The Lavender Keeper (27 page)

‘If this is too fast for you—’

‘Hush,’ she whispered as she reached up on tiptoe to give him a teasing, lingering kiss. She began to unbutton his tunic.

‘Champagne?’ he murmured.

‘Just you,’ she breathed as the zipper on her beautiful new dress was expertly undone and the silk chiffon slipped away from her body.

He stared at her in the soft, ghostly light and sighed. Lisette couldn’t believe this was her, standing near-naked, allowing a man to hungrily watch her as she carefully unrolled her precious stockings. Finally she was brazenly naked; an alter ego had emerged and a new Lisette was carrying her through this evening.

Markus ripped off his tunic, flinging it carelessly towards a chair. She was sure he would tear buttons on his shirt but finally that too fell away and she caught her breath. Silvery scars on his muscled body traced memories of wounds and
battles she knew nothing of, but reminded her that this was a soldier … the enemy.

Looking at him standing there, vulnerable and filled with the same helpless lust that she was experiencing, she didn’t see his nationality or his age. It made her smile inwardly to hear an echo of her grandmother’s voice: ‘Choose an older man for your first lover. He’ll worship you, like no young man ever would.’ Markus would not be her first lover, but he would be her first older man. Lisette was bewildered, suddenly unsure whether she was doing this for King and Country or for herself. It would be a lie if she said she didn’t want him to be her lover in this moment.

To Markus she whispered, ‘Hold me.’

Suddenly they were locked together in a slow and sensuous kiss, sinking them deeper and deeper, lasting long enough for Lisette to lose sense of time. As he lifted her onto the bed, she wasn’t sure she was ready. But once there she gave herself entirely over to the laughter and the loving that Colonel Markus Kilian lavished upon her.

Lisette stirred first. Her wristwatch, the only adornment she still wore, told her through sleepy eyes that it was a few minutes to four. Not even a bird was awake with her. The silence was comforting, and although the realities of life were now crowding into her thoughts, she managed to hold them at bay – for just a while longer – to enjoy this private aftermath of her birthday celebration.

They’d made love for hours, it seemed; Markus claimed that he was determined not to sleep as long as she was in his arms, but of course he’d lost the fight. She’d made sure he knew that of all his rivals on and off the battlefield, he had been her conqueror. He’d drifted asleep still smiling.

The memory of the last few hours would always be sweet. The colonel had been tender, generous and above all funny. They’d laughed together as much as they’d loved together.

She had thought when they moved to the bed that it would be a fierce, rushed affair; she had been so eager to feel him
on her, in her, that in fact it was Lisette who had been the more hurried. She sighed softly, recalling his gentle, rhythmic lovemaking and the tender way that he’d paused to stare at her until she began to feel shy.

Although her British school had been all but Victorian in its straitlaced attitude to men, Lisette was far from prudish. Nonetheless, there was something about the intensity of Kilian’s gaze that had caused her to blush.

She watched his face in repose, lit softly by the moonlight that had seeped into the room. As he slept she admired his strong jaw, furred by a shadow that he would shave in a few hours. His face was symmetrical and perfectly balanced; even the slight greying of the hair near each ear was identical, as though a mirror reflection. She carefully reached to touch the tiny wisp of hair that curled on the pillow at his neck. Golden and soft. An Adonis, she thought, imagining all the hearts that trailed broken in his wake.

And so it was time to go; she must leave him wanting. She instinctively knew they would never have a night like this again. She leant forward and brushed his lips with hers. His eyelids flew open and she saw alarm flare before he blinked and smiled.

‘Is it morning?’

‘No, but I have to go.’

He sighed, tried to reach for her, but she had already slipped away from his grasp and tiptoed to the bathroom, gathering up clothes as she went. Not much later in the gloom of the lobby, lights out for the curfew, and with barely even skeleton staff in the early hours, he asked if he could see her again at nightfall.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve got some work to catch up on.’

‘Change your plans.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Don’t hold back on me, Lisette.’

She took a risk. ‘You held back on me last night. You wouldn’t tell me about your work, about Stülpnagel.’ She tried to make it appear airy but worried it sounded far too specific.

Luckily he wasn’t paying close attention. ‘You don’t need my burdens. None of my secrets are relevant to the joy that is you. Happy birthday, beautiful Lisette,’ he said, escorting her to the car. Once she was inside, he leant in and kissed her once at length. ‘Time will drag until I see you,’ he said, when he finally pulled away.

‘Markus.’

He leant back in and pulled the connecting glass closed so the driver couldn’t hear them. ‘Yes?’

‘Are you …’ she hesitated. This was too fast. But she needed to give London something.

He grinned. ‘Am I in love with you? Ask me again tonight.’

She blinked with consternation, covered it with a cautious smile. ‘Don’t tease me.’

‘I thought you were the one who believed in love at first sight.’

Lisette had no answer for that. ‘I was going to ask something else, actually.’

‘Don’t be shy.’

‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’

He looked at her intently. ‘No. But trouble does seem to find me,’ he replied cryptically.

She covered his hand with hers. ‘There were moments last night when you sounded wistful, as though you wished you could change things.’

‘Most soldiers do. Few of us would choose war. And those of us who can effect change should … or we would regret our cowardice.’

She could see he’d said far more than he’d intended; she couldn’t push him any further at present. So she smiled. ‘I can think of no man further from cowardice,’ she whispered and blew him a kiss. Kilian stared at her longingly as he reluctantly closed the door. The driver eased the vehicle from the kerb and set off into the darkness of Paris. Lisette twisted in the deep leather to watch Kilian, noting that he was walking away from the hotel, not turning back inside. For a few seconds he cut the loneliest of figures, a solitary man on Avenue Kléber, and then he was gone, lost to the darkness as the car gained speed.

Something was on his mind. He’d alluded a few times to his regrets, and the contact from Stülpnagel had clearly surprised him. The meeting sounded plausible and yet her instincts judged that Kilian had not bought it. Why did the military commander of Paris, who with a single order could mobilise all soldiers in the city – in all of France if it came to it – need to discuss security arrangements with the liaison officer for the Church in Paris? Credible, perhaps … but only just. Stülpnagel had minions to do that sort of job. He would not call a sudden face-to-face meeting with Kilian, she was sure of it. She frowned, wondering whether she was just desperately trying to read more into it than there was.

The truth was she was feeling suddenly protective of Colonel Kilian. Damn him for being so likeable! And damn him for making her body react as it had to his touch. It wasn’t meant to be like this. She was the spy, the cold user of others … so why were her cheeks hot and her supposedly hardened heart pounding?

She felt self-conscious that she was alone with the driver, who had presumably witnessed their languid affections earlier. She was shocked when the driver reached behind his head to push the partition down. It was as though he had eavesdropped on her thoughts. He slowed the car to a halt.

She blinked, frowning in confusion and the beginnings of fear.

‘Yes, driver?’ she asked, nervously smoothing her hair.

‘
Bonsoir
, Lisette,’ he said, turning. Even in the dark she knew that voice, and even in shadow she knew the face of Lukas Ravensburg.

Luc had no idea how Lisette felt about him now after the previous autumn when he’d stolen a kiss in the back of a bus winding its bumpy way down from Gordes into Cavaillon. Seven months since that night in the Gestapo car, after a day filled with rage and blood, murder and despair, it was Lisette’s lips, Lisette’s arms, Lisette’s presence that he’d clung to like a raft in stormy seas.

How he had let her go he would never know. No woman had ever affected him as Lisette had, but then no woman had shared such trauma with him, or seen him so raw. Watching her train draw out from the platform in Lyon had been an agony, but he had been so anxious for her safety that the train was all that mattered in his fractured mind, which was still spinning with the memory of Wolf’s death. The chilling
coup de grâce
he had delivered under the gleeful orders of von Schleigel still haunted him most nights.

Over the weeks that had followed Wolf’s death, Luc’s grief
had hardened. He hated how cold he’d become. Where was that man who had made carefree love in the fields? The man who could appreciate the sight of sunlight turning a single lavender stalk into a thing of luminescent blue beauty? Or who had seen the moonlight silvering a curious, magical-looking wild patch of white alpine lavender, whose seeds he carried with him, along with the blue?

Amid his grief, Luc could not stop thinking of Lisette. Neither of them had been looking for love, he was sure of that. And yet two wilful people had been thrown together and their sorrows had connected. It was her resistance to him, her ability to confront him and provoke him, that had broken through the barriers he’d put in place around his heart. And now she owned that heart. He knew all he needed to about Lisette – that he loved her. Ever since that realisation, he had committed himself to keeping her safe, as best he could.

At the start of the war his father had made him bury a box with money, among other items, in one of the family’s lavender fields away from Saignon. Luc had laughed at the time but Jacob had tapped his nose.

‘Trust me, son. That money could save your life one day.’

And save his life it had. He’d made his way back to Mont Ventoux, dug up the box and used some of the money to find his way to Paris. Once there he’d made contact with the Resistance network and discreetly discovered Lisette’s whereabouts. And it was then that he began to follow her. He told himself it was to keep her safe, but knew in his heart that it was to keep her close.

Luc had learnt to keep his distance, trailing Lisette daily from her flat to the bank, shadowing her infrequent visits to the café off the Champs Elysées, even watching her at
weekends when she strolled through the markets or wandered around the gardens. At night he would follow her home and then shiver in the cold until the light in her flat went out. Then he would hunch his shoulders, push his gloved hands deeper into his pockets and wander away, back to his grubby bedsit or whichever late-night job the Resistance network had allocated him for.

There had been one occasion when Luc had almost revealed himself. He remembered how he’d taken a circuitous route to his destination one weekend afternoon through Montmartre, in the hope of seeing Lisette. Just as he had given up hope, he recognised her from behind in the street – how she moved, the sway of her hair and he even recalled how it felt between his fingers. He’d eased his way closer, hoping to feel her presence in his lonely life.

Lisette had stopped to cross the road and he’d seen her profile. It had sent a wave of desire and pain through him. And as she’d waited, sharing a few words with her neighbour, he’d got close enough to hear her voice, touch her even, but he’d had to keep walking. She’d crossed, and then something had happened to cause her to turn back. He’d had to instantly duck down to retie his shoelace in case she saw him. Shaken, he’d disappeared down a side street. Since then he’d refused himself any opportunity to openly see or be seen by her – until now.

With his German heritage and Aryan looks, Luc had managed to get a job as a driver for the German command some months earlier. It was a useful position for a member of the Resistance, but as of a week ago, it had become more than useful. Everything had changed on 1st May. London had begun broadcasting a stream of
messages personnels
at a rate
and volume never experienced before, and the flurry of coded messages caused great excitement. It was the signal!

In homes and farmhouses up and down the country people had become accustomed to clandestinely tuning into the BBC for the daily coded messages.
There are no bananas, Yvette has ten fingers, the Trojan war will not happen
. These codes alerted SOE agents and their fellow French resisters that a plane was arriving in their region with a new agent, or that a cache of weapons would be dropped by parachute, or that new wireless equipment was being sent. Most listened in vain, some waiting months, even years, for regional communications.

But not on 1st May 1944. That night clutches of resisters gathered by their hidden radios were bombarded by a torrent of messages that galvanised every SOE agent throughout the country into immediate action. It was time to prepare for the Second Front that could be expected within weeks. Courageous men and women who’d been working independently in their own small knots of Resistance were instantly bound into a single, cohesive push to disrupt, delay and destroy the German military in France from reaching the country’s northern beaches in a last heroic attempt after nearly five years of despair.

Luc knew he had to get Lisette away from Kilian and out of Paris if he could. If there was something to learn or an advantage to be gained he could understand her role, but given the overarching new instructions, her mission was redundant. Nothing she did here was of any use, and to stay was to endanger her life recklessly.

He had waited for the right moment to reveal himself to Lisette and urge her to escape. Being Kilian’s driver provided the perfect opportunity, although seeing her with Kilian was a
cruel penance. Keeping his cool while the colonel touched the woman he loved had felt impossible … but he would not have to watch it again. He had to get her out before she got in too deep. It had to be tonight.

Lisette sat in a stunned silence in the dark of the car. She’d gone to sleep thinking about Luc every night since they’d parted, promising herself he would not be the first person she thought about when she woke up. She had broken her promise daily – except for today. And now here he was.

‘Where have you been?’ she finally whispered.

‘In and around Paris.’

Her tense silence spoke plenty.

‘I couldn’t stay in the south,’ he said, becoming defensive. ‘When we last spoke—’

‘When we last saw each other, I was the one talking. You had nothing to say. Nothing!’

He hesitated. ‘What happened was too terrible to speak of.’

‘But abandoning me wasn’t too hard for you.’

‘I never abandoned you,’ he said, and his voice was so hurt it tore at her heart. ‘I have watched over you most days. Often I’ve been close enough to reach out and touch you. And when I couldn’t watch you, I’ve made sure someone else had you in their sights.’

Her mouth gaped.

‘Remember that time you tripped and dropped your shopping.’ She blinked. ‘Your baguette broke.’

‘And a precious egg I’d saved for. A young man helped me.’

Luc nodded. ‘His name is Jacques.’

She stared at him, speechless.

‘On another occasion someone warned you that the Germans were checking ID papers on the Métro.’

‘Yes. A young woman with very short dark hair.’

‘Her name is Isabelle. And your new neighbour—’

‘Sylvie,’ she said for him, shaking her head with disbelief. ‘No!’

He looked down. ‘She agreed to keep an eye on you for me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s a friend.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

He shrugged slightly. ‘I have to make sure you are safe. Don’t walk to Saint-Germain in the dark again as you did a few days ago. It is not safe.’

‘You’ve been in Paris the whole time?’

His voice was thick with emotion, overlaid with contrition. ‘Not all the time. That’s when I depend on the others. But yes, I have stayed close to Paris … close to you.’

‘Why couldn’t you—’

He turned around to face the steering wheel. ‘Lisette, I understand your mission. I know what you’re doing with Markus Kilian.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I am no fool. You’re not spending time with him for pleasure.’

‘No, I’m not,’ she agreed, her voice barely above a whisper.

Luc restarted the car. ‘That is why I couldn’t reveal myself. I couldn’t risk compromising your mission. Until now.’

They drove back to Montmartre in silence. When the car finally purred to a stop he dutifully opened the door for her. ‘I will walk you up to your door. Once we are inside the building we can speak more freely.’

He wouldn’t look at her yet, and she was glad – her emotions were ragged and looped into knots. She might have pined for Luc, but she wasn’t prepared for him to walk back into her life just as she’d succeeded in seducing Kilian. Markus had asked her last night how she’d feel if her farmer were to suddenly reappear. She felt dizzied by how close to reality his question had been. Luc had been in the car, had driven them back to the hotel; had known where they were headed and how long they’d spent together. The carefully built walls of her façade were crumbling.

Was Luc still here because he loved her or simply because he was a hunted man in the south? And if he did love her, then how could he bear to be near her under these circumstances? She had to be equally strong and composed. Nevertheless, his presence was a complication.

‘You looked very beautiful tonight,’ Luc remarked as she moved past him. ‘You smell very expensive. Chanel, if my experience in perfumery serves me well.’

‘Don’t,’ she pleaded.

‘And you’re very convincing in your affections for the colonel.’

‘Luc …’

He skipped ahead to hold open the door of the apartment block.

Lisette glowered at him but stepped through the doorway.

‘I’m impressed at your speedy work, but I’m not surprised. After all, I fell for your charm just as quickly and as hard as the poor colonel.’

She rounded on him. ‘How dare you!’ she snapped in a whisper.

‘After you, Mademoiselle Forestier,’ he said in a hard voice, gesturing at the stairwell.

‘I don’t need your help.’

‘Oh, yes you do.’

Lisette had a mind to stomp up the stairs but she didn’t want to wake others. She hurried instead, all but running up the flights. Luc took his time, striding two steps at a time, and was just behind her when she arrived at her floor.

She was aware of her deep breathing. The shock of his presence was smothering her.

‘Are … are you all right?’ She gestured at his leg. ‘The limp.’

‘A cover, or I would be fighting. I have to keep it up constantly, or risk forgetting.’

‘Why are you here?’

He held his silence.

Lisette turned to open her door but she dropped the key. Furious with herself, she bent to retrieve it but he was quicker. Her hand searching in the dark found only his. Her instinct was to pull away but he held her hand fast and placed it against his heart.

‘I’ve thought about you every day since that train took you away,’ he whispered hoarsely.

It all came flooding back, all the emotion she’d wrestled under control: the despair of Laurent’s death, the knowledge that Luc had likely killed at least one person that night but perhaps more, the helplessness of not being able to comfort him as he grieved and then that cold, wordless farewell at the station. She was back in Provence again, infuriated by him, wanting him more than anyone. But now Kilian stood between them.

‘Oh, Luc, come inside, please.’

He shook his head and stood, helping her up. ‘Too risky
with the car outside. I must go. But we need to talk, and soon.’

‘Then come back later. I won’t go to work today. Any time that you can.’

He nodded and opened the door for her, handed back the key. He left without touching her again, without another word. She listened to his departing footsteps, almost frightened to let him go, and heard him pause on the landing below as a door opened. Lisette strained to hear. It had to be Sylvie – was she spying on them? She didn’t know whether to hate her now or like her all the more.

Lisette kicked off her shoes and tiptoed back out onto her landing. She risked peeping over the banister to see Sylvie grasping Luc’s coat, whispering at him urgently. It was obvious he was trying to leave. He shook his head and gently pulled Sylvie’s hand away. She had no need to hear their words to know what was being said.

Lisette stepped back inside her room and rushed to the window. Soon enough Luc emerged, and within a few heartbeats he and his car had disappeared. But he’d promised to come back. And she knew she probably only had a few hours to get her shattered thoughts and mood together … as well as head to the café to send her missive to London.

Lisette could not sleep. She filled a small tub with hot water, peeled off her beautiful dress and slowly bathed herself. Her pale skin flushed under the warm flannel as her mind wandered through her memories of Markus Kilian. She needed to ‘compartmentalise’ – that was the word they used in training. She had enjoyed Markus; to admit anything else was a lie. A couple of months ago she had no one in her life. Now she had two men to consider. How was she to separate them?
And especially when one now worked for the other! Luc was playing a most risky game.
But he’s doing it for you
, a small voice reminded her.
To be close to you, to keep you safe
.

Lisette put the flannel over her face and took a deep breath. This was no time for her emotions to dictate her actions. She had to think with her head, not heart. London was expecting more of her, especially since she’d ingratiated herself so swiftly with Kilian. She didn’t need London to tell her that the Soviets were making great inroads in the Ukraine and that the German army was likely in retreat. It had become even more crucial to know of potential German countermoves. Berlin was on the back foot, with the Americans adding new credibility to the Allied push, but nothing was more unpredictable than a wounded animal.