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

y Cortes,” he corrected her. “That is her full name. I met her once about ten years ago. She was then eighteen. She will now be twenty-eight.”
    “Did you—like her?” she asked.
    “I could have liked her, no doubt, if I’d got to know her a little better. I had no opportunity to get to know her better. Why?”
    “Your mother says she is very beautiful.”
    “She was beautiful at that time, in a rather flawless, camellia-like way. She was also a bit of a blue-stocking.
    “And that put you off?”
    “Look here,” he said, looking down at her and frowning, “don’t tell me the marquis discussed his sister with you?”
    “Of course not,” Josie answered, so relieved that it hadn’t even occurred to him before that the marquis would do anything of the kind that she uttered the lie quite unblushingly. And then she rushed on: “I noticed that he has only one arm. That is rather a grim disablement. How did it happen?”
    “I think he was thrown from a horse—he used to play a lot of polo at one time, and in addition he broke in horses himself. He was always the intrepid type, the fearless, ardent sportsman who liked to live life dangerously, and was bored without excitement. He was always throwing in his lot with some expedition or other in some far corner of the globe, and often he financed the whole thing, because, of course, with him money has never been any object whatsoever. He still has the money, but nowadays life must seem a little circumscribed to him, to say the least.”
    “Terribly circumscribed,” Josie agreed, a note of purely womanly sympathy throbbing in her voice, because the marquis had struck her as unusually self-contained, and that surely meant that at some period of his life—probably soon after his accident—he had had to come to grips with himself, and recognize that in future there would be many limitations. His character had been strong enough to accept the thought of those limitations without any attempt at rebellion, hence the look of discipline in his face, the quiet strength of his mouth, and the gravity of his eyes.
    She felt a surge of admiration for him rise up in her. “However, it could be a great deal more circumscribed if he wasn’t so well endowed with this world’s goods,” Michael remarked. “And he doesn’t have to earn his own living, which is fortunate.”
    “Nevertheless, a one-armed man is very badly handicapped.”
    “So the sight of that, empty sleeve of his aroused all your feminine pity, did it?” He was smiling down at her in the gloom, and although she wasn’t looking upwards she could feel him bending his head towards her a little, as if he was attempting to look into her face. “Little Florence Nightingale with the truly tender heart! I believe most women find him irresistibly attractive, even though he does possess only one arm. How does h affect you?”
    “Affect me?” She gazed up at him in faint surprise, and then appeared to consider. “Well, of course, he is attractive—and unusual! I’ve never seen anyone quite like him before, but then I’ve never met a real live marquis before. And I’m quite sure he doesn’t require anyone’s sympathy.” She was so sure of this that she was even a little surprised by her own certainty; and, puzzling over the reason for this, and recalling the marquis’s dark uninformative face, and the cool note of authority in his voice, she was able to forget for a few moments the disturbing nearness of her present companion, and that warm grip of his upon her arm. Then, as a result of not concentrating on where she was placing her feet in that tunnel-like path she stumbled suddenly, one of her high heels catching in a corner of loosened paving, and but for Michael’s close grip she would have fallen flat on her face.
    He caught her with an arm thrust suddenly round her shoulders, and when she looked up, gasping a little in relief, his face was very close to hers. He was laughing a little as he said: