do, Miss Carey.’ Ewen took her by the hand, turning her to face the large mirror on the wall. ‘We’re the descendants of two people who loved each other with a very grand passion indeed,’ he told her reflection. ‘We could hardly fail to know each other. Besides, having seen the portrait of Rose, I knew you the moment I set eyes on you.’
Rosanna eyed his reflection analytically. ‘You don’t look much like Harry.’ She smiled a little. ‘But I feel I know him a lot better than you.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve read his letters!’
Ewen turned her to face him. ‘Thank you for giving up your evening, Rosanna.’
He retained her hand, and Rosanna stood very still, her pulse quickening as his thin, strong fingers closed over hers. ‘I enjoyed it. I’ve never met a celebrity before,’ she said brightly.
He shrugged, his smile more crooked than before. ‘No celebrity. Just a journalist who got lucky.’ He looked down at her intently. ‘I’ll bring the letters back tomorrow night, then.’
Rosanna nodded, wishing he’d release her hand. ‘All right.’
‘This time have dinner with me.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, thank you.’
‘I see.’ Ewen dropped her hand. ‘Right. I’ll call round after dinner, then. Or before. Whatever.’
His expression was suddenly so aloof, Rosanna felt chilled. But not enough to agree to a meal together. She never accepted dinner invitations. Nor wanted to. But to her astonishment she wanted to go out with Ewen Fraser so much she had to force herself to refuse. ‘After dinner. If you like,’ she added casually.
The warmth returned to his eyes so suddenly it kick-started her pulse again. ‘I do like. Very much. Tomorrow at eight-thirty, then.’
‘Come a bit earlier than that—if you want to get to grips with the other stuff, I mean,’ added Rosanna gruffly, and bit her lip.
Ewen grinned. ‘Men usually beg you for more time, of course, not the other way round.’
‘I wasn’t begging,’ she said indignantly.
‘I know.’ He picked up his briefcase. ‘You just want to get everything finished and be rid of me.’ His eyes danced, the overhead hall light picking out flecks of gold in the hazel irises. ‘I’d be here at nine in the morning if I thought you’d let me in.’
This time the flicker of response was so violent Rosanna was hard put to hide it, and almost told him not to come again. But she couldn’t think of a feasible excuse, and her tone was cold in sheer self-defence as she told him seven-thirty in the evening would do very well.
Ewen smiled with regret as the doorbell rang. ‘My cab. Goodnight, Rosanna.’
‘Goodnight.’ She opened the front door. ‘Don’t stay up late reading Harry’s letters. In fact, take my advice— read them tomorrow, not tonight.’
‘Why?’
She smiled wryly. ‘You’ll find out when you read them!’
CHAPTER TWO
FEELING oddly restless after Ewen Fraser had gone, Rosanna took her grandmother’s letters to bed to read, which was a big mistake. In their own way the letters were as innocently erotic as the outpourings Rose Norman had received from Harry Manners.
Rosanna already knew how the two young people had met from the entries the young VAD had made in her diary. Rose Norman had been sent to France. With a couple of girl drivers for company, sometimes only one, she travelled in the unwieldy old ambulances of the time to transfer the seriously injured from casualty clearing stations to base hospitals further away from the front line.
2nd Lt. Harry Manners, one arm in a sling, a stained bandage round his forehead, flagged down Rose’s ambulance one day to beg transport for two of his wounded men. The men were crammed in somehow, at which point a flat tyre was discovered. Rose managed to help Letty Parker, the driver, change the tyre with instructions from the young platoon commander, who promptly collapsed in an unconscious heap the moment they finished the job.
Between them the girls managed to heave him into the front seat, Rose holding him as upright as possible on the journey back to the base hospital. Harry Manners’ forehead had been grazed by one sniper’s bullet, and his shoulder pierced by another which missed the jugular vein and the spine by a hair’s breadth, a ‘Blighty’ wound which sent him back to England to recover.
Fate sent Rose Norman home on leave on the same train, helping with the wounded on the journey. When she came across Harry he was light-headed and obviously feeling wretched, but utterly delighted to see her again. They were able to talk only briefly, but Harry begged her home address, and the moment he was discharged from the hospital in Denmark Hill called to see Rose on a day when her mother was helping Rose’s sister, Amelia, with the children’s measles in Kensington.
Far into the night Rosanna lay in the same bedroom her grandmother had occupied as a girl, riveted by the account of a love affair all the more passionate and poignant for the modest, unaffected style of Rose Norman’s letters. Referring to the diary from time to time, Rosanna read how Harry cut short his stay with his parents, and saw Rose every day, courtesy of the measles which focussed her mother’s attention away from her younger daughter.
When Harry asked her to marry him, Rose, still shadowed by the loss of one fiancé, was superstitious, and implored him to wait until the war was over.
‘But in the meantime,’ wrote Rose, ‘we are madly, wildly in love, and alive.
‘Today,’ said the next entry succinctly, ‘we became lovers.’
The diary was blank after that until Rose arrived back in France, not earlier than scheduled due to curtailed leave, as she told her mother, but on the due date after a week of illicit bliss with Harry in a Brighton hotel.
Their next meeting was in France, when Rose managed to get time off to stay with Harry in a pension in Rouen before he went up to the front. When they parted Harry gave his love a brooch in the shape of a gold rose, and kissed Rose’s tears away when she sobbed in his arms.
Rosanna slept late the following morning, and woke to a feeling of guilt. Overnight she’d had time for regrets, very much aware that there was no real necessity for Ewen to bring back the papers in person. Any future dealings with him could have been done by post. But she liked him. In fact, after just one meeting she felt as though she’d known Ewen for years. Or in some other life. Which was dangerous. It stemmed from Harry and Rose, of course. Their love story had fostered an intimacy that would never have happened if she’d met Ewen in other circumstances.
Ewen Fraser was an attractive, intelligent man loaded with charm. But, Rosanna reminded herself, apart from his great-uncle and his success as a writer she knew very little about him. Women, if the press were to be believed, flocked around Ewen Fraser in droves. For all she knew he might even be married. Not that it was any concern of hers if he had a wife or an entire harem.
The day was hot, and Rosanna spent most of it in the garden, topping up her tan. And later, after a quick salad supper, she took time with her appearance, choosing clothes
