The Undaunted

All's Fair in Love and War

But Ashton would not budge.

"I have one arm, Jennifer," she spat. "And scars where I once had a face. Part of my nose is gone."

Jenny flinched.

"If you're flinching at the mere thought of it, the sight of it will be a million times worse," Ashton continued relentlessly. "If I know one thing it's that there aren't enough men to go around, not now half of them are dead. Nobody will choose me over a smooth skinned debutante with full use of her limbs. I came over here to find a husband because God knows there are no men left in England, and now Jack has made that impossible."

"Love isn't about what you look like," Jenny said.

"Isn't it? So you weren't attracted to Jack's face? Or his body?"

"Ashton, I was his friend for a long time before I was his lover. I didn't think about his body or his face when I was his friend."

Ashton laughed bitterly. "And you don't think about it now? Don't revel in running your hands over his naked flesh? Don't glance at him and catch your breath because he's so handsome? You were a model, Jennifer. You've traded on your looks and your body for years. Don't pretend it doesn't matter! Don't try to make out like I'm the unprincipled one! All's fair in love and war, didn't you know?" Between the bandages, Ashton's eyes glared at Jenny, an accusing emerald green.

Jenny sat down by the bed. "Wouldn't you rather marry someone you loved, Ashton?" she asked gently. "Someone who loves you? What are you gaining by doing this? A man who doesn't love you?"

Ashton cut her off. "I now have a face only a mother could love. And you know as well as I do how much my mother loved me. Which means I have no one. So don't you sit there, secure in the knowledge that you've landed a handsome and wealthy man, and tell me to wait for love! I don't care about love! I never have. My parents cured me of that. I want my freedom!"

Ashton's voice lowered but it struck Jenny harder than the forceful tone of a moment before. "Marriage to the admiral gave me that freedom," she went on. "He was away at sea and I had a house, parties, friends, fun. All for the bargain price of sex once in a blue moon and escort services to occasional dinners and military functions. As a single woman, I have no freedom. Nowhere to live. No money. Because I was childless, my husband's home and belongings have passed to his brother. But I also know that I won't have any freedom by marrying a man who's besotted with me."

"So you would take the man I love away from me?" Jenny asked softly, hoping that because she wasn't saying it directly to Jack, it wouldn't have the consequences they'd feared. "I love Jack and he loves me. What he and I have isn't a fleeting wartime romance. It's forever."

"Hasn't everything you've seen over the past two years shown you there is no forever? I learned that in boarding school, that even a daughter isn't forever. That's why there are boarding schools and husbands," Ashton murmured.

For the first time, Jenny felt how deeply Ashton's parents' abandonment of her at a Parisian boarding school in order to avoid the heavy lifting of caring for a child had hurt her. When they were fifteen, Jenny and Ashton had turned the fact that their parents weren't concerned about them in the same way that most other parents seemed to be for their children into an amusing game: a competition to see whose parents would do the most neglectful thing that month. Ashton usually won.

"I don't believe in love, Jenny," Ashton was saying. "I've made my choice. Jack owes me." She turned her head on the pillow, her face away from Jenny. "And he's an honorable man."

The words stuck like a knife into Jenny's heart. "Yes, he is," she whispered half to herself.

"And he'll do the right thing and marry me," Ashton continued.