Brave Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page B

He’d chosen to come to this post tonight because it was close to Catharine, and it didn’t make any difference which post he covered when the raids began. He always got a story, at one post or another. Tonight, he’d come to be close to Catharine, that was all, but now . . .
    The heavy thud of his footsteps echoed in the empty street. Everyone had taken shelter. Between bangs of AA guns, Jack heard the tinkle of shell casings striking the pavement, the clatter of incendiaries on the rooftops and the streets, and the heavy, uneven drone of the bombers. But he kept on running, skirting an enormous crater in one street, seeking another path when rubble, the spilled-out walls of a church, blocked his way.
    A gas fire burned and hissed as he approached the corner of Seamore Place. Heat pushed against Jack as he forced himself on, sweat streaming down his back and legs despite the chill of early spring. He rounded the corner and stumbled to a halt. An agony of horror knotted the breath in his chest.
    Fire danced high into the sky from the blazing house at the corner. As Jack watched, the house slowly dissolved, the walls sliding inward and thousands of sparks crisping up into the air. Smoke spiraled lazily up. Firemen struggled with heavy hoses to save the house next door.
    Jack blinked his eyes against the stinging soot and smoke, straining to see down the block. Where Catharine’s house had stood was a gaping emptiness against the darkening sky, a crumpled, tumbled heap.
    Jack stumbled over the fire hoses.
    â€œHey, mate, get back. It’s dangerous here.”
    Jack ignored the shout and dodged around the fire truck, his eyes clinging to that open space where no open space should be. He ran desperately toward the emptiness. “Catharine!” He shouted it against the roar of the hoses, the rumble of the fire, the clatter of incendiaries, and the drone of the bombers.
    â€œCatharine!”

    The stench of cordite burned her nose and throat. Catharine struggled to breathe. It was utterly dark. She realized with surprise that she wasn’t injured, although her head ached from the concussion, and she would be bruised and sore. When she tried to move, she discovered she was lying in a pocket of rubble. She had some inches of leeway, but her shoulder touched an immovable beam. She lifted her hands, felt the rough wood. Panic flared. She turned, twisted, shoved, then sank back, her heart thudding. She was buried beneath the ruins of the house, and the oak beam which trapped her also protected her from the crushing weight of the debris.
    Faintly, she heard faraway thumps in the dark, cold, and quiet space. She knew the raid went on, but that was all she heard.
    â€œPriscilla?” She heard her voice, thin and high. “Priscilla?”
    No answer.
    Nothing.
    Only a tiny crackle as pieces of mortar sifted down through the wreckage.
    She and Priscilla had just reached the floor of the cellar when the bomb hit. What had happened to Fontaine and his wife and the two maids?
    â€œFontaine?” She tried to shout. Her call sounded loud in her own ears, terribly loud against the awful silence.
    No one answered.
    No one moved.
    â€œPriscilla?” she cried again, but without hope.
    Catharine lay in the terrible silence and thought of her life—and of love.
    Reggie. She had wanted so badly to love Reggie. He’d taken his two-seater up one sunny Friday morning, turned the nose down, and kept his hands steady on the controls until the plane crashed into a Surrey hillside.
    â€œReggie . . .”
    She could picture him clearly, his smiling light blue eyes and sandy hair and that dark blond mustache that made him look so carefree; but he wasn’t carefree at all. The love she’d offered hadn’t been enough to help him fight the demons in his mind, the guilt and horror that he tried to wash away with whisky. He’d chosen death because he felt he wasn’t worthy