Queen's Nurse

by Jane Arbor

  “But if he loved her in return, wasn’t he man enough to come to me?”

  “He wanted to. But Liane wouldn’t let him, and for love of her he gave in. But there was nothing clandestine nor sordid about it. They had only their secret delight in being together for that pitifully short time. They planned to part when Peter went back to duty. That was the measure of Liane’s loyalty to you—”

  “And the measure of my failure of her is that she feared to come to me with the one thing I wanted for her—the love of a decent man like Seacombe!”

  “You didn’t fail her! Even if you had loved her, she could still have come to you and you’d have understood. I told her so, because I loved you and I knew—”

  “Didn’t you see my cruel misjudgments of you turned equally against her?”

  “I don’t think so. I believe real love can be mortally hurt, but that it can forgive anything—even the rejection of itself.”

  Muir summoned a rueful smile. “I doubt if a man’s love is as selfless as that. For instance, I had no possible claim on you, my sweet, but the thought of you and Leyden or you and Seacombe was sheer torture! Tell me, Jess, that I need never go through such agony of mind again—”

  In his arms she murmured, “There was never any need. We—we’ve just been wasting time, that’s all.”

  “But we’ll waste no more? You’ll marry me—soon, soon?” As once before, his lips came down upon hers, demanding the answer that his heart should have had no need to ask. All her life Jess was to remember how, at the moment of that first kiss of love between them, her roughly clad body seemed to mold itself unbidden against the strength of his, while her arms were clasped about his neck and there was the hard spread of his fingers pressed upon her back.

  But it was a brief, almost forbidden sweetness. When they drew apart it was guiltily, as if they had no right to such happiness amidst the broad disaster about them, within the very shadow of Liane’s unguessed fate. When one of Muir’s fellow rescue workers came to say that a truckload of salvage was going back to Crane-by-Sea and they could go with it, they went hand in hand in silence, sure only of each other in a world that, overnight, had had its security torn ruthlessly away.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As soon as the truck arrived at Quintains it was surrounded at once, and amid cries of relief and joy people eagerly claimed oddments of their own property from the strange mixture of its contents.

  Muir waited while Jess handed over to its ecstatic owner the frightened and bedraggled cat that she had been nursing on the way. Then with an arm about her shoulders he led her toward the open door.

  “This is our first homecoming together,” he whispered. “Jess, can you realize that?”

  Quintains—Muir’s home and hers! She shook her head. “I can’t believe it. We—” She broke off at the sudden, convulsive tightening of his grasp. Then it slackened and he strode forward, both hands outstretched to the girl who came out of the darkness of the hall into the doorway. “Liane!” he breathed upon a note of utter relief. “Liane—bless you, child, for being safe!”

  It was Liane. For a moment she stood there, pale and shy but seemingly unhurt. Then in a single impulsive moment she flung herself into Muir’s arms and burst into a torrent of tears. Between her sobs she was stammering, “Muir, I’ve been so wicked—so wicked!”

  “Hush, Liane. You are safe—that’s all that matters now.”

  “You don’t understand. I was never in danger. You might find it easier to forgive me if I had been—”

  “There is nothing I wouldn’t have forgiven you, Liane, if you had only trusted me.”

  She leaned back against the gentle cradling of his arms. She shivered and glanced at Jess. “Jess said that,” she whispered. “But you wouldn’t have forgiven this.”

  Muir set a finger beneath her chin. “Look at me, Liane. Were you ever afraid of your father? Afraid to go to him with anything that troubled you?”

  “No, but—you are different—”

  “No different from your father. I tried to take his place in your life, as I had promised him I would. That was the only wish he expressed to me and the only promise he asked of me. No difference between us, Liane. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “But you—” Her color flamed. “You mean I could have told you I didn’t care for you like that—and you wouldn’t have been hurt?”

  “I could have borne it.” Muir’s glance of tenderness was for Jess. He held out a hand to her, releasing Liane. “Jess can tell you why,” he said.

  Liane looked wonderingly from one to the other. Muir said, “You see, I’d already fallen in love with Jess before you two met.”

  Both girls echoed, “Before?”

  “At our only meeting before that. That makes it at first sight.”

  The words flashed a memory across the shutters of Jess’s brain—the memory of a stranger’s glance challenging hers across a dusky salesroom, momentarily blotting out the crowds between. So that instant had worked an unbidden magic for him as well as for her!

  Liane was protesting. “But you didn’t tell her! If you had, I’d have known you couldn’t love me, and I needn’t have been afraid! Why didn’t you, Muir?”

  “There were—complications.” Muir held Liane’s eyes steadily with his own as he added, “At one time I believed Peter Seacombe was in love with her. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

  “Peter?” Liane bit her lip and paled. “How—how much does he know about Peter?” she appealed to Jess.

  “Everything. I had to tell him—”

  “But you don’t know everything! You don’t know everything!” The girl’s voice rose upon a note of hysteria, and she began to laugh wildly and without control.

  Muir and Jess exchanged glances of alarm. “She is overwrought,” said Jess compassionately. To Liane, “Dear, come and rest. Don’t try to tell us any more now.”

  “But I don’t want to rest!” Liane twisted free of her friend’s gentle hold. “I daren’t rest. I daren’t let myself sleep yet. If I did, I might wake to find that it isn’t true—that none of it is true!”

  “That what is true, Liane?” The question was Muir’s, but they were both tensed for the answer.

  “That—Peter is alive. That—he is here. That I’m his wife!”

  Then the slight figure crumpled and, as if by a miracle of swift movement, strong arms, which were not Muir’s, were about her, saving her from falling.

  It was a dream come true for Liane that no later sleep could take away. Understanding nothing, Muir and Jess went into the house, leaving them together.

  Jess sat on one side of Liane’s bed while Peter sat on the other, holding her outstretched hand. Her left hand lay upon the coverlet where the ring upon its third finger was caught in a shaft of the weak winter sunlight that had followed the storm.

  She smiled at Jess. “What else do you want to know?” she asked shyly.

  Jess looked across at Peter. “Well, Muir told me some of what you told him. But I didn’t get the details, as he had to go back to duty straight away. They’re going to work without a break to try to stop the beaches before tonight’s tide.”

  “And you want the details? Where from?”

  Again Jess glanced at Peter. “I think,” she said quietly, “from the point where you let me believe that you meant to part. I’d been in your confidence so far, so was that quite fair?”

  “You mean that day when you let me shelter in your car on the Crane road?” he asked. “I know. I’ve blamed myself hideously since. But you must believe, Jess, that I was being completely honest then. We did mean to make those few hours together in London our last.”

  “And something happened afterward?”

  “Yes.” Liane took up the story. “We did mean to because we’d talked and talked, and we saw it as the only honest thing. It—it was only on Peter’s very last night here that we knew we couldn’t do it, that the whole thing was too much for us, though we couldn’t see a way out. And then
chance played into our hands. For some technical reason his troop plane was held up for two days, and that gave us the time we needed.”

  “Time for what?”

  “For Peter to take out a special license for us to be married before he went away. I came back that night and went up to London again on his real last day. And we were married then, an hour before his plane took off.”

  “And you believed it right to do that—and still not tell Muir anything? Liane, had you utterly forgotten the loyalties you owed him?” protested Jess, as she had done before.

  Liane’s lip quivered. “I was no less of a coward then than I’d always been, but of course we didn’t mean to keep it from Muir any longer than it took Peter to inform his C.O. on his return to duty and for him to write to Muir telling him that we were married.”

  “Asking his blessing on something that couldn’t be undone?” Jess hated to sound censorious of Liane before Peter, but she was burning against the injustice done to Muir.

  It was Peter who answered. “It was the only way, Jess. By that time we knew our own minds completely, and Liane couldn’t face Muir alone. We couldn’t think of parting as we had planned, so the only thing was to stand by each other in an accomplished marriage that neither Muir nor my mother could undo.”

  “But Muir wasn’t told by letter?”

  “No. That was where things began to go wrong. When Peter got back to Korea his C.O. was on sick leave, and though Peter waited for him to return without informing the acting C.O. he decided in the end that he mustn’t delay writing to Muir any longer. So he wrote—and was captured the next day with the letter still on him.”

  Jess remembered something. “Before Christmas you had begun to look for that letter to come, hadn’t you, Liane?”

  “Yes. I was happy, because I was hoping for it every day. You—know what came instead.”

  “To my mother, not to my wife, of whom no one knew the existence,” put in Peter. “I wrote to Muir again from the prison camp, but it never got out. And when I realized that I should be posted as missing, I thought the news might draw Liane and mother together. I never dreamed that she wouldn’t tell mother and Muir the truth then.” Peter went on. ‘Then I was released and was flown-back to London before the war office had time to correct its information about me. And I didn’t realize our marriage was still a secret until I phoned yesterday afternoon—”

  “I answered the telephone, as you know, Jess. And I persuaded Peter to let me go up to London to meet him, so that we could come back and break the news together.”

  “And I agreed to that, because I thought it would be less shock for my mother than first hearing me speak on the telephone.”

  “So I went—just as I was. I only took a coat, and I didn’t leave a message for Muir because I knew the times of the trains from and to Crane station, and I calculated Peter and I could be back before Muir was. I got a lift on a truck into Crane and went to London to meet Peter. And then—we couldn’t get back, not even as far as Starmouth, because of the lines being flooded. We tried to telephone, but they were only taking priority calls, and later we couldn’t telephone at all. We got through by road this morning, after you’d gone down to find Muir. And Mrs. Seacombe—no, she’s my mother now as well as Peter’s,” said Liane wonderingly, “was so sweet and understanding with me that I can’t believe I ever thought she would be otherwise. But both she and Peter insisted that when Muir came back I must go to him alone.”

  “After all you’d gone through for fear of just that?” queried Jess.

  “Yes. And I didn’t need persuading. I knew I must. But if only, if only I’d had the courage to go to him before!” Liane’s voice broke upon the vain regret, and Jess saw Peter’s grip tighten steadyingly upon the hand he held.

  A silence that was vibrant with their thoughts fell between the three of them.

  Peter thought, Bless her, she is so impulsive and so volatile that I’m going to have to be a kind of rocky background for her all my life! But would I ask anything better of my own fate? I know I wouldn’t—

  Liane went on thinking, Muir ... I needn’t ever have been afraid to tell him about Peter, because he was already in love with my own dear Jess. I didn’t even bring them together, as I might have hoped. What have I been to anyone since I came to England but a worry and a nuisance? Even sometimes to Peter, when I wouldn’t let him do what I knew in my heart was right ... But I’ll make it up to all of them from now on—to Peter and Muir and Jess and mother ... How strange that sounds when I’ve never known what it is to call anyone that. She called me her daughter, too. And I loved it...

  Jess, looking at Liane’s lovely profile as she turned toward her husband, thought, What a strange mixture she is! Seemingly as childlike and vulnerable and as in need of protection as Muir said of her. But how determinedly—even ruthlessly—she has fought through to what she wanted! Which is she really—child or woman? When she goes with Peter wherever his career takes him, even as Muir’s wife I may not see enough of her afterward to find out. But I think will want to remember her as she was when she asked me what being in love was like—how she would know it when it came. Because, that day, trying to explain to her taught me that I loved Muir. And I wouldn’t have foregone knowing for the world—

  They started at the knock on the door. Liane called, “Come in,” and Petra entered.

  Her embarrassment at the sight of Peter and Liane holding hands lasted for only a moment before she burst out. “What do you think? They’ve sent a message back from the coast, asking for volunteers to help with the animals they’ve managed to rescue. Fancy—the man who brought the message says he himself brought in five cats who were sailing on a plank down Cranemouth Street! I’m going to volunteer, of course, but Mr. Forester has gone back and Mrs. Seacombe is in her room, and I wanted to ask—” she was looking at Liane “—whether I could bring a mixed consignment of beasts and birds back here to look after?”

  There was a twinkle in Liane’s eyes as she began. “I don’t think I can give you permission, Petra—But you could ask permission of the future mistress of Quintains—” And Liane nodded toward Jess, delighting in her confusion.

  “Jess! You? You—and Mr. Forester!” Petra took in the astounding implications one by one.

  “Lovely, lovely news!” crooned Petra. “I don’t understand at all, but I can’t wait now because I’m going to the animals, and I’m not going to ask your permission as I know you’ll give it. But save it all for me when I get back—I want to know everything!”

  With that she was gone. But not for good. A moment later she put her head around the door. With a wicked wink at Jess, she said, “If I should happen to meet Jane Bretton, would you mind if I told her? Say I’m not to if you dare!”

  The door closed explosively behind her.

  In the little breakfast room where she had waited to see Muir on a summer’s morning months ago, Jess was waiting for him again.

  This time beyond the house was the enveloping fog of a winter night, and even the house was wrapped about by its own silence. It was late, and Mrs. Seacombe had excused herself for being tired and had gone to bed. Liane and Peter were in London for a regimental dinner. The kitchens were remote and quiet, and Jess was alone.

  She had been reading but had found her eyes straying too often to her watch. So she had laid the book aside and now sat with her hands idle in her lap. Listening to the silence and knowing that though she might be alone in the little room, she was not alone with the suspense of vigil that she kept.

  All along the vulnerable coasts of England men were watching, patrolling and counting the minutes to the common zero hour, the passing of which would spell either disaster or safety for thousands. For fourteen days and nights the work of filling the broken land defenses had gone on ceaselessly and tirelessly—work that had had to be completed by the flowing of tonight’s tide—the highest of the season. Tonight there was no wind, and men thanked God for it. But the guard had to be kept and the waiti
ng to be endured.

  Jess glanced again at her watch. Not long now before Muir should be back—if he came back tonight. If he did not—the agony of those other nightmare hours might have to be faced all over again. But if he came soon that would mean that this time men had conquered the sea, and in the coming spring the little happy homes along the shore would live again.

  Home ... What a blessed meaning it has, thought Jess, grateful for all it had meant to her youth, eager for the future that would build her a new one here at Quintains with Muir. She looked across the room and smiled. There was the dresser, homely and familiar to her past, making its gentle promise to her future. It bore its blue willowware again now. She and Muir had set it out together on the day that he had told her he had meant never to use it once he had lost all hope of her.

  There was no sunlight now, but its color caught the leaping firelight as those other willow plates that Muir had not shared with her had always done at home. She rose and went over to the dresser, but turned as she reached it, her ears tense for the sound she believed she had heard.

  It was, it was! Muir had come home. And though she knew with infinite gratitude that that meant the ceaseless watch upon time and tide was over, she felt the moment of his homecoming to be for her alone.

  He stood tiredly upon the threshold, saying nothing but knowing that she understood all that his coming meant. Then, still without a word, he opened his arms wide and Jess ran into them, eager—eager—to be held against his heart.