Nurse for the Doctor (19 page)

“What is it,
querida
?” came in definitely gentle tones. Josie tried to keep her slim figure erect, while she ran nervous fingers over the carved flowers and fruit of the bed post.

“
Senora
, I have to go home”—she took another deep breath—“to England! I would like to be released at once, because there are urgent reasons why I should—why I
must
go home! Carlotta is very well able to take care of you now that you are so much better; you have your own doctor quite close to you, and—and I would like to catch the
Sud
Express tonight.”

“I see,” Dona Amelie said, as calmly as if the request had been for an evening stroll in the Paseo del Prado. “And you say it is urgent?”

“Very—urgent!”

The old lady nodded.

“I will not attempt to pry, child, and you shall go! Leave everything to Carlotta—your packing, your ticket, the reservation that will be necessary if you are to be sure of a sleeper. And it will be advisable if you rest during the afternoon, although you do not normally take a
siesta.
In fact, I think you should go to your room now, because you do not look to me as if you have had a very good night.

“I—I’m quite all right,” Josie stammered, although as a matter of fact she was a little taken aback by the ease with which she had won her point—her immediate return to England. She had expected a little opposition to the idea at least. “I’m not a bit tired.”

“No, but you will be by tonight, and a sleeper is never a very comfortable thing, or that is my experience.” She waved a dismissing white hand gently. “Go, now, my dear, and we will meet again before you leave, and drink a farewell glass of wine together.”

Josie went, a lump in her throat, a bewildered conviction at the back of her mind that all this was not actually happening. She, who had come to Madrid only three days ago, was going away from Spain for good, and it was by her own choice. She could have stayed, but she had decided to go—and having made that decision she felt as if she were going down into a vortex of despair.

She lay on her bed for the rest of that morning and felt like someone who was only partly alive. Last night she had seen and talked with Carlos de Palheiro—after tonight she would never see him again! It was like being told that one would never drink water again, or eat sustaining food, or know what it was like to walk in the sunlight. By her own choice she was condemning herself to the shadowy side of the street for the rest of her life, and yet there was nothing she could do about it.

She could not bear to remain, knowing that the man she loved might soon be married to another woman. She could not bear to be near him and not be a part of his life.

Carlotta came stealing into her room with a late luncheon tray, and told her that everything was arranged. A first-class ticket had been procured for her, even a sleeper had been secured. There would be time for her to have a light evening meal before she left, and Dona Amelie had given instructions that it was to be served to her in her room. But before that she would like to see Nurse Winter in her own room, for the promised farewell drink.

When Josie, dressed for her journey, entered her room, Dona Amelie was up and dressed. She was beautifully dressed for the evening, and dinner with her nephew.

“Such a pity,” she said, as Carlotta put a glass of wine into Josie’s shaking hand, “that my nephew will not be here in time to say goodbye to you, and thank you for all your kindness!” She was staring at the glowing amber in her own glass, and did not lift her eyes as she spoke. “But I am sure he would wish me to thank you on his behalf. And on my own behalf—” She made a little sign to Carlotta, and the latter handed her an envelope, sealed, and bearing the superscription:
Miss Josephine Winter
— and she pressed it into Josie’s hand. And as she did so she lifted her eyes. For the first time the English girl saw in them a certain mistiness.

“I will not say goodbye,” the old lady said. “
Vaya con Dios
.”

Josie found herself outside the room, clutching the envelope she would have liked to refuse, only words wouldn’t come to her aid, and translating over and over again to herself that parting blessing:

“Travel with God.”

It was impossible for her to make a pretence of eating anything, and Carlotta didn’t try and force her. But she had all her things beautifully packed, and when the moment for actual departure arrived they were carried downstairs by the chauffeur. Carlotta, a small, spare, grey-haired woman who had served Dona Amelie faithfully for many years, stood at the foot of the steps and watched until the car had disappeared from sight.

Josie looked neither to right nor left as the car swept her away, but she had the feeling that other eyes apart from Carlotta’s witnessed her departure.

At the station she was caught up in the whirl of frenzied excitement that inevitably pervades a great railway terminus when the arrival or departure of an important train is due. Josie’s train was waiting for her, and Dona Amelie’s grizzled chauffeur fought his way through the press with the luggage. He insisted on placing it in her compartment himself, handed her her ticket, and received the generous tip with which she rewarded him with a look of surprise. Then he touched his cap in acknowledgement several times, smiled at her a little uncertainly, told her about the various stops, and how soon she could hope to reach her destination, and then withdrew on to the platform.

Josie felt like someone who had been turned a little numb as she waited for the train to start. Part of her longed for it to start. The other part was dreading the moment just as someone suffering from claustrophobia dreads plunging into a tunnel.

An elderly gentleman sat down opposite her, and made himself thoroughly comfortable. A severe-looking woman wrapped herself in a travelling rug, and took the other corner. The lights in the carriage seemed hard and bright, shining down on Josie, and the whole station itself was a sea of brightness, echoing noise and constant movement.

Josie looked at her watch. Four minutes to go. She felt a little sick. She studied the people on the platform and thought, “Well, at least there is no one near and dear to me to see off, so I am spared that sort of anguish!”

And then she shut her eyes, because the lights were really intolerable—she actually was beginning to develop a kind of migraine—and the endless movement on the platform bewildered her.

Someone pushed open the sliding door to the corridor, and a quiet voice issued an instruction:

“Get the luggage!”

The words were in Spanish, but she knew enough Spanish by this time to understand them at once, and the voice was one she would never forget. A hand touched her arm.

“Come along!” said the same quiet voice incisively.

Josie followed him out into the corridor. She moved like an automaton, while behind her Fernandez snatched her suitcase down from the rack. The excitement on the platform reached boiling point when the long train started to slide away from it, and people waved frantically, called last minute messages, and even blew kisses. Josie felt a hand grasp her arm and draw her away from the rather desperate feverishness of it all, and she hardly dared to look to right or left as she was propelled outside to the waiting car. Not Dona Amelie’s old-fashioned car, but the Marquis de Palheiro’s long, black, glittering limousine.

She relaxed against the pearl-grey upholstery and shut her eyes. Then anger coursed through her like a flood—anger and rebellion, and she opened her eyes.

“How dared you take me off the train like that?” she demanded.

The marquis, who was sitting beside her, answered even more quietly than before as he looked down at her: “I dared because I had to. Because it was the only thing I could do,” he told her simply.

CHAPTER
XVII

Josie
felt the smooth motion of the car as it bore her away from Madrid’s big central railway station, and for the first time that day she knew that time was not a factor she any longer had to reckon with. Not in the immediate future, anyway. Her train had gone, and she was still in Madrid, and although she had no idea where she was being taken, she did know that it didn’t matter very much.

Nothing mattered very much just then, save that the motion of the car was soothing, that it was delicious to lie with her head against yielding cushions, and not even trouble to think. Although she had rested all day she was all at once terribly tired. It was just as if she were possessed by an inertia that wouldn’t let her think, and her spurt of anger having died, she didn’t even want to talk.

The marquis had taken her off the train, but no doubt he had an excellent reason for that. He had said he had to do so, but as she stared out at the lights of Madrid—so sharply accentuated by the cold, velvet darkness of the night—she was not really curious. She only wished they could drive on and on, and that he wouldn’t mind if she fell asleep, and that once she wakened she would still find herself where she was.

She felt his hand cover both of hers that were limply clasped in her lap.

“Josie!”

“Yes?” She turned her head rather languidly, and looked at him. The roof-lamp was on, and she could see his face dimly. His eyes were very dark—the sort of dark eyes it would be good to drown in, if only they were pools, she thought a little lightheadedly.

“Josie, why did you run away?”

“I wasn’t running away. I wanted to go home.”

“And have you never thought that here in Spain there is a home waiting to be offered you?”

“No.” A sigh quivered down the whole length of her frame. “No.”

“Have you never for one moment believed that I love you?”

This time her breath caught. Suddenly her lower lip quivered, and he saw it. He saw the utter disbelief in the great brown eyes as they were turned towards him the sudden hopefulness behind the disbelief, shining like a star between the brightly-tipped lashes.

“You—love me?”

“Since the very first moment that we met!”

“Oh!” Josie breathed, and then the roof-lamp went out and his arm was slipped behind her, and he drew her almost fiercely close against him.

“Josie, you foolish—you incomprehensibly foolish child! So dependable and capable and wise in many ways, and yet creating only a web of unhappiness for yourself because of a stupidity one would never believe.”

“But, I don’t understand,” she whispered into his neck. “I honestly don’t understand.”

“There are many things you have to understand yet,
querida
, and more than one explanation is due to you. But, for the moment, this is enough—this is more than enough!”

And his lips closed over hers as they had closed once before, and without the volition of her will she clutched at him and clung to him, and the kiss went on and on while the big car sped on its way noiselessly, and they might have been travelling on a cloud of bliss instead of inside a smooth-running modern chariot.

When at last he lifted his head Josie’s lips were burning, and her whole body was trembling in a way it had never trembled before—not even on that night when he had kissed her in the garden.

His voice sounded quite strange as he said: “That other time, when I tasted the sweetness of that flower-like mouth of yours, was the only gleam of hope I had until you told me I had been wrong about Duveen. Until then I’d suffered an agony because you seemed to like him so—and that very first time we had lunch together and you let him hold your hand. Oh, Josie, never again will any man so much as touch your hand without my express permission—and that will never be granted. I love you with every beat of my heart, and every breath I draw, and I want to hear you say that you love me in that way too.”

“I do—I do!”

“Then why were you so cruelly running away from me?”

“Because—last night...”

“Last night should never have happened to you.” He drew in his breath as if even the memory of it hurt him. “When I said goodbye to you down there by the sea I knew there would have to be a period of waiting for you and I, not because of the accident to
Tia
Amelie, but because there were certain things I had to do—obligations I had to be free of.”

“Was—Sylvia an obligation?” she asked, hiding her face against him, while he spoke with his lips almost pressed to her hair.

In a way she was ...” His arm tightened as he felt her shrink for a moment. “But not a serious obligation, my loved one! You see, she is Maria’s friend, and the two of them had spent quite a long time together in America—Maria had stayed for several months as the guest of the Petersens, and because Sylvia was not happy owing to the acquisition of a new stepmother she brought her back to Spain with her. I was happy for her to remain with us as long as she pleased—or I was until I realized that—Well, until I realized that she might not wish to go away at all...”

“You mean she wanted to marry you?”

He smiled into her hair, and if she had seen his eyes she would have realized that there was more humor in them than she would have ever believed possible, considering that his disposition was normally rather serious.

“There have been women who have wanted to marry me before,
querida
—not so much because of any charms I possess, but because there are quite a lot of other things I do possess that are more material. Miss Petersen was a little bedazzled, I think, by the idea of a title—she has quite a lot of money of her own, and wealth would not attract her—but
I
was not bedazzled by Miss Petersen.”

“She is very lovely,” Josie said, huskily. “And I am almost certain she is in love with you.”

“
You
are in love with me, my darling,” bending almost protectively above her, and kissing her with a kind of restrained hunger, “and your love is all I shall ever want in this life. And you are so much lovelier than any woman I have ever met that it would be useless to compare you.”

Josie looked up at him in bewildered bliss.

“Go on,” she said, “about Miss Petersen—and your obligations.”

“I wanted to give her a few weeks longer in Madrid, and then I hoped that Maria would cleverly persuade her to depart. In the meantime you were, as I thought, on the Costa Brava, still benefiting after your illness from the sea air, and secure with
Tia
Amelie. It didn’t take her very long to discover the way I felt about you, and she promised that she would never allow you to be overworked, and that if she became too much for you she would get the doctor to provide another nurse to assist you. She also promised that she would not allow you to depart under any circumstances, and that she would write to me about you and let me know exactly how you were.”

“And—did she?”

“Oh, yes.
Tia
Amelie is a wonderful correspondent, and I pictured you both very happy down there on the coast. I knew—and this gave me the greatest comfort—that you were well away from Michael Duveen, and I planned, whatever happened, to visit you before Christmas and ask you to marry me. You see I—I imagined you knew what was in my heart, and that you would be content to wait!”

“That was why you spoke of—the sweetness of the rewards when they came?”

“Of course! Would I have asked if you could endure our separation, and spoken of those rewards, if I had not been completely serious about you?”

“I don’t know. I—” Once again she hid her face. “You see, I had a lot of time to think, and—Michael hinted—”

“Yes?” sharply. “What did he hint?”

She thought perhaps she should not have involved Michael, but it was too late now.

“I think he honestly thought you were planning to marry Miss Petersen. He said that Dona Maria thought so, too.”

“Maria knew—from the beginning—how I felt about you.”

“Oh!”

“So Michael let you believe I was serious about Sylvia? Did he?” She nodded. “And what did you think—last night? When you arrived for the party?”

“I thought—it was a party at which you would announce your engagement.”

“To another woman?—Although I love you!”

“I couldn’t be sure, I ... And you were very attentive to Miss Petersen—always!” She suddenly felt a little indignant, when she thought of her sufferings of that day—and worse sufferings the night before. “If you were merely playing the part of host, you did it very well, and you must remember I had no real idea how you felt about anything. I think most people in my position would have believed you were going to marry Sylvia. Michael honestly, I am sure, thought so, and at least he did ask me to marry him several weeks ago.”

“He did?”

“Yes. And I think he was serious—at the time. Poor Michael doesn’t know what he wants from life.”

“One thing is certain,” he said, between his teeth, “he will not have you.” She was amazed to feel him trembling with a kind of fury. “Last night he completed the misery that rushed over me when you arrived with that devoted Cavalho in attendance.
Tia
Amelie must have had one thought only in mind when she decided to get you included as a guest, and that was to issue me a warning in case I waited too long. And you were so cool and distant to me—you looked at me even with a kind of contempt—that I was afraid I had already delayed too long. And I telephoned this morning to invite myself to dinner tonight, for the sole purpose of seeing you, and having things out with you.”

“I know—I mean, I know you invited yourself to dinner. But I didn’t want to see you.” She caught her breath as she recalled how unhappy she had been that morning. “And in order to avoid seeing you I decided I must go home.”

Carlos’s arm strained her to him, and he muttered something huskily in Spanish. She had already discovered that in moments of stress his English evaded him a little.

“And how do you think I felt,” he asked, after a moment, “when
Tia
Amelie contacted me when you had actually left for the station and told me that you were going home to England? Apparently she had been trying to get in touch with me all day, but I was out; and although she tried my clubs—everywhere she thought I might be—it was not until you were practically leaving Madrid that she got through to me. Oh, Josie,” his voice sounding actually strangled, “that was the cruellest thing you could do to me, and if I was wrong not to make myself clear to you weeks ago then at least you can feel now that I have been punished. With so very few minutes to snatch you off the train I thought I was living in a nightmare.”

“I’m sorry,” Josie said but at heart she was glad that he had suffered just a little. And then her conscience pricked her, and she put up a hand and touched his cheek in the darkness. “What would you have done if—if it had been too late to snatch me off the train?”

“Chartered a plane and flown after you to England, of course,” he answered immediately. “But the thought of you and your unhappiness would have upset me very much, because
Tia
Amelie did tell me you were very unhappy—she knew that!”

“Dear Dona Amelie!” Josie’s eyes grew very soft as she thought of her, and the efforts she had made on her behalf. And then her love for him rushed up and filled every corner of her heart, and she added, in rather a choking little voice: “Oh, Carlos—darling! I’m sorry I did what I did. It was rather cruel—I realize that now. But you must understand that never—at any time—have I been sure of you.”

“Except now? You are sure of me now?”

She quivered in his hold, pressing herself against him. “Yes, I’m—sure of you now.”

And then as he kissed her again she wound her arms around his neck and held him tightly to make up for the fact that he had only one arm with which to do the same to her.

Some ten minutes later, when the car still seemed to be travelling along very smoothly, although there were not quite so many lights, he recollected their immediate position.

“I promised
Tia
Amelie to take you back at once,” he said; “but my instruction to Fernandez was to drive on until I ordered him to stop, and I had better do so now.” He addressed the Chauffeur through the speaking-tube. “We will now return to
Tia
Amelie,” and he lay back and drew her back into the hold of his arm. “She is old, and will be growing very impatient.”

“You—she—she approves of your—your interest in me?” she asked shyly, not knowing how otherwise to put it.

“She approves of my wanting to marry you.”

“But you have not yet asked me to marry you—not really asked me!”

“No; but I will. At the moment we are arriving, so I cannot do so with all the formality you seem to require, and which is of course desirable; but before the evening is out I will most decidedly ask you to marry me.” And he smiled at her very tenderly as he helped her from the car.

Dona Amelie didn’t wait to receive them in her drawing room; she came out into the hall.

“So you’ve brought her back!” she said, and her old face seemed to be working a little as she looked at her nephew.

“Yes, I’ve brought her back,” he said quietly.

Dona Amelie held out both her arms to Josie, and for a few seconds the girl was folded close, and the perfume of sandalwood enveloped her. Then she heard the indomitable old lady she had lived with for weeks say in a tone of heartfelt gratitude: “I’m so glad! I couldn’t have borne to lose her—except when the right moment comes!”

But she didn’t elaborate on the right moment, or say anything else appropriate, of inappropriate—according to what had taken place in the car on the way from the station, and which she had yet to learn—to the situation just then. Instead she announced that dinner was ready to be served, and they could dispense with formality for that one night, since Carlos had not had time to change into evening things, and Josie was wearing her travelling suit. But the girl looked curiously radiant, she thought, and she had never before seen Carlos look quite as he looked now. So she ushered them both towards the big dining room, and didn’t seem at all surprised when neither of them seemed very hungry, although the fact that she ordered champagne to be served with the meal indicated that she had high hopes of hearing something she wished to hear before very long.

But she was the essence of tact, and they had had rather a gruelling day—or certainly Josie had—and she had no intention of attempting to extract information before they were willing to pass it on to her. So as soon as they returned to the main drawing room, she declared herself not yet capable of staying up very late, and intimated she would like to retire to bed immediately. So Josie saw her upstairs to her room and handed her over to the devoted ministrations of Carlotta before flying along to her own room and making sure that her appearance was all that it should be.

When she went downstairs again the coffee-equipage had just been wheeled into the drawing room, and Carlos was standing over by one of the big windows and looking out at the lights of Madrid. He turned as soon as she entered, waited until the servant had withdrawn, and then crossed the room to meet her.

Filled with shyness she found herself unable to meet his eyes.

He put her into a chair.

“You—you will have some coffee?” she asked.

A tender smile appeared in his eyes.

“The correct thing to say would be: ‘Will you have some coffee, Carlos, my darling?”

Her hand trembled as she lifted the heavy silver sugar tongs.

“You—you aren’t—officially—my darling yet,” she reminded him.

“True.” He stood looking down at her, at the small, shapely head covered in soft, fair curls, the delicate complexion—no amount of Costa Brava sun had been able to really tan it—the little unexpectedly firm chin, the flowerlike mouth. And his gaze having arrived at her mouth he suddenly dropped to his knees beside her chair, and huskily repeated “True!” Then he removed the sugar tongs from her hand, lifted her other and managed to secure them both tightly as he asked: “Josie! Please say you will be my most beloved wife ... I’ve never asked a woman to marry me before, but a Spaniard should be correct about these things, and there is your father who should be approached. However, he is not here, and you don’t think he will hesitate to give you to me, do you, darling?” as if the sudden fear that he might had crossed his mind.

Josie smiled a little whimsically.

“My father has never thought of possessing a marquis for a son-in-law. If you were just a very ordinary person like himself, I know he wouldn’t hesitate about it,” she ended a little breathlessly.

Carlos looked at her gravely.

“And you Josie? Would you prefer it if I were just an ordinary Spaniard—a farmer, like your father?”

She touched his empty sleeve gently.

“If you—had to work for your living—I could do so much to help you. If you were a poor man I could do the things a woman loves to do for a man—sew buttons on his shirts, and mend his socks, and cook for him. None of that will be necessary if I marry you. But,” looking at him with anxious eyes of her own, “there is another side of the picture. Sylvia Petersen would have made you entirely the right sort of wife—she is far more beautiful than I can ever hope to be, she has lived her life in the sort of world you’ve lived yours in always, and she would never be likely to fail you. I—I’m so ordinary .”

“Josie,” he said sternly, “do you wish me to smother you with kisses before you’ve said that all-important ‘yes’?”

Josie’s eyes filled suddenly with bright and shining tears. Her lips quivered with emotion.

“I only want to say ‘yes’ quickly,” she managed, and was caught and held fast.

His lustrous eyes looked down at her adoringly.

“If
you
ever fail me, Josie,” he said, “then I shall never believe in anything again!”

Later he inquired anxiously: “And it doesn’t distress you that I have only one arm? One arm with which to hold you close?”

She shook her honey-gold head.

“Why should it, when I have two?”

He kissed her eyes, the entrancing soft curve of her cheek, the tip of her nose, and again her lips.

At last he said: “We will invite all your family here for the wedding, and I want us to be married soon ... As soon as it can possibly be arranged.”

Josie’s brown eyes looked up with complete capitulation.

“It couldn’t be too soon for me,” she answered, and was horrified that she was incapable of dissimulation.

And then suddenly she remembered something. She remembered the morning when she had seen him riding into the stable courtyard at the villa, with Sylvia perched on his pillion. And she asked, although she was certain she knew the answer: “Why did you suggest that I should ride with you one morning, and then take Sylvia Petersen pillion-riding instead? Because it was Sylvia, wasn’t it?”

He remembered the morning just as clearly as she did. “No, my darling, it wasn’t. It was the daughter of my bailiff, who is just fourteen years old, and on holiday from her convent school farther along the coast. Why,” his eyes sparkled, “I believe you were jealous!”