Never Forget Me

by Marguerite Kaye - Never Forget Me

  ‘It’s fine,’ Sheila said, aware of the other woman’s jealous eye upon her. ‘Whenever Matron MacDonald can spare the time...’

  ‘She will find the time today, won’t you, Matron?’ Luc snapped. ‘It’s not as if we have any patients yet.’

  Matron MacDonald coloured deeply. ‘My apologies, Dr Durand. I will meet with Miss Fraser as soon as this meeting is over.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Luc said, flashing Matron a disarming smile that made her colour for quite a different reason.

  With a coquettish flutter of her eyelashes, Matron MacDonald embarked upon a detailed list of medical queries and issues. Listening with one ear, pencil poised lest she be required to take action, Sheila allowed her attention to drift to Luc. There was no sign of the temper that had made him snap at Matron a few moments ago. He was giving her his undivided attention, taking notes without looking at his book, keeping his eyes focused on her. He often disagreed with things she said, but he never talked over her, and he always explained his reasons when he did. He encouraged her to voice her own views, and on occasion acted upon them.

  ‘Which,’ Matron MacDonald had told Sheila in an unguarded moment a few days before, ‘is almost unheard of, especially for such a very distinguished surgeon. So refreshing. We’re so privileged to work with him. Confidentially, if it were not for his presence here, we would have had a great deal of difficulty finding staff willing to work in a hospital in such a remote location.’

  Today, however, Matron was as starched as her apron as she got to her feet at the end of the meeting, her brusque nod in Sheila’s direction in stark contrast with the effusive smile she aimed at Luc.

  ‘I’d better get on, too,’ Sheila said as the door closed behind Matron, ‘unless there’s anything else.’

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Luc said. ‘I’d like you to attend the meeting of the trustees with me.’

  ‘Me?’

  He got to his feet, rubbing his hand over his eyes and came round to the other side of the table, perching on top of it. ‘Yes, you. The author of the report you are going to write. They will have questions, and you are in a far better position to answer them than I am.’

  ‘But the men on the board, they know me from before, Dr Durand.’

  ‘Please, when we are alone, can we dispense with the formalities?’

  ‘I can’t call you Luc.’

  ‘You just did, Sheila.’

  He smiled at her. Not his usual polite, strictly business smile, but the one she remembered from Armistice night. The one she’d tried very hard not to remember from Armistice night. The one that made her stomach knot and her heart flutter in a most unbusinesslike way. ‘They won’t take me seriously. The board, I mean. They’ll look down their noses at me. “That’s wee Sheila, who used to be the chambermaid at the Big House,” they’ll say. “What the devil does she think she knows about anything beyond laying fires and setting tables?”’

  ‘Are you telling me that after all your wartime experiences you are afraid of a few men in suits?’

  She opened her mouth to deny it, then stopped. She tried to picture herself sitting round a table much larger than this one, a lone female face surrounded by local dignitaries. ‘Most of them have known me since I was a wee lassie. The laird. His solicitor and his accountant. Colonel Patterson from the other Big House.’

  ‘But you are not a—what do you call it—wee lassie now. You told me the day I arrived here that you wanted a chance to prove everyone wrong. I am giving you that opportunity. Why won’t you grasp it?’

  ‘I— Because I—because I— It’s not that I’m afraid of them, Luc. It’s just that I don’t...’

  ‘You won’t let me down, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘How did you know I was going to say that?’

  He shrugged, smiling at her. ‘Because these past few weeks, I think I have come to understand you a little.’

  She smiled back. ‘Quite a lot, I’d say.’

  ‘When you are here with me, you are so confident, so sure of yourself. You are doing an exceptional job. Even Matron would admit that.’

  ‘If you tied her down and forced her.’

  ‘She may be old-fashioned, but she is a fair woman. Others may be less so and attempt to judge you based on assumptions. Don’t let that affect you, Sheila. And don’t be ashamed of where you come from, either.’

  He was so confident, so very sure of himself and his abilities, it was difficult to believe he came from such humble origins. He clearly spoke from experience, she had no doubt about that. What pain lay behind his words? And what courage! It made her own insecurities seem petty.

  Sheila tossed her head back. ‘You’re right. I will go to the meeting, and I’ll answer whatever questions they throw at me, and if one of them so much as mentions my past I’ll remind them that the war has changed everything. Which it has,’ she added soberly.

  ‘Complètement,’ Luc agreed.

  She thought a shadow passed over his face, but it was gone before she could be certain. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for having such faith in me. And before you say it, yes, I agree, I should have more faith in myself.’

  ‘So now you can add mind reader to your list of attributes.’ Luc wandered over to join her at the window. ‘What am I thinking now?’

  Over the past month, they had both taken enormous care not to get too close physically. They had never referred again to Armistice night, but there were times when she knew he’d been thinking of it. A look in his eye. The way he jerked his hand away if she brushed it accidentally. On such occasions awareness was strung like a wire between them. It lasted the merest of seconds but left her heart pounding, her throat dry. It was there now, though neither of them was looking at the other. He was just inches away from her, and the urge to lean into him was almost overpowering.

  ‘I’d prefer not to know what you are thinking right now. Much safer for both of us, I suspect. It’s a beautiful view, is it not?’ Sheila added hurriedly.

  ‘Very beautiful,’ Luc whispered.

  But he wasn’t looking at the view. ‘It is,’ Sheila said, horrified to find herself blushing. ‘Over yonder, right at the edge of the loch, that’s the family tomb I was telling you about. There’s a path through the rhododendrons. It’s a pity they’re not in bloom. I could show you, if you’d like.’

  ‘I’d like that very much.’

  His shoulder brushed hers as he angled towards her. Trance-like, she reached up to touch his hair, running her fingers through the soft silky waves at his collar. He touched her cheek. His thumb caressed her jaw. She lifted her face. He drew her forward. His lips hovered over hers. For an aching moment, she thought he would pull away, and then, suddenly, his lips were on hers.

  It was the sweetest of kisses, all the more so for being so much longed for. She wrapped her arms around his neck. His fingers tangled in her hair. His mouth clung to hers. She closed her eyes on the world and kissed him back. It was like sunlight dancing on the skin after a long cold winter, that kiss, warming her from the inside. It was languorous and heady, like honey and wine. She was floating, bathed in the smell of him, the heat of him.

  When finally it ended, they clung together, poised in the embrasure of the window, staring wide-eyed at each other, speechless. They had broken all their own rules, but it was impossible to deny this bubble of attraction that enfolded them, this thirst they had slaked. No, not slaked; this longing was far from slaked.

  Sheila was the first to move, casting an anxious glance first at the closed door, and then out of the window, to the empty gardens. ‘Luc...’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ he said.

  She had no idea what she was going to say. That it shouldn’t have happened. That it couldn’t happen again. That was what she should be saying, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She stared at him helplessly. She had worked so hard to make him into Dr Durand, her superior, and now the illusion was stripped away. Though she knew getting it back was a matter of
self-preservation, she did not want to. Not yet.

  He smoothed his hand over her hair and kissed her brow. ‘We have been working so hard, I forget sometimes that the war is really over. It is a beautiful day, and we are in a very beautiful place and you are a very beautiful woman. I am tired of being Dr Durand,’ he said, echoing her thoughts, ‘and though I have the greatest admiration for Miss Fraser, I find I would very much like to spend some time with Sheila before the hospital claims my soul. Do you think we could, just for today?’

  She couldn’t imagine wanting anything more, right at this moment, though she knew, simply from wanting it so much, that it would be a mistake. But would it? He was offering a moment out of time, away from reality. An escape. An illusion. Something that they could pretend had never happened, just like before. She knew, even as she thought it, that she was lying to herself, but she didn’t care. Not when she could still taste him on her lips. Not when he looked at her like that, his eyes slumberous with the passion that smouldered between them, his smile the most tantalising curve.

  Sheila nodded before she could change her mind. ‘Yes, I think we could,’ she said, and surrendered to sweet temptation.

  * * *

  She decided to make up a picnic and found an army-issue haversack hanging on a peg in the old garden room that had become a repository for abandoned pieces of kit. Looking out of the dusty window, she remembered having a conversation with Flora in this very room, not long after the start of the war, when her own thoughts were already far away from Glen Massan, concentrated on her first hospital placement. Outside in the grounds, the army had erected neat lines of tents. Inside, Flora had been confiding her attraction to the man who would later become her husband. Sheila, who had thought herself so much more worldly wise, had cautioned Flora against surrendering to that attraction.

  Flora had ignored her advice and followed her heart. So, too, had Sheila, in the heady first months of freedom in France, though the consequences had been very different from Flora’s happy ending. Four years on, and Glen Massan’s grounds were once more being tended by the men who had left to fight. Not all had returned, but every one who had, and who had wished to reclaim his job, had been encouraged to do so. And here Sheila had returned, too. The former maid, now in charge of the rebirth of Glen Massan House, restoring the grounds to a new and functional purpose, minus Lady Carmichael’s beloved croquet lawn. If Flora was here now, with the roles reversed, what advice would she give Sheila?

  She turned away from the window, smiling at her own whimsy. Being in love coloured everything Flora said. Flora wanted the world to fall in love as she had, but Sheila had tried love on for size and hadn’t liked the fit of it at all. She wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.

  ‘And since that is one thing I am absolutely certain of,’ she said firmly to herself as she made her way to the kitchens, ‘then today can do no harm whatsoever.’

  Chapter Seven

  Sheila led the way through a narrow gap in the tall rhododendron bushes, whose lilac, magenta and fuchsia flowers were just beginning to unfold from the large, fist-like buds. The path behind the bushes was rutted and narrow, wandering through a wood, through which the occasional glimpse could be had of the sparkling waters of the loch, and the hills beyond.

  She walked with the easy stride of one used to being outdoors, the heavy boots she wore emphasising her slender ankles, the skirt of her dress swinging out to give him tantalising glimpses of her calves. It was warm, she had told him, for spring in the Highlands, laughing as he shivered in the breeze, which seemed to blow permanently off the loch. She wore no coat but instead a long woollen garment in navy blue, which apparently her mother had knitted. Her hair floated behind her in silken strands. Her skin was healthy from being in the fresh air, the colour of cream. Freckles speckled her nose. The vibrancy that had first attracted him to her was like a field of electricity, an almost tangible spark of energy surrounding her.

  The path widened and Luc caught up with her, taking her hand, enjoying the warmth of her fingers as they twined with his. They talked of politics, because there was so much to discuss. The Paris Peace Conference. The new workweek that would be introduced in Britain and in France. Momentous changes that the war had brought about, but today they’d had enough of the world, and the subject paled.

  ‘That book you were reading the other day, when you were having lunch, are you enjoying it?’ Luc asked.

  Sheila made a face. ‘Virginia Woolf. Not particularly. It’s beautifully written and frightfully clever, and before the war I’d have lapped it up, but these days I find I want something less weighty.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You’ll laugh at me,’ she said, ‘but I think I’m a wee bit in love with an ape man called Tarzan.’

  He did laugh. And because her eyes were dancing with fun, and because her mouth was curved into the most teasing of smiles, and that smile connected straight with his groin, he caught her to him. ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘Well, he lives in the jungle, naturally, so he spends most of the story half naked, but that’s fine because he’s very athletic, and very good-looking. He’s a bit of a hero, too, forever doing good deeds.’

  ‘Every woman’s dream, in fact,’ Luc said ironically.

  Sheila chuckled. ‘He’s not so very different from you. I think the work you do is much more than heroic. I’ve been reading some of the case studies you wrote up for the medical journals. You work miracles, Luc. You don’t just save lives, you make life so much better for those dreadfully disfigured men and their families. You make them feel human again.’

  He was accustomed to being thanked, accustomed to his skill being lauded, but his standards were so high, his aim always for perfection, that more often than not he felt undeserving of both. ‘I think it is never enough, what I do,’ Luc said. ‘I think there must always be more.’

  ‘From what I’ve read, you’re already achieving the impossible. Your patients must think you a real hero. I know I do.’

  She meant it, and it touched him to the core. He had been lonely before coming here to Glen Massan, he realised with a shock, and with a further shock realised that Sheila was the reason he wasn’t lonely now. It panicked him, this knowledge, so he thrust it to one side, and said the first thing that came into his head. ‘So if I went to live in a jungle, you’d desert this Tarzan for me?’ She blushed delightfully. ‘And if you did, mignonne,’ he said, ‘would you be half naked, too?’

  An image of her, not half but fully naked, flashed into his head, and he was immediately aroused. He wanted to kiss her again. Was this what he’d intended when he’d suggested this outing? He’d been so befuddled with that kiss, he hadn’t been thinking straight. And Sheila, what had she wanted?

  ‘Tarzan doesn’t have a mate,’ she said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘He’s too busy saving lives. You see, you do have a lot in common.’

  The truth is, you don’t have time for a wife, you’re too busy saving lives. Eugenie’s accusatory words rang in his ears. Abruptly, he let Sheila go, making a show of gazing up at the sky, hefting up the haversack, which had fallen unnoticed to the ground. ‘I hope it’s not going to rain. We haven’t had our picnic yet.’

  ‘Luc, what’s wrong?’

  He forced a smile. ‘Nothing.’

  * * *

  They walked to the end of the woods in silence. Beside her, Luc was frowning, lost in thought. Sheila racked her brain but couldn’t understand what she’d said to make him retreat into himself. They emerged at the edge of the loch, and the promontory upon which the church stood came into view. As ever, the haunting beauty of the ruin made her stop in her tracks.

  ‘Mon Dieu, it must be very old,’ Luc said.

  ‘Fourteenth century,’ Sheila replied, ‘though apparently there was a monastery on the site for hundreds of years before that.’

  They followed the perimeter wall round to the gate and entered the ancient churchyard. Luc bent over the headstones, most
of which had sunk into the soft ground, tracing the inscriptions with his fingertips. The wrought iron enclosure that housed the Carmichael family crypt stood at the far end, facing out over the loch. The large Celtic cross that bore the names of those interred was made of the same grey granite as Glen Massan House. The gold lettering of the newest inscription stood out brighter than the rest.

  Alexander Gordon Maxwell Carmichael

  Lieutenant of the Argyll and Southern Highlanders

  Laid down his life for his country 10th October 1918 aged 20 years

  Virtutis Gloria Merces

  Beloved son, the battle is over, but you will live forever in our hearts

  ‘Glory is the reward of valour,’ Luc translated. ‘Do you believe that?’

  Sheila frowned, shaking her head. ‘I’ve witnessed the results of valour and they’re far from glorious, but...’ She broke off, staring at the words on the tomb. ‘I believe we have a duty, those of us who are left, to make sure that they didn’t die in vain. You’ll think that sounds awfully pompous but...’

  ‘Non, I think it is true. I came here to Scotland hoping to escape France and all the memories. I wanted to forget the war, but it’s not possible, is it? It has shaped us.’

  A cloud scudded over the sun, casting a shadow on the tombstone. There were fresh flowers in an urn. Lady Carmichael’s doing, Sheila knew, for the laird had been unable to bear coming here after the ceremony. She wondered where they had come from, those flowers at this time of year. She opened the gate and laid her own spray of dried rosemary on the plinth, kneeling down to say a private prayer.

  When she had finished, the sun was shining again. Luc was standing to one side of the railings, gazing out over the loch. She slipped her hand into his.