Jewels (33 page)

“Mine too,” Sarah laughed softly. They each had a cup of tea, and he had smuggled over a bottle of champagne, and he toasted her and the long life of Lady Elizabeth Annabelle Whitfield.

Eventually, he stood up to leave. “You should sleep now.” Without saying a word he stooped to kiss the top of her head. His lips brushed her hair, and he closed his eyes just for an instant. “Sleep, my darling,” he whispered, as she drifted off to sleep before he even left the room. She had heard what he said in the distance, but she was already dreaming of William.

Chapter 15

Y
the summer of the following year, London had almost been destroyed by the constant bombing, but not the British spirit. She had had only two letters from William by then, smuggled in to her through circuitous routes in the Resistance. He insisted that he was well, and reproached himself repeatedly for not getting her out of France when he should have. And in the second letter, he rejoiced over the arrival of Elizabeth, after he had gotten Sarah’s letter. But he hated knowing that they were in France, and that there was no way for him to reach them. He didn’t tell her that he had explored numerous possibilities of being smuggled into France, at least for a visit, but the War Office had objected. And there was no way of getting Sarah out of France, either, for the moment. They just had to sit tight, he said, and he assured her that the war would soon be over. But it was a third letter from him in die fall that brought Sarah the news which almost killed her. But he hadn’t dared not to tell her, lest she heard the news some other way. Her sister Jane had written to him, since she knew she could not contact Sarah. Their parents had been killed in a boating accident off Southampton. They had been on a friend’s yacht when a huge storm had come up. The yacht had sunk, and all of the passengers on board had drowned before the Coast Guard could reach them.

Sarah was consumed with grief when she heard the news, and for an entire week she didn’t speak to Joachim. By then he had learned that his sister had been killed in the bombing of Mannheim. Their losses were not small, for any of them. But the loss of her parents came as a crushing blow to Sarah.

The news only seemed to go from bad to worse after that. The entire world was stunned when they learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“My God, Joachim, what does that mean?” It was he who had come to tell her. They were close friends by then, regardless of their nationalities, and the fact that he had saved Elizabeth’s life weighed heavily with her. He continued to bring them food and small things, and he seemed always to be there for them when she needed him. He had gotten some medicine for her when Phillip got another bout of bronchitis. But now, this news seemed to change everything. Not for them. But for the entire world. By the end of the day, America had declared war on the Japanese, and hence the Germans. Directly, it changed nothing for her. She was already his prisoner, technically. But it was a frightening thought to realize that America had been attacked. What if New York was next? She thought of Peter and Jane and their children. It was so terrible not to be with them, so they could grieve for their parents together.

“This could change many things,” he said to her quietly, as he sat in her kitchen. Some of his men knew that he came to see her sometimes, but no one seemed to think much of it. She was a pretty woman, but she behaved with dignity as the châtelaine of the château, but to Joachim she was far more than that. She was someone he cherished. “I imagine it will have serious implications for us very shortly,” he said somberly. And he was right, of course. Every possible aspect of the war stepped up, and the bombing of London continued.

It wasn’t until two months later that Sarah learned that her brother-in-law was in the Pacific, and Jane was staying at the house on Long Island with the children. It was odd to think that the house belonged to them now, that it was hers and Jane’s, as well as the house in New York. And that Jane was there with her children. She felt so far away from all of them, and so sad to realize her children would never know her parents.

But she was in no way prepared for the news that reached her in the spring. Phillip was eighteen months old by then, and Elizabeth, their miracle baby, as Joachim called her, was seven months old, had four teeth, and was constantly happy. All she did was coo and laugh and sing, and every time she saw Sarah she squealed with delight, and threw her arms around her neck and squeezed her. And Phillip loved her too. He always kissed her and tried to hold her, and called her “his” baby.

Sarah was holding her on her lap when Emanuelle came in with a letter for her, from the hotel, with a postmark from the Caribbean.

“How did you get this?” Sarah asked and then stopped herself. She had realized long since that there was a lot about Emanuelle and Henri’s lives that she didn’t want to know, and possibly even those of their parents. She had heard echoes about people being hidden at the hotel, and she had even let them use an old shed near the farm once, to hide someone for a week. But she’d tried not to know enough to harm them. Henri had had minor injuries more than once. Even more worrisome was the realization that Emanuelle had become romantically involved with the mayor’s son, who was intimately involved with the Germans. And Sarah sensed correctly that her involvement with him was more political than romantic. It was a sad way to begin one’s love life. She had tried to talk to Emanuelle about it once, but the girl was very closed and very firm. She didn’t want to involve Sarah in anything she did, with or for the Resistance, unless she had to. But she brought her the letter now, and Sarah saw from the crest on the back of it that it was from the Duke of Windsor. She couldn’t imagine why they were writing to her. They never had before, although she had heard, on the radio Emanuelle’s parents kept hidden at the hotel, that he was now the governor of the Bahamas. The government was afraid he might become a pawn for the Germans if he was captured, so they were keeping him well out of harm’s way. And before he left, his German sympathies had been no particular secret in England.

The letter began with a warm greeting to her, in which he assured her Wallis joined him, and then went on to tell her that he had the greatest regret in being the one to inform her that William was missing in action. There was a distinct possibility that he had been taken prisoner, but it was not a certainty, he was sad to tell her. In fact, the letter told her as she read it with glazed eyes, the only thing certain was that William was missing. He described in detail how it had occurred, and assured her that he had every conviction that his cousin had acted with wisdom and courage. He might well have been killed going down, or he might have survived. But he had been parachuted into Germany on an intelligence mission that William himself had volunteered for, despite the objections of everyone at the War Office, for precisely these reasons.

“He was a very stubborn young man, and it has cost us all dearly, I’m afraid….” He went on, “You most of all, my dear. You must be very brave, as he would want you to be, and have every faith that if God wants it thus, he will indeed be safe, or he may well be already in the hands of our Maker. I trust that you are well, and we send our deepest condolences and our deepest love to you and the children.” She stared at the letter in her hand, and read it again, as sobs welled up in her throat and began to choke her. Emanuelle had been watching her face and could see it was not good news. She had sensed that when she brought it to her from the hotel, and she took Elizabeth from her quickly and left the room, not knowing what to say. She came back a few moments later, and found Sarah sobbing at the kitchen table.

“Oh, Madame …” She put the baby on the floor and put her arms around her bereft employer. “Is it Monsieur le Duc?” she asked in a strangled voice, and Sarah slowly nodded, and then lifted tear-filled eyes to hers.

“He’s missing … and they think he might have been taken prisoner … or he might be dead… they don’t know…. The letter was from his cousin.”

“Oh,
pauvre
Madame . he cannot be dead…. Don’t believe that!”

She nodded, unsure of what she believed. She only knew that she couldn’t survive a world without William. And yet he would want her to, for their children, for him, but she just couldn’t bear it. She cried where she sat for a long time, and then she left the house and went for a long walk alone in the forest. Joachim didn’t see her this time. She knew that it was late for him, and he would already be at dinner. She wanted to be alone anyway. She needed to be. And finally, she sat on a log in the darkness and cried, wiping her tears on the arms of her sweater. How could she bear living without him? How could life be so cruel? And why had they let him do a dangerous mission that involved dropping him into Germany? They had sent David to the Bahamas. Why couldn’t they have sent William somewhere safe too? She just couldn’t bear the thought of what might have happened. She sat in the forest in the dark for hours, trying to hear her own thoughts, and pray, and feel some messages from William. But she felt nothing. She felt numb until late that night, when she lay in the bed they had shared when they first came to the château and she was first pregnant with Phillip. And suddenly as she lay there she felt certain that he was alive. She didn’t know how or where or when she would see him again, but she knew she would, one day. It felt almost like a sign from God, it was so powerful that she couldn’t deny it, and it reassured her. She fell asleep after that, and in the morning, she woke refreshed, and more certain than ever that William was alive, and had not been killed by the Germans.

She told Joachim about it later that day, and he listened quietly, but he was not totally swayed by her religious belief.

“I’m serious, Joachim. … I felt this power … this absolute certainty that he’s alive somewhere. I know it.” She spoke with the conviction of the deeply religious, and he didn’t want to tell her how skeptical he was, or how few of those captured actually survived it.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said quietly, “but you must also prepare yourself for the possibility that you could be wrong, Sarah.” He tried to say it as gently as he could. She had to accept the fact that he was missing, and perhaps dead. There was more than just a vague possibility that at that very moment she was already a widow. He didn’t want to force her to face that feet yet, but eventually, no matter what she had felt that night, or what she wanted to feel or believe, she would have to.

As time went on, with no reassuring news of him, and no reports of his capture or survival, it was obvious to Joachim that he was dead, but not to Sarah. Sarah always acted now as though she’d seen him the previous afternoon, as though she’d heard from him in a dream. She was more at peace and more determined and more sure than at the beginning of the war, when she still got occasional letters. Now there was nothing, there was silence. He was gone. Presumably forever. And sooner or later, she would have to face it. Joachim was waiting for that time, but he knew that until she accepted William’s death, the time was wrong for them, and he didn’t want to press her. But he was there for her, when she needed him, when she wanted to talk, when she was sad, or lonely, or afraid. It was difficult to believe sometimes that they were on opposite sides of the war. To him, all they were were a man and a woman who had been together for two years now, and he loved her with all his heart, all his soul, everything he had to
give
her. He didn’t know how they would sort it out after the war or where they would live or what they would do. But none of it was important to him. The only thing that mattered to him was Sarah. He lived and breathed and existed for her, but she still didn’t know it. She knew how devoted he was to her, and sensed that he was very fond of her and the children, and especially close to Elizabeth, after he saved her life when she was born, but Sarah never truly understood how much he loved her.

That year, on her birthday, he tried to give her a magnificent pair of diamond earrings that he had bought for her in Paris, but she absolutely refused to take them.

“Joachim, I can’t. They’re incredible. But it’s impossible. I’m married.” He didn’t argue the point with her, although he no longer believed that. He felt certain that she was a widow now, and with all due respect to William, he had been gone for six months, and she was free now. “And I’m your prisoner, for heaven’s sake,” she laughed. “What would people think if I accepted a pair of diamond earrings?”

“I’m not entirely sure we have to explain that to them.” He was disappointed, but he understood. He settled for giving her a new watch, which she did accept, and a very pretty sweater, which he knew she desperately needed. They were very modest gifts, and it was very much like her not to accept anything more expensive. He respected that about her too. In fact, in two years, he had never discovered anything about her that he didn’t like, except for the fact that she continued to insist she was still married to William. But he even liked that about her too. She was loyal to the end, kind and loving, and devoted. He used to envy William for all that, but he no longer envied him, he pitied him. The poor man was gone. And sooner or later, Sarah would have to face that.