Queen's Nurse Read online

  “I know that.” Beneath her lashes Jess glanced at him, but he was not looking at her. Upon an impulse of daring she added, “But perhaps—forgive me for saying this—for someone like Liane affection without understanding isn’t quite enough.”

  “You are implying that Liane doesn’t feel herself understood? By whom? By me?” Muir’s tone was coolly analytical.

  “Not only by you. I think she craves to be needed in something of the way her father needed her—looking after his comfort and being an important and indispensable part of his household. I know she hoped she might find another niche like that but felt that Mrs. Seacombe had shut her out.”

  “I see. Well, perhaps we can remedy that. But your comment implied that I have failed in understanding, too? Could you enlarge on that?”

  Jess’s fingers tightened upon the stem of her wineglass. She had not sought this, but now that she was launched upon it she must carry it through, unheeding of the pain of pleading Liane’s cause with the man she loved herself.

  She said quietly, “Liane goes in some awe of you. I think there are some things in her life that she doesn’t share with you because of that. That is, she may know that you stand strongly behind her, but while she is afraid of you she can never be quite natural in turning to you when she needs to.”

  “And this fear of me—is it your own judgment of the situation, or has Liane said as much?”

  “Something of both. I know she is awed by you, and she said once that if anyone fell short of your estimation of them, they would have short shrift with you.”

  “Implying that she fell short of it?”

  “I don’t think she meant that at the time. Only that she realized the barrier that her fear of you was setting up between you.”

  “But a barrier of her making, surely? She has no possible reason to be shy of me, so any such barrier must be broken down from her side.”

  From yours, too! The passionate conviction beat in Jess’s brain, but the task of making him understand Liane’s real need daunted her. She could have gone on from there—Liane needs your love and your sympathy and your help now. She needs to know she can talk to you and look for a tolerant hearing when she tells you that she has given her love elsewhere. For fear of you she sent away the man she loves and now may never see him again. And her fear of you cheats you of your own due from her—the truth. But before she could frame the words to tell Muir this without betraying Liane, the door opened and Liane herself came in.

  She had changed for dinner, and she had made up with more sophistication than Jess had ever known her to employ before. Every strand of her shining hair was in place and there was now no hint of the ravages of despair behind her eyes. Her smile was steady, even almost assured, and there was a touch of coquetry in the way in which she went up to tap Muir’s wineglass with the back of her fingernail, looking up at him to say, “Sherry? I think I’d like some. May I?”

  She was acting a part and acting it superbly. This was what she had meant when she had told Jess that Muir would not guess at her secret. This was Liane’s pitiful banner of pride, the brave gesture with which she had promised herself she would face the world—and Muir.

  The sheer mistaken gallantry of it did not escape Jess. But across Liane’s head as she stood between them Muir’s eyes met hers.

  In the quizzical lift of his brows Jess read his unspoken question. He did not believe that Liane needed any help of his for which she was afraid to ask. And, short of telling him the truth, there was no way of convincing him that she did.

  For all Muir’s efforts, no further news of Peter came through to his mother, and the bleak January days dragged on, each taking its little toll of hope from her store and destroying it ruthlessly. But she did not collapse and went about her work as usual, and Jess was not called in to her again.

  Jess did not see Liane either, but once she had news of her from Petra Tempton-Burney when they met one morning on the windswept seafront of Cranemouth.

  Petra worriedly said to Jess, “I say, is Liane Hart all right?”

  “All right? Yes, I think so,” said Jess carefully. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I’ve hardly ever seen her out here, except sometimes in the summer when she and Lieutenant Seacombe came to swim. But lately she has been going for long walks by herself across The Warrens. Or she sits for ages in the bit of shelter she can get from the sand dunes, and she seemed rather to hate it when I came upon her unexpectedly one day.”

  “Perhaps you startled her?” suggested Jess.

  “I may have done. I certainly didn’t expect to see her there. Or anyone, for that matter. In the winter I’m often the only person out on The Warrens—except the seabirds, of course. And that’s just as well, because the sand dunes aren’t safe for anyone who doesn’t really know them.”

  “Not safe? Why not?”

  “Well, in some places there is quicksand, and in others the incoming tides take to channels you wouldn’t expect. At high tide you might easily find yourself marooned, with sea behind you as well as in front.”

  “But surely—” Jess glanced out at the table-level stretch of open sands before them “—no one could be surprised by the tide on this coast? You can see it coming in for miles.”

  “Of course you can—by daylight,” agreed Petra.

  “But Liane wasn’t out on The Warrens after dark?”

  “It was late afternoon, nearly dusk, when I came upon her in the dunes. She was already cut off from the way she had come. I had to show her the best way back,” replied Petra bluntly. “I explained to her that the sea cuts its channels where it finds the land weakest, and that if you know the way by which it comes, that’s all right. But if you don’t or hadn’t noticed on your outward journey, you’d find yourself in danger.”

  “And you say Liane resented your warning her?”

  “I don’t know whether it was that or whether I startled her, as you suggested. I asked you about her because she seemed vaguely unhappy about something. She hardly listened to what I said, though she said yes and no politely enough when she realized I wasn’t just interfering. But I knew she wasn’t listening—with her whole attention, I mean—even when I told her that within the next two weeks or so we get the really high spring tides. So I came back with her as far as the front here, and I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Well, thanks for telling me, Petra,” said Jess after a moment.

  “I thought,” said Petra, “that someone who knows her better than I do ought to warn her, too. Mr. Forester, for instance. She would listen to him, wouldn’t she?”

  “She should have taken warning from you.” Anxiety for Liane put a touch of asperity into Jess’s tone.

  “She may have thought it wasn’t my affair,” said Petra generously. “But she really shouldn’t go out there alone.” Jess’s heart ached for Liane, seeking the loneliest place she knew for the brief hauling down of her ragged banner of pride, for the secret struggle against her longing for Peter, even, perhaps, for the shedding of the tears at the cause of which no one must guess. All the same, she had no right to be careless of her own safety, once she had been warned of danger, and Jess resolved to tell her so at the earliest opportunity.

  When she did she was disarmed by the girl’s gentle agreement that she had been foolish and by her promise that she would not take such risks again. She seemed surprised, too, that Petra should have thought her warning had gone unheeded, and Jess felt reassured that she would not go out to The Warrens again alone.

  A few days before Michael was due to come down a bitter northeast wind set in, and at first Jess, well wrapped up but still shivering in its blast, did not understand everyone’s anxiety that the black frost it caused should hold over the weekend.

  Mrs. Boss, bringing Jess a dish of crumpets for her tea by the blazing fire in her room, enlightened her.

  “It’s the skating of course,” she explained in her singing East Anglian voice. “If the frost only holds, they’ll flood the water
meadows from the river, and everybody, young and old, will be skating like mad. Can you skate yourself, nurse? You’ll be out of the fun if you can’t, for we all turn out for it here.”

  “Oddly enough, I can a little,” said Jess. She was remembering the harsh winter of her first year at the hospital and how her friendship with Michael, begun on the wards, had been cemented by their mutual stumblings and shared laughter on the lake in, Regents Park.

  She had achieved only mediocre performance then, but she had done a little since on an indoor rink and loved the grace and exhilaration of the exercise of such skill as she had. She resolved to phone Michael, telling him to bring his skates with him, and thereafter she began to watch the falling thermometer with as much anxiety as everybody else.

  Michael arrived by train at the Crane station, and Jess was able to meet him with the car on her return from a call in the village. He leaped at once from his compartment, swinging his skates dangerously but seemingly having no other luggage except what he might be carrying in the pannier like pockets of his sport jacket. He did not give Jess his usual salute—the light, brotherly kiss on the cheek that she had never resented—but he took both her hands, his eyes alight with pleasure at seeing her.

  Jess, waiting to greet him, had received a cool nod from Jane Bretton for whom he had stood aside while she alighted from the same compartment. Jane lingered on the platform, signaling to the station’s only porter to take her suitcase, and Jess was aware that she was eyeing Michael and was witnessing their meeting with interest.

  “Who is frozen face?” asked Michael as he gave up his ticket. “I noticed you spoke to each other.”

  Jess explained about Jane.

  “Well, she got on at Cambridge and since then has regarded me with a don’t-you-dare-address-me-young-man-or-I’ll-pull-the-emergency-cord expression. Not that I craved to particularly, though if she’d been at all matey I might have shown her my placard.”

  “Your placard?”

  In answer, Michael extracted a card from one of the panniers. In neat block letters its wording ran, “I am not engaged to Jess Mawney and never was.”

  “Oh, Michael, you idiot!” Jess blushed and laughed.

  “I thought of tying it around my neck,” he grinned, then added more gravely, “It hadn’t escaped me, you see, that you didn’t want it thought here that we were engaged.”

  “Oh, Michael—” Jess began again, blushing more deeply though not laughing now.

  His glance was one of shrewd understanding. “I’m not asking your reasons,” he assured her quickly. “I just knew. Hence the precaution.” He flicked the card and was grinning once more. “I thought it would make you laugh.”

  They laughed together as they got into Jess’s car. And Jane Bretton, waiting for her husband to meet her, watched them go with an interest that was flattering.

  Mrs. Boss had no room to put Michael up, so he was to sleep at a neighbor’s, though he would have his meals with Jess. Mrs. Boss was delighted by the full justice he did to an enormous lunch of stew and dumplings and cherry-jam tart, and promised that there would be high tea to match on their return from skating, if that was what they meant to do.

  “Of course we’re going skating,” claimed Michael. “Though whether we come back in as few pieces as we go is something else again. Eh, Jess?”

  They skated through the short afternoon until dusk and then had cups of strong, sweet tea from an urn that someone had thought to provide. Afterward lanterns were set around on the ice and people were still skating when at last they came away.

  They spent the evening listening to the radio and talking by the fire. As Michael gave her the latest news of the hospital, Jess realized with a slight pang that already he had moved into fresh circles and that he had many new friends who were mere names to her. There was, for instance, a Dr. Jean Carrelmore, a house physician on Jess’s old ward. She figured frequently in Michael’s anecdotes, and Jess remembered how she had hoped just this for him—that when she left London he would find someone to love in her place.

  Was Jean Carrelmore that person? Intuitively, and from the eager way Michael spoke of her, Jess believed that she was. But she also thought that Michael himself did not know it yet.

  She had not reckoned on Michael’s intuition about herself being as keen as hers about him.

  Just as they were about to part for the night he said carefully, “Do you realize that you haven’t mentioned Forester once since I arrived? But you spent Christmas at his house. What sort of a time did you have?”

  “Christmas was lovely. It—it was marred at the end by news from Korea that the housekeeper’s son, who was on leave here during the summer, was missing, believed killed.”

  “Marred for you only by that?” Michael paused. “Look, Jess, I said I wouldn’t ask questions. You see, I don’t need to, and you don’t have to hedge with me. You are in love with Forester, aren’t you? And he’s not in love with you?”

  His glance at Jess’s face and the sight of her knuckles gleaming, bone white, with the tensity of her grasp on the arms of her chair gave him his answer.

  At last she said in a taut voice, “Don’t let’s discuss it, Michael. It doesn’t signify very much. And I—I don’t know how you knew.”

  “I wasn’t allowed to give you my customary salute when we met at the station. Remember?”

  “You didn’t mean to kiss me this time,” she protested.

  “That I didn’t was merely split-second timing.” Michael’s tone was rueful. “I was going to, but you shied away almost imperceptibly. So I didn’t. And I knew then what I had guessed at Christmas or even before—that my last chance with you had gone. In the circumstances, it was rather sweet of you to let me come down. But I’ve been too persistent a chap to say no to, haven’t I?”

  “No. I’m glad you came, especially now that I needn’t pretend with you any more. The—the other isn’t significant enough to spoil the friendship we have until you want to end it, Michael.”

  “I won’t want to,” he declared stoutly.

  But Jess, thinking again of Jean Carrelmore, knew that that time would come. “Well—we had fun, didn’t we?” she said a little tremulously.

  “Yes, we did.” For all his stout loyalty, his use of the past tense tacitly agreed that matters had changed forever between them. But he went to stand by her and to ruffle her hair affectionately. “Tell me as much as you like or nothing if you please,” he said. “And if there’s anything at all that I can do—”

  They both knew there was nothing. Jess’s fate remained her own.

  The following morning Jess had to drive in to Starmouth with some papers for Dr. Gilder, so Michael went with her. Jess did her errand, and they had coffee in town. And when Michael noticed that the movie house was showing belatedly a film he had missed many months before in London and which Jess also wished to see, they planned to go over for it that evening. As the frost still held they would go skating again in the afternoon.

  Mrs. Boss had been right when she had told Jess that everybody would be doing the same. It was almost literally true. On that flat countryside even a few days’ frost made skating possible and safe, and most people seemed to have been able to skate from babyhood, while the latest generation of babies was already learning! As it was Saturday the children were there in force, and Jess got a lot of pleasure from watching their antics on the tiny blades on which they seemed so at home.

  Even the few hours’ practice they had had the previous day had given confidence to her and Michael. They managed a quite passable waltz, and Michael insisted on instructing Jess in some spectacular leaps and turns of which the professional-sounding names were most impressive. They both had to admit their own execution was less so, but gave rise to a good deal of chaff and laughter.

  Michael had just gone down unceremoniously on one knee and was trying to convince Jess, standing over him, that he had meant to do it, that it was part of the act, when she looked up to see Muir chatting to Edgar
Bretton at his side, skating easily by.

  She was half-turned from him, but knew when he checked and came about in a skillfully executed turn to face her.

  Before he recognized Michael he said, “I hadn’t realized that you skated, or I’d have asked you to join our party. Liane hasn’t come, as she doesn’t skate and she’d have been cold standing about, but Jane and Edgar and a few other friends are here. We’ve foregathered at the far end of the north meadow, and we thought of making an evening of it. There may be a moon, and Castle, one of the farm men whose cottage is nearby, is preparing some lamps to bring out to us later. Will you join us?”

  By this time Michael was on his feet, and Jess was only too conscious of him at her side, bristling and defensive, as if he thought her in need of protection from Muir’s indifference.

  “Thank you. You—you’ve met Dr. Leyden, haven’t you?” she murmured.

  The two men exchanged rather curt nods and Muir said, “Yes, we have met—” Jess immediately saw the impossibility of expecting Michael to join Muir’s party or of Muir’s being particularly cordial if he did so. A personal antipathy between them had been “touched off” by Michael at that first unfortunate meeting, and now cordiality would never be easy for them. Besides, she had surprised again in Muir’s glance that same level watchfulness with which he had told her at Quintains that Michael was on the telephone—as if he knew he had no right to judge her continued association with Michael, but he did so all the same.

  She said quickly, “It is very kind of you. But we won’t be staying much longer. We’d planned to see a movie in Starmouth this evening.”

  “Must you? You can go to the show anytime. You can skate only while the frost holds, and by my calculations it will break before long when the wind backs to the northwest.” It was Edgar Bretton adding his argument, but Muir did not join in again, seeming to have taken Jess’s refusal as final.

  When they had skated on Michael shyly tucked his arm beneath hers. “That was rather sweet of you,” he said. “Did you want to go really?”