Penny Jordan - The Hidden Years

‘You do? Now, there’s a coincidence. I’m on my way there too. They told me in the place where I’m staying that this road would get me there quietly and discreetly. Not supposed to be running this job really, you know,’ he told her, patting the bonnet of his car. ‘And she’s a thirsty lady. But when you’re in the forefront of a war you’re entitled to a few perks. Luckily the Yanks aren’t as parsimonious with their petrol as our people, and I know this Yank…’ He broke off and smiled winsomely at her. ‘Boring you to death, I expect. A pretty girl like you doesn’t want…’

A pretty girl… Lizzie gazed adoringly at him. He thought her pretty…her heart raced and sang, and then she remembered all Aunt Vi’s stern teachings and turned her head away from the dangerous potency of that warm smile, saying shakily, as she tried to pick up her cycle, ‘I really must go… I’m sorry I didn’t hear you coming…’

‘Going to be late for work, are you? What do you do up there… nurse?’

‘No, actually, I’m a nursing aide,’ Lizzie told him and for some reason the surprise in his eyes hurt her a little. It had never mattered when other people spoke derisively about the lowly status of her work, but now, suddenly, for this handsome laughing young man, she ached to be able to announce that she did something very important…

‘Well, we don’t want you getting into trouble for being late. Not when it was really my fault. Hop in… I’ll strap your cycle to the back.’

‘I’m not actually working,’ Lizzie told him, hesitating beside the car. It would be breaking all Aunt Vi’s rules and her own to accept his offer of a lift, but she wanted to do so more than she had wanted anything else in her life. ‘I’m going to visit someone…’

Immediately his glance sharpened. ‘Boyfriend?’ he questioned her, making her blush and shake her head.

‘No, it’s one of the patients… I promised him I’d wheel him out to see the rhododendrons now they’re in flower. He says they remind him of his grandparents’ home when he was a little boy…’

‘Sensitive little thing, aren’t you? A no-hoper, is he?’

Something in the careless way he spoke jarred on Lizzie’s tender conscience; even though she knew that for Edward Danvers life could never ever be anything other than painful and lonely, she said quickly, ‘No—no, of course not…’

Perhaps it was the stark contrast between the two men: Edward so pale and thin, old before his time, his body wasted, his manhood destroyed by the same terrible injuries which had necessitated the amputation of his legs.

It had happened in the frantic push to land on the Normandy beaches. He had been helping to organise the disembarkation, standing chest-deep in the icy cold water. Someone had got into difficulty in the water—a young private who couldn’t swim—Edward had dived down to help him, and had been crushed beneath some landing equipment in the rush to get the troops ashore.

Edward’s life had been saved but not his legs, and even now in his nightmares he cursed God for that cruel mercy.

In her mind’s eye Lizzie saw him, so thin and wasted in his wheelchair, and compared him to this man, so fit and healthy, so insolently cheerful and careless of whatever dangers fate had in store for him, and suddenly and unexpectedly she was overwhelmed by a swift surge of protective, possessive fear, by a need to take him to herself and keep him safe… It was the first time she had ever experienced such an emotion and it stunned her, leaving her feeling too vulnerable and weak to object when he insisted on helping her into his car, and fastening her bike across its boot.

The space inside the car was so tiny that when he got in she was immediately conscious of the heat of his body, of its warm male scent, of all the differences of sex that separated them and stirred exciting frissons of sensation in every corner of her body, in her blood, under her skin, a tingling dangerous wave of heat that made her cheeks burn and her heart pound.

He set the car in motion, driving it with a careless recklessness that excited her even while it frightened her.

‘I take it you don’t have any people living locally—any family,’ he enlarged, taking his attention off the road to turn and look at her. She made him feel a rare curiosity about her with her lack of any regional accent, her shyness, her total air not just of being unawakened but also of being completely unaware. He doubted that any man had ever kissed her, never mind…

‘No. No, I don’t,’ Lizzie told him huskily. ‘My…my aunt.’

‘So what brought you to this part of the country, then?’

He was an expert in knowing how to approach a woman, and this one, this woman, child, green as she was, was going to drop into his arms as easily as ripe soft fruit.

All it needed was a little care, a little flattery, a little coaxing.

Lizzie gave him a surprised look. She was not used to people being interested enough in her to ask her questions. A warm glow began to spread through her body, bringing with it a dizzying surge of self-confidence and bravery.

‘My…my aunt sent me here. She knows the matron in charge of the hospital.’

‘Your aunt, you say… You don’t have any other family, then?’

‘No…not now…’ Her voice dropped, her eyes darkening as she relived the shock of hearing of her parents’ death. ‘There was a bomb…’

While he nodded his head and made sympathetic noises, he was congratulating himself on having picked a real winner. No family to speak of apart from an aunt who, by the sound of it, didn’t give a damn and anyway was too far away to be of any concern to him. He had a couple of days’ leave owing to him. There was no reason why he shouldn’t spend them here… Any longer than that and he would be bored out of his mind with her. As he made light conversation with her he amused himself by imagining what she would be like. She would be nervous but malleable; she would give him whatever he asked of her, just as long as he told her he loved her. He smiled cynically to himself. He was well aware of the effect his handsome face had on susceptible female hearts. He had seen that bemused, adoring look in too many pairs of feminine eyes before not to have recognised it.

Women were such fools. Tell them you loved them and they’d give you anything…everything…

‘What a pity we can’t pretend that you don’t have to go in here,’ he murmured softly to her, as the hospital came in sight. ‘Then we could just keep on driving…run away together and never, ever come back. Would you like that, my sweet? Would you like to spend the rest of your life with me?’

Lizzie’s heart thumped frantically with a mixture of shock and delight.

She heard him laugh and knew that she was blushing… knew that he must be able to read her feelings in her eyes.

‘Shall we do that?’ he continued to tease her. ‘Shall I steal you away, take you somewhere where it would be just the two of us…?’

His voice had developed a deep, caressing, almost mesmeric quality. Totally unable to take her eyes off his face, Lizzie discovered that she had virtually forgotten to breathe and that suddenly her lungs were labouring desperately to take in air.

Taking advantage of her bemused state, he allowed the tone of his voice to change, to deepen with regret as he told her, ‘How I wish I could do just that, but I can’t, can I…? There’s a war to be won.’ He allowed his eyes to darken, his whole manner to become subtly infused with purposefulness; he had discovered very early on in the war that if there was one thing women fell for even more than being told he loved them, it was the suggestion that he as a man of honour had to put his country before his feelings. This one, he could see, was no exception.