Never Leave Me by Margaret Pemberton Page A

slender, bereft of stockings despite the chill draughts that lurked in every corner of the chateau. He remembered the heavy stockings she wore in the daytime and knew with what contempt she would refuse silk ones if he were to offer them. Just as she would reject with contempt anything that he offered her.
    â€˜The proprietors are family friends,’ he said, the tight control he was exercising over himself making his voice harsh.
    The room seemed to have closed in on her. She knew the proprietors well. They were not the kind of people to entertain Nazi sympathies, yet it was not the shock that her family and Major Meyer should have acquaintances in common that was making her feel so faint. It was something else. The same, nameless emotion that overcame her whenever she was in his presence.
    She had hated before, but never with a passion that made her feel physically weak. She had hated the Germans when two thirds of the villagers of Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts had been marched off as forced labour. And she had hated them when she had known that they were to defile Valmy. But it had been a cold, murderous hatred. A hatred that she was in command of. She was in command of nothing when Major Meyer looked at her with his hard grey eyes, his body as lean and lithe as that of a panther about to spring on its prey.
    She tried to speak again, but the words would not come. Her father and mother had receded into a hazy distance and she was conscious only of Major Meyer; of blond hair gleaming like dull gold in the firelight; of the abrasive, masculine lines of his face. Of broad shoulders and the lightning of flashes on his collar; of strong well-shaped hands as they nursed his cognac. Of the sense of power under restraint. His masculinity overwhelmed her and suddenly she understood. In a moment of clarity so agonising that she cried out loud she knew what the emotion was that confounded her whenever she was in his presence. It was not hatred. It was physical desire.
    â€˜Lisette, are you ill?’ Her father was stepping towards her anxiously.
    She rose to her feet, fighting for air, her face deathly pale. ‘No … Please … Excuse me…’ Shaking violently she fended away her father’s arm, knowing only that she must escape from the room. Escape from Major Meyer’s presence. Escape from a truth too monstrous to live with.

Chapter Three
    He fought the almost overwhelming instinct to leap to his feet and stride after her. His powerful shoulder and arm muscles clenched as he remained where he was, the glass of cognac in one hand, the other still clasping the ankle of a booted foot as it rested with apparent ease across the knee of his other leg.
    The Comtesse had been busy with her embroidery. At her daughter’s strangled cry the work had fallen from her hands and now her eyes met her husband’s in alarm.
    The Comte gave her the merest frown, intimating that she behave as if nothing untoward had happened and said, with an underlying note of strain in his voice, ‘My daughter’s headache is obviously still troubling her, Major Meyer. Please forgive her abrupt departure.’
    Dieter nodded, barely trusting himself to speak. Waves of shock still reverberated through him. It was as though he had touched a live switch. He had to tighten his hold on his ankle in order to prevent his hand from trembling.
    â€˜I have some aspirin in my room,’ he said, controlling his voice with care, appalled at the intensity of the sexual desire that had swamped and almost submerged him.
    â€˜Thank you, Major Meyer,’ the Comtesse said, rising to her feet, the skin taut across her finely sculpted cheekbones, ‘but I have a supply myself. Perhaps you would excuse me while I find them and take them to Lisette?’
    â€˜Of course.’ This time his voice was sharp-edged. Anger had come hard on the heels of desire. He was a man who prided himself on always having his emotions under tight