Never Forget Me

by Marguerite Kaye - Never Forget Me

  ‘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

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter One

  Paris—28th October 1916

  The 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 même 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.

  The dancer had finished her performance and was now drinking champagne and laughing wildly with a group of admirers. Robbie leaned back in his seat, surveying the room with a jaundiced eye. The pain stabbed behind his eyes, as if someone were turning a white-hot skewer around and around in his brain. Another glass of wine, even another bottle, would make no difference. He would not sleep, and the headache would only get worse. He was trying to summon up the energy to cancel his order when he saw her.

  She was standing at the end of the polished zinc bar. Tall, for a woman, her face unmistakably French in some indefinable way, it was the blankness of her expression as she stared sightlessly across the room that caught his attention. She was beautiful. Glossy black hair cut fashionably short, tucked back behind her ears to show a classic profile. High, wide cheekbones, a very Gallic nose. Her brows were dark, finely arched above deep-set eyes that looked like two black pools in the shadowy light of the club. Pale skin that drew his attention to her mouth. Full, sensuous and pink, it was a mouth made for laughter, though she looked as if she did as much of that as he did. A mouth also made for kissing. Robbie smiled bitterly. Working here, as she undoubtedly did, he bet she did a great deal of that. For the right price.

  Her gown was dark blue, draped softly over her breasts in the style of a Roman tunic, revealing just enough of her throat to make a man want to see more. Robbie was surprised to discover that there were some parts of him not quite so moribund as he had imagined. Beneath the gown he imagined her lush body, soft, creamy flesh to sink into, to envelop his own battle-hardened and scarred shell. She would smell of summer, of flowers, of that delightful sweet spiciness that was so peculiarly female. She would not smell of mud or despair.

  He groaned. To the dull ache in his head was now added the throb in his groin. Across the room, the woman was staring at him, her mind dragged back from whatever dark place she had been inhabiting, alerted no doubt by the intensity of his gaze. He willed himself to look away, but he could not, though he regretted it immediately when he saw her take the tray from his waiter containing the fresh bottle, threading her way through the crowds towards him.

  ‘Your wine, Monsieur Capitaine.’

  She spoke in English. He replied in French. ‘I already told the waiter I’m not interested in company.’

  ‘You flatter yourself, monsieur, I am not offering that kind of company. I think you have drunk too much, perhaps.’

  ‘Correction. I’ve not drunk nearly enough.’

  ‘I suspect there will never be enough for someone like you.’

  Which chimed so accurately with what he’d been thinking himself that Robbie couldn’t help but stare. Close up, her skin had a surprising freshness. The paleness he had taken for powder was natural. The pink of her lips seemed natural, too. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of other men here who will be more than happy to pay for your services,’ he said.

  ‘You are mistaken, Monsieur Capitaine. I do not provide the kind of services the other girls offer. I work here, yes, but as a waitress only. Monsieur le Patron is from my home town and I needed the job. He’s short-staffed as most of the waiters have gone off to fight. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Getting drunk. Or I would be, if you would give me that bottle. Why didn’t you let the other waiter bring it over?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Why were you staring at me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He glared at her, not because he wanted her to leave, but because now that she was here, he desperately wanted her to stay. ‘For heaven’s sake, since you are here, please sit down,’ he said, snatching his cap from the chair.

  She hesitated. ‘I am sorry, I should not have— I can’t think why I— I should go.’

  Robbie cast a look over at the patron. ‘Will you get into trouble?’

  ‘I’ve finished my shift.’ She put the tray down on the table and took the seat he had pushed towards her. ‘My time is my own.’

  ‘Then use it to save me from myself by sharing this bottle, mademoiselle,’ Robbie said, pouring the wine. ‘If you are in no rush to go home?’

  She shook her head, offering him a small smile. ‘It has been a long night, I confess I would very much like a glass of wine, and I am in no hurry.’

  Robbie eyed the club’s animated patrons sardonically. ‘Then you’re the only person in this city who is not.’ He lifted his glass. ‘Santé, mademoiselle.’

  * * *

  ‘Santé.’ Sylvie Renaud took a small sip of the cheap, rough wine and studied the man seated opposite her. Dark auburn hair with a natural wave fell over his brow, shaved almost to the bone on one side of his head. A head wound, she surmised, and no doubt the reason for his being here in Paris. Dark shadows told the same story of exhaustion she saw on every soldier’s face who visited the club. His eyes, the grey-blue of the sea in winter, had the blank look of a man who had seen too much. She was accustomed to the sadness and desperation that clung to the men returning from the front, but this man seemed empty, a husk of a man wearing his aristocratic good looks like a borrowed suit of clothes. It was that singular trait that had caught her attention from across the room, though why it had led her to act so uncharacteristically, she had no idea. She closed her eyes and took another sip of wine.

  His hand covered hers and her eyes flew open. ‘Stop thinking,’ he said. ‘You stared at me, I stared at you. It doesn’t matter why. So let us both stop thinking, and tell me your name.’

  His hand was cool on top of hers. His fingers were long, elegant, extremely clean. ‘You are right,’ she said with some relief, because she really didn’t want to persuade herself to leave him just yet. ‘I am Sylvie. Sylvie Renaud.’

  ‘Robbie Carmichael. Enchanté.’ His mouth curled into what he obviously hoped was a smile. He looked as if he had to concentrate to make it happen.

  ‘Robbie. That is a difficult name for me to pronounce.’

  ‘It’s Scottish.’

  Which explained his accent, so much softer than the clipped tones of the English officers when they spoke French. ‘But you are not wearing a skirt,’ Sylvie said, trying one of her own practised smiles.

  ‘Too cold this time of year.’ His smile stretched a little farther this time. ‘It’s called a kilt.’

  ‘Kilt.’ He had a beautiful mouth. His legs were long, the calves beneath the ridiculous tightly bound gaiters all the British wore, were nicely shaped. Though his face was gaunt, his tunic loose fitting, his body, she suspected, was rather more solid-packed muscle and brawn than starved. He would have been the sort of man women swooned over before the war. ‘You speak very good French,’ she said. A trite remark, even if it was true,
but she wanted to encourage him to talk, because then he would forget to drink.

  He shrugged. ‘I import wine, so I spent a lot of time here in France. Before.’

  ‘Before,’ Sylvie repeated. ‘They all have a before, every soldier in this room.’

  ‘And only a lucky few will have an after.’ Robbie Carmichael picked up the bottle and made to top up her glass, even though she had barely touched it. ‘I won’t be one of them.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that.’

  She caught his wrist before he could drain his glass, causing him to slop wine onto the table, but he yanked himself free and took a large gulp. ‘A well-kept secret, Sylvie, but the life expectancy of an officer in our wonderful British army is six weeks these days. I’ve seen action at Ypres, Festubert, Givenchy and the Somme. The odds are stacked against me. It is merely a question of time.’

  He spoke not bitterly, not angrily, not even sadly. It was the very lack of emotion in his voice, the matter-of-factness, that got to her, wrenching unwanted feeling from her, that familiar terrible mixture of fear and deep-rooted sorrow that left her bereft. She had forgotten how that felt. More accurately, she had not allowed herself to remember. Blanking it from her mind had been the only way she could survive.

  ‘You really are trying to save me from myself.’

  She didn’t understand what he meant until he nodded at her empty glass. She didn’t even remember drinking it.