‘D’accord?’ he asked.
She nodded, her smile tinged with sadness. ‘If you could go back to being the person you were before the war, would you?’
‘Non,’ Luc said without hesitation. ‘When I said it had shaped us, I didn’t mean I wished it undone. When I said there was no escaping the war, I meant it would be wrong to pretend—or to try to pretend—it didn’t happen. It did, and here we are, and you are right, we have a duty to make all that sacrifice worthwhile.’ He grinned. ‘Now you will think I sound pompous.’
She brushed her lips against his hand. ‘I think you put it perfectly.’
* * *
They left the chapel enclosure, and Sheila led the way towards the path that wound up the hill. Luc followed her up the steep climb, arriving at the top, slightly out of breath as she was, exclaiming with surprise as they skirted the protective hedge of yellow-flowering gorse to the hollow of grass on the other side.
‘C’est magnifique,’ he said, gazing out at the vista, the loch, the hills, Glen Massan House and the village beyond.
Sheila spread out the old blanket she had packed, but left the food in the rucksack. The sun was warm, and the gorse protected them from the breeze. Luc took off his jacket, collar and tie and lay back, resting his head on his clasped hands. His shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, leaving his throat exposed. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, the corded sinew on his forearms standing out under the soft smattering of hair. His eyes were closed. She stretched out beside him, his skin pale compared to hers.
‘Do you regret coming here?’ she asked. ‘To Glen Massan?’
He rolled over onto his side to face her. ‘How could I, when it allowed me to meet you again?’
Sheila could feel the blush stealing over her cheeks and dipped her head. ‘Luc, I don’t know what you thought, but I’ve never done anything like that before. I had no idea what you expected of me—afterwards, I mean.’
He smoothed his hand over her hair, gently tilting her chin up to meet his gaze. ‘So that is why you ran away? I had a feeling that you had shocked yourself as much as I had, but I didn’t know how to ask. Am I permitted to say that it pleases my ego, your saying that?’
‘I didn’t think your ego would be in need of pleasing. You are the dashing Dr Durand.’
His laughter was softly ironic. ‘Not so dashing, I assure you. While you were getting dressed in such a hurry, I was hiding in the salle de bain agonising over what the etiquette was in such situations.’
She couldn’t help laughing, touched to see that he looked faintly embarrassed.
‘I know, it is ridiculous, non?’
His fingers were tangled in her hair, lightly stroking the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck. ‘It was not just worrying about etiquette that kept me there,’ he said.
‘No?’ She could see the pulse beating at his throat, the first hint of stubble on his jaw. The honey scent of the gorse reminded her of their kiss earlier.
‘I was worried that if you were still naked when I came back, that I would not be able to hide the fact that I wanted to make love to you again.’
She remembered him standing there dressed only in a towel. She remembered how shocked she had been at her body’s response to him, how determined she had been not to betray herself. How different would things have been had she stayed? How much more complicated? But she had not, and what was the point in speculating about what might have been when he was here now, and metaphorically speaking she was once again standing in the doorway, and she could choose to walk away or to stay?
His fingers had stilled. She had been silent too long to pretend there was not a question to be answered and she knew it would not be asked again. Tomorrow they would return to being Dr Durand and Miss Fraser. Today...
‘Would it shock you,’ she said, reaching over to smooth his hair to feather her fingers over his nape, mirroring what he had done to her, ‘if I told you that I was thinking the same thing?’
* * *
Luc tensed. For a fraction of a second he hesitated, but though there were a hundred reasons for him to get up and walk away, he could think of only one thing. He wanted her, and she wanted him.
He rolled her onto her back, taking her unawares. She lay beneath him, her hair spread out behind her, her eyes wide with surprise. ‘Would it shock you if I told you that I have spent a great deal of time wondering what we would have done if you had stayed?’ he asked.
‘And if I told you that once again, we’d been thinking the same thing?’
‘I would tell you that I would be astonished if it was the exact same thing,’ Luc whispered.
‘Why don’t you tell me, and we can compare notes.’
He laughed. ‘Why don’t I show you instead,’ he said, and kissed her.
The kiss started where the other had left off. Heat flared between them. She twined her arms around his neck and arched under him. He fumbled with the belt that held her knitted jacket in place and pushed the garment aside. Her hands fluttered up and down his back. He rolled onto his side, pulling his shirt over his head.
He kissed her again, shuddering as she stroked his skin. Buttons. He cursed. ‘Why does this thing need so many buttons?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought they’d be a problem to a surgeon as skilled as you,’ she said, undoing them.
‘I’m not a surgeon, aujourd’hui, I am a man.’
She laughed, a throaty sound that made his muscles clench. ‘Patently.’
He sighed with satisfaction as her blouse parted, revealing the soft contours of her breasts under the white cotton of her underwear. ‘And you, ma belle, are just as patently a woman,’ he said, taking one of her dark pink nipples into his mouth and sucking.
She bucked under him. He continued to suck though the flimsy material. Her brassière also buttoned up the front, but this time his fingers cooperated. He buried his face between the valley of her breasts, teasing her nipples with his thumbs.
‘Is this what you imagined?’ he whispered, cupping her fullness.
‘Yes,’ she answered, flattening her palm over his chest. ‘And this.’
‘And this?’ he asked, kissing her again, shuddering with pleasure as her tongue touched his.
‘And this,’ she said, her hands on his buttocks, arching against him, so that his erection throbbed between her legs.
He groaned, sliding down her body, pushing her skirts and petticoats up and tugging her knickers down. ‘And this?’ he said, lifting her to him. ‘Did you imagine this?’
He licked into her, and she made the most delightful of sounds, intensely feminine. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I have never—oh! Dear heavens, yes.’
She was wet, soft, pink. He licked again, and she shuddered, and again, tasting her, teasing her, rousing her and tensing as his own arousal pulsed. She clutched at his shoulders and moaned his name as his tongue stroked her. She dug her heels into the ground, arching up under him as she climaxed.
He had never been so aroused as she tugged at his shoulders, rolling him onto his back, lying over him in a tangle of clothes and hot skin, kissing him frantically. Tiny kisses, on his eyes, his cheeks, his jaw, back to his mouth. Her hands fluttered over his chest, his belly, to the fastenings of his trousers. He kicked himself free of them and his underclothes. She knelt between his legs as he had done between hers. Her nipples were hard, pert, pink as she leaned over him, taking his shaft in her hands.
‘Did you imagine this?’ she asked, circling her fingers round him, stroking him slowly.
He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do anything but concentrate on not peaking too soon. Not yet. She stroked him again, watching him. Her eyes were dark, her cheeks flushed. ‘Did you imagine this?’ she asked, taking the weight of him in her palm.
He groaned, feeling himself contract. She bent farther over him, her nipples brushing his belly. ‘And this?’ she said, kissing his chest. ‘And this?’
Her mouth claimed his as she mounted him, taking him deep inside her with one thrust th
at made them both gasp. It was only then he realised he had no préservatif.
He ached for her, but he forced himself to tell her so, through gritted teeth. ‘We have to stop,’ he said.
She shook her head and lifted herself up, sliding down slowly this time, her hands gripping his shoulders. Luc cursed. ‘Sheila.’
‘Tell me when,’ she said, and thrust again, and he thought fleetingly what a compliment of trust she had paid him, and then he all but lost control.
He kissed her deeply. She was so tight around him, he thought he might just pass out from the pleasure of it. She leaned farther over him, her breasts crushed against his chest, taking her weight on her hands, and thrust again. He squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to come. He didn’t want it to end. Then she thrust again and he felt her pulse, heard her guttural cry, and he knew he couldn’t hold on any longer. Calling out her name, he lifted her away just as his climax took him, twisting him from the inside and turning him inside out.
Chapter Eight
Sheila lay back, gazing up at the sky, waiting for her heart rate to return to some semblance of normality. Beside her, Luc, too, lay on his back, his chest heaving. He was naked. What clothes she had on were in complete disarray. She felt weightless and weighted, as if she were two people, one humming with pleasure, the other already wondering how on earth she could have behaved so wildly.
She sat up and began to straighten her underwear, to pull her blouse over her chest. ‘I can’t imagine what you must think of me,’ she said.
He sat up and caught her hands, forcing her to still. ‘I think a great deal of you.’ When she made no reply, he frowned. ‘Sheila? What is wrong?’
‘This. We shouldn’t have. You’ll think...’
‘What?’
‘That I’m— That you don’t want...’ Now was the time to tell him about Mark Seaton, but she could not. ‘I don’t want you to think less of me,’ she said instead, turning her face away.
‘Do you regret that we made love?’ Luc asked her.
‘Do you?’ she asked, unable to keep the defensiveness from her voice.
‘No, but perhaps I should. Perhaps this was a mistake.’
‘You think so?’
He sighed. ‘If you think so. I don’t know.’ He got to his feet and began to put on his clothes.
Sheila finished dressing while he had his back to her. What an idiot she had been! If only she hadn’t kissed him. If only she had told him she was far too busy to take time off. For more than a month she’d managed to resist him. She’d worked hard and she’d earned his respect, and now it was destroyed, and for what! A few fleeting moments of pleasure.
Her body protested that it was more than that, but she ignored it. So she’d made another mistake, but this time she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. ‘Luc, this doesn’t have to change things,’ she said urgently. ‘It was a mistake, but surely it needn’t prevent us working together?’
‘Of course I want us to work together. Is it not obvious how much I appreciate you, and how much I have come to rely upon you?’
He broke off and stared out at the view over the loch, taking deep breaths. When he turned back to her, his expression was sombre. ‘Our relationship is important but does not take precedence. The success of the hospital is what really matters. My work means more than anything to me.’
‘I understand. I feel the same way, Luc.’
‘You mean that?’
‘Yes, I do.’ He looked dubious. Now was the time to tell him about her experience with Mark, because then he would be convinced. She steeled herself. ‘Luc, I...’
‘Sheila, I need to explain something first.’
Luc paced over to the edge of the gorse. ‘What you said earlier, about your ape man being too busy saving lives to have a mate, it was true. About me, I mean. I was married. Before the war. Her name was Eugenie.’
Shelia felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach. Her knees gave way, and she dropped onto the blanket. ‘Married,’ she repeated dumbly. Luc was married! She thought she might be sick. Surely he would not have—with her—not if he was married. Was married. Did that mean he was no longer married? Or that his wife... ‘Oh, God, Luc, she died, didn’t she? In the war. I’m so sorry.’
He held out his hands to ward her off. ‘I don’t want your sympathy, Sheila. I want you to understand.’ He sat down, keeping a careful distance away, clasping his hands around his knees. She could see he was having to work himself up to speak, so she forced herself to wait, though the questions roiled in her head.
‘I have always been ambitious,’ he said, finally breaking the silence. ‘I have always wanted to be the best at anything I tried. My father was the same.’ He looked up to smile wryly. ‘I am prejudiced, of course, but he really did make the best bread in Paris, I think. When I announced that I wanted to be a doctor, I was just seven or eight. He didn’t laugh at me, he simply told me that if I wanted it enough and worked hard enough I would succeed.’
His expression was distant. Sheila’s skin was clammy. She had no idea where this story was heading.
‘When you want something so badly,’ he continued, ‘when you have to work so hard for it, it means more to you, but that’s no excuse. Eugenie, my wife, and I, we agreed it would take four or five years for me to establish my career, and then we would settle down, have a family. And I meant it, Sheila. At the time,’ he said earnestly, ‘I really did mean it.’
‘But it took longer?’
‘No. It actually took less time, but then it wasn’t enough. There were always new techniques to learn, new methods to try. It was a bone of contention between us, the number of hours I was spending at the hospital. We began to argue. I began to resent her because she made me feel guilty for being at work when I should want to be at home with her.’
‘Did you love her, Luc?’ It was a painful question to ask.
‘Yes, I did. I did love her.’
And now she had her answer, and it was even more painful. She had no right to feel jealous, and no reason, either, and so she chose to twist the knife. ‘What was she like?’ Sheila asked.
‘Young. Pretty. Fun. Clever enough to be bored waiting at home for me, and then bored enough not to wait at home for me. When the war broke out, she took a job in a munitions factory. Clerical work at first, but when demand for shells increased, she moved to the factory floor working shifts. It meant we were hardly ever home together. I think—no, I know—she meant to prove a point to me, and she was right. I had grown arrogant. I would never have said it, or even admitted it if she’d challenged me, but I did think my work was more important than hers.’
There was a time when Sheila would have defended his view, but not now. The servants’ hierarchy at Glen Massan she had taken for granted was something that appalled her now. Young, naive and anxious to please, she’d accepted the doctor, nurse, VAD hierarchy that mimicked it in France until experience taught her differently, just as experience since the war had taught her, to her dismay, that few people thought as she did. ‘It was the way of things before,’ she said, because it was true, even if she didn’t believe it was right.
‘An explanation, but not an excuse. I put myself first. That was selfish and unfair of me. I paid a heavy price for my arrogance.’
‘What happened?’
Luc closed his eyes, and began to speak very fast. ‘We had arranged to go out for dinner. Things had been strained between us—we had hardly seen each other for weeks. Eugenie swapped shifts at the factory, and I agreed to be home early, but then an emergency came up at the hospital and I stayed on. When I got home, I found a note saying that she’d decided to go to work. “At least there, I know I am wanted,” it said.’
His fingers were kneading the blanket as he spoke, curling and uncurling around a fold in the fabric. Sheila discovered she was holding her breath.
‘I went there—to the factory. I was angry because I knew I was in the wrong. When I got there...’ He choked, took a deep b
reath. ‘I walked into the aftermath of an explosion. Commonplace in those early days, such accidents. It wasn’t a large explosion, but it was enough. Eugenie and three other women were— They died.’
Luc threw back his shoulders and gazed straight at her. His face was grim rather than sad. ‘She wouldn’t have been there if I had come home as I promised. I blamed myself for a long time after that, but I don’t anymore. It was an accident. A tragic accident, but it wasn’t my fault. The dead are dead. So many of them, since Eugenie, that it is impossible to imagine. But it is as you said, Sheila, there has to have been a point. I cannot bring Eugenie back, but I can dedicate myself to using my talents to save others. It’s the least I can do. It is all I can do. So you see, there can be no room in my life for anything else. Or anyone else. Not in that way.’
He was warning her off. ‘So we need to put our feelings to one side and work together professionally for the good of the hospital,’ Sheila said. She sounded hurt. She couldn’t understand why she sounded hurt when he was offering her exactly what she wanted.
‘Exactly. We did before,’ Luc said.
He didn’t sound convinced, but that was most likely her imagination. She was deeply moved by what he had told her, and touched that he had confided in her what was obviously so painful, but she had no idea how she felt about what he’d said, save that she was extremely glad he had pre-empted her own sordid confession. What mattered most was exactly what he said. Their work. The hospital. She, too, could be wedded to her vocation. ‘Yes, we did,’ she said, telling herself it wasn’t a lie because they had, up to a point.
She leaned over to press his hand. ‘Thank you, Luc, for trusting me with this. I do understand.’
His fingers curled tightly around hers. ‘I have never spoken to anyone about that day. When Eugenie died, I told myself that part of me had died with her. Until I met you, I have not wanted any woman, and since I met you, I have not been able to stop wanting you. But I will. I have to. It is the only way.’
She nodded. She had what she wanted: his respect, his trust and his support. Far more valuable, she reminded herself, than something so ephemeral as attraction. Or love.
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