The Undaunted

Jack To the Rescue

Jenny didn't have a chance to ask to be replaced. Instead, the enraged PRO from Naples, the one who had told her to make sure she wasn't responsible for any shit landing on him, arrived at the hospital in a furious spray of mud, telling her she had completely disregarded his directives when she waltzed onto a battlefield.

"It was a little tricky to think about you while I was in a ditch being shot at," she retaliated angrily, sounding more like her old self than she had for the past two days.

Somehow, word had spread, quicker than lice in a foxhole, that there had been a woman at the Italian front, which was a violation of the terms of her accreditation and was also, apparently, a crime worse than slaughter. She was put on a plane in Naples and sent back to London. She thought she wanted to get out of the hell that seemed to have temporarily left the underworld and landed on a mountain in Italy, but the way she'd been yelled at and ordered away had made her seethe and she refused to give anyone the satisfaction of telling them that she didn't want to be in Monte Cassino anyway.

She was collected at the airfield by Warren Moore much to her dismay. He did at least have the good grace to admit that a mistake had been made.

"Exactly," Jenny said, relieved that at least now he seemed to understand she hadn't purposely gone out looking to photograph a firefight. "I was told I'd find a hospital there, which is what I was supposed to be writing about, not a battle."

Warren gave her a tight-lipped smile. "I can get you a more suitable assignment," he said. "I'd like the women to focus on women's interests, for the women's pages. I have no idea why they sent you to Italy. Like I said, now that I'm looking after you, it won't happen again."

Somehow Jenny didn't quite like the wolfish expression behind his words. "I was sent to Italy because I asked to go to Italy," she said quietly, while her mind processed both what he had said and the way he had said it, as if he were her protector, ready to guide her, with his sharp white teeth, toward the things seemingly for a woman, rather than the unladylike.

"But now that you've seen Italy, you'll know you made a mistake," Warren said confidently.

Jenny hated to admit the experience in Monte Cassino had shaken her. But to tell him, with all his condescension, that yes, she couldn't face all that again and would rather report on something frivolous she found herself unable to do. Instead, with her pride still intact, she said, "I wouldn't have been sent back to England if I was a man who had been driven to a battlefield would I? So, it's not just that I took photographs that were beyond the scope of my orders to report on the hospital, is it?"

"Women are not permitted in combat zones. I told you that before, Miss Snow. But I can get you plenty of other assignments," Moore said in an annoyingly cajoling voice. He reached over and touched her lightly on the arm, giving her a smile which suggested he was used to having some kind of potent effect on women when he flashed his teeth.

Jenny realized that, as well as wanting to relegate her to the kind of reporting she could just as easily do for Vogue back in America, he was flirting with her. And doing it with such assurance, as if he really thought she would bat her eyelashes at him, be grateful that he had rescued her and be only too happy to let him take her out to dinner, so long as the restaurant wasn't on the same land area as the war that was forbidden to her by that same femaleness he claimed he wanted to protect.

"So, you think I should limit myself to victory gardens and cosmetics?"

"Maybe just cosmetics," he said, taking his eyes off the road, raking them over her face and then her body and grinning at her as if she'd appreciate the joke. "I believe that's your area of expertise."