Nurse Linnet's Release (7 page)

“If that doesn’t knock Roger Sherringham cold I’ll eat my hat!” Cathie declared. “In fact, there’s no doubt about it, you’ll be the belle of the ball! Even I, in my near-Dior creation, won’t come anywhere near to you!”

Linnet laughed at the flattery, but being accustomed to Cathie’s flights of fancy and wild exaggerations did not allow it to go to her head. All the same, when she was ready at last, and examining her own reflection in the mirror, she couldn’t help feeling pleased with it.

She looked rather like the heart of a china rose herself with her flawless skin, the exquisite delicacy of her small features, and her crushed violet eyes. Although if anyone had suggested to her that they resembled crushed violets she would have been merely amused. Her hair was like a dark and shining cap enclosing her small head, and those delicate feathers of fringe lay like the ends of an ostrich plume on her white forehead.

“Ready, Angel?” Cathie burst in on her, and waited for the other’s reaction at the full splendour of her in the sea-green brocade. She really looked quite spectacular, and Linnet felt certain Pat Murphey would enjoy his evening.

The two men called for them in a taxi. Linnet felt shy in the company of two members of the opposite sex who were more or less complete strangers to her, but she couldn’t fail to recognize the fact that Roger Sherringham betrayed instant symptoms of looking as if
he
were quite
certain
he was going to enjoy his evening.

“Where have you been all my life?” he inquired seriously, as soon as they left the taxi. “And why didn’t I see more of you when you were at St. Faith’s?”

Linnet resorted to the triteness of the reply that fine feathers make fine birds, and although he agreed with her that there was something in that, it was such a microscopic “something” in her case that she still felt flattered.

The dance floor was packed, and Linnet recognized amongst some of the elegant females who preferred to take refuge on the edge of it the wives of Sir Paul L
o
ring and his opposite number, the Senior Surgical Registrar. Lady Loring had not been Lady Loring very long, and she was much younger than her husband, and very finished and poised and perfect. Sister Helen Wortley, who was St. Faith’s particular pin-up beauty—so beautiful in fact that she would have had instant success on the films—was there dancing with the Head of the Pathology Department, and lively little Sister Maureen O’Connor was whirling round in the arms of a man everyone had been expecting her to marry for years, one Barry Richardson, who was thinking of launching out in General Practice.

Linnet enjoyed her dances with Roger, and she also danced several times with Pat Murphey; but when Roger tried to inveigle her into one of the discreetly arranged sitting-out alcoves, where it was possible to draw the curtains and remain shut off from the rest of the room—apart from the noise of it, of course, and the music—she very firmly opposed the idea. He looked at her a little ruefully, but with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

“Not even if we don’t draw the curtains?”

She shook her head, and he thought what a noticeably firm little white chin she had, in spite of her gentle eyes.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll get you something to drink.”

While he was foraging for food and drink for them both Linnet became aware of someone very tall who appeared, suddenly at her elbow.

“Good evening Nurse,” said Dr. Shane Willoughby.

Linnet looked up at him. He seemed very distinguished in his evening things, she thought, and she did wish his eyes weren’t quite so blue, because she agreed with Diana Carey that when one looked into them unexpectedly it was like feeling oneself suddenly engulfed in blue water, and she found it extraordinarily difficult to look away.

“I don’t think I really ought to address you as nurse, you know,” he said. “You much more closely resemble something out of fairyland, in fact rather less substantial than a sprite, I’m inclined to believe. Or I could liken you to a piece of Dresden china, couldn’t I?”

“You could,” she answered, her eyes laughing up at him, “if you really feel like allowing your imagination flights of that sort?”

“It isn’t that I allow them flights of that sort. Looking at you I couldn’t do anything else!”

She suddenly felt herself blushing—very definitely blushing, in the way which always annoyed her, because she felt it was so obvious, and she had so little control over the rush of blood to her cheeks.

“Let’s dance!” he said, quickly, and without waiting for her permission, as the orchestra was just starting up a waltz, he swept her into his arms and out on the floor. Linnet felt the oddest little feeling of sudden excitement inside her, for amongst the many attractive females there that night there were a good many, she knew, who would have regarded an opportunity to dance with Adrian Shane Willoughby, Tropical Fever Expert, and although many years younger than Sir Paul Loring already away up in his rarefied class, as the high spot of the evening.

But Linnet only knew that she had thought him an extremely attractive man from the moment she had first met him, and in addition she thought him an extremely humane man. She was quite sure that he was fundamentally, and in every other way,
nice.
She found herself recalling echoes of his voice, and remembering things he had said to her, days after he had said them, and when the echoes should have been forgotten. But she was quite sure that the only woman’s voice he seriously bothered himself about was that of Diana Carey.

Not only was he slowly but surely getting her completely well again, but he was making himself responsible for her in all sorts of ways—even to the extent of first attempting to enlist Linnet’s sympathy in the case of the attractive widow
(all
the sympathy of which she was capable) but had gone out of his way to arrange things with the matron of Aston House in order that Linnet, in whose sympathy and attentiveness he trusted, should continue her ministrations where Diana was concerned, and help her towards even more rapid recovery.

As they circled the room, and the tuneful Viennese waltz made doing so a delight, she was aware that he was holding her almost as closely as Roger Sherringham, but there was a difference. With Roger she had the feeling that the hold might at any moment become much more embarrassing, but with Adrian Shane Willoughby there was, she felt sure, no fear of that. In spite of his close hold, there was a certain amount of detachment about it. But it was a beautifully safe and secure hold, and she knew that their steps matched perfectly.

Then suddenly she found herself thinking of Guy Monteith, away up in the north of Scotland. Although he had promised to do so he had not so far telephoned her. She was not sure how she felt about that. She only knew that if he did telephone her she would find it terribly difficult to say “no” if he asked to see her again. She had a strong feeling that she should—that indeed she
ought
to say “no”—but there was something about even the tones of his voice that destroyed, or practically destroyed, her will-power. When she found herself looking into his eyes she seemed to have no will-power at all, and the knowledge was a little inclined to frighten her.

She found herself wishing suddenly that instead of only going into Hertfordshire—Guy’s own country!—with Diana, she was going really far away with her, to some spot where it would be most difficult for anyone to get in touch with her unless they had some really pressing reason for doing so.

But she mustn’t overlook the fact, as she reminded herself,
that it was quite on the cards that she never would hear any more from Guy Monteith.

When the dance was ended Dr. Shane Willoughby thanked her courteously, and then looked a little amused when he saw her escort standing waiting for her—not looking any too pleased—on the edge of the floor.

“I’m afraid I’ve interfered a little with Dr. Sherringham’s plans for the evening,” he remarked. “But I enjoyed that dance very much. Thank you again, Nurse—I mean Fairy Kintyre!”

Linnet felt herself blushing again, and she was still blushing a little when Roger re-joined her.

“Isn’t it just like a ‘high hat’ to try and pinch one’s girl,” he grumbled, taking her by the arm. “But I’ve got some chicken sandwiches over here, and something to drink as well. Come on, and let’s do justice to the excellent manna provided.”

CHAPTER I
X

They slipped out of London on a morning when spring had suddenly ceased to be spring any longer, and had become summer over night.

Linnet sat in the back of Dr. Shane Willoughby’s car, and she looked very neat and trim in her uniform. Diana sat beside him at the wheel, although she would probably have been much more comfortable on the back seat, which was superbly sprung, with a light rug over her knees and cushions at her back. But she insisted that she was feeling almost normal, that she liked sitting in the front, and that Dr. Willoughby would find it dull if no one sat beside him.

She glanced archly sideways at him as she spoke. She made no attempt to conceal the fact that he interested her, and that the thought of sitting beside him for an hour and more pleasantly excited her. She was wearing a long, loose oatmeal-coloured coat over her exquisitely-cut suit, and her hair reached in a golden cloud to her shoulders. Violets were fastened to the front of the expensive-looking coat, and their perfume kept drifting back to Linnet’s appreciative nostrils.

They left London about eleven o’clock, and reached their destination shortly after twelve. Dr. Shane Willoughby drove carefully, and without any burst of speed, as if he realized that he had a valuable cargo aboard in the person of Mrs. Carey, and his car was so comfortable that it was obvious she enjoyed the drive.

Briar Cottage, when they arrived there, instantly aroused Linnet’s admiration. It was the kind of cottage house-agents love to get hold of and advertise, accompanied by illustrations, in the glossy magazines. Beginning life as a farm worker’s cottage three or four hundred years before, it had been added to and added to, improved beyond all recognition, until it now provided Sir Paul Loring with an extremely comfortable and convenient week-end home.

It stood surrounded by a garden so gay with flowers and strips of emerald lawn that Linnet’s eyes actually sparkled with her appreciation, and inside there was such a genuine wealth of old oak that she recognized Sir Paul, knew something, at least, about furniture. His housekeeper had lunch all ready for them, and the table in the dining-room was bright with lace table mats, flowers and silver.

But Diana decided that she was just a little bit exhausted when the doctor had handed her out of the car, and lunch was held up while she recovered in a deep arm-chair, and an aperitif was brought to her. She did look a little pale, Linnet admitted, and she was so thin that there seemed to be literally nothing at all of her, but also she plainly intended to make the most of having Dr. Shane Willoughby on hand and ready to be completely attentive.

After lunch Linnet tucked her up in bed in her attractive room with the latticed windows and the dressing-table standing in a petticoat of highly-glazed chintz which matched the quilted bedhead, and then went downstairs a
g
ain and out into the garden, where she found the doctor smoking a pipe on the lawn.

“Do you object to this?” he asked, as he pulled forward a chair for her.

“On the contrary, I like the smell of it,” wrinkling her nose a little. “But I wasn’t going to sit still. I want to explore that little wood there,” indicating a copse at the bottom of the garden.

“Very well, I’ll explore with you.”

When they stood in the heart of the little wood the scent of fresh growing things surrounded them like incense. It was very dim, and cool, and a little enchanted. It only needed the voice of a nightingale to lift itself up suddenly to fill the place with more magic. But, no doubt, when the dusk stole down, and the first stars appeared, the voice of the nightingale would be heard.

“I shall try and get down to see you at least once a week,” Dr. Shane Willoughby said, prodding the bowl of his pipe, and obviously not thinking of nightingales. “And if you feel in the least disturbed about anything, or Di—Mrs. Carey’s condition doesn’t satisfy you for some reason or other, you won’t hesitate to let me know, will you? You’re on the telephone, and you’re no real distance away, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can manage it. But I don’t honestly anticipate any set-backs, and the great thing for you to do is to keep the patient as cheerful as possible.”

“I’ll do my best,” Linnet promised.

“I’m sure you will.”

His pipe was threatening extinction, and he put it away in disgust, and produced his cigarette-case instead. But when he offered it to her she shook her head.

“You’re a very abstemious small person, aren’t you?” he remarked, and smiled at her. “And that’s another thing—Diana smokes too much, or she will do if you don’t watch her closely.” This time he didn’t correct himself when he said “Diana.” “And she’s not particularly abstemious—people who are just a bundle of nerves as she is often aren’t. They try to bolster themselves up with false stimulants, and although she can have a sherry before lunch and one before dinner as well—if she feels she must—that’s the maximum alcoholic intake I intend to allow her just now. Will you remember that, Nurse?”