The Eden Inheritance (21 page)

Kathryn shivered. The thin silk kimono was no protection against the frosty night. If she didn't go back to bed she'd catch a chill. But she did not want to go back to bed. The thought of lying there, listening for the small sounds that would tell her Paul had returned, was not an inviting one.

Suddenly a movement on the drive caught her eye. She leaned forward against the windowsill, peering out. Paul – it had to be! She experienced a rush of relief and then, as suddenly, the first creeping fingers of alarm. His progress was erratic, he was pushing the bicycle in a way that looked more as if the bicycle was supporting him than the other way around, and his other arm looked strangely awkward. Something was wrong. She knew it with instinctive certainty and knew, just as surely, that she had to find out what it was.

Charles was still sleeping soundly, his snores softened into deep, regular breathing Kathryn padded into the dressing room and found a coat. Then she changed her slippers for a pair of fiat-heeled shoes, let herself out of the bedroom and crept down the stairs.

The back door of the château was unlocked, evidence that he had intended to return that way, and she crossed the courtyard to the shed, the door of which was ajar. She pushed it open and as she did so heard the click of a gun being cocked.

‘It's me!' she hissed urgently. ‘Is that you, Paul?'

‘For God's sake! I almost shot you!' His voice was thick.

‘Are you mad?' she whispered, shocked.

The shed was very dark after the bright moonlight outside but she could just make out the figure leaning heavily against the wall, clutching his arm.

‘Paul?' she said. ‘Are you all right?'

‘No, I'm bloody not. I nearly got caught, dammit. I killed two Germans. And one of them got me in the arm.'

‘On my God!' Kathryn went hot, then cold, and for a moment she thought she was going to faint. Never in her life before had she experienced such overwhehning terror. ‘You killed two Germans? Paul – you'll bring the roof in on us!'

‘Never mind them for the moment. It's me I'm concerned about. I'm dripping blood everywhere and I think my arm is broken.'

‘Oh my God!' she said again. Her eyes were beginning to get used to the light now. She went over to him. ‘Show me.'

‘This one. Christ!' He winced as she touched it.

The thick material of his jacket felt soggy and sticky to her touch; a dark pool of blood had dripped on to the floor.

‘Stay here,' she said. ‘You can't come back into the house while you're bleeding like that. I'll get something …'

She left him in the shed and flew back into the kitchen. A few minutes later she was back with a thick towel.

‘Can you take your jacket off?'

He groaned as he eased it off his shoulder; she peeled the sleeve back down his arm, wrapping the towel around it as firmly and gently as she could.

‘That should take care of it for a minute or two. Let's get you inside.'

She put her arm around him, supporting him, and he leaned against her gratefully. Every last reserve of his strength had gone into getting back to the château and now he felt weak and shaky.

‘Can you make it up to your room?' she asked when they were back in the kitchen. ‘I'd better do something about the blood in the shed.'

‘I'll make it,' he said through gritted teeth.

She filled a bucket with water, found a scrubbing brush and took both out to the shed. In the half-light she was not sure how good a job she would be able to make of clearing up but at least she had to try. After a few minutes' work the floor looked reasonably clean again. She scattered some sawdust which she found in a sack by the door over the wet patch and rearranged a couple of sacks to half cover it. The bicycle she stowed away against the far wall. Then she emptied the bucket down a drain in the yard and went back into the house, bolting the door behind her and creeping, up the stairs to Paul's room. He was sitting on the bed cradling his arm, which was still swathed in the kitchen towel. His face was drawn into tight lines of pain and lacked any vestige of colour.

‘You look terrible,' she said.

‘Thank you very much!'

‘Don't be flip. What are we going to do about your arm?' She crossed to him, sitting on the bed beside him and trying to unwrap the towel. He winced.

‘Leave it, can't you?'

‘No, I can't. Let me look at it.'

He allowed her to unwrap the towel, wadding it underneath to prevent blood dripping on to the floor. It was an ugly wound but at least she did not think the arm was broken.

‘I'll try to clean this up,' she said, ‘but you are going to have to get it seen to professionally.'

‘And how the hell do I do that?' The pain was making him sharp and snappy, loss of blood and exhaustion fogging his brain.

‘What about your doctor friend in Périgueux? I'll take you there tomorrow. But you'll have to keep out of sight. Thank goodness they are all busy at the distillery is all I can say. And thank goodness I happened to see you coming back!'

He said nothing. It was alien to him not to be in control but for the moment he was glad to be able to leave it all to her.

Kathryn went back downstairs for a bowl of water and disinfectant – she was afraid to use the bathroom in case someone heard her. Bad enough running water at all in the middle of the night – the ancient plumbing could make ghastly noises in the pipes. When she returned she bathed the wound as best she could, steeling herself to ignore Paul's muffled groans of anguish. When she had finished she bound it up with yet another clean towel and secured it with a long silk scarf around his neck. Then she helped him to lie down on the bed, fully clothed, and covered him with the eiderdown.

‘I don't suppose you'll sleep much but do at least try,' she said. ‘I must go to bed myself now or Charles will miss me. I'll bring you breakfast in the morning and we'll work out a plan of some kind.'

He nodded, reaching out a band to her.

‘You know, Kathryn, you're quite a girl.'

‘Yes,' she said drily. ‘ I surprise myself sometimes.'

But there was a glow in her, a tenderness erasing the anxiety momentarily. It went with her as she returned to her bedroom, hanging up the coat and draping her kimono over a chair. As she slipped into bed Charles stirred, reaching for her in his sleep. She eased herself out of his reach but for a moment she found herself imagining that the body beside her, emanating warmth, was not Charles but Paul. She lay, savouring the illusion, too tired to wonder at it let alone try to evaluate or understand. But still sleep would not come. Every time she closed her eyes she was reliving the events of the last hour and soon the pleasant illusion was overtaken by anxiety once more – anxiety for Paul, anxiety for herself, for what she had to do and how she was going to achieve it. And then, just at the point when sheer exhaustion was about to claim her, heart-stopping terror.

Paul had killed two Germans, he had said. Whether they knew he was responsible or not, what dire consequences would that have for them all?

Dawn was breaking, silver and pink, before finally Kathryn managed to grab a couple of hours' desperately needed sleep.

W
HEN SHE WAS
sure that the coast was clear Kathryn went to Paul's room.

He was lying on the bed dozing but the tumbled eiderdown and pillows told her he had, not surprisingly, spent a bad night. As soon as he realised he was no longer alone he jerked violently, groaned and tried to sit upright.

‘How are you feeling?' she asked.

‘Lousy.'

‘I can see that. Look, I've brought you a cup of coffee. We have to talk. We must decide what to do.'

She set the cup down on a small table within reach of his good arm, glancing, as she did so, at the towel with which she had bound up the wound. Though a dark patch of blood was visible it was not as large as she had feared it might be.

‘At least the bleeding seems to have stopped,' she said, ‘but I still think you should get it seen to. It could turn septic. And the trouble is I can't ask a doctor to call here. We daren't draw attention to the fact that you need treatment, and in any case I'm not sure how far Dr Artigaux is to be trusted. I'll have to take you to Périgueux. I only hope there's enough petrol left in the Hispano.'

‘No,' he said. ‘I can't ask you to do that, Kathryn. I've had a chance to think now – I've been awake most of the night. The best thing would be for me to get of here altogether. Then if the Gestapo come asking questions about the murder of two German soldiers they won't find you sheltering an enemy agent under your roof.'

‘But where would you go?' Instead of relief Kathryn was' experiencing a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘I have other contacts. They'd hide me and I can change my identity. Now this has happened I can't endanger you any more than I already have done. With hindsight perhaps I shouldn't have come back here last night at all but there are things I need to remove. They are well hidden but if the Germans made a really thorough search I wouldn't like to guarantee they wouldn't find them. Besides, I was worried about the damn bicycle – I thought it might be identifiable.'

‘Oh Paul, I don't know … The very fact that you had disappeared would be suspicious. How would I explain that?'

‘You wouldn't. You'd just have to plead complete ignorance, pretend you were as taken in as the rest of them. Even if your family had doubts they wouldn't betray you, would they? And to the outside world the fact that they have been such good citizens of the new France should stand you all in good stead.'

‘I don't know,' she said again. ‘I don't like it.'

‘Neither do I, but it's the best we can do. If the Boche come here asking questions tell them about me as openly as you can without incrimmating yourself. Christ, it's a mess, I know. I'm sorry, Kathryn. It was a mistake on my part to involve you.'

‘It's a bit late to worry about that now,' she said. ‘ In any case you didn't make any promises about it being easy. You did warn me it would be dangerous.'

‘I also said I'd do what I could to protect you. So far I've made a balls-up of that. I don't want to get you in deeper.'

‘If you were to go like this you'd be picked up in no time.' She couldn't believe how much it suddenly mattered to her that he should not be picked up – and not because she was afraid he might talk under pressure, for she knew he would not allow that to happen. If questioning and torture became inevitable he would simply take the cyanide capsule that he carried in his cuff link – and it was that very possibility she could not bear to think about. ‘Please – let me take you to Périgueux and see if the doctor can patch you up enough to bluff it out. I'd never forgive myself if I turned you out now, just when you need help and support more than ever.'

‘And I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to you because of me.'

It was a truth he was no longer able to ignore, but which had shaken him nevertheless and cost him a great deal to admit, even to himself. He cared very much what happened to Kathryn. He had come here half expecting a spoiled little rich girl of the type he despised most and found instead a woman of character and spirit, scared to death yet brave enough to risk the consequences in order to help him. He had used her ruthlessly, knowing: he was placing her in a position of great danger and accepting that the ultimate sacrifice might be the result. If he was to be successful he could not afford to think about that. She was just one woman; the stake he and others like him were playing for was a whole continent of men, women and children. The trouble was that he had committed the cardinal sin of espionage. He had ceased to see her as just one woman.

Tossing and turning through the long painful hours of the night he had seen her face, heard her voice, wished irrationally that she was still there with him instead of lying beside her husband, even though, like most wounded animals, his primary instinct was to want to be alone with his pain. But somehow thinking of her had eased the agony. The realisation had come as a shock to him. In the dark and lonely hours it had always been Gerie's face that had been there before his half-closed eyes, Gerie's voice speaking inside his head. Now he discovered to his dismay that he was unable to visualise her clearly. With infinite care he sketched the details in his mind like an artist working on a portrait – the flaxen hair, her china-blue eyes, her creamy skin and the flush of pink colour in her cheeks. Baby-face, he had used to call her teasingly. But try as he might the picture refused to take shape, the details refusing to blend into a whole. And with a sickening sense of betrayal creeping around his heart Paul realised it was Kathryn's face that was real to him now.

It was this realisation that had made him decide he must leave the château. On a professional front it was dangerous to feel this way about any one person – the caring made one too vulnerable. But from a personal point of view too he wanted to escape. He did not want another face replacing Gerie's in his mind's eye, did not want anyone else impingeing on the place in his heart that belonged to her alone. It was too soon, much too soon, an insult to all they had shared.

‘I have to go,' he said now. ‘It's the best chance for all of us.'

Kathryn raked her fingers through her hair. She felt close to tears, helpless and frightened.

‘Well, I don't agree with you. But if your mind is made up I suppose I can't very well stop you. But at least have something to eat first.'

‘All right,' he said. ‘Then you must go out. Take Guy with you. When you get back I'll be gone. Tell someone straight away. Pretend surprise – bafflement. And then forget all about me.'

She nodded, knowing he was asking the impossible. It would be difficult to enough to carry off such a charade, but she supposed she could manage it. What she would not be able to do was forget him.