Never Leave Me (39 page)

‘It is sufficient for me that you are pleased,' she said, squeezing his hand, knowing how happy he was that his grandchild was to be born in France.

The baby was born in Bayeux's maternity hospital five days later. Greg had driven her there in the Citroen, terrified that the baby would put in as speedy an appearance as Dominic had. It didn't. He had to wait a gruelling fifteen hours before the nurse came and told him that he had a daughter.

When at last he was allowed to see her, he was shocked by the blue shadows beneath Lisette's eyes, her obvious exhaustion.

‘I thought it was going to be so easy for you,' he said, his voice choked as he took hold of her hand.

‘So did I,' she said, a wry smile touching her lips. ‘It will teach me never to assume.'

He leaned forward and kissed her. ‘Thank God it's over,' he said hoarsely. ‘I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you. It would destroy me.'

She touched his strong-boned face tenderly with her fingertips. ‘Nothing is going to happen to me,' she said gently, loving him so much that it hurt. Her fingers tightened in his, her eyes beginning to sparkle with amusement. ‘After all the trouble I've gone to, providing you with a daughter, aren't you going to say hello to her?'

He grinned. In his concern for her, he had forgotten all about the baby. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘after I have kissed you again.'

The baby lay in his arms, tightly shawled, her eyes closed, her face red. ‘She's fantastic,' he said delightedly. ‘Does she look like Dominic did?'

‘A little.'

Their daughter did not look at all like Dominic. Dominic's hair had been corn gold. Their daughter's hair was dark and thick, already beginning to curl.

‘She's wonderful,' Greg said again, holding his daughter with exquisite tenderness. ‘Absolutely, thunderingly marvellous!'

Lisette lay back against her pillows, content. This was the moment she had waited for. The moment when Greg held his child in his arms.

‘Dominic is going to be thrilled with her,' he said. ‘I've promised him he can visit you tomorrow and have a peep at her.'

The tiniest shadow touched her eyes. She had been confident she would no longer experience a stab of conscience when Greg spoke Dominic's name, his voice full of pride and love. Yet a spasm of pain had come so automatically she had been unable to suppress it.

‘What name are we going to give her?' she asked, determined it would not do so again.

‘The name we agreed on,' he said, laying his daughter gently back in her cradle. ‘Lucy.'

The christening was held in the same small church they had married in. Madame Pichon was in attendance, as was Madame Chamot and old Bleriot. Luke had travelled from London to act as godfather. Annabel had apologised for not accompanying him, saying that pregnancy and channel crossings were not compatible. She had sent her love and a cobweb-fine christening shawl that she had knitted herself.

Dominic stood on sturdy legs, holding his grandfather's hand, his eyes curious as Father Laffort sprinkled water on the baby's head. Lisette looked across at him, her eyes full of love. It was nearly two years to the day since he had been born. The February sunlight streamed in through the stained glass windows above the altar. Two years. And now she had another child, a daughter. They were a family, and in three days'time they would be returning home.

She leaned on the deck rail as the ship eased away from its berth, staring out at the coast of France until it merged into the horizon and could be seen no more. She wondered how long it would be before they returned. Until she could smell the fresh clean fragrance of the apple orchards again. Hear the sea birds calling above the grey, surging waves of the Channel. The chill sea wind struck through her coat and she turned away, feeling very French, very conscious of her love for her country as she left it for the second time. She refused to panic when, six weeks after Lucy's birth, they began to make love again and her body continued to fail her.

‘What's the matter, Lisette?' he asked, staring down at her as she lay beneath him in their brass-headed bed. ‘Why are you so tense? It's as if you're afraid.'

She had forced a smile, sliding her arms up and around his neck. ‘Silly,' she had said, her voice a trifle unsteady. ‘What could I possibly be afraid of? It's just too soon after the baby's birth, that's all.'

A month later she had consulted a gynaecologist. ‘There are minor lesions at the neck of the womb,' the gynaecologist told her. ‘Nothing serious, but it would be advisable to delay another pregnancy for a year or so.'

‘Would they be responsible for a … a change in my attitude?' she asked, the colour rising, in her cheeks.

The gynaecologist frowned. ‘I'm afraid I don't understand your question, Mrs Dering.'

Lisette's hands tightened on her lap. ‘My responses – in bed – no longer seem to be the same as they once were. Could the lesions you spoke of be responsible?'

He shook his head. ‘No, but please don't worry. Having a baby is a major emotional trauma. It can be a little time before marital intimacy returns to normal.'

She had thanked him, asked him to send his bill on to her, and had taken Dominic on a promised trip to the zoo.

‘Smile, Maman,' Dominic said to her as he threw nuts for the monkeys. ‘Please smile.'

She had smiled and hugged him tight, fighting down the fear that gripped her. She was panicking unnecessarily. Lucy's birth had been difficult. She was still only two months old. She needed time, that was all. She wasn't suffering from guilt any more, just the after effects of an arduous birth.

‘Daddy! Daddy!' Dominic called, running to find him the instant they returned home. ‘We went to the zoo! There were lions and tigers and an
enormous
ephelant!'

‘Elephant,' Greg corrected with a grin, bending down and opening his arms wide for Dominic to run into them.

‘
And
there were monkeys!' Dominic added with a giggle. ‘We gave them nuts to eat and they were funny and made me laugh!'

Greg swung him high in his arms and looked across to Lisette, his eyebrow quirking. ‘Was it fun? You look tired.'

She gave him a bright, quick smile. ‘Of course I'm not tired,' she said, and he knew she was lying. ‘It was a lovely day. We enjoyed ourselves hugely.'

There were shadows beneath her eyes. Slowly he lowered Dominic to the floor. ‘Go and say hello to Lucy,' he said gently. ‘She's with Simonette in the nursery.'

‘What's the matter?' he asked when Dominic had run from the room. ‘Something is wrong between us, Lisette. I want to know what it is.'

‘Nothing is wrong,' she said sharply, turning away from him and taking off her jacket, laying it over the back of a chair.

He made no attempt to touch her. He leaned against the open door leading into their bedroom and watched her, his gold-flecked eyes troubled. ‘You're lying to me,' he said quietly. ‘You've been lying to me for months. I want to know why.'

She spun to face him, terrified that he had guessed the truth, that she was on the verge of losing him. ‘I don't know what you mean!' she cried, the pupils of her eyes wide and dark, her fear naked in her voice.

His brows flew together. He crossed the room towards her swiftly, seizing hold of her shoulders. ‘What the devil is the matter, Lisette? What is it you're afraid of?'

Her hands were against his chest. She could feel his heart beating. Feel his strength. She swayed slightly, knowing how easy it would be to bury her fears and pain in his arms, knowing how deeply she would hurt him if she did so.

‘Nothing,' she whispered. ‘There is nothing wrong, Greg. Please believe me.'

The skin tightened across his cheekbones. For a moment he had thought she was going to confide in him. To trust him enough to tell him what it was that was marring their happiness. He hooked a finger under her chin and tilted her face to his. ‘I'm thirty-two years old, Lisette,' he said, and his voice had a hard quality in it she had never heard before. ‘I like women. I know women. And I know damn well when one is lying to me in bed.'

The thickly carpeted floor shelved away from her. The precipice she had skirted for so long opening wide at her feet. ‘You're wrong,' she gasped, her heart slamming against her breastbone, the blood thundering in her ears. ‘I love you! I love you more than anything else in the world!'

‘Then show me,' he demanded, his eyes dark, his hands sliding down her thighs, lifting her skirt, moving caressingly upwards.

She sobbed, confounded by desire for him, terrified that she would be unable to give rein to it.

He held her close, lowering her to the floor, his mouth hot and hard on hers, his hands insistent. She gasped, her arms tightening around him, loving him so much she was dying by inches. He took her fiercely, savagely, without restraint and she cried out beneath him, her eyes closed, her hair tumbling from its chignon, damp with sweat.

In the seconds before he reached his own shattering climax, he looked down at her, breathing harshly, but there was no triumph in his eyes. Only an agony of suspicion that had not been stilled.

‘Luke and Annabel have a daughter!' Lisette said, walking into the sun-filled breakfast room that looked out over the Bay, a letter in her hand. ‘Isn't that lovely news, Greg? They have named her Melanie.'

‘I can't quite see Luke as a fond father,' Greg said drily, helping himself to a warm croissant. He had forgotten what an American breakfast was. Lisette still cooked and baked as if she were in France.

‘Why not,
chérie
?' she asked, pausing as she passed his chair and dropping a kiss onto his cheek. ‘I think Luke will make a very fine father. He will be very English. Very correct.'

Greg laughed, his pinprick of irritation at hearing Luke's name on her lips dying. ‘Yes, it would have been Eton, Oxford and the Guards if Melanie had been a boy. I'm not sure what the set pattern will be for a girl.'

She sat down, her hair falling softly onto her shoulders, her rose-pink chiffon negligee cascading in flounces around her. ‘I must send Annabel a gift for the christening. Perhaps if I shopped this morning, we could meet for lunch?'

He was lunching with Nick Elliot of Clayton Advertising, but he knew immediately that he would cancel it. He would see Nick later in the week. The prospect of meeting an effervescent Lisette for lunch was one he wasn't going to forego.

‘I'll meet you at one o'clock at the Atlantis,' he said, pushing his chair away from the table and rising reluctantly to his feet. ‘I have to go now, sweetheart. I have a meeting with the board at nine. If you want to send something really special to Annabel, why don't you pay a visit to Tiffany's?'

Her eyes widened. ‘But that would be horrendously expensive,
chérie
!'

He grinned down at her. ‘It's never stopped you from shopping there before. Why let it stop you now? he said, cupping her chin in his hand, tilting the perfection of her heart-shaped face to his, silencing her mock-outraged rebuke with a kiss.

She was laughing as he left her. The mornings were always the best times between them. She could express her love for him freely, secure in the knowledge that the kisses, the touches, would not end in bed. It was only in bed that the panic came. That the guilt she tried so hard not to think about threatened to crush her.

She stared out through the vast windows, down the lushly foliaged hillside to the city and the sparkling blue water beyond. She had been so confident that her guilt would trouble her no more once Lucy was born, and she had been so sadly wrong.

Her eyes clouded. She no longer knew if he was aware of the constraint that paralysed her when she was in his bed. Since the day she had taken Dominic on his trip to the zoo, neither one of them had ever brought up the subject of their physical relationship. It was as if they both knew that to mention it again would be to plunge them down a precipice from which there would be no recovery.

She wasn't sure, but she thought he no longer made love to her as often as he had once done. And when he did, she tried so hard to be sexually responsive that there were times when she nearly convinced herself that everything between them was once more as it had been in the early days of their marriage. The days before they had come to America. Before she had seen Isobel Dering's face light with joy at holding the child she thought was her grandson. At hearing the pride in Greg's voice as he introduced Dominic to his family and friends.

She rose from the table, her eyes dark.
Did
she convince Greg? She had no way of knowing. She could only pray that he was convinced of her love for him. That he did not doubt her. That he would continue to love her, for without his love there would be no joy in her life. No happiness at all.

She went into the children's rooms, kissing them good morning, telling Dominic that she would be out until the afternoon and asking him to be good for Simonette.

She enjoyed her mornings in the city. Greg had bought her a midnight-blue Lincoln Zephyr convertible, and she loved driving it herself, taking the swooping, switchbacked hills with a steady hand and eye. She bought an antique silver christening mug and had Melanie's name and the date of her birth engraved on it, and then she browsed through an art gallery on Grant Avenue before driving to meet Greg at the Atlantis.

It was a new restaurant, small and exclusive, catering for a select clientele. Greg saw the
maitre d'hóte
snap instantly to attention as she entered. Saw heads turn in her direction. Saw the looks of undisguised admiration from the men and the envy from the women, as she walked with effortless grace down the centre of the crowded room. She had never made any effort to look American. She was as French now as she had been the day he met her. Everything she wore was starkly simple and exquisitely chic.