Never Leave Me (57 page)

A sign post with the farm name on it swung gently in the breeze at the roadside. Dominic veered down a cart track, cycling between rich cornfields and apple orchards, surprised to find that the farm was a working one and not just a pretentious and empty title. The building itself was manorial. Large and sprawling with a slate roof and leaded windows. In espousing the country life, Luke Brandon had done so in style and comfort. His heart began to slam as he skidded to a halt. Surely the knowledge that Luke was his father should make him feel differently about him? Surely he should not still feel the innate distaste for him that he had always felt?

The front door was of heavy oak, surrounded by baskets and tubs of flowers. He dropped the knocker hard against the wood with a spurt of anger. This was the man who had taken advantage of his mother when she was only eighteen years old. Who had, from what Greg had told him, led his mother to believe that he was dead. Rage flooded through him and as he reached out for the door knocker again the door swung suddenly open.

She was so young that he stared at her with amazement. Her hair was dark, looped back softly over her ears, gathered in a ribbon at the nape of her neck. She looked so much like his mother that all he could do was stare.

‘Can I help you?' she asked curiously.

He struggled to recover his equilibrium. ‘Yes. I would like to speak to Luke Brandon. My name is Dominic Dering.'

Her eyes lit with recognition and her mouth curved into a welcoming smile. ‘Dominic! How nice. I've heard so much about you from Melanie. Please come in.'

It was not what he had expected. He stared at her again, took a deep breath, and followed her into a wide quarry-tiled hallway.

‘Luke,
chéri
! We have a visitor!' she called from the foot of a broad sweep of highly polished woodstairs.

‘Coming!' From somewhere above them a door slammed, footsteps were heard approaching the head of the stairs. Dominic's throat tightened. His father. It was incredible. Unbelievable.

Luke began to descend the stairs, adjusting the sleeves of a turtleneck sweater, running his hand through his hair. The door was still open, sunlight streaming into the hall below him. He could see Lisette. Petite. Slender. Her dark hair pulled madonna-like away from her face, her strongly marked brows heightening the delicacy of her cheekbones and jaw. And he could see Dieter. Strong, powerful, every line of his body tense, his blond hair tousled, his harsh, hard-boned face raw with pain. He stumbled, his hand shooting out to the bannister to steady himself. It wasn't Lisette. It was his wife. And it wasn't Dieter.

‘Who the hell …?' he began fiercely.

‘It's Dominic,' his wife said cheerily, ‘Isn't it a nice surprise?'

Luke gasped for breath, his face ashen. Dominic. His likeness to Dieter was so strong, so marked, that even now he found it hard to believe that he wasn't once more at Valmy, standing at the head of the stairs, raising his pistol, taking aim, firing. ‘My God!' he whispered and then, abruptly, ‘Melanie isn't here. She isn't arriving until this evening.'

It was Dominic's turn to be disorientated. ‘I don't understand …'

Luke descended the remaining stairs swiftly. ‘Melanie,' he said curtly. ‘That's why you've come, isn't it? She said you'd had a row. She asked if she could stay for a few days before returning to school. Her ferry docks at Le Havre just after six.'

His head felt as if it were splitting apart. He said hoarsely, ‘I didn't come here to see Mel. I came here to see you.'

‘Would you like a coffee?' Luke's wife was asking. ‘An aperitif?'

‘Why?' Luke asked, as they both ignored her.

‘I want to talk to you.'

Luke's eyes narrowed sharply. ‘About what?' The boy looked ill, deranged almost.

‘About the war. About Valmy.'

Luke's mouth tightened. So the boy knew about his father. About his father's death. He wondered who had told him. ‘Then let's talk outside,' he said, glancing quickly at Dominic's pockets, at his belt, satisfied that the boy wasn't armed and hadn't come with a half-baked idea of revenge.

‘But surely some coffee …' Ginette said bewilderedly.

‘Later.' He dropped a swift kiss to her temple. ‘And some cognac as well, I think.'

‘But it's only two in the afternoon …'

Luke whistled a large, ungainly labrador to his heels and said to Dominic, ‘Come on, let's walk.'

They stepped out onto the gravel, the dog bounding joyously ahead of them. Neither of them spoke. Luke led the way, away from the farmhouse and towards a copse of trees. The fields on either side of them were well tended … He took a pipe out of his pocket, thumbing the tobacco down and lighting it. ‘Right,' he said at last, when they were a good half mile from the house. ‘What is it you want to know?'

Dominic stopped walking, waiting until Luke also stopped and turned round to face him. ‘I want to know,' he said, his jaw clenched, his eyes burning, ‘why you have never told me that I'm your son?'

Luke took the pipe out of his mouth and blew a wreath of blue smoke skywards. It was not what he had expected and his relief was intense. ‘Would you care to repeat that question?' he said with interest. ‘I don't think I can have heard it right.'

‘You smarmy bastard!' Dominic yelled, his self-control deserting him, tears terrifyingly near to the surface. ‘I know damn well that you're my father! That you and my mother were lovers! That she only married Greg because she thought you were dead!'

Luke eyed him with amusement. ‘And just who filled your head with that pother of nonsense?' he asked laconically.

‘
Bastard
!' Dominic sobbed again, his fist shooting out to Luke's jaw. Luke side-stepped swiftly, deflecting the bow with ease.

‘Oh no you don't!' he panted, seizing hold of Dominic's wrist and wrenching it halfway up his back. ‘Now who the hell told you that I was your father?'

‘Greg!' Dominic gasped, wincing with pain.

Luke's brows shot upwards and then he began to laugh. ‘That's funny,' he said, releasing his hold of him. ‘My God, I wish I'd known years ago that was what he believed!'

Dominic stared at him. ‘Then it's not true? You're not my father?'

Luke shook his head in mock regret. ‘No, Dominic, I am afraid the honour is not mine.'

‘Then who?' Dominic began, and then he remembered Melanie and he didn't care. ‘Oh Christ!' he gasped ecstatically, staggering with relief. ‘Then I can marry Melanie.
I can marry Melanie
!'

‘You can if you can get her mother's permission,' Luke said drily.

‘What about your permission?' Dominic said bluntly.

Luke shrugged, his voice indifferent. ‘If you want to marry when you're both scarcely out of the schoolroom, I shan't exert any effort to prevent you.' A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. He wondered how long Greg had known that Dominic was not his son. How long he had believed that he, Luke, was Dominic's father. How long he had suffered. The dog circled around them, impatient for the walk to continue. ‘As I am not your father, don't you want to know who is?' he asked curiously.

Dominic was suddenly very still. ‘Do you know?'

Luke's lean, olive-toned face was amused. ‘Oh yes,' he said, a smile touching the corners of his mouth. ‘I know. I've always known.'

‘Then tell me.'

Luke shook his head, picking up a stick and throwing it for his dog. ‘No,' he said with infuriating complacence. ‘It isn't for me to tell you. It's for your mother. She'll be at Valmy by now. Heloise said their flight landed at noon.'

Dominic glanced at his watch. It was two-thirty. He had nearly four hours before meeting Melanie off the ferry.

‘I will,' he said grimly, spinning on his heel and breaking into a run.

She was in the rose garden. He crashed the bicycle to the ground, running across the terrace and down the moss-covered steps. Her eyes flew upwards and he saw that she had been crying.

He remembered his grandfather's death and was ashamed that, in his relief over Melanie, he had forgotten it.

‘Dominic!' She rose to her feet, smiling through her tears, her happiness at seeing him piercing him to the heart. She was his mother. He loved her and whoever his father was, he knew now that it would make no difference to that love.

‘Hello Maman,' he said, walking swiftly towards her, hugging her tight.

She scarcely reached his shoulder. She was wearing a black woollen dress, exquisitely cut, and sheer black stockings and black suede, peep-toed shoes. Her hair was loose, falling softly about her shoulders, smelling fragrant and clean.

‘I missed you,
mon cher
,' she said, smiling up at him, tears still trembling on her thick, lustrous lashes. There were pearls at her ears, a heavy rope of pearls about her neck. She looked no older than the girl Luke Brandon had married.

‘I need to talk to you, Maman,' he said, taking her hand, beginning to walk with her down one of the petal-strewn pathways. ‘I need to know about my father.'

‘Your father?' Of all the things she had expected him to say to her, she had not expected it to be about Greg. ‘But he's well. The surgeon is optimistic that the surgery was a success and …'

‘Not Greg, Maman,' he said steadily. ‘My father.'

She froze, the blood draining from her face.

‘I'm sorry, Maman,' he said compassionately, ‘but I have to know the truth.'

‘But who told you …' she whispered. ‘How did you know?'

Her face was so white it was like carved ivory.

‘Dad told me. Whoever my father is, I guess Greg will always be Dad to me. He told me so himself but I didn't believe him. I didn't understand what he meant. I do now.'

‘Greg told you …' She swayed.

‘He thought Luke was my father. He told me that you and Luke had been lovers before he met you. That you thought Luke was dead when you married.'

Her cry was the cry of a small, wounded animal.

‘Why doesn't he know the truth, Maman? Why did you never tell him?'

‘Because …' Her voice was choked in her throat. ‘Because I thought that he would leave me … That he would be so shocked by the truth that he would never want to see me again …'

Dominic took hold of her shoulders gently. ‘He loves you, Maman. There is nothing in this world that you could do that would shock him so much that he would leave you.'

‘I killed that love many years ago,' she said, her eyes wide and dark and anguished.

He shook his head, feeling suddenly older than her and wiser. ‘There is no way that you could kill his love for you, Maman. Not ever. Now I want to know. Who is my father?'

She closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them, the tears sparkling on her eyelashes were no longer for Henri. ‘Come with me,
mon cher
,' she said, taking his hand, her fingers interlocking tightly with his. ‘Let me show you,' and she led him out of the rose garden and into the meadow beyond. The meadow that led to the tiny church and the overgrown graveyard and the cherry tree leaning over a blossom-covered grave.

‘His name was Dieter Meyer,' she said, her voice thick with relief and love, ‘and he came to Valmy in the spring of 1944 …'

She told him everything. She told him about her fateful bicycle ride; about her agony at falling in love with a German. She told him about Rommel; and Elise, and their efforts to pass information to the Allies. She told him about Paul Gilles and André Caldron, and the way they had died. She told him about Black Orchestra. She told him about their meetings in the small turret room; about their plans to be married; of their delight when they had known they were to have a child.

She told him about D-Day, and about his death and the only thing she did not tell him was the identity of the soldier who had fired the fatal shots. She told him about the tortured, grief-stricken days that had followed, of how she thought she had lost the baby, of her decision to marry Greg. And she told him of Greg's return in 1945. Of his part in the liberation of Dachau, and of her conviction that he would leave her if he ever learned that she had loved a German.

‘You were wrong, Maman,' he said at last, gently. ‘He believed and lived with something far worse than the truth.' He plucked a wild rose and laid it on his father's grave, and then he said, ‘I'm going to meet Melanie, Maman. I'm going to bring her back to Valmy.'

When her mother died, Valmy would be hers. She would never live in it again, but she knew that Dominic would. That he would live in it with Melanie. That his children would run freely through the rooms that his father had entered as an invader.

He left her and she stood for a long time, thinking about the past, about the pain Greg had endured, about the depth of his love for her. The sun began to lose its mid-afternoon heat and she still stood, looking down at Dieter's grave, knowing that ever since his death she had lived in a Gethsemane of her own making. Love had been within her grasp all along. Greg had known that Dominic was not his son, and it had made no difference to the love he had given her. She knew now that if she had told him about Dieter, it too would have made no difference to the love he felt for her. She had grossly underestimated the man she had married, and because she had done so, because she had been a coward when she should have been brave, they had known years of unhappiness.

She heard the familiar chink of wheelchair wheels and spun round. The shadows were long on the grass, the sun flushed with rose, low in the sky.

He halted a yard or so away from her. He was wearing jeans and a silk, open-necked shirt, his muscles beneath the fine fabric hard and strong. There were no lines of pain on his face. He looked bronzed and healthy and she wanted him so much that she felt physically weak.