The Assassin by Evelyn Anthony Page B

looked down at her and saw her eyes had filled with tears. ‘Don’t go away. I don’t want you to leave. All right, I know what it’ll mean if you stay, but I don’t care. Do you understand that—I don’t care what may happen. I’m in love with you.’
    She put out her hand and he caught it. They moved towards each other and he closed both arms round her.
    â€˜You mustn’t say that,’ he said. ‘You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know what you’re talking about;-you should have a good man, someone to marry you.’ With one hand he stroked the blonde hair back from her face. ‘If I ever got my hands on the one who left you, I’d beat his head in.’
    â€˜You wouldn’t need to,’ Elizabeth said quietly. ‘I thought I was in love. I thought that making love to him was real, but now I know it wasn’t. I guess you’re the only real man I’ve ever met in my life. When I think about him, all I wish is that it hadn’t happened.’
    â€˜If you regret your nice clean-living American,’ Keller said slowly, ‘how much more are you going to regret me?’
    She put both arms around his neck; immediately his hold tightened, gripping her body against his.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Elizabeth whispered. ‘If I lose you, probably for ever.’
    â€˜Where did you get those marks?’ Elizabeth leaned over him, tracing the savage scars down one side of his chest. There was no shyness, no inhibition left in her now. Every day she learned more about love. It wasn’t all passion; it was just as much the slow contentment of lying close and talking in the half-light. It was the way he kissed her now, after they had made love, and soothed her to sleep in his arms. Mathews had never been gentle afterwards. He had separated quickly and made jokes, as if he was afraid of being taken seriously. With this man it was all different. So many contrasts, from the fierce masculine possession to the silent tenderness that made her love him more each day. It didn’t seem possible that they had become lovers only a week before. She repeated the question.
    â€˜How did you get those scars? Tell me.’
    He put his finger on a jagged weal that ran down from his left shoulder. ‘That was a fight in a brothel in Algiers.’
    â€˜I don’t want to hear about the brothel,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Tell me about the fight.’
    â€˜There was this German Legionnaire—he called himself Beloff,’ Keller said. ‘But that wasn’t his name. He was a bastard. A mean one. He hated my insides and I hated his. He was supposed to be an officer in one of the S.S. regiments. We had a fight over one of the whores in this place. He was no officer—he used his feet too well. Not as well as I used mine, so he found himself a bottle.’
    â€˜Don’t,’ she pleaded, closing her eyes against the picture of the jagged glass tearing into his skin. ‘Please don’t …’
    Keller laughed. ‘He was in the sick bay for a month,’ he said. ‘If he was a war criminal I did him a favour. His own mother wouldn’t have recognised him. Most of us were Germans on the run anyway. The non-coms were French; they were bastards too.’
    â€˜You were in the Foreign Legion?’ She sat up a little, staring at him. ‘I can’t believe it. I thought that was just something they made movies about with Gary Cooper.’
    â€˜Who do you think was doing the fighting at Dien Bien Phu?’
    She shook her head at him and smiled. ‘I never heard of it.’
    â€˜It’s a place called Viet Nam,’ Keller said. ‘Now you must have heard of that ! That’s where I got these two holes.’
    He put her fingers against his ribs. ‘I was three months in hospital in Saigon. When we pulled out I’d had enough. I deserted. I’d spent my whole life