I kissed him again. I was going to tell him how much I’d missed him when we were apart, that what I’d longed for more than anything was to be back there with him, lying on a blanket on the sand, under the stars. But his lips were on my ear, nuzzling the skin, sending shivers of rapture down inside.
“We don’t get many chances to be happy, do we?” he murmured. Then, with one hand still on the wheel, he dropped down on one knee. “Alice, will you marry me?”
Chapter 27
The sea was the color of the jacaranda flowers that heralded spring in the Congo, lilac blue in the twilight of a September evening. Our ship was gliding through the English Channel, heading south. We could see the lights of France twinkling across the water. By midnight, we would be off the coast of Brittany, passing close to the place where things could have turned out so very differently for Jack and me.
“Isn’t that a wonderful sight?” I leaned over the rail of the liner, craning my neck.
“It is.” Jack’s hand was on my shoulder. “Hard to believe it’s more than a year since the place was liberated. Even harder to believe that we played a part in bringing it about.”
Another, smaller hand tugged at my skirt. “Mummy, is it dinnertime yet? I’m hungry.”
I bent down to straighten the captain’s cap that had slipped so far back on Ned’s head that it was about to fall off. Merle and Fred had given it to him on his birthday, and he insisted on wearing it all the time, even at the table. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, it won’t be long now. I promise.” I glanced at Jack. “We’ll have to ask if he can have his meals earlier in future.”
Jack dropped to his knees, his head level with Ned’s. “Tonight’s a special occasion,” he said. “That’s why you’re allowed to stay up late, with all the grown-ups. It’s Mummy and Daddy’s wedding anniversary. Do you remember that day?”
Ned nodded. “I was hiding behind the door with Auntie Merle. And when you came out of the church, we throwed those things at you.”
“Rose petals.” Jack smiled up at me. “They stuck in Mummy’s hair, didn’t they? She looked like the fairy queen.”
“And then we had currant cake—and Louis was sick on Danny’s dress.”
“It’s funny, what kids remember, isn’t it?” Jack murmured as we made our way down to the dining room. “What sticks in my mind is all the faces. The smiles. People like Leo Badger and George Retallack—the whole village, crammed into the church, singing their hearts out.”
“Is that all you remember?” I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow.
“Well, of course, I couldn’t wait for it to get dark.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “We were lucky it was so warm, weren’t we? And thank heaven for the blackout . . .”
The memory of our wedding night was as vivid as if it had happened days ago, not two whole years before. Jack had laughed when I’d asked if we could spend it at the boathouse. He said he’d thought of taking me to London—to somewhere fancy, like the Ritz. But it had been magical, lying outside on a blanket, listening to the lap of the waves and the piping cries of the seabirds, watching the sky turn scarlet in the west as the sun disappeared, counting the stars as they began to appear. And then, when it was dark enough to know that no one could possibly see us, we’d begun undressing each other.
In the morning we’d found rose petals everywhere. They must have tumbled out of our clothes. I’d even found some in my underwear. The tide was in and we’d run into the waves, wading out as far as the barricade across the cove before wrapping arms and legs around each other and making love again, right there, in the water.
There hadn’t been time for a proper honeymoon. Although we could no longer make the clandestine runs across to Brittany, there was plenty for us to do. As well as intercepting messages and training the agents who were still being parachuted in, we had two hundred American soldiers camping in the cow pastures beyond the walled garden. They were building a road through the valley to the beach, preparing for the tanks that would soon be on their way to France for the D-Day landings.
“Mummy, will there be ice cream?” Ned’s voice brought me back to reality.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” I replied. “You’ll have to eat up all your dinner first.”
Later, when he was tucked up in bed, we sat outside the cabin in deck chairs, sipping champagne. I reminded Jack of the day, eight months after the wedding, when we’d sat on the rocks above the cove watching hundreds of American troops massing at the water’s edge, about to embark for the Normandy beaches.