The Heart's War (22 page)

Looking through the water blurring my view, I could see we’d stopped on a stretch of road lined with large, old townhouses. Chimneys poked up at each corner. The housing looked to be in serviceable condition, if exhausted. They needed a new coat of
paint.

Soldiers wandered up and down the street, many of them bandaged, or limping along with a crutch.

It looked like the government had quartered the runoff from the local barracks here.

“Wait here for a moment, Eleanor,” Lawrence said. Before I could protest, he opened the door and swung himself out into the drizzle. I watched him run up the stairs to the door marked 42 and enter without knocking.

The private kept the car running, the engine growling and sputtering, the frame of the vehicle shuddering slightly as it idled.

Lawrence didn’t return immediately, so I found myself staring down at my hands, folded on my lap. What business could he possibly be attending to here? And why did I need to be right outside? Surely he could have just left me back at that public house?

From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a uniformed man emerging from number 42 and hurrying down the stairs. At least he didn’t want to take his time sauntering down the sidewalk, I figured. When he reached the door and began opening it, I readied my complains on my lips.

They died when the man who sat down beside me was not Lawrence Marsh.

“This can’t be!” I said, my body moving instinctually back into the corner created by the seat and door.

“It is, though. Oh, Ellie! There have been so many times I thought I’d never see your face again!” He reached for me.

“No, you’re dead! They told me you were dead! Am I insane? Am I seeing things?”

The Jeffrey Beech sat across from me in the back of the Ford looked both familiar and alien. Like Lawrence, he was gaunt, his cheeks hollowed out. His happiness at seeing me warred with the weight of what he’d seen over there in his eyes, which looked older than the shining, optimistic ones I knew back in Kitchener.

The tails of cream-colored bandages poked out from the cuffs of both sleeves, and he moved with a stiffness that spoke to whatever injury he’d sustained.

Like some child, I squeezed my eyes shut, my nails biting into the palms of my hands as I clenched them into fists. If this is a dream, I told myself, I want to wake up. I want to wake up now!

But when I opened my eyes, Jeff still sat across from me. My palms stung from the jabbing I gave them.

And Jeff still had his hand extended out towards me. One corner of his mouth trembled, and his eyes looked watery.

“I told you I’d come back to you no matter what,” he said, “And I wasn’t about to let an artillery shell make a liar of me.”

Slowly, still not quite believing what my senses told me, I accepted his hand. He felt solid enough, and warm.

“Ellie…” he started, but I stopped him when I flew across the seat and wrapped my arms around him. Despite his other changes, his smell remained the same. I luxuriated in the feeling of his chest expanding with his breaths. When he returned the hug, crushing me against him and resting his cheek on my shoulder, the tears came.

It was real. This was no dream.

My Jeff was alive!

***

The townhouse had three levels, with most of the rooms converted to dorms and jammed full of cots. Jeff stayed in what used to be some sort of study or library, judging by the bookcases built into the walls and the old stone fireplace that still smelled of ash.

Normally, it looked like ten men slept in there. But Lawrence had pulled rank and ordered everyone out to give Jeff and me some privacy. He’d pulled a few cots together (refusing my help all the while) and that’s where we sat, our hands intertwined and our thighs pressed together as we watched the rain slide down the window lattice in our first moment of contented silence in what felt an eternity.

I knew I was still in some state of shock and disbelief. I kept squeezing his hand and looking at him, making sure he was actually there. He squeezed my hand right back.

“What happened to you? Why did they tell me you were dead?” I asked.

Jeff unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it back off his shoulders with some effort, his eyes squinting in pain. I sucked in a breath. His stomach was heavily bandaged, as well as his shoulders.

“The shell exploded right next to me. They figure it must have been a partial dud or something, because it didn’t explode nearly as much as it should have. It was plenty for me, anyway. I don’t really remember much, actually. Just being lifted into the air, tasting dirt and blood in my mouth… and thinking about how I was never going to get to see you again.”

My hands played lightly over the bandages, coming to rest on the bare skin where his shoulders met his neck. “You’re going to be seeing me from now on, as often as I can manage,” I said.

I leaned in to kiss him, but he pulled back at the last moment. “Why are you here, Ellie? In England, I mean. Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m so happy to see you, I’m just not really certain why I’m seeing you in this place. Was it Lawrence? Did he somehow get you over here?”

I smiled. “Not how you’re thinking, but in a way, I suppose. I followed you. I got over here only to find out that you’d shipped out already.”

That satisfied him. This time when I leaned in for a kiss, he didn’t stop me. His lips were as warm and soft against mine as I remembered. Warmth flooded my body, my heart fluttering at the touch.

Neither of us wanted to stop. So we didn’t. My sense of propriety raged inside the cell where I’d locked it away. Damn propriety. I thought Jeff was dead, and he wasn’t. And nothing was going to keep me from him any longer.

“Gently… Gently…” Jeff said as I eased him back down onto the cot. And it was quite an effort to be gentle. Desire and relief and pure happiness positively thrummed inside me, looking for any way out.

Some part of me wondered if there were soldiers bunched up on the other side of the door, listening in on our moment together. The rest of me didn’t care.

No, the rest of me was too busy unbuttoning Jeff’s trousers and kissing him and getting feverish at the thought of being together once more.

And then we were. We both sighed and shuddered in relief as we became one once more, him hot and hard, me just as hot, but soft and clutching around him.

Our hands clenched together, the strength of our grip attesting to our need for this
intimacy.

I kept the pace relatively slow, not wanting to hurt him, until near the end. He touched me deep inside, and I just couldn’t control myself anymore. So I buried my face against his neck while he held me close, our bodies rigid as the waves of our pleasure passed over us.

And it was all the more intense for me. I thought we’d never have a moment like this again, and there we were, given a second chance by fate.

We lay side by side on the cots he’d pushed together earlier, looking up at the bare lathes of the ceiling.

It was then a terrible thought hit me. I bolted up, Jeff looking at me in confusion.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Are they going to make you go back, when you’re recovered?” Already, I was plotting a million ways to keep him safe with me. No draft board in the world could take him, not this time.

“No, this is it. I got my discharge after they released me from the field hospital. I’m back to Halifax and Kitchener on the next boat going that way.”

I’d been so overwhelmed by getting my Jeff back that I’d completely forgotten about the news from Kitchener.

“Jeff, there’s something I need to tell you…”

Epilogue

Losing his mother hit Jeff harder than any artillery shell. Losing his home and belongings poured salt into the open wound. But other things soon occupied our lives.

For one, our marriage. Jeff proposed to me on the grand staircase of the Olympic on the trip back. He offered a plain steel band, which to me was worth more coming from him than all the gold in the world. We got married within a week of returning to Kitchener, despite all the tumult of sorting through the wreckage of our lives.

Thankfully, Jeff got a hero’s welcome and a manager’s position at Lang’s. I made amends with my mother, and we stayed with her for a short time before finding a little place of our own, down on Albert Street in Waterloo.

Marie, our daughter, was born November 11
th
the following year, Armistice Day. It was an incredible time. Everyone across the world knew that something had been irrevocably changed in mankind by that terrible conflict. But now was a chance to rebuild our lives, to make things better for everyone.

In the summer of 1920, Jeff took the family back across the Atlantic. We got passage on the Olympic, converted back to the luxury liner she was built to be. It was strange to be back on that behemoth, not seeing crowds of soldiers everywhere, not having to wonder if a submersible stalked us. 

Our hotel looks out upon the Arc de Triomphe across the way. It’s a lavish room, with plenty of gold trimming and sumptuous, decadent French style in the antique furniture. More than we can afford, really, but Jeff insisted that we do this in style.

Marie’s getting heavier in my arms, but thankfully she’s quiet. Something about the pretty lights, the way the wind ruffles the leaves of the trees lining the streets, calms her.

The door opens behind me, and Jeff smiles as he walks in. He looks good in his dark suit, the gold chain of his pocket watch resting against his vest.

He still moved a little stiffly, and bore the scars of the war under his clothes. But he lived. That was what counted.

“How are my beautiful women?” he asked, giving me a kiss on the lips and Marie one on her forehead. She burbled happily.

“We’re merely wondering what took you so long, and where you might have gone off to where we couldn’t join.”

With that, Jeff smiled. He reached into his jacket and pulled something out. “There was something I forgot to get you while I was over here.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jeff opened the box to reveal a generous cushion cut diamond set into a golden band.

“Oh, Jeff, it’s beautiful!” I said.

“I told you I would get you one. It just took a little longer than I first thought. Here…” he started sliding off the steel band he’d given me on the Olympic, but I stopped him.

“No, this one’s more precious to me than any diamond.” Instead, I held out my right hand, and he slid the ring down on that ring finger. We looked at the light glinting off it, the way it sparkled in the Parisian sun.

“Do you like it?” he said.

“I love it! Just promise me you’ll never again run off on an adventure to get another. Once was more than enough for me.”

Jeff hugged me from behind and we looked out onto Paris. It was funny to think how just a few years ago the Germans came within a few miles of the city.

“Never again.
I never want to be without you,” he said.

THE END

Contact Lucy at:
[email protected]

Want to learn about the latest releases and promotions? Sign up for Lucy’s newsletter by copying or typing this URL into your internet browser: http://mad.ly/signups/77009/join

Lucy Lambert

Published by Lucy Lambert

Copyright 2014 Lucy Lambert

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.