Never Leave Me (4 page)

Her eyes were suspiciously bright. ‘Yes, Papa,' she said, feeling the burden of secrecy that she had lived with for so long lift from her shoulders. ‘But you cannot meet Paul as inconspicuously as I can. You must let me continue doing the things that I
can
do.'

‘And you must promise me never to cross Major Meyer's path again.'

Their eyes met and her throat tightened. There were no more unseen barriers between them.

‘I promise, Papa,' she said, not realising how vain a promise it

would prove to be.

A week later, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel descended on Valmy, his large black Horch convertible flanked by a motorcycle escort, his aides'cars in his wake. There were no preliminaries of civilities as he entered the chateau. He marched across the stone-flagged hall, a short, stocky figure in a heavy greatcoat, his silver-topped marshal's baton under his arm.

‘Let's get to work, Meyer,' he said impatiently, pulling off his gauntlets and slapping them against his palms. ‘We have only one real enemy, and that is time.'

‘Yes, Herr Feldmarschall,' Dieter said respectfully, clicking his heels and leading the way into Valmy's grand dining-room.

The maps were spread out on the twenty foot table. Drinks had been set out on a handsome Louis XV chest, but Rommel ignored them. He had no time for fripperies. He strode straight to the table and stared down at the maps grimly.

‘Well, Meyer, what do you think?' He had asked for Dieter Meyer's presence in Normandy personally. He knew the family; knew the man. He was the kind of officer he liked – hard-headed with intellect and imagination, as well as courage.

‘The war will be won or lost on the beaches, sir,' Dieter said bluntly. ‘We'll have only one chance to stop the enemy and that's while he's in the water … weighed down by equipment, and struggling to get ashore. Our main line of resistance must be on the coast. There's only one way to smash such an attack if it comes, and that is by meeting it head on.'

Rommel growled in agreement. ‘And do you think this is where an attack will come, Meyer?'

‘Reports from captured Resistance leaders indicate it is.'

‘And the nightly air attacks on the Pas de Calais?'

‘A bluff,' Dieter said with cool certainty. ‘The Allies are trying to draw our attention from the real target.'

Rommel nodded. It was a strategy he would have used himself. Get the enemy to deploy their strength on a false target leaving the real target unprotected.

Dieter saw the lines of strain on his commander-in-chief's face and knew the reasons for them. No matter what was said publicly, the Third Reich was in deep trouble. Thousands of Allied bombers were pounding Germany. Russia's massive forces had driven into Poland. Allied troops were at the gates of Rome. Everywhere the great armies of the Wehrmacht were being driven back and destroyed. Germany was not yet beaten, but an Allied invasion would be decisive.

It was here, on the coast, that the future of Germany would be decided. The high command thought that the attack would come at the Pas de Calais, but he had a gut feeling that they were wrong. To outwit the Allies it was necessary to out-think them. And in attempting to do so, he had become more and more sure that the attack would not be in the obvious place. Not at the narrow crossing that was being bombed with such zest, but on the vast, open beaches of Normandy.

Rommel swept his baton from the Scheldt in the Netherlands down across Normandy to the north front of Brittany. The possible invasion front was vast and all of it had to be protected. He slammed his baton into the palm of his hand and began to stride the length of the room. ‘You've been here four days, Meyer. You've inspected the coast. What more can be done to defend it?'

‘The low level of the land and the Vire estuary can be more fully exploited,' Dieter replied unhesitatingly. ‘Further areas can be flooded. That will make it impossible for parachutists or glider-borne infantry to land. The open fields inland can be riddled with booby-trapped stakes and trip wires. That should give them a bloody enough welcome.'

Rommel nodded. He hadn't underestimated his young officer. He continued to pace the beautiful inlaid floor. ‘See to it, Meyer,' he said grimly. ‘And see that every bluff and gully leading from the beaches is mined. Every pathway, however obscure. We must leave nothing to chance.' He clapped his hand on Dieter's shoulder. ‘The future of Germany is in our hands,' he said gravely. ‘We must not let her down.'

He had swept from the chateau with the same speed and lack of fuss with which he had entered. Dieter watched the Horch skim down the linden-flanked drive, his handsome face sombre. Their intelligence services had not been able to discover the Allies'plans. Yet Resistance leaders would have to be alerted in order to co-ordinate the attack. If it was to be in Normandy the local underground leaders would be the first to know. His mouth tightened. That line of enquiry meant he would have to liaise with the Gestapo at Caen and Bayeux.

He wheeled on his heel, gravel scattering as he marched back into the chateau. His family was an old German family that could trace its name back for hundreds of years in the
Almenach de Gotha.
His father had been a soldier and his grand father a soldier before him. They were members of the officer caste who hated the Nazis and when it came to the Gestapo, Dieter shared their contempt. He wanted to have as little truck with his country's bully boys as possible.

She was walking towards the foot of the main staircase when he entered the hall, wearing brown slacks and a cashmere sweater that had seen better days. Her hair was windblown, soft dark tendrils brushing against her cheeks, and there was mud on the low heels of her shoes. She kept her bicycle in one of the deserted stables at the rear of the chateau and he judged that she had just returned from one of her frequent trips to Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts. Her eyes met his coolly, large and dark in the pale perfection of her face and an impulse of sensuality went up like a flare inside him.

He wondered what the devil it was about her that he found so arousing. He was thirty-two, and his taste had never run to virgins. Before the war his social circle had been high and fast-moving and the women he took to his bed had been glamorous sophisticates. Innocence had never held any charms for him. Yet ever since entering Valmy he had been electrifyingly aware of the Comte's young daughter.

The blaze of defiance with which she had faced him in her father's rooms had sexually disturbed him. He had never seen eyes so dark and brilliant, lashes so long and curling. There was a brightness to her, a vividness, that he found intensely arousing. It was as if she were lit by an inner flame and he found his eyes being drawn to her time and time again. She was very French. Carelessly elegant. Even in the crumpled slacks and old sweater there was an air of
chic
about her. A style that had nothing to do with what she wore and everything to do with the way she wore it.

She had paused, one foot on the bottom stair, the thrust of her hip and the long line of her leg unknowingly provocative, her shining black hair held away from her face with two heavy tortoiseshell combs, her violet-blue eyes hostile.

He barely glanced at her, striding across the hall and entering the grand dining-room with its array of maps. There were enough willing Frenchwomen without deflowering the daughter of his reluctant host. He gazed down at the maps, pencilling in large areas, a deep frown furrowing his brow. More land east of the Vire could be flooded and more guns placed on the cliffs, their barrels aimed, not towards the sea but directly down at the beaches so that they could fire at point blank range along the waves of assaulting troops. His pencil faltered, her face dancing insidiously in his mind. Her mouth was full and soft, like the petals of a rose. He wondered what it would be like to kiss and gave an expletive of annoyance. Damn the girl. He had other, far more important, things to think about. With renewed concentration, he studied the maps of the coastline, identifying areas of weakness, determined that if the Allies invaded, they would be thrust back into the sea.

Lisette ran up the stairs to her room, a small pulse pounding in her throat, the breath tight in her chest. His presence filled the chateau. It was no longer their home, but his. He moved through the rooms with utter assurance, ordering locks to be fitted on the double doors leading to the grand dining-room, requisitioning yet another room that overlooked the Channel, curtly civil, always menacing.

She closed her bedroom door behind her, moving across to the window and staring out over the windswept headland to the sea. Paul was still working on the repairs to the defences at Vierville. No doubt doing so on Major Meyer's orders. The aides had come to Valmy as she had known they would. The cobbled courtyard at the rear of the chateau was rarely empty of staff cars and motorcycles and the old servants'quarters around the courtyard now housed a score of soldiers.

She leaned her face against the coolness of the window pane. Rommel's sweeping visit to Valmy had confirmed her suspicions that Major Meyer's task was to oversee the coastal defences. Which meant that the German high command was increasingly suspicious that if and when an attack by the Allies was launched, it would be directed against Normandy. She drummed her fingernails against the glass frustratedly. It was surely the kind of news that London would be interested in, yet without Paul she had no way of passing the information along. For her own safety and the safety of others, she did not know who Paul's contact was. It was the way the Resistance survived and flourished: secrecy was its life blood. Even the leaders rarely knew one another except by code names and never did one group know what another was doing. If betrayal came, it could not spread. She turned away from the window restlessly. An invasion was only rumour but it was one the Germans believed. If it were true, it would be vital that they had no knowledge of where and when the attack was to take place. Prior knowledge would doom it to disaster. And in Valmy, on the grand dining-room table, were probably maps and papers that would tell the Allies exactly how much information the Germans had about their plans.

Her eyes sparked with impatience. Her father had promised that he would garner what information he could, but the rooms occupied by Major Meyer were locked and a sentry stood on duty outside the double doors of the dining-room. No easy opportunities for spying were going to present themselves. Opportunities would have to be made. She opened the bedroom door, walking quickly and quietly along the corridor and down the stairs to the library.

‘We must talk, Papa,' she said, not sitting down. ‘In the gardens, not in the house.'

Henri de Valmy nodded. Field Marshal Rommel's visit to Valmy had shaken him. Whatever Meyer's task it was obviously an important one and he could feel the precarious safety of their lives rapidly slipping away.

The sentry on duty outside the dining-room eyed them with hostility as they crossed the hall. It was as if
they
were the usurpers. A flare of white rage surged through Lisette and she had to clench her jaw in order to remain calm. They were everywhere: tramping up and down the winding stairs that led to Major Meyer's study; grinding their cigarette stubs beneath their heels as they paced the terraces; littering the drive with their presence. Her father took her arm gently as they walked through the kitchens and out into the courtyard beyond.

‘They must be endured,' he said quietly, yet again. ‘It is the only way that we will survive them, Lisette.'

‘I hate them,' she said fiercely as they crossed the cobbles, the February sun chill. ‘They've permeated Valmy with their presence. I don't think that we'll ever be free of them.'

‘We will,' her father assured her, his austere features grim. ‘And until we are, we must be grateful for the Major's civility.'

Beyond the courtyard a long lawn sloped away towards a terrace and the sunken rose gardens. As they began to walk towards them something tight caught in Lisette's throat. She hated Major Meyer most of all. It was easy to be contemptuous of the others. They didn't rob her of breath when she unexpectedly encountered them as the major did. He had a way of looking at her that totally disconcerted her. His very presence scorched her nerve ends raw. It was because of him that the others were here. Because of him that their home was no longer their own. And her reaction to him was intense.

‘We have no reason to be grateful to Major Meyer for anything,' she said, a throb of passion in her voice.

Her father led the way down the moss-covered steps that led to the formally laid out rose beds. In summer they were vibrant with colour. He liked old-fashioned roses – full blown Gloire de Dijons, pale flushed Ophelias. Now the rose trees were gaunt and bleak, only the flat green buds promising the glory to come.

‘Valmy has many treasures and none of them have been despoiled,' he said patiently, wishing that he had put on a jacket for the sun held no warmth. ‘We haven't been asked to move into the servants' quarters to make room for his men. Neither you nor your mother have been treated … disrespectfully.' He passed a hand across his eyes. My God. When he thought of some of the stories he had heard about the occupying forces, the wanton destruction and the brutality, the rapes … At least Meyer's men were disciplined.

He had walked into the kitchen some days ago in the Major's wake. Marie had been transferring a heavy casserole from the oven to the table and two soldiers had been lounging in her way. The casserole was hot and there was no other surface upon which Marie could set it down. She had said
‘Excusez moi,'
and the soldiers had deliberately obstructed her, laughing at her distress as her gnarled hands began to lose their grip on the heavy dish. Meyer had stepped into the kitchen, ordering them to apologise instantly and they had done so, mortified with shame.