Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Ginger
Somerset, England
Ginger Benson turned off the engine to the motorcar and climbed down from the driver’s seat, shivering as she stepped into the blustery winter air. She hadn’t taken the time to grab more than a shawl on her way out the door from the hospital.
And she wouldn’t have rushed over here, either, if it wasn’t for the fact that this time he’d pilfered her favorite artery clamps.
She scanned the exterior of the small farmhouse she’d shared with her family for the first five years of life here after the war, heartstrings tugging at the darkened windows that had once been such a source of light and life for her.
But as Alexander and Clara had gotten older, they’d all outgrown the two-bedroom cottage.
It had been silly to consider staying here when the residential side of the estate had more than enough bedrooms for them all—even if it meant moving back to her family’s ancestral home, where the ghosts of her past stalked every corridor.
But she wasn’t the only one who missed the farmhouse.
The tracks in the snow led straight for the front door and Ginger followed them, then paused at the doorway. She opened it a crack. “Alexander?”
Silence.
She sighed and opened it more widely. “Alex.”
A grunt answered from the kitchen, followed by the unmistakable snap of an electric discharge.
Swearing under her breath, she hurried into the house, surprised to find it warm. A fire glowed from the woodstove in the empty living room, a cot beside it with neatly stacked books at the foot.
Apparently, Alex had decided to make this his hideaway for some time now.
She rounded the corner and found her fifteen-year-old son at the kitchen counter hunched over a mess of wire, batteries, a coiled bit of copper tubing—and something that looked suspiciously like the foot pedal from her operating table.
He didn’t look up, his dark head bent with concentration. “Don’t touch the gap; it’s still live.”
She sighed. “Is that my surgical clamp holding the—”
“It was the best conductor I could find,” he said absently, twisting a knob made from a sardine tin lid. “And your glass slides make excellent capacitors. They’re only cracked a little.”
A crackle lit up the makeshift transmitter. Alex’s face glowed—not from the sparks but from sheer satisfaction. “I just sent a ‘CQD’ in Morse. If there’s a ham operator within ten miles, they’ll pick it up.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re going to burn the farm down. Or, worse, attract someone in a uniform with more questions than patience.”
He finally looked at her and grinned. “Well, if they show up, at least I’ll know it works.”
Ginger shot him her sternest glare, doing her best to suppress the smile tugging at her mouth. “Shut it down—if that’s possible. Put out the fire and lock up. We’ll discuss your blatant thievery at home. I’ll be out in the motorcar waiting for you.”
A look of consternation crossed his handsome young face and she turned away, hurrying to the motorcar before sentiment got the best of her. He’d always been too intelligent for his own good. She didn’t even know what in God’s name he was building now.
And Noah, who’d lost his own father at a young age, had responded to that trauma by being the opposite of a disciplinarian with his children. Her husband would likely encourage Alexander in his exploits. Buy him another damn book on mechanics.
But stealing from the hospital crossed a line. Funds were painfully low since the Slump, and Ginger had fought tooth and nail to keep the hospital and mother-and-child home afloat. They’d had to turn so many impoverished women away, though, and that had been devastating.
She ground her teeth as she reached the motorcar, restarted the engine, then settled into the driver’s seat. Alexander soon emerged, a canvas satchel slung over his shoulder. He trudged toward the vehicle and climbed in beside her wordlessly, frustration still written in his stormy blue eyes.
Ginger suppressed the urge to soothe him, then pulled out of the snow-covered drive.
Fortunately, it had only been a light dusting—enough for her to be able to track her son’s footsteps—but not so much that she hadn’t been able to drive here to collect him.
The walk back to the hospital would have only taken fifteen minutes, but she hadn’t wanted to do it in the cold.
Tense, thick silence hung between them, making her miss the days when he’d been an angelic—if incorrigible—toddler who’d wrap his arms around her neck, rather than a serious adolescent who thought himself smarter than her. Which he probably was.
Not that he needs to know that.
But he already did speak as many languages as Noah. Clara was also proficient in at least four languages, since Noah had tutored them both. And sometimes Ginger envied that bond between the three of them—the time she’d given over to Noah to spend with them while she worked in the hospital.
“What on earth were you building anyway?” she asked at last, glancing at him.
“A spark-gap transmitter, of course.” He frowned, one hand tightening on the strap of his satchel.
A what?
She looked back at the road, hoping he wouldn’t see the blankness in her face. “Is it legal?”
He didn’t answer, sighing instead and turning his gaze out the window.
“Why are you so much like your father?” she muttered, gloved fingers tightening around the wheel.
“Were you hoping I’d scrub in with you like Clara or Ivy? Sorry—I’m not that kind of prodigy.”
He said it matter-of-factly, as though he’d considered the matter before.
“No, I wasn’t saying I was hoping for …” Ginger shook her head, unable to complete the thought due to her own frustration.
“I’m not trying to encourage you to be anything other than what you aspire to be, Alex.
But the stealing has got to stop. Even Papa won’t be on your side with this one.
My supplies are strictly off limits for your experiments. ”
“I was borrowing.”
“Well, you should have asked.”
“Most of the things I used were sitting in a dusty old cabinet—”
“And yet they’re still not yours to take.”
“Fine,” he gritted out.
That tone was enough to boil her blood. She clenched her teeth to keep herself from saying anything she shouldn’t, then focused on the estate looming in front of them.
The house that—rightfully speaking—belonged to Alexander.
A fact he didn’t know. And one that she was increasingly worried of telling him about.
Jack Darby had bought the estate from her former brother-in-law, the last earl of Braddock, after the man went bankrupt. At the time, Ginger and Jack were still married—she’d thought Noah dead, and Jack had wanted to raise Alexander as his own.
When Noah returned, she divorced Jack and chose the man she’d never stopped loving.
But instead of selling the estate, Jack quietly put it in Alexander’s name.
Then he left—first for America, then later Egypt.
Every so often he’d turn up at Penmore, and the children loved it when he did—Uncle Jack was their favorite person.
And when Noah had become restless at home and Ginger had agreed his plan to winter occasionally in Egypt for the archeological season, they saw Jack there as well.
She was never able to stay in Egypt as long as the rest of her family—she could only be away from the hospital for a limited period—but both Alexander and Clara always came back brimming with stories about Jack.
Her feelings about Jack were much more complex.
Falling in love with him when she’d thought Noah was dead had been surprisingly easy. Not that her love for him compared to the love she had with Noah—and now the life they’d built together—but a part of her would always love Jack.
But marriages didn’t function well when a wife still loved her husband’s closest friend, so she’d put distance between herself and Jack. Was never alone with him. Didn’t write.
The space was necessary. She’d created a mess by getting involved with Jack in the first place—one that she still feared the repercussions of, especially when Alex would learn someday that the estate belonged to him.
She pulled into the courtyard and parked beside an unfamiliar motorcar. Not that it was unusual for unfamiliar cars to be here—it was a hospital, after all. The work here was endless, the days long and sometimes unbearable, though she rarely admitted that out loud.
Alex’s hand shot toward the latch to open the door, and she reached across, setting her hand on his forearm. “I’m proud of you for your experiments. Truly. But next time, just ask me. If I can give you the supplies—if they’re really not being used—I will.”
He held her gaze for a split second before nodding and looking away. Then he was gone, hurrying out of the car and heading into the house.
Ginger adjusted her shawl, then followed him, her heart unusually heavy.
She’d started the morning performing a hysterectomy for a poor woman with fibroids, then gone immediately into an emergency surgery for a local farmhand whose arm had been mangled from a thresher.
She’d worked for hours stitching torn muscle and staunching blood with the help of her nurses, all the while hearing the health inspector’s voice from last month, “Patients under the panel must go to approved physicians, Dr. Benson. You’ve no authority to treat them here. ”
Maybe the back-to-back surgeries had got the day off on the wrong foot. Or it was the unrelenting bone-deep weariness she never seemed to shake.
For twelve years she had begged, borrowed, and bent the rules to keep the hospital alive.
Donations dwindled each season. The county association ignored her letters.
Still, she carried on—stitching wounds, setting bones, coaxing babies into the world—all while her male colleagues dismissed her as a curiosity and closed the paths for funding and payment.