Nurse Linnet's Release (8 page)

He was looking at her gravely, and she answered in her best professional manner:

“I certainly will, Doctor.”

“Good. I know I can depend on you.”

Diana came down and joined them for tea on the lawn, under the shade of a giant oak tree, but already she was depressed by the thought of his departure. Linnet felt a little sorry for her when she realized how much, in the past few weeks, she had grown to depend on this man with the blue eyes and the crisp brown hair that shone in the sunlight, and how much she was going to miss his daily visits to her in the nursing home. In London he had been practically on her doorstep, but now—now he would be a car journey away.

Linnet left them alone together for a while after tea, and went up to do her own unpacking, and when she looked out of the window at them they appeared to be talking earnestly, and Diana’s golden head was bent very near to the man’s.

Linnet didn’t know why, but all at once the task ahead of her filled her with a curious feeling of distaste.

Once the doctor’s long black car had slid away from the white-painted garden gate Diana announced rather pettishly that she was feeling completely exhausted, and would have dinner in bed. Linnet ran her bath and put out a chiffon nightdress for her, and when she was in bed she went down to the kitchen to inspect the tray the housekeeper was preparing and inquire into the menu, and decided that everything was just right for the invalid. The housekeeper, a sensible woman and an excellent cook, seemed pleased by her approval, and Linnet felt certain they would get on well together.

After her own dinner she went out once more into the garden, and took a short walk in the direction of the village. The lane was leafy and shut-in, and the spot was so intensely rural and so peaceful that it caused waves of appreciation to break over her. This was more like Heatherbridge, and it made her feel just a little homesick, although in Heatherbridge they were not quite so remote. Here the peace was like a mantle wrapping them about, and by the time she returned to the garden of Briar Cottage, having decided that it was just a little late and rather too lonely for a solitary walk in the leafy lane, a young moon was climbing into the sky above the oak tree, and a nightingale had actually started to sing in the little wood.

Linnet listened to the liquid notes, entranced. Surely they were the magic on which all love songs were founded? All around her were tall, heavenly blue delphiniums and lilies, waxen white in the gloom, not yet fully opened, although the scent of them was intoxicating and seemed to go a little to her head. Her senses started to swim a little, the combination of passionate heart-pouring and penetrating perfume almost too much for her.

And then the telephone rang sharply in the house. The housekeeper, staid in her dark dress, appeared in the open doorway.

“It’s for you, Nurse,” she said. “A gentleman wishes to speak to you!”

CHAPTER
X

Linnet couldn’t even think whom it might be. She simply couldn’t imagine any “gentleman” ringing her at this hour, and in such a spot, and she certainly never thought of the man who had been her patient only a few weeks ago at Aston House. For one thing, he was in Scotland, and he had no idea where she was. The nursing-home wouldn’t be likely to pass on such information to a casual male caller.

But when she reached the instrument in the hall and picked up the receiver her heart gave a tremendous bound when she recognized his voice.

“Is that you, Linnet?” he asked.

“But—” she began.

“Listen,” he cut her short. “I’ve been trying to establish contact with you for hours, or so it seems. Aston House declined to let me know where you were, but you gave me your home address when I saw you last, and I rang there. Your mother—and I think it was your mother—astounded me by telling me you were in Hertfordshire! Apparently you’re looking after Diana Carey, and you’re not more than a couple of miles away from my own home! Linnet, do you get that?”

“Y-yes,” she answered, thinking it was impossible she could be so close to his home.

“Listen again, then, my sweet. It wasn’t particularly kind of you to go off without leaving some sort of a message for me when I rang you in London, but I’ll forgive you because it was I who should have left an address with you. However, I’m on my way to see you now—did you catch that?”

“But you’re—in Scotland?” she stammered.

“Not on your life, darling. I’ve been back home for a couple of days, and now I’m not going to waste any more time. I know Briar Cottage. I’ll be with you in not much more than a few minutes.”

“But you can’t possibly,” she exclaimed, suddenly anxious, “at this hour! I’ve a patient to look after!”

“You can leave her for a quarter of an hour. In any case, I’m coming right up to the house. I’ll be in the lane outside your gate almost before you’ve hung up!”

Linnet felt really concerned when she had hung up. She looked at the grandfather-clock in the hall and discovered that it was still only nine o’clock. Then she slipped out to the kitchen to have a word with the housekeeper.

“Mrs. Barnes, will you listen for Mrs. Carey’s bell should she ring? I’m only going for a very short walk, and I’ll be back very soon. I don’t think Mrs. Carey is likely to want anything, as I’ve already settled her down for the night, but should she do so you’ll know I won’t be far away.”

“Certainly, Nurse,” Mrs. Barnes answered affably. If she thought it strange that the nurse, who had already been for a walk, should be going out again, she did not look surprised, and instead, as she arranged a couple of early-morning tea trays, she added; “I’ll have a nice cup of tea for you when you come back, if you feel like one. I always say there’s nothing like a nice cup of tea before going to bed.”

“Thank you.” Linnet smiled at her gratefully. “That will be very nice.”

Then she stole up to her room and pulled on a woolly cardigan over her thin dress—for some reason Diana objected to uniforms around her when she was no longer a patient in a nursing-home, and had especially asked Linnet to shed hers while she was with her, and dress as if she was no more than a companion—and then slipped out again into the garden.

The nightingale had stopped singing, and the silence seemed very intense. It was by now quite dark, but making her way to the gate Linnet stepped outside and into the lane just as a pair of powerful headlights began to shed their light across the road through the avenue of trees, and as she walked a few paces to meet them the golden glare poured over her.

Instantly the car slowed, and then came to a standstill. In such a narrow, enclosed space the big Bentley looked positively enormous, and in the way such things do strike one at inappropriate moments Linnet wondered how on earth it was going to extricate itself from the embrace of those close-pressing trees and hedgerows and withdraw down the lane. But a nearside door had opened, and a voice reached her. It was the masculine voice that turned her heart
over, and it was a trifle husky.

“Linnet
...
!
Linnet, my darling
...
!
”

Linnet stood feeling curiously loath, in spite of the hammering of her heart, to enter the car, but his hand reached out and caught at her arm and he pulled her inside. The door slammed
shut, and they were alone in a world of faintly eerie darkness illuminated only by the golden glow on the dashboard. There was a smell of warmth and cigarette smoke, the masculine scent of shaving-cream and hair lotion, and Linnet felt the pulse at the base of her throat beating wildly. For a few seconds she could say nothing at all, but she felt his hands imprison her tightly.

“I can’t stay longer than a few minutes,” she managed at last. She thought he laughed rather shortly, and then his hands had drawn her near to him and she was in his arms. There was no hope of escape from those arms unless she struggled violently, and in such an enclosed space even that would probably avail her very little. The arms were like steel bands about her, relentless in the way they crushed and bruised her, and she could hear his uneven breathing, and realized that his heart was labouring like a tormented thing below her own. His mouth was groping for her own, and determined to find it.

“Please
...
!
” she gasped, as she had gasped before, but she might have saved herself the effort. His mouth found hers, and after that she gave up even attempting to free herself.

Several minutes later she heard herself asking tremulously:

“Why did you come here tonight?”

“Why
...
?
When you were only a couple of miles away! Linnet, my dearest dim-wit, would anything have kept me away?” He kissed each of her eyes lingeringly, and then the barely seen outline of her pale cheek, and the little hollow in her slender throat where the pulse was still fluttering away wildly like a frightened bird. “Oh, darling,” he whispered, “I found it impossible to stay away from you!”

“But this is ridiculous,” she whispered back. “Just because we met when you were ill—”

“Just because we met when I was ill is surely the only proof that is needed that I love you more than anything else in life! People don’t fall desperately in love when they’re ill unless the attraction is something which overcomes even the fear of their illness! Something strong enough to outlast the illness and go on for ever!” His voice shook again slightly. “I told you I wouldn’t have minded dying while you were holding my hand, but now I want you to go on holding it for the rest of my life, sweetheart!”

She put back her head and looked up at him. She was becoming accustomed by now to the dimness, and she could see his eyes—so dark that it was almost a fluid darkness, deep and mystic and compelling, with something blazing away in the depths of them like the golden glow on the dashboard.

“Guy, I—”

“Yes?” He picked up one of her hands and held it against his lips. “You what?”

“One can’t fall in love—really in love!—in such a short while!”

“So far as I’m concerned I fell in love as soon as I saw you! But you’re not certain whether you’ve fallen in love with me, is that it?” She felt his warm breath on her cheek, and something quivered inside her like an uncontrollable ecstasy.

“Yes, I—I think I am certain,” she confessed, and turned her face to bury it against him as his ar
m
s crushed her close to him again.

“Linnet!” Again there was silence for several seconds, and then she heard him ask her the unbelievable question. “And you’ll marry me, won’t you?”

She was silent for so long that he added urgently:

“I can’t wait for you, Linnet! You must marry me soon!”

“But are you quite—quite sure you really want to marry me?” She thought of the difference in their everyday backgrounds—he with his money, his big car, his dignified home not so very far from where they were at that moment, and his farm in Rhodesia. She with only her two years’ hospital training behind her, a general practitioner for a father, and absolutely no money. There must be many girls in his own walk of life who would marry him without hesitation
...
Why did he pick on her? Why should he even think of marrying her?

“Sure? Of course I’m sure! I’m so sure that even if you turned me down I’d force you to marry me somehow!”

There was something almost brutal in the declaration, and the way he suddenly started to kiss her again, without any regard for bruising her lips, was almost brutal, too. But there was desperation in his hold—a kind of barely-repressed desire to devour her, as if he had been starving for her all the time he was in Scotland—and the thunder of his heart against her convinced her that there were no half measures about his capacity for loving. It was like something that had already burst several bonds, and would force its way through any other barriers that were interposed to check it.

And then she suddenly thought of Diana and Mrs. Barnes, the housekeeper, and realized that this was no time to give serious thoughts to marriage. She had yet to become accustomed to the idea that he was in love with her
...
!
Seriously in love with her
...
!

And she was feeling bemused by the very violence and possessiveness of his love-making.

“I must go,” she said, attempting to draw herself away from him. “I have a patient for whom I am responsible, and I mustn’t leave her for long
...
”

“Diana?” he said. “Diana Carey?”

“Yes. You said you know her.”

“I do. As a matter of fact, she’s a kind of distant relative of mine, and I saw quite a lot of her in Rhodesia
—and
her late husband! You know she’s a widow, of course?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that her husband died tragically?”

“No.”

“Well, he did!” The cold hardness of his voice was a little disturbing after the warmth of his recent tones. “Oh, I know quite a lot about Diana,” with a kind of dry sarcasm, “and although I’m grateful to her for bringing you here I hope you won’t let her make a kind of slave of you! I shall come and call on you both tomorrow.”

“But—but will she mind?”

“Mind?” His laugh was almost disdainful. “Diana will not mind, I can assure you, and even if she did it wouldn’t affect me. I don’t approve of your looking after other people—in fact, I’m wildly jealous of your looking after anyone but me, I want to take you right away from nursing, and I’m determined to marry you soon! So go back and sleep on all that, and don’t worry your head overmuch about Diana. She’s the kind who’ll make an excellent recovery before long, and be right back on top where she was before her marriage—and some other poor devil will be in danger!” He bent to press his lips to hers, fiercely, demandingly—and surprisingly with just a touch of tenderness.

“I love you, little Linnet,” he whispered, “I love you!”

When she returned to the cottage there was a light still burning in the kitchen, but Mrs. Barnes had evidently retired upstairs to bed. But the kettle was on the stove, and the tea caddy and a small teapot and cup and saucer were all set out ready for her, and not because she really wanted the tea but because she felt it would disappoint Mrs. Barnes if she didn’t make herself some, Linnet sat down and waited for the kettle to boil.

She realized that she was trembling a little, like someone who was over-excited, and there was a queer bubbling happiness inside her. But her hands and her feet were cold, just as if she had been shocked. For the second time in her life she put up a hand and touched her lips—and they were burning.

She was glad of the tea after all, as she sat sipping it. Tea was so beautifully commonplace and ordinary, and whatever the emergency the mere act of drinking it affected one with strongly rationalizing, if purely temporary, calm. It was like Dutch courage, only the after-effects were more beneficial. Linnet felt several degrees more like herself, and less as if she were floating on unreal clouds, as she washed her cup and saucer at the sink and dried them carefully and put them away.

Only after she had stolen upstairs and looked in to make sure that Diana was sleeping peacefully, and was undressing herself in her own room, did the remembrance of something Guy had said return to disturb her. At the time she had hardly realized what he was saying, but now it struck her as an extremely odd thing to say about anyone as golden and captivating as Diana.

“She’s the kind who’ll make an excellent recovery before long, and be right back on top where she was before her marriage
—and some other poor devil will be in danger
!”