by Pamela Kent
Chris said something about feeling better already since Janine had arrived, and Lady Hannaford surveyed her a little sceptically.
“If you’re still suffering with your nerves you ought to take a tonic. And if that doesn’t work you ought to tell your husband that it isn’t good for you to be left alone such a lot. I don’t approve of husbands with careers … not when they exclude their wives!”
The door opened and a slim young woman came in and went up to Lady Hannaford and tucked a cushion in behind her back. She announced that she had ordered tea to be served immediately, and that it would arrive at any moment on the trolley. She was not wearing a uniform, but her shapely dark blue dress with white collar and cuffs was a most attractive substitute, and as she had gleaming fair hair swept to the top of her head and long-lashed irisblue eyes she was able to count on raised eyebrows and a certain amount of surprise when Lady Hannaford introduced her as her nurse.
“This is Nurse Tempest,” Lady Hannaford said. “But as she has already been with me a month she allows me to call her Elizabeth. Elizabeth, my dear,” she continued, “have you seen anything of Tim since he disappeared after lunch? He said something about going for a walk on the moors with one of the dogs, but he knew we were expecting visitors for tea, and he should be back.”
Elizabeth Tempest smiled at her employer, and interposed yet another cushion between the hard back of the chair and the fragile-looking back of her patient.
“He is back, Lady Hannaford,” she assured her. “He’ll be with us any moment now. As a matter of fact, he’s washing his hands, and making himself what he described as ‘presentable’ for company.”
A fond expression chased itself across the old lady’s face.
“The dear boy!” she exclaimed. “In the old days, when he used to come and stay with me during his school holidays, I had the greatest difficulty in inducing him to make the maximum use of soap and water, but thankfully all that is past now. I’m quite certain he never neglects to wash behind his ears, and clean his teeth three times a day. It’s such a relief because, as I say, he was a bit of a problem …”
“But not now, I’m sure,” Nurse Tempest murmured, almost sotto voce, as her iris-blue eyes watched the door, and she was the first to see it open and the tall, elegant figure of a man in a well-cut tweed hacking jacket and casual flannels that nevertheless managed to proclaim themselves as the endproduct of a first-class tailor, and impeccable linen, came into the room with a pug under one arm, and a honey-coloured spaniel keeping close to his heels.
He handed the pug over to his aunt, who accepted it with a beaming smile, told the spaniel to be careful of the lady’s stockings because her paws were very wet, and then shook hands formally with Chris, smiled into Nurse Tempest’s eyes, and appeared to notice for the first time that there was another visitor in the room, and to all intents and purposes she was a complete stranger.
“Dear me!” he exclaimed, smoothing his warm brown hair with one very shapely warm brown hand. “What a good thing I paused to inspect my tie and to make absolutely certain there were no smuts on my nose before barging in here. You told me we were expecting a visitor, dear aunt, but I don’t think you mentioned two visitors? And both of them delectably female!”
His aunt wagged a finger at him as if cautioning him not to go too far, for Tim’s dark brown eyes were alive and sparkling with something that could have been amusement as he looked down from his six feet two inches at the slightness and not more than five feet two inches of Janine. She was wearing a silk shantung suit in canary yellow, and a canary yellow Alice band held back the deep waves of her chestnut hair, which would otherwise have fallen forward over her smooth forehead and formed an enchanting little chestnut fringe.
“How do you do, Mr. Hannaford,” she said, with a demure and quite unrevealing smile … but for one moment she was terrified lest he was going to abandon the pretence and enquire how well she slept after he left her room.
“How do you do, Miss Scott?” He had retained her hand for several seconds longer than was strictly necessary, and appeared to be deriving some queer sort of satisfaction from the feel of her small, slim fingers as they lay in his.
With a slight tug she released her fingers, averted her eyes from the queer mockery in the brown ones, and looked down at the spaniel that, despite instructions, was clawing at the hem of her skirt. She bent down and made a fuss of it and established the beginnings of friendship, and Tim Hannaford provided her with his clean linen handkerchief to remove the paw-marks from the canary silk. He said in a low tone as he offered to remove some of the marks himself:
“Personally I preferred you in that transparent thing you were wearing the other night … But there’s no doubt about it, you look good in conventional wear, too! You do, if I may be permitted to say so, pay for dressing!”
Janine felt the hot colour begin to scorch her cheeks, and she thrust his handkerchief back at him hurriedly as Nurse Tempest, looking infinitely attractive and entirely at home behind the tea-trolley, lifted cool blue eyes to her and enquired whether or not she took sugar in her tea.
“Two lumps, please,” Janine answered in some confusion, and it struck her that the cool blue eyes lingered on those bright spots of colour in her cheeks, and although it was quite possibly purely her imagination the eyes narrowed and betrayed a certain mild surprise before concentrating on Tim Hannaford’s thin, brown face, after which they became momentarily inscrutable and then smiled radiantly at him.
“If you wouldn’t mind handing round the cups, Mr. Hannaford …?” she suggested gently.
“Of course, Nurse!” he answered, and established himself at her elbow.
Tea lasted for about an hour and during that time the hostess divided her attention between her two visitors and the pug on her knee, as well as occasionally sparing a few friendly words for her nurse-companion, and rebuking her nephew for some outrageous statement he made. It seemed that Tim Hannaford was in the habit of making outrageous statements. With his elegant shoulders propped against the marble mantelpiece behind him, a cigarette smouldering between his long, sensitive fingers, and a haze of cigarette-smoke creeping upwards to dim the sparkle in his indolent brown eyes, he smiled benignly on all four ladies, and accused his aunt of putting him in an impossible position, because apart from the pug on her knee he was the only gentleman present.
“I think you do it deliberately,” he said, “to highlight my masculine appeal.” His thick black eyelashes fluttered, and he glanced first at Nurse Tempest, and then at Janine. “I travel so much in lonely places that I’m quite sure I miss many of the plums of life. In fact, the softer side of it is inclined to escape me altogether. It’s sad, but true, but a hardened bachelor has few rewards.”
“That’s because you refuse to settle down,” his aunt declared briskly, offering the pug a corner of cake, while Janine offered the spaniel the remains of a cucumber sandwich. “I’m always telling you that the day when you decide to give up your restless ways and marry I’ll be really happy … and I’ll remake my will and leave your wife all my jewellery, instead of leaving instructions for it to be sold and the money devoted to the comfort of elderly donkeys, which is how matters stand at the present time.”
Tim cocked an eyebrow at Janine.
“Isn’t that enough to tempt any girl to marry me?” he asked.
“It all depends,” Janine answered, “on how fond she is of donkeys!”
Lady Hannaford once more chortled delightedly.
“You have a ready wit, child,” she said to Janine. And then, to her nephew: “Why don’t you take Miss Scott-out into the garden and show her the roses?” she suggested. “I’m sure she’s a rose-grower, because her sister is, and in any case, I want to have a few words with Mrs. Blair while nobody’s listening, so that means you can run away, too, Elizabeth, my dear,” dismissing the nurse. “I’ll ring for you when I want you to read me my usual chapter before dinner.”
Nurse Tempest accepted her dism
issal gracefully, and she walked to the door as if she was a professional model rather than one devoted to the care of the sick and infirm, and when she reached the door she made soft noises which attracted the dogs, and they accompanied her from the room.
Lady Hannaford looked after her fondly.
“Elizabeth is such a wonderful person,” she declared. “So young and delightful to look at, and yet amazingly efficient and devoted to her calling. I’ve grown so attached to her in the short time that she’s been here that I don’t think I could bear it if she suddenly decided it was too dull here, and took a job somewhere else.” Her eyes flickered for a moment, and then rested on her nephew’s face. “Tim dear, do have a word with her about the dogs, won’t you? It would never do if they were taken for another walk to-night, as you’ve given them enough exercise for one day.”
Tim’s brown eyes smiled faintly.
“I thought I had instructions to escort Miss Scott round the gardens,” he said.
“Yes, dear, you have, but see Elizabeth later.” Two pairs of brown eyes gazed at one another. “She never takes the dogs out until after dinner, and in any case it’s much too lonely for her on the moor.”
“I think I get you, Aunt,” Tim replied, placed a hand beneath Janine’s elbow and guided her to the french window. “Après vous, mademoiselle!” he said, and stood aside for her to precede him on to the terrace.
Behind them in the pleasant room filled with elegant eighteenth-century furniture she heard Lady Hannaford, dropping her voice to a cautious pitch, say to her sister:
“Well now, tell me, my dear, how are things with you? And how is that husband of yours behaving?”
Janine walked slowly forward along the terrace, and Tim Hannaford walked just behind her. When they reached the head of the terrace steps she descended them automatically, and he followed. At the foot, on the cool crispness of the lawn, with the sweet scents from the rose-garden carried by the wind in their direction, and paling sunlight falling warmly all about them, she turned and looked at him, and to her surprise he was not even looking at her. His head was bent, and he was moving forward thoughtfully, his shoulders bowed, his brown gaze concentrated almost grimly on the shaven turf.
He looked up at her swiftly.
“How is your sister?” he asked. “She looks to me as if a high wind would blow her clean away, and a moderate breeze heel her over. Did she ever have any colour in her cheeks, by the way? … Natural colour, I mean.”
Janine shook her head.
“Not much. But a lot of people never have any colour.”
“Redheads often have what is known as a matt complexion, but that’s a very different thing from a deathly pallor,” he observed, staring at her almost accusingly.
Janine walked forward over the grass.
“I don’t think Chris would like to hear herself described as a ‘redhead,’ ” she remarked.
Tim drew level with her, and she could see that he was scowling, his black brows meeting above the bridge of his nose.
“Well, burnished bronze, chestnut … whatever you like to call it,” he said. “It’s such fantastically beautiful hair that it doesn’t much matter. We all know that there aren’t many women in the world with the looks of your sister, but what concerns me is the fact that she seems to grow more fragile every day … like a piece of Chinese porcelain that’s becoming so rare it ought to be guarded,” he added.
“I would never have suspected that you concealed so much poetry,” Janine remarked, not even understanding herself why her tone sounded a trifle waspish.
Tim Hannaford merely met her eyes without any expression in his own.
“Some people—like some of the finer things in life—inspire poetry,” he replied.
“Was that the reason why you picked a rose to decorate her breakfast tray when you spent the night at Sandals?” she asked. “Did you think it was more poetical than a mere note of thanks?”
“I sent you a note,” he answered.
“Yes; and I tore it up and put it into my wastepaper basket because the maid looked so amused when she handed it over.”
“Indeed?” But there was no lightening of his expression. “Possibly the maid has a poor sense of humour.”
“Possibly she’s used to delivering notes—and roses!—when you pay one of your flying visits to Sandals,” Janine suggested, and she put back her head and looked at him challengingly out of definitely disdainful grey eyes.
“Meaning what?” he asked, his voice suddenly soft and drawling, while the look of indolence had returned to his eyes. “Meaning precisely what, young woman with a nasty mind?”
Chapter VII
JANINE denied the accusation indignantly. She told him that if he behaved unconventionally he must expect to be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion.
“You know very well that my sister is in poor health,” she said. “She is suffering from a form of nerves that makes it highly desirable that the people around her shall behave normally, and yet you enter the house in great stealth at night, and leave it with as much stealth in the morning. It’s true that Chris seems to be aware that you do behave oddly … that you seem to think you still have a right to look upon Sandals as a kind of motel when your car breaks down. But if you want my opinion that doesn’t excuse your arrogant attitude, or your lack of consideration when in point of fact you have no right at all to enter Sandals without being invited … and particularly not by the back door!”
“It wasn’t a back door I entered by,” he enlightened her smoothly. “It was a side door.”
“That’s a mere quibble, and doesn’t interest me,” she told him.
“No?” He had a very unpleasant smile when he chose, although it also revealed those hard white teeth of his—excellent teeth.
“What does interest you about the night I ‘broke into’ Sandals? The fact that I departed in the morning without seeing you again, and the rose I picked for Christine was the best I could find at that hour … when I was still feeling a bit bleary-eyed from lack of sleep? Would it have made you happier, and filled you with far less rancour, if I’d also picked a rose for you, instead of rifling the writing-desk in the library and sending you a short effusion which perhaps lacked quality, written as it was at the same early hour?”
For the second time since she had met him officially that afternoon Janine blushed scarlet.
“How dare you!” she exclaimed. “As if I—as if I want your roses!”
“Not mine,” imperturbably, “your sister’s. You heard my aunt say a short time ago that she’s a rose-grower like herself.”
Janine turned away. She discovered that the honey-coloured spaniel had joined them on the lawn, and it provided her with an excuse to ignore him.
“All the same, I’m rather sorry I didn’t tuck a few scarlet petals inside the envelope with the note,” he said. “They might have softened you towards me, perhaps even predisposed you towards me. Once we were officially introduced, I mean.”
Janine spoke softly to the spaniel, and started to walk forward again over the grass. Tim Hannaford took her by the arm and propelled her forward until they were out of sight of the house, and then he spoke to her rather sharply.
“For goodness’ sake get it into your head that I wasn’t doing anything very dreadful when I blundered in on you that night at Sandals. I wanted somewhere to rest my head for the night, and how was I to know that an attractive female was occupying the bed I’ve so often slept in? If instead of behaving like an hysterical Victorian miss you’d got up and offered to cook me a light supper I’d have thought more highly of you, and if you’d accepted me for what I was—and am!—you might by this time have thought more highly of me. However, we got off on the wrong foot—both of us, because believe me I wouldn’t have come anywhere near you if I’d known you were in that room—and it seems we’re doomed to a state of enmity. But there’s one thing that should draw us closer to one another … the fact that we’re both concerned about your s
ister’s health. Now tell me, when she married Stephen was she in a rather fragile state of health?”
Janine shook her head. He was still gripping her arm, but she wasn’t going to make a scene by insisting that he release it.
“She was always perfectly healthy. Not the outdoor type, but not a hothouse plant, either.”
“Nowadays she suggests a hothouse plant, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t know quite what she suggests. But I do know I’m worried about her.”
He frowned fiercely. Glancing at him sideways she decided that there was something gypsyish about his appearance … or there would have been if he had paid a little less attention to his grooming, and didn’t patronise such an excellent tailor.
“I don’t want to worry you still more,” he said, “but I can’t help feeling that there’s something—wrong—at Sandals. There’s nothing wrong with the house, of course, and the situation is superb. But your sister hardly thrives there, and it’s rather to be wondered at. Could it be that for her the very essence of existence is in a town?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Janine replied. “In fact, I’m sure it’s not. We once lived in the country and she was very happy.”
“But she wasn’t married then.” He glanced at her shrewdly. “Does she miss Stephen very much when he’s away, do you think?”
“Well, naturally.”
“All devoted wives miss their husbands when they’re separated from them? Is that it?” There was a faint note of jibing in his voice. “Well, granted that it’s a pity he has to be away so much, she must realise that he has a job to do … rather an exacting job. Wouldn’t most wives in the circumstances resign themselves a little more?”
