Nurse Linnet's Release (14 page)

CHAPTER XIV

Diana said almost drawlingly:

“Darling, I’m afraid you’ve caught us in the act!”

Linnet had never felt so uncomfortable in her life, or so conscious of a desire to escape without leaving any trace behind her or any indication of where she had escaped to. Curiously enough she was not angry, but she felt shocked, affronted in some way she felt she would never forget. It was like someone brushing her hair up the wrong way, and causing her an unpleasant sensation all the way along her spine.

“Put it down to the champagne,” Diana said, as Guy still offered no explanations, although he had turned to look at Linnet.

“I—your mother—we wondered where you were
...
” Linnet
said,
speaking
mechanically. “We’ve finished looking at the photographs.”

“And did you get a very big thrill from the sight of Guy in his birthday suit, sitting in the middle of a pram rug?” Diana inquired, with a kind of gay carelessness, as she swept past Linnet into the corridor. Her eyes were sparkling and amused, but there was just a touch of sympathy in them as they rested on the younger girl’s small, blank face. “Just a little interlude, darling,” she whispered. “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill,” and went on her way to the drawing-room.

Linnet turned to follow her, but Guy came up behind her and caught her arm.

“So you thought you’d spy on me, did you?” he said, and his voice was harsh and brutal.

Linnet turned and looked up into his face. The dark flush on the rather high cheekbones reminded her of the flush in his face on the night he had had malaria so badly, and his dark eyes were glittering strangely.

“I can assure you I had no intention of spying on you,” she answered, very quietly, after a moment. “It was your mother’s suggestion that I come and look for you.”

“And you did come and look for me!” His voice mocked. “And you caught me with Diana! Well, she, at least, is flesh and blood, and there are few reservations about her!”

Linnet succeeded in wrenching free her arm, and she turned quickly and left him and hurried back to the drawing-room. She found Diana chatting composedly to her hostess as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, and although she was never afterwards quite certain how she managed it she forced herself to join in their light and casual conversation, and when the coffee was brought offered to pour out for Mrs. Monteith, although Guy had by that time returned to the drawing-room and was sitting and deliberately watching her.

If his mother thought there was something not quite normal in his manner she gave no sign, but Diana quickly grew bored by a purely feminine conversation—for Guy somewhat noticeably contributed nothing to it—and after a short while made an excuse to go upstairs to bed. Linnet rose to follow her, saying she would give her her sedative, but Diana waved her away smilingly.

“Don’t be silly, darling”—she nowadays never addressed her as Nurse—
“I
’m quite capable of dosing myself, and I really don’t want you.”

But Linnet insisted on following her just the same, and as she started to climb the stairs behind Diana, who was running gracefully over the shallow treads ahead of her, Guy emerged from the drawing-room behind her and took one quick leap up the stairs and caught her wrist.

“Linnet, I want to talk to you!”

She wrenched away her wrist.

“There’s nothing to talk about now. I must go and help Diana.”

“Diana doesn’t need you. She’s already caused enough trouble for one evening, and I’m determined to talk to you!” He managed to grasp at her wrist again, and drew her into an alcove half-way up the stairs. “Linnet, please!”

When she looked up into his face this time she saw that his eyes were imploring her, and every scrap of harshness and hostility had gone. There was even something pathetically humble about the way he looked at her.

“Not tonight,” she said, less sharply, but just as inexorably. “Diana is my patient and I must settle her down for the night. Let me go, Guy.”

“But you’ll come back and say good night? Let me explain?”

A tiny smile touched her lips.

“I shouldn’t have thought there was very much explaining you could do.”

“You don’t understand ... I was unhappy, uncertain of you—you’re so elusive, so much like a dream I keep trying to grasp hold of
...
!
And I love you desperately
...
!
”

His eyes were tormented, pleading with her, and she gazed at him in amazement. Less than half an hour before he had held Diana in his arms, and now he told her that he loved her desperately
...
!
He was incomprehensible to her because the torment in his eyes was the reflection of something he was genuinely experiencing, she felt sure, and the urgency of his voice gave away the fact that he was willing to humble himself completely and plead with her. And yet she had actually seen him with Diana’s lips underneath his own
...
!

Nevertheless, she refused to give way.

“I can’t stop now—I must go to Diana! You can do your explaining another time
...
”

And she fled away from him while he was still looking at her as if her unyielding attitude appalled him, and reached her room and even turned the key in the lock once she was inside it.

She went through to Diana’s room, and Mrs. Carey was seated on the side of her bed and thoughtfully smoking a cigarette.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve already taken my tablets, and I’m going straight to bed. Don’t be too hard on Guy.”

Linnet looked at her curiously.

“Does it amuse you to—to do that sort of thing?” she asked.

The widow smiled up at her queerly.

“To let a man make light love to me even although he’s engaged to someone else, and happens to be my own cousin? My dear child, don’t be silly! Of course it amuses me, and one day you’ll find it amuses you, too—when you’ve been married to Guy for a year or so! It’s a little light relief, you know—makes life exciting!”

Linnet looked to make sure she had everything she would require for the night beside her bed, and then returned to her own room; but as she slipped out of her green dress and into her dressing
-
gown, and then picked up her spongebag before going along to the nearest bathroom to brush her teeth, the thought which disturbed her mind had nothing at all to do with herself, and it didn’t even concern Guy—it was the thought that if Diana married Adrian Shane Willoughby she would be doing him a grave injustice, for he was not the type, she felt absolutely certain, to appreciate a wife indulging in a little light relief with another man after not much more than a year of marriage!

And the more she thought of Adrian Shane Willoughby, the more concerned for him she felt.

When she returned from the bathroom, after peeping cautiously before leaving it to make sure that the corridor was empty—for another encounter with Guy was the last thing she desired that night, and it was absolutely important that she should be alone for a while and think over the main incident of that e
v
ening before coming face to face with him again—she congratulated herself on choosing a moment when there appeared to be no one about, and entered her bedroom quickly, with the intention of once again locking the door once she was inside.

It was not that she thought Guy would try to thrust himself upon her while she was a guest beneath his own mother’s roof, but the look in his face had worried her, and he was by no means completely his normal self tonight.

She slipped inside the room, and was actually about to turn the key when she realized that someone was smoking a cigarette in the room, and looked round to see Guy himself standing near the window, with its as yet undrawn curtains.

He looked at her defiantly, but with a touch of the same pleading as before.

“You needn’t be alarmed,” he said, his voice a little dry. “I merely want to talk to you—I told you I’ve got to talk to you tonight!—and if it’ll give you any feeling of reassurance my mother’s bedroom is quite close to this.”

All at once, something about the way he allowed the words to fall from his lips—in much the same fashion as a schoolboy guilty of a crime he was well aware to be a major crime, and yet terribly anxious to clear himself if he could, would prepare the way for his own defence—touched her quite profoundly. Holding her white candlewick dressing-gown around her, and with her dark hair framing her face in slightly tumbled curls, she walked across the room towards him.

“Very well,” she said, “if you really feel you
must
say what you’ve got to say tonight! And I’m not at all afraid of you, Guy, so I shan’t be in the least tempted to call your mother.”

“No?” For an instant he smiled, and there was a genuine touch of humour in the smile. Then he instantly grew serious again. “Linnet, I’ve got to hear you say you forgive me before I go to bed—before I let you go to bed! I’ve got to hear you say that everything’s exactly the same between us.”

“But how can you expect everything to be exactly the same between us?” she inquired, looking at him as if he was a problem child and almost entirely beyond her to understand.

“Because I’ve already explained to you—there was nothing serious about that little episode in the library with Diana. Diana doesn’t mean a thing in the world to me, but you—you mean all the world!”

He moved near to her.

“Linnet, I’ve behaved badly, but it was more a kind of blind gesture because I—because I wasn’t altogether happy. I wanted you and you preferred to sit and look at snapshots with my mother! Tomorrow you’ll have left here, and it might be days before I’ll see you again—before you’ll even consent to come out in the car with me!—and yet you won’t give me every moment of this evening. Don’t you understand that I can’t bear that sort of thing?”

This time she looked at him with a touch of gravity.

“Don’t
you
understand that your mother is my hostess, and that I owe her something as well as you? And we’ve had the whole of the day together!”

“It wasn’t a happy day—you weren’t really close to me at all!”

She sighed.
“Oh, Guy, you’re hopeless!” And then, looking at him, with his strange dark eyes, his unhappy mouth and almost ruthless chin— the kind of chin that might permit him to do anything if he felt like it!—she asked herself a searching question. Just what sort of feeling did he arouse in her, and how much truth was there in his statement that she was not as close to him as she might be? If she loved him with all her heart, and soul, and mind, wouldn’t she at this moment be devastated because she had caught him kissing another woman? Wouldn’t her world—her
whole world
—have tip-tilted so dizzily that she would hardly be able to think clearly at this moment,
and wouldn’t she have found it impossible to go to bed without getting the matter straightened and cleared up in some way or other?

Wouldn’t she have felt tormented, and unable to face the thought of sleep
...
?

She realized that suddenly he was watching her face closely, almost as if he were holding his breath with a kind of acute anxiety, and looking up at him again one thing at least became clear to her. She was sufficiently fond of him—even if it wasn’t love she felt for him—to hate to see him hurt in any way, and the sight of his face twisted in that anguished fashion while he watched her hopefully at the same time did something so acute to her that her feeling showed in her face, and he seized the opportunity to put out his hands and take both of hers.

“Linnet,” he said, softly—and all at once she had the feeling that he understood, and was more resigned—“when we’re married I promise you I’ll make you love me as I love you! You won’t have any doubts about it then
...
And, oh, my darling, at the moment I’ve got enough love for the two of us, if only you’ll forgive me for tonight, and say that we’ll go on as we were?”

She realized that he was drawing her towards him, and although she hesitated and resisted him for a moment, it was only a moment, and after that she was once again held fast in his arms, and they seemed to be straining her almost desperately up against him, as if the actual physical contact with his body must induce some more lasting response in her. And he whispered:

“Linnet
...
!
Linnet, my precious, say you do forgive me?”

She put up a hand and gently touched his cheek.

“Yes, I’ll forgive you
...
But only if you’ll give me your word that it will never happen again? And I’m not only thinking of Diana! There must be no other episodes remotely like it—just because you feel a little frustrated!”

“It wasn’t just frustration
...
” And then he gave her his word, solemnly: “I’ll never let you down again, Linnet!”

She smiled at him.

“In that case we’ll forget all about it!”

“You’re an angel,” he told her. He resisted the temptation to kiss her violently, and instead his lips lightly brushed first her cheek, and then her hair, and then each of her eyes in turn. And his final kiss on the lips was very tender. “And now I’m going to let you go to bed,” he said, putting her from him.

When he had left the room, closing the door very quietly in case the sound should penetrate to his mother’s room—and his mother, he knew, held Linnet in such high esteem that nothing must be allowed to smirch it—Linnet sat down rather suddenly on the side of her bed, and gave vent to a curious sigh for a girl who had just patched things up with her lover.

She dropped her head in her hands for a moment, and she wished she was wiser than she was—she certainly wished she was more worldly wise. And she wished she knew whether patching things up with Guy had been a wise thing to do.