“Now, that’ll be something.” Clara spoke for the first time. “Things I’ve heard about the way that fellow and his gang mess around with voting to get their own folks elected would make your flesh creep. And seemed like nobody was doing one tarnation thing to stop him. Folks was just plain scared to draw a free breath, seemed like.”
“Well, it’s going to be a sight different from now on, Clara,” said Sheriff Grimes.
“I sure hope so,” Clara answered, but there was more than a shade of doubt in her voice, as she saw the Sheriff and Trooper Jenkins to the door.
Lindsay walked with them out to the hall, and Sheriff Grimes said quietly, “Sure must have been a bad experience for you last night, Miss Lindsay. Must have shook you up considerable.”
“I was so angry to see what they’d done to Mr. Mayhew that I didn’t have much time to be scared,” Lindsay answered. “And besides, I’ve been on duty in emergency in the hospital when things got a bit rough, especially on Saturday nights!”
“Well, now, I reckon that’s the truth,” Sheriff Grimes said, held out his work-calloused hand and gave hers a firm grip. “Sure been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Lindsay. Last time I saw you, you was a little tow-headed kid about so high!”
He held his hand a foot or two above the floor, and Lindsay laughed.
“Oh, I must have been bigger than that, Sheriff, because I remember you.”
“Do you now? Well, now that’s right nice to know!”
She watched as the two men went down the drive, got into the sheriff’s car and rode away.
Because she knew Clara was taking care of Miss Jennifer, she went on out to the big old swing and dropped into it.
She had no idea how long she had been sitting there, lost in her unhappy thoughts, when Jim Henderson came down the stairs and out to the verandah. He was beaming happily. As he saw her, he patted the attaché case he carried with a fond and loving hand.
“What my boy picked up and has put on this tape is just about going to blow this Bayou sky-high,” he boasted happily.
Lindsay smiled at his enthusiasm.
“My aunt won’t like that. It’s her Bayou, you know,” she reminded him.
Jim looked startled, and some of his eager enthusiasm was dimmed.
“By George, that’s right, isn’t it? I’d forgotten that,” he confessed.
“Well, if Alden risked his life to get the story, then I think you owe it to him to publish it,” Lindsay told him firmly. “And I’m sure my aunt is in no way involved with illegal activities of any kind. She just likes to be the Queen of the Bayou and have everybody who lives here acknowledge that fact.” Jim looked out over the gloomy landscape, the sunlight fighting to finger its way through the giant branches of the big, moss-hung oaks, the swamp beyond the confines of the lawn, and shuddered.
“It looks like something out of a ‘horror movie’,” he admitted frankly, and hastily offered an apology. Lindsay shook her head.
“I’m on your side,” she told him. “I couldn’t agree with you more! I’ve hated the place ever since I came here when I was five years old.”
Jim scowled in puzzlement.
“Then why do you stay—a lovely, intelligent girl like you, a registered nurse? I’d think you’d want to get as far away from the Bayou as you could.”
“I do, and I did,” Lindsay told him. “But my aunt needed me, and I came back until a replacement could be found for her housekeeper-companion. Now that we have found one, I shall be leaving as soon as Alden is no longer in need of my services. The doctor says that should be in a week or two.”
Jim asked, “You’re going to stay on and nurse him until he is able to leave?”
Lindsay looked puzzled. “Well, of course. He needs skilled nursing that Clara, my aunt’s new L.P.N. won’t be able to give him.”
“Hey, that’s pretty wonderful of you,” Jim said in acute relief. “That’s a very valuable man up there. I couldn’t afford to lose him!”
“I couldn’t either.” Lindsay smiled. “He’s a good friend of mine, you see.”
Jim studied her with a sudden curious intentness.
“Just a good friend?” he probed gently.
“Well, of course!” Lindsay made a little gesture of annoyance. “He was a friend even before he became a patient. And now that he really needs me, I’m only too happy to stay here and do all that I can to help him get well.”
Jim nodded.
“I—ah—don’t know if what I’m about to say will be of any special interest to you, Miss Mallory,” he began slowly, obviously searching for words with which to clothe his thoughts. “I’m giving Mayhew a handsome bonus for this job, and he’s going to have some time off. Plenty of time for a honeymoon, incidentally.”
Lindsay stared at him, wide-eyed.
Jim added hastily, answering the startled look in her eyes, “I only meant, Miss Mallory, that if you thought that Alden Mayhew might not be top-notch matrimonial material because of his income, that’s going to be improved considerably now.” He broke off, anger darkening his face as Lindsay burst out laughing. “I can’t see what I’ve said that is so funny.”
Lindsay mastered her laughter and said gently, “I’m sorry, Mr. Henderson. But it just struck me as funny, your trying to play Cupid for Alden and me.”
Jim scowled. “Well, I admit I make a pretty poor substitute for the little guy with the bow and arrow,” he admitted huffily.
Lindsay broke into his words.
“It always strikes me as funny that any time a nurse is assigned to attend a male patient, especially if the patient happens to be reasonably young and unmarried, everybody expects her to fall in love with him,” she told him. “Oh, of course, we nurses would be very indignant if our young male patients didn’t fall in love with us! We’d feel we’d been derelict in our duty if they didn’t look on us as angels in white. But we always know that before they’ve been out of the hospital a week, they will have forgotten the color of our eyes and the sound of our voices!”
Jim grinned at her, his huffiness vanquished by the logic and the matter-of-factness of her words.
“Well, I’m sure it won’t be like that with Alden, Miss Mallory,” he assured her. “He seems to be very seriously smitten indeed.”
“He’s been lonely here in this place, and he’s been a bit bored by the lack of the sort of entertainment he’s accustomed to in the city,” Lindsay pointed out. “I assure you that if he has time for a honeymoon and a bonus to finance one, he’ll take it with some other girl than me.”
“Then he’ll be much more of a fool than I think he is,” said Jim. “That is, if you’re available, with no previous commitment.”
“Let’s just say that I am not in love with him, nor he with me, and let it go at that, shall we?” suggested Lindsay.
“By all means, let’s let it go at that,” said Jim, and offered his hand for a goodbye handshake. “It’s been nice knowing you, Miss Mallory, and I can leave my boy in your hands knowing he will be well and properly cared for. Send him back to me as soon as you can, won’t you? He’s very valuable, and I need him.”
“Dr. Corbett and I will do our very best, Mr. Henderson, you may be sure,” Lindsay answered, and watched him go down the drive to the car that had been waiting for him.
When the car had gone down the drive out of sight, she turned and went back into the house. She looked in on Miss Jennifer, who was lying back against her pillows, her eyes closed, listening to Clara read aloud from the weekly paper.
“That you, Lindsay?” demanded Miss Jennifer shortly. “Well, you’re not needed here, so go on about your business.”
“Yes, Aunt Jennifer,” said Lindsay meekly, and exchanged a wink with Clara as she closed the door behind her and went upstairs to see if Alden needed anything.
He greeted her as she opened the door and said c
heerfully, “Hi, Beautiful; come in and grab a chair. Has the boss gone?”
“He has, and seemed extremely pleased with what he was taking away with him on the tape recorder,” Lindsay assured him.
“Well, he better had be. You and I sure fought to get it for him,” Alden said.
“I had nothing to do with it. I’m just delighted that you got it, and lived to record it,” Lindsay told him.
“The good doc says if it hadn’t been for what you did for me before he got there—” Alden began but Lindsay interrupted him sharply.
“I wish you’d stop calling him ‘the good doc,’” she snapped pettishly. Alden stared at her.
“Well, he is a good doc, isn’t he? I thought you’d be the first one to agree to that fact.”
“Of course he is, but the way you say it sounds as if you were making fun of him!”
Alden studied her curiously, his chin propped on one fist, and said quietly, “I’m not making fun of him, Lindsay sweet. I wouldn’t, for anything in the world. I think he’s really the greatest, and I’m deeply grateful that he’s available when I’m in need of his expert service.”
Lindsay smiled and said, “Well, that’s better.”
Alden nodded and winced as the slight gesture touched a painful muscle in his back.
“So you’re not in love with him, but you get all riled up at anybody that seems to be casting aspersions on him,” he mused aloud.
Lindsay drew a deep, unsteady breath and said something she had not had the slightest intention of saying.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t in love with him.”
Alden’s brows contracted slightly, and there was a bleak look in his eyes.
“Which means that you are,” he said quietly.
“I’m afraid I am,” she admitted huskily.
“Afraid? Why afraid? That’s pretty crazy talk about a guy that’s heels over head in love with you, it seems to me.”
“Only I don’t think he is. Not any more. He’s quite upset because I rushed out to the hut when that man came for me. He won’t believe that I didn’t know the patient was you.”
Alden nodded. “So, of course, the poor guy is jealous of me,” he said slowly, and added huskily, “I wish he had some reason to be.”
Deeply touched, Lindsay said quickly, “I wish so, too.”
He studied her for a long moment, and then he said quietly, “I suppose there’s no hope there ever could be.”
“I’m sorry,” Lindsay stammered.
He scowled at her.
“Well, don’t be!” His voice held the hint of a rasp. “Don’t feel sorry for me, my pretty! As soon as I’m up and on my feet, the boss will send me out somewhere, and I’ll be so busy saving my neck I’ll forget all about you. It shouldn’t take more than a hundred years.”
“It won’t take a year, Alden! Believe me!”
“Ha! I wish I could!” He turned his face away from her and said huskily, “Now get out. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do, and I think better when I’m alone.”
And Lindsay, her eyes misted with tears, her throat clogged with them, went quietly out of the room and closed the door very gently behind her.
Chapter Twelve
And so the days slid by; days that seemed to have no real meaning for Lindsay except that each succeeding one found Alden slightly improved, until toward the end of the second week he was able to be up and dressed.
His first day downstairs, Miss Jennifer demanded that he give her a detailed account of his adventures, and Clara and Lindsay listened, as interested and absorbed as Miss Jennifer.
Each day Dr. Corbett arrived in the morning, brisk, efficient, his attitude toward Lindsay that of a doctor with a reasonably capable nurse who was no more to him than that. By the end of the second week, Lindsay had given up any hope that he could ever feel toward her as she so desperately wanted him to feel.
Alden accepted his ministrations with polite appreciation but with a faintly quizzical look in his eyes, and not once did he offer any comment on Dr. Corbett’s manner toward Lindsay.
One morning toward the end of the second week, when Dr. Corbett had expressed himself as being very pleased with the patient’s recuperative powers and had departed, Alden said thoughtfully, “Know one of the things I’m looking forward to the most when I’m on my feet?”
“Leaving the Bayou, I should imagine,” Lindsay answered.
“Well, that, of course,” Alden agreed. “But that’s the second thing I’m looking forward to. The first is giving our good doc a swift, hard poke in the jaw.”
Lindsay stared at him beneath raised brows.
“Well, now that’s a very grateful attitude, after the man has taken such good care of you,” she protested.
“Oh, I’m not going to poke him for the way he’s looked after me,” Alden explained grimly. “I’m going to clobber him for the way he’s treating you.”
“Thanks, but don’t bother,” Lindsay said hotly. “I can fight my own battles.”
“You’re doing a darned poor job of it, my girl!” Alden’s tone was touched with anger. “Letting him walk all over you.”
“He is treating me exactly the way any doctor treats a nurse!”
“Even if the nurse happens to be in love with the doctor? Don’t tell me that never happens!”
Lindsay’s cheeks were pink, but her head was high.
“Well, of course it happens sometimes if the nurse is silly.” She managed to make her voice sound lightly amused. “And I admit some of us are. But we can usually handle the situation by changing jobs, that being the safest way.”
“Phooey on safety!” Alden cut in grimly. “Oh, if the doc is married to someone else and the nurse has the brains and decency not to want to break up a marriage, I’d say running like a scalded cat would be the solution. But in a case like yours and the good doc’s, I’d say the best thing to do would be to try to beat some sense into his thick skull.”
“Well, don’t try it,” snapped Lindsay, “because I wouldn’t have him if he had to be forced to admit he loves me. I’m quite sure now that he doesn’t. We’ll leave it at that. I’ll go back to my job, and I’m sure I can forget him the same way you are going to forget me.”
Alden studied her curiously. “Be kind of nice if we could forget by being together, wouldn’t it? I mean, you could forget him while I was trying to prove to you what very good husband material I am.”
Lindsay shook her head and said huskily, “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be the solution.”
Alden grimaced. “I didn’t think it would. But you can’t rule a guy off the course for trying.”
“Of course not.” Lindsay smiled at him. “I’ll go now and see if your lunch is ready.”
“And just think. Tomorrow I can go downstairs to the table and save you having to lug a tray up those stairs.” He grinned at her.
“I haven’t minded a bit, but it will be nice to have you at the table again. I’ve missed you.”
“Hully-gee, thanks!” drawled Alden.
“Don’t mention it.” Lindsay laughed, then paused at the door to look back at him and say, “You do know, don’t you, that I’m going away from the Bayou with you when you leave?”
He jerked upright and stared at her.
“You’re what?” he bleated.
Startled, because she had not realized how that would sound to him, Lindsay explained hastily, “Oh, I only meant that now Aunt Jennifer has a housekeeper-companion who is also a licensed practical nurse, there’s no longer any necessity for me to stay on at Bayou House, once you are able to leave. And I thought we could leave together.”
“I ought to sock you for that,” Alden murmured so low that she could pretend not to hear him. And then, his voice more cheerful, he went on, “That will be swell. I’ll drive you straight to your beloved hospita
l and deliver you into the arms of the welcoming committee I’m sure will be lined up on the front steps waiting for you.”
Lindsay laughed. “What a flattering picture! Let’s hope it develops like that.”
“It will. You’re that kind of nurse,” he assured her, and then added, his brow furrowed slightly, “Are you telling me that you’ve been free to leave for the last two weeks but stayed on just to look after me?”
“Well, of course. You had to have expert attention, and I flatter myself that’s what I was able to give you,” Lindsay answered, puzzled at his obvious surprise.
Alden nodded thoughtfully.
“Then no wonder the good doc is jealous, knowing how you hate this place,” he mused aloud, and added briskly, “Now get going, Nursie dear, and bring the starving patient his daily pap.”
“Yes, sir,” said Lindsay demurely, and went out.
On the morning when Dr. Corbett gave Alden his final examination and told him he was discharged, Alden slipped on his shirt. As he was buttoning it, he said casually, “Then Lindsay and I can make our plans to leave early in the morning?”
Dr. Corbett stiffened slightly, and his hands, that were packing his instrument case, grew still. His eyes were lowered to the case, as though checking their contents, and when he spoke his tone was carefully matter of fact.
“I see no reason you shouldn’t,” he agreed. Then, as though the words were forced from him against him will, “So Lindsay is going with you?”
“Of course,” said Alden, as though surprised at the question. “Why not? She hates the Bayou and has only been sticking around to look after me. Now that her aunt has Mrs. Bates to take care of her, what is there here to hold Lindsay any longer?”
Dr. Corbett finished repacking his bag and straightened. His eyes on Lindsay were enigmatic, his jaw set.
“Nothing, of course. I’m sure she will be delighted to go away with you,” he stated flatly.
“Alden has very kindly consented to drive me back to the hospital, where I hope I will find I still have a job,” Lindsay told him evenly.
He looked sharply at her, then at Alden, before his eyes swung again to Lindsay.
The Nurse Novel Page 29
