Nurse Lang (15 page)

When Jill came down to the breakfast-room her eyes were luminous. It was evident that she had been to see Philip and there had been tears, but now her whole world was transformed.

“Phil has told me about last night,” she said, looking tentatively across the table in Moira’s direction. “I’m terribly sorry, but it was just one of these things that happen, Moira. Neither Phil nor I could help falling in love.”

“Of course, you couldn’t!” she agreed. “Don’t mourn for me, Jill. What I felt for Phil wasn’t love. It was pity and the desire to help when I was needed, that was all. I was a fool to think it might develop into anything stronger.”

“You—never really loved him?” Jill asked, perplexed.

“Not in the way you mean.”

“Well, then—” Jill hesitated before something she had been about to say. “Oh! what a muddle,” she burst out. “Doesn’t anyone know what they want around here?”

“Apparently you and Phil do.” Moira moved towards the door. “I hope you will be happy, Jill.”

“Phil goes over for a final X-ray this morning,” she said, buttering a slice of toast with her usual vigour. “I’m going with him, though he’s not at all nervous this time. He feels absolutely confident about the result.”

Moira left her with a silent prayer in her heart, and the day seemed endless until she was free to return to the Priory.

Grant had ordered Philip to rest and the whole house seemed curiously hushed so that her breath caught in her throat with sudden, paralyzing fear. What had happened at the hospital? Was it possible that the plates had come through and there had been nothing to show but defeat?

Somewhere a clock struck seven, and Jill came towards the head of the stairs. Halfway up Moira could see her silhouetted against the dark panelling of the corridor above, young and slim and straight in her simple uniform, and her heart lifted a little as she met the steady confidence in the blue eyes.

“It’s been a hectic day,” Jill said, “and Grant says he may not be able to let us know what the plates say before eight or nine o’clock. Sir Archibald came down this afternoon, and I believe he is staying to dinner.”

Moira wondered if Jill knew that Serena had taken the pearls, but she did not think so. The excitement Jill referred to would be the discovery of their loss and the fact that Philip’s engagement to Moira had been broken. She did not think that Grant would have disclosed the fact of Serena’s treachery even to his future sister-in-law.

In that she was mistaken, however. She was going down to the hall when a car drew up outside the main door and Grant got out, followed by Sir Archibald Rathbone. Immediately, her thoughts flew to Philip and the result of the X-ray examination and her heart began to pound close against her throat as she sought the truth in Grant’s face in spite of all her knowledge of him. As she might have expected, his expression revealed nothing of his inward thoughts and she was forced to wait until he had shown his guest to his room before she could ask about Philip.

“Sir Archibald will be staying overnight,” he said when he came back down the stairs, and Moira saw that he was carrying one of the large manilla envelopes which had become so familiar to her in her work at the hospital.

She had seen so many X-ray reports before, watching while nervous patients and anxious relatives stood waiting on a specialist’s words, that she seemed to be looking at Grant now in a familiar dream.

“Simpson over at the hospital rushed these through for us so that Sir Archibald could make his final report immediately,” he said, “but we could not have hoped for anything quite like this.”

He took the negatives out and held them up to the light for her to see, outlining the area of damage to Philip’s spine and taking it for granted, no doubt, that she was following him, but suddenly she could not see the plates for tears. All she knew was that there had been overwhelming relief in his voice and the jubilation of victory.

Suddenly her hands were trembling and she clasped them before her as she looked at him.

“It means that he will live—that he will be all right now—quite normal in every way!” she cried.

He put the negatives aside on the table behind her when she no longer seemed to be interested in them.

“Everything has knit together in a way which is just short of miraculous,” he explained. “Sir Archibald himself is surprised and delighted.”

“And Philip!” she said. “What must Phil be feeling knowing release from fear, at last? It will be wonderful for him, wonderful for Jill and their future together!”

He came a step nearer, deliberately turning her face towards him with a firm hand under her chin.

“And you, Moira?” he asked. “What do you feel? Were you ever really in love with Phil?”

There was only one way to answer that, and she held out her hands to him, no longer caring that he could see their trembling or read the confession in her eyes. A wild, strange magic was pounding in her veins, a magic which she had felt only once before on a sunlit island garlanded with flowers, and it seemed that he could feel it, too, for he did not wait for his answer, catching her up in his arms while his lips sought hers in an answer which needed no words.

“Moira!” he said. “Moira! this should all have happened weeks ago!”

She looked her bewilderment and he drew her gently into the library and closed the great doors behind them, as he had done so often in the past, shutting them into a sanctuary of his own making.

“We haven’t got very long,” he said. “I’ll want you to act hostess to Sir Archibald after I’ve told them you’re going to be my wife.” His lips tightened momentarily. “Serena has gone. I’ve made provision for her elsewhere and now I know that I should have had the courage to do it long ago.”

“Was it—about the pearls?” Moira asked.

“Yes. Serena had taken them. She had some idea that she had a greater right to them than you had, but that’s beside the point. She should be quite comfortable in the South of France with the use of a small annual income I have from some securities there.”

She knew that he did not want to speak about his cousin, that he was deeply ashamed and still very angry at what Serena had done, and she was quite prepared to forget Serena in the joy of her own happiness now that Grant had told her that he loved her. She turned to face him with a lustre in her eyes which there could be no mistaking.

“It doesn’t matter about Serena—or anything Grant, so long as we are here together,” she said simply, and he came across the room and took her in his arms, standing where they had so often stood in the past in the deep embrasure of the fireplace with the flames licking gently round the logs and their flickering light giving life and warmth to the lovely room behind them.

“We will always be here,” he said, his arms tightening about her. “I loved you from the start, Moira. There was never any doubt about that, but Phil had to come first. It seemed to me that I had no right to think about my own happiness while his life hung in the balance, but I asked you to come to Mellyn as much for my own sake as for Phil’s. I felt that I could not lose you, and then—it seemed that Phil had won. When he announced your engagement I felt stunned. I couldn’t believe it, and I went out to the moors in a blind, savage, hurt rage, telling myself that you couldn’t do this to me. And then the fact dawned that you had come to love Phil. My own love argued that it could only be pity, but I saw that I had to stand aside, whatever I felt, at least till Phil was well. I had come between Phil and what he had taken for love before,” he added grimly, “and I couldn’t do it a second time. I had shown him Kerry for what she was—brutally, perhaps, but it was the only way to cure him of a desperate infatuation, and I think he appreciated it in the end. He didn’t like me for it, of course. In fact, it all but separated us for life, but somewhere deep down Phil acknowledged the truth. Kerry was like poison at Mellyn, and the thought of Serena giving you the room she had occupied maddened me. Serena did that for a purpose, I suppose. She didn’t want you at Mellyn. It was a direct challenge to her power. She had guessed the truth right from the beginning—instinctively, if you like—but she saw that I loved you even then. I think that I meant to claim you after Phil was well—even after your engagement, and then there was no more doubt about Phil’s condition and I knew I had no right to take you from him. When I came to tell you that day I felt that you must care for Phil more than I had thought and I wondered if, maybe, I had been mistaken about you and me belonging from the first.”

“There was no question about it,” Moira said, conscious of the protective comfort of his arms. “It was never Phil, Grant, however much I might have thought that I could have loved him out of pity, but—when I first came to Mellyn there was the thought of Kerry, the knowledge of her memory everywhere about the house—”

He kissed the distress from her lips.

“Kerry’s memory was all darkness,” he said harshly. “She destroyed something very precious to me in those few months she was at Mellyn. She destroyed Phil’s trust in me and turned it into hatred, and even now I wonder if the breach has quite healed, now when he knows the truth about Kerry. His jealousy and despair were terrible to see, and even when they quarrelled, when she told him that she had no more use for him and drove out into the night, he was still in love with her. I knew that he had to find someone to make up to him for all that, but I could not have thought up a more desperate situation than having to give up the one person I had ever loved to see Phil out of his despair.”

His arm tightened about her, his lips straying over her hair as he went on to confess:

“I tortured myself with cynicism when I gave you Philip’s ring, telling myself that I had been wrong, that I had been too sure of you, and this was Fate’s derisive answer.” He drew in a deep breath, as if the memory of these hours had still the power to hurt. “Do you think it was any satisfaction to me that the emerald was really my choice?” he asked harshly. “There was only one thought in my mind, that, when you wore it, you were bound to Phil and he would keep you to your promise. You were what he needed—what he wanted now. What right had I to feel that you could have loved me as no other woman ever could—that you had loved me from that first day in Grand Canary when I had kissed you in the ring of flowers?”

“It was true,” she whispered, “quite, quite true! I’ve always loved you, Grant. There has never been anyone else, but it seemed that Phil needed me and I did not know that you would ever love me.”

He gathered her closer, pressing her head tightly against his shoulder. “We’ve made mistakes,” he said, “but they’re all over. After Phil got well, when he could walk and you still wanted to go on with your engagement, I felt that you must have loved him, after all, that I had been a fool to hope there had been some mistake and that all I could do was to stand aside and watch you complete his happiness.”

“And then Jill came on the scene!” Moira said, holding him tightly. “Jill and Philip. They were made for one another!”

He released her, holding her at arm’s length to look at her in the firelight.

“Just as you were made for Mellyn,” he said gently, “and for me!”