Never Leave Me (31 page)

‘Are you all right?' he asked as he opened the doors of the Citroen and bundled her inside.

‘No,' she said, her hair dishevelled, her voice unsteady. ‘The baby is coming!'

Luke took one look at her face and then put his foot down hard on the accelerator, racing out of Bayeux's cobbled streets and into the narrow, high-hedged lanes beyond.

‘It will take me half an hour to get to Valmy. Will you be all right until then?' he asked tightly.

‘I should be all right for hours. First babies don't come quickly' she said reassuringly, bracing herself against a spasm of pain that was nothing like the gradual build-up which Dr Auge had told her to expect.

Luke saw her hands clench in her lap, the knuckles whitening, and pressed his foot down even harder. He didn't know anything about the time sequence of first babies but instinct told him that this one was not going to be long in arriving. He flashed through le Calvaire and Mosles wondering how soon he could get hold of Dr Auge or Madame Pichon.

‘It doesn't feel … at all as I had expected,' she gasped, pressing her hands to her bulging stomach.

Luke remembered the crowd, the crush, her terrible distress at the scene they had witnessed. He didn't know what shock did to a woman in the early stages of labour, but in Lisette's case it certainly seemed to be speeding events up.

‘Hold tight,' he said grimly. ‘We're nearly there.'

‘You'd better be quick,' she gasped. ‘This baby is well on its way!'

‘
Christ!
' He slammed his foot to the floor, screaming up the hill towards the beech woods, a cloud of dust billowing in his wake.

He still had to get hold of Dr Auge or Madame Pichon. It could take him thirty minutes, perhaps forty. And if the baby came while he was away? He couldn't leave her alone with her father. The unwordly Henri would be totally unable to cope. Which meant that he, Luke, would have to stay with her while Henri drove the Citreon to Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts in search of the doctor or midwife. And if Lisette was right, and the baby was determined to arrive in a hurry, then in all probability he would be the one delivering it.

‘
Christ!
' he said again, swerving out of the woods and plunging down the long, linden-flanked drive. He felt as if he were about to enter into combat, not knowing what to expect, what he would be called upon to do.

‘Are you going to be able to talk me through this?' he asked tautly as they screeched to a halt outside the stables.

‘I'm sure that babies who arrive in a hurry do so with very little help,' she panted, trying to sound more confident that she felt, clambering from the car and then halting suddenly as another spasm of pain knifed through her.

Luke ran to her side, slipping his arm around her waist. She leaned against him, panting for breath. The pain receded and she said urgently, ‘Help me up the stairs, Luke. I think time is running out.'

He half carried her up the whitewashed stone stairs, shouting for Henri.

The Comte rushed out of the room above them, staring down at them in alarm.

‘What is it? What's the matter?'

‘The baby,' Luke said tersely. ‘It's on its way. Take the car and bring Dr Auge or Madame Pichon back with you!'

Another wave of pain swamped her and she groaned, swaying against Luke's supporting arm. ‘Quickly!' Luke rasped. ‘There's no time to lose!'

Henri didn't hesitate. He dashed past them, stumbling down the stairs and running towards the car.

There were beads of perspiration on her forehead: ‘It's coming!' she gasped, seizing hold of his hand. ‘Oh Luke, the baby's here!'

He got her into the bedroom and to the bed. She collapsed across it, panting, bearing down, unable to hold back. He tore open her coat, pushing her skirt high, pulling her panties down and ripping them from her legs. There was no time for hot water. No time for towels. No time for anything. The baby's head was already at the mouth of her vagina.

‘Gently, Lisette!' he urged, as she groaned and the baby's head crowned. ‘
Gently!
'

The baby's head emerged. Luke saw tightly dosed eyes; a wrinkled scarlet face. A mouth already opening to draw breath. Lisette gave a great gasp, there was a rush of liquid, and to Luke Brandon's indescribable wonder, Dieter Meyer's son slid, squalling lustily, into his waiting hands.

By the time Henri returned with Dr Auge, the baby was wrapped in a shawl and Lisette was suitably clad in a nightdress, cradling it to her breast.

‘Good God!' Dr Auge said, pulling up short in the doorway. ‘Is there anything left for me to do?'

Luke grinned. ‘I didn't cut the umbilical cord. I thought you'd prefer to do that yourself.'

Dr Auge collected his scattered wits and bustled across to the bed. ‘And to think I thought this would be a difficult birth,' he said briskly, taking the baby from Lisette's arms and laying it on the bed.

The baby, aggrieved, began to squall again. Dr Auge removed the shawl and regarded him with satisfaction: ‘Congratulations, Madame Dering. You have a fine son. A little small, perhaps, but that is to be expected after the hardship of the last months;' He turned towards them. ‘Have you some weighing scales?' he asked, certain that the baby's weight was to everyone's advantage.

‘Five pounds three ounces,' he said a few minutes later, ‘He will need a little extra care, but he's healthy enough if the sound he is making is anything to go by. Put him to the breast. I'll call again tomorrow.
Au revoir, Monsieur le Comte. Au revoir, madame. Au revoir, monsieur.
'

He hurried away, wondering who the Englishman was, and if he was the father. Somehow he doubted it. The Englishman's colouring was distinctive. Black hair, blue eyes. The baby's hair was dark gold and, in Dr Auge's opinion, destined to stay dark gold. No, the Englishman wasn't the father. And the husband wasn't the father.

He frowned as he threw his bag into the rear of his battered car. One solution had occurred to him, but he dismissed it as too bizarre, too ridiculous to be considered seriously.

‘What are you going to call him?' Luke asked, sitting on the edge of the bed as she nursed the baby, her hair falling softly against her radiant face.

She smiled. ‘I'd like to call him Luke, after you.'

He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘Don't do that, it would only confuse things more. Don't forget that Greg believes it was me you were in love with.'

Her eyes darkened, her happiness draining away. ‘Will he mind very much?' she asked, desperate for reassurance. ‘He didn't mind when he though that it was you I was in love with, but when he knows it was Dieter …'

‘I don't know,' he said truthfully, turning his head away so that she could not see the expression that had flashed through his eyes. He hoped Greg Dering minded like hell. He hoped he walked out on her and never returned. When he had mastered his emotions he turned towards her once again. ‘Will it matter so much to you if he does mind?' he asked tightly. ‘If he finds the baby totally unacceptable?'

He wanted her to say no; that she wasn't in love with Dering. That she never had been. That she was happy now, with the baby … with him.

‘Yes,' she said, and beneath the dark halo of her hair her face was pale, her eyes anguished. ‘It would be almost more than I could bear.'

His mouth hardened. He'd been a fool to ask. But she was being loyal to a man she barely knew. He was certain, when Dering returned, she would be disillusioned. Until then, all he could do was to be supportive and loving. And wait.

She called the baby Dominic. It was a name that was French in origin and yet would not sound strange in California. A name that began with the same letter as Dieter's name. A name that had no other associations.

He was a placid baby, not reminding her, temperamentally of Dieter at all. But there was no mistaking his paternity in the already firm lines of chin and jaw. The grey, black-lashed eyes and the burnished mop of dark gold hair.

A week after the birth she was cooking and cleaning and shopping in the market, the baby constantly at her side in the makeshift cot that her father had made for him.

In March she received a brief and hastily written letter from Greg saying that his company was pressing on towards the Rhine. By the end of the month the Rhine had been crossed and Luke assured her that the war was in its final stages. That the Germans had no alternative but to surrender.

In April, Greg wrote her that American and Russian soldiers had met up on the bank of the Elbe. From the radio, borrowed from old Bleriot, they learned that Russian troops were advancing on Berlin; that the French First Army had reached Lake Constance.

‘The surrender can't be much longer,' she said, her eyes bright with expectation. ‘Once it is, it can only be a matter of weeks, perhaps days, before Greg returns.'

She had misplaced her tortoiseshell comb and her hair dipped forward at either side of her face, brushing her cheeks. She was wearing a red silk shirt and a white linen skirt and looked as if she should have been on the Champs Elysée instead of in a converted stable in Normandy.

‘Where is Greg now?' he asked, forcing her voice to be casual. He didn't want Greg Dering to return. He didn't want to witness a joyful reunion. Perhaps, incredibly, Dering's acceptance of Meyer's son.

She looked at the last, hastily scrawled letter. ‘They're moving south, towards Munich. He expected to be at a place called Dachau the day after he wrote. I don't know where it is. I've never heard of it before. It isn't on any of the maps.'

Luke hadn't heard of it either, but if the Americans were moving south so speedily, and if the Russians were in Berlin, then the end could only be days away.

It came a week later. They heard the news of the German surrender on the radio and almost simultaneously the bells in Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts'church steeple began to peal.

Luke lifted Lisette off her feet, swinging her round and round exultantly. Henri was nearly incoherent with joy. He kissed Lisette, he kissed Luke, he kissed the baby, he hung the Tricolour from the window. It was over. The nightmare was at an end. The Germans had been beaten to their knees and Europe was once again free.

Greg returned to Valmy a month later. Luke and Henri were in the village, visiting old Bleriot who had fallen in a drunken stupor and broken his leg. Lisette was arranging roses in a bowl near an open window, the baby in his cot at her side. When she heard the note of the approaching engine she froze, her hand in mid air. It was a jeep: an army jeep.

She left the roses. She left the room. She hurled herself down the whitewashed stone steps, through the archway and onto the cobbles. He was in uniform. Strong, fit and unbelievably handsome.

For a split second she faltered, then he saw her. He shouted her name, leaping from the jeep, his eyes shining, and as he sprinted towards her, her hesitancy vanished and she entered his arms like an arrow entering the gold. Only when she was crushed hard against his chest did she admit to herself how frightened she had been that he would never return. That he would be killed, reported missing: that she would never see him again.

‘Oh, I'm so glad you're back!' she cried joyfully, her arms tightening around his neck, and then, as he looked down at her and she saw the flecks of gold near the pupils of his eyes, the tumble of his hair curling low over his forehead, she said chokingly, ‘I missed you, Greg! Oh, how I missed you!'

Relief rocked through him. It had been ten months since he had said goodbye to her. Long enough for her to have changed her mind about the hasty wedding he had talked her into. He felt her press herself against him. She hadn't changed her mind, and she hadn't forgotten. The memories of their wedding night had sustained her through the long months of waiting as they had sustained him.

‘No more partings,' he promised huskily. ‘This time when I leave, you come with me,' and then his mouth came down on hers, hard and hungry, and desire licked through her, scorching her nerve ends raw.

He swung her up in his arms, carrying her with devastating ease up the stone stairs, striding with her through the sun-filled sitting-room where Dominic lay unnoticed in his cot, falling with her onto the bed in the room beyond. She tried to speak, to tell him about Dominic, but he gave her no chance.

‘Later,' he said hoarsely. ‘We'll talk later, Lisette. All I want to do now is make love to you. It's been so long. Too long.'

His fingers were on the buttons of her blouse, his mouth on her lips, her throat. She abandoned the attempt to speak, astonished at the ferocity of her own need. Her own passion and hunger.

He tore himself out of his uniform. Within seconds her blouse followed his shirt onto the floor, her skirt his trousers; her lace-edged French knickers, his shorts. He was too impatient to wait until she removed her suspenders and cheap, rayon stockings. A tuft of night-black hair curled silkily against the fragile whiteness of her inner thighs. He groaned, burying his face in the sweet-smelling fragrance of her, his tongue hot and exploring. Her fingers tightened in his hair, her back arching with pleasure.

‘I love you … love you … love you …' she gasped, and knew with delight that it was true. When he mounted her and she opened for him, she shivered with ecstasy, wrapping her legs around him, wanting to hold him inside her forever.

Their climax was shattering, the reverberations going on and on until she thought she would die. As she looked up into his face, at his tightly closed eyes, at the expression of intense concentration, almost agony, furrowing his features, she was aware of a sensation she had never before experienced. Power and pleasure inextricably mixed. He was her husband. There was no shadow hanging over their love for one another. No darkness to blight the happiness they had discovered.