With This Ring

by Jean Saunders

  “I need you with me.” His next words stunned her, and she felt as if her face paled, then flooded with colour. He gave a twisted smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to put on climbing boots in the physical sense. But these crazy Dutchmen only know a smattering of French, and are having great difficulty making themselves understood. It will be almost impossible to give precise instructions to them unless they can follow them exactly.”

  Tania’s mouth was so dry she could hardly move her lips. “What — what do you expect me to do? I — I can’t, Claude, don’t ask this of me.”

  “There’s no-one else. You have to come. You’ll be quite safe. You’ll stay at base camp with the controller, who will instruct you in the three-way radio system. Everything you hear me say to the climbers must be translated into Dutch, and their own replies passed back to me. You’re an expert linguist, Tania. It will save hours of valuable time if you come with me now. It may very well save lives.”

  Her heart thudded violently. It was all her worst nightmares rolled into one, to be personally involved with the mountains, and to feel so sickeningly that she had no choice, no choice at all. She owed it to James’s memory. Claude released her, and Tania felt strangely as if she stood alone for the first time in her life, yet it didn’t hurt. She was the symbol of Henri’s future, standing without props, moving forward, dictating the terms of her life.

  “What are we waiting for?” she said huskily.

  * * *

  The next thirty-six hours were the most traumatic of Tania’s life. She and Claude drove to the mountain rescue base camp as quickly as the slippery roads would allow. Overhead the sky was a grey canopy; before them reared the towering, snow-clad mountains, majestic and terrifying. At their foot, Tania felt dwarfed, dehumanised, cold to her bones. Marc awaited them with three others, equipped with all the mountaineering gear, the helmets and snow-goggles, climbing irons and ropes, the medical equipment and stretchers, brandy and food and tents. The thought of carrying all that across a road was enough to make ordinary men quake a little, let alone to the places Tania found unimaginable. For the first time, she gave them all her unstinted admiration.

  There was little time for anything else. She was quickly initiated into the three-way radio system by a fresh-faced young Frenchman called Eduard. They were the anchormen, Claude told her jocularly. For a moment he pulled her close to him, as the others tactfully turned their backs.

  “We make it a practice never to say goodbye,” he said roughly. “So it’s au revoir, chérie, until we meet again.”

  He held her tight. Through the thick layers of clothing he wore, she imagined she could feel the strong beat of his heart next to hers. His hands pushed carelessly through the tumble of her hair. His touch made her scalp tingle. She clung to him wordlessly, wanting to say so much … so much … and capable of saying nothing at all. He swore softly, and for a brief moment his cheek rested against hers, the roughness of it instantly familiar and dear to her, making her throat thicken. Was all this just for effect, because the others would expect him to kiss his wife goodbye? The thought wouldn’t leave her, although it made her want to weep.

  “I love you,” Claude said in a swift whisper against her cheek, and seconds later he was rejoining the others, leaving her with Eduard, cheerfully asking her if she would like some coffee, while Tania replied mechanically, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, wondering if she had really heard those whispered words, or if her own longing had conjured them up out of her own imagination. Her heart had leapt, only to resume beating crazily fast. She had heard them, felt them, against her skin …

  Why had Claude said he loved her? Was it because it was what he knew she wanted to hear, handed to her like a little talisman as he went on his dangerous mission? There had been no need. He was the one in danger, not Tania. And yet, didn’t her heart go with him, every step of the way? Didn’t he know it? But of course he didn’t, because she had made it plain to him that she hated him and what he did. She resented the fact that she had married him because of a moment’s weakness at seeing him in the throes of a nightmare. She was frightened of what was happening, up there, in the unknown, in the silent world of the mountains that had killed her brother. Most of all, she was frightened for Claude.

  She knew exactly what he had meant now, when he said Henri was in good hands, and Claude was most needed here. James, too, was beyond anyone’s help, anyone’s love, and it was futile to look backwards, when all the future beckoned. If they had a future after today. Tania repulsed all negative thoughts, took the scalding coffee from Eduard, and asked what she had to do.

  Throughout the whole process of the rescue, Tania was emotionally and professionally involved, part of Claude’s world, and in being a part of it, she began to understand it. From the first moment she made radio contact with the three Dutchmen in the mountains, and heard their astonishment and then their varied reactions at hearing a woman’s voice speaking to them in their own language, Tania was held in an urgent need to help in any way she could. There were even moments when the Dutchmen made joking passes at her over the air, and to keep up their spirits, she responded, only to have Claude’s crackling voice intervening with mild comments to keep her mind on the job.

  It was nerve-racking, tensely scaring, exhilarating and emotional. To speak to Claude, knowing that at any moment they may lose contact, and knowing that the reason could be a mere loss of radio signal, or a fatal one, was more heart-palpitating than anything Tania had ever known before. But the strange thing about it was her own reaction to her position here. Gradually as time passed, she began to realise she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. If she had been left at the château while all this drama was happening, she would be frustrated and helpless. Here, she was needed, as she had never been needed before. If she never shared another thing with Claude, she was grateful for having been allowed to share this.

  He would be triumphant if she ever dared to tell him so! She and James were more alike than she had realised. And her parents too … she knew now how their hunger to seek knowledge from the world they had chosen for themselves could never be swamped by domesticity, however much they loved their children. These hours fraught with danger had taught her so much more than a lifetime’s academic learning.

  “We’ve got them!” Claude’s jubilant voice suddenly came over the radio. “They’re all right. A bit bruised and battered, but no worse. We’re coming in — hold on, one of them has something to say.” Claude evidently allowed one of the rescued men to speak.

  He spoke in Dutch, as Tania had heard the voice all that gruelling day and part of the night. She knew his voice so well now, and suddenly she realised the message was for her alone.

  “Thank you, lovely lady,” the man said, his voice rough with emotion. “You were our inspiration. Will you marry me?”

  Tania laughed, and it seemed as if her jaw ached with the strangeness of the sound. It had been tensed for hours.

  “Tell him no,” Claude put in, suddenly aggressive. “Tell him you’re spoken for.”

  She did so, feeling a quiver run through her. Was she? Now that the worst was over and the descent could begin, there was time to remember other things. Like the fact that Claude had said ‘I love you’, and held her close, and stirred up all the longings she had kept hidden recently. There was time, too, to remember Henri, and to wonder how the operation had gone. She left Eduard in charge of the radio now, and put through a phone call to the clinic. Minutes later, she was feeling another flood of thankfulness as she learned that the operation had been a complete success.

  As soon as she could, she relayed the news to Claude. He said little, but she recognised the gladness in his voice. Tania hesitated, then she added softly, “Some day he’ll be able to climb his mountain, Claude.”

  He was too busy to reply. There was still a hazardous return journey, and she and Eduard seemed to have drunk an endless amount of coffee. She was suddenly ravenous, and Eduard produced some tins of soup and
a loaf of bread, and Tania heated it on the small gas stove. It tasted like nectar.

  At last the climbers and the rescuers came back to the base camp, and Tania was hugged by the three brawny Dutchman, not too exhausted to appreciate the sight of a pretty woman, and to make it clear how much they envied Claude Girard his lady. She blushed, hearing them, glad that the others weren’t fully aware of all that they said. They would sleep here now, and leave in the morning. Claude looked at Tania.

  “Can we go home?” she said tremulously. He nodded, and she still couldn’t be sure whether their relationship had changed or not. She sat beside him in his car as he sped silently through the snow-covered countryside in the pale unearthly light of dawn. It was hours since they had slept, and her whole body felt stiff and aching, her eyes gritty. Claude must feel so much more exhausted than she did. They spoke little on the journey, and now she wondered if he regretted his impulsive words. He had said he loved her. If it was all a lie, she just couldn’t bear to know it. Not yet. She was still too emotionally fragile, still somewhere high on the mountain …

  “We will talk later,” Claude said, when they reached the château. “We have things to discuss. They cannot remain unsaid any longer, Tania. But we are both desperate for sleep, and I think that is our first priority.”

  Tania nodded. What things did they have to discuss, she thought uneasily? He looked so serious, so fatigued. She longed to smooth away the deep-etched lines of tension from his face, but she was afraid to be so intimate with him. He looked oddly detached, even deflated. Maybe it was the aftermath of the rescue, where all his strength had been demanded of him, but there was a gnawing feeling inside her that if he wanted to discuss releasing her from their marriage, she just couldn’t bear it.

  She couldn’t blame him if it was what he thought she wanted. She had intimated as much enough times. What a blind fool she had been. But she still had to know a few things for herself, and she needed to be in full control of her faculties before then. Sleep must come first.

  Someone had lit a fire in their bedroom and kept it going until their return, and the room was warm and welcoming. Claude took a quick shower, and while Tania did the same to ease her taut muscles, he phoned down to the staff to thank them for the fire in the room, saying that he would ring down when they needed anything more. The words drifted in and out of Tania’s senses as she fell into bed, and was asleep almost immediately. She could think of nothing else but the bliss of being warm and relaxed …

  * * *

  It was brilliant daylight when she awoke, a crystal-clear day made sparkling by thin rays of December sunlight on the frozen snow. In the fireplace the fire still burned, and Tania realised that Claude must have put more logs on it, at some time. She turned her head fractionally, stretching her limbs carefully, and finding that she was still supple after all, after the rigours of the time spent huddled over the radio in the base camp.

  Her heart jolted as her eyes encountered Claude’s. Next to her on the pillow, he was fully awake, but unmoving, and she had the odd feeling that he had been watching her sleep. The trite ’good morning’ stuck in her throat, and instead she lay very still, breathless, waiting … yet not still at all, for every nerve-end inside her was tingling and alive, as if her whole body was aware that these moments were very important ones. Her body recognised it as much as her mind.

  “I want to thank you, Tania,” he said quietly. “It was cruel of me to drag you along with me, but there was nothing else I could do. I know what an ordeal it must have been for you.”

  He had thanked her once before, when he had made love to her. She had thought it was an insult, instead of a sharing of mind and spirit. This time she felt it was her failure, that he should think it necessary. Her amber eyes blurred to a liquid fire.

  “It’s you that I should thank, Claude,” she whispered painfully. “For making me see that I’ve been a child all this time, hiding behind my own inadequacy. I was afraid to reach out and discover just what I was capable of being. I know now.”

  She ached now with a different kind of hunger. To feel his arms around her, to know his caresses and the sweet warm familiarity of his love-making. She had to know if he really loved her …

  “Claude,” her mouth trembled as she spoke his name, “you said something before you left me at base camp. Did you mean it?”

  For a moment she saw the defensive look come into his eyes, and didn’t understand it. “I’m sorry if it bothered you,” he said raggedly. “Put it down to a feeling of premonition, that I had better say it once, just in case I never got the chance to say it again.”

  She put her soft fingers against his mouth. She couldn’t bear him to tease her now, even though she didn’t need telling that there was no laughter in him at that moment. He was as tense as she was, and that gave her hope.

  “But did you mean it?” she whispered. “Did you? Don’t I have the right to know? I am your wife!”

  She drew in her breath as the look in his eyes darkened at her words. So suddenly she hardly knew how it had happened, he had pulled her towards him in one fluid movement, so that she lay above him as he stared up into her face, his dark eyes searching hers, as her hair cascaded about her shoulders and his. She heard and felt the sudden pounding of his heartbeats beneath her own. And even before he spoke, Tania was aware of a sudden surge of exultation, as if all the ice around her heart was melting …

  “Yes, I meant it! When do I say anything I don’t mean? I love you, and I’ve loved you for a very long time, ever since James used to tell me about his beautiful sister. I’ve seen your face in my dreams a thousand times, knowing it so well from the photos James showed me. I didn’t recognise the feelings as love, not until I met you in London, and you let me know only too well what you thought of me and how you despised me. I couldn’t bear to know you thought so ill of me, but even then I had no real intention of taking things this far, I swear it. Forcing you into a marriage you didn’t want must be one of the worst tricks a man can play on a woman.”

  “I didn’t have to accept! I still had a mind of my own. I could have said no — if I had wanted to.”

  While he had been talking, his eyes had become haunted again, the way they had been during the nightmare, his movements suddenly restless, tortured. At her words, his eyes focused on her face again, on the soft tremulous mouth and the love that shone out of her eyes as if a thousand fires were lit behind them. His voice was velvety now, sending wild shivers of excitement through her veins. She was conscious of the warmth of his flesh touching hers, wanting hers, and love and desire were intermingled on his face in the most beautiful look of all.

  “Why didn’t you say no?” Claude asked her. She could feel the small movements of his hands along her spine, possessing her as surely as spring followed winter. She felt so loved she wanted to cry, except that she didn’t want to cry, she wanted … she wanted …

  “Because I love you.” She spoke the words to him for the first time, tasting them, loving the sound of them, the feel of them on her lips. “I love you, Claude, so much, so very much.”

  She couldn’t say more, because by then his mouth was crushing hers, and she felt as if she was spinning slowly in space as he reversed their positions in slow motion, never loosening his hold on her, as if he would never let her out of his arms again.

  The sense of wonder pervaded every part of her, awakening her as from a long deep sleep, for now at last she knew the joy of love, and the ecstasy of belonging to one man, one love, now and for always.

  The End

  A Note on the Author

  Jean Saunders (1932-2011), née Jean Innes was born in London, but lived in the West Country for almost all of her life. She was married to Geoff Saunders, her childhood sweetheart, with whom she had three children.

  After the publication of her first novel, Jean began a career as a magazine writer and published around 600 short stories. She started to publish gothic romance novels under her married and maiden name in th
e 1970s. In the 1980s, she wrote historical romances under what would become her two most popular pseudonyms, Rowena Summers and Sally James. In 2004, she began to use the penname Rachel Moore.

  In 1991 Saunders’s novel, The Bannister Girls, was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year award. She was elected the seventeenth Chairman (1993-1995) of the Romantic Novelists' Association, and she was Vice-Chairman of the Writers' Summer School of Swanwick. She was also a member of Romance Writers of America, the Crime Writers' Association and the West Country Writers' Association.

  Discover books by Joan Smith published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/JeanSaunders

  A Different Kind of Love

  The Bannister Girls

  Velvet Dawn

  With This Ring

  For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been

  removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.

  This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  First published in Great Britain 1993 by Severn House Publishers Ltd

  Copyright © 1993 Jean Saunders

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