“Maybe he has a lover in London,” Teresa remarked.
“That’s … well, an unexpected observation.”
“Why?”
“From a Catholic.”
“Say what you like about us Catholics, but we understand human weakness.” She gave a knowing smile. “And I see from your face that the idea is not such a bad one for you.”
No, it wasn’t: his father stealing a few moments of happiness in the arms of a lady friend. He just felt a little foolish that it hadn’t occurred to him before.
Meanwhile, down at the other end of the table, the captain from the Cheshires was evidently doing a good job of entertaining Lilian, judging from her laughter. A few weeks before, it wouldn’t have mattered to him. Now it did. So much so that when the evening finally broke up, he was quite ready to leave, to be gone. That impulse vanished the moment Lilian asked him to stay on a while longer. There was a work matter she needed to discuss with him.
It was a chilly, clear night, and she held her woolen cardigan tight around her shoulders as they strolled in the palace garden, their feet crunching softly on the gravel pathway.
“You looked like you were enjoying yourself with the blond Adonis from the Cheshires.”
“Tristran.”
“Of course. How could I forget?”
“He’s very brave.”
“Really?”
“Yes, he told me.”
In the darkness he could just make out the gleam of her teeth.
“You know what? He probably is. The Cheshires have had the dirty end of the stick for quite a while.”
“You’re defending him?” she asked.
“Yes. No. I hate him.”
They both knew there was another message buried in the words—an admission on his part—and he quickly filled the awkward silence with a question.
“So, what did you want to talk about?”
She had a couple of questions about some material sent by the Ministry of Information to the Times of Malta that had found its way through to her at Il-Berqa.
“Ignore it,” was Max’s advice. “Most of what we get from them is complete rubbish or out of date—usually both.”
“That’s no way to talk about your superiors.”
“I can only imagine it’s done on purpose.”
“On purpose?”
“To confuse the Germans, should they ever intercept a dispatch.”
Lilian laughed before drawing to a halt on the pathway.
“Over here,” she said quietly, setting off across the grass.
“Why?”
“My cousins.”
“What about them?” he asked, falling into step with her.
Felicia and Ena were two leggy creatures in their early teens.
“I know what they’re like. They’ll be watching from their bedroom.”
She led him beneath the boughs of a large orange tree. It was so dark that he sensed rather than saw her take a step toward him.
They kissed briefly, almost cursorily, their lips barely touching.
There was nothing cursory about their second kiss. She pressed her body against his, and the warm tip of her tongue forced its way between his lips.
“Don’t stop,” she said, when they broke off briefly.
And when they finally separated, he bent to recover her cardigan from the ground and replaced it around her shoulders.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Now I’ll have to lie to them at breakfast.”
“Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound.” He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her toward him. She avoided his lips.
“And then I’ll have to tell Father Tabone in confession that I lied to them, and he will want to know why.”
“And when you tell him, he’ll say, ‘Lilian, Lilian, not the soldier under the orange tree story again.’”
She gave a horrified gasp and playfully pinched his arm. “You think I am like that, do you?”
“I think I want to kiss you again.”
She didn’t resist, and this time her hands roamed beneath his shirt and up his back.
No thoughts of Mitzi had intruded at the time. Only later, during the long ride back to Floriana on the motorcycle, the searchlights roving the heavens high above his head, did he weigh those first tentative embraces against the urgent abandon that had always marked his lovemaking with Mitzi.
Mitzi had unleashed something in him, presented him with a side of himself that he’d never known existed—a dark and sometimes unsavory side. Maybe it was her guilt, but there were occasions when she had required him to dominate, even demean her. And he had duly obliged, warily at first, like an observer hovering above the bed, then more willingly.
He had since abandoned his theory of an errant wife’s unconscious desire for castigation, partly because it was insulting to her. Did errant husbands feel obliged to act out their guilt with their lovers? Somehow he