Nurse Linnet's Release (16 page)

“I don’t think so,” she answered, at last.

Her hand was resting beside her on the windowledge, and suddenly he covered it with one of his.

“You’re so young,” he said. “Linnet, you really are young— young even for your age!—and it would be disastrous for you if you did make a mistake! I’m not suggesting that Monteith isn’t—isn’t the sort of man you ought to marry, but he’s older than you, and his experience of life and the world is vast compared with yours! My dear child,” as out of the corner of his eye he observed the fact that Guy had suddenly lifted his head and noticed them together, “I know I’m interfering without the slightest right, but if you have any doubts at all
—do please think again
...!”

Linnet’s face, as she gazed up at him—not noticing Guy’s sudden attentiveness—was filled with amazement she found impossible to conceal, but there was also a look of very real appreciation in her eyes because of his surprising concern for her. She told him: “Really, I have thought about it—very carefully
...
” And then Guy’s tall shadow fell across them, and behind him the woman he had deserted looked anything but pleased.

“Good afternoon, Shane Willoughby,” Guy greeted him with quite noticeable coldness and curtness. “Or is it good evening?” looking at his watch. “I suppose we ought to be going, Linnet, if we’re going out to dinner tonight?”

“I was just telling Nurse Kintyre that I’d like an opportunity to congratulate you on your engagement,” Shane Willoughby replied, standing up and dwarfing him by perhaps three or four inches.

“Thank you,” Guy said, without any change of tone. He looked at Linnet almost impatiently. “Are you ready to leave?”

“Well, I don’t know whether Diana is—”

“Never mind, Diana,” he returned shortly. “She’s quite capable of seeing herself back to the hotel in a taxi, and I’d like to leave now.”

“Very well,” Linnet said quietly. She looked at the doctor. “I—is it likely we shall be seeing you again this evening, Doctor? Diana said she had asked you to join us for dinner.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t able to accept her invitation,” he returned, very gently, and in spite of Guy’s glowering expression she knew somehow that the gentleness was deliberate.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I—I’m sorry
...
!
”

And then Guy had her by her elbow, and was already propelling her towards the door, and she had to call her good-bye over her shoulder.

They didn’t even wait to make their farewells to their host and hostess, and as soon as they were outside Guy impatiently extricated his car from the line in front of the house, and with a silent Linnet beside him drove off in the direction of her hotel. She could tell by the almost violent manner in which he jammed his gears and wrenched at the wheel of the car that he was in a sudden very black humour indeed, but she felt quite at a loss to understand it.

One moment he had been laughing and talking and flirting openly and rather outrageously with one of his old lady friends, and the next he had borne down upon her and Dr. Shane Willoughby as if they were both his worse enemies.

“Guy,” she said suddenly, as they drew near to the hotel, “is anything the matter?”

“Matter?” he answered, and tightened his lips. “Does that fellow Shane Willoughby think you’re still one of his nurses to be taken aside and given quiet instructions on whatever it occurs to him to instruct you about at the moment, or is his interest more personal? It looked to me as if it was
very
personal—so personal that it involved holding your hand! If I catch him so much as touching your hand again I’ll—!”

But whatever it was he proposed to do if Dr. Shane Willoughby indulged in any slight familiarity Linnet was not to learn just then, for they arrived at their destination and she alighted from the car with dignity.

“I was surprised that you even noticed us together,” she said quietly, before she moved towards the hotel entrance. “Until just before we left you were so preoccupied with the lady you obviously knew very well that I thought you had forgotten me altogether!”

Guy had the grace to look suddenly almost guilty, and apologetic at the same time. And then both expressions passed and sullenness took their place.

“That doesn’t excuse Shane Willoughby! If the fellow’s interest in you is serious he’s left it a little late to put his own case over! Far, far too late
...
!
”

And as Linnet went up to her room she found herself echoing his words over and over again, but she wasn’t in the least sure why she did so. She had really no idea why she did so.

Far, far too late
...
!

CHAPTER XVI

From the moment the evening really started Linnet knew it was going to be a disaster. Guy’s mood was blacker than ever when he arrived outside the hotel with the friend who was taking Adrian’s place for the evening, and when Diana and Linnet entered the car it was the friend who helped them in, and whose mood was the only mood amongst them entirely in keeping with the pursuit of pleasure.

Linnet was subdued, and Diana’s humour was not much sunnier than Guy’s, although she thawed after a time, and under the influence of her escort’s obvious admiration. Linnet was wearing the creamy-pink net dress she had bought for the dance at St. Faith’s, but not even the sight of her wearing it seemed to affect her
fiancé
’s mood. He drove with his eyes fixed grimly on the traffic, and Linnet sat with her brocade evening-bag clutched tightly in her lap and waited for his hand to steal out and cover one of hers, as it so often did when she was seated beside the driving-seat. But by the time they reached the up-to-date restaurant where they were to dine he had not softened towards her sufficiently to acknowledge her close presence in such a lover-like fashion.

In fact, his mood throughout the evening was scarcely lover-like. Diana looked at them both from time to time with an amused smile on her face, and once she inquired:

“Have you two children quarrelled?”

Neither of them answered, and Guy said:

“Let’s go on somewhere else, shall we? This place is like flat champagne, and the band’s no good. Let’s go somewhere where they can really play.”

So they went on to no fewer than three well-known night spots, and it wasn’t long before it became clear to Linnet that this was going to be an occasion when both Diana and Guy more or less made up their minds to revert to the curious types they both were at heart. Champagne circulated freely, and although Linnet, as always, merely sipped at hers, Diana had plainly forgotten she had been very seriously ill recently, and that excess of any sort was still taboo, and waved Linnet’s protests aside every time her glass needed refilling, and Guy openly mocked at his
fiancé
e.

“Linnet’s such a good little girl,” he told the fourth member of the party, a young man called Anthony Wise; “and, in fact, Diana and I have decided that she’s almost too good!”

Linnet looked almost appealingly at Anthony Wise, whose behaviour was far more rational than that of either of the other two, and he looked back at her as if something about her expression caused him concern.

“I wouldn’t worry about Mrs. Carey,” he said, in a sympathetic voice, when they were seated alone at the table and Diana and Guy were dancing. “You may have the job of looking after her, but she doesn’t strike me as being very ill now, however ill she’s been recently, and she’s probably feeling in the mood for a celebration.”

Later, when she got Diana alone for a few minutes in the ladies’ cloakroom, while they both repaired the ravages to their make-up, Linnet urged her to return to the hotel, but Diana looked at her in amazement and said:

“My dear, the night’s young yet, and this is the first time I’ve been really let off the leash for ages!”

There was something almost reckless in her manner, and Linnet couldn’t help feeling that it had something to do with that last lunch she had had with Dr. Shane Willoughby. And in the next few seconds Diana almost confessed as much. “Do you know what Adrian said to me when we had lunch together yesterday?” she asked. “He said that he thought he could more or less wash his hands of me now
...
!
At least, he didn’t exactly say that, but he inferred that there was no need for him to keep a constant eye on me in future!”

“Then—then he must think you are very much better,” Linnet found herself murmuring
m
echanically.

“So much better that in future I’ve got to look for someone else to hold my hand and give me courage!” Diana exclaimed, adding a touch of mascara to her eyelids. “Doctors!” She said the word on a snort of disdain. “They’re barely human, and they’re only interested in you if you’ve got some sort of weird ailment which looks like it’s defeating them! Sir Paul’s the same—he and Adrian have had a wonderful time trying to check up on my bugs
...
!
”

She gave a final flick of powder to her face, and then turned from the glass.

“Come on, my dear. Guy was suggesting that we drive down into Hertfordshire tonight instead of tomorrow, and we can have breakfast all together at the cottage, and that will be fun.”

“Oh, but I don’t think that’s a good idea at all,” Linnet instantly objected. “Mrs. Barnes will be in bed, and we’ll disturb her.”

Diana-flicked her cheek carelessly but affectionately.

“As if that matters! And, in any case, we don’t have to get her out of bed—we can get our own breakfast, and she needn’t be disturbed at all. And it is my cottage, so long as Sir Paul says I can stay there, and until we go off to Rhodesia,” assuming that Linnet had decided to go with her.

“But we’ll have to settle up at the hotel.”

“We can do it over the telephone, darling, and collect our clothes tomorrow. Come on!”

When Linnet attempted to reason Guy out of the plan, he merely looked at her oddly, and smiled mockingly.

“I do believe you don’t think I’m sober enough to drive you,” he told her. “But my driving is even better when I’m not a hundred per cent sober!”

Linnet felt there was nothing further she could say, since even Anthony Wise seemed to be looking at her in amusement. At the last moment it was decided that Anthony should collect his own car out of his garage and drive Diana down to the cottage, and that Linnet should travel alone with Guy in the big Bentley.

“And we’ll all meet for breakfast,” Diana said gaily. And she called after them: “And no lingering on the way, either!”

But once they had started Guy’s manner seemed just as distant
to Linnet as it had been when they started out for the evening, but his expression if anything was even more grim. He was determined to let her see what the car could do in the way of speed, and the harsh smile of amusement on his lips when she looked at him sideways in faint alarm disturbed her very much. Also she thought that, instead of looking a trifle flushed after a somewhat exciting evening, he was looking a little pale in the cold starlight, and there was a tiny rivulet of perspiration running down his forehead from his sleek dark hair.

She asked with sudden anxiety:

“Are you all right, Guy?”

“All right?” He shot her another sideways glance. “Of course I am. Even if I’m not strictly sober!” on another mocking note.

“I didn’t mean that. I meant—you
are
all right?”

“Quite all right”—and suddenly his hand reached for hers—“beloved!” His voice had become soft again, tender and caressing. “You sound really concerned about me, Linnet! Are you?”

“Of course I am. And I’ve got a feeling you’re not quite all right. I don’t think you could have been quite yourself all the afternoon.”

“Because I was so abominable to you?—and that fellow Shane Willoughby?”

“You do realize that you have been rather abominable?”

“I realize that I’ve been feeling sick with jealousy, and if I have also been feeling a bit odd since late afternoon that’s got nothing to do with my dislike of Shane Willoughby.”

She tried to pull her hand away from his, but he grabbed at it. “Don’t do that, Linnet! You’re mine, and if I want to hold your hand I shall do so!”

“But not when we’re travelling as fast as this!”

“Then I’ll slow down a bit if you’re honestly scared.” He did slow, and she felt him reaching again determinedly for her hand. His fingers felt hot and dry. “Linnet, I love you, and I’m going to stop and tell you how much I love you! I want to hold you in my arms—”

“No,” she said. “No, Guy!”

“Why not?” His voice was mocking again. “Are you scared of me?”

“I don’t want to stop—”

A car, with its headlights dimmed, passed them at speed, and then they rounded a bend and another pair of headlights temporarily dazzled them. They were still travelling far faster than Linnet could approve, but she could never afterwards be quite sure what happened to them and caused them to crash. She always remembered that Guy had only one hand on the wheel, and that his other hand was still persistently groping out for her, but even so he had been driving very competently all the way out from London.

And then it seemed to her that they skidded on what must have been a portion of wet road, and the car spun round and all but described a complete circle, and then hit the bank with a sound like an explosion. As it somersaulted and she was thrown clear and the hard ground came up at her she had only one thought in her mind, and that was that she had known all day that the evening was going to be a disaster.