Katie’s Hero
Cody Young
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 2012 by Cody Young ISBN 10: 1-4405-5683-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5683-8
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5684-9
eISBN 13: 978-1-44055684-5
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
The Royal Air Force has a motto, “per ardua ad astra,” which means “through struggle to the stars.” I think about that motto a lot while I’m writing, especially when I’m writing about love. This book is dedicated to those who have struggled, and to those who are still searching for the right person to love.
Prologue
October 1940
The air raid siren wailed and Katie felt another contraction surging.
“You can’t drop it here, girl, we’ve got to get to the shelter!”
Katie felt someone tug at her sleeve, pulling her along, urging her to hurry. As the contraction eased, she opened her eyes and saw her roommate Joan’s concerned face.
“I need a doctor!” Katie’s water broke and ran down her legs, fluid tinged pink with blood.
Joan looked terrified. “In this? Are you mad! You’ll be needing an undertaker if you don’t hurry up.”
They ran around the corner and into the next street. Ahead they could see a crowd of people all pushing and shoving, hurrying down into the Tube station. A bottleneck was forming by the entrance.
The first bomb hit a few streets away, and the girls were buffeted several feet along the road, like a couple of pieces of litter picked up by the wind.
“For the baby’s sake, get me to a doctor,” begged Katie.
“We’ll see about getting one when the raid’s over,” Joan said. “Babies take ages.”
“Are you sure about that? Oh … Holy Mary, Mother of God … ” Katie said, hoping the familiar words would chase away her pain. A man with a briefcase held over his head nearly knocked Katie off her feet, fighting to get past her, jostling to get to the entrance.
“Silly Irish cow,” the young man said. “Get out of the way!”
Joan was angry. “She’s having a baby, Mister. You could help her, if you had an ounce of humanity in you!”
But he disappeared down into the shelter along with everyone else.
Katie couldn’t move. She couldn’t think about anything except the ferocious pain that held her in its grip. “Joan, go! You get down the stairs now, I’ll follow.”
Another blast. Much closer. The roof tiles on the houses just opposite the Tube station cascaded like dominoes into the street. They seemed to fall onto the pavement in silence. Their sound could not compete with the deafening bombs.
Katie gripped her belly and gave a moan. She looked at poor, terrified Joan and tried to yell, “Go!” but she wasn’t sure if she’d managed to utter a sound.
Joan took one last, guilty look at Katie and ran down the steps into the shelter.
The building across the road began to crumble away before Katie’s eyes. The bricks came tumbling down — again effortlessly, silently — as the whole front wall peeled away and toppled to the ground.
“Now and at the hour of our death … ” she said softly, but she couldn’t hear the words.
Then Katie felt a man’s arm around her, and she was lifted up and carried down the steps at the same moment a river of bricks rolled toward the entrance to the underground station. Katie buried her face against the gray cloth of his RAF jacket and refused to admit that she was lucky to be alive. She didn’t feel lucky at all.
He carried her down to the shelter, where the crowd quickly surrounded Katie, some from concern, others for the distraction. It wasn’t every day a girl went into labor in the middle of an air raid.
A woman leaned forward and spoke to Katie. “What a time to choose, luv!”
“I didn’t choose. It was Hitler,” Katie said.
No pain relief, no bed, no hot water, and no doctor. Not a good way to bring a little person into the world, and Katie desperately wished she could have done better. Even if the child should never have been born, it deserved far better than this.
“Where shall I put her?” the man in the RAF uniform asked.
“Over here,” a woman called out, “I’ve had six of me own. I’ll do what I can for her.”
As the man laid her down gently on a blanket, Katie looked up and saw his face for the first time. A hero’s face, lean and young. Concerned blue eyes, gazing down at her. He wore the peaked gray cap of an officer. Leagues above me, she thought, and yet he stopped to help. Her fingers touched the wings emblem on his jacket.
“You’re a pilot?”
“Yes,” he said, with a devastating smile. “Fighters,” he added, with a note of pride. She was still cradled in his arms when the next contraction came. She moaned and gave herself up to the pain. When it passed, she realized how tightly she gripped his hand.
He gazed down at her, eyes full of compassion. “Brave girl,” he said, in a voice that spoke of public schools and old money.
Katie sighed. She didn’t feel brave.
“I’m afraid I have to leave you now,” he said, apologetically. “I’m on a forty-eight hour pass, and I reckon I’m up to about forty-nine already!”
The woman next to Katie laughed. “You ain’t going nowhere tonight, handsome. Not now. The way out’s blocked. They’ll have to dig us out in the morning.”
The young pilot looked up. “I’d like to stay, but duty calls.” He looked down at Katie one last time and squeezed her hand. “Good luck,” he said, instead of goodbye.
He moved to the edge of the platform, and in one athletic leap, vaulted down onto the tracks to the astonishment and disapproval of about two hundred Londoners. He ran across the railway line and leaped up onto the other side. There he ran up the steps, two at a time, and disappeared in the direction of the exit.
The woman shrugged and turned back to Katie.
“Where you from, luv?”
“County Clare.”
“Should’ve stayed there. Much more peaceful.”
Katie’s face contorted, and someone wiped her brow with a damp rag — another woman with a kinder face. “Nearly over now. Soon be done.”
“Too soon,” Katie said, fretting about the outcome. If only she hadn’t run when the siren sounded. If only she’d been more careful. Months ago, she should have been more careful. Or he should. Tom, back in Ireland. She should have known better. She swore she’d never look at a man again, not like that — it only led to pain and heartache like this. She gave a long, desperate howl.
“Hush, luv. Can’t be helped.”
March 1941
The trained steamed in to the station, and Katie alighted at the tiny platform in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. She was thankful to have left London. It made it easier to forget.
The train pulled out of the station, and once the hiss, steam and smoke had subsided, it was very quiet. Katie was entirely alone for a few minutes, until an enormous woman in a dark blue uniform appeared from the back of the tiny ticket office.
The woman stuck out a hand for Katie to shake. “Marjory Mallory,” she said in a hearty voice, “of the WRVS.”
Here was a flagship for the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service if ever there was one, thought Katie, and smiled. “Katie Rafferty, of nowhere in particular.”
“I’ll take you up to his lordship’s house,” Mrs. Mallory said, sounding important and authoritative. “We must walk, to save petrol and be patriotic.”
At first, they walked along in silence. Katie was glad that Mrs. Mallory didn’t require her to talk, as she preferred the quiet rhythm of their footsteps on the country lane. Every step was taking her further away from London, and that was all that mattered. For now.
It was cold, Katie’s suitcase was heavy, and there was no sign of a house up ahead, only a deep-cut lane shadowed by trees. It was wet underfoot and her shoes weren’t keeping the water out. Katie wasn’t sure it was patriotic to wear out such a lot of shoe leather, but she was in no position to argue — she was relying on Mrs. Mallory to find her a safe place to spend the rest of the war. Safe and
warm
, would be lovely, but Katie knew that posh houses weren’t very cozy, generally speaking, so she wasn’t getting her hopes up.
It had sounded like a good offer, when she got the letter. She was to look after four children, evacuees from London, in a lovely old house owned by a lord, no less. It would be easy work, the letter assured her, and it was situated in the depths of the countryside in Hertfordshire, so it would be much safer than being in a big city that might be bombed at any moment.
“You like children?” Mrs. Mallory asked, gently. Breaking the silence.
Katie nodded. She loved children, and being the oldest of a rowdy family of ten this was a love born of experience, not just a notion.
The older woman took that as her cue to tell Katie more about her new place, and how lucky she was to have found it. But the more Mrs. Mallory told her, the more worried Katie became. She went pale when she heard that the children wouldn’t be arriving until Friday.
“He doesn’t live alone, does he?” Katie said in alarm.
“He has a housekeeper, dear, but she doesn’t live in.”
“But …
I’m
living in, and I’m to stay there, tonight, with him?” As soon as the words were out, Katie knew that she’d sounded like a silly Irish girl, afraid to spend the night under the same roof as a man she didn’t know and wasn’t sure if she could trust.
“Michael is a gentleman,” Mrs. Mallory said, in her deep, plummy voice. She gave a short, sad sigh. “He was such a nice boy — before the war.”