A Promise Is for Keeping

by Felicity Hayle

  A Promise Is For Keeping by Felicity Hayle

  Fay played a rather passionate game of Postman's Knock with Mark at a country house party, not thinking they would meet again: Then she found herself working under him as a nurse at her new hospital.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Winnipeg · Canada · New York · New York

  First published in 1967 by Mills & Boon Limited, 50 Grafton Way, Fitzroy Square, London, England.

  Harlequin edition published July, 1968

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  The Harlequin trade mark, consisting of the word HARLEQUIN® and the portrayal of a Harlequin, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in the Canada Trade Marks Office.

  Copyright, 0, 1967, by Felicity Hayle. All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WITH fingers that were almost too stiff to move, and certainly too cold to feel, Fay Gabriel pulled at the old-fashioned bell. The taximan had already done so once and it had not been answered, so she had paid him off and let him go.

  Now she began to wish that she had not. The ground was already covered with a layer of snow several inches thick and from the leaden look in the sky it seemed that there was more to come.

  There was still no reply to the echoing peal of the bell. So far as she was concerned it was almost the last straw. Stiff with cold, shut outside a house to which she was a stranger, in the middle of a countryside which seemed to consist of nothing but dark trees and white undulating fields—if it had not been for the fact that she had flown in from Australia only that morning she would have felt like turning round and going back again.

  That being impossible, she decided to try the bell again, when she became aware that voices were approaching. She could not see over the tall hedge which separated the Victorian Gothic mansion from the road, but after a few seconds hope sprang to life again as two figures turned in at the drive gates and came towards the house.

  Two young people, from the sound of their voices, Fay decided. It was not possible to determine their sex, for both wore duffle coats, and had trousered legs with rubber half-boots.

  They came up the porch steps and for a moment a smile

  trembled on Fay's lips as she expected them to offer some greeting. But she found herself staring blankly after them as they passed her as though she was not there at all and went into the house—the door seeming to require no more than a turn of the enormous brass knob. They passed through, still engrossed in animated conversation, and left the door ajar behind them. Fay wondered what she was expected to do next, but at that juncture one of the young people came back. It was a boy, she was now able to observe.

  "Have you come to stay?" he asked in a voice no longer animated but distinctly bored.

  "Yes," Fay answered readily. "Is Mrs. Travers in?"

  "Oh, I expect so. You'd better come in then, hadn't you? Damn draughty with this door open."

  Fay stepped inside and deliberately refrained from picking up either of the suitcases which stood at her feet. They were heavy—and she had ideas that even in the latter half of the twentieth century good manners did not come amiss from the male of the species. The suggestion seemed to communicate itself, for after staring distastefully at the bags for a second or two the young man stooped, picked them up and dropped them again resoundingly inside the hall. Then, taking no more notice of them or their owner, he went up the rather fine central staircase, calling out to someone as he did so.

  It was distinctly more pleasant inside the hall than it had been on the porch. There was a great open fireplace with a good fire burning in it, and Fay went and stood near it to thaw out a little.

  Several people passed fleetingly through the hall, but no one took the slightest notice of her and none had the appearance of being domestic staff. She devoutly wished she had never come. In her wildest forebodings, fed assiduously by friends who wanted to discourage her, she had never imagined a reception like this. She longed desperately for the golden beaches at Waikerooma, with the sun beating down on the bronzed bodies of the surf-riders. When she shut her eyes she could see it all—the fifteen-foot waves with foaming

  crests, the shouts of the surf-riders, the fun and sparkle of it all.

  "Who're you?" The question made her open her eyes quickly and dispelled the beautiful dream. Fay found herself staring at two children. One of them, a very small girl in a long loose sweater, almost no skirt at all and with thin legs with blue bony knees, regarded her stolidly. The other, a slightly older girl, in jeans and a similar sweater, smiled as if with sudden inspiration and cried, "It's the angel child!" and fled through a door at the far end of the hall, screaming "Horsey ! Horsey, where are you?"

  Quite plainly, Fay thought, she had arrived at some sort of mental institution, and the words which came from the gnome-like child facing her without the slightest change of facial expression did nothing to discredit the idea.

  "Who are you sleeping with?"

  Taken aback by the unexpectedness of the question, Fay stammered, "I—I don't know. Why?"

  "Well, you must be sleeping with someone," the infant went on. "Everyone does. Cynthia sleeps with Bernard, and Lucy with Derek, and Jill with Charlie—only I think she's getting tired of him, so she'll prob'ly change next week. Mark went to meet you—I expect you'll sleep with him," the child finished, and having settled things to her own satisfaction, apparently got tired of Fay and went off through the same door as the other child had.

  Fay gasped, literally as well as figuratively. She had been brought up on tales of the Old Country told by her mother, who to her dying day remained no more than an immigrant in the land which had afforded her husband a brilliant career as author and publisher. Over and over again she had told Fay stories of her own godmother—Mrs. Antonia Travers—tales which had made Fay feel that she knew the old lady—for that was what she must be now, she remembered. But those tales had never included the slightest hint of this bedlam. Old ladies did grow a little eccentric, Fay very well knew, but this—this was pushing eccentricity to the nth degree.

  The door at the far end of the hall opened again and this time a businesslike middle-aged woman wearing a white

  coat came through. She had a smile of sanity and came up to Fay with apologies. "Miss Gabriel? I'm so sorry—we didn't hear the bell—I suppose you did ring?"

  "Several times," Fay told her faintly, almost unable to believe in this apparition of normality.

  "We were all busy with the yule log," the woman explained. "We can't get it through the door—but we will, we will!" she laughed happily. "Christmas wouldn't be Christmas to Mrs. Travers without a Yule log! But please do come along—I'll show you your room."

  To Fay's intense relief the room to which she was escorted was a small one and contained only a single bed. She did not care for a room-mate—of either sex.

  "The house is terribly full—as, usual," her cicerone explained, "so we've had to tuck you away in this corner. You're next to the bathroom and the cistern makes abominable noises—I hope you won't mind."

  "I sleep very soundly," Fay told her with a smile.

  "That's a good thing, I must say, Miss Gabriel—for the goings-on in this house when there's a party here are nobody's business and they go on until all hours of the night. So if you take my advice you'll snuggle down and get your rest—no matter if you hear somebody screaming blue murder!"

  "When can I see Mrs. Travers?"

  "Ah well now, she never sees anyone between
lunch and dinner—and I can't say I blame her either, with this lot on the go all the time. But she said to make a special exception of yourself. As soon as you've had a wash and tidy up I'll take you along to her room for tea. Shall we say a quarter of an hour?"

  "That'll be fine," Fay agreed, "but I've forgotten to bring my cases up—"

  "I'll send them up for you—and if you want anything just give a shout for 'Horsey !'—Mrs. Horsfall's the name."

  Sometime later, much refreshed after removing the traces of her long journey, Fay tapped on Mrs. Travers' sitting room door. A crisp "come in" answered her, and as she obeyed she felt that she had stepped right back into the past.

  Toni Travers' sitting room had all the gold and white

  elegance of an eighteenth-century boudoir with gleaming spindle-legged chairs and bureaux. It must have been left unchanged since the house was built, Fay thought, and then remembered that the house was not that old. That brought back the memory of something her mother had once told her of Toni Travers. She had been a reigning Italian beauty when she had met and married Charles Travers just before World War One. But in the ferment of patriotism which swept the country immediately afterwards, Antonia had become even more English than the English themselves in her efforts to become the typical "county" gentlewoman.

  "My angel child! At last—I've waited for you so long! Why didn't you come to see me before?"

  In complete contrast to her room the figure who greeted Fay, standing back to the fire on the hearthrug, wearing a tweed suit and with hair close-cropped like a man, was certainly more "county" than anything Fay had been led to expect from her reading of English novels.

  If the words of greeting puzzled her a little there was no mistaking the warmth of welcome which went with the outstretched hands and the effusive kiss on both cheeks.

  "It's very kind of you to let me come," Fay smiled in response. "Mummy told me so much about you."

  As she spoke Fay was noticing that all that was left of the Italian beauty was a pair of over-bright dark eyes and a beautiful bone formation which showed through the tightly-drawn skin of her face.

  "I do hope I'm not going to be a nuisance. Your housekeeper tells me that you have a house full of visitors for Christmas."

  "I've always got a houseful of visitors," Toni smiled. "I have an enormous number of relations—I've quite lost count of them, and half the time I don't know which is which. So many of them seem to suffer from marriages which have come adrift. I keep open house. Let them come here to sort themselves out—and no questions asked. And there are the children too—poor little mites! They've got to have some place that seems like home, haven't they. Now, come and have some tea. Or don't you drink tea?"

  "Oh, indeed yes," Fay assured her. "We drink a great deal of tea in Australia."

  Toni started to pour. "Australia, yes—an outlandish place to live. I could never think why you wanted to go there in the first place. But it hasn't changed you, not really. You haven't got that nasty flat accent—"

  Fay was going to explain that with English parents and an Australian school she had grown up to the necessity of being entirely bilingual, but Antonia swept on to another topic.

  "Mark's a nice boy, isn't he? Quite the nicest relation I've got—in fact I can never quite explain how he crept into the family at all. We're a raffish lot on the whole, you know—but Mark's so respectable and quite dependable. I want you two to like each other very much, angel child. Where is he now?"

  "I don't know." Fay stepped into the slight pause which followed the question—she had to make the most of small opportunities like this or the one-way conversation would flow on forever with Fay getting more and more bewildered. "I don't know—I haven't met him yet."

  Toni Travers' mouth fell open in surprise. "You haven't? Then how did you get here? I sent him to meet you. You must have seen him—Mark always does what I ask him."

  "Well, I'm afraid he didn't meet me. Perhaps he went to the wrong station or something—"

  "Wrong station my foot!" the old lady was emphatic. "He met you at the airport."

  "But I told you in my letter that I would be coming down by train—the tourist agency back home fixed all my tickets for me—"

  Toni was not really listening any more, but a look of consternation clouded her eyes for a moment. "Oh dear—Mark will be cross," she sighed. "He's always telling me to be more accurate—but I really did think I'd got it right this time—"

  At that precise moment after a rather peremptory knock at the door it burst open and a tall man came in. "Toni, you've done it again !" he spoke as he came. "Sent me off on another wild goose chase. There was no such person as your

  —oh!" he stopped abruptly as his glance encountered Fay. "Oh—you've arrived, I see."

  "Yes—I came down by rail," Fay explained, sorry for the long cold drive he must have had but not inclined to be apologetic since the mistake was none of her doing.

  "Well, why didn't you say so?" he demanded, and Fay would have thought he was addressing her but for the fact that his keen dark eyes were fixed on Toni.

  "I'm sorry, dear boy," she smiled at him sweetly, "but you know what I am—just a silly old woman. I expect I got things mixed, but it doesn't matter now—you're both here and I want you to like each other. She's just like I told you, Mark, isn't she? Golden curls, violet eyes and the loveliest complexion—pure cream and roses. Just like her photograph, only nicer—" As she was speaking Toni got up and crossed to a table behind Fay and came back again with a large photograph in her hand.

  Fay recognised it as one of her mother taken when she had been about her own age, or perhaps a little younger.

  Mark glanced a little grimly at the photograph, and remarked, "Yes—she's a little too much like that photograph. And it's stood on that table for as long as I can remember." Then he looked at the old lady again and his expression softened. "Oh dear, this is another of your gaffes, Toni dear. Why didn't you tell me that it was not your angel child I was to meet, but her daughter?"

  For a moment Toni looked blank. "Oh goodness! Of course—how stupid of me. I am sorry—please forgive me, Mark dear. Somehow as one gets older the years fly past so quickly. I had forgotten—"

  For the first time since she had entered this house Fay felt firm ground under her feet. Sickness, mental or physical, was one thing she did understand, and the realisation that Toni was a little sick in her mind explained so many things that had seemed more than odd. She took charge of the situation at once.

  "Don't worry, Mrs. Travers," she smiled. "Mother has always told me so much about you that I feel as if I'd known you all those years too."

  "I'll go and put the car away as I shan't be wanting it again to meet you with," Mark excused himself ungrammatically and, abruptly as he had come, disappeared from the room.

  Toni Travers settled herself down again in her chair by the fire, sitting very upright and very much in command of things again. "Of course—it was terribly stupid of me. I remember perfectly. You're a nurse, aren't you? And I wrote to my friend the Matron of St. Edith's about you. Was it all right? Did she give you a post there?"

  "Yes—and I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for the introduction. By all accounts St. Edith's is a splendid hospital and the experience there will be invaluable to me."

  The bright dark eyes, so alive in the old lady's face, studied Fay for a few moments. Then, "You know you're far too pretty for a nurse," she commented. "You'd far better fall in with my plan—"

  What that plan was Fay was not destined to hear, for with apparent inconsequence Toni harked back to a previous point in the conversation.

  "I've a queer family," she confessed with a smile, "and I can't pretend that I understand or approve of them all—but then I'm an old woman, another generation altogether, so that probably explains it. But Mark's the best of the bunch —I do know that. In fact I don't know how I'd get along without him. You can always rely on Mark," she assured her guest.

  The ta
lk went on desultorily for a little longer, and then Toni dismissed her peremptorily, and Fay went back to the little bedroom which had been allotted to her.

  She began to understand what Mrs. Horsfall had meant about the plumbing. The party was beginning to take baths, apparently, and the gurglings and bangings which went on in the pipes might have been a trifle alarming if she had not been warned.

  As she drew the curtains against the night which had already set in Fay shivered. She wished again with devoutness that she had never come to England at all. Why hadn't she been satisfied with the pleasant, comfortable life in the Commemoration Hospital? Nursing was just as worth while

  there as anywhere else, and probably there wasn't much more that even London could teach her.

  In a moment of devastating honesty she had to admit to herself that there had been more to her decision to come to England than merely the desire to improve her qualifications. She had been brought up all her life to see the Old Country —Home—through the eyes of a very homesick woman who as the years sped by saw the past through glasses which became more and more deeply rose-tinted. Fay had taken it for granted that England was the same as it had been in her mother's youth—a land of gracious living, of kindness and good manners; of men who were not only all good-looking, but perfectly groomed and chivalrous in the extreme.

  Already she knew that she was doomed to disappointment and began to suspect that there might come a time when she would be glad of the rougher manners but simpler honesty of "Down Under."

  At the moment, however, there was nothing she could do about it. It was obvious that she would have to fend for herself here. As she had not the slightest idea of the routine of the house she would have to pluck up her courage, go downstairs and try to find the housekeeper, who had at least seemed a kindly soul. The kitchen quarters seemed the best place to try, and she guessed those to be beyond the door through which the children had disappeared.