Never Leave Me (10 page)

Lisette envied her mother the ease of her decision. A faint fragrance of lemon and spice cologne clung to the pillows and she had only to close her eyes to see him looking down at her. To see the wheat-gold shock of blond hair; the grey eyes that could be so glacial when angry, so dark when filled with desire. To see the broad, powerful shoulders and lean hips and to be overcome once again by the overt masculinity and strength that she had fought so hard and powerlessly against.

Her mother looked across at her pale face and said contritely, ‘I shouldn't have stayed with you so long, darling. I've over-tired you. I'll leave you now so that you can get some rest.'

Lisette did not contradict her, but she knew it wasn't tiredness that was making her feel and look so ravaged. It was the grim knowledge that, by attempting to discover and disclose to the Allies the plans being discussed by Rommel and Dieter in the privacy of the grand dining-room, she would be betraying the only man she could ever envisage being in love with.

When Elise came in with her tea tray she pushed herself up against the pillows, sensing at once that Elise had news for her. ‘What is it?' she asked urgently. ‘Did you see Rommel? Have you thought of a way of entering the grand dining-room?'.

‘I saw him,' Elise said tightly, her face almost as pale as Lisette's, ‘and I've thought of a way. It won't be easy and it leaves a lot to chance, but it's a risk we must take.' She set the tray down on the bedside table and said quietly and quickly, ‘I'm going to cause a diversion that will leave the grand dining-room unguarded, and I'm going to do it soon. There's no time to wait for an opportunity to present itself. Meyer could be called away from here at any time and when he goes the plans and documents that are important enough to warrant Rommel's interest will go with him.'

‘How are you going to cause that kind of a diversion?' Lisette asked, full of sudden foreboding.

Elise's eyes didn't flicker. ‘I'm going to start a fire in Meyer's apartment,' she said coolly.

Lisette's eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You're crazy! A fire won't ensure that the dining-room is left unguarded and even if it is, it will only be for a very short space of time.'

‘There will be long enough,' Elise said with frightening certainty.

Lisette stared at her incredulously, her anger growing. ‘You're mad!' she hissed, wondering how Paul Gilles could possibly have judged Elise to be more competent than herself. ‘Not only will you destroy Valmy, you'll gain nothing by doing so! What are the Germans going to think when the panic is over and it's found that maps and papers have been taken? They're not going to think a passing hitchhiker dropped in and lifted them! They're going to know damned well why the fire was started and they're not going to have to look very far to find out who was responsible. We'll all be shot! My mother and Marie included!'

‘They won't shoot anybody,' Elise said equably, ‘because no maps, no papers, will be missing. I shall photograph what I find. No one will know that anyone has even been in the room.'

Lisette's breath was coming short and sharp. ‘It isn't possible! It's crazy, ill thought out…'

‘It's a chance,' Elise whispered fiercely. ‘Dear God, Germany's Inspector General of Defence in the west has been discussing military strategy only rooms away and you're quibbling about the danger!'

‘I'm not quibbling about the danger!' Lisette retorted furiously. ‘I'm quibbling at risking failure!'

‘We won't fail,' Elise said. ‘It's going to be as easy as falling off a log.'

‘Does Paul know your intentions?'

‘He gave me the camera. How I get in and out of the room is my own affair.'

‘It isn't,' Lisette said savagely, thinking of her mother. ‘It's mine as well, and I'm not going to sign my parents' death warrant because you're too hot-headed to listen to reason!'

‘You have no choice,' Elise said infuriatingly. ‘It's going to be days before you can even move from your bed.'

Lisette's eyes flashed and she gritted her teeth. It wasn't going to be days, it was going to be hours, but she saw no reason why Elise should be informed of her plans.

‘Have you told my father what you intend to do?'

‘Not yet. The fewer people who know, the better. I've told you because you're the person who's going to have to sit tight on the camera in the immediate aftermath. If any suspicions are aroused, and there is a search, I doubt if Meyer will think this room suspect or have his men toss you on to the floor in order to search beneath your mattress. I don't envy you your conquest, but he's sweet on you. I've overheard him asking after your welfare twice now.'

‘You're imagining things,' Lisette said coldly, a shiver running down her spine.

Elise gave her a sudden, disconcerting smile. ‘I'm not. I'm very perceptive. I wouldn't have thought a copy-book soldier like Meyer would have been capable of ordinary human emotions, but it seems that where you are concerned, he is. Don't let it panic you, we can use it to our advantage.'

‘Yes,' said Lisette bleakly, determined to see Paul Gilles at the first opportunity. ‘I'm sure we can.'

When Elise left the room she swung her legs from the bed and determinedly tried to stand. Elise's scheme was just the kind of careless operation Paul had been so insistent they avoid. The stakes were too high to allow for failure. If their suspicions were right, and it was the Allies'plan for an invasion of Europe that was being discussed by Rommel and Dieter, then it was imperative that London should know the extent of German information. If German intelligence knew when and where the invasion was planned, then it would be doomed to failure. Thousands of Allied troops would die needlessly, and France would be lost.

Sweat broke out on her forehead as she took first one step and then another. And if the Germans
didn't
know the Allies'plans, that information, too, would be vital to London. Her thigh throbbed, the blood pounding, and she reached the window with relief. Somehow she had to walk or ride into the village and speak to Paul. A young corporal was wheeling a motorcycle away into one of the disused stables; Dieter's staff car was parked on the cobbles, gleaming and polished and frustratingly inaccessible. Elise had said that she planned to act soon. But how soon? Surely the best time would be immediately after one of Rommel's visits, and there was no telling when his next flying visit would be. The feeling of foreboding she had felt when Elise entered her room with the tea tray deepened into fear. Had Elise told her of her plans because she intended acting almost immediately? Was there going to be no time to speak to Paul? No opportunity of thinking of a safer, surer way?

There was a firm rap on her door and she flew round to face it, her eyes wide, half-expecting to meet the news that Valmy was on fire.

‘What are you doing out of bed?' he asked peremptorily, his dark, rich voice smoking across her senses. ‘Auge told you not to walk on it yet.'

‘I needed to walk on it,' she said unsteadily. ‘I was getting so stiff I could hardly move.'

His presence seemed to fill the room. He was in uniform, his cap and gloves held correctly in the crook of his arm, the decoration for valour that Hitler had placed around his neck gleaming dully in the late afternoon sunlight. He closed the door behind him, placed his cap and gloves on a chair, and walked towards her.

‘I tried to visit you earlier, but your mother was insistent that you needed rest.'

She tried to speak and could not. He was going to touch her and her mental capitulation would become physical reality. The blood drummed in her ears and she pressed herself backwards against the chill coldness of the window pane.

He stood mere inches away from her and then slowly reached out, tilting her face to his, tracing the pure outline of her cheek-bone and jaw with his forefinger. ‘Don't be afraid,' he said, drawing her towards him, his voice thickening. ‘I'm not going to hurt you, Lisette. Not now. Not ever.'

A shudder ran through her and she gave a low, soft moan as his arms closed around her and his mouth came down on hers in swift, unfumbled contact. For one brief, vain moment she tried to resist and to pull away but he held her easily and as his lips burned hers, hard and sweet, her body moulded itself to his of its own volition. Her hands moved up and around his neck, her lips parting as she lost her breath in the passion of his mouth.

Nothing mattered any more. Not the uniform that he wore; not the language that he spoke. Not even Valmy. All that mattered was that she knew, with an instinct ages old, that she had found the other half of her being. The one person without whom she would never again feel whole.

‘I love you,' she whispered helplessly as his hot, urgent mouth moved to her throat and her shoulders and he slipped the strap of her nightdress free, his fingers caressing the soft warm flesh of her breast.

The silk fall of her hair brushed his hand and tenderness, terrible in its intensity, trembled within him. He wanted to plunder her body, to assuage his deep, driving need of her with ferocious love-making, yet when he lifted her in his arms and turned with her towards the bed, it was with passion tightly reined.

She was still pale from the blood she had lost. It would be days before her stitches were removed. Days before he could make love to her without inflicting pain. With a gentleness he had never before experienced, he laid her down on the bed, stunned by the knowledge that he would wait – and wait willingly.

He took hold of her hands, drawing her fingertips up and pressing them against his lips. All of his adult life he had had as many women as he had chosen to reach out for. Sophisticated, clever, beautiful women that he had taken and discarded with practised ease. Not one of them had possessed her vibrancy, her allure. Just looking at her sent his pulse pounding and his heart racing.

A smile crooked the corner of his mouth. His family would be outraged. His friends would think he had taken leave of his senses. A Frenchwoman. He could almost hear their remarks; see their disbelief. His shoulders lifted in an imperceptible shrug. He was not a man who cared what others thought of him. He was thirty-two, a hardened man of the world who knew what he wanted. And what he wanted was Lisette de Valmy.

‘It won't be easy for you,' he said, reaching out and sliding the strap of her nightdress chastely up and on to her shoulder, fighting the urge to cup the perfect weight of her breast in his palm, knowing that if he did so all restraint would be lost.

There was ownership in his fingers and a shiver ran down her spine. ‘What won't be easy?' she asked, noticing for the first time the small scar that ran through his left eyebrow, the tiny lines at the corner of his eyes and mouth.

‘Marrying a German.'

She
gazed
up at him, her mouth rounding on a gasp of incredulity.
‘Marrying?'

His eyes gleamed. ‘Of course. What other alternative is there?'

They were legion and they both knew it. German officers did not many French girls. They took them as spoils of war. Sometimes they seduced them. Sometimes they even loved them. But they did not marry them.

‘But how … where?'

He hooked a finger under her chin, lowering his head, kissing her long and deeply. ‘Don't you worry about that,' he said at last. ‘Leave it all to me.'

She grasped hold of his hand. ‘No!' she cried in sudden fear. ‘My parents… The villagers …'

His smile faded. ‘There's no need for you to concern yourself about retribution from the villagers,' he said tightly. ‘As for your parents … they won't like it any more than mine will. But they'll accept it. They'll have no choice.'

She shook her head and the late afternoon sunlight danced in her hair. ‘I don't care what the villagers think of me, or what they might say or do. But I do care about my parents. They will be regarded as collaborators. You may be able to protect them now, but you won't be able to protect them when the war is over.'

Her words hung between them. When the war was over. To both of them it meant different things. For Dieter, it meant the subjection of the British. The surrender of the Americans. A France permanently under German control. A France where no retribution could be taken by the populace against those who had bowed to the inevitable and had joined forces with their oppressors.

To Lisette it meant a France that was free. A France no longer under the heel of Nazi domination. A France where those who had collaborated would be seen as traitors and treated as such.

They stared at each other, French and German, and the war rose up between them like a high, bloody wall, separating and dividing. At the expression in her eyes Dieter's jaw clenched. ‘Oh no,' he said savagely, reaching out for her and pulling her against him. ‘We're not going to fall into that trap, Lisette. Let the war take care of itself. It has nothing to do with you and me and we must never allow it to do so. I shall tell your parents that we are going to marry, but there is no need for anyone else to know. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.' He pressed his mouth against her hair. He would take her to Berlin. There would be difficulties but none that he could not overcome.

His voice was the voice of a man accustomed to making decisions and not having those decisions questioned. She leaned against him, sliding her arms around the lean tautness of his waist, resting her head against his chest, the sense of refuge that she had felt when his arms had closed around her in the rear of the Horch returning in full force. His lips brushed her temples, her cheeks, and then closed hungrily on her willing mouth, and she knew that no power on earth would ever separate them. Not family. Not country. Nothing.

‘Love me,' she begged in hungry, hoarse tones she scarcely recognised. ‘Please love me!'

His muscles tensed as he exerted every last vestige of his iron-strong self-control. ‘No,' he said, pressing her back against the pillows, his strong hands cupping her breasts, his mouth a mere fraction from hers. ‘Not while you're so weak that you can hardly stand.'