Temptation (Avon Red)

by Leda Swann

  Lenora would have tried to comfort him if he had needed comforting. But to her eyes, he did not seem heartbroken by the incontrovertible evidence of Beatrice’s infidelity. Instead, once his initial shock had worn off, he seemed more confused than angry, as if his view of the world had suddenly been proven wrong and he had nothing with which to replace it.

  Beatrice huddled on the bed with the bedcovers wrapped around her to hide her nakedness. How could she have gone from the height of ecstasy to the depths of despair in the space of a heartbeat?

  It was bad enough that she had given in to Captain Carterton’s seduction and had begged him to make love to her. Having an audience for her degradation was a thousand times worse. For that audience to be made up of her best friend, Lenora, and Dr. Hyde, the man she had once planned to marry, was worst of all.

  She wanted to hit out at the captain for daring to think of her, for daring to love her. From the moment she had met him, she’d known he would ruin her.

  He came and sat beside her on the bed and put his arm around her shoulders in a gesture intended to comfort her. Though his top half was still bare, he had pulled on a pair of trousers to cover his legs. “They have left now.”

  She shrugged, saying nothing. It didn’t matter if they were to stay or to go. They had seen enough to damn her.

  “He is not the man for you. If he had truly loved you, he would have stayed and fought for you.”

  “Even after finding me in another man’s arms?” She gave a bitter laugh. There was no joy left in her. It had all been sucked out of her, leaving her dry and withered like an autumn leaf. She didn’t care about Dr. Hyde. Truth to tell, she never really had. But she cared deeply about being caught fornicating like a common harlot.

  “Especially after finding you in my arms.” His arm tightened around her shoulders, constricting her, controlling her.

  She pushed it away. “Caught in the very act of fucking another man? No one could overlook that.”

  “You had promised him nothing. There was no betrayal in our love.”

  “Love?” She spat the word. “Today has been about many things, but none of them are love. Lust and desire. Control. Possession. But not love.” It shamed her that she had not been stronger, that she had let a man who was not her husband take her virginity. She wanted him to feel part of her shame.

  Her words found their intended target. He sat up as stiffly as she was. “I cannot speak for you, but there was love on my side. There has always been love on my side for you.”

  “If you loved me as you profess, you would not have been so sure about what I wanted. You would not have forced a decision on me. You would have given me a choice whether or not to be with you, not taken my choices away.”

  “But you are not made for Dr. Hyde.” The captain ran one hand through his hair with evident frustration. “He would not make you happy. Why is this so clear to everyone but you?”

  “This is not about Dr. Hyde. It is about me. Whether or not I am happy is nobody’s business but my own. The choice was mine to make and you conspired to take it away from me. You knew I could not resist you.

  “Even if he had not come to find me—” Her voice broke, but she cleared her throat and forced herself to continue. “Even if he had not come to find me, I could never have married him after I had been polluted by your touch.”

  “Is that what you think of me? That my touch has polluted you?” His voice came out sounding as if she had just punched him in the stomach.

  She did not care if her words hurt him. He deserved to know what he had done. “I am no longer fit for a respectable man to marry. You have ruined me, as I knew you would.”

  “I love you, Beatrice. I have loved you since the first letter you sent to me and I saw the goodness in your heart.” He sounded helpless now. Hopeless. His cocky smile and his jaunty stride were gone. “But I do not know the Beatrice who is sitting next to me now. She is not the woman I thought I loved.”

  “You never knew me. You fell in love with a fantasy. I am a woman of flesh and blood, with my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own hopes and dreams.”

  “I have tried to win your heart in return, but you do not have the generous soul I imagined. You will not let me in.”

  She was silent. There was nothing more to say.

  In the teeth of her silence, he got up and strode around the room. “I am weary of trying to win your affections. Maybe you are right. Maybe I did fall in love with a fantasy.”

  She should have felt triumphant, vindicated, but all she felt was a hollow ache inside her where her heart ought to have been.

  “I will have you taken back to London, back to your boardinghouse, back to your precious Dr. Hyde. He may even take you back again if you play your cards carefully. But I will not be calling on you again. I am out of patience, out of hope, and my soul is weary with being rejected.”

  “So, this is the end?” She had expected something more dramatic. Tears at least. Arguments, shouting, pleading. Not this dull resignation. “We are through with each other?”

  “If you wish to see me again, I would be happy to hear from you, but I will not try to contact you anymore. I am done pursuing you. It is no use. The next move will have to come from you.”

  She huddled tighter into the bedclothes. Even Captain Carterton was rejecting her. Now that she had succumbed to his seduction and he had taken her virginity, he had no more use for her. He must despise her as a wanton woman, as she despised herself. “That would be for the best,” she agreed in a small voice.

  This way they would have a clean break. She would not put herself in his power again.

  Twelve

  “You are no longer required at this hospital.”

  Beatrice quailed under the matron’s steely gaze. “What is the matter? What have I done wrong?” Had Dr. Hyde been so small-minded and petty as to tell the entire hospital what he had witnessed? Even though the story hardly resounded to his credit, either? Few men would willingly confess that their sweethearts found them wanting and had turned to another man to give them satisfaction in bed.

  The captain certainly had given her the satisfaction he had promised. Her face burned at the remembrance of how she had been set on fire by his touch. Even now, when she was receiving a dressing-down from the matron, her mind kept wandering back to the cottage by the sea. Captain Carterton had been such a skilled lover in the way he had tormented her until she was almost out of her mind with need, and then fucked her until she had almost passed out with pleasure.

  The matron’s face had turned slightly pink and her voice grew frostier than ever. “I do not intend to repeat the whole sordid story. Suffice to say that your services are no longer required. St. Thomas’s Hospital expects all its nurses to be women of the very highest respectability. Members of our profession already walk a fine line in the eye of society. We cannot afford to let the actions of a few taint the reputations of the rest of us.”

  It must have been Dr. Hyde who told on her. It had to have been Dr. Hyde. She knew that Lenora would never have betrayed her in that way. “But I have worked here for five years. You cannot just turn me out on my ear like that.”

  The matron’s square face took on a gleam of satisfaction. “I think you will find, Miss Beatrice, that I can do exactly that.”

  She could not leave her position without putting up a fight for it. “But…”

  “And do not bother asking for a reference. I would not write anything about your…your habits that any prospective employer would want to read. I would make sure that no one else would, either. Now be gone with you.” She flapped her apron at Beatrice as if she were a marauding chicken. “We don’t want your sort hanging around here and giving the hospital a bad name.”

  Beatrice turned on her heel and walked away from the woman’s gloating smile before she said something that she would regret. The old bat probably hadn’t been touched by a man for forty years and was jealous that Beatrice had gotten something she hadn’t. The dried-
up old prune of a woman. She needed a good hardy man in her bed at night to put her in a better temper with the world.

  As soon as she was out of sight, she leaned against the wall and put her head in her hands. So, her career was now in ruins. She would never find another job as a nurse in London now—her reputation would catch up with her wherever she went. That was just what she needed. Her personal life was a disaster, and now her professional life was completely wrecked as well. Could she not do anything right?

  The first thing to do, she decided, was to see if she could make amends, professionally at any rate, with Dr. Hyde. He was a reasonable man and had been fond of her once. Before he caught her in a compromising position with another man, true, but maybe he would find some shred of kindness in his heart for her. If he wanted to, he could rescind the matron’s dismissal of her. He was a doctor, after all, and she was just the matron.

  She strode right into Dr. Hyde’s office where she knew she would find him before he started on his ward rounds for the day. “Matron Baddeley just told me I no longer have a job,” she announced, with no preamble at all. “I have been dismissed.”

  He did not look up from his papers. “And you are surprised? After you absconded with your lover instead of coming to work, with no notice to anyone where you were or when you would be returning? She was well within her rights to dismiss you. I saw no reason to interfere with her decision.”

  The calm in his voice infuriated her. Had he never cared for her at all that he could throw her to the wolves so easily, without batting an eyelid? “You told her I had absconded with my lover? When you knew it wasn’t true?” Her voice was rising to a dangerously high pitch and she stopped for a moment and swallowed to regain her self-control. “That was low of you.”

  “I had to give her some explanation of your absence. Out of kindness to you, I chose an expurgated version of the truth. You should be thankful that I spared her all the gory details.”

  “I am surprised that you would act in such a petty way and go telling tales on me to the whole hospital. I thought you were my friend.”

  He put down his pen then, crossed his arms, and fixed her with a glare. “And I am surprised that you dared to show your face here at all. I had thought you were a sensible woman, but no sensible woman would have done what you did.” He gave a shudder of distaste. “Or have the gall to turn up to work here as if nothing had happened. And then dare to come and complain to me, the wronged party in all of this, that you no longer have a position to come back to. Truly, your effrontery knows no bounds.”

  “Captain Carterton abducted me. I did not go with him willingly.”

  “You forget—I was there. I saw you both. I heard you.”

  “I did not mean to give in to him.”

  “Your good intentions did not take you very far.”

  He had not offered her a seat, but she sat down on the chair opposite his desk anyway. “I always meant to marry you, you know, even though Captain Carterton was so insistent in his attentions to me. You would have made a good husband.”

  A muscle in his eye twitched, but he gave no other sign of emotion. “Then I am glad you delayed your decision so there is no engagement for us to break. Awkward explanations might have been needed.”

  “You would not consider marrying me now. Not after…” She did not mean it to be a question but a statement of fact. To tell the truth, she could not ever imagine marrying him now—not after the captain had loved her with such passion.

  Looking at the doctor in front of her, his mouth pursed in disapproval, she did not know why she had ever considered the possibility so attractive. Yes, he would make some woman a decent husband, but he was not for her. He was too prudish, too tame, too domesticated for her. As his wife she would have been safe, but she would never have been truly happy. Accepting him would have been a measure of her cowardice, not of her good sense.

  He gave a short bark of laughter, but there was no mirth in it. “No, I would not.”

  “I didn’t think so.” It was strange how little the idea upset her. “I wouldn’t marry me either, if I were in your position.”

  He steepled his fingers together and looked at her from over the top of them. “So, now we have agreed that any marriage between us is out of the question, what do you want from me?”

  “I want to continue working here. As a nurse.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Do you think that is wise? Or even desirable? I have to think about more than your continued employment—I have to think about the good name of the hospital.”

  “I’m a good nurse. You know I am.”

  “Your competence as a nurse is not in question. It is your fitness to act as a nurse that is in doubt.”

  She ignored his unspoken inference. “You could speak to the matron and get me reinstated if you chose to.”

  He did not deny it. “I think it would be best if you were to take some time away from the hospital. To work out what you really want in your life. And then in a few months, if you decide your calling is truly to become a nurse, and if you decide you are willing to make the personal sacrifices to continue working at St. Thomas’s, then I will see if the matron will reconsider.”

  “I know I want to be a nurse. I know I want to stay here. Can you not speak to her now?”

  He took up his pen and bent over his work again. “I will not speak to her until I am sure it is the right thing to do,” he said as he scribbled. “As of now, I am far from convinced you are an appropriate person to have on the staff. Now, if there is nothing else I can do for you, I hope you will excuse me. I am behind on my work.” And with that he waved her out.

  Beatrice walked out of his office, down the corridor, and out on to the street.

  She had been dismissed. She was unemployed. All her long years of training had come to this—being thrown out of her position because of a momentary lapse of her good sense and discretion.

  The streets were busier than ever as she wandered back to the boardinghouse. She wouldn’t be able to call it home for much longer. Without any money coming in from her job as a nurse, she would have to vacate her room for another girl in a few weeks. Goodness knows where she would go.

  Maybe it was time she had a long visit with one of her sisters. They were always so sensible and full of good advice, and could help her sort out the mess she had made of her life.

  But not yet. Maybe in a week or so she would be able to face her family. Right now, her nerves felt too raw and her spirit too bruised. All she wanted was to crawl under her bedcovers and sleep for a week, and hope that everything had magically changed for the better by the time she woke up again.

  Mrs. Bettina was in the kitchen with the cook kneading dough for bread when Beatrice arrived back. She wiped the flour off her hands with a damp cloth and hurried over to take Beatrice’s arm. “It didn’t go so well at the hospital, I take it?”

  “I have been dismissed.” She tried to choke back her tears, but faced with Mrs. Bettina’s sympathy they insisted on falling. “I have nothing. No job. No man. I soon won’t even have a place to live.”

  “You can stay here for as long as you please,” Mrs. Bettina said loyally. “A good nurse like you will have twenty new offers of a position before too much longer. And you can pay me your back rent when you start working again.”

  Mrs. Bettina marched down to the hospital with all the determination of an avenging angel.

  If anyone should be punished for Beatrice’s unexpected absence from the hospital, it should be her.

  The sergeant-major had told her what Captain Carterton was planning and she had done nothing to stop it. She’d thought that Captain Carterton was so much of a better match for Beatrice’s spirit that she’d been willing to turn a blind eye to his shenanigans.

  She marched straight into Matron Baddeley’s office. A tiny room that had once been used as a storage closet, it was barely big enough for a tiny desk and a chair to sit at. Mrs. Bettina had to stand just inside the doorway to fit in
at all.

  The matron looked up, a false smile plastered on her face. “Mrs. Bettina, what an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?”

  “I have come to see you about Miss Beatrice Clemens, one of your nurses.”

  The smile instantly faded from the matron’s face. “I dismissed the girl this morning. She has already gone. There is nothing to worry about.”

  “That is exactly why I have come to see you. She has been boarding with me for several years and she is a fine girl. I cannot believe she deserves to be summarily dismissed.”

  “Miss Clemens has proven herself to be unreliable, and of poor character.” The matron’s voice scraped on her ear. “In my books, that is quite sufficient to warrant dismissal.”

  “She was not to blame for her absence. I have it on good authority that she did not go with the captain of her own free will.”

  “What a taradiddle.” The matron’s face was screwed up in an ugly laugh. “If you believe that, you will believe anything. The trollop has been caught out and now she thinks to escape the consequences of her debauchery by laying the blame elsewhere.”

  “Debauchery? Nonsense. She is a young woman with a woman’s needs. What business is it of mine, or indeed of yours, if she chooses to spend her weekend in the company of a young man?”

  The matron’s face grew uglier still. “You are making excuses for her?”

  “I am pointing out that whatever she does in her private life, she is a good nurse. Doesn’t that count for anything? After all, which of us would not do the same as she if we had the chance?”

  At her last, incautious words, the matron’s eyes nearly popped out of her head in fury. “Are you accusing me of being as morally bankrupt as that young woman?”

  Mrs. Bettina’s own anger was growing. What an old hypocrite the matron was. Everyone in the hospital knew that each year she took in half a dozen likely young men as boarders, and each year chose one of them to live rent free in exchange for favors offered. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t let some handsome young man climb into bed with you if he asked?”