Jewels (37 page)

It was the first of August when the head surgeon told her that she needed to get away, that they had become convinced that His Grace was never going to wake from his coma. He simply wasn’t going to wake up again. He might exist that way for years, or days, but if he had been going to wake, by then he would have, and she had to face it.

“How do you know he won’t suddenly come to, this afternoon?” she asked, sounding faintly hysterical to him. But all she knew was that they had managed to save his legs for him, and now they were going to give up and throw him away like so much garbage. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in five weeks, and she was not giving up on him now, no matter what they said, but the doctor insisted that they knew better.

“I’ve been a surgeon for nearly forty years,” he told her firmly, “and sometimes you have to know when to fight and when to give up. We fought … and we lost … you have to let him give up now.”

“He was a prisoner of war for three and a half years, is that what you call giving up?” she screamed. But she didn’t care who heard her. “He didn’t give up then, and I won’t give up now. Do you hear me?”

“Of course, Your Grace. I understand completely.” He left the room quietly and asked the matron if she might suggest a mild sedative to the Duchess of Whitfield, but she only rolled her eyes at him. The woman was possessed. She was obsessed with the idea of saving her husband.

“The poor man is almost gone. She ought to let him go in peace,” she said to the sister working beside her, and the other woman shook her head, too, but she had seen stranger things. They had had a man on one of the wards who’d revived recently, after nearly six months in a coma from a head wound he’d gotten in an air raid.

“You never know,” she said, and went back to check on Sarah and William. Sarah was sitting in the chair, speaking softly to him about Phillip, and his mother, and Whitfield, and the château, and she even vaguely mentioned Lizzie. She would have said anything if she’d thought it would work, but so far nothing had, and although she wouldn’t admit it to anyone, she was nearing the end of her rope. The sister put a gentle hand on her shoulder as she watched them, and then for an instant she thought she saw him stir, but she didn’t say anything. But Sarah had seen it, too, she sat very still, and then began talking to him again, asking if he would open his eyes to look at her just once … just one teeny tiny time … just to see if he liked the way her hair looked. She hadn’t seen herself in a mirror in over a month, and she could just imagine what she looked like, but she went on and on, kissing his hands and talking to him as the sister watched in fascination, and then slowly, his eyes fluttered open and he looked at her and smiled, and then closed them again as he nodded and she began to sob silently. They had done it … he had opened his eyes…. The sister was crying too, and she squeezed Sarah’s hand as she spoke to her patient.

“It’s very nice to see you awake, Your Grace, it’s about time too.” But he didn’t stir again for a little while, and then ever so slowly, he turned his head and looked straight at Sarah.

“It looks very nice,” he whispered hoarsely.

“What does?” She had no idea what he was talking about, but she had never been so happy in her life. She wanted to scream with relief and joy as she bent to kiss him.

“Your hair … wasn’t that what you asked me?” The nurse and Sarah laughed at him, and by the next day they had him sitting up and sipping soup and weak tea, and by the end of the week he was talking to all of them and slowly regaining his strength, although he looked like a ghost of his former self. But he was back. He was alive. That was all Sarah cared about. It was all she had lived for.

The War Office and the Home Office came to see him eventually, too, and when he was strong enough, he told them what had happened to him. It took several visits, and it defied belief. It made them all sick to hear what the Germans had done, and William wouldn’t let Sarah stay in the room when he told them. They had broken his legs again and again, left him in filth till they festered, tortured him with hot irons and electric prods. They had done everything short of killing him. But they had never figured out who he was, and he had never told them. He had been carrying a false passport, and false military papers when they dropped him in, and that was all they ever knew till the end. And he had never revealed his aborted mission.

He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroism, but it was small consolation for losing the use of his legs. It depressed him at first to realize that he would never walk again, but Sarah had been right to fight for them, he was glad he still had them. He would have hated it if they’d amputated his legs.

They had both lost so much, and one afternoon, before he left the hospital, she told him about Lizzie, and they had both cried copiously as he listened.

“Oh, my darling … and I wasn’t there with you….”

“There was nothing you could have done. We didn’t have the medicines or the doctors…. We had nothing by then. The Americans were on their way, and the Germans were getting ready to leave, they had nothing left by then, and she wasn’t strong enough to survive. The commandant at the château was very good to us, he gave us everything he had … but she didn’t have the stamina….” She sobbed, and then looked up at her husband. “She was so sweet … she was such a lovely little girl….” Sarah could hardly speak as he held her. “I wish you could have known her….”

“I will one day,” he said through his own tears. “When we are all together again, in another place.” And in some ways, for both of them, it made Phillip doubly precious. But she still missed Lizzie terribly sometimes, especially when she saw a little girl who looked anything like her. She knew that there were other mothers who had lost their children during the war, but it was a pain that almost couldn’t be borne. She was grateful that now William was there to share it.

She thought about Joachim sometimes now, too, but he was part of the distant past. In the loneliness, and the pain, and the terror, and loss of the war, he had been her only friend, except for Emanuelle. But the memories of him were slowly fading.

Sarah turned twenty-nine years of age while William was still in the hospital. The war in Japan had ended days before, and the whole world was rejoicing. William went home to Whitfield the day the Japanese officially surrendered on the battleship
Missouri
, on the eve of Phillip’s sixth birthday. It was the first time William saw his son since he was only a few months old, and the meeting was emotional for him, and a little strange for Phillip. Phillip stood and stared at him for a long time before finally approaching him, and putting his arms around his father, at his mother’s urging. Even in his wheelchair William was such a big man that Phillip was in awe of him. And more than ever, his father regretted the years he’d lost in getting to know him.

The time they spent at Whitfield was good for all of them. William learned to get around more easily in his wheelchair, and Sarah got a much-needed rest for the first time in a long time. Phillip adored being there, and it gave him the time he needed to get to know his father.

He talked to him about Lizzie once, and it was obvious that talking about her at all was painful to him.

“She was very beautiful,” he said softly, looking into the distance. “And when she got sick, Mommy couldn’t get any medicine for her, so she died.” There was the merest hint of reproach in his voice, which William noticed, but didn’t understand. Was it possible that he blamed her for the child’s death? But that seemed so unlikely that he didn’t dare broach the subject to him. Surely he knew that his mother would have done everything she could for her… or did he know that? William wondered.

Phillip talked about Joachim sometimes too. He didn’t say much, but it was easy to sense that the child had liked him. And whatever his nationality, William was grateful for the man’s kindness to his children. Sarah never spoke of him, but when William asked her, she said. He was a kind man and a decent person. They celebrated William’s mother’s ninetieth birthday that year. She was remarkable, and especially now, with William back, she was better than ever.

They were all better than they had been. But there was no denying, they had suffered enormous losses … of time … of hope … of people they loved … sweet Lizzie lost to all of them. William gone for so long and almost lost forever…. Joachim come and gone from their lives…. The losses and the sorrows had taken their toll, and they were recovering now. But at times, Sarah wondered if the hardest hit of all had been Phillip. He had lost a father he’d never known for the first six years of his life, and now he had to get to know him and build a relationship with him, which wasn’t easy for him. He had lost a friend in Joachim when he left … and a sister he would never forget, and still mourned for.

“You miss her, don’t you?” she asked him softly when they were walking in the woods, and he nodded, lifting his eyes to hers painfully as he always did when they talked about his sister. “I do, too, sweetheart.” She held tightly to his hand as they walked on, and Phillip looked away from her and said nothing. But his eyes said something William had already understood, and Sarah hadn’t. He blamed his mother for his sister’s death. It was her fault Lizzie had died for lack of medicine … just as it was her fault Joachim had gone. … He wasn’t quite sure what she’d done to make these calamities fall into his life, but he knew she’d done something … or at least she hadn’t stopped them. But he was happy at Whitfield anyway. He rode, he walked in the woods, he enjoyed his grandmother, and little by little, he began to know William.

Chapter 17

HEY
didn’t go back to France until the spring, and by then William was in full control of their lives again. He seemed to have made his peace with losing the use of his legs by then, and he was back to his normal weight. Only the white hair he suddenly had made him look different. He was only forty-two, but his experience in the prisoner-of-war camp had aged him by years. Even Sarah looked more serious than she had been before the war. They had all paid a high price for what had happened, including Phillip. He was a serious little boy and he was very unhappy when they left Whitfield. He said he wanted to stay there, with his grandmother and his pony, but, of course, his parents overruled him.

William cried when they got back to the château. It looked so exactly the way he’d remembered it, the way he dreamed it would be if he ever came home again, that all he could do was hold Sarah and sob like a child. Everything looked beautiful when they arrived. Emanuelle and her mother had everything ready. Sarah had left Emanuelle in charge for almost a year, and she had run the place to perfection. There were no longer signs of armies of any kind, not in the château, or on the grounds, or even in the stables. Emanuelle had employed scores of men to clean everything up and get it ready for the Whitfields.

“It looks beautiful,” Sarah complimented her when they returned, and Emanuelle was pleased. She was very mature for a girl of her years. She was only twenty-three, but she ran things well, and she had an eye for detail and precision.

Sarah took William to Lizzie’s grave the afternoon they arrived, and he cried when he saw the small grave, they both did. And on their way back to the house, he asked Sarah again about the Germans.

“They were here for an awfully long time,” he said casually. “It’s amazing they didn’t do more damage.”

“The commandant was very good. He was a nice man, and he kept his men under control. He didn’t like the war any better than we did.” William raised an eyebrow as she said it.

“Did he ever say that to you?”

“Several times,” she answered quietly, not sure why he was asking these questions, but there was something in his voice that told her he was worried.

“Were you good friends with him?” he asked offhandedly, knowing how often Phillip had mentioned him. There were times when he worried that his son preferred the German officer to his own father. It was a blow to him, of course, but he understood it. And as Sarah looked at him now, she understood his questions. She turned so that she could see William in his wheelchair.

“We were only friends, William. Nothing more. He lived here for a long time, and a lot of things happened to us…. Elizabeth was born.” She decided to be honest with him, she had to be, she always had been. “He delivered her, he saved her life, she would have died at birth if he hadn’t saved her.” But she had died anyway, so maybe it no longer mattered. “We survived for four years here through all that. It’s hard to ignore that. But if you’re asking me what I think you are … no, nothing ever happened.”

He startled her then with his next words, and a little shiver of shock ran through her.

“Phillip says you kissed him when he left.” It was wrong of him to tell his father, or in just that way, but maybe he didn’t understand what he was doing, or perhaps he did. Sometimes she wasn’t sure she understood him. He had been so angry at her ever since Lizzie died … and Joachim left … and William came home … and now he often seemed withdrawn. He had a lot to absorb and understand. They all did.