SPOILERS!!!
This part about Dorothea in Crimea is really interesting. Wanting to find out the whereabouts of her sister, Dorothea decides to go to Scutari on her own. The town is in a terrible condition: dirt everywhere, a nauseating stench permeating everything. The soldiers' women are in the basement of some building, and Dorothea is shocked by the way they live. None of them know anything, and not satisfied, Dorothea follows the corridor to some room, and it is there that she is attacked by two men who touch her sexually, leaving her disgusted and afraid.
When Dorothea returns to the hotel, she feels sick, and Elizabeth, the woman she befriended, is worried and looks after her, but Dorothea is too ashamed to tell her. Soon they finally move to Scutari, but in the hospital they are not allowed to look after the wounded men but their duties are rather domestic, in the kitchen or making bandages. Dorothea keeps asking after her sister, and one of the nurses finally has some information. She tells her that some officers' wives went to Balaklava, but she doesn't know the name of the women, but one was young and blonde. Dorothea knows that it is Lucy.
The hospital gets flooded by an avalanche of wounded men, and as Dorothea is around and starts looking after the men. That evening Florence Nightingale calls Dorothea and tells her that it has come to her knowledge that Dorothea has disobeyed the rules when she decided to attend to the wounded men. Dorothea explains that she couldn't ignore those men. Nightingale says that she has broken the rules and she must leave the hospital, and Dorothea begs her to reconsider. When Nightingale is adamant, Dorothea says that if she must go, she could go to Balaklava, thinking about Lucy, and Miss Nightingale comments that she has been asked to send some nurses, so she decides to send Dorothea. Elizabeth also gets a position there too.
Dorothea is dismayed to discover that she needs to wait three weeks for a day off. When she finally goes, the women tell her that Lucy's husband died and she is gone. Nobody saw her go, and she left some things behind, which Dorothea asks to see. One of the things is a wooden box, and inside she finds all her letters she has sent but they are unopened, and there is one letter from Charlie. Without thinking about it twice, she rips Charlie's letter open, and she discovers that it is a farewell letter. Charlie declares his undying love, but he also apologises for keeping Dorothea's letters but he was afraid that Dorothea would persuade her to go home, and he couldn't live without her. He finishes the letter by saying that she should find happiness and marry again. Dorothea is angry that Charlie could keep her letters from her, and the women tell her that Charlie was a fair-weather officer: great when things were great, but keeping back and turning to the bottle when things were not so good.
After that visit, Dorothea writes a letter to London as she thinks that Lucy must already be there. Yet, her father writes back, saying that Lucy is not in London. Elizabeth and some of the nurses tell her that maybe she took a ship which would stop at other ports and it would take her longer to arrive in England. It is when she finally talks to the port master which she learns that nobody saw Lucy embark, which means that Lucy could still be in the country. Dorothea is very worried because she doesn't know if her sister is alive, injured, a prisoner, or if she is all right, she wonders where she is. That is what I wonder too, and in the next part we will discover that.
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