For Ever and Ever (4 page)

“The one who ticked you off?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Too bad. But you don’t have to worry about anything like that now, do you? I was talking to your friend Miss Elstone just before dinner”—he could say it as casually as that!—”and I gathered from her that you are independent of most things these days. In any case, I suppose the nursing wasn’t ever much more than a passing fancy, was it?”

“I shouldn’t have described it as that myself,” replied Leonie rather coldly, and she wondered uneasily just what story Claire had invented, in order to explain her presence.

“No? Well, then,” Kingsley Stour said with apparent warmth, “if I may say so, I think it was darned good of you to do two years of nursing, when there wasn’t any need for you to work at all.”

Disquieted though she was to find herself thus cast for the role of an idle golden girl, Leonie found it quite impossible to reply. She was reluctant to expose the falseness of whatever story Claire had chosen to tell about her, but she certainly did not feel like substantiating it in any way. So she changed the subject and had to let Kingsley Stour think what he would.

At the end of the dance he brought her skilfully to a standstill just beside Claire and her partner. It was thus perfectly simple for him then to ask Claire to dance, while Leonie went over to exchange a few words with Nicholas Edmonds, who, seated at the side of the ballroom, was surveying the gay scene with a slightly sardonic air.

“I’m sorry I can’t ask you to dance with me.” He smiled at Leonie, as though he found her rather good to look at. “I’m afraid my dancing days are over.”

“Oh, Mr. Edmonds, what nonsense!”

“I didn’t mean only on the grounds of age.” He sighed impatiently. “I took a rather bad fall from my horse about six months ago, and ever since then I’ve had to live a disgustingly inactive sort of life.”

“I’m so sorry.” Leonie’s blue eyes surveyed him with friendly sympathy. “But I hope the voyage will do you a lot of good. And as for dancing with me, that isn’t necessary. May I sit and talk to you for a bit?’

“Of course. But only for a short while. Anyone as young and pretty as you should be dancing and enjoying herself.”

Leonie refrained from saying that she would much rather talk to Mr. Edmonds than dance with the Assistant Surgeon. She thought it might sound affected. But she did say,

“I like talking quite as much as dancing, provided it’s with someone interesting.”

“The implication is altogether too charming to resist,” declared Nicholas Edmonds, giving her that sidelong, amused look which was not without an element of indulgence. “Though I don’t know what leads you to class me as ‘someone interesting’.”

“Don’t you?” Leonie regarded him thoughtfully. “Well, you
look
interesting, for one thing. Besides, you seem to know so much about people.”

“Well—I’ve been about a bit,” he conceded, but with an air which suggested slight boredom with the process. “What makes you think I know about people?”

“You seemed to know all about Renee Armand, for one thing.”

“I should do. I was once married to her for a whole year,” he replied drily.

“Were you?” gasped Leonie. “But how terribly awk—I mean—”

“Awkward to find ourselves on the same ship? Oh, not really,” her companion assured her. “We are what is termed good friends still.”

“But—at the same table,” said Leonie rather helplessly.

“It’s quite natural. We both happen to know Pembridge well.”

“Do you?” The centre of interest shifted. “I—I know him too, a little. But I suppose it hardly counts,” she added rather humbly. “I was a nurse in one of the hospitals where he worked.”

“St. Catherine’s?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know why it shouldn’t count,” Nicholas Edmonds said. “Pembridge very seldom forgets anyone.”

“No,” agreed Leonie soberly. And she thought it would have been rather more comfortable in her own case if he had.

An amused and speculative glance told her that her companion had sensed something of what she was thinking. But before he could comment or question, the subject of their conversation himself came up, and Nicholas Edmonds said, with a touch of rather malicious interest.

“I have just been hearing that Miss Creighton worked under you once.”

Mr. Pembridge gave Leonie a brief glance.

“Yes. At St. Catherine’s.”

“Not exactly a happy memory, I gather,” said the other man thoughtfully.

“For me?” Mr. Pembridge looked a trifle haughty.

“No, no. For her.”

“Mr. Edmonds, how can you say such a thing!” exclaimed Leonie, greatly put out. “I never said anything of the sort. I never said a
word
about—”

“Oh, no words, of course. But you cast down your lashes with an air of remembered disapproval there was no gainsaying.”

“The remembered disapproval was mine, if I’m not mistaken,” said Mr. Pembridge drily, before Leonie could find her voice to say anything.

“Then it’s time you forgot it,” replied the other man. “She’s a nice child and shouldn’t be unhappy on her first ocean voyage. Take her along now and settle your differences over the next waltz.”

“But I don’t want—” began Leonie, petrified with dismay and astonishment at hearing her delicate relationship with Mr. Pembridge handled thus.

“Nonsense! Of course you do. And, anyway, I’ve talked long enough.” Nicholas Edmonds made a slight gesture of weariness and impatience. “Go along, there’s a good girl. And remember that it’s easier for a nurse to apologize than for a surgeon to do so.”

Even then Leonie would have stood her ground and refused. But, unexpectedly, Mr. Pembridge held out his hand to her and smiled.

“Are you coming?”

“Not if you’re asking me just because—”

“I’m asking you because I want you to come and dance with me,” he said.

And so Leonie put her hand into his and went away, aware that Nicholas Edmonds looked after them with an air of reflective amusement which she thought out of place.

As Mr. Pembridge swung her on to the dance-floor, she thought she would have given anything—just anything—to be able to produce a casual and witty comment which would have put things in their right perspective. But she could think of nothing—not even the most conventional remark—until at last he said, softly and with a hint of amusement in his voice,

“Yes—I see what Edmonds meant about the disapproving, downcast lashes.”

“Oh—” Leonie’s long lashes swept upward and for a moment she looked the Senior Surgeon full in the face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—to express disapproval.” She looked down again then, but with a slightly softer expression. “It was only that I—I simply don’t know what to say after Mr. Edmonds’s embarrassing speech.”

“Forget about it,” Mr. Pembridge advised her. “Edmonds leans to a slightly malicious type of teasing, but he really did think it a good idea that you and I should have a talk. And I’m not sure he wasn’t right.”

“Oh, Mr. Pembridge—why?” Leonie was rather apprehensive.

“Well, for one thing, I want to know why you think I’m overquick and inaccurate in my judgments. It’s a formidable thing for a surgeon to have said to his face, you know.”

“But I didn’t mean it professionally!” cried Leonie, so eager in her denial that she did not even hear the laughter in his voice. “I meant—”

“Yes?” he prompted, as she hesitated.

“Mr. Pembridge, you know you really were very horrid to me all those years ago when you found me flirting in the corridor of St. Catherine’s. After all, it wasn’t
such
a crime—to be remembered against me. And I was rather—rather young, when all’s said and done.”

“You were very young,” said Mr. Pembridge, in a tone that slightly surprised Leonie. “It was because you were so young that I was so emphatic, I suppose.”

“I—don’t think I understand.”

“Didn’t you ever realize, even later, what type Catterick was?” he inquired drily.

“Catterick—Oh, of course, that was his name, wasn’t it? I’d forgotten it until this moment.”

Mr. Pembridge laughed a good deal, for some reason or other.

“Well, if you’ve forgotten his name, there’s no more to be said about him,” he told her gaily. “He wasn’t a type for any young nurse to be mixed up with. Leave it at that.”

Leonie looked up again then and studied the strong, handsome face that was so near her own.

“He never spoke to me again,” she said thoughtfully.

“No. I don’t expect he did,” Mr. Pembridge agreed, rather gently.

“You mean”—she looked wondering—”you can’t mean—that you arranged that?”

“ ‘Arrange’ would be too positive a word,” Mr. Pembridge told her with a smile. “Let us say, rather, that it impinged on his consciousness that he had better leave you alone.”

“Mr. Pembridge!” Leonie was thunderstruck. “Are you telling me that you—that, in a sense, you protected me?”

“Again I find the word a little too positive,” he said, smiling still. “I discouraged you from putting your head into danger.”

“And I used to turn off and go another way when I saw you coming,” she murmured, half to herself.

“Yes, I know.”

“You
knew?
”
Leonie looked impressed. “You—you know rather a lot about people altogether, don’t you?”

“Not so much,” he assured her. “I still, for instance, don’t know why it agitates you to see your pretty companion and my Assistant Surgeon getting on so well together.”

“Oh—that—” Leonie’s face darkened as she recalled her momentarily forgotten responsibilities. “That’s something else again.”

“Something really worth worrying about?”

“I’m afraid so.” She had a ridiculous and almost overwhelming impulse to confide her difficulties to Mr. Pembridge. But, recalling how many breaches of confidence this would involve, apart from anything else, she checked herself and did not elaborate on the one rather sombre reply.

The music was drawing to a close now. But as they came to a stop at the side of the ballroom, he looked down at her and said teasingly,

“Shall I tell you one more thing before I leave you, to go and do my social duty by the charming Madame Armand?”

“If—you like.” She smiled doubtfully, for she still could not get used to the idea that Mr. Pembridge was no longer the cold and disapproving surgeon from St. Catherine’s.”

“Don’t worry about the attractions of any other girls,” he told her, lightly and a trifle mockingly. “You carry some pretty powerful weapons of attack yourself.” And, with a not entirely kindly laugh, he left her—half pleased with the compliment, half vexed with the terms in which it had been cast.

For a while Leonie sat watching the dancers, her mind still largely occupied with the extraordinary conversation which had just taken place.

To think that, in his cool, astringent, sarcastic way, Mr. Pembridge had really acted out of concern for her silly young self, all those years ago! It put a very different complexion on the affair, even if memory told her that he could have been a little kinder to herself.

This did not, of course, alter the fact that he still presumed to regard her with a critical eye, the eye of a surgeon who had once known her as a pro, and could not shed the last vestige of authority towards her. But it did make Leonie glad that they had had this revealing conversation, and made her decide that, at the first opportunity, she would also disabuse him of the notion that she had any personal interest in Kingsley Stour.

Kingsley Stour’s interest in her, however—whether from pleasure or policy—showed every sign of flourishing. She had hardly been sitting there five minutes before he came up and invited her to come out and stroll on the sheltered part of the promenade deck.

Leonie’s first impulse was to refuse—even curtly, if necessary. But then it came to her, with a flash of insight she could not afterwards explain, that it might not be a bad thing to have a talk with Kingsley Stour too. Not exactly with the gloves off, but in terms that would put an end to his using her as a peg on which to hang his more amusing bits of camouflage.

She smiled, therefore, and came with him, to lean on the inside rail and look out through the great windows of the promenade deck and watch the long path of light from the ship gleam on the endlessly moving waters.

When he began to flirt lightly with her, she smiled still, but she half turned her head away, so that he could only see the line of her cheek, and presently he asked reproachfully,

“Why don’t you look at me?”

“I was thinking,” Leonie said.

“Of me?”

“Of something you said. About my not needing to nurse or do any hard work. That’s not true, you know.”

“Not true?” He gave her a quick, almost startled glance which secretly both amused and interested her.

“No. Everyone needs to do some sort of hard work, unless they are satisfied to be utterly useless.”

“Oh—that—” He dismissed this aspect with a laugh. “Well, I daresay you’re right. At least, the fact that you think so is part of the essential, delightful
you.
I meant it from the practical point of view only when I spoke of you.”

She turned her head then and smiled full at him though she was really a little frightened at what she was going to do.

“You do know a lot about me, don’t you?” she said rather mockingly.

“Quite a bit,” he assured her. “I find the subject enthralling.”

“Thank you.” Leonie drew in her breath slightly and felt rather like a duellist testing the point of his weapon. “Would it surprise you to hear that I know quite a lot about you too?”