The Undaunted

All's Fair in Love and War

Jenny stood up suddenly and whirled around, needing to leave. She crashed into a nurse, who said, "Pardon me" in German.

The last thing Jenny heard was Ashton shouting at the nurse. "I don't speak your filthy goddamn language so don't use it in front of me!"

***
Jenny drove straight to find Jack. "I've made everything worse. I didn't mean to, and I know I can't possibly really know how you feel but, talking to her, I felt so guilty and you must feel a thousand times worse and I just wanted to help..." She trailed off, her voice breaking on a sob.

Jack put his hands on her shoulders and made her stop talking. "Jenny." The light was back in his eyes and he looked determined, almost back to the Jack she knew. "I can fix this. I feel better this morning. Plenty of jeeps use the road I took. I asked around. What happened was bad luck. So maybe I wouldn't have taken you that way but I've been down that road before. And yes, I was in a hurry to see you but I was concentrating on the road and I was being vigilant, like always. I owe her, that's for sure, but I don't owe her marriage."

Relief coursed through Jenny. She didn't know what she been thinking but Ashton's arguments had seemed unassailable, as if there really was no option other than Ashton being alone for the rest of her life. Jenny knew Ashton well enough to know that was not something Ashton would tolerate and not, she supposed, did Ashton deserve that. Still, Jack's last words haunted her. I owe her. They were so much like Ashton's own words.

But maybe it wasn't true, Jenny thought now. Maybe Ashton being out there wasn't an accident. I don't speak your filthy goddamn language, Ashton had screamed at the nurse.

Back at the press camp, Jenny searched until she found Joanne.

"Joanne, you know you said a woman rang looking for Jack the other day?"

Joanne looked momentarily puzzled, then nodded. "Yes, I remember that."

"Was she American?"

Joanne huffed. "Hell no. She was as English and red haired as Henry the Eighth. Why?"

"No reason," Jenny said before she walked slowly away. Ashton had called the morning of the accident wanting to know where Jack would be that day. And lo and behold she'd turned up to the very same spot to translate German even though she didn't speak the language.

If Ashton hadn't lied to get herself to where Jack had been, none of this would have happened.

***
The whole next day ambled past without a word from Jack. When Jenny found herself snapping at Martha, she took herself off in her jeep to Hitler's apartment, thinking Jack would be in the command room. But Owens said, concern smudging his freckled face, that Jack was ill and had been in his room all afternoon. Owens was happy to smuggle her upstairs when she said she had something important to tell Jack, something that might help.

Jack didn't answer her knock so she pushed the door open and found him sitting on the floor, back against the wall, eyes staring blankly ahead with a harrowing, haunted look in them.

"Oh my God, Jack, what is it?" Jenny cried, thinking to the floor, wrapping her arms around him and holding him to her. "Jack?"

He didn't speak for a long time. Then he slowly turned his head to look at her. "Ashton's father is Lieutenant General Alexander Fortescue of the British Second Army."

The words are enunciated slowly and clearly as if he was trying to understand them even as he spoke.

Jenny shook her head, confused. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"He was at the hospital when I went to see Ashton this morning. He's furious about what's happened to his daughter. He wants someone hung out to dry and he more than outranks me."