But Ann got no consolation from that reflection. She was smarting from the barb that Iain had misjudged her about Burrows, and had added insult to injury by discussing her and her apparent indiscretions with this hateful young woman. And what was this talk of her reputation?
She walked over to the door, determined to act no longer as hostess to either of them. This house was not hers and she had invited neither of them into it. “Please excuse me,” she said coldly. “I feel that it would be unprofitable to continue this discussion, and I must go to Beverley. She may be wanting me.”
She did not give them the opportunity of detaining her, but went quickly out of the room, jerking the door shut behind her, crossed the hall and ran upstairs to change into her uniform.
He had dared to discuss her with that creature! She would never forgive him.
In the room she had left, Maureen Lyntrope turned to the french window and then back to her companion. “Come along, Iain, we’re wasting time here.” She took a sharply distasteful glance around the room. “The place looks as if it’s never had a good turn-out since Ray’s parents lived here. Really, that awful girl ... She’s even worse than I imagined she would be. What a family! Poor Ray!”
Sherrarde said nothing as he followed her out of the french window on to the terrace. Maureen’s expression was now everything that could be described as pleasant, in direct contrast to his, which was angry and disturbed.
That horrible girl had succeeded in antagonizing him completely, she reflected complacently. He might agree now to what was the only solution to the problem of Fountains — Beverley Derhart being sent to a nursing home, the children to school and that dreadful Mrs. Woods and her daughter sent packing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A LETTER was beside Ann’s plate on the breakfast-table next morning. She was first down and she picked it up, staring at it in surprise. Who was likely to be writing to her? Especially locally.
She bit her lip. Iain Sherrarde? No, she was sure this wouldn’t be his writing. There was something about it which was definitely not Iain. Besides, why should he write to her?
Distastefully she read; “I can’t get away till eight o’clock tonight so I suggest you go into Sunbury on the 7.30 bus. It passes the gate near Dainty’s End about 7.20. Wait for me at the ‘Ring o’ Bells’ and I’ll scorch over on my bike. I won’t be late and I advise you to be there. I’ve quite a lot to say and I don’t suppose Mr. Iain Sherrarde will follow us up there! But be there.” That sentence was heavily underlined and then the letter continued, “If you’ll say nothing about this. Just wait to hear what I’ve got to say.”
Ann stared fearfully at Gateworth’s letter. Mrs. Woods was having her breakfast in bed this morning, and Ann’s first impulse was to hurry up to her room and show her the letter, and tell her what had happened yesterday.
There had been no opportunity as yet to do so. Mrs. Woods had arrived back from her luncheon engagement only just in time to change for another one which included dinner and bridge.
When Ann had gone up to see her, she had held the door open only a crack and declared she was half undressed. Was Beverley all right? If so, that was all she wanted to hear. She simply hadn’t time for anything else.
Ann wasn’t the type to be over-insistent and she had turned away with her story of Ralph Gateworth’s telephone messages and visit untold. Now she wished desperately that she had stood her ground and been determined to make Mrs. Woods listen.
For the more often she re-read this note, the more she discerned the threat behind it. She was panic-stricken, and inevitably her thoughts channelled themselves in one direction. Somehow he must have found out her real identity, and found out also something discreditable about her which he would tell everybody.
“Everybody” in Ann’s shrunken world, which at the same time she was sure was wider and more wonderful than anything she had ever known before, was Iain Sherrarde. She didn’t want him to discover that she wasn’t the real Anne Woods. While she could retain that identity she could go on fighting to keep the children here at Fountains. While they were here, he would keep on coming...
Yesterday afternoon she had told herself that she hated him, but she still wanted him to come to Fountains — to come often. It could never be too often...
“What’s wrong with you this morning, Sister Anne?” Beverley queried some time later. “You don’t seem your usual bright self, and when the children were here you hardly spoke a word.”
“They talk enough without anyone else adding to the confusion,” Ann answered with a smile. “I didn’t want you to be overtired. Lie back now and rest. You mustn’t overdo things for a day or two.”
“The trouble is everybody is too careful of me and that leads me to committing excesses out of sheer boredom,” said Beverley. “I’m sure it would be more sensible if I lived a normal life and hang the consequences. You can only die once, they say, but I die every day of boredom and frustration because I can’t do any of the things I used to enjoy. Even my children don’t hug me properly. They say ‘We must be careful not to hurt Mummy,’ and they put their little arms round me so gently. It’s completely unnatural...”
Ann had been brooding over Ralph Gateworth’s letter, but now she looked with deep concern, and yet with some surprise, at the lovely but desolate face of the girl on the bed.
When Doctor Butler had talked to her yesterday, she had assumed, and she was sure he had too, that Beverley herself had decided on her hermit-like existence.
“Who planned for you to stay here in this suite, away from the rest of the house?” she enquired.
“Iain arranged it all while I was in hospital,” Beverley replied drearily, and then with a lightning change of mood, she laughed almost simperingly. “Actually, I believe there is method in his madness. He wants to keep me out of the way of other men. He’s terribly jealous when I have any of the students or doctors from the Institute over here. And didn’t you notice the way he looked at Lee that night of my party?”
Ann had noticed, but she steered the conversation back to the suite and to Fountains, and Beverley lapsed again into gloom. “It was my husband’s home, but we never lived here because we hated it, even when we’d had it modernized. Ray said everybody down here was always reproaching him because he was a playboy and hadn’t followed the family tradition of training to be either a doctor or a banker.”
Ann nodded. “Your mother told me about your husband’s family when she was explaining about the Institute...”
Beverley’s laughter trilled out. “You mustn’t say ‘your’ mother, Sister Anne, or everybody will think it’s very odd. I wonder who you really are! Oh, who’s that?”
There was the sound of a closing door, then a quick tattoo on the bedroom door and a voice: “May I come in? I heard you laugh, so I know you’re awake.”
Beverley gave a resigned gesture. “My bete noir! He haunts me.”
Ann went to the door, and Robert Leedon, whom she now knew was the Assistant Director of the Institute, stared beyond her to the girl lying under the lovely satin eiderdown.
“I haven’t heard you laugh like that since you were modelling,” he said.
“By which remark you will conclude, Sister Anne, that we have here a very old friend,” mocked Beverley, her blue eyes glinting.
Robert Leedon, in no way put out, advanced further into the room, bestowing a casual nod on Ann, but giving most of his attention to the invalid. Indeed, it seemed that his light eyes almost devoured her, and it was not difficult to guess that he was deeply in love with her.
“Are you feeling better, my darling?” he asked.
“Better!” she repeated, in a bitter voice. “Of course I’m not better, Lee. You know I can never be better.”
He flung himself down on the white skin rug by the side of the bed, covering her hands with his own. “You will be better, my darling. I swear it. If only—”
Ann thought it was time she left them. Leedon was certainly very much in l
ove, and again Ann found herself wondering whether the animosity between him and Iain was on Beverley’s account or something to do with their professional work. It couldn’t be very satisfactory to Iain to know that his chief assistant hadn’t got his heart in his work.
In the little kitchen which was part of the suite, she began to prepare a tea-tray. It looked very attractive when it was ready, with the pretty pink and grey china, the thin slices of bread and butter, the strawberry jam and the cake with nuts on top. She got out a lace cloth and some napkins, but even then she hesitated about breaking into the intimate conversation in the other room.
However, before she had finally made up her mind to do so, Mr. Leedon came out and put his head round the kitchen door. “Mrs. Derhart says she’s dying for a cup of tea, nurse.” His voice was strictly formal and his pale face austere and expressionless.
“The tray is just ready,” Ann said brightly. “I’ve put an extra cup, sir, for you.”
“Thank you, but I can’t stay.” He seemed about to go, and then all at once he came back. “Look after her well, nurse,” he said, almost thickly. “She’s very frail, and she needs the greatest of care.”
Ann’s expression was anxious as she picked up the tray. Beverley would be drained and exhausted, she supposed, after this latest emotional crisis. However, when she arrived in the bedroom she saw that the invalid, far from being dejected, was sitting up, her blue eyes sparkling, her cheeks pink.
“Oh, tea! Good!” she exclaimed. “I always enjoy visits from Lee. He stimulates me and it makes me feel so excited that a man of his brains should waste his time going on loving me after all these years. Of course, I don’t talk about ‘all these years’ to anyone outside the family, Sister Anne.”
“No!” Ann looked at her with raised brows as she set the tea-tray down.
Beverley giggled and picked up her hand-mirror which was never far from her reach.
“You wouldn’t think it, would you, but I’m thirty-four. Most girls of twenty look like hags beside me!”
Ann’s surprise was quite genuine. “Are you really? I ... well, it’s almost unbelievable!”
And it really was. Beverley’s face was almost as unlined and petal-soft as that of her daughter Emma, and her hair as shining red-gold as the child’s.
“Somebody very unkind once said it was due to arrested development. You know — a sort of ‘baby doll’ situation,” Beverley continued dryly, “but I’m only too pleased about it, whatever the cause. Naturally, I take care of my skin and my hair, but I’m not in possession of any fabulous beauty preparation, which is what one writer in a woman’s magazine reported about me.”
Ann tipped the spout of the grey and pink teapot into the teacup already containing what to her seemed a very generous amount of milk and sugar. “You’ve known Mr. Leedon for a long time, then?” she asked.
“Since I was sixteen,” Beverley giggled. ‘That’s how I usually put it. Yes, quite a long time, and you would believe it, the silly man has been in love with me from the moment we met. Yes, this tea is lovely — just as I like it.”
Ann thought that Beverley was probably not exaggerating. Mr. Leedon had the appearance of a man who had been devotedly in love with her for a long time.
“That’s what the Sherrarde and Derhart clans had against me — that I’d too many admirers. They’d have put it in stronger terms if they had dared,” Beverley went on, as she bit into one of the dainty sandwiches which Ann had made. “Pour a cup of tea for yourself, Sister Anne. We mustn’t stand on ceremony. And by the way, the real Sister Anne is a ‘step’ — Mummy, like little Beverley, has been married three times.”
Married three times! This girl who looked so young! Ann poured herself a cup of tea while she pondered on this. Mrs. Woods had said something about Anne being younger than Beverley, but since she had met her patient, she had been thinking of it as the other way round.
“Who are you thinking about — the real Anne Woods?” Beverley enquired now. “She isn’t in the least like me,” she went on complacently. “She’s more your type — dark hair and pale face, but she hasn’t your figure and she isn’t as pretty as you. You’ve got something elusive — hard to describe, but it’s there all right. Have you been married? But of course, you don’t know, do you! You can’t remember. Odd, isn’t it!” She gave a funny little laugh. “It must run in the family. There are lots of things I can’t remember, either.”
“You were telling me about your sister, Ann prompted, sitting down.
Beverley shrugged. “I don’t know much about her. She’s — let me see — about ten years younger than I am. She was only a kid when I broke free from Mummy, and I think she has always hated me and been jealous that she wasn’t blonde and beautiful. In one thing, though, she had been quite determined to imitate me — in making a wealthy marriage. That’s why she chose to go in for nursing. So that she could have a rich man as a patient and marry him. It has been done, you know. Oh!”
She raised her eyebrows. “You have an expressive face. So you don’t like the sound of that?”
“Not much,” returned Ann briefly.
Beverley took another sandwich. “Oh, well, it takes all sorts to make a world, as they say. I wonder where she is now. Mummy hasn’t heard from her for ages...”
Ann got up to pour out more tea. What she had heard about her namesake didn’t add up to anything very pleasant and she would have dropped the subject had it not been for the letter she had received from Ralph Gateworth asking her — no ordering her — to meet him tonight. Would Beverley know anything about him?
Rather tentatively she asked: “Was your sister engaged or ... anything?”
Beverley looked bored. “No. I told you she’s looking for a wealthy husband. She won’t marry anyone who hasn’t a lot of money.”
Ann’s long eyelashes fluttered. Gateworth was a male nurse, so he certainly didn’t fit in with Anne Woods’ requirements. It began to look as if the girl had encouraged him to take a post down here in order to get rid of him.
She wondered whether to tell Beverley about his visit yesterday and his letter, and then decided not to do so. What she wanted to find out now was whether Gateworth knew anything about her ... about Ann Wood.
Beverley began to talk again about herself, a subject which she found all-absorbing. “Ray’s family were furious when he married me,” she laughed. “We had a marvellous time while it lasted. I’d never had so much money in my life and I loved it. Then he died, and there wasn’t a cent. He hadn’t come into his capital, and though he’d made a will leaving everything to me until I remarried — spoil-sport — there wasn’t anything to leave. We’d spent up to the hilt as regards income. I considered fighting it out in the law courts, but I was advised that I couldn’t win, so when Iain was prepared to be generous — on his own terms — I gave in with what grace I could.”
She laughed again, her blue eyes glittering oddly. “I get a very handsome income, as long as I do what he wants. He is the children’s trustee, just as he was Ray’s and he thinks that gives him the right to interfere in my life as well as in theirs. It was he who insisted that I left London and came down here. And of course, I was so ill at the beginning that I just didn’t care. He brought the children down here to live with his aunt, and then when Mummy and I came to Fountains, we got them back again, but only after a struggle.”
She lay back among her pillows again, beginning to look very frail and tired, and Ann saw that it was time she rested again. “I expect you would like a little sleep now, and then before you know it, Mrs. Marchdale will be bringing in your supper,"’ she said cheerfully.
“Heavens!” Beverley’s voice was pettish. “This existence of just eating and sleeping is more than I can stand. I shall die of boredom while you’re all trying to save me from dying from any excitement.” But her eyelids were already drooping, and by the time Ann had tidied the room, she was asleep.
The house was very quiet when a few minutes later Ann went into
the big hall. It had begun to rain — a steady downpour that looked as if it might go on for hours.
Ann thought, It’s going to be a wretched night for me to walk through the coppice to get that bus. She resented the idea of giving in to Gateworth’s blackmail, but what else could she do? There was a threat implicit in every line of his letter. He worked at the Institute, and unless she could convince him otherwise, he might broadcast the information that the nurse at Fountains was an imposter. If Iain Sherrarde heard the gossip he might believe it and decide that she was not a trained nurse. He might be only too glad to seize the opportunity of getting the children back under the care of his aunt.
The thought of the children sent her upstairs to their wing of the, house. They were lying half across the big table, one on either side, drawing on big pieces of grey paper with colored chalks. They were both engrossed, and Averil, almost as interested as they, was bending over to offer advice.
“Mine’s a house and a garden,” shrieked Guy. “It’s Dainty’s End and there’s a witch in it.”
“It’s not polite to call Aunt Mary a witch,” remarked Emma censoriously, raising her blue eyes for a moment from her own masterpiece.
“It isn’t Aunt Mary who’s the witch,” Guy yelled gleefully. “Nurse Auntie Ann, who do you think the witch is?”
“I couldn’t really say,” remarked Ann cautiously, though she had a very good idea.
“It’s Doctor Lyntrope,” he shouted. “She’s a witch.”
Even Emma looked momentarily shocked. “But she’s young,” she said doubtfully. “Witches are always old — at least, I think they are. What do you think, Nurse Auntie Ann?”
“When I’ve seen pictures of them, they always seem to be old and have very long noses,” returned Ann decidedly. In all fairness she couldn’t call Doctor Lyntrope anything but young and quite good looking.
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