Nurse Linnet's Release (12 page)

But she thought that he looked faintly rueful as he held her hand for a moment and then walked out to his car, where Diana was waiting to say good-bye to him alone.

CHAPTER
XII
I

The next two weeks slipped away very quietly and uneventfully, and Diana still improved—in fact she was beginning to look and feel almost herself again. Dr. Shane Willoughby telephoned to say that he was having one of his exactingly busy spells and he might not be able to get to see her as often as he would like, so he suggested putting her in the care of the local G.P., who would be able to report to him on her condition.

Diana s
a
id nothing about this, apart from looking a bit peeved; but the local G.P. she found quite a pleasant man, and reasonably young, so she was not against the idea of his visits. Linnet had grown to look upon Diana as curiously feline in her reactions to most things. She was either pleased and affable, like a good-tempered kitten, or she became short-tempered and showed her claws. She extended a kind of careless, half-intimate friendship to Linnet, and told her things about her past life that made Linnet wonder more than ever whether Adrian Shane Willoughby knew exactly what he was about in betraying interest in her.

She admitted that boredom drove her to do things she often regretted afterwards, and in the case of her marriage boredom had caused her to flirt with any man who came her way, which had
caused her husband needless jealousy.

“I was in love with him—very much in love with him in a kind of way,” she admitted. “But he wanted to order my life and bully me, and I wouldn’t allow it. Did you know he shot himself in the end?”

She posed the question so casually that Linnet was shocked as well as startled, and when she admitted that she knew nothing about it Diana, in her turn, looked surprised.

“I imagined Guy had told you all about it. He knows—everything there is to know!” she said.

Guy had returned from his trip to London, which had lasted for several days, with an outsize diamond of flawless quality set between shoulders of platinum and embedded in cream-coloured velvet lining a ringcase when Linnet first saw it. He borrowed one of her gloves for size, and the fit was absolutely perfect. Linnet was dumb with admiration when she saw the ring slide easily on to her finger and render the fragile whiteness of her hand almost spectacularly lovely. The delicate pink finger-nails looked like shells, her smooth wrist looked small and fine-boned and patrician. In fact, such a hand, ornamented in such a way, might never have performed such plebian tasks as scrubbing-down in a sluice-room, to say nothing of scrubbing floors on occasion.

Guy, as he watched her face, asked:

“Like it?”

“
Like it
?”
Her small face glowed. “I’ve never possessed—or
seen
—anything like it before! I shall be terrified of losing it.”

“Don’t worry. You won’t lose it.” He carried her hand up to his lips and caressed it softly. “And now all that remains is for us to announce our engagement to the world! I’ve written to your father and received his permission to marry you, although naturally he wants to see me as soon as possible, and we must get into Kent at the earliest opportunity. And I’ve also drafted a notice for
The Times.
You’ll see it when it appears.”

“Oh!” Linnet exclaimed, not sure that she wasn’t a little frightened by the finality of such a step as this, even while feeling thrilled by the fact that Guy’s ring adorned her finger. “What—what does the notice say?”

He quoted, with a faint smile on his lips:

“
The engagement is announced between Guy Sommerville Richard Monteith, only son of the late Mr. S.R. Monteith, and of Mrs. Monteith, of Lady’s Mead, Hertfordshire, and Linnet Anne, youngest daughter of Dr. and Mrs. F. Kintyre, of Heatherbridge, Kent
.”

“Oh!” Linnet exclaimed again, and felt herself go oddly and unreasonably cold.

Guy looked at her with one eyebrow raised.

“No use thinking about backing out now,” he told her.

“I wasn’t thinking of backing out.”

“That’s just as well, because you won’t have an opportunity to back out—ever! You’re in this now for good and all! The next step is to get you safely tied up as my wife!”

Linnet wrote to Cathie Blake and told her about her engagement, and Cathie replied with rapturous congratulations, obviously more thrilled by the news than by any other news she had received for a long time.

“
Linnet, my pet, you’re a deep one
!
”
she declared, in her long and rambling reply.
“
And to think that I once warned you against Major Monteith! I didn’t know at that time that you possessed something which the rest of us at Aston House plainly haven’t got, because we none of us seem to be able to persuade a rich man to marry us! Sister Newton is thinking of becoming engaged to a parson she’s known for years who lives somewhere up in the north of England, and Jane Farr—that baby!—is angling for a houseman at St. Faith’s. Yours truly is getting along quite nicely with Pat Murphey, and an engagement may shortly be announced! But not in
The Times!

Matron has proved herself a snob of snobs by pasting the cutting about you up in the hall, where all and sundry can see it!
I
suppose you’ll have to ask her to the wedding
?
”

Linnet paused to get a mental picture of the people who would be viewing that extract from
The Times
affixed to the Notice Board in Aston House, and she wondered whether Dr. Shane Willoughby would be amongst them. But there was no reason why he should be, because so far as she knew he had no other patient's at Aston House, and it might be months before he had another. But it was very likely that he did read
The Times.

The week-end at Lady’s Mead was arranged for the third week-end they spent in Hertfordshire, when Diana was so nearly recovered that it could do her little harm, and might even do her a
certain amount of good.

Guy collected them, of course, in the Bentley, that was so superbly comfortable that Linnet always felt she wanted to go for really long drives in it. Mrs. Monteith was all ready to receive them when they arrived, and promised to be a very gracious and charming hostess over their weekend. She had already written to Linnet to tell her how delighted she was that her son was going to marry her, and Linnet was not therefore very much taken aback when she received an almost motherly kiss from her on arrival.

She and Diana were given rooms adjoining, and they were both such delightful rooms that even Diana expressed the utmost approval. Linnet’s had a moss-green carpet and an oyster-pink bedspread and quilted satin bedhead to match. Diana’s was all lavender and palest grey. Linnet had a superb outlook over the finest of the lawns and the great cedar tree that stood in the middle of it; Diana’s outlook was a little more restricted, but still infinitely satisfying after an outlook over a small cottage garden.

“I can’t help repeating that I think you’re
very, very
lucky, my dear!” Diana told Linnet, when she entered her room before starting to dress for dinner that first night. “And tonight we’ve really got to dress,” Diana had insisted beforehand. “I know Aunt Pen is quite unbending about these matters, and in fact she’s a little like the District Commissioner in the jungle who got into a dinner-jacket every night although he was the only white man for miles around. Aunt Pen would change into evening-dress even in the middle of the Sahara.”

Now she wandered to the window and looked out at Linnet’s peerless view, and then looked at the roses on her dressing-table.

“Have you noticed,” she asked, “that they’re scarlet? Scarlet as heart’s blood!”

Linnet felt a touch of blood dye her own cheeks as she gently fingered the roses. She had already decided that possibly it was Guy who had chosen her flowers.

Diana watched her face carefully, and then smiled strangely.

“Do you know,” she said, “I can’t get over this complete capitulation on the part of Guy! It’s true that no one ever really expected him to marry—and to choose someone as simple and unsophisticated as you is the thing which really strikes me as amazing! Once upon a time I rather fancied him for myself, before ever I met my husband, and he wasn’t by any means altogether indifferent to me! But, don’t worry,” as Linnet looked up quickly, “he never thought seriously about me. At least, he never asked me to marry him—otherwise I might, I just
might,
have agreed to do so!”

Linnet said nothing, and Diana smiled again.

“If I had agreed to marry him—that is to say if he
had
asked me!—you wouldn’t be spending this weekend here, would you?”

Then she drifted away back to her own room and Linnet started to get ready for the evening.

She didn’t wish to wear the green dress in which she had first dined with Guy, and so she put on a little pinky-beige georgette with a swirling skirt that suited her almost as well. And as it had an off-the-shoulder neckline that she was a little shy about, she added a gauzy stole she had made herself and to which she had attached a few sequins.

By the time she went downstairs she was looking—or so she hoped—a worthy future daughter-in-law for the elegant Mrs. Monteith, although she still could not believe that one day she would be mistress of this lovely house herself.

In the drawing-room, when she entered it, there were masses of flowers—flowers banked up in corners, and filling every available container. The long low room was filled with all the glory of the evening sunshine, and Guy was standing waiting for her in the wide window.

For a moment she felt so proud to think that she already all but belonged to him that her heart missed a beat. There was no one else in the room, and he was looking dark and sleek and elegant, wearing the faultlessly tailored dinner-jacket which fitted his well-held shoulders as if it loved them, and the look in his eyes as she moved towards him sent waves of pleasant confusion welling over her.

“My lovely one,” he said. He took her in his arms, but he did not kiss her. Perhaps he was afraid he might spoil her make-up. His hand lightly stroked her hair, and he examined every detail of her face with a kind of fixed absorption as the radiant sunset light poured over her. “Are you happy, Linnet?” he asked softly.

“Of course I am,” she answered. “Are you?”

He smiled she thought a little oddly.

“I could be happier,” he admitted. “I shall be
much
happier when you really belong to me! I’ve been brought up to believe that there’s many a slip—! Well, you know the rest
...
!
But there isn’t going to be any slip in our case,” he concluded, with a kind of cold fierceness. “I’ll see to that!”

At dinner they sat in the light of tapering candles although the afterglow lingered brilliantly outside the windows, and the atmosphere of the dining-room was cool, and flowerscented, and very dignified. Diana wore a dress of iceblue lame which the candle flames softened almost to silver, and Linnet’s pinky-beige became almost a pinky-pearl. Mrs. Monteith looked a very finished product indeed in black velvet and pearls, with her fine, silvery hair treated to a delicate blue rinse which did a great deal to emphasize the extraordinary delicacy of her complexion, and Guy, although the only man present, looked exactly fitted to such surroundings.

Linnet was aware of the portraits on the walls—portraits of Guy’s ancestors—and she felt they were looking down at her and taking in details of her appearance just as he had done, only in a more detached and critical manner, because from their point of view she was just an outsider.

Whenever Guy’s eyes met hers he and she might have been alone at the table, and she thought Diana’s expression was amused at times, and that her eyes sparkled a little derisively at others. When dinner was over she consented to be shown a new game of Patience by her aunt, and Guy took Linnet off out into the garden.

But the dew was heavy, and it was a little cool, and he was very careful of her tonight.

“You mustn’t catch cold,” he said. “I don’t forget that you had pneumonia in the winter, and you’re so much like thistledown that I’ve got to be careful.”

In this mood, his gentleness and his tenderness appealed to her very much, and as a change from the somewhat concentrated fierceness of his love-making were rather restful. He took her to the library and showed her the portrait of the eighteenth-century admiral over the fireplace who was one of his direct forbears, and several curios which he himself had brought home from the East and also from Africa, and a photograph of his bungalow in Rhodesia. To her it looked more like a large and impressive house, surrounded by spacious verandas. He described the colourful growth to her, the yellow-blossomed acacias and the bougainvillaea which draped the veranda pillars, the scarlet hibiscus and the tremendously tall lilies which grew at the sides of the lawns.

“I think you’ll like it,” he said, watching her face as she studied the photograph. “I’ve a feeling it will suit you better than England. You need warmth and sunshine, and the atmosphere in Rhodesia is sparkling and fresh. I can’t wait to get you there!”

She smiled up at him.