by Susan Barrie
‘I’ve told you I don’t mind,’ he repeated, and his concerned eyes were on the whiteness of her face as he eased her gently into his arms. He stood holding her and looking about him helplessly for some reasonably comfortable article of furniture on which he could deposit her, but there appeared to be none, and he thought swiftly and then decided that the only thing he could do was carry her out to his car.
He managed to get both the cottage gate and the car door open without jarring her too badly, or releasing his possessive hold on her, and then he lowered her gently on to the back seat of the car, asked her whether she would like a nip of brandy from the flask he always carried in one of the car pockets, and when she refused said crisply:
‘All right, I’ll waste no more time but get you home as quickly as possible.’
‘Home?’ she barely breathed from the back seat of the car.
‘The Priory, of course. Where else?’ and he covered her almost tenderly with a plaid rug he had extracted from the boot of the car. ‘Sure you’re not too uncomfortable? Apart from that ankle, I mean.’
Dazed with relief after her agonizing ordeal, and so grateful for the comfort of the yielding springs beneath her that she wanted to weep with it and a good deal of moisture did actually fill her eyes as she gazed at him through the dusk of the early spring evening she murmured like a contented kitten:
‘Oh, no, I feel wonderful ... after the hideous hardness of that awful floor!’
His lips were very tightly compressed as he took his seat behind the wheel.
‘If I’d had the least idea that your Rose Cottage was such a ghastly shell of a place I’d have declined altogether to allow
you to move into it,’ he told her. ‘I know you’ve already boasted that you possess the deeds, but there must be ways of preventing a young woman like you from behaving with absolute rashness! And how you had the nerve to talk about roses round the door!...’
‘I didn’t.’ The car was moving effortlessly along the narrow lanes, and for the first time for what seemed like hours she was growing warm under the silken softness of the expensive rug, and her teeth were no longer chattering, and even her ankle felt like a burnt-out furnace or a poultice that had gone off the boil. He had said he was taking her home, and it had sounded wonderful ... for Wroxford Priory was home to her. ‘I said it was covered in roses in summer.’ She felt happily argumentative. ‘And it isn’t summer yet.'
He swung the car through the main gates of the Priory. They tunnelled up the drive.
‘No, it isn’t summer yet,’ Sir Luke agreed softly ... with an extraordinary note of softness in his voice, she thought ‘It’s spring ... and in spring all things are possible!’
CHAPTER SIX
Mrs. Edgerley made a pot of very strong tea and carried it to the library, where Horton had piled so many logs on to the fire that the roaring in the chimney was positively alarming. Sir Luke had placed Melanie on a couch, and even the cook was peeping in through the open doorway and offering suggestions about cold compresses. Everyone appeared to be rallying round, while they waited for the arrival of the doctor, and Melanie felt like an unwarranted intruder as she wondered what had happened to the house guests, since they were conspicuous by their absence, and she hoped very much she wasn’t keeping them out of the library.
When she said something to Sir Luke about being a perfect
nuisance, and hoping she wasn’t setting the entire house by the ears, he looked down at her frowningly and told her quite sharply not to be so absurd. He applauded Mrs. Edgerley’s arrival with the tea-tray, but seemed to think a nip of something stronger than tea was what Melanie really required. She had looked so startlingly white when he found her in the cottage that he had been quite shocked, and to her he still seemed to be fussing unnecessarily as he bent over her with an extra rug and laid it lightly over the one that already covered her, and then accepted the tea-cup from Mrs. Edgerley’s hands and held that out to her as well.
Melanie, who was no longer pale, and felt as if she was being slightly suffocated by warmth and the maximum amount of attention, looked up at him and tried to protest while she smiled gratefully at the same time. The tea, at least, was infinitely comforting, and she managed to deliver herself of a remark to the effect that she was being an unpardonable nuisance.
‘You have people staying in the house, Sir Luke, and they’ll wonder why you’re neglecting them. Mrs. Edgerley will look after me very well and there isn’t any need for you to stay here with me,’ she tried to point out to him between sips of scaldingly hot tea.
He answered as if he suspected that she wished to be rid of him.
‘I intend to stay here until the doctor has seen your ankle,’ he told her, ‘and I want to hear his verdict. I’m not at all sure you haven’t fractured something in addition to giving yourself a bad sprain. What on earth you were doing on those rickety steps alone in a badly lit cottage I simply can’t think—’
He had made the same observation so many times that she refrained from pointing out to him afresh what it was she had been doing ... and instead she demurely finished her tea. The doctor arrived, and as he had known her very nearly all her life and was not in the least surprised to find her at the Priory there was no need to explain how and why she came to be there. He did look a little perplexed when she talked about decorating her cottage, but apparently thought she was indulging some sort of a whim, and took it for granted that her headquarters was Wroxford Priory.
‘Well, I’ll look in and see you tomorrow,’ he said, after he had carefully examined the ankle and applied an adhesive bandage to it. ‘I’m not quite certain yet whether there’s a fracture, but the bruising is certainly bad and only when the swelling has gone down and you’re feeling less pain will it be possible to find out just how extensive the damage is. However, rest will soon take the swelling down, and by tomorrow you’ll probably have no pain at all, unless you attempt to stand on that foot. I’m afraid it will mean inactivity for a few days, even perhaps a few days in bed. But you’ve had a bit of a shock, and that will be a good thing in any case—’
‘But, Doctor—’ Melanie objected.
Sir Luke said promptly that he was quite sure the doctor was right about a few days in bed. If there was a fracture it could be harmful to put any undue strain on the ankle.
‘You’re quite right,’ Dr. Binns agreed. ‘And we don’t want any complications, do we?’ He beamed at his patient and pinched her cheek — having been accustomed to doing that sort of thing since her childhood. ‘Now, I know you’re an active young woman, Melanie, and it’s not easy to keep you in bed, but this time I must insist—’
‘But you don’t understand, Doctor!’ She endeavoured to make him understand, while behind him the housekeeper shook her head fiercely, and Sir Luke paced up and down the room and talked quickly about the local countryside and his intention to spend a lot Of time at Wroxford now that the Priory had passed into his possession, interrupting her quite rudely as he put a few leading questions to the doctor concerning matters of purely local interest and events with which he was as yet unfamiliar. He seemed to think the doctor might be able to provide him with information concerning various of his near neighbours, and by the time Melanie, enthroned on her couch drawn up close to the blazing fire, had given up the attempt to make her position crystal clear to an old friend and medical adviser over a period of years, Dr. Binns himself had grown interested in the discussion, and he accepted Sir Luke’s invitation to accompany him to the gunroom for a drink before he departed with a gratified expression, waving smilingly to his patient before he left the room.
‘See you tomorrow, young woman, and make sure you’re resting comfortably in your room and not hopping about the house! I’ll send you some tablets that will give you a good night’s rest, and if you take my advice you’ll let Mrs. Edgerley help you up to your room straight away. Or better still, let Horton carry you!’ and he grinned at the butler who had arrived on the scene prepared to show
him out, and his grin was deliberately provoking, for Horton always pretended he felt younger than he actually was, and it would certainly test his endurance to carry a young woman - even one as slender and slight as Melanie - up the curving main staircase and along several corridors to her room.
Or the room that had once been hers!
No sooner had Sir Luke and Dr. Binns left them alone than Melanie turned appealingly to the housekeeper.
‘But you know I can’t stay here!’ she said. ‘I’ll have to get back to the Bell somehow or other. Perhaps Dickson could drive me there!’
‘Dickson will do nothing of the kind!’ Mrs. Edgerley tightened her lips. ‘You’re here, and here you’re going to stay, Miss Melanie, until that leg of yours is better. Sir Luke himself would be very annoyed, I feel sure, if you tried to do anything else! I could tell he’d made up his mind you were going to stay here, and that’s why he took the doctor off for a drink instead of letting him listen to you and your tale about having no rights here any longer. For one thing, he’s quite a kind gentleman ... and he brought you here, didn’t he?’
‘Y-yes,’ Melanie admitted.
‘If he hadn’t wanted you here he’d have taken you straight to the Bell. Now, I’m going upstairs to get a room ready for you ... and it’ll not be the one Mrs. Larsen took so much exception to, and made so much fuss about. Later Dickson can fetch some of your things from the inn, and then you’ll feel as if you really are back home!’ The housekeeper departed looking happier and rather more content than she had looked for a long time, and Melanie realized that it was simply and solely because she, who had looked upon the late Sir James as her guardian, had returned to what the housekeeper quite unreasonably considered was her rightful place.
But she wasn’t happy about her return herself. She felt guilty and a nuisance, and she also felt badly frustrated because all her plans had apparently come unstuck. And the pain in her ankle, which had become a kind of dull throbbing, was making her feel slightly sick.
Sir Luke wasted little time on entertaining the doctor, and he was back inside the library within ten minutes of the housekeeper’s departure. Melanie looked up at him uneasily in the fire glow and explained that Mrs. Edgerley had taken it upon herself to get a room ready for her.
‘Not entirely upon herself,’ the master of the place corrected her. ‘I gave her her instructions some time ago, and she’s merely carrying them out. But I’m sure she’s thoroughly enjoying herself in the process!’
He moved nearer to the couch and looked down at the unhappy face of the girl with unmistakable gentleness, but there was also something adamant in his expression.
‘Stop being awkward, Melanie,’ he advised softly, ‘and be grateful that the Fates decided you should come back. Because I know you think Wroxford Priory has more charm than anywhere else on earth.’
She nodded durably.
‘And it’ll be time enough to discuss what you’re going to do next when your ankle has mended, and you’re feeling very much brighter than you are now.’ He bent lower over her, and rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘It’s hurting, isn’t it?’ he said quietly.
She nodded dumbly once more.
‘Well, Binns is sending you some tablets, and they should ease the pain. And you’ll feel much better when you’re in bed.’
‘But I haven’t any right here—!’ she burst out.
He smiled quizzically as he surveyed her, and put his dark head on one side.
‘Haven't you?’
‘And Miss Larsen and her mother will think I’m ... an appalling nuisance!’
‘Never mind Miss Larsen and her mother. Never mind anything for the moment.’
Mrs. Edgerley returned, and he slipped his hands beneath her and lifted her with so much ease from the settee that she might have been a butterfly.
‘Ready, Mrs. Edgerley?’ he asked. ‘Lead on, then! I don’t think it will strain me unduly if I carry Miss Grainger up to her room ... whichever one you’ve got ready for her!’
‘The old nursery, sir.’ The housekeeper was looking thoroughly well satisfied with herself and the idea that had occurred to her, and she turned and led the way out of the library as if she personally considered herself rather clever. ‘It’s always been kept aired, and it’s a very bright room, and I’ve had one of the more comfortable beds from one of the other rooms shifted into it. I’m sure Miss Melanie will be very comfortable
there, and there’s no need at all to shift Mrs. Larsen—’
Held close in Sir Luke’s arms as he mounted the stairs behind his housekeeper Melanie felt slightly appalled - and a little alarmed for Mrs. Edgerley.
No need to shift Mrs. Larsen! How would he take that?
But, unseen by Melanie, he smiled slightly as he bore her with effortless ease up the centuries-old staircase.
‘That’s very clever of you, Mrs. Edgerley,’ he said.
The door of the old night nursery was standing open. It was in a rather remote wing of the house, but it was a well-cared-for wing, and Mrs. Edgerley and most of the resident staff were quartered in it, so the invalid would not be entirely alone. If she wanted anything, there would be someone on hand to attend to her. It was really quite an ideal arrangement.
It was some time since Melanie had see the inside of the night nursery, and although she remembered it as a very pleasant room - an exceptionally pleasant room, in fact - she had not actually remembered that it was as pleasant as this.
A bright fire was leaping up in the grate which was protected by an old-fashioned fireguard, and the white paintwork and the pleasant pictures that adorned the walls made it look curiously serene. The firelight flickered on the ceiling, and there was a well-padded rocking chair as well as a chintz-covered settee drawn up close to the fire. The curtains, of the same highly glazed and delicately flowery chintz, were drawn closely across the windows, and the sharp chill of the early spring night was shut out. The only evidence of spring was in a vase of daffodils on the dressing-table.
Sir Luke placed his burden carefully down on the settee, and then he stood back and looked around him with the same sort of pleasure that was highlighting Mrs. Edgerley’s features.
‘This is nice,’ he said. He looked towards the couch and smiled at Melanie. ‘It’s very nice, don’t you think? Mrs. Edgerley is really clever!’
Melanie wakened next morning to a sense of the unfamiliar, although she realized that she hadn’t slept so well for a long time.
It could have been that the old-fashioned feather mattress with which her bed was equipped had had a soporific influence, and almost certainly the doctor’s tablets had had something to do with it Whatever it was, she had slept for hours without so much as stirring, and her ankle was considerably less swollen when she examined it in the morning, and she might even have risked putting it to the ground but for Dr. Binns’s warning.
As it was, she was horrified to discover that she had slept late
— much later than her usual hour for rising from her bed - and Betty Clark was down on her knees in front of the fireplace doing the grate and re-kindling the fire.
Apparently this was one of the few rooms in the house in which there were no power points, and that meant no electric fires. But as compensation the fire, when it was lighted, made the whole room seem extraordinarily cheerful... and no doubt because it had been carefully chosen as a night nursery in the long ago it had an ingrained atmosphere of cheerfulness.
Melanie tried to stop Betty getting on with her fire lighting, assuring her that she could do without a fire and it really wasn’t necessary for fuel to be carried upstairs for her benefit. But Betty had already received her orders, and she merely smiled at the girl in the bed and asked her what she would like for breakfast.
‘Breakfast in bed?’ Melanie looked shocked. ‘But I haven’t had breakfast in bed for years ... not since I had the measles, as a matter of fact, in this very house!’ she told the maid.
Betty was intrigued, but det
ermined to do her duty just the same. She reported to Mrs. Edgerley that they were likely to have trouble with the occupant of the night nursery, as it was still called, and it was the housekeeper herself who took
Melanie’s breakfast tray to her, and threatened to summon Sir Luke if she became in the slightest degree obstreperous.
‘The doctor’s orders were that you were to stay in bed until he came,’ she reminded the girl. ‘And Sir Luke has also said that you’re to stay where you are.’
‘But I can’t make myself a nuisance to everyone,’ Melanie protested.
‘You’ll be a greater nuisance if you don’t do what the doctor ordered,’ the housekeeper pointed out to her.
Nevertheless, after breakfast Melanie insisted on hopping on one foot into the bathroom, which was unfortunately sited a little way down the corridor, and when Dr. Binns called at about eleven o’clock she was completely dressed and sitting in a chair beside her fire. She was also taking a kind of delight in the enchanting pictures on the walls, and the very wallpaper, which had been chosen for the express purpose of appealing to childish eyes.
She was quite sure Miss Larsen, if she had been asked to sleep in the room, would have hated it, if only because it lacked adequate wardrobe space and was sadly deficient in mirrors. But to Melanie it exuded a comfortable tranquillity and breathed of the days when Wroxford Priory had had its full complement of young people as well as older ones.
Dr. Binns expressed himself as well satisfied once he had removed the adhesive strapping and examined her leg. It was certainly very badly discoloured and still slightly swollen, but the possibility of a fracture seemed to him very much more remote, and he insisted that all that was really needed was complete and absolute rest for the leg for a few days.
‘A pity there isn’t a lift in the Priory,’ he remarked, as he beamed his satisfaction at her. ‘But I’ve no doubt you’ll manage to negotiate the stairs in another twenty-four hours ... and under your own steam.’
Melanie was once more attempting to explain to him that, now that Sir James was dead, the Priory stairs were nothing to do with her, when Sir Luke chose to make his appearance and inquire how she was. He was followed immediately into the room by an enormous bouquet of hot-house flowers which Martin Vidal had despatched to her with affectionate messages
