Never Leave Me by Margaret Pemberton Read Free Book Online Page A

only hers and her father’s, but mother’s as well. If only, she thought, pushing down on the pedals, bicycling away from the square and through the narrow streets towards the bridge, if only there was an easier way. But try as she might she could not think of one.
    The soldier lounging astride his motorcycle watched her leave the café and then settled back to wait a little longer. Not until Paul left did he kick the machine into life and before Lisette had reached the beech woods he had roared out of the village in the opposite direction, circling round until he reached the road, barred to civilians, that snaked along the cliff tops to Valmy.
    â€˜You’re quite sure he was the purpose of her visit?’ Dieter asked sharply as the private stood to attention in the study that had previously been Henri de. Valmy’s private retreat from the world.
    â€˜Yes, sir. She spoke to two old women but only briefly and her eyes were on Gilles. As soon as the women left the café, Gilles came over and sat at her table.’
    â€˜For how long?’
    â€˜Thirty-seven minutes, sir.’
    Dieter frowned. It could have been a lovers’tryst but he doubted it. He couldn’t quite see the aristocratic Lisette de Valmy pursuing an alliance with a gangling schoolmaster.
    He dismissed the private, still deep in thought. He had made the unpleasant trip to Gestapo headquarters at Caen and had discovered that the Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts schoolmaster was high on the list of suspected members of the local Resistance cell. And Lisette de Valmy had cycled purposefully from Valmy to meet him for an intense conversation the moment he had been released from forced labour at Vierville. He sat down at the large Beidermeier desk, tapping a silver pen thoughtfully on its surface.
    Lisette de Valmy’s home had not appeared on any of the lists of known or suspected members of the Resistance, yet she had a bicycle and spent long hours visiting villagers both in Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts and the surrounding countryside. The local patrols probably took very little interest in her comings and goings. It was all highly suspicious and his jawline hardened. He hoped passionately that his instincts, always acute, were this time playing him false.
    â€˜You mean that he is having dinner with us?’ Lisette asked her father, aghast. ‘You can’t mean it! You can’t expect us to sit down and eat with him!’
    â€˜He’s here and we must make the best of it,’ her father said patiently. ‘So far, he has treated us with respect and we can do no less than follow suit.’
    Lisette tried to speak and couldn’t. Her throat was choked with distaste and panic and something else. Something too dark and fearful to even acknowledge.
    â€˜I can’t,’ she whispered at last. ‘I would feel like dirt. Like a collaborator.’
    Her father put his arm around her shoulders. ‘You have no need to, my love. It will give us an even better opportunity of convincing the Major that your mother’s health is fragile and that extra help in the chateau is a necessity.’
    â€˜He won’t believe you,’ she said, her voice low and choked. ‘I told Paul that he would not believe us, but he hasn’t met him. He doesn’t understand.’
    â€˜Of course he will believe us.’ her father said serenely. ‘It is virtually the truth, so why should he disbelieve us?’
    She remembered the way Major Meyer’s eyes had held hers across the silk-draped bed. ‘Because he is a man who will never be taken in by falsity,’ she said, turning away from him as a flash of fear rippled down her spine.
    Out of the habit of a lifetime she changed for dinner but did not go down to join them. The pretence that he was a guest and not a ruthless, despotic invader would have been more than she could endure. She paced her bedroom restlessly, staring repeatedly out of the window towards