We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [116]
He must have been aware of her—because he turned and smiled.
“It isn’t for me, is it, that you’re doing this?” She asked it with something close to certainty, willing it to be so.
“No,” he said without hesitation. “Because of you, perhaps, you and Joseph, but because I have to to satisfy myself.”
She felt something of the fear ease out of her, the knots loosen.
“Were you afraid it was for you?” he asked, and this time there was amusement in his voice. “That then you would owe me something?” He did not add that you cannot owe love; she knew he was thinking it, just as she was. She felt the heat in her face and was glad of the concealing darkness. There was only the occasional yellow glare of lamps as they passed some lone farmhouse still standing, or a group of people stopped temporarily and huddled around a fire, now and again car lights going the other way.
Perhaps at last they understood each other in the deepest things; the values that are woven into nature, the need to be at peace with who you are, together or alone.
As if the emotion were too strong, and the time too short, he moved away from it. “I know you’ve dressed Schenckendorff as a British V.A.D., but you’d better not let him speak. He still sounds German to me. I’ll wager any Belgian in the country knows German when he hears it. They have five years’ hate to avenge. They aren’t going to forget it. Does Joseph really think they will?”
“No,” she said simply. “Have you got a better idea?”
“No, I haven’t. But we’d better be right. We’re going to have to stop for fuel sometime. We won’t make it all the way to the coast on what we have. One mistake will be the last.”
“I know.” It was what she had been dreading. Even the basic difficulty of finding fuel could be enough to delay their journey fatally, let alone if any part of the ambulance broke down and she could not find the parts to mend it, or had not the skill. Even any prolonged time in one place brought the danger of exposure. The very best they might be taken for was British deserters. Once anyone realized Schenckendorff was German, they might all be suspected.
“Judith?” Mason said quietly, his voice breaking through her thoughts.
“Yes?”
“We’ll make it.” He was smiling. “You, of all people, are not going to fall at the last fence.”
“Why not? It can happen.”
“There are three of you!” His smile was broader now, a kind of happiness in him.
“There are six of us,” she corrected him, slightly puzzled.
“Three Reavleys! That should be enough to take on the world, let alone the odd corner of Belgium,” he retorted.
She glanced at him and saw the laughter under the surface, and also the tenderness in his face, even in the pale, shifting reflections of light from the road. He was not mocking her; he wanted to mean it, wanted to hope.
The first stop came after about five hours. They were in flat country, farther from the fighting, but this land had been occupied by enemy troops, and the roads had been heavily bombed. One small river had spread wide, flooding the area behind the broken bridge and the scattered debris that had blocked it. There was nothing to do but go around the waterlogged fields, which took them extra miles and cost precious time and petrol. That meant they now needed to get more fuel. They dare not run too low.
They stopped at the next village, and Judith made the request from a mechanic attempting to mend a battered van. She was in uniform and felt consumed with guilt when the few cans were given willingly. They had assumed that her passengers were wounded men being taken to the nearest port for passage to England. One man asked her if the railway line had been bombed—was that why they had come this way? He looked surprised that this sort of difficulty should crop up so late in the war.
“By zeppelin still?” he said questioningly. “Stupid! They’ll lose now whatever they do. It’s nearly over.” His voice choked. He was elderly with a heavy, ugly face and gentle eyes.