Nurse for the Doctor by Averil Ives Read Free Book Online Page A

the wine list. “I’m not going to order champagne, because one can do that anywhere, and here in Spain there are so many wonderful wines that we mustn’t neglect to sample them.”
    The wine he ordered was sparkling, and the color of peach brandy, and a half-glass of it told Josie that it was fairly heady. Afterwards, on the terrace, they sipped liqueurs with their coffee, while an orchestra in the great restaurant behind them dispensed the zestful Spanish rhythms that set most people’s feet moving restlessly. Josie felt as if hers were affected by a kind of itch to be out in the middle of the glistening ballroom where late holidaymakers were gliding back and forth in an atmosphere heavy with flower scents, and the wine-sweet tang of the sea that wafted in through the open windows.
    Josie’s eyes were fascinated by the great stars that hung in the heavens above them, and a young moon was climbing above a thicket of umbrella pines that grew in a corner of the grounds. It looked like a thin sliver of silver caught up in the black branches, and the sky behind it was deep and dark like indigo. She couldn’t see the sea, but she could hear it slapping murmurously on the white beach just a little below them; there was something seductive and enticing about the way it crooned away tirelessly.
    “I can’t ask you to dance,” Michael Duveen said, “but we can have a little stroll before turning in, if you’d like that. Would you like it, Josie?” He smiled at her. “And may I say that you look quite devastating in that dress? Why is it that a uniform smothers a young woman’s personality?”
    “Does it?” But Josie had always been of the opinion that the Chessington House uniform was very attractive; and her dress was a simple, rather floating green chiffon—one of only two evening dresses she possessed—and would not have stood comparison with any of the other, far lovelier and more expensive dresses worn by visitors in the hotel that night. Or so she thought, remembering precisely what she had paid for it. “Perhaps I haven’t got a great deal of personality to smother,” she dimpled at him.
    “On the contrary, you’re a bit of a dark horse,” he told her, limping with her to the head of the terrace steps. As they descended them she felt sure that eyes watched them, and that limp which in some way merely added to his distinction, and the wing of gold in his hair above his right eyebrow as the colored lights shone down upon them. His hand was inside her arm, and he was leaning on her very lightly. “When I first saw you I thought you were terribly demure and meek—that under no circumstances would you say boo to a goose. But now I’m not so sure.”
    He led her away from the main paths where couples perambulated—and other couples took advantage of discreet alcoves and well-arranged garden seats to enjoy the magic of the evening—and they penetrated a grove of ilex trees. It was like entering a cool, dark tunnel, with the moonlight faintly filtering through and creating a checkerboard at their feet. It was also extraordinary to Josie that she should be here at this hour, in a land that was still completely strange to her, with a man who refused to let go her arm, although he was capable by this time of walking quite comfortably with the aid of his stick.
    “What did you do to the marquis this morning?” he mused, smiling down at her in the dim light. “Why was it that he so particularly wished to be alone with you for a few minutes before he left?”
    Josie pretended to look surprised.
    “You heard what he said. He wished to make certain there was nothing lacking for your reception tomorrow.”
    “And if that isn’t the height, and breadth, and depth of Spanish hospitality I don’t know what is!” Duveen returned a little mockingly. “No, Josie, you can’t expect me to believe that. There was something else, wasn’t there?”
    She hesitated.
    “You know Dona Cortes?”
    “Dona Maria de Silva