muddy trenches of France, but no. All she could think about was the marriage chaining her to Benedict that neither one of them wanted.
She lay in bed, staring at the darkened ceiling and worrying about how miserable Benedict looked last night as he spoke of Claudia. All this time Inga assumed the breakdown of his first marriage had been Benedict’s fault because ... well, because he was Benedict.
And yet he was actually a fine man. Beneath his old-school manners and withdrawn demeanor, maybe he was a smidge shy.
She rolled over in bed and punched her pillow. Benedict couldn’t be shy. She’d seen the way he confronted von Jagow and took command at the embassy during the crisis. It seemed his shyness was mostly around women. Or maybe it was just her .
His kiss hadn’t been shy. Yesterday he had swooped into the kitchen and made a beeline for her, sweeping her into a magnificent kiss. Maybe it was so wonderful because they’d both been happy. It could happen. That was surely the only reason she could have shared that fleeting, amazing moment of joyous intimacy with him.
She wouldn’t let herself think about that kiss again.
Ever .
A whirlwind of activity greeted her when she arrived at the embassy. A backlog of normal business had been accumulating ever since the Lusitania went down, and she rolled up her sleeves to tackle it.
At one o’clock, Benedict rapped on her door. “Snap to it, Miss Klein. You’re needed to accompany me on a trip to Ruhleben. We leave in five minutes.”
The kind, regretful man from last evening was gone, replaced by the Benedict of old. A bit of laughter bubbled up inside because, despite herself, she rather liked the Benedict of old.
Normally, Benedict would take Larry to help with clerical duties, but Larry’s persnickety fear of dirt made him terrified of prisoner camps. Inga had no such qualms, and he quickly outlined the problem for her.
“The Germans are starting to be difficult about the relief supplies shipped into the camps by the YMCA. I need to step in and put an end to it.”
“Why are they being difficult?”
“Because the YMCA hasn’t gone through the customary channels, and Germans are linear thinkers who can’t tolerate that.”
“I’m not a linear thinker,” Inga defended.
True, there was nothing linear about Inga. She was all soft curves with wavy hair and a kissable mouth. He should be ashamed of himself for thinking such things, though any man with a pulse would be drawn to her.
“We’re here,” he said as they pulled up outside the racetrack that had been home to four thousand men for the past year.
Inga strode beside him, notebook at the ready as they stormed the fortress of Teutonic bureaucracy. It took two hours to cut through the necessary red tape and authorize the YMCA to ship books for the camp library and writing supplies for classes many of the prisoners agreed to teach. Throughout it all, Inga quietly sat beside him, her pencil flying across the page as she recorded every word of the conversation in shorthand. Upon returning to the embassy, she would type two copies of the conversation, sending one to the administrators at Ruhleben and keeping the other in their file at the embassy so there could be no confusion about relief supplies in the future.
On their way out, Inga paused beside a one-eyed man perched on a haystack, making a sketch.
“Percy?” she asked. “Do you remember me?”
The man tossed down his sketchpad and stood. “How could I forget the prettiest lass in all of Germany?”
Inga laughed, and the two began chatting, but not before Inga sent a questioning glance at a nearby guard to be sure he’d allow the conversation. Inga had learned techniques for navigating inside the prisoner camp, and the guard nodded his permission.
Benedict still had to tamp down the initial spurt of jealousy, but it subsided when Inga asked after the man’s wife and children back in Edinburgh. It turned out that Percy was a Presbyterian minister who had a lot to say about conditions in the camp.
“Our biggest challenge is barbed-wire disease,” Percy said. “Boredom can kill a man. Take away his purpose and lock him up with nothing to do, and he will languish and die.”
Benedict gestured toward an outbuilding the prisoners had converted into a chapel. “Surely you’ve been able to help with religious instruction?”
Percy gave a halfhearted nod. “I’m a Presbyterian, which isn’t much good to a Catholic or a Jew. Last month we had two hundred prisoners from India transferred to the camp. What do I know about Hinduism? The men want pastors and priests and rabbis of their own faiths, only they are scarce.”
Benedict mulled over the problem on the drive home. It was becoming increasingly likely these men would remain confined for the duration of the war. The ability to lean on spiritual comfort might become a lifeline for them.
“What about prisoner swaps?” Inga suggested. “You said there were two rabbis among the prisoners at the POW camp in Magdeburg. Maybe one of them could be transferred to Ruhleben.”
Benedict was embarrassed he hadn’t thought of the idea himself, but Inga was good at clever solutions. “Excellent suggestion, Miss Klein.”
They were still married, and although he referred to her as Mrs. Kincaid in public, she remained Miss Klein to him otherwise. It helped keep a professional distance between them because there were times when he wanted to haul her into his arms and run his hands through the glorious mass of her blond hair. It was unbelievably tempting to unfasten the hair clip that held the heavy coil in place. Over time the impulse to yank that clip free and watch her hair go spiraling down her back was getting stronger instead of fading.
As September turned into October, he and Inga traveled throughout the region, visiting detention camps and interviewing the various religious leaders trapped behind barbed wire. They found men who’d be willing to move to a different camp, where a Catholic priest or a Baptist minister would be eagerly welcomed.
At Christmastime, instead of buying gifts for everyone at Alton House, Inga used her money to buy something for the prisoners at Ruhleben. Better still, she leaned on the Gerards for a substantial donation, so there was plenty of money to make care packages. He and Inga lined up a hundred crates down the center hallway of Alton House. Everyone in the house grabbed a sack of the items Inga bought to distribute them across each crate.
Benedict added jars of candy while Colonel Reyes added bars of soap. Other items included cigarettes, new socks and underwear, tinned beef, and dried apples.
Larry opened the next box of supplies and looked aghast. “Inga, you didn’t,” he said, his voice a combination of surprise and horror.
“Indeed, I did,” she replied with a grin.
Benedict strode over to examine what had Larry so bewildered. It took only a fleeting look into the box to understand. Honestly, sometimes this woman was beyond belief. A full run of The Perils of Pauline filled the box.
“Miss Klein, really?”
“Yes, really,” she said. “I saw what the YMCA has supplied for the library, and it’s nothing but educational books and classics and training manuals.”
“Do you think The Perils of Pauline will hold a man’s attention for more than five minutes?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea, but I know one thing for sure. At the end of each issue, the men will ask that wonderful, immortal question: What happens next? And that’s worth a lot.”
Benedict tossed an issue into a crate because she was right. For men trapped with nothing to do, these frivolous stories packed with adventure and lurid story lines might have a place. Luckily, she had selected a number of westerns and detective stories in addition to her trashy Perils of Pauline . By the end of Christmas Eve, they had filled one hundred care packages.
Everyone at Alton House wanted to help deliver the crates. Even Larry volunteered, having gotten over his squeamishness by asserting that the freezing temperatures kept germs at bay.
Christmas Day afternoon was spent walking alongside Inga as they delivered a hundred care packages to the Ruhleben Interment Camp. It was unlike any Christmas celebration Benedict had ever experienced, but it was perhaps the holiest. They were doing God’s work, bringing compassion and kindness to a place in desperate need of such blessings, and it was the finest Christmas in his memory.