Nurse Ann Wood (11 page)

She decided not to wear uniform, but instead she put on a simple green dress with a leather belt and matching shoes. By the time she was ready the hour had already struck and she went downstairs with slow, reluctant footsteps.

The big door leading on to the terrace stood open to let in the pale spring sunshine, and as she went towards it, a shadow fell across the doorway. Ann stood still, a sudden, wild, unreasoning terror fixing her to the ground.

And then the shadow had moved, fallen across her, and a voice was saying, “Excuse my walking in, but the door was standing open and I’ve already rung twice. Could you tell me if Miss Woods is at home?”

Ann said, in a small voice, “I am Miss Wood.”

He was a thin young man, with a rather high color and very blue eyes. Perhaps not an unpleasant face, but certainly a hard, even a ruthless one.

“I mean Miss Anne Woods,” he retorted, fixing her with those very blue eyes.

Ann made a little helpless gesture. It was quite evident that she was not the Anne whom he knew.

“I am Ann Wood,” she repeated steadily, guessing that he would not notice the omission of the “s.”

“Here, I say!” With a quick gesture, he pulled her to the door, and into the stronger light of the terrace. “You’re not the Anne Woods who should be here to meet me,” he declared roughly. “Where is she? Nurse Anne Woods, I mean. Last time I saw her, she was a nurse at a hospital in London — Queen Frida’s Hospital.”

“I am Nurse Ann Wood,” the girl said again, steadily.

“Now what is all this?” The man clenched his hands, his high color increasing over his cheekbones and his blue eyes beginning to bulge.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.” There was a faint chill in Ann’s sweet voice. When he had pulled her into that clearer light, he had put a hand on her shoulder, and kept it there. She now shrugged her arm free and took a step back from him, her eyes fixed on his face.

She had begun to find her self-possession. After all, why should she feel guilty? Mrs. Woods had accepted her as her daughter, taken responsibility for her from the hospital, and Beverley was calling her “Sister Anne.”

She raised her small chin and her eyes were darkly lavender between their black fringes. “Who are
you,
may I ask?”

He stood his ground squarely and plunged his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I’m Ralph Gateworth and I’m engaged to Nurse Woods. Got my ring, she has. I’m a staff nurse at the Institute. I took the job because I wanted to be near Anne. She said she was throwing up her post in London and coming home to look after her sister. That was three months ago, and when I saw the advertisement for the Institute job, I applied for it, but since I came down here I haven’t had a word from her. Then quite by chance I heard last night that Mrs. Derhart’s sister, a nurse, was looking after her.”

Ann inclined her head. “That’s true. I’m here to keep an eye on my sister, who is a semi-invalid, and on my sister’s two children.”

“Why ... But ... Ralph Gateworth looked at her dazedly, and then said rather hoarsely, “Come down the steps on to the drive, will you? I don’t like this terrace with all these windows. We don’t know who may be listening.”

“Now look here,” the young man said, as they reached the drive, “what
is
this all about? Where is Anne? Has she sent you down here to take her place? Or what?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ann did not like his tone and her own voice and expression showed it. “Whoever you came to see is not here, that’s obvious, so you’d better go.”

“If you think I’m going to be fobbed off like that, you’re sadly mistaken,” he replied. “I came to see Anne and I’m going to see her or find out where she is. Understand.”

Ann said coldly, “I don’t know anything about her. Please let go of my arm.”

“Not so fast, lady,” he murmured, and his expression changed as he looked down at her cloudy dark hair and her pale lovely face. “If it comes to that, you’re a sight prettier than she was. You say you’re Anne Woods. Anne Woods is my girl, so what about it, sweetness?”

Both arms were around her now, and his lips were very close.

“Let go! How dare you? Anger held Ann rigid, and kept her voice very low.

“Gateworth — that’s your name, isn’t it? What are you doing here?”

The man turned slightly, but he did not relax his grip on one of Ann’s arms. “Good afternoon, sir. It’s nothing, nothing wrong, sir. Just a slight tiff between this young lady and myself.”

Iain Sherrarde’s ice-cold eyes quelled him. “Anne, is this fellow annoying you?”

She freed herself completely from Gateworth’s hold, her face full of embarrassment and vexation. “I’m — that is, yes — no,” she replied incoherently.

“Oh, it’s just our way of being friendly, sir,” Gateworth put in jauntily. “We don’t believe much in sentiment or romance, but Anne and I understand each other very well.”

Again Iain Sherrarde silenced him with a glance. “Anne ... Miss Woods ... are you all right?”

Ann swallowed convulsively. She thought, in a terrified manner: I don’t want him to know about the other Anne. If he does, he’ll guess right away that
I’m
the imposter and he’ll send me away. He’s only willing for me to stay with Beverley and the children because he believes I’m related to them. If I go away, I may never see him again. Panic drove her along a path which she had no wish to tread.

“No, he’s not annoying me,” she remarked, trying to make her voice sound unconcerned. “But he doesn’t seem to realize I’m here on duty.” She turned to Gateworth and her eyes held an impassioned appeal.

“Please go now. I’ll be able to see you when I’m free.”

“O.K., sweetness, that’s good enough for me,” he returned jauntily. “I’ll ring you again.” He threw her a kiss, gave Iain Sherrarde, who was standing rigid, a civil “Good afternoon, sir,” and walked towards his motor-cycle which he had propped up in the drive.

Through white lips Ann said, “Did you want me, Mr. Sherrarde?”

“I did, but...” He hesitated, his voice cold and accusing. “I wanted to talk about the children. Where are they?”

Ann said simply, “I don’t know.”

His face went even darker. “You don’t
know
! I suppose it doesn’t matter what they’re doing. Your conversation with that fellow Gateworth was far too important!”

“I fail to see the connection.” Ann’s voice was as cold as his, though she felt very near to tears. Gone was tenderness and understanding that he’d shown again last night. They were once more, it would seem, the accused and the cold, condemning judge.

And now a scarcely controlled temper edged his voice. “Do you mind if we go into the house? You have no coat and there’s a cold wind.”

Angry that she was trembling, Ann defied him. “I’m not at all cold.”

Again there was a flash of temper, this time in his fine eyes. “I would still rather talk to you inside ... Please.”

Ann went up the steps, her head very high. He was passing judgment on her in connection with Gateworth, as he had done once before when he had found her with Burrows at very much the same spot. What right had he to be so intolerant and arrogant?

She walked ahead of him into the shabby drawing room which was so much more neglected than any other room in the house. She sat down and in a remote voice invited him to do the same. He shook his head, and when he didn’t seem inclined to speak, she went on in a dangerously sweet manner, “I haven’t very much time, Mr. Sherrarde. I ought to get back to Beverley.”

If he was waiting for an explanation from her about Gateworth, he wasn’t going to get it. He had got to be made to realize that she was a person in her own right and not just the children’s nurse.

His expression was grim. “It must be obvious to you that this can’t go on,” he said.

“This? I’m not sure what you mean.” Ann was sitting very straight in her chair.

He gave her a glance from under his black brows. “No doubt you have your mind on ... other things?”

Her color rose angrily and they were staring at each other, quite oblivious of anything else, when the french window leading on to the terrace was pushed open with a decisive hand, and Doctor Maureen Lyntrope came in.

“Aunt said that you had walked over to have a look at the children,” she smiled at Sherrarde, “so I thought that if I followed in my car, I could drive you back.”

“That was a kind thought, Maureen.”

“The gardener thought you were in the house, but he wasn’t sure about Nurse Woods. He’d seen her talking” — her voice changed to an imitation of Burrows’ west-country accent — “ ‘very friendly-like’ to a young man with a motor-cycle, and he wondered if she might have gone off with him. I almost think he was jealous!”

Ann wondered dazedly whether she was imagining the malice. Surely she must be. The mimicry was excellent, and both she and Mr. Sherrarde should have been laughing instead of lapsing into this glowering silence.

It was he who broke it. “I’ve just begun to tell Miss Woods that she’s taking on too much in caring for her sister and the children.”

“Quite ridiculously too much,” commented Doctor Lyntrope loftily.

Ann was determined not to lose her temper. “Please sit down,” she invited them politely. “Shall we discuss it quietly? After all, I expect that we all really want to do the best for Beverley and Emma and Guy, though we approach it in different ways.”

She looked at Mr. Sherrarde directly now. He frowned. “What exactly are you implying?” he demanded.

Ann retreated slightly. After all, she was a stranger and she mustn’t descend to personalities. If he didn’t know that Doctor Lyntrope’s interest in the children was just a cloak to gain his attention, she couldn’t tell him.

She said thoughtfully, “It isn’t right to take the children somewhere where they can’t see their mother. That would be inhuman.”

“As if
she
cares anything about them,” the woman doctor put in scornfully. “They’ve been in the care of servants from the time they were born — and not particularly competent ones at that. Before the accident, Ray and Beverley were never in England. They were skiing at St. Moritz or yachting somewhere in the Mediterranean, or in the Bahamas or in New York. They were scarcely ever at home, consequently the children hardly knew them.”

“But life is different now for Beverley,” Ann pointed out. “They are all she has left to remind her of her husband. Obviously she can’t take much responsibility for them herself, but they should be here in the house, so that she can see them whenever she is well enough.”

“No one is disputing that,” Iain Sherrarde admitted. “But we ... my aunt, Doctor Lyntrope and myself think that they could be better looked after at Dainty’s End. My aunt and Doctor Lyntrope would not only see that they are well cared for, but also that they are brought up ... properly. Naturally, they would come over here each day to see their mother.”

“That’s quite the best plan — the only plan,” Doctor Lyntrope asserted briskly.

Ann said in a quiet voice, “But I understand that that plan has already been tried and that the children were unhappy.”

Sherrarde’s expression was gloomy. “They certainly didn’t seem the same. Children are odd. They thrive—”

“Naturally they seem happy when they are subject to no discipline,” Doctor Lyntrope interrupted sharply. “But that isn’t to say that it’s the best thing for them — far from it. In this house,” she looked around the unkempt room distastefully, “they’re ... Oh, well, I suppose I’d better not say it.”

“Please say exactly what you like,” Ann implored her with dangerous sweetness.

Iain looked uncomfortable. “Hang it all, Anne!”

Ann’s heart began to beat in an excited way. She was conscious that Doctor Lyntrope’s face was angry. Ann found that a devil she had not known she possessed had seized her.

“Yes, Iain?” she enquired sweetly, and looked at him with great wide eyes, as if she were hanging on his every word.

Again in his own eyes there was a quick gleam. “You must admit,” he urged, “that there’s no one here to take an interest in the children, no one to supervise...”

“And what about myself? Am I such a nonentity?” Ann demanded. She had forgotten now that she was not Anne Woods. Her spirit was up and she was determined to stand by that lovely helpless girl who had lost her young husband so tragically, and whom these two were now trying to deprive of her children.

“But, Anne, that’s where we started this discussion,” he pointed out gravely. “
You
can’t be responsible for so much. If you’re to care for Beverley, you can’t look after the children as well.”

“I can supervise,” Ann told him with simple earnestness. “I wasn’t impressed by her at first, but I can see that Miss Pollard is competent in many ways. When she is giving them lessons, she keeps them interested and she takes great pride in their appearance. I think
everyone
” — she emphasized the word slightly and her eyelashes flew upward for a moment as her glance went towards Doctor Lyntrope, seated near the french window — “must agree that they are well cared for in that respect. Where Miss Pollard has been lacking is that she has been unable to give them any feeling of security, and one can’t blame her for that, in the circumstances.”

This time her grave glance enveloped them both. They seemed about to reply, but Ann went on, “Naturally, they will go to school when they are old enough, but they shouldn’t be separated and sent for a long time yet.”

“Who’s talking about sending them away?” Sherrarde frowned. “Ridiculous! They’re only babies yet. No one has suggested such a thing.”

“But it
was
suggested yesterday, and in the children’s hearing,” Ann told him quietly. “And as a result Miss Pollard had to get up twice in the night to Guy, who was having nightmares. I suggest that great care should be taken about what’s said before a little boy who is as sensitive and highly strung as Guy.”

“There, you see what’s going to happen!” Doctor Lyntrope got up from her chair with a flounce and came over to Iain. “With all these women fussing around him, he’ll be as bad as his father.”

“Maureen!” The one word, in a tone of shock, told Ann, who knew nothing of Guy’s father, that Doctor Lyntrope had made a tactical error in speaking of him slightingly to Iain.

Doctor Lyntrope’s color rose and she gave a shrug as she climbed down. “All right, Iain, I’m sorry I said that. I ought to have remembered that you were very fond of Ray and, so Aunt Mary says, absurdly indulgent to him.”

They seemed to have forgotten Ann, and as she listened, she began to see why Iain felt so responsible for the children, even apart from the fact that he was their guardian. He had loved their father.

But Sherrarde had not forgotten her, nor the subject of their discussion, though Ann was sure Doctor Lyntrope was anxious for it to be dropped.

“Anne, I don’t understand this talk of school. It has never been mentioned so far as I know in the children’s hearing. Guy’s name is down, of course, for the two schools which his father attended, but that’s a long way ahead. Who has spoken to the children on this subject? Do you know?”

Averil Pollard had said this morning that Doctor Lyntrope had threatened the children yesterday that they should both be packed off to school when they had struggled to get out of her car.

As Iain stared at her, Ann shook her head. She couldn’t bring herself to tell tales about this young woman, unpleasant though she had been to her.

Doctor Lyntrope’s principles were more elastic. She put in carelessly, “Now I come to think of it, I believe Kathleen said something about it when they were behaving badly yesterday.”

Sherrarde’s frown deepened. “Then she had no business to say anything of the sort,” he growled. “I’ll speak to her.”

Maureen touched his arm lightly and smiled at him. “Iain, for heaven’s sake, be careful. Maids like Kathleen are treasures these days and I don’t know what Aunt Mary would do without her. She was on the verge of rebellion yesterday. Better let me have a word with her.”