A Mortal Sin
Page 19
Daphne’s hopes lifted. “You can’t know how desperately I love him. How I want to find him to make sure he is all right. But if he loves Caroline and wants to marry her, I wouldn’t stand in his way.”
Their tea arrived, accompanied by little cakes. Daphne forced herself to eat because everyone seemed so anxious for her to do so, and Mrs. Whitehead must have used some of her precious sugar ration to bake something special for her. “What about you, Tom? Mum will be hurt that you didn’t tell her before you got married.”
“It happened so fast. I sent her a long letter the other day, giving her all the details. God knows when she will get it, though. The German U-boats are causing havoc with shipping.”
“I’m glad everything has worked out so well for you.”
Julie went over to her. “I’m sorry, Daphne. If everything had gone well, you would have your baby by now. What a wicked thing war is.”
“Let me look at you again, Tom. Mum was worried you’d be hideously scarred for life.”
Numerous pink scars stretched across his forehead, but Daphne saw that they had faded even more since she last saw him at the hospital. A patch still covered the eye he had lost, though.
“I’ll be getting my new one soon, tailor made.” He patted the patch with his fingertips.
“The army won’t want you back?”
“I don’t think so, well, I’ll never be a front line soldier again. Militia maybe. With my luck I’ll end up pushing a pen in some office.”
Daphne liked the vague vicar. In fact all the Whitehead family were nice. It didn’t take long for the photo album to come out. Two handsome boys in uniform, a beautiful girl in a bridal gown, and this same girl with two children.
They asked no questions, these understanding people, but she found herself telling them about Singapore, Paul and Robbie, about the ship being sunk, and somehow it seemed to ease her despair.
“It must have been awful for you, Daffy. Poor Rob, I couldn’t believe it when I first heard, he was such a good kid.”
* * *
Today was Thursday, and the wedding ceremony had been scheduled to take place on Saturday. Their numerous phone calls brought no result; even Sir Phillip himself was unavailable now. How could a man be so, well evil, that was the appropriate word for a father who, knowing full well his son’s wife was alive, would let that son marry another woman It was criminal Daphne thought.
“I still think we ought to contact the police,” she said.
“Listen to me Daphne. You didn’t see Sir Phillip, so you couldn’t possibly imagine what the man’s like. He’s rich, ruthless, and wields such power the police are probably on his payroll. He’s so desperate for this marriage to take place, he’ll do anything to stop us,” Tom warned.
It was terrible waiting for time to pass before they fronted up to the church and accused Paul of committing bigamy, she thought with rising panic. Would Sir Phillip actually go so far as to harm them?
* * *
Tom, Julie and Daphne caught a train up to Leeds and spent the night in a cramped room in an ancient inn. After an early lunch on Saturday, they paid a local farmer to take them to their destination in a horse-drawn cart. A large church, built of dark stone and with a huge bell tower, stood on a slight rise overlooking a quaint little village.
They were late. Daphne, on noticing several Rolls Royces, trembled with anxiety and fear.
“You’ll be right, Daffy. Damm it, we’re late.”
Inside, the church was filled to capacity. Her eyes were drawn to a beautiful rose window above the altar. Choirboys were singing O Perfect Love. She faltered, would have fallen had it not been for Tom’s supporting arm. They slipped into the only vacant pew, the second last one, and Daphne clasped her shaking hands together and willed the butterflies to stop churning up her stomach.
Paul had his back to them. His carriage was as erect as ever, yet somehow different. They weren’t in time. Maybe he was already married, she thought frantically.
“You’ll have to get up and say something, Daphne.”
“I don’t think I can, not in front of all those people.”
“If you love him you will. If you don’t, we’ll leave right now. You’ve come all this way, surely you’re not going to turn tail and run at the last minute.”
“Go with her, Tom,” Julie whispered. “Say something now, the minister’s getting ready to start.”
The choir had finished and the usual murmur of expectation rippled through the congregation. “Dearly beloved…”
“Excuse me.” Tom’s voice sounded overloud in the sanctified quietness of the church. “Paul Ashfield is married to my sister.”
There was an audible buzz. Every eye in the church turned towards Tom. The groom turned around, and Daphne hardly recognized Paul with the haunted look, the dark circles under his eyes, and an ugly, raw scar gouged into his cheek.
“Daphne’s dead.” Just the two anguished words, hopeless in their finality had her standing up.
“I wasn’t on that plane, Paul.”
There was absolute uproar now, and she was aware of nothing, except a white, drawn face, slashed by a vivid red scar.
“Sunshine?” His voice, full of such anguish and pain, brought tears to her eyes. She knew for certain now, he had never stopped loving her. When he called her by her pet name, she knew he hadn’t forgotten what they shared.
Daphne ignored the beautiful blonde girl at his side, as well as Sir Phillip’s look of sheer poison, as she darted towards the altar.
Paul took two unsteady paces towards her, and it wrenched her heart because he dragged his leg so badly. They engulfed each other, oblivious to the commotion around them, and he kissed her with a passionate desperation. “I thought I’d lost you, Sunshine.” His tears fell on to her face, hers on to his.
“I thought you’d been killed too, Paul.”
“Our baby?”
“I had a miscarriage,” she whispered sadly.
Somehow the minister ushered them all into the vestry, where Tom gave a hurried explanation.
“What about me?” Caroline shrieked. “You promised. You promised to marry me.”
Paul’s pale cheeks turned even paler. “I’m terribly sorry.” He rummaged his hands through his hair. “God, what a mess.”
“It’s your fault.” The blonde turned on Sir Phillip, and the face that had seemed so pretty only seconds ago, now turned ugly. “You said Paul would never know she was alive. What’s going to happen now? Are you going to tell them or will I?”
“Be quiet, Caroline, we can still sort this out.”
“It was your idea. You wanted me to marry your sop of a son, so no-one would know about us.”
“I’m warning you,” Sir Phillip snarled.
Daphne looked at this ruthless man and shivered.
“Thought you were so clever didn’t you, Phillip?”
“Caroline, my dear.”
“Oh yes, Daddy, you were as bad. Do you know why Sir Phillip was in such a hurry to marry me off to his son?”
“Caroline. Be quiet.”
“Phillip got me pregnant.” The bride’s mother fainted. “I wanted to get rid of it, but no, he said I should marry Paul and let him think it was his.”
The next few minutes were not pretty; Daphne had never seen such ugliness before in her whole life.
“Let’s get out of here before I end up killing someone.,” Although Paul’s voice shook with emotion he almost sounded like his old self.
“Good idea,” Tom agreed.
Paul took one of Daphne’s arms, her brother the other, and with Julie clinging to Tom’s hand they left by the back entrance.
“God, I would never have believed my father would do such an evil thing to me. He’s ruthless but this. I’ll never forgive him.”
“Have you got a car, Paul? In years to come we’ll probably laugh over this,” Tom said with a grin.
“We’ll take the old man’s Rolls and to hell with him,” Paul decla
red. “I’ll drive it until it runs out of petrol.”
“Now that everything is fixed up, you must have heaps to say to each other. Drop Julie and me off at the nearest station, we’ll get the train back,” Tom suggested. “We can catch up with each other in a few days. We’ll have some stories to swap. Looks like you copped it pretty bad.”
“I nearly lost my leg, so I’ll always have a limp, and this.” He fingered his jagged scar. “Do you mind, Daphne?”
“How could you ask? If you were legless it wouldn’t make any difference to me. Even when I thought you were dead, I never stopped loving you.”
“I never forgot you either. I only agreed to marry Caroline because my father always wanted it. She didn’t love me. Hell, she didn’t even like me after I wrote that letter breaking off our engagement. But I didn’t care what happened to me. I was a living, breathing, empty shell.”
They stood beneath a huge oak. “Daphne I didn’t want to live when I thought you were dead.”
Their lips were desperate as they kissed each other with a fierce hunger, oblivious to the thrushes fluttering around them. There was so much lost time and heartache to make up for, but a lifetime together in which to do it.
The End
About the Author
Margaret Tanner is a multi-published Australian author. She loves delving into the pages of history as she carries out research for her historical romance novels, and prides herself on being historically accurate. No book is too old or tattered for her to trawl through, no museum too dusty, or cemetery too overgrown. Many of her novels have been inspired by true events, with one being written around the hardships and triumphs of her pioneering ancestors in frontier Australia.
As part of her research she has visited the World War 1 battlefields in France and Belgium, a truly poignant experience.
Margaret is a member of the Romance Writers of Australia, the Melbourne Romance Writers Group (MRWG) and EPIC. She won the 2007 and 2009 Author of the Year at AussieAuthors.com. Her novel Frontier Wife won the Best Historical Romance Novel at the 2010 Readers Favorite Award, and another novel, Wild Oats was a 2011 Finalist in the EPIC awards. Margaret is married with three grown up sons, and a gorgeous little granddaughter. Outside of her family and friends, writing is her passion.
Website: http://www.margarettanner.com/
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