Whisper of Jasmine. Deanna Raybourn

      Chapter One

      Christmas, 1914

      London

      Delilah stared at the printed words on the sheet of paper and knew that her life had just changed forever. It was thin, that sheet of paper, insubstantial as a ghost and twice as scary.

      “So these are your orders,” she said to her husband. Her voice didn’t break, but Johnny knew her too well.

      “I told you I was enlisting,” he reminded her gently.

      “Yes, but I thought that was just something people say, like ‘the cheque is in the mail’ or ‘my, what a pretty baby you have.’ I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

      “I have to, Delilah. My brothers are going, so many of my friends. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t.”

      “I know,” she said, offering him a thin smile. “You don’t have to explain it, really. If I were a man and English, I’d beat you to the front lines.”

      Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She held them back, purely with the force of her will, and Johnny shook his head.

      “They’d be better off with you,” he said, his voice light. “You’re a damned sight braver than I am. It takes a lot more courage to stay behind than it does to go along with the crowd. I don’t want to go, Delilah. It’s going to be bloody and brutal and like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I want to stay here with you and write my book and eat your awful cooking and get a dozen babies off of you,” he told her, running his hands around her waist. “But—”

      She put a finger to his lips. “I told you you didn’t need to explain it. It’s stupid and tragic, and when this war is over no one will even remember why it started. That’s how wars always go. But you have to live with yourself when it’s done. So,” she added, dropping her finger to toy with the button of his shirt. “You’ll go off to war and I’ll keep the home fires burning. It’s what the little woman is supposed to do, right?”

      He dropped his head to her neck, resting his brow in the curve of her shoulder. “Delilah—”

      “But we can’t talk about it,” she told him, rearing back to look him in the eye. “I can’t. I’ll put on a brave face even if I have to paint one on with powder and lipstick. I’ll smile and wave you off to war and I’ll mark off every day you’re away on a calendar. I’ll roll bandages and make myself useful and pretend everything’s quite all right, but I can’t talk about it again. Not even with you. If I talk about it, if I think about it, I’ll never be able to let you go.”

      He cupped the back of her head with one large hand and kissed her, slowly, sweetly, as if he were courting her again. When he pulled away, he wasn’t surprised to find the tears that had stood unshed in her eyes were gone. He had always said Delilah Drummond was a force of nature. She had swept into his life with all the impact of a hurricane, and he had never entirely recovered from the first time she had looked up into his eyes and given him her slow, inviting smile.

      “Very well. We won’t talk about it,” he said seriously. “What shall we do instead?”

      She slid her fingers under a button and slipped it free. “First, we’re going to bed for the rest of the day and we’re not getting up until tomorrow. I want to make a thousand new memories of you, Johnny.” She kissed him fervently. “And then you’re going to help me throw a party, the best New Year’s Eve party anyone has ever thrown. We’re going to spend every last penny we have and invite everyone we know and we’ll ring in 1915 in style with champagne and lobster patties and dancing until dawn.”

      He grinned. “You realise I’m reporting for duty on the second of January?”

      “Good. Then the last memory you’ll have of me is wearing a party frock and knocking back cocktails while I kick old 1914 right in the teeth. Let’s send it off in style.”

      * * *

      Delilah was as good as her word. On Boxing Day morning she woke up early and began writing out the invitations, and the next morning she was up at dawn, roaring around London in her beloved Aston Martin coal scuttle. It was a discarded prototype, and Johnny still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to persuade an old beau to sell it to her. She had painted it bright yellow and the thing could drive indecently fast. She drove it like she did everything else, with a great deal of flair and a careless certainty that everything would turn out for the best. Of course, the cart horses she scared and the errand boys she nearly mowed down weren’t quite so sure, but Delilah had discovered that a wide smile and a few kisses blown on the wind went a long way towards pacifying the bystanders who had to jump out of the way. She tore through the London streets as quickly as she dared, collecting regular admonishments by the authorities and more than a few admirers. She paid boys to watch the automobile for her when she parked haphazardly in front of the wine merchant and the butcher and the florist, and by December 27 parcels began to arrive, filling their small flat with party preparations. There were crates of vintage champagne, the best she could find on such short notice and marked up so drastically it took Johnny’s breath away to read the bill. But getting Delilah to change course once she got the bit between her teeth was like trying to hold back a storm. Far easier just to go along for the ride—and far more fun. She put him to work testing canapés and mixing cocktails, a taste for which she had brought with her from Louisiana, while she dashed off again on another of her interminable errands. She shopped for a party dress and chose flowers, and—to Johnny’s amusement—hauled home a gramophone