Clash by Night (34 page)

Laura coughed nervously.

They looked at one another, then away.

Now that they were finally alone neither one of them seemed to know what to say.

“I’d better get this fire started in here before we freeze,” Laura said briskly. She went to the fireplace and he joined her silently, adding logs to her pile of kindling and stepping back as she lit it. They watched without comment as it flared up, each thinking urgent and hungry thoughts but too insecure after their separation to voice them.

“That’ll do it,” Laura said, as the fingers of warmth reached out to the cold room, engulfing them in a radiant glow. She shut the door to the hall to trap the heat inside the kitchen, and got blankets from the storage chest by the porch for each of them.

“Better have this until the temperature rises in here,” she said to Harris, handing him one.

She sat on the floor next to the hearth and he followed suit, staring into the flames. Laura glanced at his clean profile and he seemed lost in thought, unreachable.

It wasn’t long before she was warm enough to discard her sweater. He assisted her as she turned her back and he pulled it over her head. Touching her provided the impetus he needed.

“Laura,” he said huskily. “I want...” he stopped, still holding her sweater.

She waited, her heart banging in her chest, listening to his voice behind her.

“I want you,” he finished, putting his arms around her waist. “God, how I want you.” He pressed his mouth against the nape of her neck.

She leaned backward into him, sighing, and her sweater fell to the floor.

She was wearing only a thin cotton shirt and nothing else. He slipped his wrapped hands under it, enclosing her breasts, teasing her nipples with his unbound thumbs. They bloomed, pebble hard, and he turned her to face him, crushing her mouth with his.

His lips were still cold and chapped with past fever, but Laura knew nothing except that her lover had returned to her. They were starved for each other. She clung to him, kneeling, as he kissed her with an intensity that belied their separation and his recent illness. He let her go for an instant and unbuttoned her shirt with trembling fingers, dragging it off her shoulders and dropping it into her lap. The firelight played over her naked skin, turning ivory to gold, and he bent to embrace her, pulling her across his thighs and reaching for the waistband of her slacks.
 

Laura lay back in his arms, letting him undress her, lifting her hips as he removed the pants from her legs. Finally she was wearing nothing but sheer cotton briefs, and his expression as his gaze raked over her was one she would never forget.

“Beautiful,” he whispered. “So beautiful.” He set her on her blanket on the floor.
 

Her eyes were green slits, her limbs pale and slim, her auburn hair backlit by the fire. She raised her arms above her head to enhance his view.
 

He swallowed hard, bending, and tugged at her underwear. When the pants resisted he ripped them from her body with one savage movement and thrust his head between her thighs.

Laura gasped and stuffed her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out. The pleasure was so sudden and so intense that her mind reeled with it. For long, torturous seconds he enticed her with his lips and tongue until she was pulling on his hair to raise him, desperate to have him inside her.

“I can’t wait,” he rasped, moving over her, fully dressed. She kissed him wildly and tasted herself on his mouth.

“Don’t wait,” she urged, as eager as he. “Don’t.”

He took her at her word, opening his fly and entering her with a force that rapped her head against the wooden floor. She didn’t even feel it. She clutched the leather shoulders of his jacket and wrapped her legs around him, her eyes shut tight against any input but the satisfaction of her body joined to his.

It was over quickly for both of them. They lay panting on the floor, Harris pinning Laura under him. After several minutes their breathing returned to normal.

“I haven’t made love in two years,” Laura finally said dreamily, reaching up to push his damp hair off his forehead.

“And you probably never will again after this experience,” he said gloomily. “I feel like I raped you.” He sat up on his haunches, regarding her anxiously.

“It wasn’t rape,” Laura said, laughing. “Did you hear me protesting?”

“Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?” he asked, still uncertain.

“I’ve never felt better in my life,” she said, smiling, and he relaxed enough to grin back.

“Well,” he said, releasing his breath explosively. “Merry Christmas.”

She giggled wickedly.

“Oh, I remember that laugh,” he said, still grinning. “Nobody could believe that sweet, innocent face after they heard that laugh.”

She launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck, and he clutched her to him as if he would never let her go.

“God, I love you, Laura,” he said, his voice breaking. “I love you so much.”

“Even though I’m not as sweet as I look?” she asked archly, drawing back to peer at him in mock severity.
 

“‘Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild,’” he recited softly. “That’s you.” He ran his hands down her naked back tenderly, rough palms against soft flesh.

Laura tilted her head. “Keats?” she said, surprised.

“Yeah,” he murmured, a little embarrassed. “Don’t look so thunderstruck. I can read, you know.”

“And that’s supposed to be about me?” she asked.

“I always thought so,” he answered, with a sober sincerity that touched her. He hardly seemed the poetic type.

“My hair’s not long anymore,” she said, smiling ruefully.

“That can be corrected, as you pointed out to me.”

“All right, all right, I’ll let it grow. But I must say that I never thought of myself as particularly light footed.”

“Graceful, then,” he said.
 

“That, either.”

“You are.”

“And wild eyed?”

“Just wild,” he said mischievously, and kissed her. He lifted her into his arms and sat with her in his lap, drawing the blanket around her. They huddled together in front of the hearth, feeling the heat from the flames seep into their bones.

“Warm enough?” he asked.

 
She sighed comfortably. “Yes. On days like this I really miss American central heating.”
 

“I didn’t think it got this cold in France.”

“It does,” she said resignedly. “Often.”

“It’s a good thing the old man didn’t come downstairs a few minutes ago. He would have gotten the shock of his life,” Harris said.

“He never leaves his room,” Laura said. “We bring him food, and washing things, and he uses the commode up there.”

“He must be really out of it,” Harris said.

“He is.”

Laura expected him to make some further comment about the suitability of this fate for Henri Duclos, but he surprised her by saying nothing.

“It’s light now and still snowing,” she said, looking over his shoulder at the window.

“Christmas Day,” he said. “I wonder what the folks are doing back in Evanston.”

“Opening gifts?”

“I guess so. Going to church, getting ready for the big dinner. All the relatives come. My Uncle Jack gets drunk and my Aunt Minnie knits everybody things that never fit.”

“I was feeling really homesick yesterday,” Laura confessed. “Missing my family.”
 

“That’s understandable.”

“And missing Thierry and Alain.”

At the mention of their names his arms dropped, and he looked away from her.

“Things will never be the same for anybody after this war,” he said dully.
 

“Alain’s like a saint in this town now, the local Jeanne d’Arc,” Laura said. “People revere him.”

“Sure they do,” Harris said, stirring. “That kind of courage is almost mystical. People revere someone who had it because they know that’s the closest they’re ever going to come to it.”

“But not you,” she said softly. “It’s not the closest you’re ever going to come to it.”

“I’m not sure any more,” he said softly. “I’ve seen things, terrible things, and done things, to stay alive...” He paused. “It isn’t all as simple and straightforward as I once thought it was.”

“I know.” She reached up and touched a thick scab on the side of his face, by his ear. “How did you get this?” she said.
 

“Getting out,” he said.

“Of the camp?”

He nodded. “Barbed wire.”

“And this?” she said, drawing her hand across a welt she could see inside the collar of his shirt.

“Staying in,” he said grimly.

She stared at him.

“One of the guards was a weird kind of guy, a big Czech turncoat with hands like hams. He liked to whip the prisoners when they got out of line. And I mean he really
liked
it.”

“Did you get out of line?” Laura whispered, knowing the answer.

“I guess he thought so,” Harris said, looking away from her. “I was one of his favorite targets.”

Laura’s mouth went dry when she considered the situation: Harris, young and handsome, at the mercy of... She didn’t want to think about it.
 

 
“You might say he was an added incentive to get out,” Harris concluded, pulling her close.

She hung on him for a moment, then drew back and began slipping his jacket off his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she said, as he shrugged out of the jacket and she started on his shirt. When it was open down the front she began kissing his chest, and he tangled his fingers in her hair, holding her against him.

“Keep it up, you’re doing fine,” he said hoarsely, as her hands went to his belt. Then he grew impatient and stood to pull off the rest of his clothes, turning to toss them on a chair.

Laura almost cried aloud when she saw his back. It was crisscrossed with scars, some purpled welts, others obviously older and fading. Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked them away.

He faced her again, his body still beautiful though thin enough for her to count his ribs. But when he knelt to embrace her she forgot everything but his closeness, and she responded to him the way she always had: with complete abandon.

It was much more leisurely this time and they relished it, lingering with each caress, building slowly to a climax that left them both satiated. And so, as the villagers gathered for morning mass or prepared for the holiday, Laura and Harris slept.

Laura woke first at ten o’clock, and realized that Brigitte would be home in two hours. She dressed hurriedly, putting her blanket over Harris where he lay. She built up the fire quietly, being careful not to disturb him, and then picked up his clothes to wash. She heated water in the iron pot hanging in the fireplace and washed them in the sink with brown soap, rinsing them with cold water from the pump. Then she went to the cellar and, shivering, put them through the hand wringer before returning to hang them on a stand in front of the hearth.

Harris, exhausted, slept through all of it. He continued to sleep while she took a tray to Henri and refurbished the old man’s fire, then came back to the kitchen and started readying the midday meal.

They had precious little to celebrate with but she had badgered a chicken out of Pierre Langtot’s wife, which she now cut up with some hoarded vegetables and put in the iron pot to stew. She sliced bread and opened jars of Brigitte’s silvered corn, left over from their last gardening efforts. Laura had even gotten some
gateau
in Bar-le-Duc, purchased with ration books acquired from Kurt Hesse. He was a big help.
 

“Is any of that for me?” Harris asked hopefully. Laura turned to look at him; he was sitting up in a tangle of blankets, his hair in an unruly cowlick on one side. He rubbed the stubble on his chin.

“Certainly,” Laura replied.

His nose twitched. “Smells good,” he said, indicating the stew pot. He stood and looked around for his pants.

“Aren’t those still wet?” she asked him as he slipped into them, padding barefoot to her side.

“Dry enough,” he said. “You can cook too?” he said, pretending to marvel at her abilities.

“You wouldn’t think so if you’d been eating with us lately,” she said dryly. “This is a feast.”

“I always seem to make out all right in the food department around here,” he said, picking up a slice of bread and biting into it. “You treated me pretty well when I was hanging out in Pierre’s barn.” He pulled a chair up to the table and sat, watching her work.

“Oh, well, we had to keep you going then,” she said. “For patriotic considerations.”
 

“And now?”

“Now I have my own reasons for wanting you healthy,” she said, smiling impishly, and he grinned.

“Can’t say I expected to be spending Christmas here,” he said, polishing off the bread and picking up a raw carrot. He bit off a chunk and sat with his legs splayed in front of him, chewing.