Peach by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online

mainly children and young people. She will be put on a respirator to help her breathe, but Madame and Monsieur,” his large brown eyes faced them sadly, “I’m afraid I cannot offer much hope.”
    Lais hurled herself at the doctor. “What do you mean?” she cried. “Are you saying my sister is going to die?” Gripping the lapels of his starched white coat fiercely, she looked ready to kill him.
    “Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle—please,” he tried futilely to remove her. “I cannot say. It is a disease of which we have little knowledge. We can only hope.”
    Lais’s hands dropped limply to her sides and the doctor smoothed his ruffled coat nervously. “I will do my best for her, of course. We all will.”
    “Doctor Marnaux,” said Leonie in a high, clear voice.
“My granddaughter will not die
. You understand, Monsieur.
She will not die
.”
    Doctor Marnaux eyed the frantic young woman and the quietly desperate older one nervously. “Of course not, Madame,” he replied soothingly, “of course not.”
    “I will stay with her,” said Leonie, walking to the severe white door behind which her granddaughter lay.
    The doctor glanced at Jim and shrugged helplessly. “As she wishes, Monsieur,” he murmured. “We have done all we can.”
    All transatlantic telephone lines were occupied and calls were already being censored or curtailed. It took Jim two days and considerable influence to reach Gerard in Miami.
    “I’m leaving right away,” said Gerard, his voice tense across the crackle and woosh of the line.
    “Things are already difficult here,” warned Jim. “Remember, once you are here as a French citizen you may find it impossible to leave.”
    “Even if Peach were not so ill,” replied Gerard, “I would return to do what I can for my country.”
    Gerard had only ever taken a nominal interest in the de Courmont business empire built by his father, preferring to leave the running of Monsieur’s vast automobile plants and their peripheral companies, the monumental iron and steel works, the rolling mills and the factories at Valenciennes that had produced guns and weapons for other wars, to the capable management of governing boards. And even the fact that the empire was now in jeopardy with the country at war, came a far second in his priorities to the fact that his beloved little Peach was desperately ill.
    By pulling strings he was able to get a plane from New York to Lisbon. After two days spent waiting for a flight to Paris that never took off, he wangled his way on to a plane to Madrid and from there took a crowded, slow-movingtrain to Barcelona, where he persuaded a reluctant taxidriver to drive him as far as Gerona. He scoured the town for a car but, ironically for a man who owned one of the oldest automobile companies in Europe, there was not a vehicle to be found anywhere. Desperate with worry he stormed the steps of the American consulate, elbowing his way past the line of sullen, anxious people awaiting visas, that stretched down the stairs and around the block and never seemed to move. His business card, sent in via a supercilious lackey who was wielding his petty bureaucratic power with relish, brought an instant response. De Courmont was not a name to be ignored. The consul’s own car and driver were placed at his disposal immediately and Gerard crossed the border, covering the endless kilometres between Gerona and Nice in a vast Chrysler flying the American flag that turned heads in the queue of traffic heading the other way towards the border.
    Even unshaven and weary after almost six days of travel and with very little sleep, Leonie thought that Gerard was still a very handsome man—like Monsieur. But Gerard’s strong face and steady blue eyes held none of the cynicism of his father’s. Though he had Monsieur’s powerful shoulders and forceful stride, Gerard was a gentle man whose consuming interests were in his chosen career of architecture, and in his family. He had none of the