Her Patriotic Duty by Rosie Meddon

Author:Rosie Meddon [Meddon, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Sagas, Historical, World War II, Women, Romance, General, Family Life, War & Military
ISBN: 9781788639668
Google: GlnwDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
Published: 2020-09-10T18:21:59.689000+00:00

* * *

‘This is good work, Miss Ward.’

‘Excellent, in fact.’

‘Well done.’

It was late the following morning and almost no time at all after Esme had gone to Les Marronniers to report what had happened, two officials from SOE arrived to interview her.

‘You have spoken to no one of this?’ the older of the two men checked.

She shook her head. ‘No one other than Madame Marron – and only then just in order to ask what I should do.’

‘Good. You did the right thing. Rather fortunate we were already at The Grange, observing training, since it meant we could get here without delay. You’re our first decoy, and with this,’ he tapped the file with his pen, ‘just your second assignment, you have already proved not only your own worth but the value of the programme as a whole.’

‘In some regards rather worryingly,’ the second of the men observed. ‘For the sake of the integrity of the programme, we must hope this proves to be an isolated incident. If you get the same results with your next man, we’re in trouble.’

Watching as he closed the file containing her report, Esme nodded. She hadn’t considered the longer-term aspect of what she was doing; she had been concerned only with Roger Pryce. ‘What will happen now?’ she asked.

‘Now,’ the man with the file said as he got up from the table, ‘we will report back to our superiors, who will almost certainly authorise us to pick up Mr Pryce and take him to HQ.’

‘And then?’ she asked. Failure or not, she didn’t like the idea that on her say so, something terrible was going to happen to him – something final.

‘Other than recommending that he be pulled from the programme, that won’t be for us to determine. But, given the extent of his training, we can’t just return him to civilian life. He will need to be placed somewhere… somewhere he can be closely monitored at all times.’

She wondered, but didn’t like to ask, whether that would mean him going to jail.

With the two men from SOE then departing, Madame Marron and Violette came into the room.

‘You are all right?’ Madame Marron wanted to know.

Esme nodded. ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you. Exhausted, but fine.’

‘I know what we’ll do,’ Violette said, slipping her arm through Esme’s and smiling warmly. ‘We’ll go out to lunch. And then, afterwards, you can go back to the hotel and catch up on some sleep. You do look a little grey under the eyes, and we can’t have that.’

Although Violette’s offer was well meant, inwardly Esme groaned. She didn’t feel like going out to lunch but neither did she feel like going to sleep. What she wanted to do was to talk to someone and sort out her feelings – feelings that veered from satisfaction and pride one moment to guilt and shame the next. Worse still, she knew that although this particular assignment had come to a close, in a couple of days’ time, she would have to reprise the charade with another target.

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