The Temptation Trap

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.

Fate sent Rose Norman home on leave on the same train, helping with the wounded on the journey. When she came across Harry he was light-headed and obviously feeling wretched, but utterly delighted to see her again. They were able to talk only briefly, but Harry begged her home address, and the moment he was discharged from the hospital in Denmark Hill called to see Rose on a day when her mother was helping Rose’s sister, Amelia, with the children’s measles in Kensington.

Far into the night Rosanna lay in the same bedroom her grandmother had occupied as a girl, riveted by the account of a love affair all the more passionate and poignant for the modest, unaffected style of Rose Norman’s letters. Referring to the diary from time to time, Rosanna read how Harry cut short his stay with his parents, and saw Rose every day, courtesy of the measles which focussed her mother’s attention away from her younger daughter.

When Harry asked her to marry him, Rose, still shadowed by the loss of one fiancé, was superstitious, and implored him to wait until the war was over.

‘But in the meantime,’ wrote Rose, ‘we are madly, wildly in love, and alive.

‘Today,’ said the next entry succinctly, ‘we became lovers.’

The diary was blank after that until Rose arrived back in France, not earlier than scheduled due to curtailed leave, as she told her mother, but on the due date after a week of illicit bliss with Harry in a Brighton hotel.

Their next meeting was in France, when Rose managed to get time off to stay with Harry in a pension in Rouen before he went up to the front. When they parted Harry gave his love a brooch in the shape of a gold rose, and kissed Rose’s tears away when she sobbed in his arms.

Rosanna slept late the following morning, and woke to a feeling of guilt. Overnight she’d had time for regrets, very much aware that there was no real necessity for Ewen to bring back the papers in person. Any future dealings with him could have been done by post. But she liked him. In fact, after just one meeting she felt as though she’d known Ewen for years. Or in some other life. Which was dangerous. It stemmed from Harry and Rose, of course. Their love story had fostered an intimacy that would never have happened if she’d met Ewen in other circumstances.

Ewen Fraser was an attractive, intelligent man loaded with charm. But, Rosanna reminded herself, apart from his great-uncle and his success as a writer she knew very little about him. Women, if the press were to be believed, flocked around Ewen Fraser in droves. For all she knew he might even be married. Not that it was any concern of hers if he had a wife or an entire harem.

The day was hot, and Rosanna spent most of it in the garden, topping up her tan. And later, after a quick salad supper, she took time with her appearance, choosing clothes that would show off her newly acquired glow. Some of which, she realised, eyeing her reflection, wasn’t entirely due to the sun. She’d left her hair to lie loose and glossy on her shoulders, and in sharp contrast with the demure look of the night before wore a sleeveless pink shirt and brief denim skirt. Knowing she looked her best heightened anticipation hard to control as she went downstairs to wait for Ewen Fraser.

He arrived punctual to the minute, dressed in a thin white cotton shirt and pale khakis, and presented Rosanna with a bunch of roses, making no attempt to hide the pleasure he took at the sight of her.

‘Hello, Rosanna. You look different with your hair down.’ He smiled and handed over the flowers. ‘Your garden’s probably full of these, but nothing else seemed suitable.’

‘Why, thank you. How kind.’ Rosanna’s smile masked the now familiar leap in her blood. ‘I’ve been lazing in the garden. Would you like a drink out there before we tackle any more papers?’

Ewen agreed with alacrity, and Rosanna sent him off to sit in a garden chair while she put the roses in water. She took her time, breathing in their heady scent, feeling light-headed. There was no mistake, after all. During the day she’d tried to convince herself that Ewen Fraser was just a pleasant, rather clever young man, but nothing out of the ordinary. One look at him again tonight had scotched that theory. He wasn’t handsome exactly, but his tall, rangy body and slanted gold eyes were just as appealing on second acquaintance as at first. Ordinary he was not. Rosanna went out into the garden with Ewen’s beer, and sat down in one of the other deck chairs.

‘You read the letters?’ she asked at once, to emphasize that they were here for a purpose.

‘Yes. I couldn’t resist reading them last night after all,’ he said ruefully. ‘I couldn’t get to sleep for hours. They were a revelation. Harry’s love for Rose was blazingly physical, yet at the same time it’s plain he absolutely worshipped her.’

‘It was mutual.’ Rosanna touched the gold rose pinned to the lapel of her shirt. ‘This is the brooch he gave her in Rouen, the last time they saw each other.’

Ewen leaned closer to examine the pin, close enough for Rosanna to breathe in the scent of expensive soap and healthy male, and she moved away instinctively. He drew back at once, and for a moment there was an awkward silence. They broke it at the same time, then stopped and laughed a little.

‘You first,’ said Rosanna.

Ewen breathed in deeply. ‘I was about to say I’ve already done the major part of the research—war records, and historians and war poets of the time. But Harry’s diaries and the letters he wrote to Rose are even more valuable in some ways. They conjure up the mood and atmosphere of the time so vividly I felt I was living it with them.’

‘I know what you mean,’ she replied with feeling. ‘Rose was a well-brought-up girl sheltered from the squalor and suffering she soon witnessed, but she was so determined she even lied about her age to get accepted. It’s clear from her diary that she found rich rewards in helping the wounded.’ She sighed. ‘It makes my life seem horribly trivial.’

Ewen reached out a hand and took hers. ‘Not in the least trivial, Rosanna. You’re educating the next generation. And my aim is to make sure Harry and Rose’s generation is never forgotten.’

‘Amen to that.’ Rosanna detached her hand swiftly, before he discovered her pulse was racing.

‘I’m very grateful to Harry and Rose,’ said Ewen, his voice deepening. ‘Without them I might never have met you.’

Rosanna cast a wary glance at him.

‘I felt I knew Rose already, of course,’ he went on. ‘But I never imagined I’d meet her in the flesh, in the person of her granddaughter.’

‘I may resemble her a little, but otherwise I’m nothing like her,’ warned Rosanna sharply, worried about where this was leading. ‘She was very much a woman of her time. I’m totally different. I could never have been as noble as Rose. When Gerald Rivers turned up out of the blue, shell-shocked and minus an arm, Rose felt she had no option other than to marry him. So she wrote that heart-rending letter to Harry.’

‘Who did his level best to get killed after receiving it. But in the usual way of things, of course, he got himself decorated instead.’ Ewen shook his head. ‘If this were fiction, Rose would have had his child, Gerald Rivers would have brought it up as his own and you and I, Rosanna Carey, would be related.’

His eyes locked with hers. Something molten in their depths touched a dangerous, responsive chord, and she looked away quickly, shaking her head.

‘In actual fact my mother wasn’t born until the thirties. Though she hardly remembers her father. He died when she was four.’

The silence which followed was so protracted, Rosanna grew restless at last and got up to break it. ‘Shall we make a start?’

Ewen followed her through the sitting room into the hall. Rosanna was suddenly so burningly conscious of his physical presence in the confined space that she tripped on a rug and his hands shot out to save her, closing on her waist. He drew in a sharp, unsteady breath and turned her to face him. For a long, tense moment they stared into each other’s eyes, then Ewen Fraser pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

‘I’ve been wanting to do that from the first moment I saw you,’ he muttered against her mouth, and kissed her again, his lips parting hers with such hunger she was shaken to the depths. She yielded helplessly, lost in the overpowering intimacy of the sensation as his tongue caressed hers, and he held her so tightly she could feel the powerful urgency surging through his body into hers like an electric charge. He raised his head at last, breathing unevenly, and stared down into her dazed, astonished eyes. ‘Are you going to show me the door, Rosanna?’ he asked hoarsely.

Appalled to find she was trembling from head to foot, she raised her chin militantly. ‘Why? It was only a kiss.’

‘Was it?’ he said harshly.

‘Yes,’ she said in desperation, and broke free to precede him into the kitchen, where the bright overhead light dispersed any remnants of intimacy. Rosanna faced him, suddenly angry with herself. And with Ewen. ‘I admit it’s my fault as much as yours,’ she said, her eyes stormy. ‘I obviously misled you by letting you come here again tonight. I’ve got some information you want, and most of it you can have. But that’s as far as it goes.’

‘Then why the hell did you let me kiss you like that?’ he demanded hotly.

Rosanna’s face fell. ‘You took me by surprise,’ she muttered.

‘You could have called a halt long before you did.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose I was a bit beglamoured by what happened to Harry and Rose. Some of it must have rubbed off. Would you have preferred a slap in the face?’

‘Damn right I would,’ he said bitterly, and held her chair for her. ‘Right. Down to business. Let’s get this over with.’

The tension lay heavy in the air between them, but they worked quickly. An hour later a pile of neatly correlated research material was stacked beside the boxes.

‘Now comes the awkward bit,’ said Rosanna, squaring her shoulders. ‘I need a favour.’

Ewen ran a hand through his hair, eyeing her narrowly. ‘What kind of favour?’

‘Would you agree to an exchange?’ she asked reluctantly. ‘Rose’s letters for Harry’s? I want to try my hand at a novel. Not a serious, historical novel like yours. Just a romantic story about two star-crossed lovers in the past whose descendants get it together in the present.’

Ewen was silent for some time before he raised a daunting eyebrow. ‘Have you ever had anything published?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever tried your hand at fiction before?’

‘No.’

‘Then I wish you luck.’ Ewen lounged back in his chair negligently, long legs crossed at the ankle. He shrugged. ‘All right. You can keep Rose’s letters. I haven’t seen her diary, of course, but that’s likely to be more use to you than to me, anyway, if you’re concocting a romance. My focus will be on the Great War itself, following the lives of two friends, once students together in Heidelberg, now soldiers in opposing armies. Only a small section will be devoted to the doomed love affair. As a final twist the lovers are torn apart, but the friends are reunited after the war.’

Something in the pejorative way he said ‘concocting a romance’ needled Rosanna. ‘That’s fine, then,’ she said tightly. ‘No harm done.’

‘Right.’ Ewen rose to his feet. ‘If you could spare some photographs of the period to go with Harry’s letters, and the rest of the stuff, I’d be grateful. I’ll take copies and return them, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Rosanna, feeling suddenly depressed. ‘Take what you want.’

He sifted through them again, chose half a dozen, then looked at a more modern photograph of Rose on the beach with her child. ‘The family likeness is very marked. That’s how you’ll look in a few years’ time.’

‘Follow me,’ said Rosanna abruptly, and led him across the hall to another sitting room where several silver-framed photographs were grouped together on a small table. One was her parents’ wedding picture, two others were of herself and Sam in their degree robes and mortar boards. The fourth was a formal portrait of a lady with dark eyes still brilliant under her white hair, the smile familiar from Harry Manners’ treasured portrait of Rose.

‘Taken the year before she died,’ said Rosanna huskily.

‘And still beautiful.’ Ewen gazed at the photograph for a long time, then turned away. ‘Thank you for letting me see her.’

‘It needn’t make any difference to your novel,’ she assured him as she saw him to the door. ‘You’re bound to score a big success again. Mine will be nothing like that, even if I manage to get it written, much less published. No one will ever connect yours with mine.’

Ewen shrugged. ‘I doubt if we’ll trespass on each other’s preserves. If I do,’ he added deliberately, ‘you can sue me.’

‘As if I would!’ she said scornfully. ‘Just one more thing. The portrait of Rose.’

‘Sorry. I’m keeping that. You’ll have to make do with Harry.’

Rosanna looked up at him in entreaty. ‘But we don’t have one like that, Ewen. Couldn’t you take a copy of it with the others and let me have the original back?’

He looked down at her in silence for a moment. ‘I’ll compromise. You can have the copy. I’ll keep the original. Unless,’ he added, with a tigerish, explicit smile, ‘you have some kind of persuasion in mind?’

Heat rose in Rosanna’s face and she backed away. ‘You’re angry with me,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Why?’

His smile was unsettling as he followed her step for step as she retreated. ‘Because I keep confusing you with sweet, passionate Rose, I suppose, whereas all the time cool, practical Rosanna was merely using me for her own ends.’

She opened her mouth to deny this, then thought better of it as she found herself backed up against the newel-post at the foot of the stairs. It was neither the time nor the place to confess she’d wanted to see him again for his own sake.

‘I’ve been gazing at that portrait for weeks,’ said Ewen softly, his eyes locked with hers. ‘I thought I was seeing things when you opened the door to me.’

Rosanna swallowed. ‘I’m not Rose, and you’re not Harry.’ She dodged away, but Ewen caught her easily, and locked his arms round her.

‘True, Rosanna Carey,’ he said huskily, ‘yet it seems unbelievable that we’ve only just met. I’ve been living with that photograph, reading Rose’s letters, and then I find you, in the glowing, irresistible flesh. Rose reincarnated.’

‘I’m—not—Rose,’ she said through her teeth.

‘Better still. You’re warm flesh and blood—and alive,’ he said hoarsely, and brought his mouth down hard on hers. At the touch of his lips her breath left her body and the blood pounded in her ears as Ewen Fraser knocked her defences flat for the second time. Held fast against the tall, slim body which grew tense with demand, Rosanna took a regrettably long time to come to her senses at last and tear her mouth from his. Ewen raised his head a fraction to look down into her eyes, their ragged, uneven breathing mingling as she shook her head violently.

‘Why are you trembling?’ he panted. ‘Just as you said, it was only a kiss.’

She struggled to get free. ‘Let me go. Please!’

To her fury he suddenly chuckled, shaking his head as he held her closer. In command of himself again, he was so blatantly enjoying himself she wanted to scratch his laughing, slanted eyes out.

‘Oh, no!’ he retorted. ‘Do you think I’m a fool? I may never get the opportunity again. Don’t be afraid, Rosanna. I promise I wouldn’t harm Rose Norman’s granddaughter for the world.’

She ground her teeth in fury. ‘You won’t get the chance. When I allow someone to make love to me it’s because they want me, Rosanna Carey, not a ghost.’

‘So the men you know only make love to you when you allow it?’ said Ewen with interest. ‘Is that satisfactory?’

‘On my part yes. I don’t know about theirs.’ Her eyes flashed coldly. ‘Besides, we’re not talking in the plural. There’s only one.’

Ewen leaned against the newel-post without easing his hold on her in the slightest. To break free she’d have to make a fight of it. At which point Rosanna made a mortifying discovery. She didn’t want to fight. She actually enjoyed the sensation of being desired so much he wouldn’t let her go. And desire her he did. In such close physical contact it was a fact impossible to ignore.

‘I thought there must be,’ he said, sighing theatrically. ‘Who’s the lucky man? And where is he? Am I likely to see him hurtling through the door at any minute to wrest you from my arms?’

Rosanna would have given a lot to say yes. ‘No,’ she muttered into his shirt-front. ‘He’s a doctor, gaining experience in the States to add BTA to his qualifications.’

‘BTA?’

‘Been to America.’

Ewen grinned, and raised her face to his. ‘Would he mind if he knew you were here like this? With me?’

‘He’d better,’ she snapped.

‘Then I might as well give him something to mind about.’ Ewen stifled her protest with an engulfing kiss, parting her lips with his marauding tongue. He made no move to caress her with his hands, but went on kissing her with unflagging relish, his arms locking her so close against him, their hearts thumped in unison. Rosanna had never been kissed like this, by someone taking so much pleasure in the process that the kisses in themselves were more erotic than anything experienced before. Even in the arms of Dr David Norton.

The thought struck Rosanna like a thunderbolt, and she wrenched herself away, clutching the newel-post. Ewen’s arms dropped and he stood back, his eyes slitted in his taut face, their uneven breathing the only sound to break the silence.

‘Time I went,’ he said gruffly at last.

‘Yes.’ She took in a deep, shaky breath.

But neither made any move. Rosanna knew she should speed Ewen Fraser on his way, in case he took her silence for acquiescence, some kind of tacit invitation to stay and take up where he had just left off. Which, she realised, was exactly what she wanted, deep down. Which was incredible. Even if there were no David she just wasn’t the type to fling herself into the arms of a man she’d known for one solitary day. Especially one who couldn’t separate Rosanna Carey of now from Rose Norman of then. If she were ever mad enough to let Ewen Fraser make love to her she would never be sure if he wanted her for herself or because she was the incarnation of Rose.

Rosanna pulled herself together and released her death grip on the newel-post. ‘Right,’ she said, in a voice intended to be brisk, but which came out so unlike her own she hardly recognised it. She cleared her throat and tried again, wishing Ewen would move, instead of looking at her as though committing her face to memory. ‘Goodnight, then, Ewen. Good luck with the book.’

‘And you,’ he said quietly. He turned to pick up his briefcase. ‘Goodnight, Rosanna. Thank you for the drink. I’ll return everything in due course.’ He reached into a pocket for his wallet and took out a card. ‘Here’s my number should you need to contact me.’

‘Thank you.’ Rosanna took it from him, privately vowing to have nothing at all to do with him again. Ever. ‘Ewen,’ she said impulsively as he went out, and he turned sharply in the porch.

‘Yes?’

‘I had the idea of writing about Rose before I’d even met you, or knew what you wanted. And I’m not using information that belongs to you, except for his photograph, and you can have that back if you want.’

‘I already have one very like it. You keep Harry. I’ll keep my beautiful Rose.’ He smiled crookedly, and she shook her dishevelled head.

‘You’re in love with a ghost, Ewen Fraser.’

His eyes glittered under the porch light. ‘If you mean that what happened between us just now is likely to haunt me, you’re right. But there’s no ghost involved, just the memory of you in my arms. You, Rosanna. Goodnight.’

CHAPTER THREE

ROSANNA rang her parents next morning, gave her mother a brief account of the meeting with Ewen Fraser, and told her Harry’s letters had been duly handed over.

‘He gave me Rose’s letters in return.’

‘How wonderful,’ said Henrietta Carey, the catch in her voice plainly audible down the line. ‘I can’t wait to read them. What did you think of Harry and his letters?’

‘Quite a man. Poor Rose. Poor Harry, too. Apparently he never married.’

‘How sad. Did you like Ewen Fraser, by the way?’

‘Yes,’ said Rosanna with perfect truth. ‘He’s—rather charming.’

‘Are you going to see him again?’

‘No, Mother.’

‘Have you heard from David lately?”

‘Yes, of course. He rang on Sunday, as usual. He’s working very hard.’

‘I’m sure he is, darling. Sam sends his love, by the way.’

‘Is he well?’

‘Fighting fit. He told you to come with us next time.’

After talking to her parents the house seemed empty to Rosanna. She’d slept very badly after Ewen’s departure the night before, burning with guilt over the disloyalty to David. But it was only a kiss, she told herself. David would understand. Not that she was going to tell 34 him, just in case he didn’t. News like that didn’t travel well.

In spite of her restless night she’d been awake at first light, and the day stretched emptily in front of her. Which was what she’d longed for last week when she was working like a dog for Charlie, she reminded herself irritably, so she’d better make the most of it, and start on some serious research for her novel.

A visit to the local library provided her with a stack of helpful literature, fact and fiction, including Siegfried Sassoon’s account of life in the trenches. And on the way home Rosanna called into a bookshop and bought a copy of Savage Dawn. Just out of curiosity.

From now on, thought Rosanna dryly, she could hardly complain about having nothing to do.

She resisted the temptation to read Ewen’s book first. Instead she went out into the garden with a picnic lunch and started on Sassoon’s memoirs to get herself in the mood.

Rosanna read all afternoon and evening, regularly dipping into the factual, pictorial accounts alongside Sassoon’s graphic, understated account of trench warfare. She ate her supper while she read, and made notes and drank endless mugs of tea and coffee. By eight in the evening her eyes were protesting and she was so stiff from sitting in one position she had a long, leisurely soak in the bath, watched television for an hour or so, then locked up and went to bed with Ewen’s book.

His style was spare, but so evocative. The African heat fairly sizzled from the pages as she read. Rosanna was drawn to the soldier hero from the first, and found herself identifying with the woman he loved to such a degree that her heart began hammering during the first love scene between them. Afterwards she lay awake in the dark for hours, shaken by the fact that Ewen’s written word conjured up his own lovemaking all too vividly. She burned with guilt, furious with herself for responding so helplessly. She was going to marry David Norton. She’d known David for ever, and his lovemaking was very… Very what? Rosanna let out a deep, irritated sigh. At the moment she couldn’t remember what it was like. Whereas she could feel Ewen Fraser’s kisses on her mouth even now.