A Mortal Sin (23 page)

“What if Paul ever found out?” he asked.

“He wouldn’t.” Hard and implacable the tones were now. “Paul isn’t the man he was before Singapore.”

“I heard he nearly lost his leg.” Tom desperately played for time to give himself a chance to digest what Sir Phillip was saying.

“Yes.” Momentarily something flickered in the stony brown eyes. “Physically he’s recovered, mentally, well…” Sir Phillip lit a cigar and blew out a circle of smoke. “What’s your price?”

“Well.” Tom ignored the shocked gasp from Julie. “A thousand pounds.”

“A thousand pounds?” Sir Phillip echoed.

“Yes, Ashfield, that’s my price. Five hundred for me and five hundred for Daphne.”

“Tom, no,” Julie wailed.

“Why not? We could do with some extra money. It would give us a good start.”

“And Daphne?” she asked.

He inwardly cringed at the look of revulsion on Julie’s face as she edged away from him. “Five hundred pounds would be handy for her too. Later on she’ll meet up with someone else.”

“But you said she…”

“Julie, be quiet. Well, Ashfield?”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“I want cash.”

“Cash?” Sir Phillip snapped.

“Yes, can you get it?”

“Of course, but not today,” Sir Phillip said haughtily.

He obviously felt insulted that they should think he couldn’t raise a measly thousand pounds at short notice. Tom didn’t know how he stopped himself from attacking the arrogant bastard right then and there.

“We could meet here again. Tomorrow at the same time, Sir Phillip?”

“Agreed.”

Tom stood up. He went to take Julie’s hand and she snatched it away.

Out in the street she glared at him through tear drenched eyes. “How could you do such a contemptible thing? Sell your sister’s happiness for money.”

“Darling, I don’t want his dirty money. I was stalling for time.”

“You didn’t mean it?”

“Of course not, silly.” He put his arms around her.

She collapsed against him with relief. “You sounded so convincing.”

“Did I?” He hugged her tight. “Rob always said I should have been on the stage. What a cold fish Ashfield is. Did you see his face?”

“Hard as granite. That man frightens me,” she said, trying to suppress a shiver.

“We’ve got to find Paul. Wonder what he meant by physically recovered, but not mentally?”

“I don’t know, Tom, perhaps he had a nervous breakdown.”

“Sounds like it.”

Gwen, a friend of Julie’s, who had survived fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing during the Blitz, had invited them to stay with her anytime they wanted to. It was a miracle that her house had survived unscathed Tom thought, but Julie had said Gwen was now deaf because of the excessive noise. She spent most of her time working in the vegetable gardens that had been created in The Tower of London moat.

The moment they arrived at Gwen’s little house, Tom started ringing around in an attempt to find Paul but he drew a blank. It was as if Paul Ashfield had dropped off the face of the earth. Even the minister scheduled to perform the marriage ceremony didn’t know his current whereabouts. He tried Bowater residence, and if anyone knew anything there, they weren’t saying.

He used the line of ‘old army mate in London on leave’ so often he almost believed it himself.

“What are you going to do now?” Julie asked as they lay side by side in the spare room at Gwen’s. “Poor Daphne.”

“I don’t know what we’ll do tomorrow, my darling, but right now, Daphne would forgive us for thinking of ourselves, and there’s something I want to do very much.” He drew her into his arms.

* * *

A plump tabby cat lay on a mat near the front step, watching a butterfly fussing around a window box full of colorful flowers. The door was of heavy, aged blackened oak. Daphne banged the brass knocker and nervously waited.

Julie answered it. Her hair was the color of toffee, her eyes sparkling with good humor.

“Daphne, you made it.” Julie hugged her. “Come in and meet everyone.”

“Where’s Tom?”

“Out the back. Here, give me your case. We’ve prepared a room, but weren’t sure when you would arrive.”

“Thanks. So, you and Tom are married now.”

“Yes.” Julie blushed. “Come inside and meet my mother. Daddy has gone off to a parish meeting. Tom, Tom.”

The sitting room was full of good quality dark furniture, but colorful paintings on the walls lifted the dullness. “My brother is the artist,” Julie explained.

“They’re beautiful.” Daphne was almost swaying with fatigue, when Mrs. Whitehead bustled in.

“Oh, my dear, you do look worn out. Sit down and I’ll get some tea.”

“Thanks, I am rather tired.”

“Daffy, you made it.”

“Tom!” Her tiredness and despair were temporarily forgotten as he engulfed her in a bear hug.

“You didn’t put much weight on in the hospital, and you’re still as white as a sheet. You’re a wreck,” he said with brotherly candor, as he held her at arm’s length.

“Have you been able to contact Paul?”

“No. Bloody Sir Phillip knows we’re trying to contact him, I’d stake my life on it.”

“Maybe Paul wants to marry Caroline.” Her lips trembled as she forced back the tears. She felt as if she had done nothing except cry over the last couple of weeks. I have the right to shed buckets of tears, after all I’ve lost, but for Tom’s sake she tried to pull herself together. He had suffered too. Losing his eye must have been catastrophic, but at least he had found Julie through it.

* * *

“It’s strange,” Tom said. “No one has seen Paul since he got back from Singapore. We asked around, trekked up to Yorkshire, no easy feat with the rationing, but the servants wouldn’t tell us anything. Down at the pub there isn’t much beer, but the locals have got plenty to say. Paul is supposed to be a recluse. None of them have set eyes on him, and it appears he doesn’t care one way or the other what happens to him.”

Daphne’s hopes lifted. “You can’t know how desperately I love him. How I want to find him to make sure he is all right. But if he loves Caroline and wants to marry her, I wouldn’t stand in his way.”

Their tea arrived, accompanied by little cakes. Daphne forced herself to eat because everyone seemed so anxious for her to do so, and Mrs. Whitehead must have used some of her precious sugar ration to bake something special for her. “What about you, Tom? Mum will be hurt that you didn’t tell her before you got married.”

“It happened so fast. I sent her a long letter the other day, giving her all the details. God knows when she will get it, though. The German U-boats are causing havoc with shipping.”

“I’m glad everything has worked out so well for you.”

Julie went over to her. “I’m sorry, Daphne. If everything had gone well, you would have your baby by now. What a wicked thing war is.”

“Let me look at you again, Tom. Mum was worried you’d be hideously scarred for life.”

Numerous pink scars stretched across his forehead, but Daphne saw that they had faded even more since she last saw him at the hospital. A patch still covered the eye he had lost, though.

“I’ll be getting my new one soon, tailor made.” He patted the patch with his fingertips.

“The army won’t want you back?”

“I don’t think so, well, I’ll never be a front line soldier again. Militia maybe. With my luck I’ll end up pushing a pen in some office.”

Daphne liked the vague vicar. In fact all the Whitehead family were nice. It didn’t take long for the photo album to come out. Two handsome boys in uniform, a beautiful girl in a bridal gown, and this same girl with two children.

They asked no questions, these understanding people, but she found herself telling them about Singapore, Paul and Robbie, about the ship being sunk, and somehow it seemed to ease her despair.

“It must have been awful for you, Daffy. Poor Rob, I couldn’t believe it when I first heard, he was such a good kid.”

* * *

Today was Thursday, and the wedding ceremony had been scheduled to take place on Saturday. Their numerous phone calls brought no result; even Sir Phillip himself was unavailable now. How could a man be so, well evil, that was the appropriate word for a father who, knowing full well his son’s wife was alive, would let that son marry another woman It was criminal Daphne thought.

“I still think we ought to contact the police,” she said.

“Listen to me Daphne. You didn’t see Sir Phillip, so you couldn’t possibly imagine what the man’s like. He’s rich, ruthless, and wields such power the police are probably on his payroll. He’s so desperate for this marriage to take place, he’ll do anything to stop us,” Tom warned.

It was terrible waiting for time to pass before they fronted up to the church and accused Paul of committing bigamy, she thought with rising panic. Would Sir Phillip actually go so far as to harm them?

* * *

Tom, Julie and Daphne caught a train up to Leeds and spent the night in a cramped room in an ancient inn. After an early lunch on Saturday, they paid a local farmer to take them to their destination in a horse-drawn cart. A large church, built of dark stone and with a huge bell tower, stood on a slight rise overlooking a quaint little village.

They were late. Daphne, on noticing several Rolls Royces, trembled with anxiety and fear.

“You’ll be right, Daffy. Damm it, we’re late.”

Inside, the church was filled to capacity. Her eyes were drawn to a beautiful rose window above the altar. Choirboys were singing O Perfect Love. She faltered, would have fallen had it not been for Tom’s supporting arm. They slipped into the only vacant pew, the second last one, and Daphne clasped her shaking hands together and willed the butterflies to stop churning up her stomach.

Paul had his back to them. His carriage was as erect as ever, yet somehow different. They weren’t in time. Maybe he was already married, she thought frantically.

“You’ll have to get up and say something, Daphne.”

“I don’t think I can, not in front of all those people.”

“If you love him you will. If you don’t, we’ll leave right now. You’ve come all this way, surely you’re not going to turn tail and run at the last minute.”

“Go with her, Tom,” Julie whispered. “Say something now, the minister’s getting ready to start.”

The choir had finished and the usual murmur of expectation rippled through the congregation. “Dearly beloved…”

“Excuse me.” Tom’s voice sounded overloud in the sanctified quietness of the church. “Paul Ashfield is married to my sister.”

There was an audible buzz. Every eye in the church turned towards Tom. The groom turned around, and Daphne hardly recognized Paul with the haunted look, the dark circles under his eyes, and an ugly, raw scar gouged into his cheek.

“Daphne’s dead.” Just the two anguished words, hopeless in their finality had her standing up.

“I wasn’t on that plane, Paul.”

There was absolute uproar now, and she was aware of nothing, except a white, drawn face, slashed by a vivid red scar.

“Sunshine?” His voice, full of such anguish and pain, brought tears to her eyes. She knew for certain now, he had never stopped loving her. When he called her by her pet name, she knew he hadn’t forgotten what they shared.

Daphne ignored the beautiful blonde girl at his side, as well as Sir Phillip’s look of sheer poison, as she darted towards the altar.

Paul took two unsteady paces towards her, and it wrenched her heart because he dragged his leg so badly. They engulfed each other, oblivious to the commotion around them, and he kissed her with a passionate desperation. “I thought I’d lost you, Sunshine.” His tears fell on to her face, hers on to his.

“I thought you’d been killed too, Paul.”

“Our baby?”

“I had a miscarriage,” she whispered sadly.

Somehow the minister ushered them all into the vestry, where Tom gave a hurried explanation.

“What about me?” Caroline shrieked. “You promised. You promised to marry me.”

Paul’s pale cheeks turned even paler. “I’m terribly sorry.” He rummaged his hands through his hair. “God, what a mess.”

“It’s your fault.” The blonde turned on Sir Phillip, and the face that had seemed so pretty only seconds ago, now turned ugly. “You said Paul would never know she was alive. What’s going to happen now? Are you going to tell them or will I?”

“Be quiet, Caroline, we can still sort this out.”

“It was your idea. You wanted me to marry your sop of a son, so no-one would know about us.”

“I’m warning you,” Sir Phillip snarled.

Daphne looked at this ruthless man and shivered.

“Thought you were so clever didn’t you, Phillip?”

“Caroline, my dear.”

“Oh yes, Daddy, you were as bad. Do you know why Sir Phillip was in such a hurry to marry me off to his son?”

“Caroline. Be quiet.”

“Phillip got me pregnant.” The bride’s mother fainted. “I wanted to get rid of it, but no, he said I should marry Paul and let him think it was his.”

The next few minutes were not pretty; Daphne had never seen such ugliness before in her whole life.

“Let’s get out of here before I end up killing someone.,” Although Paul’s voice shook with emotion he almost sounded like his old self.

“Good idea,” Tom agreed.

Paul took one of Daphne’s arms, her brother the other, and with Julie clinging to Tom’s hand they left by the back entrance.

“God, I would never have believed my father would do such an evil thing to me. He’s ruthless but this. I’ll never forgive him.”

“Have you got a car, Paul? In years to come we’ll probably laugh over this,” Tom said with a grin.

“We’ll take the old man’s Rolls and to hell with him,” Paul declared. “I’ll drive it until it runs out of petrol.”

“Now that everything is fixed up, you must have heaps to say to each other. Drop Julie and me off at the nearest station, we’ll get the train back,” Tom suggested. “We can catch up with each other in a few days. We’ll have some stories to swap. Looks like you copped it pretty bad.”

“I nearly lost my leg, so I’ll always have a limp, and this.” He fingered his jagged scar. “Do you mind, Daphne?”