A Case of Heart Trouble (19 page)

“You must be fitter than I imagined,” he said, with satisfaction, “or else our good Yorkshire air has done a lot for you in a very short time. In any case, I think we can thank the Yorkshire air that you aren’t any worse.” He plumped up her pillows for her, and lifted her against them. This time she knew that his hands trembled when he touched her. “I spent all last night wide awake and thinking about you,” he told her, a little jerkily.

“Oh, Martin,” she whispered.

His name came so naturally to her lips that he smiled.

“If you ever make it Doctor again I’ll beat you,” he told her. “And if I ever call you Nurse Drew again you can beat me! I've always disliked the Nurse Drew part of you . . . although I was glad of your ministrations when I was ill. You were so patient with me, and I know I gave you a lot of trouble. I gave you a lot of trouble quite deliberately sometimes. I wanted to provoke you, to shatter that calm and poise of yours. Shall I tell you something, darling?” he said suddenly.

The ‘darling’ caused her to vibrate again deep inside her, but she managed to nod her head.

“After my accident, when I was in pretty poor shape and you sat beside me for a couple of nights— do you remember?—I came to myself occasionally and saw you sitting there. You were so enchanting and so remote in your prim cap, with that soft hair determined to form one or two brazen little curls despite your efforts to restrain it, that you had me completely fascinated. I remember that each time I opened my eyes I hoped you were there, and once when you were not there I was very rude to the Sister who had taken your place. On another occasion, when you were there, I said something I afterwards hoped you hadn't caught properly. Do you remember what it was?”

The lovely color flooded her face, and she nodded her head again.

“Yes; it was something to the effect that you—” “That you were an angel and I'd fallen in love with you! I said that very distinctly, didn’t I?” bending over her. “I said that if you’d only kiss me I’d either pass out altogether or get well on the instant! But you decided I was rambling and beat a hurried retreat. Probably a discreet retreat!” “Lots of patients say—say things they don't mean in delirium,” Dallas observed, coloring brilliantly this time.

“But when I said that I wasn't delirious,” he assured her. “I was completely rational, and knew what I wanted. . . . I’ve known ever since what it is that I want! That’s why I asked Matron to let me have you, a very junior young woman, to supervise my convalescence when I left Ardrath House. And if she's as shrewd as I suspect she is she’ll know by this time why I wanted you! ”

He dropped a succession of light kisses on her hair and her forehead, and then drew away as if he couldn't trust himself.

“I love you, little one,” he told her. “I love you so much it’s hard for me to doctor you as well as be your lover! ” He smiled at her twistedly, and Edith came in with her breakfast tray and he took it from her. He placed it on the little table which swung across the bed, and urged her to get inside as much of the toast and marmalade as she could manage.

Once more, before he left her, she laid a hand on his arm and

detained him.

“Martin—” her eyes were big and appealing— “you didn’t really believe me when I said the other night that it was true I—I had been seeing your cousin, did you? Because it wasn’t true! Only you seemed to want to believe that it was.”

“I know, my sweet,” capturing her hand and holding it against his cheek. “But I was curiously obsessed that night, and I think I wanted to torment myself. I’d been away from you for three weeks, and you greeted me so coolly when I came back—”

“But Joanna was here,” she protested.

“I know, I know—now! But at the time it seemed to me that you’d beaten what I described just now as a discreet retreat, and were going to try and maintain your distance. And I have no reason to love Brent . . . or to trust him farther than I’d trust my bitterest enemy.”

Her fingers retained their light grasp of his sleeve.

“Did you—ask Mrs. Baxter about the telephone calls?”

“No, my darling, I didn’t,” he answered reproachfully. “I don’t discuss the woman I love with my housekeeper . . . and I knew you were speaking the truth. I knew it was Joanna who had decided to become the serpent in Eden.”

“Yet you treated me as if I was still suspect,” she reproached him. “I know, I know,” he said again. “But I’ll explain all that later . . . when you’re really better, darling. Not while you’re still a poor little thing in bed with the remains of a temperature. And all you have to do is to hug to yourself the knowledge that . . . I love you!”

His eyes told her how much, and her own melted into pools of liquid green light.

“I love you, too, Martin,” she whispered. She caught her breath. “I love you so much, I—”

“Will you eat your breakfast to please me?” he said softly, beside her ear.

Later in the day Joanna made an unexpected appearance in Dallas’s room. She said that she had come to say goodbye, and also to express her regrets because it was her fault that Dallas had collected such an unpleasant chill. She made the admission with a casual air of being quite sure she would be forgiven for it, and sat on the side of the bed and smiled at the invalid in a way that highlighted her extraordinary vivid charm.

“I’m afraid I was out of humor the other day, and because I know Stephanie thinks you're quite wonderful it irritated me. She used to be my lapdog, and now she's become yours” she said dryly. “But children are like that. Ungrateful little beasts whose affections seldom remain

fixed for long.”

“I don't think Stephanie is in the least ungrateful,” Dallas returned, defending the child of whom she had grown very fond herself. “But she isn't as strong as you seem to imagine, and that's the reason why she isn't at school. If she had been capable of taking long and exhausting country walks in all sorts of weather her father wouldn't have taken her away from school, or her headmistress agreed that it was a good idea.”

“No, I suppose not,” Joanna conceded. She produced the inevitable packet of cigarettes from a pocket of her slacks, and asked whether the occupant of the room had any objection if she smoked. Dallas said she had none. “Well, now Martin will be able to coddle the two of you, won't he?” she remarked with even greater dryness, and a distinctly wry gleam in her dark eyes. “I suspected the direction in which the wind was veering when he asked you to come back here and look after Steve—whom I'll admit I also suspected he removed from school just because it suited his convenience! But after the other night, and the way he behaved when he thought I'd let you in for pneumonia, I can no longer delude myself into believing that it's just a crush he's had on you— doctor and nurse sort of thing!—and that in a matter of months he'd be well over it. He's admitted to me that he intends to marry you, and therefore there doesn't seem much reason why I should stay on here.”

“What do you mean?” Dallas asked, amazed at her complete transparency, and her apparently complete indifference to what other people thought of her and the plans she laid which sometimes went astray.

Joanna shrugged.

“My dear girl, don't be naive. I as good as admitted to you that I wanted to marry Martin, and that’s why I came and dumped myself on him. But now that I know I’ve been wasting my time I shall cut loose and drift off somewhere again . . . probably go back to the Continent, where at least I can paint undisturbed.” She smiled at the girl in the bed. “Undisturbed by the charms of your Martin, I mean.”

She started to wander about the room, aimlessly —just as, Dallas supposed, she would shortly be wandering about the Continent— picking up things off the dressing table and setting them down again, idly glancing through magazines. And at last she went to the window and stood looking out. The wind had died, and it was all very peaceful once more, and springlike . . . even summerlike.

She sighed.

“My sister lived here once, as you know, but she wasn’t happy. She wasn’t the type to marry a doctor . . . she wanted lots of attention and a husband who could devote himself to her all the time. Martin, you’ll find, is very devoted to his profession and however much you love and need him you won’t have him all the time. But you won’t be like Maureen, I’m sure, and console yourself elsewhere.” Her eyes were very bright as she turned them once more on Dallas.

“What do you mean?” Dallas asked again, but this time she was unable to anticipate the answer.

Joanna shrugged her enchantingly slim shoulders once more.

“My dear, you do have to have your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted, don't you! ” she exclaimed. “My sister was in love with her husband, but she was the sort of woman who had to be loved in return . . . passionately! Quite honestly, I don't think Martin was ever more than attracted by her

looks, and her demands sickened him very early in their marriage.

She wasn’t the wife he wanted, and but for the fact that she fell in love with Brent he might have let her go. To any other man, I mean.

But Brent, his own cousin, boyhood companion, and so on . . . no!

He never forgave Brent. That’s why he was staggered when I told him that you, too, were falling for Brent.”

Dallas felt her face flame, and her indignation actually shook

her.

“You told him that I . . . ?”

The other held up her hand.

“Keep calm, and remember that you had a temperature yesterday! It’s all over now, and Martin knows the truth. But I felt I had to tell you as well, for some curious reason. And my advice to you in the future is . . . keep well clear of Brent! For however much in love with you Martin is—and I think he’s so much in love that it’s a novelty to him. never having felt that way before!—he’ll always be jealous of a man he knows to be dangerous. And although Brent isn't really dangerous—it was Maureen who used him as a tool—he’s a bit of a charmer, and you never know . . . one day! ”

Dallas watched her walk to the door, and was glad she was leaving the house. At the same time she felt she had cause to be grateful to her for telling her all the truth about Martin, and was sorry that she had to leave. Like this . . . disappointed in her own hopes once more!

“Perhaps one day,” she said huskily, “you’ll find someone else you’ll—you’ll want to marry.”

Joanna shook her head.

“Not a hope! ” she declared emphatically. “With me it's always been Martin . . . yes, even when he was married to my sister! But I’d be just as bad for him as she was. So it’s lucky, perhaps, that he's found you.”

She waved a hand before she disappeared round the door.

“Any time you grow tired of Steve let her come - and stay with me. I’m really very fond of the child,

though I know you don’t quite see me as a devoted aunt. But then you don't see me as a devoted anything, do you? Just a predatory female you'd do well to avoid in future! ”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE next night Dallas went downstairs to dinner, and although she was just a little pale still she had obviously recovered from her experience in the woods while searching for Joe.

In honor of the occasion Stephanie stayed up for dinner, and so also, naturally, did Joe. But Joanna had departed with her stacks of canvases and her large quantity of luggage, and it was understood vaguely that she had returned to Vineys to be the guest once more of Mrs. Temple-Stewart until her plans for going abroad were more firmly laid.

Immediately after dinner Stephanie was despatched to bed, and Dallas would have liked to accompany her upstairs and see her settled for the night as she had been in the habit of doing until two nights ago, but Martin refused to permit her to do anything of the kind. Not merely, he said, was Stephanie perfectly capable of putting herself to bed, but Dallas was still a semi-invalid.

But Dallas didn't feel like a semi-invalid as she sat in the drawingroom and poured out coffee for the two of them, and once more they were alone together. But not as they had often been during the first week of her return to Loring, and not as they had been on several occasions in the course of the past two days. Now there was no excuse to slip a thermometer in her mouth, or make feeling her pulse an excuse for holding her hand, if Martin felt like holding her hand. Now they were two people sitting opposite one another in a brightly lit and beautifully furnished room, with a coffee table between them but nothing more.

Dallas was wearing her golden silk dress, and she looked very slim and golden and young; Martin's eyes dwelt on her thoughtfully as she sipped her coffee, and behind the thoughtfulness was another expression that made her feel suddenly and ridiculously nervous when she encountered it for the first time. She looked away quickly, although her pulses were bounding, and Martin considerately averted his eyes until her coffee spoon had stopped rattling in her saucer, and she had set the

cup down quietly on the table near her.

Then he said:

“I’ve been thinking about Stephanie and her schooling. I don’t honestly think we can justify keeping her away from school much longer, but I know she’s not keen to return to Bournemouth. For one thing, I think she needs a more bracing climate, so I’ve decided to send her to school in Switzerland . . . at any rate for a year or so.”

“Switzerland?” Dallas looked startled. “But isn’t that rather far away? And would she really like it, do you think?”

He smiled.

“You’ve grown very fond of my small daughter, haven’t you, Dallas?” he remarked. “And I know she’s very fond of you. But the two of you will see one another quite often even if she goes away to school, and from the point of view of her health it would be better, you know.” He leaned towards her. “As a matter of fact, I’ve quite made up my mind, and I’m going over to Switzerland to inspect suitable schools in a week or so’s time. I thought we might take Stephanie with us.”

“With us?” Once more she was catching him up on his final words, and this time he lowered his cigarette to an ash tray and went across to her. She was sitting in the lap of a huge chesterfield, and he dropped down beside her and took her hand. With his other hand he lifted her chin and forced her to meet his eyes.