by Lisa Bingham
When she looked up, she saw the uncertainty in his eyes, the fear that she would be put off by his scars. Wrapping a hand around the part of him that thrust against her, she dispelled his misgivings as quickly as they had appeared.
“I have wanted to touch you like this for so long,” she whispered. “Since the night of the fancy dress.”
His smile was slow and filled with an answering heat.
“You will never know how many times I’ve wished you’d lost control and made love to me up against the tree.”
In an instant, control was taken from her as Paul pulled her hard against him, turning them both so that her back pressed into the softness of the mattress and he was above her, straining, his arms trembling with desire and restraint, passion and fatigue. Sensing that his energy was limited, despite his wishes to the contrary, she shifted until he pressed up against her, then wrapped her legs around him and brought him home.
There was a twinge of pain, an uncomfortable resistance. Then Paul slid deep within her, warming her from the very core of her being, sending shivery bursts of pleasure from that intimate linking through her entire body.
Paul was trembling, his features tense and strained. “I can’t…I don’t think I can…”
“Shh,” she whispered in his ear. “Give in. For now, love me hard and fast, just the way I fell in love with you.”
He needed no further urging as he drew back, then slid into her, again and again, faster and faster, until she knew that she could not endure the pleasure-pain he inspired in her. And just when she feared she could not take another moment, her body seemed to explode in such sweet spasms that she couldn’t help from crying out his name over and over again.
Long, long moments later, she surfaced from a haze of joy and physical completion to find that Paul had collapsed against her, his cheek resting against the plumpness of her breast.
“Are you in pain?” she whispered.
She felt him smile against her. “Not anymore.”
Their laughter rippled through the room. Intimate. Knowing.
“Do you need anything?”
Again, she felt him smile. “Not anymore.”
His body, which had been trembling with exertion, began to grow quiet. The flicker of his lashes against her breast conveyed his weariness.
“Then sleep,” she murmured, kissing the top of his head, twining her fingers into the silken waves of his hair with a freedom that she never would have thought possible.
“But we—”
“Shh. Sleep. We have a lifetime to worry about the details, Paul Overdone. For now…rest.”
It took only moments before she felt his body completely surrender to the exhaustion of his wounds, his journey, and their lovemaking. Although she wanted to remain awake and enjoy the headiness of being held so close in Paul Overdone’s arms, Susan soon felt the tug of her own fatigue drawing her deeper into oblivion. But for the first time since the Blitz had begun, she didn’t rail against the sensation. Instead, she welcomed sleep and the dreams it brought as the weight of her burdens seemed to shift and lighten. Not that any of her responsibilities had lessened. No. She merely had someone else to help carry the load.
It was sometime later when a light tapping at her door roused her. Gently slipping from Paul’s tight embrace, she threw on her robe and opened the door just enough to peer out.
Margaret stood in the hall, her eyes snapping with eagerness. “Can I open my present now?”
Susan smothered a yawn. “Of course you may.”
Margaret whirled, took two steps, then paused to look over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t you like to open one of yours?”
Susan grinned. “I already have.”
“Which one?”
“The one from Paul.”
“Oh. Has he left?”
“No. He’ll be staying a few more days.” Susan made a shooing motion. “Go on, now. Open my present, then off to bed so Father Christmas can come.”
“Don’t you want to watch?”
Susan stifled another yawn. “No, pet. I’m so tired, I’m going to go back to bed. I’ll watch you open your other presents in the morning. Sweet dreams.”
“’Night, Susan.”
Susan closed the door and carefully set the lock. Seeing the pile of clothing on the ground, she picked them up and draped them over a nearby chair. As she did so, something fluttered free from Paul’s pocket.
For a moment, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. It was a photo of everyone in her family, save her father who’d been manning his Kodak. She remembered precisely the moment it had been taken, just after her father had been given a camera for Christmas three years ago.
I fell head over heels in love with a girl I’d seen in a picture because she was looking straight at the camera and laughing. And the expression on her face was one of such joy…such…carefree exuberance…
Holding the photo up to the dim light of the lamp which had been left on while they slept, Susan realized that this must have been Matthew’s photograph. The one that Paul had said he’d fallen in love with even before meeting Sara…
Sara.
Susan looked at the photo, then at Paul who slept soundly, his arm flung out, his body still curved toward the spot where hers had been.
Despite everything he’d said, everything he meant to her, there had still been that tiny aching corner of her heart that had been forced to accept the fact that he’d been attracted to Sara first, not to her. But as her thumb rubbed over the photograph, that last lump of bitterness melted away.
Because the woman laughing up at the camera was not Sara.
It was Susan.
Dearest Charlie,
It’s time you know the rest. The whole sordid tale. Because if I don’t put the words down on paper, now, I may never be able to tell you the last of my secrets. And it’s something you need to know.
After our marriage, there was only one thing that could bring me back to Defiance. The death of my beloved sister Astra.
To this day, the loss of my sweet little sister, my confidant, my own personal angel, is something that I can’t bear to think about. I lock it away, refusing to remember. Because maybe, if I’d sent for her, insisted she come to New York to live with me, I could have prevented it.
But each time I begged her to leave Defiance, she refused. Not because she didn’t want to go, but because if she came to live with me, nothing would stop my father from coming for us both.
I wouldn’t have even known she had died if I hadn’t been listening to the radio at the diner while business was slow. A landslide. Forty-two killed including seventeen children at the local school. The school where my sister was the teacher.
So I made the trip to Defiance, going back to the hell of my childhood, knowing well the dangers of doing so. But I had to go. I had been there at her birth. I would see her laid to rest.
My mother and sisters were startled when I appeared on the doorstep. Clearly, they didn’t know what they should do. But I didn’t give them the opportunity to refuse to let me enter. I was here to say goodbye, and I would not be dissuaded. I’d brought the pistol you took from Gideon the night we were married, and I was prepared to use it if necessary. But the women were so stunned by my presence that I was able to push past them easily enough and make my way to the parlor where my sister’s coffin lay on a pair of saw horses.
At the sight of Astra’s face, her beautiful, delicate face, the strength left my body. My bag fell to the floor, and I dropped beside it. Sobbing…sobbing.
There are no words possible to describe the utter sense of loss that swept over me. She was my sister…my friend…and in many ways my child…and I knew I would never be the same again. It was Astra who comforted me when I was sad, who tended to my wounds when I was hurt. It was Astra, who taught me to believe in God by writing my troubles to Jesus, then throwing my letters into the deep blue green waters of the abandoned quarry. Because that was what heaven was like, she said. Still and peaceful
and deep. And if God was to be found anywhere, he would be there. She was the sole reason I survived living in my father’s house and she was gone now. Gone.
I don’t know how long I lay there, grieving. But I suddenly became aware of my mother watching me. Looking up, I met her gaze, one clouded with alcohol and laudanum and madness. She squinted at me as if she didn’t really know me.
A disturbance came from the front of the house. My father was home. But I couldn’t move, she held me so tightly in the grip of her regard. Then she whispered. “You did this to me. You and your father.”
Then, before I knew what she meant to do, she bent—and too late, I saw that when my bag had fallen, the butt of the pistol had been exposed. My mother snatched up the gun and turned, just as my father entered the room. As his looming black shape filled the doorway, she leveled the weapon and shot him.
It was the answering silence thundering through the room that I will remember forever. That and the stunned disbelief that rippled over my mother’s features as she suddenly realized what she had done.
She lifted the revolver—not at me as I had first thought she would—but at herself. I jumped to wrestle it away from her, just as Gideon stumbled into the room, then dodged to help me.
My mother began to weep then. Weep and laugh and babble incoherently. Drawing her into my arms—my damaged, half-crazed mother—I knew the authorities would take her away. They would lock her in jail or a hospital and she would never really understand why.
So Gideon and I wrapped my father’s body in a quilt. Then, with the help of my sisters, we carried him out to the truck. And that night, we pushed him into the still waters of the old quarry.
As the first hint of dawn tinged the tips of the mountains, I took my bag and my gun, and made my way back to New York, knowing that there was only one thing left to do. Retrieve the letters you’d stolen. Letters filled with the whole sordid tale of my family. Because if you’d read them, I knew that you would never want to see me again.
I can only pray that I was wrong. That somehow, you can see past where I come from to the person I’ve become. Because I love you Charlie Tolliver. Body and soul. I can’t explain how or why, but I love you with every breath I take.
Yours forever,
RueAnn
Chapter Eighteen
Christmas proved to be particularly lonely for RueAnn. Although she invited the other boarders for the “feast” she and Edna had originally planned, the spirit of the season had lost its spark without her motherin-law to preside over the gathering. The holiday came and went, proving to be more a chore to be completed rather than a celebration. The following day, RueAnn packed up the decorations and straightened the house, feeling somehow relieved to put it all behind her.
By the end of the evening, she had decided that if she didn’t hear something about Charlie’s condition come New Year’s Day, she would begin making preparations to return to the United States. She could wait for news there as well as here in the midst of a warzone.
As the days toward her self-imposed deadline marched closer, she felt a bit like a coward about to abandon ship—especially since the Blunts and her boarders would remain to fight the battle. But she had grown so weary. So heartsick. She just wanted to go home—even though she didn’t know where home was anymore.
Now, there merely remained the matter of the New Year’s dance. She’d agreed to go with Richard during a moment of weakness, one she deeply regretted.
As she began to dress for the event, she vowed that, tonight, she would tell him about her plans to return to the United States so that he would begin looking for another place to stay. Even if she decided to stay in England, she no longer felt comfortable having him in the house. Clearly, he was attracted to her. If she offered him the least amount of encouragement, she was sure that he would begin to court her.
But, come what may, she didn’t want to start a relationship with Richard Carr. It was the coward’s way out to insist he find new lodgings, she supposed, but the last thing she wanted right now was a confrontation.
She was just placing pins in her hair when the air raid siren began its swooping cry—and conversely, she felt a surge of relief. Now, she had the perfect excuse to avoid going to the dance with Richard.
After nearly a week of no air raids, the bombers closed in upon London hard and fast. Much like an animal being stalked by its prey, she ran out of the house, seeking refuge, barely able to get inside the Anderson before the first of the explosions rocked the earth beneath her.
There had been a time when closed-in spaces had robbed her of her ability to breathe, but after so many hours spent in the Anderson, RueAnn had begun to regard the little shelter as her own safe burrow. As she crouched on one of the bunks, alone, she did an automatic head count of who should be there with her. But Susan had left for Scotland a few days before Christmas so that she and Margaret could spend the holiday with Sara. The engineers had not yet returned to the house and Mr. Peabody preferred the space under the stairs during an air raid. So she was alone, shivering in the cold as hell itself opened up around her.
After so many days of relative quiet, the Germans were determined to make up for the shortfall. Explosions hit so close that the Anderson shook beneath the rippling reverberations and RueAnn could hear debris striking the house. Heat began to seep into the shelter, and fearing another fire nearby, RueAnn pushed the door open a crack to peer outside.
The black winter sky outside was limned with fire and all London seemed to be ablaze. Incendiaries had landed on rooftops, in tree branches, on the ground, self-igniting to spread their devilish fires.
A nearby explosion rocked her on her feet, but RueAnn braced herself against the doorway. Squinting up at the house, RueAnn counted two broken windows, and an ominous dark patch near the attic chimney.
No. No!
Fearing an incendiary might have pierced the roof and even now was setting the house ablaze, RueAnn ran across the yard. Pausing only to retrieve blankets from the cubby under the stairs, she raced up, up, throwing open the door to the attic space and dodging inside.
But what she found wasn’t a fire or even inner damage to the roof. It was William Peabody hunched over a radio, speaking softly into the headset.
In German.
William Peabody looked up from his radio to see RueAnn staring at him aghast, and too late, RueAnn realized that she had unwittingly been harboring a spy.
As if all of the unsettling pieces drifted into place, she remembered finding him in Charlie’s room…Edna’s. Then there were the mornings she’d emerged from the Anderson to find that Mr. Peabody was already inside.
Gasping, RueAnn backed toward the door, but Peabody yanked a pistol from his waistband and leveled it at her.
“Where is it?”
She shook her head, uncomprehending, not even recognizing the man who stood in front of her. Gone was his stooped posture, the vagueness in his gaze, the thick horn-rimmed glasses. In the space of a heartbeat, he appeared younger, stronger, and infinitely dangerous.
“Don’t play dumb. The list. I want the list of names given to your husband just before he left Washington D.C.”
Again, she shook her head, even as a glimmer of recognition wriggled through her brain. The papers. The papers she’d found taped to the back of Charlie’s bureau mirror. Could that be what he was talking about?
Peabody drew back the trigger of his pistol. “Tell me where it is!” he demanded more emphatically.
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He made a sound of disgust. “I’m not in the mood for games, Mrs. Tolliver,” he said. “I was there. In Washington D.C. I was following your husband when the two of you made contact.” He took a step forward. “Who are you working for? The Americans? The British?”
His eyes had begun to blaze with the same fanaticism she’d often seen in her father’s. She had no doubts that he would shoot her if she didn’t cooperate.
“A-American,
” she answered, suddenly feeling like an actor who’d been thrust onstage without a script.
“I thought so. Your meeting in Washington just before Jean-Claude Foulard was scheduled to arrive was too much of a coincidence. “What’s the matter? Couldn’t you get Jean-Claude to hand over the information to you, rather than to your husband?”
She shook her head.
“There’ll be no chance of that now. I took care of Jean-Claude soon after he talked to your husband.” He advanced toward her, closing the gap between them. His expression grew thunderous and he shouted, “So where is it!”
Without thought, RueAnn dodged out of the little door, slamming it behind her. Briefly, she considered retrieving the gun she’d brought with her to England, but there was no time. She had to get away. Now!
Racing for the stairs, she took them two at a time, even as she heard the attic door hitting the wall. The thumps of his boots were close behind her as she fled outside.
In the time she’d been upstairs, the Germans seemed to have unleashed their entire arsenal so that the world itself was ablaze. RueAnn raced out into the street, dodging bits of smoldering debris and loose masonry. She fought her way through an artificial wind that had risen from the roiling flames, through streets rife with smoke and soot. She was assaulted with noise—rumbling bombers, explosions, and the crackling of burning wood. She didn’t dare look behind her to see if Peabody was still following her. She had to…
She skidded to a stop when she realized she’d made a horrible mistake. Rather than heading deeper into the narrow alleys of the business district, she’d taken a side street—only to find it completely blocked by the collapsed wreckage of a hotel. The entire sidewall had been sheared off, leaving a gaping scar—as if a giant knife had cut it in two, exposing rooms complete with beds and furniture and flapping curtains.
Whirling, she tried to retrace her path, but she’d only managed a few steps before Peabody appeared, his form silhouetted in the firelight. In an instant, he was upon her, one arm snaking around her waist to trap her arms at her sides while the other ground the snout of the pistol into her temple.