Never Forget Me

by Marguerite Kaye - Never Forget Me

  She caught his eye, forcing a smile from him that relieved the tension. ‘Perhaps you could suggest somewhere more suitable, Miss Flora.’

  ‘At the back near the kitchens might be best. The house will shelter the tents from the wind coming in off the loch, and they will be near a good water supply.’

  ‘Practical thinking. I’m impressed.’

  ‘Goodness, a compliment Corporal—Geraint.’

  ‘A statement of fact.’

  ‘Did I pronounce it correctly? Your name, I mean. Geraint.’

  ‘Perfectly,’ he said shortly.

  Really, his mood swung like a pendulum. ‘What have I said to offend you this time? I can almost see your hackles rising,’ Flora said, exasperated.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She threw him a sceptical look.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve heard my Christian name spoken since I joined up, that’s all,’ he finally admitted. ‘I’d almost forgotten how it sounded.’

  She was instantly remorseful. ‘But don’t you get leave? I am sorry, I am afraid I know nothing of these things.’

  Geraint shrugged. ‘Why should you? No, we don’t get leave. Leastways, nothing long enough for me to go back to see my family.’

  ‘Your family! So you’re married,’ Flora exclaimed, inexplicably appalled by this.

  ‘Good God, no! I wasn’t married when the balloon went up and I’d be a fool to get hitched while there’s a war on. Even if there happened to be someone I wanted to marry, which there is not,’ Geraint said. ‘I meant my parents, my brother and sisters.’

  ‘Yes, of course you did,’ Flora said. ‘I knew that.’ Which she had, truly, for she also knew instinctively he was not the kind of man to flirt with another woman if he was married. Not that he had flirted with her. Had he? She sighed inwardly, wishing that she was not such an innocent. ‘You must miss them,’ she said, trying to pull her thoughts together. ‘Your family, I mean.’

  But Geraint merely shrugged, his face shuttered. ‘We didn’t see much of each other this last while, frankly,’ he said, and when she would have questioned him further, turned his attention elsewhere. ‘I must go and see to the men, else they will happily kick a ball about all day. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.’

  Which was definitely not something she should be looking forward to, Flora thought, watching him stride off purposefully.

  The men were lined up on the driveway now. She could not hear what the corporal was saying to them. He seemed not to be the kind who barked orders, but rather spoke with a natural, quiet authority that made the troops pay attention. Once dismissed, they started to pull back the tarpaulins on the trucks, revealing iron bedsteads, tents, trestle tables and a host of other equipment including what looked horribly like field guns. Flora headed back to the Lodge. It had been an extremely eventful day already, and it was only lunchtime.

  Chapter Three

  Three days later, Geraint was in the morning room with Flora, where a phonograph sat incongruously on an antique marble-topped table. Like the rest of the house, the room was a mixture of styles, reflecting the changing tastes of the Carmichaels through the generations. Glen Massan House was too eclectic to be aesthetically pleasing. It was not a showpiece, but a home. Flora Carmichael’s home. Which it was now his duty to pillage.

  He must not allow himself to think about it in that manner. She and her ilk neither deserved nor required his sympathy, yet he found it increasingly difficult to think of Flora as belonging to any clique. She seemed slightly out of place, a misfit. A bit like himself, if truth be told. ‘I can’t quite work you out,’ Geraint said, surrendering to the unusual desire to share his thoughts.

  Flora looked up from her notebook, her smile quirky. ‘I thought you had me neatly labelled from the minute we met.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. You should be empty-headed, or your head should be stuffed full of fripperies—dresses and dances and tennis parties. I’m not even an officer. You should be looking down that aristocratic little nose at the likes of me.’

  ‘The likes of you?’

  She eyed him deliberately up and down. If anyone else had appraised him so brazenly, it would have provoked a caustic riposte. Instead, Flora, with her sensuous mouth and her saucy look, made him want to kiss her.

  ‘I am not in the habit of categorising people, as you are,’ she said. ‘In any event, I very much doubt there is anyone quite like you. Which is why, despite myself, I find your company stimulating.’

  Stimulating! She certainly was. ‘Then that makes two of us,’ Geraint said, trying not to smile, ‘though let me tell you, it is entirely against my principles.’

  Flora gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘You are the master of the backhanded compliment. I am sorry that you find you cannot dislike me when you have tried so hard to do so.’

  ‘You sound as if you wish me to try harder,’ he retorted.

  ‘Perhaps I do. Your barbs, Corporal Cassell, have been a welcome distraction while we dismantle my home.’

  Which was the nearest she had come to saying what she felt about the requisition. Her father wasn’t the only one with a stiff upper lip. Guessing that sympathy would be most unwelcome, Geraint gave a mocking bow. ‘I am delighted to have been of service.’

  Flora’s smile wobbled. ‘It is silly of me, but I feel as if we are doing something very final. I doubt things will return to what they were, even when this war is over.’

  ‘I sincerely hope they do not.’

  She sighed. ‘No, of course you don’t, and you’re probably right.’

  The perfume she wore had a floral scent. Not cloyingly sweet, but something lighter, more delicate and springlike. ‘I don’t understand you,’ Geraint said. ‘You’re not some empty-headed social butterfly. Don’t you feel suffocated, stuck here in this draughty castle with nothing to do but—what, arrange flowers and sew samplers?’

  ‘Do not forget my playing Lady Bountiful for the poor of the parish,’ Flora snapped. ‘Then there is the endless round of parties and dances, the occasional ceilidh in the village that I must grace with my presence. Added to that, there is tennis in the summer and...’

  ‘It was not my intention to patronise you,’ Geraint interrupted. ‘You just baffle me.’

  ‘So you said.’

  Her eyes were over-bright. Annoyed, as much for having allowed himself to notice the soft swell of her bosom as she folded her hands defensively across her chest as for having been the cause of the action, Geraint spoke in a gentler tone. ‘It just seems to me that you’re wasting your life, shut away here. Aren’t you bored? Why don’t you leave?’

  She stared at him blankly. ‘I cannot just leave. Where would I go? What would I do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said impatiently. ‘What do you want to do? You must have thought about it.’

  ‘I have never had to,’ Flora said, looking troubled, ‘which is a shocking thing to admit, but the truth, for it is not as if I spend my days idly, is that there is always something to do here. I suppose it has always been assumed that I would marry well.’

  ‘You mean replace your father’s patronage with that of another wealthy man so that you can carry on arranging flowers ad nauseam.’

  ‘That is a very cynical way of looking at matrimony,’ Flora said coldly, ‘and quite beside the point, since I have no intention of making such a match. The problem is, I am not actually qualified to do anything else. Thank you very much for bringing that fact to my attention, incidentally.’

  ‘You are making a pretty good fist of managing this requisition, despite your claim that you had no idea how to tackle it,’ Geraint pointed out.

  ‘That is because I have had your expert lead to follow.’

  He shook his head firmly. ‘Do not underestimate yourself.’

  ‘I doubt that is possible.’

  ‘Flora, I meant it. You are bright, quick-witted, practical and articulate. You’ve a talent for organising, for creating order.’

  ‘Do you rea
lly think so?’ She spoke eagerly.

  ‘I wouldn’t have said it otherwise,’ Geraint replied, touched by the vulnerability her question revealed. ‘You should know me well enough by now to know I don’t say anything I don’t mean.’

  ‘My parents are both fairly certain that I will make a hash of things.’

  ‘Then you shall surprise them by proving them wrong.’

  He was rewarded with a smile. ‘Perhaps I shall surprise you, too, at the end of it,’ she said. ‘Despite the melancholy nature of our task, I have to admit that I am enjoying the challenge. Perhaps I should reconsider joining the VADs, like Sheila.’

  ‘Sheila? You mean the maid? Blonde, pretty girl?’

  ‘Do you think she’s pretty?’

  Geraint laughed. ‘I think that’s the first predictable thing you’ve ever said to me. Yes, she’s very pretty and I’d have to be blind not to have noticed.’

  ‘We went to school in the village together until I was removed to an academy for young ladies,’ Flora said, making a face. ‘Sheila is counting the days, waiting to be assigned to a hospital. I shall miss her terribly when she goes. I did consider volunteering, but my mother was appalled. She thinks it would be most improper work for me, and my father thinks that I would find it far too taxing, and the demoralising fact is that he is probably right.’ She held up her hands for his inspection. ‘Lily-white and quite unsullied by hard work, as I am sure you have noted.’

  Which so exactly mirrored his own, original opinion of her that Geraint felt a stab of guilt. ‘There are plenty of other things you could do, I’m sure,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Would that I had your confidence in me. Which sounds really rather pathetic. You are right, I am stuck in a rut and have no purpose whatsoever in my life save to look decorative while waiting for a suitable husband to appear,’ Flora replied brightly. ‘Thank you, as I said earlier, for pointing that out, but if you don’t mind, I have had quite enough picking over my empty life and my character flaws for one day.’ She picked up her notebook and pencil. ‘I think we should get back to work.’

  Her smile was fixed, her cheeks flushed, though she countered his scrutiny with a determined tilt of her chin. Geraint was not fooled, but he was not such an idiot as to ignore the signs. No trespassing. He ought to be pleased with himself for making her face up to some unpalatable truths, but he wasn’t. She had taken his criticisms on the chin, too. She would have been within her rights to tell him to mind his own business, which was what he would have said had the roles been reversed. Flora Carmichael might look as if a puff of wind would blow her away, but she had backbone. He had to admire her for that. In fact, the more he got to know her, the more he liked her....

  The realisation set him quite off-kilter. Geraint got to his feet and made a point of consulting his wristwatch. A gift from his parents on his twenty-first birthday, it was a plain, functional timepiece, but it was one of his most precious possessions. ‘You carry on without me. I need to check on the lads.’

  * * *

  The door closed behind him, but Flora remained where she was. Geraint did not, as Robbie would say, pull his punches. It was a dispiriting thought, but she suspected she had been merely marking time with her life without even realising it. Forcing herself to think about it now, the very idea of turning into her mother, which she would, if she continued to allow herself to drift with the tide, made her shudder. Her parents expected so little from her that it was ridiculously easy to please them. And it would, sadly, be ridiculously easy to disappoint them, were she to pursue some sort of independent course.

  ‘Whatever that may be,’ Flora muttered to herself. Pacing over to the window, she stared morosely out at the loch. The problem was that now Geraint had pointed it out, she could not deny the creeping dissatisfaction she had been feeling, and nor could she ignore it, though to do something about it would be to fly in the face of her parents’ expectations. ‘So I am damned if I do, and damned if I don’t,’ she said wryly. ‘Which brings me no nearer at all to knowing what it is I am going to do.’

  You are bright, quick-witted, practical and articulate, Geraint had said. None of those epithets had ever been applied to her before, yet Geraint never said what he didn’t believe. He was blunt to a fault, but he also saw things in her that others did not, and expected much more of her than anyone else did, which both pleased and scared her a little. What if she failed?

  Think positively, Flora castigated herself. She would not fail, because that would reflect badly on Geraint, and she wanted Geraint to succeed. Almost more than she wanted to succeed herself. Which was a novel, not to say startling, thought. ‘Sink or swim,’ Flora repeated, remembering the pact they had made.

  An image of a naked Geraint swimming beside her in the loch, rivulets of water coursing down his muscled back and buttocks, sprang shockingly vivid into her mind’s eye. ‘Swim it shall most definitely be,’ Flora muttered, pressing the backs of her hands against her flaming cheeks.

  Chapter Four

  A few days later, as October was coming to a close, Flora and Geraint were in the attics, a jumble of rooms at the top of a narrow staircase. Though the main part of the house had electricity, which ran from a generator, there was no light here, save for what crept in through the occasional dusty skylight and what was given off by the two oil lamps they had brought with them. It had been Flora’s idea, since the outhouses and the old stables were already full to overflowing with displaced furnishings, to put the smaller and more valuable artefacts here, but she was beginning to wonder if it had been a mistake. ‘I hadn’t realised there was so much up here already,’ she said, looking around her in dismay.

  Geraint was standing just inside the doorway, clutching the low frame, staring past her into the cramped room, his eyes unfocused. ‘Geraint? Are you feeling unwell? You look quite pale.’

  Flora set her lamp carefully down and put the back of her hand on his brow. It was clammy with sweat. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said brusquely, before pushing her hand away and ducking his head to enter the attic. ‘I see what you mean. I’ve never seen such a collection of junk.’

  His voice sounded brittle to her, but his colour had returned. If he was feeling ill, he did not care to admit to it. Flora edged her way into the confined space, which was strewn with bric-a-brac. Old trunks, dusty boxes, broken furniture and huge empty picture frames comprised the majority of it, but there were also moth-eaten rugs, several stacks of account books, and an assortment of stuffed animals in various states of decline. ‘I doubt I’d recognise that thing if it were alive,’ she said, pointing to a decrepit mound that looked like a large shoe with fangs. ‘What on earth is it?’

  Geraint picked it up gingerly. ‘It appears to be a baby crocodile or alligator. Did one of your ancestors have a penchant for taxidermy?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m just worried we might stumble across a stuffed laird or two.’

  Flora burst into laughter. Geraint, now seemingly quite restored, was smiling at her in a way that made her heart beat erratically. It was an intimate smile, a complicit smile, and at the same time a very sensual smile. His eyes looked more black than brown in the dim light and there was a warmth in them that triggered a corresponding heat in her blood. Tearing her mind back to the job in hand, she looked around despairingly. ‘I shall have to clear some space, though how I am to decide what can be jettisoned...’ She took the crocodile from Geraint and eyed it distastefully. ‘You can go for a start, my lad.’

  ‘And what about this?’

  She whirled around to find him draped in an ancient sheepskin cloak, clutching a dagger. The leather was worn, the fleece was moulting in places, the blade of the dirk was rusted through, and yet he managed to look both fierce and proud, not just a warrior, but a warrior king.

  ‘What do you think, wench?’ he growled.

  She thought, rather fancifully, that she could understand why a woman would let herself be carried off b
y such a man to be—well, who knows what? ‘You look very—convincing.’ There was a smear of dust across his cheek. His hair was dishevelled. The cloak emphasised the breadth of his shoulders and his chest, just as the army puttees so tightly bound around his legs showed off the muscles of his calves. ‘They’d have worn that thing over a plaid originally,’ Flora said.

  ‘Shall I take off my tunic for the sake of authenticity?’

  They both knew he meant it for a joke, but as she looked at him, the smile died on his face. She touched the fleece, which was hemmed with a complicated design of coloured wools. Her hand brushed against the rough khaki serge of his tunic. She snatched it away. ‘It must be like wearing a hair shirt,’ she mumbled.

  His eyes were dark, dangerous. She stood rooted to the spot, unaccountably certain that he was going to kiss her. Then he took a deliberate step back and discarded the cloak. ‘No worse than a plaid would be, I imagine,’ he said.

  Did she imagine it, that almost kiss? She did not think so, but she had so little experience, she could not be sure. She had wanted him to kiss her. Had been wanting him to kiss her since that first day when he had pressed his lips to her palm. Had it been her own latent desire that had made her mistake his intentions? Slanting a glance at him, she received an inscrutable look.

  ‘Is this the only attic?’ Geraint enquired.

  ‘No, though it is the biggest,’ she replied, which caused him to flinch slightly, before he turned away quickly and picked up the oil lamp. ‘Let’s take a look, then.’

  * * *

  They began to work their way through the rooms, deciding what could be moved, what could be thrown out and which items Flora would have to consult with her father about. Two hours later, they had completed about half of the task, and Geraint stopped to push open a skylight, taking greedy breaths of fresh, cold air. Alone in this cramped space, he’d undoubtedly have parted company with his breakfast, but Flora’s presence was proving a welcome, and surprisingly effective distraction.