Nurse Ann Wood

by Valerie K. Nelson

  She turned slightly to look at the man nearest to her and Ann’s glance followed hers. He was an almost colorless young man, slight in build with very light hair and a pale, clever face. A second glance revealed that he wasn’t young at all — or at least that he was very much older than most of the other guests.

  “I always agree with whatever you say, as you well know, my lovely Beverley,” he assured her.

  Ann looked at him again. He sounded as if he had been drinking and had reached a stage of absurd solemnity, but surely the party had only just begun.

  “Anne is my sister,” Beverley went on with a mocking glance in the other girl’s direction. “Not much alike, are we?”

  “At the risk of seeming ungallant to Miss Woods, I still have to say that there couldn’t possibly be anyone like you, my most uniquely beautiful Beverley,” the man replied, still with a kind of owlish solemnity.

  “Anne is a nurse. I’ve told you about her before, haven’t I? I don’t suppose she approves of doctors who drink as much as you do, Lee.”

  “Lee” turned his pale face and solemn eyes in Ann’s direction. “I don’t know that I’m very worried about anybody’s approval or disapproval,” he announced coolly.

  Ann, pushing aside her feeling of discomfort, decided it was about time she said something. “How are you, Beverley?” she enquired.

  “Quite uninterested in my own health,” came the reply. “What about yours? You’ve been having a bad time, haven’t you, getting yourself knocked on the head by a runaway train or something.”

  “And being rescued by H.E.,” put in a girl on the other side of the settee, with a giggle. “Weren’t you thrilled? I should have been.”

  Ann was saved from making a reply by Mrs. Woods interposing smoothly, “Anne has made a remarkable recovery, thanks to the kindness of Mr. Sherrarde and the wonderful attention she received in the hospital at Sunbury.”

  “And she’ll be going back to her own hospital pretty soon, I expect,” Beverley remarked, with a malicious sparkle in her blue eyes. “She’ll be bored stiff down here with no one to nurse. Besides, what about that wealthy patient you’re looking for, to marry, Anne? No, don’t blush. You know that’s what you always said you were going to do. Many nurses marry doctors, but not you, you’ve always said. You were going to be sensible and—” Evidently Mrs. Woods thought it was time she intervened again. “Anne can’t go back to hospital. What about the children? Don’t forget that Miss Pollard is leaving at the end of the month.”

  Beverley yawned. “So she is. I forgot about that. Have you met the children?” Once again she addressed Ann directly. “Little devils, aren’t they?”

  Mrs. Woods interposed smoothly, “Of course she has renewed acquaintance with her niece and nephew. It’s nearly a year since she saw them and naturally they didn’t remember her very well. But they were crawling all over her bed this morning and having a fine time, believe me.”

  Mrs. Derhart continued to be maliciously amused by her mother’s manoeuvres.

  “What about you, Anne? Did you remember them?” she queried with a sly smile.

  Ann said quietly, “I’m afraid not. I can’t remember anything further back than the night of the accident.”

  The blue eyes opened very wide indeed. “Can’t you really? How funny! You aren’t just pretending?”

  The man called Lee gave a short, sharp laugh. “Loss of memory isn’t a joke, Beverley, my sweet. Sometimes it’s a very great blessing, though.” And he gave Mrs. Woods, and Ann a sidelong glance before turning to pick up a cigarette from a box on the table.

  Mrs. Woods returned him a glance of dislike. “Beverley darling, you aren’t going to overtire yourself, are you? All these people — all that noise!”

  The lovely face amongst the pillows was suddenly distorted with temper. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mummy, stop acting as if I were half dead! I’m doing nothing, just lying here like a log. The crowds and the noise are just a pale reflection of living — just a faint reminder that once I was a real person in the world and not just a shadow.”

  Lee bent over her. “There, darling,” he soothed, “don’t get all het up. No one as lovely as you could ever be a shadow.”

  She relaxed and began to smile. Ann saw Mrs. Woods’ lips tighten. It was obvious that she did not like this man.

  Another group of people had edged forward and Ann found herself pushed back. She did not make any effort to keep her place, but turned away, and found a spot by another window. She felt dismayed at the task Mrs. Woods had assigned to her, though she felt sorry for the lovely girl with the shadow of illness across her face and frustration in her big blue eyes.

  “Here you are, Ann. I’ve brought you a drink.” A glass was thrust into Ann’s hand and she turned in a bewildered manner to a pleasant-featured young man with very dark hair.

  “I — I—”

  “You don’t think you know me,” he grinned. “No, but I know you.”

  Ann’s heart seemed to stop beating. This was it. Someone from her past...

  “Megan has talked about you so often,” he continued easily. “You remember Megan? Nurse Elliott? She’s a friend of mine, rather more than a friend actually.”

  Ann’s face cleared. “Oh, you must be Doctor Whitely.” He looked down at her with glinting eyes. “Yes, Frank Whitely. I recognized you from Megan’s description. Feeling all right now?”

  “Wonderful,” she agreed. “Thanks to Megan’s nursing.”

  “She’ll be thrilled to have that testimonial,” he commented. “Honestly, though, is the old frontal lobe back to normal?”

  Ann shook her head thoughtfully. “No, not that, I’m afraid. I still can’t remember any further back than, the train accident.”

  He smiled sympathetically. “Too bad! But everything will probably come back all in a rush, and then maybe you’ll wish it hadn’t.”

  A cold little shiver ran through Ann. It seemed that, like Mrs. Woods, he guessed that there was something in her past from which she was running away.

  “I’m surprised to see you, here, actually,” Doctor Whitely continued. “Most of us — the people here this afternoon are mainly from the Institute, you know — are here for free drinks and a change from Institutional surroundings, but you ... well, you’re intimately concerned. You surely aren’t prepared to stand by and see that girl commit suicide! After all, she is your sister, and you are a nurse.”

  Ann’s face was very grave. “You’re very blunt, Doctor Whitely.”

  He put his hand to his smooth dark head. “I know I look like a Welshman, and indeed I am half Welsh. But the other half is Yorkshire and that half makes me put my big feet where they shouldn’t go. Sorry. Please forget it.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t apologize. But you see...” She stopped, suddenly realizing that her voice, which was raised slightly so that he should hear her over the noise of the radiogram and other conversations, was now the only sound in the room.

  She stared about her in surprise and saw that most people had stopped talking and were looking either openly or covertly in her direction. And then she heard Doctor Whitely say with a kind of false heartiness: “Why, sir, I — that is — we thought you were in London.”

  The rejoinder was rather dry. “There must be a most attenuated staff on duty at the Institute, Doctor Whitely.”

  “Yes, sir,” returned the young man, rather in the manner of a third-form boy being rebuked by his headmaster. By the time Ann remembered him again, he had vanished.

  For now she caught sight of Iain Sherrarde, who was obviously in a dark rage. “Miss Woods,” he almost barked, and then it seemed that he too became conscious of the interest and the silence around them.

  “I’d better speak to you privately,” he murmured, and his eyes blistered her with contempt.

  Ann’s expression was distressed. She realized that he was condemning her again, this time for being at Beverley’s party, giving her consent by her presence to something which s
hould never have happened. He didn’t know that she had met Beverley for the first time only a few minutes ago and had no influence at all with her.

  People around them had begun to chat again, but in quieter voices, and Ann felt rather than actually saw that they were both still under observation. And then Beverley’s husky voice drifted across to them.

  “Why, if it isn’t H.E. honoring us with his presence. If I’d known you were coming, darling, I would have put down the red carpet!”

  Ann had the impulse to slip away. She didn’t want to watch their meeting. Yet something even stronger than that impulse made her follow Iain Sherrarde as he walked across to the rose-colored settee.

  The crowd around Beverley melted as if it had not done when her mother approached her, and the only person who did not fall back was the pale, fair man called Lee.

  Beverley lay back amid her cushions, frail and exotic and so lovely that once again Ann’s heart was twisted with a pain that was almost physical.

  Iain Sherrarde’s voice was soft when he spoke — his tone very different from the one in which he had addressed her.

  He said, “Beverley, what are you doing in the middle of all this rabble? Will you never grow up? You take more looking after than Emma!”

  “That child has the brains of the family,” Beverley returned, smiling up at him. “She must take after you, H.E. Now, I never had any sense.”

  “That’s all too obvious,” he returned grimly, but his eyes were kind, kind that is when they were upon the lovely frail girl among the rose-pink cushions. But they became as bleak as his voice when they were turned upon Lee.

  “I’m surprised to see you here encouraging Mrs. Derhart to be so foolish, Mr. Leedon,” he remarked cuttingly.

  The other man had been leaning over the end of Beverley’s settee. Now he straightened, up with deliberation and confronted the speaker, his face all at once expressionless.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Sherrarde,” he said evenly. “And in what way am I encouraging Mrs. Derhart?”

  Sherrarde shrugged. “By being here at all,” he answered.

  “You’re in the same position,” Lee pointed out. Again their eyes met, and it seemed to Ann, watching anxiously, as if they crossed swords.

  Beverley interrupted them gaily. “Actually both of you are gate-crashers. I sent invitations to all juniors who had time off.”

  “And a quite remarkable number of them seem to have it off,” Sherrarde said now as he looked around.

  “Oh, that’s all right. A few of them have already left,” Beverley told him airily. “I made it clear to them beforehand that you wouldn’t be coming — you’re such a bear that I’d never dream of inviting you to my parties — and then you were supposed to be in London, so that made them doubly safe to cut whatever they were supposed to be doing.”

  “And what about their patients?”

  "Only too thankful to be left in peace for an hour or two, I’m sure,” she countered, and then, “Oh, H.E., take that horrid look off your face, your so-handsome face, and have a drink. Come on let’s drink to each other.” Her big blue eyes roved around and then she leaned forward to pick up a glass from a tray which someone had set down on a nearby table.

  Sherrarde’s face darkened. “Beverley, put that glass down. It’s bad enough for you to be in this atmosphere of noise and smoke without adding any more damn-fool nonsense to your doings.”

  His hand came down to take the glass, but with a swift movement she evaded him, held it high, and then before he could stop her, drank deeply.

  “So much for you, you interfering busybody!” she shrilled in a shrewish voice, and flung the glass towards him. It dropped with a dull thud on the carpet at his feet.

  There was the silence of dire consternation, and then Leedon jumped forward as the girl collapsed into hysterical laughter. “Why couldn’t you leave her alone?” he blazed. “You do it every time — goading her into excesses that she’d never dream of if it weren’t for your grandmotherly attitudes.”

  Mrs. Woods had appeared from somewhere and was patting her daughter’s shoulder. “It’s true enough,” she agreed angrily. “Why can’t you leave her alone? She wasn’t drinking at all, but now...”

  Ann’s own impulse was to move away, but she remembered that Mrs. Woods had asked her to come to Fountains in order to help Beverley. Besides, she was a nurse, and she couldn’t turn her back on trouble.

  “I think it would be as well to get the room cleared,” she said crisply. “Now...”

  Both men gave her quick, hard stares. Then Leedon heaved a quick sigh of relief. “You’re a nurse? But of course you are. I had forgotten ... You’re Sister Anne...”

  Iain Sherrarde said nothing ... nothing at all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT was a couple of hours later that Ann walked out of Beverley Derhart’s apartment. The girl was quiet now, and under a sedative she would sleep till morning. Mrs. Woods was still with her, and the housekeeper Marchdale would take over later on.

  As she approached her room, she was conscious of a girl’s figure leaning against her door.

  “Oh, you’ve come at last. I thought you never would,” Averil Pollard said with a sob. “Oh, Miss Woods, they’ve run away again. She’s got them and she wouldn’t hand them over to me. I honestly believe that she waits about in that road, just to pounce on them.”

  She was gulping back her sobs, and Ann thought wearily, not another case of hysteria. I really can’t bear it.

  But she didn’t let Miss Pollard see her weariness. She said quietly, “You’d better come into my room and tell me what’s wrong.” As she spoke, she pushed the girl through the doorway.

  “Stop crying, Miss Pollard,” she ordered as she closed the door. “I can’t make head or tail of what you’re saying and I don’t know who ‘she’ is.” Though she could guess.

  “It’s that Doctor Lyntrope,” Averil gulped, tears still streaming down her plump cheeks, confirming Ann’s suspicions.

  “You’ve let the children run away again, and Doctor Lyntrope has taken charge of them. Is that it?”

  “I didn’t let them run away — not purposely,” replied the girl. “I was taking them for a walk as usual, and they just ran on ahead of me. I can’t run as fast as they can...”

  Ann looked disbelieving, until having surveyed the other’s plumpish figure she decided that Averil was probably telling the truth on that score, especially as regarded the long-legged Emma.

  “I was only a few yards behind them, but by the time I got on to the road they were in the back of Miss Lyntrope’s car. They love car rides. I came up with them before she drove away, and I explained what had happened, but she refused to let me have them. She said she was taking them to Dainty’s End just as she had done before.”

  Ann’s lavender eyes between the dark lashes were very wide and very bright. This seemed very officious behavior on the part of Doctor Maureen Lyntrope. Who was she trying to impress? Surely if an engagement between herself and Mr. Sherrarde was imminent, it wasn’t necessary to bring herself to his notice in this absurd fashion.

  Miss Pollard continued with a shade of triumph, “As soon as they realized where she was taking them, the children began to protest. Emma didn’t so much, because she was in a contrary mood as I wouldn’t let them go to your room to look for you before they went for their walk. Guy tried to scramble out of the car, but Doctor Lyntrope bundled him back and locked the door. Then I tried to get it open and she called me an insolent creature and told me she would report me to Mr. Sherrarde.

  “I’m really sick of it, Miss Woods,” she concluded. “Who is supposed to be employing me? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Ann had grown hot with anger and indignation. Averil Pollard might be rather sloppy and ineffectual in some ways, but this time surely she had right on her side. Who did Doctor Lyntrope think she was, kidnapping — for one could use no other word — the children for a second time? Perhaps on the last occasion she had no a
lternative but to take them to Dainty’s End, but this time, if Averil were speaking the truth, she had discovered the children before they had got far on the main road.

  Ann was never quite sure, later, what motives drove her to act as she did now.

  For she opened her wardrobe door, took out a thin poplin raincoat, put it on, ran a comb through her hair, painted her lips and said crisply, “We’re going up to Dainty’s End to get the children. They should have been in bed long since. Burrows must get out the car. The children will be too tired to walk back, and besides, it will too dark to come by the woodland path.”

  As they went into the hall, the telephone shrilled. “It’s probably Mr. Sherrarde ringing to say the children are at Dainty’s End. He’ll just have had time to get home, I should think. Let it ring.”

  Averil Pollard gaped in wonder. “I say, but...”

  “Hurry up and find Burrows. Oh, here he is.”

  She swung round as the chauffeur approached. “Miss Woods,” he began, but she stopped him.

  “Get the car out, please, Burrows. Miss Pollard and I are driving to Dainty’s End to fetch the children.”

  His face cleared. “Good for you, miss,” he said, in his all too familiar manner.

  Ann ignored his familiarity. She was reserving her attack for those she was to encounter at Dainty’s End.

  “Hurry,” she urged him, and in a very short time she was sitting in the front seat of the big car, with the governess behind.

  “Come in with me,” she ordered Averil when Burrows drew up in front of the well-lighted house.

  “Oh,” the girl began quaveringly, and then, as if taking a fresh grip on her courage, she continued, “Oh, all right.”