The Hidden Years

Cursing beneath his breath, Kit released her. She was proving more of a challenge than he had expected and like green unripe fruit she was beginning to leave a sour taste in his mouth, but he still wanted her; not just because he desired her. Now anger and male pride were also spurring him on. There was something about her. Something about her vulnerability, her naïveté, that made him almost want to reach out and punish her for them.

Not a man given to introspection of any kind, he withdrew from her abruptly, uncomfortable with his own thoughts. It wasn’t in his nature to give in, to back down from a challenge of any kind.

‘I’d better drive you back, then,’ he told her curtly, watching the effect his coldness was having on her, and smiling inwardly as he recognised her pain. Well, it wouldn’t hurt her to suffer a little… It might even teach her a much-needed lesson, and it would certainly make her all the more eager to give him what he wanted the next time he saw her.

He walked her back to the car in a coldly remote silence that made Lizzie ache with misery and regret. Why on earth had she behaved so stupidly? Of course she loved him, and of course he had expected her to allow him to make love to her. He wasn’t a boy; he was a man…a man who was fighting for his country, a man who could walk out of her life today…

She felt the tears clogging her throat and pain and the panic churning inside her stomach. Why had she panicked like that…? Why had she felt that tension, that apprehension? Was there something wrong with her…was she perhaps incapable of pleasing a man as he had suggested, of sharing physical desire?

It was a devastating thought and one that made her face go white with anguish as they finally reached Kit’s car.

When he turned to look at her Kit was pleased to see the effect his silence had had on her. It made him relent a little towards her and cup her face with one careless hand while he demanded softly, ‘When can I see you again, sweetheart?’

Lizzie’s heart leaped with gratitude and relief. He still wanted her, after all. He was actually giving her a second chance—he did love her.

‘I—’

‘Tonight,’ Kit pressed. ‘What time do you finish work? I could pick you up…’

Lizzie shook her head.

‘Not until late.’

‘Then when?’ Kit pressed her. ‘Tomorrow…’

Tomorrow was her day off. Her heart started to pound, as, almost incapable of speech, she nodded her head.

‘Good,’ Kit told her, and then added carelessly, ‘Look, I’ll tell you what. Instead of picking you up, why don’t I meet you at the summer-house? That way…that way we’ll keep it our secret…something special just for the two of us…’

Silently Lizzie nodded her head. She had no idea how she was going to get through the interminably long hours before she could see him again, but one thing she had already promised herself, and that was that when she did see him, when he held her and kissed her, when he touched her and told her how much he wanted her, she was going to behave like a woman and not a child, she was going to remind herself of how lucky she was to have met him, and how precious this time together with him was…how vulnerable their future together when the war could sweep them apart again at any time, maybe only for a short space of time, or maybe for eternity.

She shuddered from head to foot, suddenly so cold that her teeth were chattering.

‘Tomorrow, then…eleven o’clock,’ Kit reminded her before they parted.

‘Tomorrow,’ Lizzie echoed in a whisper, her sight suddenly blinded by weak tears.

She loved him so much. She wanted to reach out to him and to say the words, to be held in his arms. To be kissed by him…to be loved by him, she recognised shakily. So why was it that when he touched her the way he had she had acted like that, tensing against him, rejecting him?

As she watched him drive away from her she shivered again, feeling more alone, more sharply aware of the precariousness of life, more confused by her feelings than at any other time in her life…

Back at the hostel there was her borrowed finery to be returned. When questioned, she kept quiet about her date with Kit in the morning. She still felt too bruised by her own stupidity, by the way she had angered him and jeopardised their love to want to discuss what had happened with anyone, so that when Rosie asked eagerly, ‘Seeing him again, are you?’ she made a non-committal reply, glad that the fact that she had to hurry to get to work on time made it impossible for them to question her too closely.

The evening shift was always a busy one, with the men to be settled for the night, their medication to be given to them, the wards to be cleaned and made ready for the morning.

Lizzie only saw Edward Danvers briefly as she passed through his ward.

As she helped another aide with the blackout cloths, she noticed how grey Edward’s skin looked and guessed sympathetically that he was in great pain. She wanted to go across to him and ask him if he would like some extra medication, but already she knew how touchy his pride was, how he hated any reference being made to the physical agony he often had to endure.

She glanced uncertainly across the ward. The sister on duty was a woman in her late fifties who had little time for the young aides, and Lizzie knew there would be no point in her trying to have a discreet word with her to solicit her help for Edward. She was the kind of woman who genuinely believed that to endure pain was good for the soul. All the junior nurses, and even some of the doctors, were in awe of her. The aides detested her, mercilessly mimicking her and making fun of her behind her back.

‘A sexless old bag,’ was how Lizzie had heard them describe her. Sexless… She grimaced over the word, exploring it apprehensively, her heartbeat quickening with anxiety. Surely she wasn’t like that…surely she wasn’t that kind of woman? No, of course she wasn’t…

Then why hadn’t she been able to respond to Kit’s lovemaking…? Why had she felt so afraid, so tense?

Too young and far too inexperienced to know that the answer lay both in her aunt’s grim upbringing and Kit’s lack of true care for her, she was unaware of the danger of the destructive seeds which Kit had so cruelly sown for her.

Eleven o’clock. Lizzie tensed as she heard the chimes from the church clock. She had arrived at the summer-house over fifteen minutes ago and now, as she waited for Kit to join her, her nervous tension made her stomach ache and her thoughts fly helplessly in a hundred different directions at once.

Before coming out she had scrupulously washed every inch of her skin, wincing at the coldness of the water, and wishing that she had something other than carbolic soap with which to scent it.

The weather had changed, clouds covering the sky, the wind cold, promising rain for later, and today she was once more dressed in her own clothes, or rather Lady Jeveson’s. Perhaps they weren’t as flattering as Rosie’s borrowed dress, but somehow she felt more comfortable in them.

One thing she had done, though, and that was to discard her bulky, unfeminine bra.

At first she had flushed with guilt, half glancing over her shoulder almost as though she had expected Aunt Vi to materialise behind her to chastise her for what she was doing, for her wanton dress, her lack of morals.

There was a small bruise mark on her left breast where Kit had bitten her, and her nipples still felt uncomfortably tender, and yet last night, lying alone in her narrow, cold bed, when she had closed her eyes and daringly allowed herself to remember the later, more gentle touch of Kit’s hands and mouth against her breasts, the tiny thrill of sensation in her stomach had made her tremble with mixed excitement and relief.

Everything was going to be all right, she was sure of it. Today she would be able to show Kit how much she loved him. Today…she took a deep breath…today she would do whatever he asked of her, if only to prove to him that she had not been lying when she had claimed to love him.

And yet she still felt nervous, ill at ease…vulnerable. She tensed as she heard someone coming down towards the pool. What if it wasn’t Kit? What if it was someone else, a stranger, coming unwittingly to destroy their precious time together? But when she looked through the broken window it was Kit’s tall, lithe body she saw striding towards her. Today he was dressed in his uniform and her heart was caught up in a jolt of sharply piercing sensation, a mingling of pride and dread as the reality of their situation swept in on her on an unwanted tide, reinforcing her awareness of how precious their time together was. Kit—who knew quite well how good he looked in his uniform, how very male it made him seem, how very much the epitome of all that an airman ought to be.

He paused as he walked towards her, recognising in her expression her adoration and her fear. A feeling of power, of triumph filled him.

‘Come here,’ he commanded softly as he walked towards the summer-house and then paused on its threshold.

Uncertainly, tremulously, Lizzie did as he instructed, and, as she felt his arms go round her, she lifted her face towards his in blind supplication of his kiss and his forgiveness for her errors of the previous day.

‘That’s better,’ Kit told her approvingly, savouring the soft tremble of her mouth. ‘Much better.’

As he slid his tongue between her lips, he pulled her closer to his body, reinforcing her awareness of his arousal, his hands moving rapidly over her back and buttocks, his own body moving urgently against hers as he sought to impress its sexual message, its need on her still innocent flesh.

When his hand slid up to cover her breast and discovered that beneath her dull sensible jumper she was naked, he told her approvingly, ‘Good girl,’ and then whispered thickly in her ear, ‘I ought to reward you for being so thoughtful, oughtn’t I? What would you like, sweetheart—what would you like me to do?’

Her mind registered the thickening of his voice and sent sharp warning signals darting through her body, so that when she squirmed in his arms it was more with apprehension than excitement, but Kit was in no mood to be patient with her. He had lain awake far too long last night with his body aching and his temper on edge to waste time this morning. He wanted her and he intended to have her.

Fighting against her apprehension, Lizzie reminded herself that this was what she wanted; that only last night she had lain in bed and thrilled to the memory of Kit caressing her breasts as he was doing now, first with his hands, and then with his mouth, and yet she still cried out with pain when he savaged their tender crests with his teeth, wanting to beg him to stop, to protest that he was hurting her, but afraid of doing so in case she angered him, in case it proved that there was something wrong with her, that she was somehow lacking as a woman. There was nothing wrong with her, she told herself despairingly, but the doubt persisted and grew, locking her muscles, and making her feel tense and uncomfortable.

Kit undressed her quickly, roughly almost, she thought, trying not to flinch when his hands almost bruised her sensitive skin, closing her mind to the hesitant but instinctive knowledge that told her that this was not the way it should be, that in some way she was being cheated.

Dark, shadowy thoughts, doubts and fears chased one another across her mind. By Aunt Vi’s standards what she was doing was totally unforgivable…wrong… Her own emotions, so at war with her physical inhibitions, confused her. She shivered, and Kit, sensing her withdrawal from him, cursed under his breath and demanded abruptly, ‘What is it, what’s wrong?’

Lizzie looked nervously at him. He was frowning at her and she shivered again, but her doubts, her fears couldn’t be suppressed.

‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ she told him huskily, ‘it isn’t right. I…’

Not bothering to hide his irritation, Kit took hold of her. He was not having her back out on him now. He wanted her too much, ached for her too much.