Nurse Linnet's Release by Averil Ives Read Free Book Online Page A

fresh course. “And you’ve been abroad—you’ve done all the things I want to do, and I’d like to hear about them. Nurse Blake said you’ve just come from Ceylon, and that you’re a tea-planter—”
    “She’s wrong,” he told her, and his voice sounded impatient. “I’ve come from Rhodesia, and I go in for mixed farming out there.”
    “Rhodesia?” Her feathery eyebrows lifted. “But that’s where Mrs. Carey comes from!”
    “Mrs.—? Oh, you mean Diana Carey.” He crushed out a cigarette he had just lighted in an ash-tray. “Yes, I know all about Diana!” She thought that a harsh look chased itself across his somewhat sullenly set lips. “I knew her husband very well —and I think I know Diana very well, too.”
    “I see,” Linnet murmured. She watched the waiter bringing dishes from a side-table, and appeared to be absorbed in the little blue flame over which he heated plates. “Did you know that she picked up a very unpleasant infection in Rhodesia?”
    “I know that she’s in Aston House, and is lucky enough to be one of your patients. You lent me a book which belonged to her, do you remember? It had her name on the fly-leaf.”
    “Yes, I remember.” She remembered him flicking open the book and exclaiming, “Diana Carey! Good Heavens!” But he had said nothing more at the time.
    Now she wished he would tell her a little more about Diana, but for some reason he did not look as if the subject appealed to him—and not merely because it prevented their discussion of herself and her affairs. He had, she decided, studying him a little more carefully, a hard, in fact rather a ruthless face—at least his expression was ruthless at times. And there was no doubt about it, as she admitted to herself with a faint sinking of the heart, that faintly sensual mouth of his was also quite definitely self-indulgent, in spite of his strong, square jaw. On the surface, at least, he appeared to be a combination of oddly opposing forces—dogged determination to get what he wanted somehow or other, and at all costs, arrogance which could never be disguised under another name, cynicism and impatience on the one hand, and something deeper and more unguess-at-able on the other; something deep and, even so, slightly sinister, like the still waters of a pool in the depths of a shadowy, silent wood.
    And yet, in spite of all that, his eyes could light up in a very pleasant way when he actually smiled, and when he addressed her sometimes his voice was very tender, as if in her he recognized something that must be handled gently.
    He pushed her champagne glass towards her.
    “You’re only sipping at it,” he said. “And I want this to be a celebration.”
    “A celebration of what?” she inquired unwisely.
    “Of our meeting, of course! Of our getting to know one another! And I am determined that we shall know one another very much better before long!”
    When he drove her back to Aston House at last it was quite late—about eleven o’clock. In fact, the local church clock was actually chiming the hour. The grey Bentley slid a little beyond the nursing-home and came to rest well beyond the street lamp and outside the blank facade of an empty house next door. Behind it a slightly less ostentatious but very sleek black car waited outside Aston House, and Linnet, who did not recognize it, wondered whether it belonged to one of the doctors who attended at the nursing-home, and whether perhaps someone was not so well tonight.
    Guy switched off his engine and dipped his headlights. Linnet turned to thank him for a very pleasant evening.
    “And did you really enjoy it?”
    “Of course I did.”
    Her small face was a little upturned to him, and it looked very pure and pale in the dim light. The eyes were very large, and soft like shadowy purple velvet under the feathery dark eyelashes. Her mouth was soft and inviting as a crimson flower.
    “Oh, Linnet!” he exclaimed, and just as she was about to offer him her