Nurse for the Doctor (9 page)

“Miss Petersen?” He looked surprised, and his dark eyebrows arched. “I do not know. As a matter of fact, I have never inquired.”

“I—I see,” she said. “I only wondered.”

She felt that he was watching her rather strangely as she made her way indoors.

CHAPTER
VIII

Michael Duveen
also gave Josie rather a curious glance, when she arrived in his room.

He was shaved, and wearing a Paisley-silk dressing gown over his pyjamas, and lying in a comfortable chair near the window. The remnants of his continental breakfast were on a little table at his elbow.

“Josie,” he said, rather severely, “I am about to insist that you redon your uniform.” As she looked surprised, his lips twitched. “Two men talk with you in the garden before breakfast! ... One, the Most Noble Marquis de Palheiro, has already addressed a few words to my mother on the subject of your being discouraged from dining alone in your own room. Oh, they were charmingly expressed words, of course, with no blame attaching to anyone
because
you dined alone in your room last night—but, if you ask me, our host is of the opinion that we don’t treat you properly, Josie. I imagine he is laboring under the delusion that it was my mother’s idea that you didn’t join the rest of us until he got hold of you somehow or other.”

Josie was silent, not wishing that he should guess that it was his mother’s idea that she should remain in her room.

“Well?” he said, lighting a cigarette, and then lying back and looking up at her with his blue eyes gleaming a little through the curtain of his long eyelashes. “That disposes of the marquis—at least temporarily—but is Don Luis the type to set your heart aflame?”

“Don’t be silly, please,” Josie said, very quietly, moving until she was beside his chair and bending over his injured foot. “A little massage for this ankle will be a good idea this morning, don’t you think?” she suggested.

“Just as you like,” the doctor answered carelessly. “But I was asking you about Don Luis. Was it quite accidental that you met like that this morning? I noticed him gazing at you last night as if you were something quite new in his experience, and it occurred to me that although no one appeared to introduce you, you might have managed to contrive an introduction—or do without one. He disappeared when you went upstairs last night, and Spaniards have a habit of serenading fair ladies underneath their balconies.”

Josie looked up at him with extraordinarily clear, and slightly reproving brown eyes.

“How do you know I met Don Luis this morning?” she asked, ignoring the absurdity of the rest of his speech.

He waved towards his balcony.

“I have a wonderful view over quite an extensive corner of the grounds from here,” he reminded her. “You must remember that in future.”

She went on with her skilful massaging of his ankle, and he looked down at the top of her fair head, discovering lights amongst the natural, silken curls that must have received an extra gilding in the Spanish sun. In England they had just looked like pale curls under her prim little cap—unless it was that he hadn’t been prepared to notice them then. And her small, heart-shaped face hadn’t then acquired that delicate honey-gold tan, her long eyelashes hadn’t lain like feathery half-circles on her cheeks, with the upward curling tips brushed with, or so it seemed, gold-dust. And, of course, she hadn’t made her appearance at Chessington House in strawberry-pink linen with a wide white belt that nipped in her slender waist, and a slightly off-the-shoulder neckline. Although the cape-like effect of the wide white collar that edged the neckline—and, incidentally, lent her rather a Dorcas girl effect—entirely did away with any suggestion of daringness, even to Spanish eyes, about that rather tempting display of dimpled shoulders and young, graceful column of a throat.

“H’m!” Michael commented, after she had been working on his ankle in silence for five minutes, and he had never once removed his eyes from her. “Reverting to the subject of you and your uniform ... It is possible that without it you’re too attractive, Josie. And if you’re going to become a bit of an anxiety ...” There was a soft laughter-note in his voice, but there was also another note that prevented her lifting her head and looking at him. “And you must remember that we’re responsible for you, my mother and I.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, without even flickering her eyelashes. “I shan’t cause you any needless anxiety.”

“You might not—but what about these impressionable Spaniards?”

“Would you call the Marquis de Pahleiro an ‘impressionable’ Spaniard?” she asked, with rather a severe look round her mouth.

“Well, not exactly ... That fellow must be getting on for forty, and he hasn’t married yet. But, then, he’s minus an arm, and no doubt he has some quixotic notions about the fairness of marriage under the circumstances. Although I don’t think many women would hesitate to take him on as a husband, with such vast estates to make up for the physical disability. To say nothing of the opportunity to become a marquesa!”

At that Josie did lift her eyes.

“I should think many women would be quite eager to take him on as a husband without the opportunity to become a marquesa!”

She didn’t know why she spoke almost hotly, but she did.

Michael’s eyes glinted again, and it wasn’t a particularly pleasant glint.

“You mustn’t allow yourself to be carried away by a show of old-fashioned courtliness, little Josie,” he said, very softly. “The marquis is
always
an attentive host, whether his guest is male or female.”

“I’m sure of that,” Josie heard herself saying, but her voice gave away the fact that she was a little confused, and she wondered why his warning didn’t have the effect of merely filling her with amazement because he should imagine it was needed, and nothing else.

Suddenly he put out a hand and lightly touched one of her curls.

“They keep in place better under a cap,” he said, almost broodingly. Then, rather abruptly: “Two nights ago I kissed you, Josie.”

“Yes.” All in a moment her confusion subsided, and she looked him straight in the eyes. “And you put it down to the effect of Spanish moonlight.”

He smiled a little oddly.

“It could have been Spanish moonlight—or it could have been you, Josie.”

Josie finished massaging his ankle, and then she stood up, looking and behaving as if his words had had no effect on her whatsoever. And the strange thing about it was that, although only two nights before those very words would have had a considerable effect on her, just then, with the morning sunlight filling his room, and he himself looking handsome enough to upset the beat of any feminine heart, she felt almost unmoved.

In fact, the only effect his words had on her was rather extraordinary. She saw him greeting Dona Maria after a lapse of ten years, and looking quite thrilled by the meeting—and she saw Dona Maria bending over him and lighting his cigarette, generally fussing over him in a way he plainly found pleasant, since he submitted to it meekly. And she remembered herself dining alone on that first night. Not that that had really upset her in the least, but Michael had hardly noticed her absence from the dinner table. Of that she felt quite sure. And she remembered the concerned look on his face after he kissed her—his blaming it on “Spanish moonlight.” And the oddest thing of all was that it didn’t matter ... She even felt a little repelled because he had referred to that night.

She turned away swiftly.

“I’ll leave you now,” she said. “You ought to have a little rest before you start to dress. And when you want me I’ll be somewhere quite handy.”

“But possibly not quite handy enough,” he remarked, a little obscurely, a piqued look about the corners of his shapely mouth as he surveyed her. “Josie, have I said anything to annoy you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, whatever you do don’t start wearing your uniform again. I was only joking about your Spanish admirers, and—I like you as you are, Josie!”

“Thank you,” she returned, with little or no enthusiasm in her voice. And as she made her way to her own room the conversation that had just ended slipped completely from her mind as she became preoccupied with wondering what it would be like to ride pillion on a spirited horse like Ramirez, with Carlos de Palheiro up in front of her in the saddle.

But she had no opportunity to find out during the next few days. The marquis, as Michael had truthfully stated, was an attentive host, and in addition to the Duveens there was Miss Sylvia Petersen to be kept entertained. And she seemed to require a lot of entertainment—especially from him. She sent him looks from her striking, blue-green eyes that told everybody else a good deal, whether or not they conveyed the same message to the marquis himself. It was possible—indeed, highly probable—that he was accustomed to receiving looks of that type from women who had brought to a fine art the business of transmitting such messages from underneath drooping eyelids, and Josie decided that he must by this time have learned the language of languishing glances.

He was such a very attractive man, with a background of wealth and high position. And in addition he had a certain tenderness in his dealings with women—
all
women, she noticed, whether it was such an obviously arch and anxious-to-please, no longer young women like Mrs. Duveen, a far more elderly woman like his Aunt Amelie, or someone young and glamorous like the lovely American girl—and she put it down to the fact that he was a Spaniard, and Spaniards of good birth do have this tendency towards the supposedly frailer sex.

Therefore it was a little difficult to tell whether his attitude to Miss Petersen was merely the result of his early training, combined with the natural gallantry of his instincts. But he did seem to behave towards her with rather excessive courtliness at times, and whenever he looked at her his eyes reflected a good deal of admiration. There was the connoisseur’s appreciation for something that was well-nigh perfect—at any rate, so far as the eye could detect—and a gentleness in the handling of that perfect thing because any other sort of treatment might prove disastrous to it. And occasionally—or so Josie had decided, as the result of discreet observation—there was a warmer flash in those lustrous dark eyes when Sylvia made a little impulsive gesture and slipped a rounded arm inside his own, or when she appealed to him to do something for her, or discovered a helplessness within herself that reached out and plucked at the protective side of his nature.

And having almost certainly made up her mind about this extraordinarily pleasing marquis Sylvia brought to light most attractively the feminine helplessness that she pretended to despise. She was the lovely, porcelain-perfect, fragile, dependent woman whom almost any man—whether possessor of a Latin temperament or not— would have been anxious to serve in some way or other, in order to win one of her misty, green-eyed smiles, and hear the little coo of appreciation in her voice when she was pleased.

And when she made her appearance in the evenings wearing one of her filmy evening frocks, with her hair like a burnished cascade round her shoulders, and her jewels drawing attention to the flawlessness of her skin, it was impossible for any man
not
to feel a quick, upward rush of admiration. Or so Josie felt certain, having noticed the way in which even Michael glanced at her sometimes, when his attention was not being claimed by Dona Maria.

Dona Maria, like her brother, had so much natural charm, and such excellent manners, that it would have been just as impossible for a susceptible male to remain impervious to her for long. And Josie was beginning to suspect that Dr. Duveen was by nature naturally susceptible, and whatever bitter experience he might have lived through he was not the sort of man to go through the remainder of his life shunning women. It was true he had talked to her of getting thoroughly strong again and then devoting himself to his work. But as well as the work there would have to be softer influences, for he was far too personable for it to be otherwise.

He and Dona Maria seemed to have a lot in common, and Josie had the feeling that in spite of her unfortunate marriage the gravely beautiful Spanish girl had never forgotten her one encounter with young Michael Duveen. Although they had not met for ten years the very words she had used when greeting him had given her away:
“
It is a long time
,
Senor Michael
...”

Were those words the key to the reason why the marquis seemed always to have a certain amount of reserve in his manner when addressing the good-looking young Englishman who was his guest? While surrounding that guest with every possible evidence of consideration, and a desire to make him as comfortable as possible, and to aid in his complete restoration to health, there never seemed to be any real warmth—or any desire for a closer bond between them—in the attitude of the Spaniard towards the now not much more than semi-invalid.

At times, Josie had even detected a kind of contempt in his manner—a slight curl of the lip when being drawn into a conversation with Michael—as if he accepted him as his guest because pressure had been brought to bear on him, and not because he had really wanted him as his guest.

And she recalled that he, too, had said something rather odd to her at their first meeting. Referring to his sister he had explained: “She has suffered in the past ... In future I wish her to make her own decisions, without interference from anyone, even members of her own family circle.’

Had he even then suspected that Mrs. Duveen had a plan, and that Michael might fall a willing victim to it? And because of something that had happened in the past—Maria’s and Michael’s past—was he prepared at that very early stage to do nothing but frown upon the plan?

But since their arrival at the villa Maria and Michael had seemed not to care what other people thought about their instinctive drawing to one another. They obviously found a good deal of pleasure in one another’s society, and Maria drove the doctor about in her beautiful little cream-colored coupe; when they were not driving she was walking with him in the garden, eagerly offering him her arm as a support instead of the stick he disliked. But his ankle was growing rapidly stronger, and soon he would need neither the stick nor the arm.

While they rediscovered one another, and Michael grew fit and tanned, the marquis drove his other, and far more desirable guest from his point of view—or, rather, allowed his chauffeur to drive them—about the beautiful Costa Brava coast. Sylvia Petersen was simply born to be driven in a limousine, and the marquis’s straight-backed, uniformed chauffeur—shut off from them by a glass partition—could do nothing to interfere with the hours of splendid isolation she passed with her host.