Nurse Linnet's Release (11 page)

It was agreed that they would spend a week-end at Lady’s Mead when Diana had had a chance to settle down a little, and to show signs of greater improvement; and somewhat to Linnet’s surprise, as they drove home, she expressed the opinion that a week-end at Lady’s Mead would probably do her a great deal of good.

“It was quite pleasant to see even Aunt Pen again,” she said, as she sat beside Linnet on the back seat, “and if there’s one thing I do adore it’s luxury in my surroundings. The cottage is comfortable enough, but Lady’s Mead would be quite a tonic.” She looked sideways at Linnet rather curiously. “You’re lucky, you know,” she told her, “really extremely lucky. Because if you marry Guy one day you’ll live at Lady’s Mead!”

And her glance, roving openly over Linnet, seemed to be trying to decide what it was about a pale-faced nurse with rather over-large eyes that made so much appeal to a man-of-the-world like her cousin.

Guy went to London at the end of the week—one of the important reasons being to buy Linnet’s ring, or so he said—but before he left he took Linnet for a couple of short evening drives, lasting no longer than half-an-hour, before it grew dark, and after Diana had retired for the night. She still went to bed early with a sedative, after having her dinner brought up to her on a tray, and once she was comfortably settled, with Mrs. Barnes listening for any unwonted sound, Linnet felt it was safe to leave the cottage for such a brief while. And it was not until Dr. Shane Willoughby arrived and seemed to disapprove that it struck her that she was not apparently entitled to any free time of her own.

Dr. Willoughby’s first visit to them after they were settled in came on a Tuesday, just a week after they arrived at the cottage. He had arranged to spend the night at the Bull Inn in the village, and having left his suitcase there he drove on to Briar Cottage.

Diana was most effusively delighted to see him. He had already telephoned her twice during the week to ascertain that she was still making improvement, and she realized that she must have been very much in his thoughts, which-was entirely to her satisfaction. When she knew that he was arriving she dressed herself in cool lime green linen with a wide white collar almost like a cape about her slender shoulders, and took up an interesting position on a
chaise longue,
with soft cushions stuffed in behind the pale gold of her hair.

Her cheeks were fuller, her eyes clearer and more alert, and she no longer appeared almost painfully thin, merely a little too slender. She was drinking quantities of milk daily, which Linnet declined to allow her to refuse, and her appetite was much improved. For lunch, and Dr. Shane Willoughby’s visit, Mrs. Barnes roasted a couple of Norfolk ducklings in the kitchen, and there were green garden peas to accompany the main course, a crisp bowl of salad, one of the housekeeper’s special feathery
soufflé
s to follow, and finally coffee and liqueurs. Sir Paul had left the cottage fully stocked with wines and provisions, and Diana had insisted that a bottle of Sauterne as well as the liqueurs should be served with the meal.

“I shall tell Adrian that I’m tired of drinking milk,” she said, looking up with a pouting, partly defiant smile at Linnet just before his car drew up.

At first he seemed to have eyes only for Diana, and Linnet felt sure he was scarcely aware that she was hovering in the background. He was wearing well-cut tweeds, and like Guy he favoured immaculate linen and a carelessly flowing tie when he was not being strictly professional, and Linnet thought he looked very tall and attractive in the sunshine; not a handsome man, but an extremely personable one.

She herself, a little conscious of her summer cotton dress, since Diana still sternly forbade her to wear her uniform even for the doctor’s visit, wondered what he would think of her when he did actually notice her, and whether he would consider her acquiescence in this matter very unprofessional.

Actually, when he did turn to her he looked at her rather hard, and then he smiled at her rather formally.

“How are you, Nurse?” he said. “Your patient already seems to be much improved.”

“You think so, Doctor?” she answered, and wondered why the formality of his tone as well as his look disappointed her in some curious way.

“Did you find it difficult to recognize Nurse Kintyre out of uniform?” Diana inquired, looking up into his face. “I told her I didn’t want her to look too professional, and she agreed to something less starched and forbidding. It makes me feel much happier to see her without a cap.”

“I’ve seen Nurse Kintyre out of uniform before,” Dr. Shane
Willoughby replied.

“Oh!” Diana exclaimed.

He changed the subject by asking her how well she was walking, and by the time they went in to lunch even the subject of her health had been dropped for the time being, and they were discussing light, everyday topics.

After lunch Diana had her usual rest, and the doctor sat in the garden with his pipe, while Linnet remained discreetly upstairs in her own room and concentrated on her needlework. Shortly before tea she saw Diana descend and the doctor make her comfortable in the chair beside him on the lawn, but she decided to remain out of their way until Mrs. Barnes actually made her appearance with the tea-tray, and then she had to descend and join them.

Diana was very gay and light-hearted during tea, and Linnet thought the man’s eyes rested on her constantly with a great deal of quiet satisfaction in, their blue depths, and when his patient announced that she was going to stay up for dinner that night he at once approved the suggestion. While Diana was changing, Linnet, who had made very little alteration to her own appearance, went down into the garden for a little quiet stroll in her favourite nightingale-haunted copse, and considerably to her surprise she discovered, after a few moments, that Dr. Shane Willoughby had followed her.

He had not changed for dinner, obviously accepting the fact that they would be very informal in the country, but he looked very fresh and beautifully shaved, with his brown hair gleaming in the dim light of the wood. He looked downwards at Linnet from his superior height, and she sensed at once that something he had been wanting to say to her was coming now.

“Do you mind if I have a little talk with you, Nurse? There are one or two things I’d like to say.”

“Of course,” she agreed at once.

He looked down at her dress, with the misty blue flowers forming misty blue splashes against a
w
hite background, and his eyebrows crinkled a little.

“I suppose it’s all right for you to wear your own clothes if Mrs. Carey particularly wants you to do so, but it isn’t always good to give way to a patient, you know. If you give way over one thing you might give way over another, and at this stage there must be no relaxing of discipline or vigilance where Mrs. Carey is concerned. I hope you do understand that, Nurse?”

She felt as if he had openly disapproved of her, and answered with flushing cheeks.

“Of course I understand, Doctor. But apart from agreeing not to wear my uniform I don’t think I’ve done anything else—unprofessional, or likely to earn your disapproval.”

But he continued to frown down at her.

“Mrs. Carey has mentioned that you have friends in the neighbourhood, and that you visit them from time to time. I hope you don’t leave your patient alone too often? I’m well aware that there’s a housekeeper in the house, but that isn’t quite the same.”

Linnet’s first sensation on hearing this was one of intense surprise—backed up by shock—because Diana had resorted to such a mean device to lessen her value in the eyes of Shane Willoughby, and she looked up at him with eyes that had widened considerably.

“I’ve left Mrs. Carey for two half-hours on two evenings during this past week,” she admitted, “but apart from that I haven’t left her at all, although she offered to let me have a car to go shopping in the nearest town. I’m sorry if you feel that I’ve been neglecting my duties, Doctor.”

All at once his eyes smiled a little.

“Nothing as serious as that, Nurse.”

“All the same, I think you do rather feel that way, and Mrs. Carey must obviously feel a little neglected, too. Perhaps you would prefer to replace me with someone else—someone a little more aware of their responsibilities?” unconsciously stiffening her slight figure, while her voice trembled a little.

“Oh, come now, Nurse
—
” His voice and his eyes were
rallying, “—have I said something to offend you?”

“No.” But she declined to meet his eyes. The healthy colour that she, too, had acquired during the past week seemed to have receded out of her cheeks, and all at once she looked rather small and pale and defenceless with the shadows of the wood deepening around her. She wondered what else Diana had said to him. “No. But I really would rather go back to London if you’re not quite satisfied with me.”

“On the contrary, I’m so pleased with the progress your pa
t
ient has made that I’d be most unreasonable if I wasn’t satisfied with you.” His eyes studied her more gravely. “And I thought you were looking so much better yourself when I arrived today that I was rather congratulating myself on doing you a certain amount of good as well as Mrs. Carey by supporting her appeal to have you with her.”

“My aunt, the matron at Aston House, told me that you drew her attention to the fact that I was not really fit to be on night duty,” she told him, even more stiffly. “Apparently it occurred to you that I might not give of my best to my patients if I was not a hundred per cent fit myself.”

This time it was his eyes that widened.

“Your aunt said that to you?”

“She inferred that I was in danger of bringing discredit on the nursing staff at Aston House, and suggested that I ought to take up a different career.”

“I—see!” he said.

“So,” smiling at him rather stiffly, “as soon as Mrs. Carey ceases to have any need of me—or you feel that I ought to be replaced!—I shall give up nursing, and then I won’t be in the least likely to let anyone down will I?”

He stood fingering his chin and studying her with unusual earnestness at the same time.

“I see,” he said again. “And have you any plans for your future, Nurse, once you give up nursing?”

She was silent for a moment, and then she answered:

“Yes, Doctor—as a matter of fact I have plans!”

The nightingale who found the wood such a pleasant spot at that hour on a warm summer evening started all at once to swell its little throat with a positive burst of singing, and Dr. Shane Willoughby lifted his head and listened for a moment, entranced.

“Who wouldn’t live in the country?” he said softly, when the bird fell silent for a brief interval, no doubt to gather strength for another outpouring. “I envy you, Nurse—you and Mrs. Carey, for being able to spend a few weeks in a spot like this.” And then: “So you have plans, Nurse? I wonder what they are? Are you by any chance thinking of getting married?”

The lightness of his tone convinced Linnet that he was merely joking, but she wondered whether she ought to tell him the truth there and then. But somehow—somehow she didn’t feel like doing so just then.

She was turning over in her mind what she could say to him when Diana’s voice came clearly to her, calling from the lawn, and instantly she seized the opportunity to escape.

“Mrs. Carey is calling me,” she said. “I must go.”

At dinner that night she was the silent member of the trio, but the other two seemed to have plenty to talk about and laugh about as well, and apparently her silence was not really noticed by either of them. Only occasionally, as the meal progressed in the pleasant little dining-room with its candle-lit table, and its feeling of age and serenity, did she discover the eyes of Adrian Shane Willoughby watching her across the centrepiece of roses, and there was that curious, perplexed, questioning look in them that had been in them in the wood.

She felt hurt and rather raw inside, because to be accused of negligence in her job was the one thing that was really calculated to upset her, even though she was only a second-year nurse, and this was probably her last case. It made her feel as if everything she had ever done before—even the rare occasions when she had won praise—had all been rendered pointless and valueless, and that there was nothing in her nursing career of which she could feel in the least proud.

Perhaps if it had been anyone other than Dr. Willoughby who had accused her of negligence she might not have felt so bad about it, but she had liked him so much from the first, and somehow she hadn’t expected cool criticism from him. Although in view of the fact that he was entertaining serious thoughts about Diana Carey it was perhaps not so su
r
prising that he was over-critical where those attending her were concerned.

And it was quite obvious that he
was
having serious thoughts about Diana. Linnet suddenly remembered the unexpected gift of exotic flowers—including dark red roses—which Diana had received while she was still at Aston House, and it seemed plain now that they had come from Dr. Willoughby. The fact that he prolonged his visits to her, and planned to stay overnight at the Bull, instead of returning to London—which a busy man of his standing might well have been excused for wanting to do—proved beyond doubt that he was very seriously interested. And looking at
Diana, with her arch glances at him, her smiles, and her obvious pleasure in his society, it was just as plain that she was very serious, too.

That night when he had left for the Bull, Diana, when Linnet helped her to bed, was still smiling and almost purring as if the evening had pleased her very much indeed, particularly the few minutes’ conversation she had had with the doctor at the gate before he left, but it seemed to strike her all at once that Linnet was unusually quiet.

“What’s wrong, Nurse?” she asked, as she drew her flimsy wrapper around her and sat down to smoke a last cigarette—permitted her now she was improving so rapidly—before slipping into bed. “You’ve looked almost glum all the evening. Is anything troubling you?”

Linnet looked at her reproachfully.

“Was it necessary for you to tell Dr. Shane Willoughby that I left you alone much more than I should? You know that isn’t true.”

Diana smiled, quite unrepentantly.

“Oh, that! Well, you wouldn’t let me tell him about your engagement, so I told him you had friends in the neighborhood whom you found pleasure in visiting. I also inferred that amongst those friends was a man who was rather interested in you!”

“Oh!” Linnet exclaimed, and looked faintly amazed. “And why did you do that?”

Diana looked up at her, a cool, shrewd, calculating gleam in her eyes as they swept over her.

“I don’t quite know,” she admitted. “Except that—Well, never mind! He’s got to know about your engagement soon, so that was rather a clever method of breaking the news to him gradually. I also told him we were going to spend a week-end with my aunt, and he approved.”

“Does he know that your aunt is the mother of Major Monteith?”

Diana shook her head.

“He hasn’t a clue. But that doesn’t really matter, does it, because Aunt Penelope
is
my aunt, and Guy
is
my cousin—and if all goes well and smoothly you, too, will be related to me before very long!”

But her smile was full of cool, brittle, faintly malicious humour.

In the morning, before he took his departure, Dr. Shane Willoughby said to Linnet, when he got her for a few moments alone:

“Forget what I said about neglecting your duties, Nurse, won’t you?” He smiled at her in a very nice way. “I’ve a feeling you’re a little bit sensitive about a criticism of that sort—and in any case you’re entitled to so much free time for yourself. All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.”

“I shan’t play at the expense of my patient, Doctor,” Linnet strove to reassure him, but she was aware that her voice sounded rather prim and aloof. “You can be quite easy in your mind about that.”