The Light Over London(14)

“She has many opinions.”

“Do you always do what she says?” he asked.

Setting her jaw, she stuck her hand out. A flicker of something crossed Paul’s face when he handed her the glass. She raised it, wondering for a brief moment if her lips would touch where his had been, and drank. More than a sip. Less than a gulp. A perfectly respectable amount of a drink that respectable young women didn’t drink.

She handed him the glass back and licked her lips, the bite of bitterness and a touch of caramel lingering on her tongue.

“First ale, then what? Life outside of Haybourne?”

“You’re teasing me again.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, wishing she’d thought to pull on a cardigan over her dress.

“I’m not.” But he grinned when he said it.

She pushed off the wall. “I’m going back inside.”

His hand shot out to stop her. “Louise, wait.”

She looked down at where his fingers had fallen, gently pressing her forearm. “What is it?”

“I couldn’t let you go without asking something,” he murmured. He gave her arm a little tug, and she took a step forward, her body moving of its own accord.

She swallowed down the rising mix of anticipation and fear and lust that surged up in her. This was the closest she’d been to a man since she’d let Gary kiss her behind a hedge just to see what it would feel like. It hadn’t felt much like anything, as it turned out.

“What do you want to ask me, Flight Lieutenant Bolton?”

Rather than answer, he dipped his head and kissed her. And oh, now she understood what her first kiss had been missing. Paul’s lips were soft but full, playing over hers as though he had all the time in the world, just for her. His free hand slipped into her hair, combing through her waves and twining them around his fingers. She gripped the lapels of his uniform, trying with all her might to hold on to this moment so tightly that it might never slip away.

He pulled back, his lips lingering on hers until at last they were no longer one.

She stood there, breath coming fast, eyes cast down. Anyone could’ve come upon them and seen. Then it would be her and not Geri everyone was gossiping about. But in the back of her mind, a tiny voice whispered, Good.

She had no obligations to anyone, had made no promises, no matter what her mother might hope. She wasn’t Gary’s wife or fiancée or girlfriend. She was nineteen and trapped in a tiny village on the edge of a country at war, target enough to know what bombs sounded like when they fell but removed from any hope of doing anything about it. Her life felt insignificant, and Flight Lieutenant Paul Bolton was quite possibly the most thrilling man she’d ever met.

“I thought I told you to call me Paul,” he said.

She hadn’t realized she was chewing on her lower lip until he lifted her chin with one finger and ran his thumb over it.

“Paul,” she whispered, still a little dazed.

“I should like it very much if I could see you again, Louise. Would you like to walk with me Monday afternoon? I have a few hours’ leave from base due to me.”

He was asking to call on her, to court her as though she were a lady in a Victorian novel. The idea, antiquated as it might be, charmed her.

“I would like that very much,” she said.

“You won’t be working?”

She shook her head, knowing she could ask Mrs. Bakeford if she might work that morning instead. Louise asked to change her shift so rarely she was almost certain the woman would be willing.

“Good. Then perhaps you’d do me the honor of this next dance,” Paul said.

With her hand tucked into his elbow, she walked back to the dance floor. No one would know it looking at her, but everything had changed.





4


CARA


“Are you going to tell me what’s weighing on you, or shall I guess?”

Cara started at the realization that Gran was examining her with narrowed eyes.

“What makes you think there’s something on my mind?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter and lifting her brilliantly colored teacup to take a sip of fragrant Earl Grey.

“You keep staring off into space, and you haven’t once complimented my haircut,” said Gran, touching the pin-straight bob that just grazed her jaw. Regular visits to the salon she’d been going to for more than twenty years had been one of the conditions Gran had placed on moving to Widcote Manor last year. Iris Warren might be in her nineties, but she intended to maintain the sort of independence she’d enjoyed since leaving her parents’ home in 1943.

“I don’t want to be fussed over any more than I want to be stuck in a corner to fade away,” she’d told Cara.

Cara couldn’t imagine Gran allowing anyone to forget about her. Chic to the core, the woman refused to wear anything she deemed too “old mumsy,” opting instead for brilliant colors and clean lines. She wore white gloves and pearls to church every Sunday, and her diamond earrings to dinner. She said exactly what she thought with the relish of a woman who knew she was old enough that people wouldn’t try to hush her.

“Your hair looks smashing, Gran,” Cara said.

Gran shot her a sly smile. “Now you’re just patronizing me, but thank you all the same. Tell me that I’m wrong about your preoccupation.”