The Chase: A Novel (35 page)

Rachel turned her back on the scene, now shaken and exhausted. She found a tree and slid down to sit at the base of its trunk, watching as the ambulances were loaded with the wounded. She counted two dead, and it saddened her immensely. She did not think she was ever going to get used to the war.

“You’re crying,” Lionel remarked.

Rachel looked up at him. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

He scrutinized her, then smiled. “You haven’t changed.”

Rachel didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not. “Actually, I have,” she said, wiping her eyes.

He left her without a word. Rachel saw him go over to his motorcar. Even though he was in uniform, it was a civilian vehicle, and only the very rich could afford petrol for motoring. He returned with a thermos. “Tea.” He smiled at her. “It’s a bit weak.” He unscrewed the cap and poured her a cup, handing it to her.

“Thank you, that’s so kind.” Rachel took a sip. It was indeed weak, and hardly sweet, but rationing had become stricter in the past month, and she did not blame him for reusing old teabags. She hadn’t realized she was so thirsty, or that her hands were bleeding from scraping amid the rubble.

Lionel sat down at the base of the tree beside her. He dug a half-eaten chocolate bar out of his pocket and handed it to her.

“Are you sure?” Rachel asked hungrily.

“Absolutely,” he said, smiling.

Rachel ate the stale but delicious candy.

“I heard you are stationed at Fighter Command,” he said when she had finished.

“Yes, I am.”

“What do you do?”

She lied. “I’m a radar operator.” She was not allowed to tell anyone what she really did.

“How have you changed?” he asked.

Rachel started. “I’m eighteen now, Lionel. The first time we met, I was thirteen.”

Lionel smiled softly—as if fond of the memory. “I remember.”

Rachel got chills. Didn’t he remember that his brother had died that weekend? Mistakenly shot by his own hand? She stood up, trying to brush off her skirt. The act was futile. “I think I had better go.”

“Why? You’re on leave, aren’t you?”

She handed him the empty cup. “Yes, but my leave ends today. I’d like to spend some more time with Papa and Hannah before I have to go back to the base.”

“How is your father? And your sisters?” Lionel asked, screwing the cup back on the thermos.

Rachel shivered again, though it was a hot August day. “Everyone is fine. Sarah drives an ambulance.”

Lionel smiled. “That would be Sarah. In the thick of it. Is she still seducing boys?”

Rachel stiffened. “She seduces no one. Men try to seduce her. They cannot stay away.”

He seemed amused. “Will you ever defend me that way?”

“Do you need defending?”

“Perhaps. I am family.”

“Yes, you are. Lionel, I really have to go.” She forced a smile. “It was nice to see you. Take care.” She turned.

He caught her arm. “Did I hear something about an imminent engagement?”

“There is no engagement,” she said more briskly than she intended.

“Are you in love?”

She stared at him. “Lionel—”

“You’re not in love,” he said. It seemed to Rachel that he was pleased.

She was not belligerent, like Sarah. When gauntlets were thrown, she turned the other cheek. She said, “Actually, I am in love. His name is Joshua Friedman, and he’s a sergeant in the Royal Artillery, stationed at the Croyden aerodrome. We’re waiting for the war to end before we get married.”

“Croyden got hit badly, didn’t it?”

“Very badly,” Rachel agreed. “Joshua said they lost the armory and the officers’ mess completely. Of course, you know the reports to the public weren’t accurate—it was so much worse than we were told. A hundred and eighteen civilians died, Lionel. Isn’t that terrible? I’m so relieved he wasn’t hurt.”

Lionel looked through her. “The Gerries will get their due,” he said finally.

He was so odd. “I do have to leave,” she said.

“Don’t you want to ask about my family?”

She looked at him. “I have merely assumed that Lady Ellen and your father are fine. And little John must be seven or eight by now.”

“Seven, I think,” Lionel said. “You haven’t heard.”

“I haven’t heard what?” Rachel asked, suddenly anxious.

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard,” he said slowly. “My father disappeared about three weeks ago.”

“What?” Rachel cried in shock.

Lionel just nodded.

“How does one disappear?” she asked, disbelieving.

“I don’t know. But the authorities have made some outrageous claims,” he said very grimly.

“What kind of claims? And how is Lady Elgin?”

“She is hanging on. They claim to have found all of this secret correspondence hidden in his desk. They even found some sort of invisible ink. They say he is a Nazi supporter, perhaps even a spy, and they believe he has fled to Germany.”

Rachel felt herself gaping. She closed her jaw abruptly. “What?” she managed finally. “They think he is a spy?” Their dinner at the manor in Wales came to mind. She clearly recalled Papa and Elgin arguing furiously. The rest of her recollections were somewhat vague, but hadn’t Papa accused Elgin of being a fascist? Could it be true?

“I know. It’s absurd. I am so angry every time I think of it.”

Rachel looked at him as he sighed. He didn’t seem angry, just resigned. But if there was one thing she knew about him, it was that he was not emotional by nature. “I am very sorry, Lionel,” she said, meaning it.

“Thank you,” he said. “I knew you would be. I know you are the one person in my family I can count on, Rachel.”

She was taken aback. They were family, but hardly close. Blood was thicker than water—that was one of her father’s favorite expressions. Still, Papa’s feelings for the Elgins had not changed. Rachel felt quite certain he was excluding them from the equation whenever he expressed such a familial sentiment.

“Well, I have to get back to the ministry. I was on an assignment this morning. Do you need a lift?” he asked.

“No, that’s quite all right,” she began, when she heard a familiar whirring noise. “Oh, no,” she cried.

And then she heard the screaming, growing louder. In unison, they both looked up.

The sun was in their eyes. For a moment, Rachel was blinded, and she lifted her hand to shield her gaze. In the next moment, a black T-shaped object emerged from behind the sun. As it did, machine guns began firing high above them, their noise unmistakable.

Rachel gripped Lionel’s arm as another plane became visible, chasing the first.

Lionel ran to his car. Machine-gun fire continued to sound. He returned, peering upward through a pair of binoculars.

“What’s going on?” Rachel cried anxiously, also gazing at the sky and trying to watch the dogfight.

“A Spitfire on the run from an ME-110,” Lionel said flatly. He handed her the binoculars.

Rachel trained them up at the sky, just in time to see the Spitfire bank so tightly it was almost impossible, wheeling away from the Luftwaffe fighter plane. The Spitfire banked again, coming back toward the ME-110. “Yes,” Rachel cried, her heart feeling as if it were wedged in her throat. She focused the glasses briefly on the Spitfire’s markings. Her heart lurched as she realized the plane was K 5281, and that it belonged to the Seventy-second Squadron. She knew the plane. Just like she knew the pilot by voice and name. She must have listened to a dozen conversations in which “Hawk” was the RAF adversary in a dogfight with the Luftwaffe. He stood out from his peers; not only was he American, he had that distinctive and funny New York accent. He had scored three kills since July, and as he was the first American to down a Luftwaffe plane in the war, he was rather infamous. But perhaps his infamy came from the rumor that he had claimed to be a Canadian in order to enlist in the RAF. Rachel had heard that his actual name was Eddy Marshall.

Machine-gun fire burst out another time. But this time it was the Spitfire attacking the ME-110 from behind.

Before her very eyes, the German fighter exploded in midair.

“What happened?” Lionel asked calmly beside her.

Rachel was about to hand him the glasses when she realized something was wrong. The Spitfire was wobbling from side to side as it began its descent. “We got the bloody Emil,” she said, “but something’s wrong. Hawk Marshall is hurt.” She realized his fighter must have been hit in the initial round of firing.

He was descending now rapidly, at a steep, unusual angle. Rachel could hear his engines, and she had been around planes enough by now to know that this one didn’t sound right.

“He’s going to crash-land,” Lionel said matter-of-factly.

Her heart felt like it had stopped. Rachel watched the Spitfire trying to correct the angle of its descent by lifting its nose. It was flying over the burning factory now. But every time the fat nose bumped up, it came down heavily again. Suddenly the roaring engine began to whine.

The fighter somehow cleared the building by inches, not feet. It was flying so low now that Rachel was afraid it would crash into the roof of the farmhouse in the field behind the factory. As it angled down, cows scattered, bellowing. A dog in the barn began to bark wildly. The plane managed to clear the rooftop of the house.

The fighter was about to hit the ground. However, a patch of trees was directly in front of it. Rachel now saw that one of the wings was flapping at its tip, as if broken, like a chicken wing. The front two wheels touched down. The plane screamed and bumped up again.

The group of close-knit trees was just meters ahead. The Spitfire went down another time. This time it stayed down, brakes screaming now as it headed directly for the trees.

Rachel watched the plane start to collapse onto one side, swerving ever so slightly, enough to avoid a head-on collision with the trees. But instead, the trees sheared off the plane’s other wing, metal screaming and shrieking.

The plane continued past the trees, wingless on one side, and finally came to a shuddering stop in the center of the field.

Rachel turned to look at Lionel, and together they ran to his car, jumping into it, Lionel gunning the engine. He jumped the curb of the parking lot and plowed through the fence enclosing the pasture. All the cows had fled to the perimeter. They bumped and bounced over the rutted ground. And as Lionel halted the car a few meters from the Spitfire, Rachel saw the pilot’s helmeted head appear from the open cockpit. She jammed open her door and ran toward the plane.

He tipped up his goggles and tore off his helmet, tossing it away. He began climbing out. Rachel reached the broken wing just as he leaped to the ground. He staggered, and she caught him. His full weight landed on her, pushing them both against the side of the Spitfire. The metal skin was burning-hot to the touch.

Rachel gripped him more tightly, until they both regained their balance by leaning on the plane. “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

As she spoke, it struck her how big he was, at once tall and strong, and there was something odd about his being in her arms—it felt familiar, either that or it felt right.

He looked down at her.

Rachel froze. Any further words she had been about to utter escaped her now. Any air she’d had in her lungs was lost. Time stood still. The past disappeared, and the future and the present became one. Looking into a pair of smoky green eyes, she had the craziest thought:
I know this man.

And then the thought was gone.

“I’m fine . . . now,” Eddy Marshall said.

CHAPTER 16

Rachel couldn’t seem to find her voice. His smile reached his eyes. He had amazing eyes. “I think I’ve crashed right at the feet of an angel,” he said. “Are you an angel?”

There was laughter in his tone. It sparkled in his eyes. He had just crashed, perhaps even destroying his plane, and he was joking with her. Rachel was oddly immobilized. The soft sound of Lionel’s steps brought her out of her strange paralysis. “Is the plane safe?” she managed.

“She won’t blow. I got hit in the windshield and the wing. She’s okay, we can save her,” Eddy said. His gaze remained unwaveringly upon her. He still wore a slight smile, and now Rachel noticed two deep dimples, which intensified the sense one had that he was extremely good-natured.

Suddenly he glanced past her at Lionel.

Rachel stepped back, out of their mutual embrace. She realized he had several cuts on his face, which were bleeding. They looked superficial. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

“Sprained my wrist,” he said. “Banged up my knee. But I think that’s it.”

Lionel paused before them. “Nice flying,” he said. “I’m Lieutenant Lionel Elgin.”

Eddy turned. “Sorry, bud, can’t shake. Squadron Leader Eddy Marshall. Number Seventy-two, out of Biggin Hill.”

“You’re an American,” Lionel commented.

“Damn right, I’m a Yank through and through.” But Eddy was looking at Rachel again.

She became aware of the disconcerting intensity of his gaze. She knew she was blushing. “We had better get you to a hospital. You need to have your wrist looked at,” Rachel said softly.

“Only if you are a nurse in disguise,” he returned.

“I’m afraid I’m not a nurse,” Rachel replied, wishing she were.

He met her gaze, his smile fading. “It’s just a sprain. My knee’s okay. We need to call this in. I need to get back to base.”

He was a heroic man, Rachel couldn’t help thinking. Heroic and handsome, thinking of his plane and his duty first. Rachel felt overwhelmed by the pilot standing before her—and she was acutely aware of being overcome. “Please, have a doctor look at your wrist. And at your knee and those cuts. You really should.”

“All right,” he said softly, as if they were alone. “Has a guy ever refused those eyes of yours?” But he wasn’t smiling anymore and he flushed.

Rachel felt her cheeks heat up like boiling water again. Quickly she turned aside, ducking her head.
He is only flirting with you
, she thought. But deep in her heart, she didn’t believe that at all.

“The medics are busy at the factory. There’s a hospital a few kilometers from Eltham. I’ll take you there,” Lionel said, a rude voice cutting between them.