Echoes by Danielle Steel Page B

said, her eyes never leaving her father's, and she looked as though she meant it. He had never seen her look as fierce or as determined, and as he saw her, he thought of something that had never crossed his mind, particularly not with her. He asked her a single question, and his voice was shaking as he did so, and for the first time in his life with her, he feared what he might hear.
    “Are you in love with someone else?” He couldn't imagine it. She never left the house, but the look in her eyes told him that he needed to ask her, and she hesitated before she spoke. She knew she had to tell him the truth, there was no other way.
    “Yes.” She stood still and stiff before him as she said the single word.
    “Why have you not told me?” He looked both heartbroken and livid all at once, and more than that, he looked betrayed. She had allowed him to go forward with this charade, merely by never telling him that there was someone she cared deeply about. Enough to jeopardize the match he had made, the one he knew was right for her. “Who is it? Do I know him?” He felt a shudder run through him as he asked her, as though someone had walked on his grave.
    She shook her head in answer and spoke softly. “No, you don't. I met him in Switzerland last summer.” She was determined to be honest with him. She felt she had no other choice. This moment had come sooner than she wanted or expected, and all she could do now was pray that he would be reasonable and fair to her.
    “Why didn't you tell me? Does your mother know about this?”
    “No. No one knows. Mama and Brigitte met him, but he was just a friend then. I want to marry him when the war is over, Papa. He wants to come and meet you.”
    “Then let him come.” Her father was furious with her, but nonetheless willing to be honorable about the matter, and reasonable with his child, although he was deeply upset with her for this profession of love at the eleventh hour.
    “He can't come to see you, Papa. He's at the front.”
    “Do your brothers know him?” She shook her head again, and said nothing. “What are you not telling me about him, Beata? I sense that there is more here than you're saying.” He was right, as he so often was. She felt her whole body shake in terror as she answered him.
    “He's from a good family, with a large estate. He's well educated and intelligent. He loves me, Papa, and I love him.” There were tears running down her cheeks.
    “Then why have you kept this a secret? What are you hiding from me, Beata?” His voice was bellowing, and Monika could hear him from upstairs.
    “He is Catholic, and French,” Beata said in a whisper, as her father let out a sound like a wounded lion. It was so awful that she took several steps backward as he advanced on her without thinking. He stopped only when he had reached her and grabbed her small frame in both his hands. He shook her so hard by the shoulders that her teeth rattled as he shouted into her face.
    “How dare you! How dare you do this to us! You will not marry a Christian, Beata. Never! I will see you dead first. If you do this, you will be dead to us. I will write your name in our family's book of the dead. You will never see this man again. Do you understand me? And you will marry Rolf Hoffman on the day I tell you. I will tell him the deal is done. And you will tell your Catholic Frenchman that you will never see or speak to him again. Is that clear?”
    “You can't do that to me, Papa,” she said, sobbing, choking for lack of air. She could not give up Antoine, nor marry the man her father had chosen, no matter what her father did to her.
    “I can and I will. You will marry Hoffman in one month.”
    “Papa, no!” She fell to her knees, sobbing, as he stormed out of the library and went upstairs. She knelt there for a long time, crying, until her mother finally came to her in tears. She knelt beside her daughter, heartbroken over what she had just heard.
    “Beata, how could you do