‘If it’s because you didn’t say goodbye, I understand...’
‘No, you don’t. I don’t want to say goodbye, not ever. That’s the whole point. I thought...’ He smiled weakly. ‘I love you,’ he said baldly. ‘I let you think I didn’t love you because I thought it would be kinder, but it was wrong and I was a complete idiot and you were right and—and I love you.’
Flora’s legs almost gave way beneath her. She dropped extremely ungracefully into a chair. ‘You love me.’
‘I do. And as long as you love me, that’s all that matters. You were right. We can cope with anything, if we have each other.’
Geraint loved her.
She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t let herself believe it, not just yet. ‘But yesterday you said...’
‘Some things haven’t changed.’ He looked down at her earnestly. ‘I am still terrified that I won’t be able to cope in the trenches, but I know that I’ll try my hardest, and I know that if I fail you’ll still love me. I’ve realised that the only way I can let you down is by walking away from you, by being too afraid to give what we have a chance.’
‘And if you are hurt, Geraint? If you are wounded, scarred, worse? Will you come home to me?’
‘I promise.’
‘And afterwards, after the war, what then? What about your political ambitions? I’m not exactly a poster girl for the socialist movement.’
Geraint grinned. ‘Oh, but all that’s going to change. No more us and them. We’ll work together, you and I, to change the world. Or at least, to change that part of it. With you by my side, I’m know we’ll succeed.’
He dropped to his knees before her, taking her hands in his. ‘Knowing you love me will give me something more precious than anything to fight for. If you’ll take me, if you can forgive me for being so blind, if you still want me, I can think of nothing I want more, and no bigger honour than to have you as my wife. Will you marry me?’
She had held herself in, kept her emotions strapped so tightly down for weeks now that it was almost impossible to let herself go. But Geraint was looking at her, his face stripped bare for her to read, and his train left in less than two hours, and she loved him and he loved her and that really was all that mattered.
‘Yes,’ Flora said in a tight little voice that did not sound a bit like her own. Happiness, like a sudden burst of summer sunshine, caught her unawares. She threw her arms around his neck. ‘Yes, yes, yes. Oh, dear heavens, yes.’
Laughing, kissing, crying, she clung to him. ‘I love you,’ he said over and over as he returned her kisses. ‘Are you certain?’ he asked her as she kissed him back.
‘Absolutely. Completely. Utterly.’
‘Then tell me what we need to do.’
‘Do?’
‘Banns. Paperwork.’
‘You mean you want me to marry you now? But we are both leaving for France.’
‘All the more reason, but if you’d rather wait I would understand.’
‘No. No, I don’t want to wait a second longer than we have to. I’ll postpone my departure. I’ll make a list,’ Flora said, laughing. ‘It’s one of the many things I’ve discovered I’m rather good at.’
Six weeks later
‘Did I tell you that you look quite radiant, Mrs Cassell?’
‘Several times. Did I tell you that I love you, Mr Cassell?’
‘No matter how many times you do, it will never be often enough.’
They were in Flora’s bedroom, having appropriated the Lodge for their wedding night. Alex had returned to school most reluctantly. Flora’s parents were spending the night as guests of Colonel Patterson. Her mother was very far from reconciled to the marriage, but the laird had proved a surprisingly fervent supporter.
The two sets of parents had been rather awkward with each other, but to Flora’s relief her brother Robbie had dashingly stepped into the breach. Charming, and as ever the life and soul of the party, Robbie had abandoned his elegant girlfriend, Annabel, to dance several reels with Mrs Cassell before persuading Geraint’s father to down a few wee drams of the laird’s oldest and finest malt.
‘What on earth did you two find so fascinating to talk about? You were chatting away for hours,’ Flora asked him at the end of the evening, but Robbie merely grinned.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ he said, enveloping her in a bear hug. ‘I’ve never seen you look so happy, sis. Don’t worry about the new in-laws, I’ll take good care of them.’
True to his word, Robbie and Annabel remained with Geraint’s parents until they left to spend the night at the drover’s inn in the village, having politely but firmly refused the laird’s offer to join him and his wife at Colonel Patterson’s stately pile. ‘We’ll be more comfortable in the pub,’ the senior Mr Cassell had said.
‘Not too comfortable, mind,’ his wife had retorted. ‘We’ve a long journey back to Wales in the morning.’
In the morning, Robbie and Annabel would return to London. In the morning, Geraint would be going back to camp. In the morning, Flora herself would be packing to go to France. In the morning, she would be alone. A bride of less than a day. She didn’t want to think about the morning.
The lamp cast long shadows on the faded wallpaper. She was nervous as she removed her cape and gloves. One night was all they had together. Geraint had been unable to persuade his CO to grant him more. They both knew it was because he had orders to mobilise, though neither of them had alluded to it.
‘We’ll manage, my darling, because we have to,’ Geraint said, as if he had read her mind, which she supposed was not so very difficult.
‘When I am in France, perhaps it might be possible for us to see each other.’
‘Perhaps, but let’s not talk of France or the war just now,’ Geraint said. ‘I love you.’
‘I know.’
‘Yes, but you don’t know how much.’ He smiled at her, a wicked smile she had not seen before. ‘Come here, Mrs Cassell. Let me show you.’
He kissed her slowly, as if they had all the time in the world. He kissed her brow and her cheeks and her neck as he pulled the pins from her hair. Then he kissed her mouth, lingeringly, lovingly. He kissed her throat and her shoulders as he undid the fastenings of the Poiret evening gown she had gone to such lengths to acquire. The soft folds of the gauzy overdress were fashioned in the Roman style, worn over a heavy lace underdress that made the most of her tall, slim frame. The gown fell to the floor and pooled at her feet. Geraint led her to the bed and removed her silk slippers. He kissed the soft skin at the top of her stockings, the back of her knee, her calf, the fluttering pulse at her ankle.
She watched, her pulse racing, as he hastily removed his own clothes, casting them carelessly onto the floor beside her own discarded gown. Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. Long, lean legs. Her breathing quickened. She had never seen a naked man before. She could not tear her eyes from the sleek arc of his erection.
He pulled her from the bed and kissed her again. He was hard, hot against her belly. He undid the ribbons that held her camisole in place and kissed the valley between her breasts. She wriggled free of her silk knickers, the last scrap of her clothing. He was breathing heavily. He bent his head to take one of her nipples in her mouth. Low inside her, the thrumming started. He took her hand and curled it around him, showing her how to stroke him, and slid his fingers inside her, stroking, slowly, to the same rhythm. She began to quiver with the pulsing inside her. He laid her on the bed, parted her legs and put his mouth on the throbbing core of her. She came quickly, crying out, bucking under him. He held her, kissed her, then he entered her, thrusting gently in on the ebbing waves of her climax until she enveloped him and the ebbing changed direction.
His skin was damp with the effort it was costing him to hold back. She didn’t want him to hold back, and wrapped her legs around him, pulling him towards her to kiss him greedily. He groaned and thrust. She thought she might die from the sheer bliss of it, until he thrust again, and it intensified. Thrusting, harder now, deeper, she heard wild cries that might have been her own as she came again, as his own climax took him, and he spilled himself inside her, clinging to her, rocking her with him, murmuring her name.
It was true what they said, she thought, drifting, floating. It was true, it was a union. They really were one.
‘Are you tired?’ she whispered to her husband some very little while later.
‘Not in the least.’
‘Good,’ Flora said, running her hands suggestively over the taut muscles of his buttocks, ‘because we’ve got all night, my darling, and I am anxious that we make the most of it.’
She felt rather than heard the low growl of his laughter. ‘Then why don’t you make a list of what you want us to do,’ Geraint said, and kissed her.
Dearest Sylvie
Contents
Chapter One
Paris—28th October 1916
T
he nightclub was packed with revellers. The air was stale, a cocktail of cigarette smoke, alcohol and sweat combined with the faint but distinctive smell of the trenches, which clung to the uniforms of the soldiers huddled round the tiny tables. Hostesses, like exotic birds in their revealing evening gowns and garish make-up, laughed coquettishly and smiled ceaselessly as they worked the room. Glasses were emptied and refilled at an alarming rate as everyone sought that ultimate of prizes, oblivion. The atmosphere was one of frenetic gaiety laced with desperation. A stranger entering would be forgiven for thinking that this was a party to celebrate the end of the world.
On a tiny podium, an exotic dancer clad only in a jewelled headdress and a transparent tunic was doing her dubious best to impersonate the infamous Mata Hari. Ribald cheers and catcalls accompanied her every gyration. Seated alone at the back of the room, Captain Robbie Carmichael of the Argyllshire Battalion, Argyll and Southern Highlanders, squinted down at the letter in his hand.
My Dear Alex,
My wound has finally healed and I go back on active duty in two days. In your last missive, you begged me to use whatever influence I have to effect your transfer from Egypt to join me in the trenches of the Western Front. I cannot, WILL NOT, do as you ask.
You are my only brother, Squirt. Our parents have only two sons. With the odds stacked against me, you must see that it is your duty not to come here to die but to stay where you are and to fight to survive.
You have to stop thinking of me as a hero, Alex. I’M NOT!!! Being wounded in the line of fire isn’t honourable or brave, and it’s certainly not glorious. Getting hit means one is careless or unlucky.
Despite what we officers write in those hateful letters to the families of our men, death is rarely either quick or painless and it is NEVER heroic. This war must be won, and it will be, but the cost is an obscene waste of life—there’s hardly a lad left from Glen Massan in my company who hasn’t been killed or wounded.
Alex, forget what they told you in that school of ours. War doesn’t bring out the best in men but the worst. We are not noble brothers in arms but savages who will do anything to survive.
Please, I beg of you, forget this business of a transfer and concentrate on staying safe.
Your brother,
Robbie
Robbie tore the letter into tiny pieces and stuffed them into his tunic pocket. Alex was just nineteen, and despite having seen very limited action in Gallipoli, his letters showed him to be still the naively patriotic boy not long out of school. Robbie himself had no illusions left about mankind. He could not bear to destroy his brother’s. The war would do that soon enough.
Picking up the bottle of red wine, he emptied the last of it into his glass. He hadn’t ever intended to send the letter, had written is as a form of catharsis. Stupid idea! All it had done was reinforce the reality of what he would have to face again in two days. It was late, he was exhausted, but he was not nearly drunk enough to go back to his digs, not nearly drunk enough to sleep. The nagging headache that had been his constant companion since waking up in the field hospital several weeks before was concentrated behind his eyes tonight. The scar throbbed. A thin angry red line beneath his newly grown hair, it ran from his temple to the base of his skull, a memento of the shrapnel that had almost killed him and the reason for his sojourn in the French capital. Convalescence. As if any of them would ever truly recover from this conflict.
Robbie stretched out his long legs and drained his glass in a single gulp, at the same time raising his hand to summon the waiter.
‘La m
ê
me chose,’
he said, and once more declined the man’s offer to send the next bottle over with
une petite copine
. In the time he had taken to drink the first bottle, several of the club’s so-called
jolies filles
had offered to sit with him, despite the fact that he’d ostentatiously placed his hat on the only other seat. Like almost everyone in Paris, the nightclub hostesses were on the make, vultures who fed off the war, leaching on the fervour of soldiers who hadn’t seen anything remotely
jolie
for months. Though he would concede that they provided a much-needed service, it was not one he wished to make use of. The old, carefree Robbie had enjoyed sex and female company enormously. The Robbie that the war had created shunned it as he shunned almost every other human contact that was not strictly necessary.