‘I suppose so,’ Flora replied. She did not want to think about that. ‘Mother, what I’m trying to tell you is that I shall be looking for something else to do.’
‘Such as what, precisely? And please, Flora, do not persist with this notion that you can become a volunteer nurse. You are quite simply not cut out for it.’
‘I can learn. I do have some skills. I am an excellent organiser, and I am a good negotiator, too. It was I who agreed the terms of the regular local deliveries, and many of those coming from Glasgow. I did those on the telephone.’
‘Well! So it has come to that, my daughter discussing terms with tradesmen.’
Flora burst out laughing. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mother...’
‘It is not funny.’ Lady Carmichael pushed her chair back violently. ‘It is very far from funny. This war will not go on forever, Flora Carmichael. When it ends, if you are not careful, you will discover that you have become quite unsuited for real life. Think about that before you ruin your hands with carbolic soap and ruin your chances of making any sort of match by compromising your reputation nursing common soldiers.’
‘So much for my determination to have the last word,’ Flora said as the door swung shut behind her mother. Picking up her notebook and pencil, she got to her feet, staring out of the window at the darkening sky, all her pleasure in having completed her meeting exactly to plan quite spoiled by her mother’s reaction.
But beneath her mother’s bluster there was genuine concern. Leaving home, flying in the face of her parents’ wishes, would change things irrevocably between them. What was more, if the war continued as it seemed inevitable it would, into 1915 or even 1916, there was a good chance they would lose all of their children to it, one way or another.
Chapter Six
S
everal days later, in the drawing room, Flora’s shoes echoed on the bare boards. It looked enormous without its furnishings, the last of which had been shrouded in old sheets and in placed in the stables. Dust motes danced in the air as a faint streak of winter sun penetrated the gloom. ‘Is it selfish of me,’ Flora asked Geraint, ‘to want to leave here just when my parents may need me the most?’
‘What about your needs?’
‘I need to leave,’ she replied without hesitation, ‘though it makes me feel horribly guilty just saying it.’
‘I know how that feels.’
‘Of course you do.’ She touched his arm sympathetically. ‘Do you regret it, Geraint?’
His hand covered hers briefly before he snatched it away. ‘It’s tough, walking away from the life you know, the people you love. I—I miss them.’
‘I find it appalling that you have not had sufficient leave to go to Wales since joining the army.’
Geraint flushed. ‘I haven’t been home in three years.’
‘Three years! But I thought— You said— I assumed...’
‘It’s not that we’re estranged. I write every week.’
Geraint was staring down at his boots, the toes of which were polished to a mirror-like smoothness, which, he had told her, severely compromised their waterproofing. ‘But you have not seen them since you enlisted,’ Flora said.
‘I told you, when I left the pit, they thought I was being disloyal.’
‘Don’t you think that perhaps the problem lies more with you, and not them? Geraint, they will surely be more hurt by your staying away than the fact that you left in the first place.’
When he finally looked up, his eyes were bleak. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said.
I don’t want to discuss it,
his tone made very clear.
Make me understand, explain it to me,
Flora wanted to say, but the pain in his eyes stopped her. ‘The news from the front is as gloomy as the weather,’ she said instead. ‘The Battle of Ypres continues on into its fourth week, although the press claim that we have repulsed the last German attack.’
‘I saw the latest figures. Fifty thousand British casualties so far and the French have lost over eighty. Small consolation that Jerry has lost the same amount combined.’
‘And every one of them someone’s husband or brother or son,’ Flora said sadly. ‘In the village, the talk is all of the boys who enlisted alongside Ghillie McNair’s son, Peter. Ten of them in total, and no doubt hundreds more from the rest of the county, all now training with the Argyll and Southern Highlanders.’ She smiled weakly. ‘One piece of good news, if you can call it that. Mrs Oliphant’s son has rather miraculously turned up alive at a hospital in France, though he has lost a leg and the sight in one eye.’
Geraint grimaced. ‘It could have been much worse.’
‘My mother said that it would have been better if Ronnie had remained missing.’ Flora flushed with embarrassment at the memory. ‘She said that now he will forever be a burden to his family.’
‘Maybe she’s right, for once,’ Geraint said roughly.
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I do, Flora, I mean it sincerely. Maybe not if it was just a leg, or just one eye, but if it was worse—and there’s an awful lot worse, from what I’ve heard—if it was me, I wouldn’t want to be packed off home to be looked after like a baby for the rest of my life. And if you’re honest, really honest, if it was your son or your husband, you wouldn’t want it, either.’
‘Don’t say that. Don’t talk like that.’
She covered her ears, knowing it was a childish gesture but unable to stop herself. Geraint pulled her hands down. ‘Imagine what it really means, to devote your entire life to a man who can’t lift his own fork, or who can’t eat anything but soup because he’s lost most of his face,’ he said brutally. ‘Think about how it would be, tied to a man who might not ever be a man in any real sense ever again.’
She shook herself free angrily. ‘Stop it! Why are you saying these things to me? Do you really think so little of me, that I would actually prefer one of my brothers to die?’
‘I wasn’t talking about your brothers. I meant me.
I
could not stand it.
I
would rather die.’
The blood drained from her face. ‘Have you had orders to go to the front? Geraint, please, is this your way of telling me that you are going to France?’
‘No.’ He swore, catching her as she swayed, holding her tight against his chest. ‘Flora, I’m not going anywhere just yet. They want me to stay on until this place is established. I’ll be around at least until the new year. Flora, do you hear me?’
‘I’m fine.’ She was shaking, but she pushed herself free and went to stand at the window. Across the loch, the clouds were gathering, turning the water on the far shore iron-grey in stark contrast to the deep blue, white-crested waves lapping the shore nearest to the house. It was one of the things she loved about Glen Massan, the sheer drama of the constantly changing weather, but as the sun disappeared behind the scudding, rain-sodden clouds and the drawing room darkened, she could not help but think it was an ill omen. Winter was approaching here in the Highlands, and it would descend, too, on the trenches of the Western Front. It signalled the end of the campaign season, which meant months waiting for the conflict to resume in the spring, though it also meant that the men at the front would be relatively safe in the interim. Cold, but safe. The war would not be over by Christmas. Even the most jingoistic of supporters acknowledged that much.
‘I don’t think you’re selfish.’ Geraint stood at her shoulder. ‘To want to leave here, I mean. I think your parents are the selfish ones, wanting to keep you here.’
She turned around to face him. ‘You don’t think I’m being disloyal?’
‘No. And before you say it, I know that’s contradictory of me.’
‘Can’t you find a way to make your peace with your parents?’
Geraint shook his head sadly. ‘It’s complicated.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘They’ll be setting up this room this afternoon. The last one. Why don’t we get out of here, get some of your fresh Highland air?’
‘Won’t they need you here?’
‘I’ve put one of the new lance corporals in temporary charge. When the company arrive tomorrow, we move into full service mode. It might be our last chance to get out together for a while, though it looks as if it’s about to pour.’
Flora smiled, looking out of the window where the rain clouds were already passing overhead. ‘Four seasons in one day, that’s what we get here. I think we’ve missed the worst of it. Let’s take our chances.’
* * *
They left by the front door, but instead of taking the path down to the loch with which Geraint was familiar, Flora led the way through a gap in the huge rhododendron bushes that grew on one side of the driveway, and onto a narrow track. She had pulled on her old mackintosh coat, which sat incongruously over her emerald-green dress. As usual, she seemed to glide rather than walk, which had the odd effect of making it look as if the coat itself was floating along the narrow, rutted path as he walked behind her.
Geraint had tried very hard since that day on Ben Massan not to give in to the temptation of kissing her again. For long periods of time, when they were involved in the detail of packing up the house and writing out the various lists and inventories, he’d succeeded, after a fashion. Then Flora would laugh at something he said, or stop in the middle of wrapping some object to tell him its history or, more often, some story associated with her own childhood. She would go misty-eyed on those occasions, and her smile would soften, especially when she spoke of her brothers, both of whom she adored unreservedly and in equal measure, just as he loved his own siblings. Listening to her speak of their games of make-believe, their childish squabbles, the endless aligning and re-aligning of loyalty that went on as they grew up, made him think of his own childhood. It disturbed him, this affinity, more even than the depth of his desire for her. He had warned her they must not get in too deep. He would do well to heed his own warning.
Flora stumbled on a tree root and righted herself, looking over her shoulder at him, her face flushed with the fresh air and the cold. ‘You haven’t asked where I’m taking you.’
Because he didn’t much care, so long as he was with her. Geraint quickly cornered this thought and bundled it away. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Where are we going?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
He laughed. ‘Then I won’t ask.’
She stopped and turned towards him. The wind had whipped her hair, loosening long tendrils from the confines of her elaborate bun to cluster around her face. She seemed, now they were away from the house, to have cast off her oppression. ‘Don’t you want to guess?’
‘I prefer to be surprised. You smell of flowers.’ He hadn’t meant to say it, but for once spoke without thinking. ‘Flora,’ he said. ‘You were well named.’
‘Geraint was a knight at King Arthur’s court. I wish you had a white charger to carry me away from here, just for a while.’
He brushed her hair from her face. ‘I’d do it gladly, if I could.’
She caught his hand and to his surprise pressed a kiss on his scarred knuckles. ‘Does it all feel unreal to you? I read the reports in the papers of the fighting, and I think, this can’t be happening. It is almost Christmas. Alex will be home then, but our soldiers will not. Christmas in the trenches. I cannot imagine...’
‘Then don’t.’
‘But I have to, I have to try to make it real. You were right to try to open my eyes about the—the horror of it. I’m frightened about the future.’
He caught her to him, wrapping his arms tightly around her, resting his chin on the damp silkiness of her hair. ‘You’re right to be,’ he said, wishing he could say otherwise but knowing her well enough to understand that her need for reassurance was second to her need for the truth. Her hands rested on his chest, caught in the warmth of their bodies pressed together. ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ he said. ‘Just for this afternoon, let’s pretend it’s not there. That there’s only us.’
‘A brief return to no man’s land,’ Flora said.
‘If you like, yes.’
* * *
When his lips touched hers, it was all she wanted. Pressing herself against him, opening her mouth to his, she wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him back fervently. He pulled her with him under the shelter of a tree. Raindrops fell from the bare branches onto her hair, her face, stinging cold on her skin, mingling with the heat of his kiss.
It was not like before. There was an urgency in both of them, in the way their lips clung, their tongues touched, their hands clutched and stroked, hindered by the damp, by the layers of their clothes. Heat and desire flooded her, making her reckless, beyond thought. An urgent need possessed her to prove that she was alive, that he was alive, that here was something that had nothing to do with war and destruction and the real world. Something ephemeral yet utterly earthy. The primal urge to connect, unite, join with another.
His hands were inside her mackintosh, sliding up her back, cupping her bottom, stroking her sides, her waist. Her breasts were pressed against his tunic. She stroked his cheeks, ran her fingers through his hair, flattened her palms on his chest. His kisses deepened. She slid her hands down to rest on his flanks and he moaned, pulling her closer. He was hard. It excited her, knowing that she was doing this to him, that this man, so different from any other she had known, so determinedly difficult, at times so deliberately obtuse, the fascinating, intriguing, lethally attractive, determinedly solitary, dangerous Geraint Cassell desired her. Wanted her. Knowing all this made her want him even more. She had never wanted any man like this. Never, in such a basic, uncomplicated way, wanted to use her body to show what she felt.
When he tore his mouth away from her, she had to bite back a moan of protest. ‘I’m not going to apologise this time,’ he said. His hands were still on her waist. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes dark and heavy lidded. ‘I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since the last time I kissed you. It is a very bad idea. You know it and I know it, but right now, I don’t give a damn.’ He looked up at the sky, now guilelessly blue. ‘Come on, you’d better show me this surprise of yours while the rain holds off.’
* * *
They walked to the end of the woods, emerging suddenly at the edge of the loch where the path skirted round the rocky shore to a small inlet. The ruined church stood on a raised promontory surrounded by a low perimeter wall. ‘It dates from the fourteenth century,’ Flora said, ‘though there was a monastery here from about the sixth. They say the Vikings razed that.’