Nurse with a Dream (22 page)

The thudding of her heart sounded like footsteps in the road. Steady, running footsteps, much too strong for Michael or Connie. But it was only her heart.

When her breathing steadied, the thudding was still there. Someone was coming, running along the road from Timberfold. She crouched lower under the bush.

It was Guy. As he drew level with her hiding-place, he halted, peering through the rain. He cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted her name again and again. Afterwards she wondered why she did not walk out to him, but fear held her pressed to the ground like a petrified rabbit.

“Dear Heaven!” he said aloud. “She must have taken to the moor, in this storm.” He ran back the way he had come, and not until his footsteps died away did Jacqueline stand up. Getting back on to the road, she had a piece of bad luck. She stepped into a concealed boggy pool with one foot and went down almost knee deep. As she dragged her foot out, the bog took her shoe and no amount of groping could recover it. It was easy to walk shoeless along the soft turf edge of the lane, but the accident meant she must wait for a lift when she reached the main road. She would never make the Moor Hen in stockinged feet.

In about a mile, she heard a car coming towards her. The wrong direction, of course. She put her head down into the rain again and plodded on, but the car pulled up with a screech of brakes.

She dashed the rain out of her eyes, unable to believe what she saw. Then with a glad shout of “Alan!” she ran into his arms.

He held her tightly, stroking her wet hair with a big hand. “My darling, my darling! I came the first minute I could. What have they done to you—are you all right?”

She leaned on him heavily for a moment. “I was frightened—so frightened, Alan. But I’m all right now.” She laughed shakily. “Apart from being wet and—oh yes, I lost a shoe.” She held up her small foot in a stocking black with peat water. “The turf is quite soft, but I doubt if I’d have made it as far as the Moor Hen.”

He picked her up and carried her to the car. She protested faintly as he bundled her in. “Your lovely car, I’ll make it wet.”

He dragged an old raincoat out of the back and spread it over the seat. “Sit on that—and put my coat round your shoulders. Don’t argue, I’m taking charge of you from now on. Peel off those stockings; don’t be bashful, I won’t look.”

“They’re off,” she said meekly in a moment, and he took her small wet feet in his hands, warming and chafing them briskly.

“That better?”

‘That’s fine. I’ll be all right now, truly.”

“We’ll be at the Moor Hen in no time. Then I prescribe a hot bath, a spot of brandy and dry clothes.”

She gave a shuddering sigh. “That sounds wonderful. Oh, Alan—you came when I needed you. You always do.” She touched the sleeves of his coat lovingly. It smelt of him and was warm, with his warmth. He had found her, and that was all she needed.

“Of course I came, as soon as I could. Are you absolutely sure you’re all right?” He studied her anxiously. “No one has harmed you?”

“Quite sure. I ran away.”

He bellowed with laughter and she smiled, reassured and not in the least hurt. He could always laugh at her, and she would not mind. “My darling, that was beautifully obvious.”

He turned the car in the narrow road and headed for the peace and security of the Moor Hen. Jacqueline was silent, watching his profile as he drove. The car was a warm, secure world, they were shut up in it together. He had called her darling, and held her in his arms, cradled her cold wet feet in his warm hands. It was very little to last a whole lifetime, but it was wonderful.

To her shamed embarrassment, huge tears started rolling down her cheeks, one after another, until she was crying hard. He passed over a big snowy handkerchief. “Take mine—I’ll bet you’ve lost yours. Nothing like a good cry, splendid for the nerves.”

“I’m crying b-because I’m happy. Everything was so awful. That man shouting and smelling of whisky—he’d had bottles and bottles of the stuff. H-how did you know I was at Timberfold?”

“Lance telephoned that you’d been spirited away—and I couldn’t come until this morning. The intervening hours were moderately grim. I had an operation this morning at nine which I could not thrust on to anyone else at short notice. Luckily it did not last long.”

“You worried about me—all night?”

“Yes.”

He could not, at the moment, bear to think of the grim slow hours in which he had discovered, slowly and painfully, just how much this golden girl meant to him. He blamed himself bitterly for letting another man step in and take her from him. Jealousy twisted a bitter knife in his vitals. Jealousy and fear for her safety.

He had tried to believe that he was too old for her, that she would find him dull, stodgy. He was by no means good-looking, and as to the social position he had to offer, being the wife of a busy consultant surgeon had its drawbacks; his hours were long, odd and unpredictable; his work had to come before his private life, he would never be sure of being on hand for parties, theatres or even an evening at home by his own fireside.

But all the arguments he could muster did not amount to a row of beans. He loved her. She had woven herself into the warp and weft of his life until it was nothing without her. He loved her young seriousness, her lilting sense of fun, her fresh, inquiring mind. And he loved her body, too—the light step, the tilt of her proud small head with its pale gold crown of silk. He groaned aloud and paced his room like a caged tiger. Fool, fool, fool! He might have won her, and he had stood by, letting her slip through his fingers. He had not even tried—not raised a hand to stop her falling into Guy’s grasp. He’d shown too much darn self-sacrifice, too much nobility; in fact, he’d been a stuffed shirt.

If he had lost her for ever, it served him thundering well right. But if there was a chance—he was taking it, with both hands.

Meantime here she was, his blessed darling, adorably absurd with her wet tousled hair and his old coat round her shoulders. Safe, thank Heaven! But what had driven her out, coatless and shoeless, in such a storm? In spite of her assurances he saw that she was pale, with dark-ringed eyes. She had been badly shocked and frightened, and at the moment his chief concern must be to get her into Mollie’s mothering hands, warm, in good spirits, as soon as humanly possible.

He was not sure where Guy stood in all this. Was he the villain of the piece; or wholly innocent, that old witch’s cat’s-paw? More important, did Jacqueline still mean to marry the boy?

His arms still ached with the sweetness of her running to him, clinging to him, with a glad little shout of his name. She had nestled in his embrace like a bird coming home.

Mollie took charge and ordered a hot bath and lunch in bed, with a hot bottle. Jacqueline protested about going to bed, but as she hadn’t a dry stitch of clothing of her own, she had to give in. Andy, though not normally allowed upstairs, sat on the eiderdown and accepted tit-bits from her tray.

Mollie took away the tray and brought back a selection of pretty nylon undies and a pale blue dress in fine wool which she thought would not be too big for her guest, but Jacqueline had fallen asleep, utterly exhausted.

She reported to the men. “Worn out, poor lamb. She looks as if she’s made of wax. I do blame myself for letting her go. What can have happened?”

Alan told them his part of the story; then there was nothing for it but to wait until Jacqueline had had her sleep out.

In an hour she came downstairs, her hair soft and pale after its wetting, the faint rose colour back in her cheeks. She wore the pale blue dress and a pair of scarlet and gold Eastern slippers which Mollie had had as a child.

“Can you bear to tell us now?” Mollie asked kindly. “Don’t if it’s too awful.”

The storm was over, the little sitting-room flooded with sunshine. “I’ll tell you. Parts of it are rather funny, I suppose. It was just being alone, and in that house one loses a sense of proportion.”

She told them everything quite simply.

“But,” Mollie said, aghast, “do you think she was going to poison you with those seeds?”

“I don’t know. I thought so at the time. All that about Michael’s gypsy mother knowing about herbs—and of course her scheme with the picture had gone wrong; the cord broke too soon.”

“It might not have broken at all, or gone in the daytime. She had to risk that. Maybe the seeds were a second string.”

Alan got up and started taking the things out of his pockets, laying them neatly on a bookcase. He was white under the tan, his eyes hard as sapphire chips. “I am now going to Timberfold, to take Guy Clarke to pieces, preferably with my bare hands. Don’t wait tea for me, Mollie—it may take time.”

For a moment Jacqueline couldn’t speak. He meant it, quite seriously and cold-bloodedly. Unless she stopped him, he would do it.

“No, Alan. I’m sure Guy doesn’t know anything of all this. He’s absolutely innocent. He just wanted to marry me. He didn’t realise, I’m sure, how far Connie was prepared to go to keep her position as mistress of the farm. It was an obsession with her, but I’m positive Guy didn’t know. He came to look for me—I told you. And he must be awfully worried this minute. We ought to let him know I’m safe, if we can.”

“He ought to have known.”

Mollie said lightly, “Men don’t know everything that goes on in a woman’s mind, Alan. If Jacky says he’s innocent, he probably is. Sit down and don’t look so murderous. I know you feel it—so do I. But there’s nothing we can do.”

He sat down, reluctantly.

Jacqueline went rather pink and said with a little gasp, “Would it be very awful if I didn’t marry Guy?” She drew the engagement ring off her finger slowly. “I did promise. But I can’t. I know all this isn’t his fault, but I just can’t marry him. It wouldn’t be fair to him, for one thing. I don’t love him and never did. But I promised, so do you think I ought to?”

“My dear child,” Mollie said earnestly, “nothing in the world—do you understand—justifies your marrying a man you don’t love. You shouldn’t have made a promise, but I’m sure you didn’t do it lightly or without reason. But don’t think yourself bound by it.”

“I’ll have to tell him myself. It would be cowardly to write. But,” her soft lips quivered, “I can’t marry him whatever Deborah says or does.”

Alan knelt by her side and took both her hands in his. “Deborah? What has she to do with it?”

Colour flooded her face. “I can’t tell you. It was nothing.”

“Nothing? To make you engage yourself to a man you didn’t love? Was she blackmailing you—holding a threat over you?”

“She wanted to get me out of the hospital. I think she was jealous.”

Suddenly Lance and Mollie weren’t there any more. She and Alan were alone.

“Jealous of what?” he insisted gently.

“Of you.” She lifted her head and looked into his face. “She was in love with you, I think. Or possessive about you, which isn’t quite the same thing.”

“My fault. I took her out a couple of times, but that was ages ago.”

“She thought she owned you. I’m sure she thought she could get you back again. So—so when you saved my life and were kind to me, she thought—” She hesitated shyly.

“She thought I loved you?”

“Oh
no
!” she said earnestly and quickly. “I wouldn’t—I mean I’m far too young and foolish for an important man like you. She just thought—there’d be gossip, and she said gossip was the worst thing for a doctor. And—and
you
said it was, too.”

He looked stern. “Wasn’t that my affair?”

“She said not to tell you. That you’d have to leave the hospital or I would. You see, she saw you bring me home that night, from the dance. And—and I’m afraid she told Diana Lovell.”

He seized his hair in both hands and tugged. “Women! What on earth has been going on? You and I never did anything to cause talk.”

“That’s what I kept telling them! But they wouldn’t believe me.”

“Listen, honeybunch. You’re not to worry about it any more. It’s true that gossip does tend to gather round a doctor—any professional man—if he’s indiscreet or foolish. That doesn’t mean he can’t speak to a girl at all, or fall in love, or do any normal, natural thing like that.” He chuckled softly. “Why, how do you think doctors and lawyers and parsons would get married?”

“Get married? That’s different. Aren’t you going to marry Miss Lovell?”

“Me? Certainly not. Who told you I was?”

“It was—sort of suggested. And once you said—when we were on the moor—that you had a passion which meant much to you. I thought perhaps it was Diana—she’s awfully pretty; and rich, too.”

“I meant my work. I think I said it meant more to me than the love of any woman.”

“Yes—that’s what you said. I’d forgotten the exact words.”

“I always believed it did—until lately. But now, you see, I’ve fallen in love and I know how silly I was. My work is still important, and if this girl marries me, she’ll many and many a time have to allow it to come first in our lives—but the most important thing will always be my love for her.”

“You mean you haven’t asked her yet?” She tried not to sound flattened, but when a man calls you darling and holds you tightly in his arms—and then...!