Nurse Linnet's Release (13 page)

“If you like it I shall like it!”

He kissed her between her slightly fly-away eyebrows, and then almost reverently kissed each of her eyes.

But in the morning she met him when she was coming from the bathroom, and he had obviously had a very good night, and was in high spirits. The little flame she didn’t altogether like to see leapt into his eyes when they caught sight of her, in her white candlewick dressing-gown, her small feet thrust into her tiny pink satin mules, while her hair was damp and curly from her bath. He insisted on removing the various items of impedimenta, such as her spongebag and big bath towel, from her arms, and put them on a side table while he took her into his own arms and kissed her with a kind of restrained hunger.

“I’ve got plans for us today,” he told her. “I’m going to take you away from the others until tea-time at least, and we’ll go off somewhere in the car.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t possibly leave Diana all that time—!” she began, but he stopped her speech with his mouth.

“You can, and you’re going to! Diana is no longer much of an invalid, and in this house, with my mother and several servants, she can’t possibly come to any harm. Besides, I told her last night I was going to take you out for the day, and she agreed.”

“She—did?”

“She did!”

“Oh, well, in that case—”

“In that case, you don’t shrink from the thought of coming out with me for the day?”

“Of course not!”

He caught her up close against him for a moment, and then reluctantly let her go.

“At ten o’clock,” he told her, “we’ll be off!”

They did have a very nice day together, particularly as it was a very fine day, and in spite of the fact that it was Sunday, and Linnet had the feeling that she ought not to have missed church, she enjoyed it. They stopped for lunch at a little roadside inn, and then went on to the coast, where they walked on the edge of green-clad cliffs, and watched blue seas curling inwards in the hot sunshine. Linnet wore an off-white linen suit and no hat, and when it was very warm she removed the jacket and Guy carried it for her, and they sat for a long time on the very edge of the cliffs, with the sea seeping quietly below them into a kind of sheltered bay.

Guy stretched himself out at full length, and presently he announced that he wanted a pillow. She offered to fold up her jacket for his head, but he looked at her reproachfully and asked: “And what’s the matter with your lap? I’d rather put my head in your lap.”

She offered no objection, and he lay very quiet and appeared to fall asleep for a while. Then he opened his eyes and looked up at her.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

She smiled down at him.

“Nothing very much.”

Somewhat to her surprise a frown creased his brow. He sat up and looked at her a little disapprovingly.

“That isn’t the correct answer,” he said. “You should have been thinking of me, and even if you weren’t actually thinking of me you should have said you were.”

Linnet continued to smile, rather amused by his petulance.

“But you were asleep, and not thinking of me.”

“I wasn’t
...
!
I was thinking of you all the time, even although I had my eyes closed.” He picked up her left hand and looked at his ring, blazing like white fire on the slender third finger. “Why is it,” he asked, “that I never
really
seem close to you, even when I’ve got you in my arms? You’re always withholding something—something I’ve got to possess if I’m going to have the whole of you!” He took her by the shoulders and shook her slightly. “Linnet, you infuriate me, because you’re the first woman in my life who has even attempted to withhold anything from me!”

Linnet’s face went suddenly both grave and thoughtful.

“And have there been so many women in your life?” she asked, thinking all at once of Diana.

He gave her another shake, more gentle than the first.

“Of course not! I was feeling frustrated—deprived of my rightful dues
...
!
But you’re so small and composed and withdrawn, at times, Linnet, and if you are as much in love with me as I am with you I don’t understand how that can happen to you.”

Linnet was silent, staring out over the sea, in which the shadows of the white clouds sailing overhead were deeps and shallows. Far out on the horizon the long shape of a tanker showed, with its smoke blur trailing behind it.

“Don’t forget,” she said slowly, “that it was you who insisted on us becoming engaged! I would have preferred to wait a while.”

“Wait for what?” he inquired, rather harshly.

“To get to know one another a little better, of course.” She looked at him with large, disturbed eyes. “You do realize of course that we hardly know one another at all? That is to say, we know hardly anything about the things we’re each interested in—the things we consider important! I can’t help thinking that there were several fences we might have taken more slowly if you hadn’t insisted on rushing things.”

“Meaning you’re
not
really in love with me?”

His voice sounded as if he was containing himself with difficulty, and her eyes became more gentle as she turned them up to his face.

“Yes, Guy, I do love you!” She did, she
did,
she told herself—she loved him in a way she didn’t understand, in a way she had never imagined she would fall in love, because it rather frightened her sometimes, and it was not in the least the kind of love she had, when she was a little younger, believed that she would one day feel for a man. When she was with him it was as much a part of her, and as necessary to her, as the air she breathed, but when she was away from him she did sometimes wonder—she wasn’t so
absolutely
certain. “Yes, I do love you,” she repeated quickly, and he stood up and pulled her to her feet.

“We’d better be getting back now,” he said.

His eyes were dark, a little tormented and a little sullen. The slightly crooked twist to his mouth was very noticeable, and that too looked a little sullen. In some ways, she thought, he was very much a spoiled boy still, and with a mother like Mrs. Monteith he must always have had a good deal of his own way. His father had died when he was very young, which had no doubt affected his upbringing.

“Come on,” he said, smiling at her crookedly, “and prove your love by getting back into the car. We don’t want to waste any more time here. Let’s get back.”

And he drove very fast on the homeward road, although they were not in any real danger of being late for dinner, and within a few miles of Lady’s Mead he insisted on stopping at a roadhouse and having a drink. Linnet drank orange squash, but he had two whiskey and sodas, and then they went on their way again, and when they finally arrived home it was to find Mrs. Monteith and Diana both dressed formally and waiting for them.

Linnet was apologetic because they were late—she felt the stop by the way had been unnecessary, especially when it had become a little prolonged—but Mrs. Monteith smiled at her and assured her that they were neither of them in disgrace. Linnet took a bath hurriedly and changed into her green cocktail dress, and when she descended to the drawing-room Guy was already ahead of her and pouring out drinks for his mother and Diana.

He still looked a little like a thwarted schoolboy, she thought, although there was a faint smile in his eyes as he handed her a glass of sherry. She noticed that he was very liberal in helping himself, and when they went in to dinner he insisted on the manservant bringing up a bottle of champagne from the cellar, and although there was no time to do much about cooling it on ice Diana at least seemed to appreciate it, as well as Guy. The hostess, apparently, either disliked or preferred not to indulge in champagne, and that left only Linnet to sip at a glass in a way that made it last throughout the meal. When Guy sought to replenish her glass she shook her head firmly and put her hand protectively over the top of it.

Diana looked at her with an unmistakably derisive smile in her eyes, and Guy’s smile grew crooked.

“Linnet’s a little Puritan,” Diana remarked, looking gleaming and golden in a golden gown. “I don’t think you’ll ever change her, Guy.”

“We’ll see,” he said, and looked at Linnet over the top of his own brimming glass. She thought that for once his eyes mocked her a little, as they had mocked her in the very beginning of their acquaintance.

“You’ll have to work very hard on her if you’re going to affect any very noticeable alterations,” Diana declared, and Mrs. Monteith looked first a little perplexed and then disturbed.

“I think Linnet is quite perfect as she is,” she murmured gently, and Linnet flashed her a warm smile of gratitude, for she had the feeling that the other two at the table were suddenly and in some queer way ranged against her. Which was absurd, of course, when one of them was the man she was going to marry—the man who professed so much devotion for her.

When they rose from the table and returned to the drawing-room Mrs. Monteith drew her a little aside, saying almost eagerly:

“Oh, my dear, I’ve found the book of snapshots I was telling you about last night, and I thought you’d like to see them.” She had them already waiting on a little table in the drawing-room, and Linnet at once drew up a chair near to her, for they were snapshots of Guy during his schooldays, and at an even earlier stage of his existence—the kind of treasured photographs a mother takes infinite care of throughout the years, and whatever else she loves she never loses these reminders of days that can never come again.

When Guy saw what was about to preoccupy them he pretended to look alarmed, and then very definitely bored. His dark face was a little flushed since dinner, and although brought up in a home and against a background where nobody ever drank anything even mildly alcoholic to excess, Linnet recognized that by finishing off the meal with liqueurs he had arrived at a stage where he was no longer strictly sober, although according to his own lights and the demands of the life he and Diana were accustomed to leading— although Diana merely looked a little brighter-eyed, and she had had the sense to refuse the liqueurs—he was no doubt sober enough. But Linnet felt vaguely disturbed as she looked up at him.

“If you’re going to look at snapshots,” he said, “Diana and I will go for a walk in the garden. Come on, Di,” opening the white-painted door, “you’ve been sadly neglected-all day, so I’ll show you mother’s prize camellias if you haven’t already seen them.”

As they went out Diana made some laughing remark about feeling like the “Lady of the Camellias” herself until recently, and he laughed back at her, assuring her that she was doing splendidly.

“You’re looking marvelous tonight,” he said “Quite breath-taking, in fact!”

When the door was closed Mrs. Monteith lifted her eyes from the leaves of the album she
w
as turning with her white, be-ringed fingers, and her glance seemed to rest upon Linnet’s face a little anxiously, as well as a little searchingly. But Linnet smiled back at her in a composed manner and she began:

“Now, this was Guy when he’d just been presented with his first cricket-bat! The cap he’s wearing is the cap of his first Prep school
...
”

Her voice went on, explaining, enthusing softly, and Linnet listened and looked with all the attention in the world.

It must have been fully an hour later that they both realized Guy and Diana had absented themselves for rather a long while.

Outside it was by now quite dark, and it was scarcely likely they were still admiring the camellias.

“I wonder where they can be,” Mrs. Monteith remarked. The snapshots were exhausted, and she and Linnet had been talking pleasantly on all sorts of subjects, and she had learned quite a lot about the girl’s home life. She felt more than ever drawn to the idea of her as a daughter-in-law, for although her background was slightly different from that of any young woman whom Guy had shown interest in before—but never enough interest to think of marrying!—it struck her as the right kind of background to produce a girl like Linnet. A father who was strict, but not too strict—a mother who was good at raising a large family
...

She sighed a little, for she herself had often been lonely, and she had often wished that she had had a large family. One child—especially a beloved son—was scarcely enough to fill all the places in one’s heart, especially when they grew away from one—as she realized was quite natural.

“I’m afraid it’s a little dull for you, dear, alone with me,” she apologized.

But Linnet so stoutly denied this that she felt really grateful to her.

“Nevertheless, Guy ought to be paying you more attention
...
!
I wonder whether he and Diana have taken refuge in the library from these snapshots? The library is really Guy’s den, you know, when he’s at home, and I feel sure that’s where they are. Just slip along and find out, dear, and then when you all come back we’ll have some more coffee.”

Linnet was a little reluctant to follow her suggestion, for she had no wish to appear as if she was attempting to track down Guy in his own house. She would have much preferred to have waited for him and Diana to return to them in their own good time, but the fact that her hostess was insistent left her with little choice but to agree to pay a visit to the library.

She knew where the library was situated. It was in a corridor leading off the main hall, and at that hour of the evening it was softly illuminated, the mellow light falling attractively across the deep rose-red carpet. When she reached the door Linnet was about to tap on it, until all at once it struck her that as she was merely looking for two people all she had to do was to turn the handle and enter.

She turned the handle so quietly that the two inside had no chance to draw apart, and when Linnet stood looking in at them with the warmly glowing corridor behind her Diana did not even seem in the least startled, let alone appear guilty. She drew back almost slowly from Guy’s arms, and as he let her go he did not even turn his head until Linnet’s voice sounded a trifle incoherently:

“Oh, I—I didn’t realize—!” And then Linnet realized that what she was saying was absurd. But, even so, she didn’t know what else to say.