The Temptation Trap

‘The same for me, too,’ she said. ‘I’m not counting the letters from relatives. The prize was a rosewood box left to my mother.’ She smiled. ‘I’d never seen it until yesterday. I made myself go through the other stuff first before opening it.’

When they were ready to start, Ewen discarded his jacket and drew his chair next to Rosanna’s. She turned the small brass key in the lock of the rosewood box, then handed it to Ewen. He stared down at the photograph of Lieutenant Harry Manners, in uniform but hatless, the grenades of the Royal Welch Fusiliers on his collar. His thick dark hair was combed flat, and his slanted eyes shone with bright certainty in his young, intelligent face.

‘The letters are all from him,’ said Rosanna quietly, suddenly conscious of Ewen’s bare brown arm close to her own, of the fine hair which showed dark against his gold watch on a slim, sinewy wrist. She pulled herself together hurriedly. ‘I’d rather you took them home and read them at your leisure,’ she told him. Harry’s letters were so passionate they were best read in private.

‘Thank you. I’ll leave Rose’s letters for you.’ Ewen pulled a leather box from the briefcase he’d brought, and pushed it towards her. And there, on top, was a photograph of Rose Norman in her bloom, a study her granddaughter had never seen before. Waving dark hair piled high, bare shoulders wreathed in white tulle, Rose Norman smiled with a radiance undimmed by the sepia tint of the photograph.

Rosanna swallowed a great lump in her throat. ‘That smile,’ she said huskily, ‘was for Harry.’

Ewen nodded. ‘I know. At first I felt like a voyeur, but once I started reading her letters I was hooked. I just had to know what happened. Damn silly, really. I knew perfectly well there was no happy ending, but I wanted one. Badly.’

‘I know just what you mean. It felt like trespass when I opened Grandma’s trunk yesterday.’ Rosanna sighed. ‘Her diary cut me to pieces in places. Harry Manners was obviously the love of her life. And by his letters she was very much his, too.’

‘And yet she married your grandfather.’

Rosanna nodded, her eyes sombre. ‘Yes.’

Ewen pushed his chair away slightly so he could turn to look at her. ‘You resemble her so closely it’s a pity old Harry never met you. And yet not. It would probably have been too painful for him.’

‘You think I really look like that?’ she said doubtfully, eyeing the photograph.

‘You’re her image,’ he assured her, looking at her so objectively she suddenly felt jealous, stung by the idea that it was Rose he was seeing. Not Rosanna Carey, her flesh-and-blood grandchild.

‘There’s a fleeting similarity, I suppose,’ she said, so furious with herself her tone was distant, and Ewen got up, quick to sense her change of mood.

‘I’ve taken up too much of your time. If I could use your phone I’ll call a cab.’

‘Of course. There’s a list of numbers on the hall table.’

After Ewen made the call he came back into the kitchen. ‘May I take your box with me? I promise to take care of it. Or if you prefer I could just take the contents—’

‘No. Keep the letters in it, but I’ll keep the diary until tomorrow. You can have it then, when you go through the other things. There are later photographs of Rose, and letters to her from her family, and newspaper cuttings.’ Rosanna preceded him into the hall to wait for the taxi. ‘The cuttings are mostly about military events. Rose must have been following Harry’s career.’

Ewen put the rosewood box in his briefcase. ‘I’ll go through these tonight, and bring it back as soon as possible. Is tomorrow any good? Would your mother mind if I came round in the evening? Or will you be back in your own place by then?’

Rosanna hesitated. ‘A friend’s using my room in the flat because I’m house-sitting,’ she said reluctantly. ‘My father’s been away for the past month, doing consulting work in Saudi Arabia. My mother’s gone to meet up with him at my brother’s place in Sydney.’

‘Australia.’ He looked at her levelly. ‘You were afraid to tell me that before.’

‘Of course I was. I didn’t know you!’

‘You do now.’

‘Do I?’ she countered lightly.

‘Of course you do, Miss Carey.’ Ewen took her by the hand, turning her to face the large mirror on the wall. ‘We’re the descendants of two people who loved each other with a very grand passion indeed,’ he told her reflection. ‘We could hardly fail to know each other. Besides, having seen the portrait of Rose, I knew you the moment I set eyes on you.’

Rosanna eyed his reflection analytically. ‘You don’t look much like Harry.’ She smiled a little. ‘But I feel I know him a lot better than you.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve read his letters!’

Ewen turned her to face him. ‘Thank you for giving up your evening, Rosanna.’

He retained her hand, and Rosanna stood very still, her pulse quickening as his thin, strong fingers closed over hers. ‘I enjoyed it. I’ve never met a celebrity before,’ she said brightly.

He shrugged, his smile more crooked than before. ‘No celebrity. Just a journalist who got lucky.’ He looked down at her intently. ‘I’ll bring the letters back tomorrow night, then.’

Rosanna nodded, wishing he’d release her hand. ‘All right.’

‘This time have dinner with me.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, thank you.’

‘I see.’ Ewen dropped her hand. ‘Right. I’ll call round after dinner, then. Or before. Whatever.’

His expression was suddenly so aloof, Rosanna felt chilled. But not enough to agree to a meal together. She never accepted dinner invitations. Nor wanted to. But to her astonishment she wanted to go out with Ewen Fraser so much she had to force herself to refuse. ‘After dinner. If you like,’ she added casually.

The warmth returned to his eyes so suddenly it kick-started her pulse again. ‘I do like. Very much. Tomorrow at eight-thirty, then.’

‘Come a bit earlier than that—if you want to get to grips with the other stuff, I mean,’ added Rosanna gruffly, and bit her lip.

Ewen grinned. ‘Men usually beg you for more time, of course, not the other way round.’

‘I wasn’t begging,’ she said indignantly.

‘I know.’ He picked up his briefcase. ‘You just want to get everything finished and be rid of me.’ His eyes danced, the overhead hall light picking out flecks of gold in the hazel irises. ‘I’d be here at nine in the morning if I thought you’d let me in.’

This time the flicker of response was so violent Rosanna was hard put to hide it, and almost told him not to come again. But she couldn’t think of a feasible excuse, and her tone was cold in sheer self-defence as she told him seven-thirty in the evening would do very well.

Ewen smiled with regret as the doorbell rang. ‘My cab. Goodnight, Rosanna.’

‘Goodnight.’ She opened the front door. ‘Don’t stay up late reading Harry’s letters. In fact, take my advice— read them tomorrow, not tonight.’

‘Why?’

She smiled wryly. ‘You’ll find out when you read them!’

CHAPTER TWO

FEELING oddly restless after Ewen Fraser had gone, Rosanna took her grandmother’s letters to bed to read, which was a big mistake. In their own way the letters were as innocently erotic as the outpourings Rose Norman had received from Harry Manners.

Rosanna already knew how the two young people had met from the entries the young VAD had made in her diary. Rose Norman had been sent to France. With a couple of girl drivers for company, sometimes only one, she travelled in the unwieldy old ambulances of the time to transfer the seriously injured from casualty clearing stations to base hospitals further away from the front line.

2nd Lt. Harry Manners, one arm in a sling, a stained bandage round his forehead, flagged down Rose’s ambulance one day to beg transport for two of his wounded men. The men were crammed in somehow, at which point a flat tyre was discovered. Rose managed to help Letty Parker, the driver, change the tyre with instructions from the young platoon commander, who promptly collapsed in an unconscious heap the moment they finished the job.

Between them the girls managed to heave him into the front seat, Rose holding him as upright as possible on the journey back to the base hospital. Harry Manners’ forehead had been grazed by one sniper’s bullet, and his shoulder pierced by another which missed the jugular vein and the spine by a hair’s breadth, a ‘Blighty’ wound which sent him back to England to recover.