The Light Over London(29)

Her lips parted, ready to deny that she was in love with Paul, but something stopped her. “I’ll think about it,” was all she had said before her mother beckoned her over to say hello to Pastor Egan.

Kate’s words still echoed as Louise let herself in through the garden gate. Maybe all it took was a month to find the man who made her heart quicken when she saw him. She should think the entire idea barmy, but wasn’t she always reading newspaper articles and seeing movies where couples fell madly in love, the pressure and uncertainty of war only accelerating declarations that were inevitable?

Inside, she unknotted the scarf she’d tied over her hair to protect it on the wet evening. She was just hanging up her mac when her father appeared in the parlor doorway. One look at his grim expression, and her blood froze. Quickly, she ran through the list of men she knew who were fighting. Kate’s brothers, Harry and Michael. George, John, and Richard from school. The baker’s son. Euan, the butcher’s assistant, who’d only been called up two weeks ago, even though he’d put his name down for the navy as soon as he turned eighteen. Gary.

“What is it, Da?” she asked. “Has there been bad news?”

Her father’s lips thinned even further, but he just said, “You’d better come join us, Lou Lou.”

She followed him, fear tingling through her, but when she crossed the threshold into the parlor, she understood. Sitting in a spindly chair, his cap in hand, was Paul.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, taking a step toward him. Her mother’s voice stopped her.

“Flight Lieutenant Bolton has come to call on you.”

“Louise . . .” Paul made to rise from his chair, but her mother coughed, sending him back down again.

“You can only imagine our surprise to open the door and find him standing there, given that we’ve never been introduced,” said her mother.

“Rose.” Her father’s voice sliced through the air, drawing all three of them up straight. “I’m sure the gentleman has his reasons for coming.” He turned to Paul. “You fly Spitfires?”

“I do, sir,” said Paul. “I’m a pilot. I was stationed at RAF Trebelzue.”

“?‘Was,’?” her father said. A look of understanding passed between the two men, and her father nodded. “We’ll leave you for a few moments.”

Louise’s mother’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Arthur, I don’t think—”

“Come along, Rose,” her father said, standing at the door to the parlor.

Her mother hesitated, her reluctance easy to read, but she followed her husband nonetheless. With one last look back, her father shut the door behind him.

The ticking of the mantel clock counted off the seconds as Louise stared at her twisting hands, unable to unravel the emotions warring in her. Thrilled to see him. Shocked that he was in her parents’ home after she’d done so much to uncomplicate this part of her life. Worried about what his presence really meant.

“Louise.” He choked on her name as he said it.

“Why are you here?” she asked again.

“My unit just received orders. We’re leaving Cornwall tomorrow.”

She dropped into a chair. “No.”

“I’m not supposed to be here. We weren’t granted leave. I jumped base.”

“Paul, what if anyone finds out?”

“Whatever the RAF wants to do with me, they can.” He rose now, crossing the room and falling to his knees in front of her chair. “I had to see you.”

Tears pricked at her eyes, and he gathered her hands in his, the press of his warm skin comforting her.

“Where are you being sent?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

“But when will we see each other again?” The first tears had begun to fall, but her voice, though soft, was still steady. They would see each other. They had to.

He lowered his forehead to their clasped hands. “I don’t know. When I can next get leave long enough to come here.”

But Louise knew that could be months.

He lifted his eyes to hers. “Will you write to me?”

“Oh, Paul, I’ll write to you every day. How could you think I wouldn’t?”

Lifting her hand, he kissed her knuckles. The sweetness of the gesture made her ache.

“I know I don’t have the right to ask it, but I’d hoped you would say yes. These last weeks . . .” He cleared his throat. “These last weeks have been everything to me.”

She placed a gentle hand on his jaw, cherishing her last few chances to touch him. “Me too.”

Pushing up on his knees, he kissed her. Hot tears slipped down her cheeks, and for the first time she hated the war not as a far-off thing that raged across the Channel, but as the brutal hand that would tear him from her and thrust him into a danger she could only imagine.

He broke away, letting out a long, steadying breath. “I want you to take this.”

He held out his hand, his compass balanced in the middle of it.

“Oh, Paul, I can’t. It’s your talisman.”

“It’s more than that,” he said. “It was my uncle’s when he was in the Royal Flying Corps. It’s one of the few things of his we have left, and it’s my most precious possession.”