Nurse in Love (18 page)

Kathryn’s lips curved into a smile. “I’m afraid there isn’t any,” she said.

“No dinner? Oh, I see
—
Well, I daresay something can be rustled up. Where’s the child, by the way?”

“Roger? Nodding in the kitchen, poor babe! I promised Mrs. Horrick I would put him to bed before I left.”

“Well, would you do that while I go and have a look at her? But you are not going yet. You are dining with me, if we have to make do with a can of soup. I rang you at the Wardrop, but couldn’t get you. I hardly expected to find you here, but now I have”—Adam paused with his hand upon the kitchen door-handle
—
“there are things we have to say to each other, Kathryn Clare—some of them long overdue.”

What could he mean? As she collected sleepy Roger and took his bedtime milk from the refrigerator in the
larder, Kathryn’s thoughts were in a whirl. She forgot everything—even that she had failed to contact Matron and ought to call her again—in her mind’s bewildered repetition of his—“there are things we have to say to each other—some of them long overdue”. Before he had found her here he had meant to ask her to dine with him. To say what? Merely to regret her decision to leave the Wardrop, of which he would probably have heard from Matron? To blame her afresh for letting Steven go abroad without her—news which he would have had from Steven to-day? Anything more professional he would have said to her on the ward.
Then why had he wanted to ask her to dine to-night?

She went downstairs again to hear that he had decided against sending Mrs
.
Horrick to Casualty Ward until the morning, that he had carried her to her room and wanted Kathryn to help her to undress. By the time Kathryn had done so, had improvised a “cage” to protect the injured ankle from the bedclothes and had foraged for a supper-tray for her patient, she began to feel that she had worked in Adam’s house for years!

She went down again to pass on to him Mrs
.
Horrick’s directions for their meal. There was some oxtail soup in the larder and some good bone-stock to add to it if it wasn’t enough—as if the Doctor imagined she made soup out of
tins
!—and a piece of boiled gammon to cut. There wasn’t a pudding, but the Doctor usually only had fresh fruit, anyway. And he made his own coffee at the table
—

The table in the small graciously furnished
dining room
was already laid when, at Adam’s direction, Kathryn went to light the candles on it. As she waited for their shy light to steady into a bravery that was
reflected strongly in the lovely patina of the polished table, she looked about her, appreciating now not the mechanics of Adam’s housekeeping, but the touches that spoke of the man himself, of Adam’s home
-
making, which for one brief evening she could share.

She judged that when he dined alone he sat here in the evening. Then was a pipe-rack near the fireplace
—
she had never seen him smoke a pipe!—a book with his place marked, a deep armchair and, yes, from its downy cushions stared the startled blue eyes of a Siamese cat.

“Why, Puss
!
” Kathryn went over to him and
coaxed his hostility by tickling his back near the root of his tail. He rolled over in response and pawed emptily at the air in cat-like ecstasy. And Kathryn thought yearningly: “How little I’ve ever known of Adam, when I didn’t even know he had a cat!”

“So you’ve made the acquaintance of Socrates. Do you like Siamese?” enquired Adam from the doorway.

Startled, Kathryn turned. “Yes, but I’ve never owned one.”

“Well, I can hardly be said to own Socrates—rather
the other way about. Come, fellow
—
” Adam stepped
forward, and at the sight of him the cat made a flying leap for his chest and nuzzled beneath his chin. Stroking him, Adam asked irrelevantly of Kathryn: “How hungry are you?”

“Hungry?”

“Yes. I ask because I’m attempting what cooks always declare to be impossible—holding back dinner, because I’d rather talk to you first. But the soup is still on the hotplate, and we can eat first if you’d rather.”

As he spoke Socrates climbed over his shoulder and walked nonchalantly down his back before leaping to the floor. Kathryn was sorry to see him go, for she felt that somehow he had been a bulwark between her and Adam whose present manner she did not understand.

She shook her head. “I’m not hungry
—
”

“Then dinner can wait. Won’t you sit down?” He indicated the inviting armchair, and when she was seated he thrust his hands into his pockets and stood looking down at her. His eyes seemed to travel all over her, as if she were a stranger whose looks he had pledged himself to memorise. At last he said slowly: “So you’re leaving the Wardrop?”

“How did you know?”

“Matron told me this morning.” The answer was not unexpected, but he went on: “She was puzzled as to your possible reasons for doing so, but I took the
liberty of telling her what I believed them to be
—
”

“You could hardly have known what they were.”

“I thought I did—then. I was wrong, as I’ve been wrong about a great many things. I told Matron that
I believed you were leaving to be married
—
”

“
Married?
Dr. Brand, you had no right
!
”

“I know that. You must forgive me. I think I derived a savage kind of satisfaction from putting the thing into so many words, facing myself as well as Matron with the inevitability of it. You see, I hadn’t then
t
alked to Steven I was with Matron this morning,
remember. It was not until I lunched with Steven that he told me that Sir Paul had accepted him on the staff of the South African clinic and that he hoped, by exercising patience, to persuade Thelma to make up her mind to go out with him. And that meant the only
thing that mattered to me, Kathryn
—
it told me that you wouldn’t be going out there as Steven’s wife
!”

With bewildered weariness Kathryn murmured: “You were disappointed? You wanted me to marry Steven—so much?”

“So much?” Impulsively Adam knelt down by her chair. “On the contrary, so little, my very dear! Don’t you understand?”

Kathryn turned away from him, questioning that she had actually heard the endearment, and not daring to trust the hope aroused by the seeming entreaty in his eyes. In a tight, hard voice she said: “I only know I understood you very well when you wanted to thrust me into marrying Steven. Isn’t it likely that I should expect you to be disappointed when you learned that he and I had defied your decisions for us, and had achieved only a very satisfying friendship of our own?”

For a long moment there was silence. Then Adam stood up and went to sit on the other side of the hearth, resting his forearms on his knees and staring at his clasped hands.

In a low voice he said: “I deserved that. But I have already asked so much of you that I’m daring to ask that you should believe what I must say now. Kathryn, I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you
!”

“You hated and despised me—for what you thought I’d done to Steven!”

“No. That was the overflow of the stored anger I’d been harbouring against the woman I’d expected to find you to be—ruthless and calculating where your own best interests were concerned and willing to throw Steven over when yours and his did not coincide. You were quite different, and a true instinct in me knew it. But I’d stored that anger too long, though when I
used it against you I felt that somehow I was using it in my own defence as much as in Steven’s. I didn’t want to fall in love with the woman Steven loved, but by the time he returned to England I knew that I’d done so irrevocably and for ever.” Adam paused and looked at Kathryn, compelling her eves to meet his. “If you’ve believed me so far,” he said harshly, “perhaps you can guess what happened then?”

“You didn’t tell him
—
”

“No, I didn’t tell him. And when I learned that all his hopes of making good and of happiness were centred upon you, still I conceived it as the only thing my friendship could do for him—to stand aside from any hope of you for myself.”

“You didn’t think of what you might be doing—to me?” The words came in no more than a whisper from Kathryn’s lips.

“To you? But I couldn’t have harmed you by what I did unless you loved me in return. No, Kathryn, I’d created for myself a big enough problem—but that wasn’t part of it. Meanwh
i
le, I had to school myself to controlling every look and every word when I was with you and every thought when I was not. Sometimes, I admit, a small voice suggested that I was attempting the impossible and that friendship did not demand it of me. Sometimes I allowed myself to listen. Once was when, not long ago. I tried to tell you what you’d
done to me at that first meeting
—
”

“And you didn’t realise even then what
you
had done to me?”

“Oh, I know I’d been unjust, but I tried to explain
that
—
” Adam broke off suddenly and raised his
head in a listening attitude, as if only now was he hearing what she had said.

“
What I’d done to you
!”
he murmured wonderingly. Then, in a single moment, he was at her side again, holding out both hands to her, drawing her to face him. “Kathryn, are you telling me that you
have
loved me—all the time?”

“Almost all, I think. And loving you destroyed my sense of proportion. If I hadn’t cared so much, I might have laughed at your determination to hand me over to Steven. And I shouldn’t have been so hurt when I was given an inkling that you thought I was far too much in evidence off the ward as well as on.”

“My sweet, where did you get that idea? As if I could ever have seen too much of you, exce
p
t for fear of betraying myself to you! Why I never dared to ask you here, to see you actually here in my home, which I longed to make yours. And until to-night, when I knew at last that you were not going to marry Steven after all, I’d only once ventured to ask you to share a meal with me. When I found you here before me, I knew that I’d already wasted far too much time, and whatever your answer might be, I had to tell you all that I have told you now.”

“I don’t understand it all. You told Matron that you knew I was leaving to be married. But you couldn’t have had any suggestion of that from Steven when, until he lunched with you, you didn’t even know about the South African job?”

“I did know about it, though until I saw Steven I didn’t know it was settled. Sir Paul had told me that he was considering Steven for one of the posts on offer, and also that he understood he would be going out as a married man—married, Kathryn, to you
!”

“But Steven didn’t allow Sir Paul to believe that!”

“No. But Thelma did. You know how she has always tried to do Steven’s living as well as her own? I suppose she wanted that job for him pretty badly, and knowing Sir Paul was looking for married men, she told him she hoped Steven would be eligible in that particular, and mentioned your name. It might have been wishful thinking, though it could have done Steven more harm than good, if Sir Paul had got the idea that he had been deceived. But it was something she had set her heart upon, hadn’t she?”

Kathryn caught back the impulse to reveal to Adam that she suddenly knew why. Thelma had wanted Adam enough to make even her real concern for Steven serve that end. But in her own new sweet knowledge and security of Adam’s love, Thelma had become a shadowy figure without threat. One day she would ask him what Thelma had meant to him. But not now.

He went on: “Now Steven’s only worry is lest she should decide against going out to South Africa with him. Personally, I think she will go. As I see Thelma, she’s never so ‘real’ or so sincere as when she is doing battle for Steven. It’s her one lovable trait when so much else about her—her arrogance and her sophistication—isn’t lovable at all. Anyhow, at the time I believed she knew Steven’s plans well enough to justify
my telling Matron what I did
—
”

“Matron
!”
Kathryn started in sudden guilt. “I had an appointment with her more than an hour ago
!”

“But you were phoning her when I came in
!”

“Yes, but she wasn’t in her quarters. I must try again. What on earth am I to say? She’ll never forgive
me—”

Adam pushed her gently back into her chair. “As your future husband—though it occurs to me that I haven’t yet asked you to marry me—I’m entitled to take
over any such awkwardnesses and embarrassments.
I’ll
phone Matron
—
”

“But what are you going to tell her?”

“The truth. That you tried to ring her, and that since then you’ve been too engrossed. No, otherwise engaged, I think. There’s a choice double meaning to that. And there’s an additional item of information I owe her too.”

“I believe you’re going to have to confess that you were wrong when you told her I was going to be married!”