Deception (3 page)

'He's
unconscious.'

'Unconscious!'
Without meaning to, she exclaimed in
alarm. 'Why didn't you tell me before?'

'You
didn't ask.'

She
was astounded, truly shocked against Jamie's stolid
acceptance. 'Now what
shall we do?'

'But
you're a nurse!'

A
nurse! If only she had been. She suspected it wasn't
the
last time she was to regret claiming to be any such
thing!
Wholly harassed, she paused. She could confess, yet
if
it brought comfort to this neglected little boy mightn't
a little twisting of
the truth be justified?

Quickly
she pulled herself together, dismissing the last
qualms of guilt.
Tiredness was sweeping her in such waves
and she knew if she
didn't make an immediate effort she
might soon be beyond it.
'Lead the way, Jamie,' she man
aged a calmness of voice
which she could see made him
feel happier. 'I was startled, that
was all. Of course I'll be
able to cope.'

For
the second time they went up the stairs together,
their
shadows following them darkly along the high old
walls. This time
they went quite a distance along the cor
ridors, until they
came to the very last door. The whole
house was icy and badly
lighted. Even before they reached
Mr Murray's room, Thea was cold again.

Inside
his bedroom the lighting was just as dim. For a
moment she could
only see the shadows which had been
pursuing them since they
left the kitchen. Like the rest of
the house, this room was
big, the furniture of the same
dimensions. Apprehensively her weary
eyes fell on the bed
and barely in time she suppressed a startled
gasp. With a
fastidious little tremor she drew back as her
heart seemed
to leap somewhere in the region of her
throat. It mightn't
be sensible,
 
but
there was
 
something so
aggressively
masculine about the man who lay on the bed that she felt
almost frightened.

The room, like the
passage outside, was freezing. She was sure he should have been under the
blankets, but these lay in a tumbled heap at his feet, where he had obviously
thrown them. He lay on his face, his arms hugging his pillows, bare from the
waist up. A little below that as well, Thea saw, where his pyjama trousers had
slipped. Her eyes, clear and innocent, darkened with a kind of bewildered
fascination as her glance travelled the length of his six-foot-plus frame. She
felt peculiar, out df her depth, yet conscious of a terrible prickling
awareness.

Drawing a sharp little
breath, fraught with increasing apprehension, she allowed her gaze to return to
the powerful shoulders, to waver on the strong column of his neck before
continuing up the back of his dark head. His hair, like Jamie's, was thick and springy,
his illness—whatever it was he was suffering from—not yet having
had time to drain the vitality from it. She couldn't see his face, which was
still buried in the pillows, but all of a sudden, she wasn't sure she wanted
to. What she could see seemed to be more than enough!

'This is my father.'
She became aware of Jamie's tugging at her sleeve impatiently while shooting
uncertain glances at her confused face. It was quite clear that, as he believed
her to be a nurse, he expected some immediate action!

'Yes.' Forcing herself
forward, she hoped her reluctance didn't show. His father was just a man, after
all, not a wild animal to be afraid of. Jamie seemed quite certain he was
unconscious, but she felt she must make sure. From the bottom-of the bed, she
said, 'Good evening, Mr Murray.' Somehow that sounded incredibly foolish!

Jamie was proved
right, as there was no reply, only the alarming rasp of difficult breathing. On
a chair nearby lay a shabby kilt and shirt, looking as though they had been
hastily discarded.
 
     

Suspecting
she was really stalling for time, she whis
pered, 'I'd
better try again, Jamie, just in case.' Averting
her eyes, she
pushed the chair with its pile of clothing to
one side, so she
could bend nearer his father. 'Mr Murray!'
she raised her voice, 'can you hear me?'

'He
wakens straight away whenever I want him.' Again
Jamie tugged at
the robe she wore, this time more fiercely.
'Why won't you believe me?'

'I'm
sorry.' Nervously Thea straightened, trembling
slightly. 'I'll do
what I can,' she promised helplessly, un
willing to
confess that she didn't know where to begin.
Jamie's anxious
eyes reproaching her, stirred immediate
sympathy, but as near as
this she found his father even
more intimidating, and unlike Jamie
she knew he wouldn't
appreciate her being here, if he woke up.

Yet,
as she stared at him, an instinctive desire to help
became
uppermost. This man was obviously very ill, in
need of someone.
Young as he was, Jamie had taken her in. This could be one way of repaying such
open hospitality. If
only she could keep her strange agitation
under control she
might remember what little she knew about
nursing.

'I
think,' she glanced at Jamie, who waited tensely, 'your
father
should be covered up. The room's too cold. Isn't
there a fire? Even
an electric one would help. We could
switch it on at once.'

Jamie
shook his head. 'We don't have electric fires,
they're too
expensive to run. There's a fireplace, though.'
He pointed to
what looked to Thea like a great hole in the
wall. 'But I'm not allowed to light
fires.'

Thea
considered the fireplace with frowning resignation.
'If
you can show me where you keep your fuel, I'll see if I
can
get one going.' Suddenly the years she had spent in
the
same house as her ailing grandfather came back to her.
While
she hadn't been expected to nurse him; she must
have absorbed how
it was done? And she had helped with Gran, when she had been so ill, near the
end.
 
    

Eager
to get on with the fire, she quickly pulled up the
rumpled
blankets, startled, as she did so, to notice that Mr
Murray's
back was wet. He was steaming like a furnace, in
spite of the coldness of the room.

It
might be necessary to swab him down, she realised,
wondering
how this was to be done. Another frown touched
her brow as she
considered the build of him. How to turn him over? His pillows were damp and
must be uncomfortable, yet again came the odd reluctance to see his face.
This,
being mixed with the even more curious desire to
see it, had Thea biting her lip
uncertainly.

Then
she gasped as the choice was roughly taken from
her, as with a
low spate of unintelligible words Mr Murray
flung himself forcibly over on to his back.

Jamie
gave a small cry of fright and Thea found herself
gulping.
As if her breast was encased in iron she found
she couldn't
breathe. Her hands curled tightly in her palms
and her eyes
widened with unguarded fascination. Never
could she remember seeing such an arresting
face. For
all Mr Murray was haggard, his
cheeks sunken and like his
body,
damp with sweat, this didn't hide the hard hand
someness of his features. Awkwardly she started
back, as
though struck. In his
present condition, which she sus
pected
was some kind of 'flu or high fever, it would be
difficult to guess how old he was, but he didn't look more than
thirty-five or six. What a fool she had been to imagine
he would be older! A tremor, so unknown and
disturbing
as to be unwelcome, began
somewhere inside her, for all her
slight body was almost rigid with
surprise.

It
took Jamie's anxious query to bring her back to reality.
'He's going to get
well, isn't he?'

'I'm
sure of it,' she murmured without conviction, dragging her eyes from the
sick man's dark ravaged face. 'But we'd better try to light a fire as soon as
possible. It's much
too cold in here.'

She
couldn't think now how she got it all done. A little
later
she was feeling happier about some things but worse
about
others. It was only with the greatest difficulty that
she
had managed to get the fire going at all. For her it had
proved
far from easy, and she had been filled with terrible
dread,
on contemplating the enormous chimney, that it
might be stuffed
with jackdaws' nests, all of which might
descend on top of her!
Worse still, if the soot came down, or it smoked, it wouldn't do Mr Murray much
good. It an
noyed her, as it seemed a tangible sign of
inefficiency, that before she got a good blaze going she was covered in soot
herself.
She was forced to borrow another of Mr Murray's
dressing-gowns
and had to leave him to go and change
into it.

While
the room warmed up, more to satisfy Jamie than
from any real good
she thought it might do, she bathed
his father's face and
hands. She couldn't understand why,
as she touched the man,
her senses should react as they
did. Her heart began
beating unevenly and a kind of
prickling awareness attacked her
limbs. It must be some
kind of antagonism, the chemistry inside her
rejecting that
of his.

It
was so strong it had astonished her that he had shown
no
sign of response. Contrarily, her nervous, slightly
clumsy
movements appeared to soothe him. As she ran a
soft, cool cloth
gently over his heated skin he almost ceased
his restless
mutterings and lay still. He still burned like a
furnace, but he
did stop tossing and turning—which ap
peared to
convince Jamie that there was some improvement,
after all.

Taking
advantage of this temporary lull, Thea had cov
ered
him up again, unable to view with any equanimity
the broad, bare
expanse of his chest. After tucking his
blankets in firmly, she
had taken a tired Jamie downstairs
and made him supper. It wasn't much but was
all she
could find, two eggs and a small
tin of beans. He had looked
quite
surprised when she presented him with two eggs, as
if he wasn't usually allowed so many, but he said
nothing
and ate them hungrily up.

It
wasn't until after he had gone to bed that she realised
she
hadn't asked where he slept. Or where she might, should
she
ever get a chance! Perhaps for this one night she could
sleep
down here. The kitchen mightn't be particularly
comfortable, but
it was warm. Stifling a yawn, she made herself a cup of tea. Tomorrow she would
leave. She must have been incredibly foolish to have come here in the first
place.

 
CHAPTER TWO

Slowly
Thea washed up Jamie's supper dishes
and her
own empty cup. Soon she must go back upstairs to see to
Mr
Murray, but she felt so helpless when there was so
little
she could do for him. She could bathe his brow and
keep
the tire going, but what he should have was proper medical attention; even
someone with as little real know
ledge of illness as herself could see that.

Unable
to find anything in the way of medicine, she sliced
up
some lemons from the vegetable rack. Adding sugar,
she
poured boiling water over them. By the time she
reached his room,
along all those icy corridors, the drink
should be cool. It had
been one of Gran's favourite cold cures—if this was all Mr Murray was
suffering from.
Somehow Thea doubted it. She could have
heated him some soup, but there didn't appear to be any in tins, and
he
was probably too ill to want anything, anyway.

Which
was just as well, she decided dryly, as there was
precious
litde food of any kind to be found in the larder.
Perhaps
he kept it under lock and key, only doling it out,
as
he thought necessary, in conjunction with all the other
niggling
little economies he seemed to be making of light
ing, furniture and
fuel.