Nurse Ann Wood

by Valerie K. Nelson

  “But I’m quite well now,” Ann responded in a small voice. Something inside her shrank at his coldness. He spoke as if he were a stranger, or even something worse — a man who felt bored or indifferent about meeting her. But perhaps she was being fanciful. She had been living in a state of blissful anticipation of seeing him again, and perhaps she had been expecting too much. After all, they had to get to know each other again.

  They went up the steps together, and then he stepped back for her to precede him into the hall, but she paused, saying nervously, “I’m afraid I don’t know where the switches are.”

  He replied impatiently, “Where is everybody? Surely it’s Burrows’ job to put on the lights and see to the windows and curtains.”

  “I don’t know,” Ann replied, still in that very small voice. “I ... I ... only arrived here this afternoon.”

  “So I understand,” he replied frostily. “Allow me, then.” Perhaps he had been in touch with the hospital to enquire about her. The thought warmed Ann’s chilled heart slightly.

  The hall had now sprung into light and he went forward into a room on the right. It was a sitting-room — a drawing-room no doubt it had once been called — and unlike most of the house, it was decorated and furnished with the soft elegance of the Edwardian era.

  “This was my grandmother’s favorite room,” he remarked as he went to the windows to draw the pale rose curtains. “I asked that it should be left as it was when the rest of the house was redecorated.”

  “It’s ...” Ann looked round and altered the beginning of her sentence. “It could be lovely.”

  They looked at each other for a moment and then he moved over to the fireplace, bending to a switch.

  Ann sat down abruptly. Those memories of hers from their two other meetings had not prepared her for this encounter when she was no longer ill. She hadn’t realized that he was so good-looking, with fine light grey eyes and a handsome profile. She wasn’t prepared for his masculinity, for the vitality which emanated from him as he began to stroll round the room.

  No wonder Mrs. Woods, having by some diabolical instinct guessed how attracted she had been to her benefactor, had shown a certain amount of malicious amusement. This was a man who would obviously have a wide choice when he contemplated marriage.

  He looked angry and impatient. Perhaps it was because of the neglected appearance of this room. She forced herself to ask, “You wanted to see...” She could not bring herself to say “my mother,” so she did not finish the sentence.

  “I came to see the children,” he told her abruptly, “but I suppose they are in bed.”

  “I expect they are. Miss Pollard is with them.” Surely that must be true, since Averil had run ahead of Burrows and herself.

  “Oh, is she?” His frown deepened and another layer of ice was added to his voice.

  Ann sat very still. The pain in her shoulder was growing worse, and her head was swimming with faintness. He went on almost accusingly, “where is everybody? Surely you haven’t been left on your own — you, a sick woman!”

  She raised her head protestingly. “I’m not a sick woman, Mr. Sherrarde. At least, not physically, and the doctors say that here, among people I know, my memory will soon return.”

  But she didn’t know them, she thought forlornly. They were strangers, and if Mrs. Woods was anything to go by, not particularly friendly. And the source from which she had expected kindness...

  Perhaps because there was a line of pain between those big, lavender-grey eyes, perhaps because her expression was so forlorn, the man’s voice softened slightly. “Despite your protestations, Miss Woods, you don’t look at all well. I suppose you were lonely, and that’s why...”

  He stopped, staring at her questioningly, but Ann’s eyes were averted. She hoped she wasn’t going to be silly enough to faint. When there was no answer to his half-veiled accusation, he went on, his voice hardening, “Where are your mother and sister?”

  Ann had decided today before she left hospital that there was a limit of deception beyond which she was not prepared to go. She said in a tired voice, “I can’t remember anything about my family, Mr. Sherrarde. Mrs. Woods seems like a stranger to me, and I haven’t seen — Beverley. I think she is in her own room with the housekeeper in attendance, as she hasn’t been well all day. Mrs. Woods had a long-standing dinner engagement.”

  He was watching her intently as she spoke in a flat, almost uninterested voice about the women who were her nearest relatives. Could there have been a mistake? Was she really as alien to these people as she appeared to be?

  A gleam of light came into his eyes and went almost at once. Whatever this girl had forgotten, it was certain that neither Mrs. Woods nor Beverley Derhart had lost their memories.

  He spoke again, dryly. “I understand from my aunt that you’re going to take charge of the children and also to give your sister such care as she requires. Obviously that’s too much for anyone to do. Looking after the children is a full-time job. I’ve been insisting that Miss Pollard must go as she is inefficient, but she certainly can’t leave until you are fully recovered. Otherwise the children must come back to my aunt’s care, which is what I would prefer.”

  He was the children’s trustee and Ann could understand his reason for wanting the children under more reliable care than they seemed to be getting at Fountains. But there was that in his voice which stung her to protest.

  “You would take the children completely away from their mother?” she asked with raised brows. “Even though she can’t have them with her very much, you surely wouldn’t be so cruel as to deprive her of them altogether?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “They could come down each day to see her.”

  Ann brought the conversation back to herself. “I’m very strong, really. One has to be, to be accepted as a nurse, and the training toughens one. I shall be able to cope quite successfully with the children and help Beverley when she needs me.”

  He continued to prowl restively round the room. “You’re not to live a life of slavery. You must have free time, and some social life.”

  “Of course,” Ann replied, though she guessed that Mrs. Woods might take a different view. “Nurse Elliott is going to cycle over on her free afternoons.”

  She thought she saw a softening in his expression and she decided that she must broach the subject which was now looming over her like an ugly shadow. She must refer to her debt to him, and acknowledge her obligations.

  “Mr. Sherrarde, Mrs. Woods reminded me today of the fact that—”

  His brows slanted up over his cool eyes. Ann gulped and forced herself to go on. “I mean the bills for my room ... for the consultants ... which I understand you have met ... I intend to repay you as soon as I’m able.” She concluded the last sentence in a little rush. Not that she wanted to do so, but once she had started on the subject, she had to finish it. It had been a mistake to refer to it at all. She read that in his expression and guessed that he had never dreamed of making himself responsible for her bills. Naturally not, when her own family was here on the spot.

  Ann hoped that never again in her life would she feel humiliation as deep as this. Had Mrs. Woods foreseen her schoolgirlish gesture and so warned her not to refer to the subject? She shrank a little more into herself at the thought of that smart woman’s cruel laughter.

  She got up and went to the door. “I’ll find out if the children are in bed, Mr. Sherrarde.”

  He seemed to shake himself out of his own discomfort. “No, it’s too late. You have seen them? Do you remember them?”

  “No.” The girl shook her pretty dark head. “I don't remember them and they don’t appear to remember me. They have never seen me in uniform.”

  “No!”

  Let the truth be revealed as soon as possible, Ann thought miserably. That she was an impostor ... a silly impostor who...

  And now she felt she could bear no more. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Sherrarde? I’m sorry there’s
no one at home.”

  “No, I’ll be off now. I think you will be wise to have an early night.”

  Only when he had gone did Ann remember that she had offered him no word of thanks for taking her to hospital, for visiting her there and arousing her from the twilight of despair.

  Childishly she wished that he had never found her — that he had allowed her to go wandering on until she was run down by some careless motorist, or until she had blundered into the river. Or that he had left her in that dim grey twilight to drift away into oblivion...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EVEN though she had wished she were dead on the previous night, when Ann woke next morning in her dark little room, to find that the pale spring sunshine was creeping in, she thought that perhaps after all, it was still good to be alive. She stretched her slim arms above her head, yawned and wondered whether she was imagining that someone was at the door.

  No, there it was again — a sort of bump. She called “Come in,” and reached for a fluffy white bedjacket to pull around her shoulders.

  Two angelic-looking faces appeared round the crack. “We wondered if we’d been dreaming last night,” Guy whispered. “Emma said we couldn’t dream the same things, but we often do.”

  “Silly, we don’t,” pronounced Emma, no less lordly this morning than she had been last night. “I tell you my dream and then you say you’ve dreamed the same, but you never tell me first.”

  “I don’t remember at first,” Guy explained apologetically.

  As they were speaking, they appeared completely round the door, clad in their pyjamas, no dressing-gowns, and no slippers on their bare feet.

  “Goodness, you’ll be frozen!” expostulated Ann. “Hop into bed, quickly.”

  “It’s been freezing outside. You can see some white on the lawns and on the trees,” Emma shouted, as she moved the curtains and stared out of the window.

  Guy was only too willing to accept Ann’s invitation. He snuggled up to her and sighed blissfully as she rubbed his cold toes. “Your feet are like ice,” she scolded.

  Guy evidently set little store by the scolding. “I like you, Nurse Auntie Anne,” he announced. “You smell nice and you’re warm.”

  Ann began to laugh, but Emma wasn’t going to allow the remark to pass without pungent comments “She’d be as cold as you are if she walked round the house without her slippers and only in her nightgown. And I told you, Guy, you can’t call her Nurse and Auntie at the same time. She’s not both.”

  “Then she’s Auntie Anne,” Guy declared. “She’s too pretty to be just Nurse.”

  “You are rather pretty.” Emma, having pulled back the curtain so that considerably more of the pale sunshine flooded the room, now approached the bed and examined Ann’s face earnestly. “Yes, you are rather pretty,” she conceded again.

  “But you look like a nurse when you’re wearing uniform. Even though you didn’t have a cap on. Why didn’t you have a cap on?”

  “I don’t know,” Ann said weakly. And when Emma’s big, china blue eyes continued to survey her incredulously, she went on, “Oh, I suppose because I hadn’t the energy to make one up.”

  “Make one up!” repeated her interrogator.

  Ann nodded. “Yes, they’re bands of linen, very stiff, and you have to pin them...”

  “Oh, will you show me?”

  “I shall only show you if you come into bed and get warm.”

  “Come in, Emma. It’s lovely and warm, and Nurse Auntie Anne is so soft and cuddly ... Like my big panda,” Guy added for generous measure.

  Emma wasn’t to be won so easily. “It isn’t Nurse and Auntie — and I’ve told you and told you, Guy!” And then to Ann, “Could I put your dressing-gown round me and sit under the eiderdown at the bottom of the bed?”

  “Yes, anything to get you warm. You’re shivering.”

  “Well, perhaps I am the tiniest bit cold,” the little girl admitted, and climbed on to the foot of the bed, while Ann reached forward and tucked the dressing-gown around the plump little figure.

  When she had unpacked on the previous evening, Ann had laid the starched band and her box of pins on the dressing-chest, which in this small room she could easily reach by putting out her hand.

  The two children watched her intently as she pinned the cap into its attractive butterfly shape and then perched it on the top of her head.

  “Now, you see,” she said.

  “It makes you look pretty,” said Guy, with precocious masculine appreciation of a nurse’s uniform.

  “You are a nurse or you wouldn’t know how to do it as quickly as that,” Emma admitted. “When are you beginning to look after us instead of Miss Pollard?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Ann said dryly. “Now it’s my turn for questions. Have you any pets? A puppy, or a kitten, or a tortoise or rabbits?”

  They both fixed her with large, serious blue eyes. Emma as usual took it upon herself to explain. “No one likes animals. When we stayed with Auntie Mary — she’s too old to be a real auntie, but that’s what we were told to call her — when we stayed with her, she said it wasn’t hi — hi — hydrogen, I think. It means they have germs, and those are little creatures which bite you, Miss Pollard says...”

  “Uncle Iain is a germ chaser,” Guy put in sleepily from his warm nest under the bedclothes. “He says—”

  “Nana — I mean Nana Woods — doesn’t like animals,” interrupted Emma, determined as always to pursue the matter to a final conclusion. “She says it’s enough trouble looking after all the human beings at Fountains, without having any animals.”

  Ann resolved that as soon as she was in charge of the children, she would get permission for them to have a kitten or a puppy, or even both.

  She turned to Guy. “You were telling me something that your Uncle Iain had said,” she queried softly.

  “I’ve forgotten now,” came the sleepy voice.

  “Miss Pollard says that Uncle Iain is a heart-throb. What is a heart-throb?”

  From the foot of the bed, Emma looked at Ann enquiringly.

  “Something that Miss Pollard is perhaps more competent to speak about than I am,” returned Ann dryly, reflecting that the governess must be a complete idiot to talk so freely before young children as she apparently did. She must know that they would repeat at some time or other whatever they heard her say. She could imagine Iain Sherrarde’s look of icy disdain if the remark had come to his ears. Some of Miss Pollard’s indiscretions must have done so, for him to have spoken of getting rid of her.

  That cold feeling of embarrassment which came to Ann every time she thought of him now lightened a little when she remembered that for her sake, so that she should not be overburdened, he had said last night that Miss Pollard must stay on.

  Guy now threw off his sleepiness and sat up. “Heart-throb, heart-throb, what does it mean?” he shouted excitedly.

  “I certainly don’t answer questions addressed to me in that tone of voice,” Ann returned quietly.

  “You are funny,” Emma remarked reflectively from the foot of the bed. “You speak quietly when we shout. You don’t scream at us like Miss Pollard does.”

  “I should hope not,” remarked Ann cheerfully. “Hush, Guy. Was that someone knocking at the door?”

  It was and she called “Come in,” while the children, at a signal to each other, vanished out of sight under the bedclothes.

  Averil Pollard, in her dressing-gown, stood in the doorway, a worried expression on her face. “I thought I heard...” she began uncertainly. “Miss Woods, have you seen the children? They aren’t in their beds and they are so fond of running away. If Mr. Sherrarde — oh, there you are, you little wretches! Come back to bed at once. I shall lock the door of the nursery, that’s what I shall do. You’ll see.”

  Without any “by your leave” to Ann, she advanced into the room, flung up the eiderdown under which Emma had slid, and seizing her by the arm, pulled her roughly on to the floor.

  “Careful,” Ann sa
id warningly.

  Emma set up an angry wail, and Guy leapt to life, flung the bedclothes away, scrambled across Ann's prone figure and began to punch the governess as, with a red face, she pulled Emma to her feet and tried to shake her into silence.

  For a second or so Ann looked on in silent consternation. Then she leaned forward and dragged Guy back to the pillow end of the bed.

  “Sit there and behave yourself, Guy,” she commanded. “Emma, please come here at once, and both of you stop shouting this moment.”

  She had not addressed Miss Pollard, whose hands were still on the little girl’s shoulders and who was shouting as loudly as the children. But her clear, commanding voice had an effect on all of them, for there was a sudden silence.

  “You’ll waken everybody in the house with all that noise, and it’s still quite early,” she went on pleasantly. “Miss Pollard, I suggest you go back to bed, and I’ll bring these two along to the nursery when I’m ready to get dressed.”

  Averil Pollard stood back, her face sulky. “I want to get them ready for an early breakfast. They’d no business to come creeping down here. They’re not allowed to wander about in this part of the house, and they know it. I don’t think they should be encouraged in their disobedience.”

  This was flinging the gauntlet down with a vengeance. Both children looked at Ann with lively interest. Her face remained calm. “I agree with you, Miss Pollard. I’ll bring them to the nursery in a little while.”

  “I can take them myself,” Averil snapped.

  Ann looked significantly at the pair, who with the acute perception of children had already realized that this new aunt of theirs was going to be victor in the encounter. Being opportunists, they had decided that they had better make the most of their remaining seconds of freedom, so they were scuffling together at the head of the bed.