Nurse for the Doctor (7 page)

Wise—and much less likely to lead to complication in the future. By which she knew she meant a recurrence of that breathtaking little experience of the night before.

CHAPTER VI

Magdalena,
when she brought her tray, looked surprised and sympathetic.

Magdalena was a Catalan girl with gentle dark eyes, and a soft, attractive voice, and she attempted to put her sympathy into the few words of English that she knew.

“It is dull for the
senorita
.” She set the tray down on a table near the window, because the light was dying fast outside—Josie had forgotten how late private families dined in Spain—and already stars were piercing the mystic haze that had dropped like a mantle upon the garden, and the colorful coast which it overlooked. “It is a little lonely, too, up here in this room?” The melting dark eyes looked all their sympathy, because the English girl looked so slight and small in the grey dress, and it wasn’t as if she was of a different caste to the women who would be dining downstairs. Indeed, the voluble Mrs. Duveen, with her lavender-colored hair, had offended by offering an overlarge tip before any tip was due, with the object no doubt of buying Magdalena’s services, which were already at the disposal of an employer who paid her well.

“I’ll be quite all right, thank you, Magdalena,” Josie assured her, smiling gratefully because a little consideration was a heart-warming thing just then. And perhaps because it was the first time that she had dined alone in Spain—so very far from home—and the dusk was deepening moment by moment in the garden outside, and seemed to be stealing in through the open window to envelop her, she was conscious of the need to have her heart warmed a little.

Of course, Mrs. Duveen was absolutely right, or so she kept telling herself. The Marquis de Palheiro
was
a marquis, and amongst the guests who would come to the villa during their stay there, there would almost certainly be those who would be extremely distinguished, and anyone like herself could hardly expect to be granted the freedom to mix with them all the time. And it was as well to begin as one meant to go on, even though at the moment there was no one who could be described as “extremely distinguished” within the white walls of the villa, apart, that was, from the marquis and his sister. Somehow Miss Sylvia Petersen, in spite of the aura of exclusiveness and expensiveness that clung to her, had not struck Josie as a distinguished product. She was undoubtedly lovely, and had all the charm of youth, and careful grooming ... but there was no suggestion of a very high top drawer about her. Unless it was because she was American, for even very rich Americans carried the flavor of their “new-world” ideas about with them.

When she had finished her own meal Josie sat for a while without switching on any of her lights, listening to the subdued murmur that rose up from the main body of the house. Once or twice she thought she heard laughter—feminine laughter—and the smooth murmur of masculine voices, and then a couple of cars swept up to the front of the house and deposited some dinner guests on the broad open space beneath the stars. But it was too dark for Josie, leaning discreetly over her balcony, to catch any real glimpses of them, apart from the shimmer of a dress that looked like the pale wings of a moth in the gloom, and the fiery flash of a jewel that adorned an unseen throat or wrist.

She was glad now that Mrs. Duveen had saved her from going downstairs, for she couldn’t possibly have competed with any of the women who would take their places at the long oak dining table in the splendidly appointed room where they had lunched that day. She had only two evening dresses, and neither of those would have even begun to stand up to comparison with the type of dresses the marquis’s genuine guests would be boosting their feminine charms by wearing.

But Josie didn’t want to spend the entire evening, before it was time to go to bed, in her room, and she decided to make her way out unseen to the garden, where she could at least walk the paths, and get rid of a little of the restlessness she felt most unreasonably possessed of.

She judged that the others would spend a good deal of time in the patio, sipping their
aperitifs
, and helping themselves to the contents of the many little dishes that accompanied these appetizers in Spain. The main meal was not the important thing—or, at any rate, it was not anything to be rushed upon, as if body and soul could no longer hang together, and when everyone did go in to dinner they might linger over it for a very long time.

Therefore Josie felt safe, wandering the paths like a lonely lost soul in her grey dress, with the velvety, star-pricked sky above her, and a warm wind coming at her face. She found a little arbour smothered in a white-flowering vine and sat there until she started to shiver a little, and decided that she would have to return to the house, even if only to fetch a wrap.

But as she drew near to the villa she decided that she would go straight to bed, and thinking of the superbly comfortable-looking half-tester bed in which she would shortly relax her suddenly weary limbs, the idea wasn’t at all distasteful. She wasn’t used to late nights, and since coming to Spain she had spent hours on her hotel balcony at nights, watching the splendour of the stars, and feeling loath to desert so much magic for the confinement of a mere bedroom. Now all at once weariness looked out of her face, coupled with disillusion because of what had happened to her the night before.

And tonight Michael had Dona Maria’s grey eyes to gaze into...

Her face looked small and pale and blurred when the marquis stepped into her path and looked down at her.

“
Senorita
,” he said, “it is a little unwise to wander about at this hour without a wrap. You should always remember that we are very close to the sea, and even in Spain the sea introduces a nip into the air when the sun is long past its setting.”

She looked up at him vaguely.

“I’m sorry...” She began to stammer, and saw that he was frowning a little.

“Why didn’t we see you in the dining room tonight, Nurse Winters?”

She didn’t know how to reply to this, but at last some awkward words left her lips.

“There are such things as conventions ... I mean, it wouldn’t be correct for me to mingle too freely with your guests, and both Mrs. Duveen and I agreed ... That is to say, I was happier dining in my own room, and we both thought it would be far more fitting.”

“I see.” But his frown didn’t lessen. “Nevertheless, I look upon you as a guest, and in future I shall expect you to remember that, and shall look to see you in the dining room whenever we take our meals.” He turned and walked beside her along the path. “Come now and have some coffee.”

She felt very small, and foolish, like a rebuked child, as she kept pace with his long strides, and she was secretly appalled at the idea of making her appearance amongst the others with her hair wind-blown, and in her plain uniform-like dress that would inevitably set her miles apart from the rest of the company. And Mrs. Duveen ... Mrs. Duveen, she felt certain, wouldn’t approve at all.

She tried to get herself excused, summoning up the courage to put forward a plea on a matter that was vital to the retention of her pride.

“
Senor
”—Mrs. Duveen had explained to her that in spite of his elevated status it was customary to address the marquis in this simple fashion—“If you please,
senor,
I would much prefer not to ... I mean, I don’t really want any coffee, and...”

“Then a glass of wine after the chill of the out-of-doors will help you to sleep,” and she realized it was no use attempting any more excuses. “It is important that a nurse should sleep well in order that she shall be fresh to look after her patient. ‘Isn’t that so, Senorita Winter?” And he looked at her with strange, dark, penetrating eyes as they passed beneath the swinging lantern in the hall.

She wondered whether he realized that for the past hour and more her thoughts had been almost entirely with Michael.

The huge, formal room where the rest of the party were relaxing after a dinner of many courses—each one a triumph for the marquis’s chef—seemed to Josie to be a blaze of light when they entered it. She could feel the light beating down on her ruffled fair curls, drawing attention to the lack of color in her cheeks, and the puritanical whiteness of her collar and cuffs. She could also see Mrs. Duveen, sharing a damask-covered couch with an elderly, white-haired Spaniard who had been paying her the most extravagant compliments ever; since dinner ended, looking at her with a frankly startled expression in her eyes, and Michael turn his sleek head towards her. He was lying back in one of the most comfortable chairs in the room, and Dona Maria had just provided him with an additional cushion which she was certain was necessary for his complete comfort. As Josie, with dragging steps—although there was nothing dragging about the brisk steps which carried her host to the array of drinks set out on a side table—reached the middle of the room, the marquis’s sister, with an almost maternal smile of solicitude for the invalid, bent above him with an ivory box of cigarettes, and he was just about to submit to having one lighted for him when Josie came to a halt.

“Is anything
wrong
, Nurse Winter?” Mrs. Duveen asked sharply, sitting upright against the pearl-grey damask.

Josie felt the color beginning to flood to her face.

“No, nothing—nothing,” she assured her employer, and wondered whether it was purely her imagination, or whether Michael really did look a little concerned as he gazed up at her. He even made an attempt to rise and offer her his chair.

“What happened to you, Josie?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you put in an appearance at dinner?”

“That is precisely the question I put to Miss Winter,” the Marquis de Palheiro said, in a very quiet but incisive voice, as he returned to Josie’s side with the drink he had poured for her. He put the glass into her hand, and as he almost forced her into a chair, she had the curious conviction that there was something very deliberate about his movements, and that his dark downward glance was like the offer of a shield and buckler in that lovely, flower-filled, brilliantly-lighted room, so full of other pairs of eyes that were offering nothing of the kind.

There was Sylvia Petersen, for instance, in a cloud of lilac gauze that swirled with her every movement, her white arms and shoulders like a bed of milk-white velvet selected for the display of diamonds that caught every ray of light in the room, and which had the appearance of heirlooms. Her hair formed burnished wings on either side of her face, her eyebrows and eyelashes were so many shades darker that the effect was slightly staggering, and her eyes were a brilliant kingfisher blue as they gazed straight at Josie. It was a hard, inquiring stare, which suggested that her sympathies were entirely with Mrs. Duveen.

The latter looked a trifle agitated.

“I thought Josie looked a little tired—and she complained of a headache,” she said, rather feebly, while her elderly companion on the settee rescued her brocade evening bag, which she had allowed to fall with a little thud to the carpet.

The marquis said nothing, and Josie took a hurried sip at her wine.

Michael looked a little quizzical.

“A headache, Josie? That sounds extremely unlike you. And if it was as bad as all that you should have come straight to the doctor for advice.” But he smiled at her with sudden gentleness. “How are things now? Did you have any dinner at all?”

“Oh, yes, I had something upstairs on a tray,” Josie assured him hastily.

“And you’ve got a supply of aspirin, of course?”

“Oh, yes.”

A faint sigh went through the room—whether of boredom, or because of the relaxing of a sudden moment of slight, but unexpected tension, Josie was unable to tell—and Sylvia Petersen went on talking to a young man with polished black curls who had been regarding Josie through a haze of cigarette smoke. Dona Maria bent down once more to light Michael’s cigarette, Mrs. Duveen turned to the sharer of her settee with a little burst of confidential conversation, and a very elderly lady with high-piled silvery hair and a magnificent black lace shawl, that must once have been a mantilla draped about her shoulders, continued laying out patience cards at the far end of the room as if that was the one thing in life she preferred doing to anything else.

The marquis made no attempt to introduce Josie to his guests—perhaps because the color was only just beginning to steal back to her cheeks, and he knew how unwillingly she had made this belated appearance—but he drew up a chair close to her as if, looking upon her also as a guest, he felt that some little attentiveness from himself was slightly overdue to her.

While she sipped her wine he asked her whether it was too early for her to have made up her mind whether she was going to like his country, and when she assured him shyly that she already liked it very much indeed, he smiled and told her the various things she ought to see and do while she had the opportunity. His voice was very smooth and gentle and courteous, and he not merely looked the part of host—an extremely distinguished one at that!— in his white dinner jacket, with a crimson carnation in the lapel, but in spite of his empty sleeve he looked devastatingly handsome. It was an order of handsomeness that Josie had never come upon before, making her think once more of stained-glass windows and medieval knights. She even found herself wondering a little, when she summoned up the courage to peep at him shyly, at such sheer perfection—a combination of unusually regular features, controlled expression, and unfamiliar coloring. She had seen many dark men in her life before, but never one with blue-black shadows in his hair, a kind of ivory pallor, and eyes of an almost fluid blackness—a blackness that reached out and could engulf one, she thought, feeling a little surprised as the thought passed through her mind.

“The early morning is one of the nicest times out here,” he said. “If you are an early riser you can enjoy an experience you will not come upon even in England.”