Authors: Jessica Steele
It was no good. She knew he could badger at her all night and she just couldn't give in to him. Not here, not in this room. Last night was too close, too well remembered.
t
She stood up nearer than she had ever been to telling him of her marriage secret.
'Trevor-' she began, and turned to face him. Only all at once it wasn't Trevor she saw sitting there. Nash's face, mocking, the devil in his eyes, swam before her, r blotting out Trevor's petulant look. 'I...' she tried, and finding it hopeless, turned from him to add, 'I'm sorry—I can't.'
To say he had been put out was putting it mildly, she
thought, after he had slammed out and she lay in bed. Damn you, Nash Devereux, she fumed as she punished her pillow—it's all your fault!
She was surprised when she awoke to find she had slept so well. Then recalling the restlessness of her sleep the night before she thought it wasn't so very surprising. Though she grew confused when analysing that it ought to have been thoughts of Trevor whom she loved going off in a huff, that kept her sleepless rather than the way it had been, her previous night's sleep ruined by thoughts of Nash Devereux.
Nash entering her thinking had her getting up and going to her wardrobe. With any luck today would see the beginning of the end of him. But she wanted to look smart. Grudgingly she admitted she owed him that much—to look smart the way one would expect an expense-no-object Mrs Nash Devereux should look.
She selected a two-piece wool suit of a deep shade of mustard. She would have to come home and change before going to work, she mused as she leisurely bathed and, afterwards, put her hair up. Madge had already guessed that she was going through something of a crisis in her life; to turn up at work dressed to kill would give her further food for thought.
The time when she should be on her way upon her, she snatched up her portmanteau handbag, shook her head that it didn't go with her elegant outfit, and realised she was going to be late if she didn't get a move on. But it didn't take long to transfer bare essentials, purse, powder compact, comb and keys, into her more fashionable brown leather bag.
At the door a last-minute thought hit her and had her scurrying to her bedroom to remove the top half of her jewel box. She had better take proof of her marriage, she thought, her fingers closing on the copy marriage certificate prior to stuffing in inside her bag and looking forward
to the day she could tear it up. Nash's dealing with Mr Leighton had most likely been done over the telephone or through his own solicitor. Mr Leighton would surely want to see the certificate.
Running late of the time she had set herself, for all she had thought she had ample time earlier, she was further delayed by Mrs Foster coming from her door out into the hall.
'Oh, you're all right, then, Perry,' she greeted her. 'I was getting a little worried about you when I didn't hear you go out at your usual time,'
'I'm fine,' Perry smiled. 'I'm not going to work until later I have an appointment. Anything I can get you on my way back?'
'I'm all right for day. But you could get me some bread tomorrow if it's no trouble.' Then, remembering Perry had said she had an appointment, 'But I mustn't keep you. I expect you're in a rush, the way I always used to be.'
Poor Mrs Foster, Perry thought, as she made it to the pavement and began hurrying along. The poor dear, besides being overweight, had arthritis, which made it impossible for her to hurry anywhere any more.
Hoping to find a cruising taxi, Mrs Foster went from her mind as she consulted her watch and saw if she was going to make her eleven o'clock appointment on foot she would be better getting on with it rather than keep looking back for a non-existent taxi.
The solicitor's office was less than five minutes away when her frequently consulted watch told her she had about six minutes to make it, provided she didn't meet any hazard in the shape of an old friend she hadn't seen in donkey's ages, or get stopped for breaking the pedestrian speed limit. She smiled at the idea that flitted through her head of a policeman coming up and asking her number.
Then the notion disappearing, her smile remained as
Nash Devereux entered her head and the satisfaction that was shortly to be hers in the blissful parting that was to come.
She turned, her mind full of it, to cross the road, and met the hazard that was to prevent her from keeping her appointment in the shape of a taxi she had given up seeing—and didn't—as it was furiously braked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE pain in her head as her eyelids fluttered open and she regained consciousness made Perry aware all was not well before the cotton wool in her brain cleared sufficiently to make her realise the bed she was in was not her own. She was in hospital.
She coughed and stifled a groan as a pain in the region of her ribs told her something was amiss in that area too, Bread, she thought, trying to recall how she had got to be in hospital. All she could remember was that Mrs Foster wanted a loaf of bread. What had happened after talking with her in the hall, she had no idea.
Needing someone to tell her how she got to be where she was, she turned her head, wincing as a spear of pain came sharper than the bearable dull throb, and closed her eyes briefly before observing, on opening them again, that there wasn't a patient in the next bed simply because there was no next bed. Gritting her teeth against further spasms of pain, she turned her head in the other direction, to see there was no bed there either. She had a room to herself.
Perhaps I'm dreaming, she thought, cotton wool wanting to take over her brain again. But if the aches in her body were anything to go by it was a pretty rotten dream. Sleep wanted to claim her, but she fought it as panic began to take a foothold. She wasn't dreaming, she knew she wasn't, and what was more, she couldn't afford a private room. What were they thinking of putting her in here?
A sound like the crash of dustbin lids in her pain-ridden head had her wincing afresh as a door she couldn't see without turning and inflicting more pain opened somewhere
behind her head.
'Good, you're back with us,' said a gentle female voice which made itself known in the shape of a mousy-haired, white-capped nurse bending over her. 'I know it hurts like crazy,' the nurse went on, efficiently popping a thermometer under Perry's tongue and taking her wrist in a cool hold while she took her pulse, 'but I'll get you something for it in a minute.'
Unable to voice any of the questions she was bursting with, with the thermometer in her mouth, Perry was forced to lie docilely while the nurse checked her general appearance before removing the temperature gauge from beneath her tongue and began writing down details on her chart.
'Nurse.' Perry found her voice weak, and not at all as strong as it should have sounded. 'What happened?'
The nurse didn't seem to think it unusual that she couldn't remember, and explained, 'It would appear you stepped off the pavement and came off second best in an argument with a taxi.' And while Perry wondered where she had been, what must she have been thinking about to have been so careless, Nurse Johns, as she later learned she was, quite without knowing it promptly stifled any further questions she might have, by saying, 'Now don't bother your head with anything else, Mrs Devereux, I'll be back in no time with something for your sore head.'
Mrs Devereux! Fear, alarm, panic added to her condition, causing Perry to feel she had just been poleaxed.
'Nurse!' she called urgently.
But Nurse Johns had already departed, and by the time she returned, and an injection was administered with speed and efficiency, Perry's brain was so filled with a complexity of cotton wool padded thoughts that nothing very coherent came from her.
The next time she awoke it was dark, but a dim light showing in the room told her she had not been left unattended. Then as before the door behind her opened, and this time a different nurse appeared.
'How's the head now?' enquired a rosy-complexioned staff nurse.
'Much better,' Perry answered with truth.
'Good. In that case I think we can allow you one visitor,' the nurse said, beaming archly as if to say she knew who her patient would prefer to see above any other visitor.
'What time is it?' Perry heard herself ask, and wondered how much damage had been done to her head that she should be asking that question instead of enquiring who her visitor was. Though perhaps it wasn't so daft, she mused,
as
the nurse told her it was half past nine. Visiting hour must have come and gone—so she must be privileged to have a visitor at this time of night. Though maybe in private wards they didn't have any strict visiting times.
'Your husband is just having a word with Sister,' the nurse continued brightly, quite happily unaware that Perry was just recalling that the other nurse had called her Mrs Devereux, and with that recollection, alarm made itself felt again.
'N-Nash is here?' she croaked.
'Mr Devereux has been in to see you on and off since you were brought in,' was the smiling reply, 'Now just sit tight,' said the nurse, causing Perry to wonder where she thought she would be going, unable to move without her aching body making her aware of parts of her she never knew she owned before.
Feeling physically beaten, she found her brain came actively alive. If Nash was here, though how on earth they had traced
him
as her husband, or her as his wife, since the press hadn't been able to do it, then she had every confidence that he would clear up every question that rattled around in her head.
Why she should have such confidence in him she couldn't have said, as she sat tight and waited, though lay would have been more appropriate. But as the minutes ticked by before her listening ears picked up a firm tread halting outside her door, she had recalled the last
time she had seen Nash.
And by the time that door was opened, she didn't know how she was ever going to speak to him, her embarrassment choking her, let alone ask him one single solitary question.
But she had reckoned without Nash being able to deal with any situation. Unable to meet his eyes, with nowhere to look lying prone as she was, Perry opted to close her eyes. She heard the small scrape of a chair as he lifted it to the side of her bed, then found her hand taken in the secure hold of his cool large grip.
'You know, Perry,' she heard his even tones, not cool, not sarcastic, teasing maybe, 'if you didn't want to go ahead with the divorce you only had to say. There was no need to half kill yourself to avoid making your appointment with Mr Leighton.'
Her eyes flew open at his teasing, though she was grateful for the shaded light as she met his scrutiny full on. 'Oh, Nash,' she said weakly, then, clarity of thought coming through where before all thoughts had been fuddled and only half finished, 'That's where I was going, wasn't it, to see Mr Leighton?'
He smiled, his hand still holding hers. 'They said you could remember nothing of the accident, though it did seem vitally important to you that Mrs Foster had a loaf of bread.'
Perry smiled too as she wondered if she had been delirious. Then her smile disappeared, a wrinkle of worry on her brow. 'Mrs Foster will be worried when I don't go home tonight. Oh, Nash,' agitation took her, 'I must get word to her!'
'Relax,' he ordered. And if he was observant enough to note the colour that flooded her cheeks at the choice of that word she had last heard from him when he had begun to make love to her, he didn't refer to it. But he made her feel instantly better by telling her he had already been to
see Mrs Foster and acquaint her with what had happened.
'Though I'll admit,' he teased lightly, 'she was slightly puzzled when I presented her with the loaf of bread I took with me.'
How easily he can make me smile, Perry thought with wonder. Of course, he made her angry too, she made herself think, her lips straightening, and then as her head cleared, anxiety there again, this time that she might be a permanent invalid.
'What did happen, Nash? What's wrong with me? The nurse said I'd collided with a taxi, but...'
'You'll be fine after a few days' rest,' he soon put her mind at ease on that score. 'You were concussed for a few hours, so they want to keep you under observation. But apart from a sore head, a few bruised ribs and the general feeling you've been run over by a juggernaut, you have no need to worry about broken bones or anything of that nature.'
That was so good to know. She was smiling at him again before she could hold it back. But there were other questions she wanted the answer to, and they came tumbling hurriedly from her.
'They're calling me Mrs Devereux,' she said, serious now, anxiety, showing once more. 'The nurse, the one who was in here before you came in, referred to you as my husband.'
In her agitation she pulled her hand from his, an involuntary movement that took her finger distractedly to her mouth. In a moment Nash had recaptured her hand, was holding it securely while his other hand soothed the back of it in a calming, stroking movement.
'Oh, where did they get that information from?' she cried, her eyes fixed on him. 'You didn't tell them, did you?'
Her confusion was apparent since unless he was approached there had been no way he could have known she was in hospital; he shook his head. 'The copy of our marriage certificate was in your handbag. It was the only means of identification you had with you. Since my name is on the certificate too it was natural they should contact me. My name is fairly well known,' he added, telling her something she already knew in a dry-humoured attempt to draw another smile from her.
But this time she couldn't smile. She groaned instead as she recalled delaying herself those few minutes by going back for that certificate. Oh, if only she hadn't!
'I thought Mr Leighton might want to see it,' she agonised. 'I...' she stopped as another thought grass-hopped in. 'They've put me in a private room,' she said worriedly. 'Nash, I just can't afford such a luxury.'
The hand holding hers held firmly as now Perry gripped on to him. 'Naturally I shall settle the account,' he assured her quietly.