by Averil Ives
He had but to turn his head to meet those breathtaking Irish eyes and that smile that should have been the very thing to retard his convalescence, but so far Josie had never caught him doing so. She was a little surprised that the photograph remained where it was, but decided that this was too delicate a matter to be dealt with even by Mrs. Duveen, and that unless Michael himself desired the picture’s removal, it would remain where it was. And apparently he didn’t desire it.
Daily he grew stronger, alerter, more interested in his own return to health, and above all amazingly affable to both of the women who shared so many of his waking hours with him. His mother saw to it that she passed much of her time in his company, but Josie absented herself whenever she could without feeling that she was neglecting her job. It was glorious, early autumn weather, and she prowled happily in the garden, ablaze with all the wonderful colors of autumn—the rich reds and mauves of dahlias and spiky asters, the yellow of goldenrod, the pale flame of a creeper that overhung the walls of the kitchen garden—and sat on a bench in the orchard where the russet apples glowed between the leaves. She spent a good deal of her time in the tiny sunken rose garden, where the paths were littered with petals, red, yellow and white, like crumpled butterflies’ wings, and the air was heavy with scent, and thought what a perfect house King’s Folly was when she looked back at it framed in trees. Michael had told her that it dated from the time of the second Charles, and that according to a local story the Merry Monarch had handed it over to one of his lady friends, who in turn had handed it over to one of her own particular friends—hence the name King’s Folly.
But whatever the folly of Charles the Second, Josie knew that if she had possessed such a house herself she would have never wished to leave it. Reflecting, during her solitary walks, on the behaviour of a young woman who had not only turned down a man like Michael Duveen, but a gracious home such as King’s Folly, she found it hard to credit. The young woman must have been extremely difficult to please. Michael alone would have been all that many women would have asked for.
Josie, at twenty-two, had never been in love in her life, and no man had been in love with her, but sometimes she ventured to think about Michael ... She caught herself recapturing mental images of him when he was sitting alone in the library, his head bent over a book, and the sunlight picked out that bronzish patch in his hair. She saw him when he was plainly growing a little tired, and every womanish impulse in her longed to do something to help him ... to take away that exhaustion. Alone in her own room she recalled the grasp of his fingers when he caught at her arm for support, and the way his dark blue eyes smiled at her apologetically in case he was burdening her with too much weight. Sometimes at night she found it difficult to sleep because she thought she heard the tap of his stick on the polished boards, and the slight dragging noise his foot made when he moved about the house, and she wanted to leap out of bed and make sure that nothing was wrong with him.
As the nurse who was responsible for his continued progress she knew that she could always go along to his room and make sure that he was all right. But there was a bell he could ring if he needed her. Over-absorption with the wellbeing of a patient was something that could hardly prove beneficial to the patient himself, and Josie began to be a little alarmed because there could be no denying that she was over absorbed with the wellbeing of Dr. Duveen.
She began to be afraid that he might notice it, or his mother might notice it—and of the two she knew she would prefer that the man himself should suspect her acute anxiety where he was concerned rather than the immensely shrewd Irish widow.
In order to protect herself from suspicion, therefore, Josie seized every opportunity to keep well out of the reach of them both, and it was Michael himself who protested at last that she was as elusive as a will-o’-the-wisp save when she was actually needed, and he wanted to know what she did with herself when she was alone.
“I like being alone,” she answered defensively, “and there are always the walks. There are wonderful walks here, and I love them.”
“Then you must permit me to accompany you sometimes.”
“You can’t do that. Your foot isn’t strong enough.”
He seemed very tall when he was standing near to her, and without looking at him, she could feel him gazing down at her with an odd expression in his eyes: an amused, but also, in some curious way, frustrated expression.
“Then you must take shorter walks. I can hobble across the lawn at your side, and we can watch that family of ducks who live on the island in the middle of the lake.”
“Wouldn’t that be very boring?” she suggested, smiling up at him.
“Then we’ll get out a boat—there is one in the boathouse—and you can paddle me across to the island. How about that?” he asked.
She continued to smile as if she was quite certain he was merely joking.
“And supposing I upset you? What would Dr. Arbuthnot say to that?”
“So long as you didn’t drown me he couldn’t say very much. The time is rapidly approaching when I shan’t be a patient of his much longer, and if you did upset us I might even now be up to rescuing you.” And then he shook his head at her. “You’re making excuses, young woman! It’s my belief that you like your own company. I selected you for a nurse because I was certain you wouldn’t try to organize my every waking moment, but I didn’t bargain for your carrying out your duties with monotonous conscientiousness and washing your hands of me between whiles. Do you like your own company?” he demanded, as if he thought of her doing so intrigued him.
For once she was not wearing a uniform, and her slim light woollen dress that was a kind of autumn brown made her hair look honey-gold by contrast. The country air had brought a peach-like glow to her cheeks, and her eyes were limpidly brown and almost disturbingly placid, as if at the heart of her she was essentially remote and placid.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I’m not one of those people who hate their own society, and in the country one is never alone. There is always a feeling of kinship with something—even if it’s only the endless activity in these hedgerows.” She reached out to pluck a scarlet rose-hip and admire it.
He surveyed her with interest.
“That’s a nice thought—a warm and simple thought. I think you must be a very nice person, Nurse Winter, if you have thoughts along those lines.” It was a warm afternoon, and he took her suddenly by the arm and led her away across the lawn in the direction of the lake that was partially hidden by a gentle heat haze. “Tell me,” he asked suddenly, with a soberness that came upon him at times, “have you ever felt violently about any single thing in your life, Nurse?”
Josie could have answered truthfully that she was feeling violently at that moment with the warmth of his hand inside her arm, and the knowledge that for these few moments at least he was glad of her society. This realization made her feel a little bemused, and her heart labored almost painfully while her sandalled feet carried her forward at his side across the shaven surface of the lawn, but words eluded her.
He went on: “Let me tell you something, may I?” As she made a little movement with her head he frowned and stared at a blaze of shrubbery they were approaching. “Rather more than a couple of months ago I thought I was in love—so much in love that I was certain I would never get over it. My life, my whole future, everything—revolved around one person. And then I was involved in an accident—largely because that love went sour on me—and from the moment I recovered consciousness I saw everything in a different light. It was just as if I needed a dose of concussion, amongst other things, to bring me to my senses. You see,” he ended, very dryly, “the lady wasn’t really worth a lot of mental suffering. She proved that. And nowadays I can sit beside her photograph and not even want to turn my head and look at it. What do you make of that?”
Josie still felt as if she would have preferred to remain mute, but he was looking down at her inquiringly, and she shook her head.
“I don’
t know. Except that,” she added, after a pause, “you couldn’t have been really in love.”
“Otherwise a bang on the head wouldn’t have cured me?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” doubtfully.
“You’ve never been in love yourself?”
“No,” she answered quickly, almost too emphatically—“No,” she repeated.
He looked down at her, and when she looked up she saw that his blue eyes had a queer, amused gleam in them.
“But, then, in spite of your efficiency, you’re not much more than a child, are you, Nurse Winter? Or may I call you Josie? I happen to know that’s your name, because I saw it inscribed in one of your books.”
“You can if you like,” she answered. “And if Mrs. Duveen won’t object.”
“Why should she object?” with a sort of swift surprise.
She met his eyes steadily.
“There’s really no reason, of course. You call your housekeeper Bennie.”
“But you’re not a housekeeper.”
“No.” She caught at a butterfly as a means of doing away with the sudden tension between them—the odd way in which his eyes surveyed her. “Oh, what a beauty! she exclaimed, imprisoning it gently in her hand. “It’s a Red Admiral!”
Michael Duveen smiled.
“You sound as enthusiastic as a child,” he told her. The sun went in, and a chill wind reached them from across the lake. It was a sad little wind, a forlorn little wind after the blaze of warmth that had been wrapping them about. “Let’s go to Spain, Josie,” he said suddenly. “My mother wants to get away from here, so let’s go. Let’s leave this pathetic, dying summer and find some real sunshine. I feel as if I want to complete my cure—my spiritual as well as physical cure.” He regarded her a little strangely. “And when I get back I mean to take up the threads of my life where I left them all those weeks ago. A man is a poor thing without his work, and work is the important thing in life—at least, that’s the decision I’ve arrived at. Never again will I allow myself to be side-tracked or deluded because something else seems temporarily important. In future the whole of my interest is going to be given to—my work.”
And he said it as if he had firmly made up his mind, and was dedicating himself to a future in which he would decline to do such a thing as fall in love—ever again.
Looking at him in the watery rays of the sun that was trying to break through again she thought, not for the first time, that he had an excellent jaw, and his mouth was not the mouth of a man who could ever be really self-indulgent, or even look upon self as something to be indulged. He could be rigid about a thing once he made up his mind, inflexible where others might be weak, ascetic if asceticism would ultimately lead him to the right goal.
She felt her heart grow a little heavy inside her, and she felt cold, in spite of the warmth that was struggling through.
“Spain?” she echoed. “Spain would be nice—” But she sounded a little wistful.
“Nice?” he caught her up. “Much more than nice, Josie! Wait until you’ve seen the effect of Spanish sunlight on a walled-in courtyard. Wait until you’ve seen the Spanish stars hanging like lamps in a sky like purple velvet! ... Wait until you’ve seen Palheiro’s villa!” A twinkle invaded his eyes. “Palheiro’s quite a charmer, by the way. A Spanish nobleman of the old school, with the easy manners of the new. Spanish mamas chase after him because he’s reputed to be enormously rich, but so far he’s declined to marry anyone.” His face hardened for an instant. “He’s probably got good sense.”
CHAPTER IV
Two WEEKS later Josie had the opportunity to decide for herself whether the Marquis de Palheiro was merely displaying good sense in refusing to be rushed into matrimony.
He came to the hotel on the Costa Brava where the Duveen mother and son, accompanied by their youthful-looking nurse who had never before been out of England in her life, had decided to put up for a few days. He came to lunch, driving up in an enormously powerful car that was as black as Indian ink, and glittering with chromium. The car came to rest in the forecourt before the hotel, on to which the windows of the great glassed-in verandahs looked. Although it was a little late in the season, and the sea breezes could occasionally introduce a nip into the air, a fountain still played in an impressive marble basin in the forecourt, and the blaze of ordered flowers was something to take the breath away.
Josie had already made the discovery that Spain was a land of contrasts—sometimes quite fierce color contrasts. There was the hard yellow of the sun, like molten gold, when it splashed across a wall as pristine in its whiteness as the snows on a mountain range; the vividness of a clump of Bougainvillaea, the clear, rich green of leaves forming a tracery. There was the bleached whiteness of the sands at midday, and the incredible blueness of the sea at all hours of the day.
Josie thought that if the whole of Spain was anything like the Costa Brava it was a delightful land; a land where the soft throbbing of guitars seemed to have become part of the atmosphere, and women still wore mantillas, and tossed flowers to their admirers, heightening an impression of romance that was always around the corner; where the hour before dawn was like the coolness of chilled champagne, and the dawn itself something to watch for. Josie had watched it, alone on her balcony while the others slept. She had watched the brilliant spreading of the daylight once the sun had started to climb above the rim of the world, and the way objects sprang to life on the beach, and became, instead of sinister monsters crouching out there in the gloom, emerald green rocks beyond which those incredible seas curled, and little white sails skimmed the surface of the sea. She had run across the sands in her bare feet and a brief but perfectly modest swimsuit (unlikely to offend even the most decorous-minded upholder of Spanish morals, such as a policeman on early-morning duty), and played about there, on the edge of the waves, with the beach to herself, while her patient still slept, and his mother enjoyed her early morning tea in a bed jacket, and the sanctity of her hotel bedroom.
Josie’s bedroom was on the floor above. It wasn’t such a large, or such a pleasant bedroom as Mrs. Duveen’s, and the balcony was much more cramped, but she had a wonderful view over the whole of San Fernando. While she hastily separated herself from her swimsuit, and donned something more suitable in which to make her first appearance of the day downstairs on the floor below, she enjoyed that view to the full, and her eyes were usually bright with enthusiasm when she entered her employer’s room.
He teased her about her energy so early in the morning, and about the way in which her wet hair refused to lie disciplined as he knew she liked it. The honey-gold ends that lay like feathers on her brow under her nurse’s cap were rebellious curls as they dried off in the sunshine.
Not that she was permitted to wear the nurse’s cap for long, once they arrived in San Fernando. Michael insisted that seeing her wearing it retarded his convalescence, and although his mother was not quite so earnest in her pleas, she did ask Josie to dress normally now that they were out of England.
“It’s a whim of Michael’s, and we must humor his whims,” she said. But the first time she saw Josie wearing an evening frock—even though it was a very simple evening frock—her eyes widened rather a lot.
The day the marquis came to lunch Josie wore turquoise-blue linen. A narrow white belt and white sandals accompanied the dress, and because it was rather cool, a chunky white cardigan. Josie hadn’t bothered to make certain her hair was absolutely neat—and, in any case, there was a strong breeze from the sea which ruffled it when she walked in the hotel grounds—and, when the marquis came moving lightly up the steps, she had but just returned from her walk in the grounds. The color in her cheeks was like the rosy afterglow of the sunrise she loved to watch, her slim bare legs and other uncovered portions of her anatomy had already acquired a pale coating of tan, and she looked like any attractive young woman on holiday—free, unfettered, and rather light-hearted.
The only difference between her and any ordinarily attractiv
e young woman was that her slimness was rather more reed-like than most, and she had an inescapable look of youth; a perfect look of youth.
The Marquis de Palheiro looked a little surprised when she was introduced.
“Nurse Winter?” he said. “But you do not look like a nurse, senorita.”
Josie felt herself blushing. She didn’t quite know why, except that those dark eyes were so plainly puzzled. And they weren’t ordinary dark eyes at all. They were deep, and velvety, and mysterious, and unfathomable, in spite of the fact that they were also surprised. The eyebrows that swept above them were black and strongly marked; the hair grew in a slight, but interesting Marie Stuart peak, and was jet as ebony. He had a pale skin that probably contained a hint of olive when the sun struck full upon it, and from the sombreness and thoughtfulness that overspread his features, he might have been a medieval knight on the eve of going forth to battle.
Beside him Michael looked tall and athletic and British, and that wasn’t because the marquis was undersized. He was merely a slender, grave, dark man of middle height, who possessed a grace that definitely was foreign.
And he was minus one arm!
Josie felt a distinct sensation of shock when she noticed the empty sleeve of his impeccable light grey suit.
“Nurse Winter is wearing what we in England call ‘mufti’,” Mrs. Duveen explained, looking up with her carefully cultivated smile at the distinguished luncheon guest.
“I see.” The marquis turned his grave eyes once more upon Josie. “Your pardon, senorita, for the impertinence of my observation, which escaped me I’m afraid before I properly realized what I was saying.”