She sought out Elliot. He'd driven and she'd need his keys or his agreement to leave this 'do. Jordie had had enough socializing for the calendar year.

She found him comparing his glory days as a rugger to Geoffrey's. None of them were long out of university in the grand scheme of things, but they were all sailing swiftly and surely into their mid-thirties, feeling decades older.

"Excuse me, Geoff, I need to borrow Elliot." She ushered her husband out of the way. "We need to go. I need to go home."

"What's the matter?" Elliot knew when she was bothered or upset. He may not have known every thought to pass through her head, but he knew plenty. They'd loved each other long enough for that, which explained why Jordie had tried so very hard for them to last longer.

"I want to go home, isn't that enough?"

"No, I'm staying. These are my colleagues, our friends, I need to be seen here for work. That's something you need to think about yourself." Jordie worked a couple of days a week according to the staff rotation and filled in where she could otherwise. According to the hospital's medical director, there was suddenly little room on the permanent staff for a female consultant, even one of her considerable surgical experience. Jordie was seeking other avenues for advancement. She would have to; a surgeon was all Jordie know how to be, and that was one part of her life she wasn't willing to sacrifice for someone else's happiness.

"Veronica and Geoffrey disinvited Romana tonight. Did you know about that?" Everyone who was anyone in Bristol medical circles were invited to these parties, hence Jordie's certainty that she would see Romana. Jordie had sought ought Romana's work in the weeks since they'd parted ways, had cast about for information on her professional reputation. Romana was steady-handed in theatre and steel-spined in a pinch. She took no prisoners and suffered no fools. She was Jordie's equal in all the ways that mattered. Romana deserved to be here more than half the consultants in attendance, by Jordie's reckoning.

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Why wouldn't they?" Jordie was incredulous. "Why should they? There's nothing wrong with her. She fought in the War like the rest of us, albeit at home. She's a surgeon. She's been up to her elbows in bleeding bodies blown apart by shrapnel and air raids, just as we have. She doesn't deserve to be excluded for being sick of her derelict husband."

"Watch your voice," Elliot growled, pulled her even farther from the other party guests. They were drawing looks. Soon, they'd be the subject of rumors and gossip instead of Romana's misfortune. Better me than her.

"Why should I? Edgar Gentry is a liar and a letch. Whispering won't keep it from being true when everybody knows." Jordie hadn't meant to listen to the rumors, but there were so very many of them and they were spoken with the least discretion. She couldn't help her curious ears.

"That 'derelict husband' you seem set on embarrassing is my direct supervisor."

"You're having me on. He works at Bristol Hospital." So did Romana when she was granted leave to work at all.

"I'm not and even if I was, you need to calm down. You're making a scene." Jordie was making a scene. She wasn't watching her tone or her volume. She was sick of being told to be quiet, to be submissive, to be soft. She was sick of taking orders from someone who was meant to be her equal, not her minder.

"And if I am?"

"He's transferring to St. James to escape the bad air surrounding his divorce. He's a shoo-in for the position of Medical Director." Elliot had been seeking a promotion to that position for as long as he'd been working at St. James's. He must have been passed over in favor of Edgar.

"Regardless of all that, this is preposterous, Elliot, and you know it. She's my friend and she doesn't deserve to cast out like this. For what? Him? Because he's worth more than she is?" Not to Jordie.

"Yes, he is." He cast disquieting looks to anybody looking their way until onlookers returned to their falsley pleasant chitchat. "Her career is going no place and you know it." Nor was Jordie's. That didn't bear saying. They both knew it. War was over, expectations had been reset. Jordie would have to build a future worth having in her own image, according to her own desires. She would have to live...whatever that meant to her.

"Just because 'that's the way it is,' that doesn't make it right. You all came back to a parade and a line of women singing your praises. We got a pat on the head and our walking papers."

"You can't still be banging on—"

"I will always be banging on about it," she snapped. She hated this. She hated how he made her seem petty and small for wanting more when more was all he ever dreamed of. He was applauded for grabbing for the very brass ring Jordie was verboten to acknowledge. "It isn't fair, it isn't right, and I'm not happy about it."

"You should be happy I took you back."

That again. It always came back to that. Jordie's indiscretion. Her misguided heart. Her affair. Her mistake. Her 'unnaturalness,' as it were. Jordie didn't think there was anything unnatural about love save for those who made her ashamed of it.

"Happy? I should be happy you slap me down each time I have an independent thought you disapprove of. Each time I look at a woman twice."

"Be quiet!" His gruff bark was more attention-grabbing than Jordie's soft-spoken admission.

"I'm not a child. I won't be spoken to like a child. I've had enough." She had given up everything to fight and then kept fighting. She was bone tired and she was finished with all this. "You aren't the only war hero in this family, Elliot. It's time you remembered that. I'll make my own way home."

Jordie left her husband standing in the Nicholson' well-appointed parlor surrounded by all his colleagues and peers, the only people he thought he'd need. He was welcome to them all.