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discover the nature of disease. He was not only respectable—he was a good man.
    Captain Carterton, for all that he was Teddy’s friend and captain, did not seem like such an estimable man as Dr. Hyde indubitably was. What kind of a man would write such words to a woman he had never met? They were almost the words that a lover would write to his sweetheart.
    Men like the captain were two a penny—they would court a girl passionately for a few weeks, and then throw her over without so much as a by-your-leave. They were fly-by-nights, will-o’-the-wisps, as insubstantial as dandelion seeds.
    As a nurse, she’d seen firsthand the damage that such passionate courtship could do to a foolish young woman. She was too canny to be caught in such a trap—no husband and a baby on the way.
    Still, she could not resist reading through the postscript again, and the tingling intensified. Teddy would surely not be happy if he knew what his captain had written to her. Mrs. Bettina would be terribly shocked. And as for Dr. Hyde? He would doubtless think twice about his invitations to walk out with him were he to know of it. Dr. Hyde was a respectable man, and the man she was planning to build a future with. It was folly even to think of writing back to the captain and giving him any encouragement.
    Of course, no one but Captain Carterton himself need ever know. If she were to write to him and ask him to keep her letters private, he would surely heed her request. He was an officer and a gentleman—not some common riffraff of an enlisted man pulled out of the gutters of Manchester or York to be enrolled as a simple foot soldier.
    Besides, he was far away in South Africa, and with the Boers on the brink of declaring war, his regiment would not be posted back to England any time soon. What harm was there in keeping a lonely soldier happy, and giving him something to look forward to on the long, cold nights on the high veld?
    A thrill of the forbidden ran through her.
    He could be her secret fantasy, her foray into tabooed territory. She could write back to him as warmly as she dared—as naughtily as her mind could devise—and Dr. Hyde need never find out.
    With that comforting thought, she unscrewed the top from her bottle of ink, and began to write.
    She hesitated for a long moment after she had signed her name to the bottom of the page. Then, quickly, before she could change her mind, she scrawled a postscript.
    There, it was done. If he did not reply to her letter, she would refuse to be disappointed. That would show he was only a man made of flesh and blood, and not worthy of her dreams.
    But she hoped her fantasy man was up to the challenge.
     
     
    Sergeant-Major Tofts rolled out of his army cot, his every joint creaking in protest. Though he had spent his life in the army, he was starting to wonder if he was getting too old for it now. His poor bones weren’t the same as they used to be. Even just getting himself up in the morning was getting more difficult. Sometimes he felt that he would trade in his whole kit for a week’s sleep on a soft feather bed.
    But if he were to leave the army, what then? He had no family, no home to go to. He knew nothing else, had learned no other trade to keep him from starvation. No, it would be his fate to wear his uniform on his back until the day he died, leaving a small sum in the four percents to his second cousin. Few would even notice his passing, and fewer still would mourn.
    It was a depressing thought for such a fine morning. He gave himself a mental shake as he fetched a bowl of cold water and shaved the stubble from his cheeks. He had a job to do, and the lives of his men might well depend on how well he did it. The army had no time for malingerers. He wouldn’t tolerate it in his men, and he wouldn’t tolerate it in himself.
    A few minutes later he was sitting at the mess table with his men, shoveling food into his mouth. A shipment from England had just arrived and the men who had