Never Leave Me (29 page)

The dress slid from her shoulders, to her breasts, to her hips, slithering into a pool of lace around her ankles. The curve of her hips, the soft roundness of her buttocks, covered only by a wisp of silk, sent his pulse pounding and the blood roaring in his ears. She was perfect. Exquisite. All he had ever dreamed of. He wanted to kiss every inch of her. To drive all thoughts of the past from her mind. To make her as hungry and avaricious for his body as he was for hers.

He lifted the heavy weight of her hair away from her neck, kissing the milky smoothness of her hair line, refusing to hurry. Slowly, caressingly, his fingers moved down her spine, lower and lower, until his strong, large hands cupped the dainty perfection of her buttocks and she gasped for breath, trembling beneath his touch as he turned her, in all the beauty of her near nakedness, to face him.

Her breasts were high and firm, fuller than he had imagined, the nipples rose-pink, taut and erect, begging to be kissed. The blue-black triangle of her pubic hair curled enticingly over the restraining silk of her panties and he groaned with need as he pulled her into his arms.

‘It's going to be good,' he whispered, his mouth brushing her temples, her eyelids, hot and sweet at the corners of her mouth. ‘Between us, it's always going to be good, Lisette.'

She was on fire, stunned by her physical response to him. She felt like a small, wild animal, desperate for the comfort of copulation. She wanted to drown herself in his arms. To bury her hurt and pain. To submerge herself in a sea of sensuality.

His mouth was on her neck, her throat. She was tormented by longing. She wanted him to grind his lips against hers, to savage her mouth with his tongue, to plunder her body without thought of tenderness or care or consideration.

She twisted her mouth to his and in hungry, swift response his tongue plunged past hers, his arms crushed her against him and she found the oblivion she craved. There was no past. No future. Only his mouth on hers, his hands on her flesh, their bodies straining dementedly towards each other.

He scooped her up in his arms, striding with her to the bed. She sank onto the fragrant linen, half-senseless with desire as he ripped off his shirt, his pants. The lean, tanned contours of his body gleamed in the soft light. A pelt of crisply curling hair darkened his chest. The white scar of a knife-wound snaked down beneath his rib cage. She opened her arms to him and the narrow bed rocked beneath his weight.

The heat of his body spread through her. She arched against him, hungry for love. For relief from pain.

He gasped her name, his hands hot on her thighs, removing in one swift movement the offending barrier of fragile silk. He had intended being gentle. Considerate. In control. Her pubic hair sprang against the palm of his hand. Her nipples burned his chest. With a groan he abandoned his intentions, parting her legs beneath him, plunging unhesitatingly into the dark, sweet softness of her, intent on a relief that was cataclysmic.

Her nails scored his back, his shoulders. He didn't wait for her and she didn't need him to. Their cries merged and mingled and when the point of momentary disintegration came, it was mutual. A physical and emotional explosion that convulsed both of them to the roots of their being. It wasn't what they had expected. It wasn't what either of them had anticipated or imagined.

He had thought that he would need patience. Restraint. She had thought she would have to pretend. Be kind. Both of them had been wrong and lay, breathless and panting, weak with relief.

At last he raised himself up on one elbow, gazing down at her, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. ‘If it's going to be like that every time I make love to you, Mrs. Dering, I'm going to have to take out more health insurance. My heart won't stand it.'

A bubble of laughter rose up inside her. She had made him happy, and in making him happy, she had eased her own hurt. With a sense of incredulity, she realised that love, like suffering, was not finite. That in her growing love for Greg, her love from Dieter was not diminished. Her fingers slid up the smooth, glistening contours of his back and buried themselves in the thickness of his hair. ‘There's only one way of finding out,' she whispered, her eyes sparkling wickedly.

‘Then let's not waste time,' he said huskily, his hands caressing the full, delicious weight of her breasts, his body already hardening with the need to make love to her again.

They moved together slowly, rapturously. He was overwhelmed by the love he felt for her. Consumed by it. She was the princess in the fairytales of his childhood. Dark, seductive, hauntingly beautiful. When they reached again an unbearable summit of mutual pleasure and he heard her cry his name aloud, his triumph was nearly more than he could bear. He felt in complete possession of her. No matter who she had loved before, he was certain that she was his now. She would be his for always. His wife. His love.

There was no time for sleep in each other's arms. No time for the endearments of satisfied love. Through the dark silent streets there came the sound of a jeep fast approaching the cottage.

He hugged her close, knowing that in another few minutes he would be on his way back to camp. That before the dawn broke, he would be leading his men south to German-held Torigni.

‘I have to go, my love,' he said, his brandy-coloured eyes dark with regret. ‘It may be weeks, months, before I'm back, but I will be back. I promise.'

Her arms tightened around him in a spasm of fear. Dieter was dead. Luke Brandon was dead. She had lost her baby. Her home. She couldn't bear the thought that Greg, too, might never return to her.

‘Be careful,' she said urgently as he gently removed her arms from his waist.

He grinned down at her. ‘Don't worry,' he said with easy confidence, ‘I will be.'

The jeep screeched to a halt outside the cottage. Reluctantly he rolled away from her, the bed creaking as he stood up and walked over to the window, signalling down to the driver that he was on his way. ‘This time next year it could all be over,' he said as he quickly began to pull on his clothes. ‘By July '45 you could be in California wowing them all with your French accent!'

She sat up in bed, her hair tumbling about her shoulders, her eyes widening. California. She had barely thought about it. Now that she was doing so, she felt a such a mass of conflicting emotions that she could hardly breathe.

His vivid smile flashed again. ‘You'll love it,' he said reassuringly. ‘Sun, sea. No memories.'

Her fingers clutched at the sheets. No memories. No Valmy. No rain-washed skies over the beech woods. No cornfields or apple orchards.

The waiting driver revved the jeep's engine impatiently. Greg snatched up his jacket. His cap. She stumbled from the bed and he caught her against him. ‘Oh God, how I love you!' he said, his mouth coming down hard and savage on hers.

In the street outside the waiting driver slammed his hand hard on the jeep's horn. He tore himself away from her, his handsome face fierce. ‘I'll be back,' he rasped. ‘Be waiting for me!'

‘I will. I promise.' Her voice was strangled in her throat.

He crushed her against him one last time and then he was gone, running down the narrow stairs to the street, springing into the jeep, not trusting himself to look behind him as the engine roared into life and the jeep sped away towards the bridge and the darkened countryside beyond.

She stood for a long time at the window, staring out over the moonlit rooftops of Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts, accompanying him in her mind's eye for as long as she could. He would fight on towards Torigni. When the German defences in western Normandy were destroyed, some American forces would drive south, into Brittany; others would hopefully swing eastwards, forcing the Germans to withdraw across the Seine. She didn't know in which direction Greg would continue to fight. She didn't know when she could begin to hope for his return.

She didn't sleep. When the first hint of dawn began to lighten the night sky, she dressed in sweater and skirt and low-heeled shoes, carefully made the tumbled bed and quietly let herself out of the house.

The cobbled streets were silent. As she approached the bridge she could hear cocks crowing lustily and the distant clang of a milking pail. The grassy banks of the river beneath the bridge were wet with dew. A spider web gleamed silkily. Marsh marigolds and kingcups hung heavy, golden, unopened heads.

She began to walk up the narrow, high-hedged lane towards the beech woods. There was something she had to do. A visit she had to make before she embarked on life as Mrs Greg Dering.

The trees thinned and the husk of her home stood before her, gaunt and bleak, its beauty ravaged. She turned aside, the long grass brushing her naked legs as she walked towards the churchyard and the cherry tree beyond.

A month later, in August, the Germans had still not been pushed back across the Seine. Information was scarce. Caen had been taken but further south, around Falaise, fighting was still fierce. She had begun to feel unwell. Sick and tired. When her period came, it was brief and scanty, barely noticeable. She knew that her father was worried about her, that if she didn't do something about her general feeling of malaise, he would insist that she join her mother in more comfortable living conditions at Balleroy. Reluctantly she went to see Dr Auge.

The doctor congratulated her on her wedding, examined her and concealed his surprise at his diagnosis. He wondered who the father was. Certainly not the American who had stormed ashore on the sixth of June and who she married a month ago. She was at least twelve weeks pregnant. He curbed his curiosity. It was none of his affair. The American wouldn't be the only soldier cuckolded into rearing a child he hadn't fathered. ‘The sickness will pass within the next week or two …'

‘But how do you know?' she interrupted, puzzled. ‘What is causing it? What is the matter with me?'

Dr Auge toyed with his pen. He didn't for one minute believe she was ignorant of her condition. She was simply trying to convince him, as she would have to convince everyone else, that the baby had only just been conceived. That when it was born, embarrassingly soon after her wedding, it could be described as premature. He sighed. He had thought she would have had more respect for his intelligence.

‘You are approximately three months pregnant,' he said unequivocally. ‘Sickness rarely continues into the fourth month and …'

‘I can't be!' She was staring at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘It isn't possible … My last period was only a few weeks ago …'

‘Periods, much lighter than normal, sometimes continue irregularly all the way through a pregnancy,' Dr Auge continued, regarding her with interest. ‘Especially when there has been great emotional stress.'

She rose unsteadily to her feet, her heart slamming thick and fast, the blood pounding in her ears. ‘Perhaps you are wrong about the dates, Dr Auge,' she said hoarsely. ‘Perhaps I am only a few weeks pregnant. A month pregnant?'

He shook his head knowing that he had been wrong. That she hadn't known. ‘There is no mistake, Madame Dering. The child must have been conceived some three months ago. In May.'

So many emotions rushed through her that she could barely stand. She was having a baby. Dieter's baby. The child she wanted more than anything else in the world. And she was married to Greg. He would think that she had deceived him on purpose. That she had married him solely to give her unborn child a name.

‘Oh God,' she whispered, her face ashen. ‘Oh dear, dear
God
!'

‘Madame Dering …' Dr Auge began anxiously.

She was no longer listening to him. She had to get out of the room. She had to get into fresh air. She had to think.

‘I shall want to see you in four weeks'time …' he was saying, but she had gone.

Dazedly she slammed the door of his surgery behind her. A baby.
Dieter's
baby! Her shock gave way to joy. She hadn't lost him completely. She hadn't miscarried his child. A part of him would be with her for always. And Greg?

She leaned against a plane tree in the village square. She would explain to him. Tell him the truth. He already knew about Dieter. Luke Brandon had told him. He had been understanding, asking her no questions, promising only to teach her to love again. She felt the weight of her anxiety lift and ease. Luke Brandon had been prepared to marry her, knowing that she was carrying Dieter's child. Surely Greg, with his infinite generosity, would be equally understanding?

Her father stared at her, appalled. ‘A
baby
?
Meyer's
baby?'

‘Yes, Papa,' she said gently, wishing that she could ease his distress. ‘Dr Auge says I'm at least three months pregnant.'

‘Dear Christ!' He groped blindly for a chair. ‘What will you do when Dering returns? What can you possibly say to him?'

Her face was pale and resolute. ‘I shall tell him the truth, Papa. There is nothing else I can tell him.'

He raised his stricken face to hers. ‘The wedding was a month ago. I remember your mother telling me that Jean's wife regularly gave birth after seven-month pregnancies.'

Her face tightened. She shook her head, her eyes clouding. ‘No, Papa,' she said, knowing how deep was his anguish for him to suggest such a deception. ‘I would rather he left me than stay with me believing such a lie.'

‘He probably will,
ma chére
,' her father said unsteadily. ‘Another man's child. A
German's
child! It is more than you can expect any man to tolerate.'

Anxiety sprang alive again, clutching at her heart. She didn't want to lose Greg. She was already more than halfway in love with him. The thought of a future without him appalled her. ‘It will be all right,' she said fiercely, rising to her feet to make some coffee. ‘Greg will understand. I know he will.'

Her father shook his head disbelievingly. She could have Dieter Meyer's child, or she could have a new life in America with Greg Dering. He couldn't see how she could possibly have both.