A Jewel In Time; A Sultry Sisters Anthology
Page 18
She nodded and he released her, stepping quickly away. Grace clutched the towel firmly to her bosom. “What are you doing here?” she hissed. “If you’re caught they’ll shoot you on sight.”
“Der Führer would like to do that anyway,” Dix sneered, “Given that Franz is imperfect, scarred and deformed.”
“Franz is--” Grace began hotly only to stop, remembering that Dix and Franz were the same man. “An illusion,” she finished lamely.
“Yes. He is. There are servant’s stairs,” Dix said, looking at the tub, the ceiling, anywhere but at the luscious form of Grace Corvedale. “There are also tunnels.”
“Tunnels?” Grace said eagerly, missing his shudder at the thought of being closed in, underground. With no light.
It won’t be a problem. If it gets us out of Germany, I’ll do it.
“How far do they go? Do they lead to the border?”
“I don’t know yet. I just discovered their existence.”
“The book,” she began.
Dix held up a forestalling hand. “No time. I came to tell you to be ready tonight. Book or no book, we have to get out of here.”
Her features set in a stubborn line. “I can’t go without it, Mr. Dixon. Absolutely not.”
“You have the necklace. You have the information in your head,” he temporized. “We’ll get the book if we can, but the longer you’re here, the longer I’m here, the more danger we’re in.”
“It’s not a necklace,” Grace protested, letting go of the towel long enough to clutch the pendant. She hadn’t taken it off, even in the bath. “It’s a brooch. It’s a family heirloom.”
“And Hitler wants it,” Dix said, flatly. “That alone is dangerous. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why does he want it, and you?”
She avoided the question, saying, “I need to get dressed, go back to my room. I can’t stay in here much longer.”
“I know. Tell me about the brooch. It’s obviously valuable for the gems alone.” He gestured to the heavy gold and winking sapphire. “And you’re wearing the ring.”
When she tightened her hand around the ring, he grinned. “Standish thought you would recognize it. Does it stand as my bona fides?” he asked. “Do you finally believe me?”
“Yes,” she acknowledged. Turning her back to him, she applied cream to her face, watching him through the mirror. “The ring is a family piece. My favorite.”
“So’s the brooch.”
“Yes.” She turned to the heavy robe she’d brought to the bathroom, slid her feet into the thick sheepskin slippers Frau Shemper had provided.
“Turn your back,” she demanded. He did and there was a soft thud as the wet towel hit the floor. Part of him zeroed in on those elegant curves, and the memory of her standing in the cold bedroom in her nightgown, the sharp points of her nipples betraying her chilled state.
Stop that.
She was the sister of a friend, she was a member of the British upper class. He was an American, and a mongrel of that sort, as well.
And they were in peril. No time for admiring.
Or anything else.
“All right, you may turn around.” There it was, he decided, that crisp diction, the accent, the ever-so-haughty tone. That was what he needed to keep his lusty reaction in check.
With an insolent grin, he turned. And stopped as attraction sucker-punched him right in the gut. Her hair framed her face in lush waves where it had come loose from the pins holding it up. The tightly belted robe highlighted more than it concealed, although she pulled the lapels across her generous breasts, it made little difference.
“What?” she said, looking over her shoulder for whatever he was staring at.
“Nothing. I hadn’t seen you with your hair down.”
She pushed at it.
“Leave it,” he snapped, angry with himself for mentioning it. “I have to get out of here. Be ready. Tonight. After midnight.”
“I’ll be ready, but I won’t go without the book.”
He nodded. “You will if we have to,” he corrected, “but we’ll get it. Now,” he said, moving to her, crowding her. He couldn’t seem to help himself. She stood her ground at his approach, but he saw the awareness in her eyes and it fired something in him.
He bent down, so that his lips were at her ear. “You’ll be safe with me,” he murmured, careful not to touch her.
Her answer was low, but delivered crisply. The huskiness, however, told him all too well that she felt the pull between them. “I doubt that. Just get me out, Mr. Dixon.”
He laughed, and tugged a lock of her hair. “Dix, sugar. Just Dix. And I will.”
To her surprise, he stepped up on the seat of the loo and pushed open a hatch in the ceiling. She’d noticed it, but dismissed it for what it was, a way to check the old cistern should it be needed.
He pulled himself through the opening with one graceful movement, lifting his whole body through with the strength of his arms alone. How strong was he, to be able to do that?
To her surprise, he crouched in the attic space to look back at her.
“Midnight,” he said with a grin, and was gone.
Talking with Hitler’s generals was boring, Grace decided. The Gauleiter for Danzig, in the recently and forcibly captured Poland, was especially boring. Nevertheless, she listened attentively and carefully to Herr Forster.
She had gleaned a great many things during her stay, things the Home Office might find useful. For in their conversation, their clumsy wooing, they allowed the smallest bits of information to slip. To her great discomfort, Von Manselm lurked, watching her with hooded eyes, giving his rivals menacing stares as they too courted Grace.
By the time she was allowed to retire for the night, Grace was worn thin. Frau Shemper had brought a chocolate pot instead of tea, and a plate of small sandwiches. She pushed Grace toward the small table as she fluffed the bed and ran the warmer over the covers.
“There now, a bit of something for you. They’ve had you talking and walking around the house for hours.”
“Thank you, Frau Shemper. I admit, I’m famished.” Grace took up the pot and poured out, adding a dainty ham sandwich to the little plate beside her saucer.
“Ja, well, it is all in a good cause. Soon you will choose one of our fine, fine generals.” She beamed. There would be no persuading Frau Shemper to help her. The woman was smitten with Hitler and believed Grace could have no kinder, higher fate than to be married off to one of Hitler’s top men.
Perhaps if she’d been German, or truly a guest, the matchmaking might have amused. In these circumstances, it did not.
“Gute Nacht, Fräulein! May you dream of your destined husband!” Frau Shemper said, bustling away with more clothes to press for the next day and a broad smile on her face.
As the lock ground into place, Grace shuddered and dropped into her chair with more relief than poise. Von Manselm was bad enough, as Forster had been. Boring, pompous, insufferable. General Hubert Schicth had been kind, in his way. That had almost been worse.
The man she’s talked with last, Joseph Goebbels, was the worst by far. Though he was married, he had nonetheless flirted heavily with her. A short, stocky man, he had seemed taller due to the fervent passion that burned within him for Hitler’s causes.
“Our leader has a great vision,” he had declared, pressing two volumes into her hands as they left the library where he had insisted they sit. It had been hell to have the diary so close, and she was sure that he knew it. He had that sly edge to his word choice and way of speaking that told her he was baiting her with every word.
“You can see the beginnings here.” He tapped the books that he’d closed into her hands, clasping his larger hands over hers and using his thumb to stroke her fingers. “We are to welcome you properly, see you settled in Germany, yes? The things you will learn from these great books, these humble books, are things to teach your children, Fräulein Corvedale. These are the things that will bring them glory in
the new world order.”
The books, a children’s story, Der Giftpilz, and a novel, which glorified the Wherbauer, the German farmer-soldier, were the kind that simultaneously decried those of “subhuman bloodlines” such as gypsies, or Jews, while deifying the common German man.
Grace knocked them from the table. Poisonous mushrooms indeed! How insidiously was Hitler infecting the German people with this thought of racial unity?
“Werewolves, more than Wherbauer,” she muttered, nudging the books with her foot.
Goebbels had indicated that he would be leaving in the morning for Berlin, going before Hitler, to prepare for her introduction to yet more of the Führer’s generals. He slyly let her know that he too would be available to her, should she care to partake.
“It will be an icy day in hell,” she snarled, galvanized by her revulsion. She quickly pulled the soft bag from the wardrobe and checked that the papers were undisturbed. The garments she’d put in the case had been returned to the drawers, but it was mere moments work to repack the bag with her warmest things. Dix said they were going to run, and run hard, straight for the border. France would give them refuge, and together she and Dix could make it to the coast.
At midnight, she was ready. She had on her heavy trousers and stout walking boots, all covered by a long, serviceable skirt, a sweater and the heavy canvas jacket she’d had for driving. All had been brushed or pressed and hung meticulously in the closet.
Now all that remained was for Dix to get the book, get her, and go.
The clock ticked away the minutes. At half-midnight, she began to pace, avoiding the creaking boards. By one, she finally sat, eating the last of the little sandwiches Frau Shemper had provided.
When shouts in the yard sounded at half-one, she hurried to the window, peeking through the heavy, velvet, lined curtains to see what had caused the hue and cry.
The household roused and Grace’s heart tripped into full throttle. Had Dix been caught? A slamming door and the sound of running feet had her leaping to the wardrobe, where she stripped in record time. If Frau Shemper came to check on her, she couldn’t be caught dressed to run. As neatly as she could, she rehung and refolded everything, shoving all that she’d packed back into the various places Frau Shemper had stowed them. She’d barely slipped into a gown and into bed, when there was a heavy tread and the scrape of the lock.
“Fräulein?”
It was the young guard, Wilhelm. She pushed up, bracing on her hand as if she’d been woken. “Yes? What is it? What is the commotion?”
“An intruder, Fräulein. Nothing more. I’m to reassure you,” he said in careful, simple German. “The man has been caught, so all is well.”
Her heart sank. Dix, caught? In the hands of the Nazis?
“Who is he? What did he want?”
“The Führer’s life, we presume,” Wilhelm said sadly. “Some fear his greatness. Some do not understand how he has brought our country back from the ashes.”
“I see.” It was all the answer Grace could muster for the sickness in her gut. “Thank you. Is it safe to go back to sleep?”
“Of course, Fräulein,” Wilhelm said, a note of pride ringing in his voice. “I will be on guard.”
“Danke,” she said, as he closed the door.
Grace cried herself to sleep. When she dreamed again of the SS officer, in his dark coat, dragging her through the snowy landscape, she wept again even as she dreamed.
Breakfast was a fresh interrogation. Had she dreamed? Had she seen the face of her fine, German husband-to-be?
To each question she offered a denial, a sorrowful negation of Hitler’s quest to see her find her true love through the occult use of the jewel. With each day it got harder to lie. Was that part of the gem’s magic?
Grace shuddered. She was back in her room, and she leaned on the wardrobe, staring into the long mirrored glass on its carved mahogany front.
The shadows beneath her eyes told of her sleeplessness. The dreams that sprang upon her the moment she closed her eyes, threatened to swamp her now, in her waking hours. They grew more detailed, more frightening.
Hard, vivid, sharp-lined images of the German officer dragging her into the night, shoving her into a car and driving hell bent for leather to a dark, dark building, then dragging her inside that. His ferocious, feral smile was all she could see before that door slammed behind them as well.
Every time, it was the slamming of that barn door, which woke her. Whatever awaited her in that barn would end her, subjugate her, and finish her utterly.
Her soul cried out against it.
And in between those terrible dreams and waking, she mourned for Dix. A man she hardly knew.
A perfunctory knock had her pasting on a false smile.
“Tea, Fräulein, before your afternoon walk with Herr Litzenfrund,” Frau Shemper said, setting down the tray and pulling back the curtains to reveal a landscape of white.
“There will be snow for Christmas,” she said, nodding. “A good luck sign.”
“Yes, of course,” Grace agreed, but her heart dropped. What day was it? It didn’t matter, really.
She knew it was up to her to extricate herself. She was strong, strong enough to walk the many miles to the border, but she was no woodsman or gamekeeper, who knew how to befuddle her trail in the snow.
Snow would tell all too plainly where she’d gone.
Snow or not, though, she had to try. For the next two days, she talked endlessly with the generals, disappointing Hitler each morning with the news that none had sparked dreams. He was growing impatient, and waved the diary at her as they met in the Library.
“We will go to Berlin. I have been too long away. I must be there to make my Christmas speech. Germany has arisen from its death throes by science,” he said passionately pounding the diary on the table to punctuate his words. “There is the mystical, yes, but it too responds to laws, does it not?”
He fixed her with a gimlet eye. “You are proof of this. I see you talking with my men, you are young, they are powerful, and yet none has captured you, or your jewel. It is as your diary says, it must be a specific one.” He tossed the diary down, strode away. “They worry for my safety,” he said, smiling now. “My generals.”
The men around the room stilled, watching Hitler’s every move.
“But,” Hitler turned to her, pausing dramatically. “I am invincible.”
“Heil Hitler!” Gauleiter Forster cried, saluting. Schmidt, followed suit and soon all the men were at attention, arms raised, saluting their leader.
“You see, Lady Corvedale? You will be aligning yourself with the best this world has to offer and your children will rule all of England when it falls before me.”
That startling statement shifted something, and Hitler smiled. “And it will fall. Now, this is great excitement, yes? So.” He moved back to the table, tapped the journal. “We will go to Berlin.”
The change from rabble rouser, and madness, to practical German dictator was eerie. “Tomorrow. See to it, Schmidt. Tell Kempka to ready the cars.”
“Yes, Mien Führer.”
Chapter VII
Frau Shemper was packing her bag. Her trunk from Calais, which the efficient housekeeper had taken away when she arrived, was open on the floor and more than half filled with clothes.
“I will be sorry to see you go, Fräulein,” Shemper said, smiling as she carefully folded a woolen jacket. “But it is a great honor you are receiving, ja?”
“Of course,” Grace managed to keep her tone light, her posture erect.
What she wanted to do was shove the old woman out the window, and run for it. Her grief for Dix weighed her down, though. She wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to push.
Duty and honor kept her playing the game. She’d found no opening to secure the journal, or to get away, but by God, tonight she would make one. Dix had said there were tunnels, and servant’s stairs. Too bad he’d only told her about them, rather than showing them to her.
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No matter what, she must leave the house and head for the border before daybreak. He had come and gone through the bathroom. Perhaps she could find her way that way.
She endured Frau Shemper’s chatter, and took her evening meal in her room.
“It is an early start,” Frau Shemper said, stopping to berate young Wilhelm for nearly tipping over the tea tray he’d brought up and set on the table between the fire and the settee. It was much smaller than the one Dix had lifted easily the first day she’d seen him.
That made her heart hurt more.
“I will wake you with plenty of time to dress and have something to eat, ja?”
“Yes, thank you, Frau Shemper.”
“Zer gut. I will return for the tray and to warm your bed.”
“Danke.”
The moment Frau Shemper left the room, Grace sprang into action. She wouldn’t be able to take much, but she could make a pack of her clothes. She would wear the boots and kit she’d originally donned when she was to go with Dix.
A sob caught in her throat. He’d been willing to come get her out, free her, and had sacrificed his life to bring her a chance of safety. She couldn’t stay here, meek and passive in the face of that sacrifice.
No time for tears,” she admonished herself. Frau Shemper would be back soon so she had to hurry. With precision, she laid out the things she would take then repacked the trunk and bag so the items she needed were on top.
The books she’d been given from the library mocked her from where they lay on the floor. She shuddered to think of the horrible, horrible prose in both books, which glorified genocide.
“Cleansing” they called it.
“Murder,” she muttered. Perhaps she, like Goebbels and his cronies, should indulge in a little book burning.
“Oh, no,” she said, smiling as an idea occurred to her. “Not to burn,” she added, picking both books up and stacking them together. “Burning’s too good for you.”
She ate heartily, worrying over the details of her idea. When Frau Shemper returned with a guard named Carl, she asked the woman if she’d stay for a moment.