The Silver Locket (18 page)

She struggled for a moment, and he thought she’d break away. She’d scream for the police, and he’d be a lieutenant or cashiered or in a military prison before the day was done.

But she didn’t scream. She gradually stopped struggling, although she was still tense. Finally, however, she relaxed.

He kissed her very lingeringly and very gently this time, tasting her and opening her reluctant mouth with his. He held her very close to him, feeling the lovely warmth of her and breathing her delicious scent, and kissing her again, again, again.

Chapter Eleven

The sudden striking of the station clock brought Rose back to reality.

‘Why did you do that?’ she cried, horrified by what she’d done herself, and furiously pushing him away.

‘I don’t know.’ Alex shrugged, but Rose could see his eyes were black and burning. ‘Actually, I do,’ he said. ‘It was because I had to kiss you, or lie down and die.’

‘You do talk nonsense.’

‘It’s not nonsense, Rose. I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was fourteen.’

‘Then why didn’t you?’

‘You’d have slapped my face! Your father would have had me branded, put me in the stocks. Everyone in Dorset knows you’re going to marry Michael Easton, although I didn’t know he had proposed until today.’

‘You think I
want
to marry him?’

‘I suppose you do.’ Alex shrugged again. ‘I know you like him, and he certainly likes you.’

‘You take too much for granted, Captain Denham. No power on earth would make me marry Michael.’

‘What?’ A sudden smile lit Alex’s face. ‘Rose, what do you mean?’

‘I don’t mean anything.’ Rose stared down at her feet. ‘I know what they think of me in Dorset. But I’m not a whore. I don’t steal other women’s men.’

‘I never said you did.’ As Rose began to hurry along the platform, Alex caught her arm. ‘You say I take too much for granted,’ he continued urgently. ‘Well, perhaps I do. But when I kissed you, it was plain you liked it.’

‘I must go, and you must never talk like this again.’

‘You don’t mean that.’ Alex’s fingers bit into her flesh, and Rose knew she couldn’t get away. He’d let her scream the station down before he let her go.

‘Listen, Rose,’ he went on feverishly. ‘There isn’t time to court you. In a different place and in a different situation, I’d have bought you flowers, I’d have watched you flirt with other men and waste my time. But we don’t have time.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I want you,’ he replied. ‘I want you so much it hurts. I’ve never felt such pain.’

She thought of slapping him, of screaming, of all the other options open to outraged virginity. But she also knew she must be honest, or she would hate herself.

‘Alex, I know it hurts,’ she whispered sadly, ‘because it hurts me, too.’

‘Miss Courtenay!’ cried a strident voice, and Rose looked to see two nurses sprinting down the platform.

‘There you are at last!’ exclaimed Miss Troy, a fierce-looking spinster who wore two hectic spots of rouge high on her bony cheekbones. ‘Miss Dennison and I have been distraught! It’s ten past four, and time we’re entrained.’ They took Rose into custody, and then began to frogmarch her away.

‘I’m going to Auchonville!’ Rose looked back at Alex, and the smile he gave her made her feel like dancing. ‘To the hospital for other ranks. I don’t know the address, but write to me!’

‘Of course I’ll write!’ Recovering from his surprise, Alex started running and soon caught up with them. As he drew level, he leaned across Miss Dennison to kiss Rose on the cheek. Then he ran on, leaving them behind.

‘What a strange young man,’ said Elsie Dennison.

‘I dare say he’s been drinking,’ said Miss Troy.

‘When could you get some leave?’
he wrote, after he had said he longed to see her, that being away from her was torture.
‘I’m due a week or more, but I don’t think I’m going to get it. My CO has jaundice, half the other officers are sick, and all the men have coughs and colds. I’m very healthy, but this means I’m doing all the work.’

‘I’m not due any leave at all,’
Rose wrote despondently
. ‘I haven’t been here long enough. But we’re not very busy, and in an emergency we’re allowed a twenty-four hour pass. I could say it was a family matter.’

‘I’ll come by rail to Belancourt,’
wrote Alex.
‘Then I’ll walk to Auchonville. If I promise to find a case or two of decent brandy, I expect they’ll let me have three days.’

A part of Rose was almost willing fate to stop her meeting Alex, but a transparent fib about a cousin in hospital in Tournonville secured the precious twenty-four hour pass. A promise to work two of Elsie’s shifts for one of hers ensured she wouldn’t be missed if she was late the following day.

She almost hoped he wouldn’t come, but she found him waiting for her in the market place at Auchonville, and to her astonishment he was sitting in a car.

‘Where did you get that?’ she cried, amazed.

‘It’s my CO’s,’ said Alex, grinning. ‘He has an arrangement with a woman in Harfoix, she keeps it in her garage. I promised Malcolm that if he’d lend me this old bus today, I’d bring back half a dozen crates of Armagnac tomorrow.’

They drove out of the town, and soon were in the leafless but as yet undamaged countryside of pretty little villages and ancient Norman churches. Before they’d gone five miles, however, Rose touched Alex’s sleeve.

‘Stop the car,’ she said.

He brought the vehicle to a shuddering halt. ‘I didn’t mean to take that bend so fast,’ he said, and grinned a wry apology. ‘Sorry if I shook you up a bit. Do you feel sick?’

‘It’s not your driving.’ Rose looked down at her hands. ‘Alex, this is wrong. You have a wife.’

‘But I don’t love her, and she doesn’t love me.’

‘How do you know she doesn’t love you?’

‘Last September, when I was in Dorset convalescing, she didn’t come and see me. She was staying with her aunt, and said she couldn’t get away. She only writes to me when she wants money, but I don’t know what she does with it. Henry gives her an allowance, and she gets half my pay.’

‘I see.’ Rose looked at him. ‘Everyone in Dorset thinks I’m wicked, cruel, ungrateful. I’m a liar, as well. Alex, do you want to kiss a liar?’

‘More than anything in all the world.’

The proprietor of the small hotel, which was tucked away along a back street in the little town of Richelcourt, glowered morosely at the woman and the British officer.

Rose didn’t care. He was old, she told herself, he’d seen it all before, he wasn’t going to judge. When Alex asked him for a room, he muttered an enormous sum in francs, and then produced a tarnished key.

Alex locked the bedroom door behind them, then took Rose in his arms. She didn’t know what to do. Familiarity with young men’s bodies hadn’t taught her how to be a lover, and she was as innocent of passion as she’d been when she was still a child.

Alex kissed her hairline, and she shuddered. Then he pushed her cloak back from her shoulders, and she froze. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured, soothingly. ‘We won’t do anything you don’t want to do. There’s no need to be frightened.’

‘I – I’m not frightened.’ Battening down her terror and trying to stop shaking, Rose looked up at him, into his eyes. ‘I want to go to bed.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Why else do you think I came here?’ she demanded, in a high-pitched voice unlike her own.

‘Rose, you mustn’t think I want–’

‘You mean you’ve changed your mind?’

‘That’s
your
privilege.’ Alex let his hands slide down her shoulders, electrifying her and making her feel weak with longing. He took her hands in his. ‘All right, we’ll go to bed.’

The huge, sagging bed had musty curtains, and when Alex drew them it was like being in a scarlet cave. There was no other world outside. Alex had no wife, Rose wasn’t playing truant and wasn’t about to give herself to a man she knew she couldn’t marry. There was no war, no duty and no time.

She hadn’t thought about the actual process, about the loss of her virginity. She only knew she wanted Alex. She wanted to be naked next to him, as she’d wanted that day in the bath house, when the dappled light had filtered through the net-screened doorway and made him looked so beautiful that she had almost wept, when the sun had stroked his smooth brown nutmeg-scented skin.

He was very careful, caressing and reassuring her as if she were a nervous mare whom he was too considerate to frighten. ‘I promise I’ll be gentle,’ he said softly, as he took off her clothes, as he kissed her face, her neck, her hair, and as he found the tender, sensitive places she hadn’t known were there before today.

As he kissed her, the material of his jacket grazed her skin, and made her shudder. ‘At least take off your coat,’ she whispered, suddenly embarrassed and ashamed.

‘You do it for me.’

When they were both naked, Alex traced a line from Rose’s throat down to her navel, then he slid one hand between her legs. She gasped and trembled, but she let him part her thighs, then find a place she hadn’t known existed until this afternoon.

‘Rose, try to relax,’ he whispered, as he kissed behind her ear and made her shiver with delicious pleasure. ‘I promise I won’t hurt you. There’s no need to be afraid.’

But Rose found she wanted pain, and when Alex finally came inside her and it hurt like hell, she sighed with satisfaction.

‘Did I hurt you?’ Alex asked, as he let his weight down on her body, as he took her in his arms and planted rows of kisses in her hair.

‘Yes, you hurt me.’

‘I didn’t mean to be so rough. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re not to be sorry, because I was in heaven.’

‘So was I.’ Alex rolled over on his back and then pulled Rose on top of him, so her hair came tumbling round her face. ‘This is the first time I’ve seen it loose,’ he said, as he played with a long, curling strand.

‘It might well be the last. I hate my hair, it’s so unruly, I think it makes me look like some old witch.’ Rose grasped two great handfuls, pushing it behind her ears then starting on a plait.

‘Leave it.’ Alex pulled her hands away. ‘Your hair is beautiful, and so are you. Rose, are you hungry?’

‘I suppose I must be. I didn’t get a chance to eat this morning.’

‘Let’s go and feed you, then.’

They dressed, then went to eat at an estaminet in the town. Alex asked for brandy and told the waiter he could leave the bottle on the table.

They sat in silence until the food arrived. Then Rose made her confession. ‘I told them I was visiting my cousin who’s in hospital in Tournonville.’ She looked up from her plate. ‘You must think that’s awful, when there are so many people actually getting hurt.’

‘It’s not awful, Rose,’ said Alex, gravely. ‘But I’m amazed to find that you are such an accomplished liar nowadays.’

‘It frightens
me
,’ admitted Rose. ‘I never used to think I could be wicked, but I suppose I must be. Alex, I thought the French were meant to be accomplished cooks. This ragout is disgusting.’

‘It does look rather ghastly.’ Alex hadn’t eaten anything, and now he drained his brandy. ‘Let’s go back to bed.’

‘That night you wouldn’t dance with me,’ said Alex, winding a skein of Rose’s hair around his index finger, then letting go and watching it spring back into a curl. ‘I’ve never been so hurt in all my life.’

‘Did you ask me to dance?’ teased Rose. She kissed him. ‘I don’t remember that.’

‘You must – I asked you twice!’

‘But when you asked me first, you didn’t really think I would. “Miss Courtenay, if you mean to dance?” What sort of invitation’s that?’

‘Well, I was nervous.’ Alex grinned. ‘I was also trying not to notice that revolting dress.’

‘It was a lovely dress!’

‘Rose, it was hideous. It was a horrid shade of piglet pink, and you looked quite ridiculous, hung with all those awful beads and sequins, like a walking Christmas tree.’

‘I hate you, Alex Denham!’ Rose jumped up. ‘I’m going back to Auchonville this minute.’

‘You’ll have a nice long walk. So wrap up well, it’s going to freeze tonight.’ Alex lay back against the pillows, watching Rose pull on her thick black woollen stockings. ‘Rose, don’t be offended. Most women look much better without clothes.’

‘You should know.’ Rose groped for her chemise. ‘You’ll have seen so many of them naked, after all.’

‘Only ten or twenty – certainly no more.’ Alex yawned and stretched luxuriously. ‘William had his half a dozen favourites, and drew and painted them most of the time.’

‘I was forgetting.’ Rose sat down again and looked at Alex. ‘You know everything about my life, but yours is a mystery to me.’

‘I’d have thought what happened was common knowledge?’

‘Everybody talked, of course,’ said Rose. ‘But they all clammed up and pursed their lips whenever children were about. I knew your mother often went away, and people wondered if she would come back.’

‘Rose, come here.’ Alex pulled her into his embrace and let her lean against him. ‘My mother and William Rayner met when she was seventeen. He had come to paint her sister’s portrait, at their house.