Nurse for the Doctor (11 page)

He removed Josie’s glass from her cold fingers.

“I also tried to persuade Senorita Winter to go for a drive this afternoon, but she preferred to be left behind. However, I think I understand that,” and his dark eyes gazed so straight at Josie that, following upon the effects of the neat spirit she had just consumed, she felt that he was deliberately seeking to confuse her for some extraordinary reason. In this he succeeded in so far as everything seemed more than a little blurred as, with the assistance of Magdalena, Josie made her way up to her room.

But before she left the library Don Luis pleaded: “You will not—how is it you would say it in English?—hold this against me, Senorita Winter? This afternoon was a disaster, but it will not happen again! Next time, if you permit, I will bring you back all in one piece, as you would say.”

“You did bring me back all in one piece,” she heard herself answering, resisting an absurd inclination to giggle a little lightheadedly at his slightly involved use of her language, “but I would prefer to be a little drier on another occasion.”

And then the fumes of the brandy caused her to stumble a little, and Magdalena caught hold of her arm.

Once she was in bed Michael made his appearance in her room. The expression on his face was a curious mixture of surprise, exasperation and faint amusement as he shook his head at her, and then sat down on the edge of the bed to feel her pulse.

“Really, Josie—really!” he said, as he continued to shake his dark, handsome head, with the wave of burnished hair dipping down a little towards one eyebrow. “Did you have to distinguish yourself in quite such a manner this afternoon? First you said you didn’t want to go for a drive with the rest of us, and then you went haring off into the blue with Don Luis. There’s inconsistency if you like.”

“I’m sorry,” Josie murmured, and looked very small and flushed with her fair head nestling in her pillows.

Michael smiled at her.

“It’s all right,” he said, “only you might as well know that we were anxious. None of the servants knew anything about your departure, and it was only when one of the gardeners reported that he had seen you in Don Luis car that we began to get a line on you.”

“Poor Don Luis,” Josie said, hoping he wouldn’t come in for more than his fair share of blame over this. “It really wasn’t his fault. He took me for such a nice drive, and gave me a very nice tea, and then Inez started to play up.”

“Inez?”

“The car. It’s a sports model.”

“
Was
a sports model,” Michael corrected her. “After today it will almost certainly land up on the scrap-heap. In fact, Carlos has already ordered its confiscation.”

Josie felt concerned, although she also felt very drowsy after a hot bath and a bowl of hotter soup.

“But, will Don Luis be able to afford another? I don’t think he’s very rich. He had a farm of his own, and he was fond of the car.”

“A sentimental fondness,” Duveen assured her. “And, as a matter of fact, he can drive any of Carlos s cars if he wants to There was no real reason why he should take you out in Inez. I think that was what annoyed Carlos so much.”

“Was he annoyed?”

“Extremely annoyed. In fact, I’ve never seen him so angry.”

“Because I didn’t leave word where I was going?”

“No, because you’d been lured forth in that particular car. Apparently its reputation is well known.”

Josie sighed.

“Poor Luis!” she said again. “I don’t want him to get into trouble.”

Michael flicked a moist curl back from her hot forehead. “A moment ago it was Don Luis,” he said, gazing straight down at her. “Do you prefer to think of him as Luis?”

She made a little movement with her head.

“I don’t know ... Does it matter?”

“Not tonight,” he answered, gently, and smoothed her top sheet. “I’m going to give you something to ensure a quiet night, and you’re not to get up in the morning until I’ve seen you, do you understand?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Josie returned a little fretfully. “I’m your nurse—you’re not my doctor!”

“Inez has reversed the positions for us,” he replied with a smile. Then he bent down unexpectedly and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “You look very small in this big bed,” he told her, and added: “Good night, Josie. If you want anything just tug hard on that bell rope.”

As he lifted his head the marquis, followed by Magdalena, moved almost noiselessly across the carpet from the direction of the open doorway.

“I understood you were here,” the marquis said, looking in a hard and inscrutable fashion at the doctor, who slid quite nonchalantly from his perch on the side of the bed. “I came to find out what you think of Miss Winter.” Michael looked surprised at the bleak formality of his voice. Then he wondered whether his host had observed that kiss.

“Oh, I think she’ll do very well,” he answered; “but of course it’s really too early to decide whether she’s caught a chill. At the moment she wants to be left to sleep.”

“You are giving her something to make her sleep?”

“Yes.”

Carlos de Palheiro advanced to the side of the bed. He looked down at Josie with eyes that were suddenly soft and compassionate.

“Poor little one,” he said, as if she were no more than the child she looked just then. “I’m afraid you took a bad buffeting. It was an unpleasant experience.”

“I’ll get over it,” she assured him, smiling up at him. And then, because she felt compelled to do so, and it was important that he should understand: “But I’m sorry if I caused anxiety,” she told him, in a small, husky voice. “It wasn’t my intention to do anything of the kind, and I remembered that you approved of Don Luis acting as my escort, as you put it yourself.”

“Did I do that?” he asked, and she thought he sounded surprised. Then he put out his one good hand and touched hers lightly, but with a cool strength that was oddly comforting. “There is no need for you to apologize,” he said. “There is no need for you to do anything but have a good night, Senorita Josie,” and she felt further surprised because the diminutive of her Christian name slipped out so easily, and somehow so altogether naturally.

Michael turned firmly away from the bed.

“Yes, we’ll leave her to get to sleep,” he said, and this time his voice was just a little bleak and disapproving.

CHAPTER X

In
spite
of
a
reasonable night Josie certainly did not feel a
hundred per cent fit the following morning. However, she was determined to get up, although Michael had ordered her to remain where she was until he saw her again. She felt certain that Mrs. Duveen would not approve of her acting the part of an invalid when she received a salary to take care of one herself.

Magdalena brought her her breakfast when she had had her bath, and Josie had the tray placed on the little table on her balcony, because after the storm of the day before the weather was once more serenely fine and warm. Magdalena pursed up her lips when she saw her looking obviously peaked, and rather heavy-eyed, but Josie quickly strove to assure her that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her.

“I may be in for a bit of a cold, but that’s all,” she said. “I’ll dose myself with some quinine.”

Magdalena shook her head.

“It would be better for the
senorita
to remain in bed, and let the doctor see her.”

But Josie merely smiled at her, and when she had drunk a couple of cups of coffee, but ignored her rolls and preserve, she selected her pearl-grey linen dress from the wardrobe and went down to find the ground floor of the house deserted. She was about to retrace her steps upstairs and go along to find out how Michael himself was, when heard Dona Maria came in together from the garden. Dona Maria was wearing a white suit, and she carried a half-opened scarlet rosebud in her slender fingers. There was dew upon the rosebud, and a brightness in Dona Maria’s eyes, like the brightness of the morning; and although Josie felt curiously wavery, as if the earth were not solid, and that at any moment she would need to catch hold of something to steady herself, the thought passed through her mind that Dona Maria looked happy. More than that, she looked radiant, as if something that had evaded her for a long time was in her grasp at last, and she knew it.

“Josie!” Michael exclaimed, his black brows all but meeting in a heavy frown. “What on earth do you think you’re doing wandering about the house when you look like death? Have you taken your own temperature this morning?”

“No, of course I haven’t,” Josie answered glibly, although she was not conscious of actually forming the words herself. “It isn’t a nurse’s job to take her own temperature—she’s paid to take other people’s.”

She swayed up against a black oak chest in the hall, and reached out to steady herself against it.

“I’m a bit—giddy,” she admitted.

“My poor child, you look really ill!” Dona Maria said, and went to her and slipped an arm about her, while Michael cast aside his stick and caught her other arm. Dona Maria’s grey eyes were full of genuine concern. “We will have to get you back to bed,” she said.

Josie laughed weakly.

“It’s absurd,” she said, “but I didn’t feel nearly so shaky when I got up. I—I’ll make my way back upstairs to my room.”

But at that moment Carlos de Palheiro, wearing riding breeches and a close-fitting black sweater, came striding in from the patio. He went straight up to Josie, scattering the other two as if they didn’t exist, and, providing her with something to ponder about for many days afterwards, swung her up against him by means of his one arm and bore her, as if her weight were no more than that of a feather, up the beautiful carved staircase to her room. Inside her room he didn’t pause, but carried her straight across to her bed, and deposited her lightly upon it. Then he stood back and looked down at her, his face very grave.

“It was wrong of you to get up,
chiquita
,” he chided her.

She lay looking up at him, and as well as the feverish brightness in her eyes there was a growing look of wonder.

“It was wonderful of you to carry me up the stairs like that,” she said. “You, with only one arm.”

For several seconds they gazed at one another, she with her lips a little apart, and scarlet as heart’s blood because of the pounding of her pulses and the mounting of her temperature, he with the fluid darkness of his eyes reaching out to engulf her.

“One arm can be as useful as two on occasions,” he told her quietly, and then his sister came up behind him, with Michael limping purposefully behind.

“Magdalena will help me to get her undressed and back into bed,” the Spanish girl said, and she looked meaningly at her brother, as if a little surprised that he stayed so long. “And it is important that she should be got back into bed without delay.”

“Of course.”

The marquis took the hint, but before he turned away he looked once more straight at Josie.

“I will come back and see you again,” he said.

Then began a queer, muddled period for Josie, during which she knew that Michael dosed her with the drugs that did in the end begin to bring down her temperature, and that he was very patient and kind, and seemed to spend a great deal of his time beside her. Dona Maria, too, sat beside her bed, and kept her forehead as cool as possible with fragrant-smelling cologne, and talked to her soothingly, and Magdalena changed her linen and coaxed her to take the first few mouthfuls of nourishment when she was feeling slightly better. But before that Josie found herself dwelling constantly on two things that were quite unrelated to one another, one of which worried her a little, while the other obsessed her. The thing that worried her was that Mrs. Duveen never once entered her room—unless Josie was too light-headed to recognize her—while the thing that obsessed her was a sentence the Marquis de Palheiro had uttered to her when he had deposited her gently on her bed.

“
It was wrong for you to get up, Chiquita.
”

Chiquita
, she kept on saying to herself. Her Spanish was limited, but it was some sort of an endearment, she knew. She had a little Spanish dictionary, and when she was able to do so she would look it up.
Chiquita
...

She was always looking round for him, hoping that one day she would find him beside her bed, but although he had promised that he would see her again, he didn’t reappear. She reminded herself that he was Spanish, and the Spanish are very “correct, and that perhaps Dona Maria would think it odd if he took it upon himself to visit, without being invited, the bedroom of an English girl. But she sighed every time the door opened and it was not he who came into the room.

One morning when she was alone with Michael she unexpectedly uttered the name Carlos aloud, and he looked at her with a faint smile on his lips. He had just induced her to take a long drink, settled her back upon her pillows, and was watching her as she lay staring out of the window at the brightness of the blue sky.

“You said that as if you like the sound of the name,” he remarked. “Do you?”

She was sufficiently recovered to be aware that a little more caution might be necessary in future if she was to go on thinking the sort of thoughts that had obsessed her lately. She knew that she blushed suddenly—a heightening of her color quite different from the flush of fever.

“It’s Spanish for Charles, isn’t it?” she asked, in rather a husky whisper.

“Could be,” he admitted, “but I’m unable to say definitely. But don’t tell me you’re lying there improving your Spanish?”

The blush increased.

“Of course not.”

Michael’s eyes twinkled a little, and then grew rather grave. He placed a hand over one of hers that was lying outside on the covers.

“Carlos and
chiquita
—you’ve kept on repeating those two words-at intervals since you’ve been ill,” he told her. “Fortunately I think I’m the only one who has heard you utter them, but to me they were very distinct, and I think I’m going to be very glad when you’re fit enough, and the time arrives for us to go home to England, Josie.”

“B-but, why?” she stammered.

His eyes surveyed her, and they were very darkly and gravely blue. Hers were enormous and brown in her wan face.

“Because I think we’ll be better at home—both of us.”

“Dona Maria?” she heard herself inquiring, while she stared at him.

“We’ll talk about Dona Maria another day,” he replied, and then frowned in the way she had sometimes seen him do before, and which suggested that problems that were too great for him were disturbing. “But not today,” he concluded, firmly. “Just now you’re going off to sleep again.”

Two days later he was again beside her bed, but he told her that she could get up for a little while the following day, if her progress was maintained.

“You’re looking much more like yourself, and less like the Josie who gave me a scare.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and smiled at her. “You hovered about on the edge of pneumonia for far too long for my personal comfort, and in future you’ve got to be taken a good deal of care of, my dear! No tearing about the countryside—whether here, or at home in England—in unsuitable cars, or imagining you’re stronger than you are! I always thought you were a bit frail for nursing, and now I know you must have been neglecting yourself for some time. Quite possibly you haven’t played enough in your short life, Josie,” possessing himself of one of her hands and gently stroking her fingers, “and that’s why you always look so serious—or you did until the last few weeks. You want fun and gaiety, and nothing very much to bother about—and more than anything else you want someone to look after you.”

Josie began to look frightened as his words sank in.

“But I’ve got my living to earn! And, oh, what on earth will your mother think of me?—what
must
she think of me for causing all this trouble?”

“Never mind my mother,” he replied soothingly. “She isn’t very good in a sick-room—unless it’s the sick-room of her only son,” with rather an odd little smile, “and that’s why she hasn’t been to visit you. But everyone else has been very much concerned about you, and I—Josie.” The smile left his eyes, while his mouth looked both serious and set. “Perhaps I shouldn’t ask you this today, but will you marry me as soon as you’re fit, Josie?”

“M-marry you?”

“Yes.” His eyes lighted for an instant, and his mouth grew a little softer again. “We could wait until we get back to England, if you like, but there are plenty of English clergymen out here, and we could find one to tie the knot.” She thought he looked a little pale, and extraordinarily anxious, and he was holding her hand very tightly—just as a drowning man might cling on to a raft. “Josie, I want to marry you!”

“Do you?” she asked, and this time she didn’t stammer, only lay very still and looked at him as if she were attempting to solve a mystery.

He avoided the bewildering clarity of her upward glance.

“I think you’re adorable, and I know you’re sweet”

“And—Dona Maria?” she said, very softly.

He uttered an impatient exclamation, dropped her hand, and then took a turn or two about the room. When he came back to her he was still looking pale, like someone who was determined to renounce something, but he was also looking exceedingly obstinate.

“Josie, listen to me!” Once more he perched on the side of the bed, with its rich coverlet, and its looped-back silken curtains. “When I first met Dona Maria—ten years ago—I knew there was something about her that attracted me, but I didn’t want to marry her. I still don’t want to marry her—”

“But you still find her attractive?”

“Of course.” He frowned. “It wouldn’t work, Josie—she and I are not really in the least alike. She’s possessive, with a Spanish woman’s possessiveness, and marriage to her means making a home and a husband her life. There would never be a loophole—no escape from that possessiveness, and I know I couldn’t stand it! I’ve my own ideas of what marriage should be like, and it isn’t a smothering, cloying thing. One must retain one’s individuality.”

“So you think you would like to marry me?”

“I’m
sure
I would like to marry you!”

“In order to escape from Dona Maria, who attracts you enough to represent a serious menace to your freedom?”

The unwavering directness of her brown gaze actually brought a rather uncomfortable dark stain to the healthy bronze of his face.

“Of course not!” But there was nothing convincing about the way he said it. “I’m not as weak as all that! And there’s something else, Josie ... Something that more vitally concerns you this time.”

“Yes?” as if she was waiting for further revelations.