Never Forget Me

‘A brief return to no man’s land,’ Flora said.

‘If you like, yes.’

* * *

When his lips touched hers, it was all she wanted. Pressing herself against him, opening her mouth to his, she wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him back fervently. He pulled her with him under the shelter of a tree. Raindrops fell from the bare branches onto her hair, her face, stinging cold on her skin, mingling with the heat of his kiss.

It was not like before. There was an urgency in both of them, in the way their lips clung, their tongues touched, their hands clutched and stroked, hindered by the damp, by the layers of their clothes. Heat and desire flooded her, making her reckless, beyond thought. An urgent need possessed her to prove that she was alive, that he was alive, that here was something that had nothing to do with war and destruction and the real world. Something ephemeral yet utterly earthy. The primal urge to connect, unite, join with another.

His hands were inside her mackintosh, sliding up her back, cupping her bottom, stroking her sides, her waist. Her breasts were pressed against his tunic. She stroked his cheeks, ran her fingers through his hair, flattened her palms on his chest. His kisses deepened. She slid her hands down to rest on his flanks and he moaned, pulling her closer. He was hard. It excited her, knowing that she was doing this to him, that this man, so different from any other she had known, so determinedly difficult, at times so deliberately obtuse, the fascinating, intriguing, lethally attractive, determinedly solitary, dangerous Geraint Cassell desired her. Wanted her. Knowing all this made her want him even more. She had never wanted any man like this. Never, in such a basic, uncomplicated way, wanted to use her body to show what she felt.

When he tore his mouth away from her, she had to bite back a moan of protest. ‘I’m not going to apologise this time,’ he said. His hands were still on her waist. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes dark and heavy lidded. ‘I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since the last time I kissed you. It is a very bad idea. You know it and I know it, but right now, I don’t give a damn.’ He looked up at the sky, now guilelessly blue. ‘Come on, you’d better show me this surprise of yours while the rain holds off.’

* * *

They walked to the end of the woods, emerging suddenly at the edge of the loch where the path skirted round the rocky shore to a small inlet. The ruined church stood on a raised promontory surrounded by a low perimeter wall. ‘It dates from the fourteenth century,’ Flora said, ‘though there was a monastery here from about the sixth. They say the Vikings razed that.’

They entered the burial grounds through a creaking gate. The gravestones, some flat, some lurching at haphazard angles into the soil, were ancient. Wandering slowly around, they read what they could of the faded stones until they came to the wrought iron enclosure set apart from the rest that contained the Carmichael family graves. The crypt faced out over the loch.

Geraint gazed out at the choppy waters, which turned from blue to iron-grey to blue again as the clouds scudded over the sun. ‘It’s a beautiful spot,’ he said. ‘There’s something about it. Peaceful. Calming’

Flora squeezed his hand. ‘Enduring. This place has survived so much. It gives me hope. Don’t laugh at me.’

‘I’m not.’

They walked back up the hill towards the ruined church. There was shelter from the wind here, and a wider panorama that swept out over the loch to the mountains beyond. Aside from the distant bleating of a sheep, there was not a sound. Geraint drew her down to perch beside him on one of the inner walls, putting his arm around her and hugging her close into the shelter of his body.

‘I know we agreed not to talk about it today, but I hate to think of you being ordered to the front,’ Flora said, after a short silence.

Geraint’s expression tightened. ‘I joined up to fight with my countrymen. The men I enlisted with are at the front. It’s where I should be.’

‘I know it’s wrong of me to say it, but I don’t want you to go to war and I don’t want Alex to sign up or Robbie, either.’

Suddenly it was all just too much. She had not allowed herself to cry, not once since the army had arrived. There were others enduring so much more than her, she had not felt as if she had the right to cry, but now the tears came, hot and acrid and unstoppable. She tried desperately to brush them away with her hands, rubbing her eyes furiously. ‘I’m sorry. It’s unpatriotic of me.’

Geraint laughed. Not a humorous laugh, but a bitter one. ‘Unpatriotic but healthy. I sometimes wish I could cry.’

This unexpected admission brought her tears to an abrupt end. ‘I cannot imagine such a thing.’

He flushed. ‘Because tears are for women?’

‘No. No, I did not mean that at all. Are you afraid, Geraint?’

‘A coward, you mean?’

‘I meant nothing of the sort! I cannot believe there is a man in uniform who has not been afraid at some point. I merely meant...’

‘Forget it.’ Geraint pulled out a handkerchief from one of the capacious pockets of his tunic.

His expression was closed, unreadable. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, or to imply...’

‘I said forget it.’ He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths before opening them again. ‘Let’s not talk about the war, Flora,’ he said in a gentler voice. ‘Let’s pretend it’s not happening, for just one day.’

Hurt. He was hurt, and he was hiding something. What had he said earlier? It’s complicated. Flora longed to ask him what, exactly, was so complicated, but he was so very determined that she should not know, and she could not bear the thought of him walking away from her. Not today. She shivered. ‘It’s getting cold, but I know a place nearby, a shepherds’ bothy, which has a fire.’

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