Nurse in Spain E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Historical Romance
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 306

Beschreibung

INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East.    Though she disliked the surgeon in charge, Margaret Hay reluctantly agreed to nurse a private patient in Spain instead of holidaying there as she'd planned. She'd have been even more reluctant had she guessed the intrigue that lay ahead!

Leseprobe

Nurse in Spain

Nurse in Spain

© Vivian Stuart, 1961

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-416-3

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

___

For Bridie Drummond, my good friend and best of neighbours

CHAPTER ONE

“Excuse me, if you please, Sister Hay”—the probationer was a trifle breathless—“but Matron’s office has just been on the phone. Matron would like to see you as soon as you’re free.”

Margaret Hay stared at her over the top of her mask, her fingers feeling for the tapes which would release it. She displayed no outward surprise: St. Ninian’s training set a barrier of more than years between herself and the messenger, for she was Theatre Staff Nurse, acting as Sister in charge of the Orthopaedic Theatre, the probationer fresh from training school.

Nevertheless, the summons did surprise her a great deal more than her calm acknowledgement suggested, since she was due to leave the hospital that day and had already taken her formal leave of Matron.

“They said,” the little pro added, recovering her breath, “that it was urgent, Sister.”

“Thank you, Nurse,” Margaret replied, her bewilderment increasing and bringing with it a measure of apprehension.

Urgent summonses to Matron’s office usually meant bad news of some kind: sudden illness or an accident, perhaps, to a member of one’s family. She had planned a fortnight’s holiday in Spain before starting her new career in private nursing—her tickets were collected and paid for, her passport visaed, and she had intended to leave tomorrow morning. Suppressing a sigh, she went in search of Sister Theobald, her immediate superior.

They had had an extremely busy morning in her own and the general theatres, with both Sir Neville Ash and Mr. Freyton operating, and she didn’t like to leave before the clearing up was finished, on her last day. But there was no help for it: an urgent summons from Matron’s office could not be ignored.

She made her request apologetically and Sister Theobald looked up to smile at her reassuringly through the cloud of steam rising from the sterilizer.

“Of course you must go, Sister Hay—I’ll see to things for you. And I shouldn’t worry—it’s probably some formality which the office has overlooked.”

“Yes, Sister, thank you—I expect it is,” Margaret agreed, but without conviction. A mere formality, whether overlooked or not, would scarcely merit an urgent demand for her presence.

She wondered uneasily, as she changed out of her theatre gown and back into uniform, which member of her family could possibly have met with an accident. Her family consisted of her father, who was a Harley Street physician, her mother and two brothers, and she had seen them all the previous evening, had in fact telephoned her mother this morning, before coming on duty. But of course, with casualties on the roads as high as they were, one could never be certain that one’s nearest and dearest were safe, from one hour to the next.

Margaret sighed again. But the habit of discipline wasn’t easily broken. Her face was devoid of expression and her manner perfectly composed when, five minutes later, she presented herself at the door of the outer office.

She was shown in at once. Matron, a small, slim woman of middle age and impeccable dignity, waved her to a chair and smilingly set her mind at rest on the score of her family.

“There is nothing wrong, Sister Hay. I have sent for you in order to ask a favor of you, as it happens. Please sit down, it will take a little while to explain the situation.”

Obediently, Margaret sat down. She thought, looking at Matron across the width of her neat and highly polished desk, of the other occasions on which she had occupied this same chair.

There had been the first occasion of all when, a shy eighteen-year-old, she had come for her pretraining interview and had been too nervous to raise her eyes to the level of that small, smiling but infinitely terrifying face. There had been others, during her probation, when she had been sent for to answer for some misdemeanour and Matron hadn’t smiled. Again, as the passing years had seen her rise from awkward pro to assured senior, she had come here to this quiet room in order to be congratulated on her progress, to be talked to and advised, to be encouraged and urged to further effort.

In all those years, Matron had changed very little. Her hair Was, perhaps, a trifle greyer beneath the austere white-laced cap, but her smooth skin was still unlined and rosy as a girl’s, her smile as ready and her movements as brisk as they had always been. The only difference between this interview and the first was that now it was Matron who was about to ask a favor of her, she who—because of what the intervening years had taught her—was at last in a position to grant one, in return for all that she had received.

Margaret offered readily, echoing the smile, “Of course, Matron, if there is anything I can do, you know that I shall be only too pleased.”

“I think,” Matron put in, with a hint of dryness, “that you had better hear what it is I want you to do before you make any rash promises, Sister Hay. Because it’s going to mean postponing your holiday. You had planned to go to Spain, I believe?”

“Yes, Matron.” Margaret’s heart sank. She had dreamed of this holiday for such a long time, made so many eager plans. . . . “I’m—that is, I was going to the Costa Brava.”

“I see. Your use of the past tense does you credit, Sister. But I am not asking you to postpone your visit to Spain—only your holiday. I will tell you, as briefly as I can, exactly what has occurred to make this request necessary.” Matron reached for the pad on which she was in the habit of jotting down notes, and studied it, her brows furrowed. The telephone rang at her elbow before she could continue, and, with a brief apology, she picked up the receiver.

“Yes, this is Matron . . . oh yes, Mr. Freyton, Sister is with me now, and I’m about to explain matters to her ... I think so, yes . . . than thank you, if you would. I’ll let you know at once. When she understands what is involved and the urgency, I feel sure that she will be quite agreeable . . . yes, indeed. Goodbye, Mr. Freyton. I shall call you back as soon as I’ve spoken to Sister.” Replacing the receiver on its cradle, she turned to Margaret with a rueful shrug. “I’m afraid I’ve had to take your agreement rather for granted, Sister Hay. There isn’t a great deal of time, and you know Mr. Freyton— he always like to have everything cut and dried, doesn’t he?”

Margaret’s lips tightened involuntarily. She knew Mr. Julian Freyton—her life had been ruled by his likes and dislikes during the three months she had worked in his theatre. He was moody, brilliant but utterly unpredictable, and his appointment as Senior Orthopaedic Consultant was a recent one.

He had taken the place of the much loved Sir Alexander McManus, who had been “Uncle Sandy” to staff and patients alike and who had held the appointment for twenty years. While, admittedly, it would have been hard for anyone to step into Uncle Sandy’s shoes, Mr. Freyton’s attempt to do so had not been, so far as his theatre staff was concerned, an unqualified success.

He was a gifted surgeon, no one could possibly deny that, but he was a difficult man to work with, for all his skill. Taciturn and sparing of praise, he was impatient and he set a relentless standard of efficiency, tolerated no smallest lapse from it. Of course, he was much younger than Sir Alexander McManus, very young indeed for such an appointment, but . . . Margaret expelled her breath in a small, pent-up sigh. In spite of his dark good looks and his string of impressive degrees, she, in common with his housemen and theatre nurses, held no brief for Mr. Freyton and bitterly regretted the retirement of kind old Uncle Sandy.

One of the few reasons for which she had looked forward to the end of her own time at St. Ninan’s had been because it would free her of Mr. Freyton’s tyranny. But now—she looked up anxiously as Matron started to speak. Was it possible that she was being asked to continue to endure it?

“Mr. Freyton,” Matron said, her tone calm and precise, “received an urgent telephone call from the mother of a young patient of his when he left theatre this morning. The call came from Barcelona. The patient—a boy of fourteen, I understand—is Spanish and he is suffering from ankylosing spondylitis of the von Bechterew type. Mr. Freyton, it seems, saw him originally about six or eight months ago when his mother, who is American and a personal friend of Mr. Freyton’s, brought him to Harley Street. At the time, he tells me, he advised operative interference, but the mother would not hear of it and returned with the boy to Spain. But now his condition has greatly deteriorated and her own doctors have convinced the mother that a spinal osteotomy will be necessary. She has asked Mr. Freyton to go to Barcelona at once to perform the operation and he has agreed to do so. Apparently”—Matron permitted herself a faint smile —“Mr. Freyton is the only surgeon she will trust to operate on her son.”

“But”—Margaret was puzzled—“how can a British surgeon operate in Spain, Matron? Won’t there be all sorts of complications?”

Matron shook her head. “No, Sister Hay. Facilities will be made available to him in a Barcelona nursing home, Mr. Freyton tells me.” She consulted her jottings-pad. “The patient’s mother is a marquesa— widow of the Marqués de Fontera—and she is very rich and influential. The Fonteras live in a palatial establishment some miles from the city.” She put down the pad. “Mr. Freyton,” she went on, watching Margaret with kindly, searching eyes, “proposes to fly to Barcelona tomorrow morning. He has asked me to try and persuade you to go with him, assist him at the operation and remain to nurse the patient for the first week or so following it. He feels he must have a British nurse who will understand and carry out his instructions for the patient’s care, and apparently Mr. Davis told him that you were going to Spain tomorrow, so he hoped you might be willing to postpone your holiday in order to help him. Your fare would be paid by air and, I’m given to understand, arrangements would be made to enable you to take your holiday later and to compensate you for any loss you may incur. I don’t know any more than this, since it has all been arranged in rather a hurry, but Mr. Freyton said on the telephone just now that he would have a word with you himself, when he finishes his out-patients’ clinic at four.”

“He didn’t . . .” Margaret hesitated, a faint tinge of color burning in her cheeks as she recalled the reprimand which, only that morning, she had received from the orthopaedic surgeon, because some small detail of her preparation of one of his cases hadn’t pleased him. What had he said? She frowned, trying to recall his exact words. “Sister, if you cannot give you full and complete attention to your work, you should not be in charge of this theatre at all. Theatre work is exacting, it requires everything one can give it, the best of which one is capable at all times.” And he had added, his tone icy as only he could make it, “Perhaps, in the circumstances, you’re wise to decide on private nursing, rather than remain here. No doubt you’re better suited to it.”

Margaret’s color deepened and spread. If that was what he really thought of her, then . . .

“Well?” Matron prompted, “Mr. Freyton did not what, Sister?”

Margaret avoided her gaze. “I only wondered,” she answered lamely, “whether he asked for me simply because I was going to Spain in any case, Matron?”

“His exact words to me,” Matron returned, “were that, by a singularly fortunate coincidence, the nurse he wanted to take with him had already arranged to go and had a valid passport. From what I could ascertain from Mr. Freyton, his decision to leave tomorrow was made so as to fit in with your plans. He seemed to have little doubt that you would agree to his request, Sister. You know, of course, that normally an operation of this kind isn’t a matter of extreme urgency.”

“Yes, Matron,” Margaret agreed. She had been a trifle mystified by the haste with which Mr. Freyton had arranged his departure, but it had never occurred to her that this might have had anything to do with herself, and she found it hard to believe this now. Mr. Freyton had made no secret of the fact that he considered her promotion to acting-Theatre Sister premature. However, she thought, with a wry little smile, she had worked with him for three months and perhaps the devil you knew was better than one you didn’t . . . at least, they spoke the same language.

She looked up to meet Matron’s questioning gaze.

“May I take it, then, Sister Hay, that you will do as Mr. Freyton asks? He is anxious to know as soon as possible, so that he can confirm the air bookings which, as you may imagine, he had some difficulty in making at such very short notice. I believe he has managed to reserve two seats on a Spanish Iberia plane, but I’m not sure.”

Mr. Freyton, Margaret thought resentfully, had indeed taken her agreement very much for granted: he had even booked her seat on the plane without waiting for her to give it. But of course, she couldn’t refuse. He had known that, just as Matron had.

She gave her assent, her tone expressionless.

Matron thanked her and reached for the telephone.

“Don’t wait, Sister,” she said. “I will tell Mr. Freyton and perhaps you would report to him at four o’clock in Out-Patients. He can give you the details which I haven’t been able to supply and arrange where to pick you up tomorrow morning. You are leaving the Nurses’ Home this evening, are you not?”

“Yes, Matron.” Margaret rose to take her leave.

Matron said, her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone, “Then may I wish you bon voyage? I hope that all will go well with your new patient and that, even if it is belated, you will enjoy your holiday. Don’t forget, will you, that if private nursing fails to come up to your expectations, we can always find a post for you here?”

“Thank you very much, Matron. I won’t forget.”

“Thank you, Sister Hay. Au revoir, then, and good luck.”

In the outer office, Margaret glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes to three. She would just have time to finish clearing up her theatre, hand over to her relief and bid farewell to Sister Theobald and the rest of the staff, before going down to Mr. Freyton in Out-Patients. But it would be a rush . . .

It was five past four when, breathless from her exertions, she made her way to the Orthopaedic Clinic.

Mr. Freyton, punctual as always, was seeing his last patient, the staff nurse told her.

“We’ve had quite an afternoon,” the girl added, with feeling, “running in ever increasing circles! And another telephone call from Barcelona, to add to our joys . . . it lasted fifteen minutes. But it seems that everything is arranged now to Mr. Freyton’s satisfaction. Mr. Cahill is to take this clinic for him, which will be a nice change for me, I must say. He says he expects to be away for ten days or a fortnight.”

“Does he?” Margaret forced a smile but it was a wry one. She hadn’t expected—knowing Mr. Freyton —that he would stay for more than a day or so in Barcelona, once the operation was over.

The staff nurse glanced at her curiously. “Rumor,” she said, “has it that you are going to nurse the case, Sister. I suppose it isn’t true?”

“It’s perfectly true,” Margaret returned, “I am, I can’t very well get out of it, you see.”

It was at that moment that Mr. Freyton’s door opened and his dark, unsmiling face appeared in the aperture. The two nurses had been standing within a foot of the door, so that it was fairly obvious to Margaret that he must have heard her last few words. But, if he had, he gave no sign of it, simply motioned her to follow him into his consulting room and, closing the door on his departing patient, said brusquely, “I take it that Matron has put you in the picture, Sister Hay?”

He did not sit down and did not invite Margaret to do so either. Evidently their interview was to be brief, she thought, and, having assented to his question, she waited.

He stood looking down at her, a tall man in a white coat, whose face would have been attractive had it been less forbidding. It was an intelligent face, thin and high-boned, the jaw strong and a trifle arrogant, the eyes deep-set, their glance cold. He was, Margaret realized, studying him, not so very much older than herself—eight or ten years, perhaps, twelve at most. His gravity made him look older, or possibly the tiny flecks of grey amongst the thick dark hair at his temples heightened the illusion—these and his manner. In the three months that they had worked together, meeting each other almost daily, she had seldom seen him smile and, standing there waiting for him to speak, she recalled, with a faint sense of shock, how changed his face seemed when he did smile.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was smiling now. He said, his tone more friendly than she had ever heard it, “I’m grateful to you for postponing your holiday, Sister Hay. It’s extremely good of you.”

“That’s perfectly all right, sir” she assured him. “It doesn’t really upset my plans. I’m a free agent for the time being, you see, so it will only mean a postponement.”

Mr. Freyton’s brief smile faded. He frowned. “Yes, of course, you’re finishing here today, aren’t you? It’s a pity, just when we were becoming accustomed to each other. Still, it’s your decision and it in no way detracts from my gratitude for what you’re doing to help me. I shall see to it that you don’t lose financially, of course—that goes without saying. Now about tomorrow —” He went into details of times and the air booking and offered, when he called at the travel agents for Iris tickets, to cancel her original ones as well. Margaret had them with her and, waving aside her half-hearted protests, he took them from her with a crisp, “Good heavens, it’s the very least I can do. I’ll collect your Iberia ticket with mine, so you needn’t worry about that. I suggest we meet on the airport coach at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. You can get to the coach station under your own steam, can’t you?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Good.” He looked relieved. Tapping the tickets she had given him with a long forefinger, he added, “What about the refund on these? Shall I get it in travellers’ cheques for you or simply transfer the bookings, if I can, to three weeks or a month later?”

Margaret hesitated. Finally she said, “In travellers’ cheques, I think, Mr. Freyton. I imagine I’ll be able to make my own bookings in Barcelona when I get there and when we see how long the patient is likely to need me. It might easily be for longer than a month, mightn’t it, in a case like this?”

The surgeon nodded. “It might, Sister. But you’ll have at least one other nurse with you, I imagine—a Spanish nurse, whom you should be able to leave in charge after the first couple of weeks or so. I don’t want to take an unfair advantage of you, you know, or force you to postpone that holiday of yours indefinitely. So long as I have you with me during the operation and for a couple of weeks after it, that’s all I’d visualized, when I suggested your coming. However, since, as you say, you are now a free agent, you’ll be able to suit yourself when the time comes, won’t you? Go or stay on, as you please.”

Margaret inclined her head politely. To her surprise, Mr. Freyton smiled again.

“You’ll like the Marquesa de Fontera, I’m sure, and the boy, Felipe, is a nice little fellow. As Matron will have told you, the Marquesa is American. They live in a fairy-tale sort of castle, in the mountains about twenty miles from Barcelona, at the edge of a magnificent pine forest. And they live in a style to which we, in this country, are no longer accustomed, even in our dreams.” He talked on about the castle and Margaret listened, fascinated by all he told her and regretting her lost holiday less and less. When he came to the end of an almost lyrical description of the surrounding countryside, she asked thoughtlessly, “You’ve been there before then, sir? I mean, you’ve stayed with the Marquesa on other occasions?”

Mr. Freyton eyed her coldly. “Certainly,” he returned, with brusque lack of friendliness, “when the Marqués was alive.” He dismissed her then, his manner so aloof and forbidding that Margaret realized that, in some way and quite unintentionally, she had offended him, although why he should be so touchy on the subject of his friendship with his patient’s mother she was somewhat at a loss to understand. It seemed, in the light of all that he had said, a trifle odd, but—philosophically, she dismissed the matter from her mind.

There was a great deal to do, before she could join the airport coach next morning at half past eight— her packing to finish, her farewell party in the Nurses’ Home to attend and, finally, she had to return to her parents’ house for the night, where inevitably she would have to go into long explanations of her change of plans for her mother’s benefit.

And, when it came to the point, it was going to be a wrench leaving St. Ninian’s. With a little lump in her throat, Margaret ran up the familiar flight of stone steps which led to the Nurses’ Home. Adventure lay ahead of her tomorrow, but today the sorrow of parting had to be faced. As she entered the Home, her mind went back, across the years, to the first time she had seen this place through anxious, eighteen-year-old eyes. It had seemed cold and unwelcoming then, a square, grey building, peopled by strangers. Now those strangers were her friends, part of a life she was leaving behind her . . . she caught her breath as memories came flooding, unbidden, into her head.

Behind her, the vast, sprawling bulk of the hospital stood, lights gleaming from some of its windows, people coming and going behind them, others, in a slow-moving queue, waiting to go as visitors up to the wards. An ambulance drew up outside the entrance to Casualty, a man on crutches limped away from Out-Patients, behind a stream of others returning to their homes.

It was a scene she had witnessed countless times before: in the years of her training, she had been part of it, one with the hurrying, uniformed figures she could glimpse through the windows. She had worked on most of the wards, in Out-Patients, in Casualty, in the Private Wing, in Maternity, a small cog in a huge and complex machine. First in the blue striped dress of a probationer, then in the plain blue of second year, next in the silver-buckled belt of a State Registered nurse and finally, today, in a sister’s bows. . . . Margaret felt tears start to her eyes.

It was ironical, she thought, moving slowly towards the staircase, that she should be leaving St. Ninian’s in the company of a man who had done much to influence her decision to give up her work here. If dear old Uncle Sandy had still been her chief, she would probably have stayed on, wouldn’t have been able to tear herself away. But Julian Freyton had shaken her confidence in herself, made her doubt her aptitude as a theatre nurse and even forced her, for the first time in her life, to resent the discipline which the very nature of her work imposed.

He wasn’t, of course, the sole cause of her leaving. There had also been David Fellowes . . .

Entering the small room which had been home to her for so many months, Margaret’s gaze went, involuntarily, to the place where David’s framed photograph normally stood. It was not there now: she had cleared her dressing table last night, when she came off duty and had packed the photograph with the rest of her possessions. But, in spite of this, she saw it, in memory, standing in its accustomed place, smiling at her. David had always smiled at her: he had been a gay, light-hearted young man, possessing more than his fair share of charm and masculine good looks, and, from the first, he had attracted her. She had met him originally when he had come, as a student dresser, to work on Beckett Ward, where she had been acting as night senior. Over numberless cups of ward tea, drunk during the small hours, when David had no real right to be there at all, their friendship had grown and ripened into what she had believed to be love.

After he qualified and became a houseman, they had gone about together regularly, accepted by the members of their own particular set as all but engaged. Margaret herself had imagined that David would ask her to marry him, as soon as he was in a position to support a wife. They had even discussed it, when David had talked of going into general practice and she, with her own career to make, had been content to wait until he should have secured his future.

It had been a shock when, out of the blue, he had told her that he was staying on at the hospital, in order to take a surgical registrar’s appointment for three years, but she hadn’t questioned his decision. If he wanted to specialize, he had every right to do so, and if it put off their wedding day, at least it meant that they could continue to work together, instead of being separated, as they would have been if David had gone as assistant in a general practice.

He was reading for his Fellowship, and, aware of how much time he had to give to this, Margaret had made few claims on his leisure in the months that followed. They still saw each other, on duty, they still went out together on Saturday evenings, when their off-duty coincided, but, gradually, they drew apart.

The second shock came when, on the hospital grapevine, Margaret heard that David was going out with someone else. At first she didn’t believe the rumors: the girl was a young but not very successful West End actress who, it seemed, had been a patient of his. She was very pretty, but on the few occasions when they had met, Margaret had thought her selfish and shallow and so obviously not David’s type that she hadn’t considered her seriously as a rival.

Consequently, when David came to her to announce, a trifle shamefacedly, that he and Pauline were getting married, the blow was a great deal harder to take than it might have been. Margaret had been disillusioned and deeply hurt, although she tried not to show it. She had even attended the wedding, three weeks later, in a London Registrar’s Office, and remained dry-eyed throughout the short, businesslike little ceremony.

She could have forgiven David his betrayal and Pauline her deception, had they made each other happy and had their marriage been a success. She could even, because she loved him, have gone on working with David at St. Ninian’s, had he been prepared to put their relationship on a formal and professional basis and leave it there. At first he had been, but after he had failed his Fellowship examination, it became clear that not only was his marriage unhappy but that he bitterly regretted losing Margaret. He had sought to renew their old intimacy, and Margaret, sick with pity for him but determined not to be the cause of a broken marriage, decided that the best and only thing for her to do was to leave the hospital. It was easier for her to go than for David, and the added strain of working under Julian Freyton had provided the final spur.

All the same, Margaret thought, her hands shaking a little as she took out the dress she had planned to wear for her farewell party, much as she hated the thought of making the break with St. Ninian’s, she was glad that she had found the courage to do it.

When she returned from Spain, she would lead a very different life—a life in which David didn’t exist. And Spain, perhaps, would prove interesting and exciting enough to ease her heartache, free her, at last, from the chains which had bound her for so long to a man she had lost the right to love.

She laid her frock on the bed and, taking her dressing gown from the back of the door, made her way along the corridor to the Sisters’ bathrooms.

The party was probably going to be an ordeal, but it couldn’t last for ever, and tomorrow . . . tomorrow was another day. A new day, a crossroads in her life: an end, but a beginning as well.

As the steam rose from the bath, Margaret found herself regretting that she had to make her fresh beginning in Mr. Julian Freyton’s company, instead of alone, as she had intended to make it. But, like tonight’s party, it couldn’t last for ever.

She slipped into the hot, fragrant water and, lying back with closed eyes, felt some of her tension ease. Mr. Freyton didn’t know about David: her ill-starred love affair had ended before Uncle Sandy’s retirement, so that his successor wouldn’t have heard the gossip or the rumors.

So she was still free. She would have to see David once again, but only in order to say goodbye. Margaret resolutely swallowed the lump in her throat and reached tor her towel. . . .

CHAPTER TWO

The flight to Barcelona next day was comparatively uneventful. Margaret had flown several times before, but air travel was still, for her, a sufficiently unusual method of getting from one place to another to make her enjoy the experience.

But she had been very late the night before—the farewell party had been followed by a long, cosy gossip with her mother and it had been well after two when she went to bed.

Consequently, after a time, she felt her eyelids growing heavy. Mr. Freyton, in the seat beside her, had shown little inclination to talk since leaving London, and, when he buried himself in a pile of medical journals which he had brought with him, Margaret gave up the effort to ward off sleep. She dozed off peacefully, her last memory the lovely spectacle of banks of fleecy white clouds, lit to glory by the sun, and glimpsed with half-closed eyes through the cabin window.

She wakened when the stewardess set a lunch tray in front of her to find, to her intense embarrassment, that her head had slipped from its own cushion to rest on her companion’s shoulder. She raised it, flushing, with a mumbled apology, conscious of Mr. Freyton’s eyes on her. He quickly looked away and said brusquely, in answer, “I imagine you must be tired, Sister Hay. You made quite a night of it, didn’t you? With farewell parties and the rest of it.”

Surprised that he should have known of the party in the Nurses’ Home, Margaret smiled ruefully. “It was a very nice party, Mr. Freyton, but scarcely what you’d call riotous, and it broke up about ten o’clock. The trouble was that I didn’t get to bed till nearly half past two and —”

“More farewells?” Mr. Freyton put in. The question was harmless enough, but the tone in which it was delivered was barbed, the eyes he turned on her coldly disapproving. On the point of telling him the true reason for her lateness, Margaret thought better of it. She returned, her own voice flat and discouraging, “Of course, Mr. Freyton. Why not, since I’m likely to be away for some time? And since I’m leaving St. Ninian’s.”

She saw his mouth tighten. “Why not indeed?” He shrugged. “At one time you know, Sister, I rather admired you for your decision to leave the hospital. I’d been told the reason for it, you see, and I realized that it couldn’t have been an easy decision for you to make. It involved considerable sacrifice, didn’t it? You’d won early promotion and —”

“What,” Margaret interrupted bitterly, “were you told about my reasons for leaving, Mr. Freyton?” She was suddenly furiously angry with him. What right had he to speak to her like this about her private life? It was no business of his, but oh, what a fool she had been to imagine that he didn’t know about David . . . what a stupid, gullible fool!

Julian Freyton permitted himself a brief, superior little smile. He pushed his plate away, reached for the glass on his tray and said, eyeing her over its rim, “The truth, I imagine, Sister Hay. Were you not at one time engaged to young Fellowes?”

Margaret stared at him, speechless with indignation. So he did know, she thought . . . though why he should choose to bring the matter up now she was frankly at a loss to understand.

The surgeon lowered his glass and went on coolly, “A hospital is a very close-knit little community, isn’t it? The life is something like that on board ship, on a long voyage. Everyone knows everyone else’s business and everyone talks about it. One can have no secrets from one’s travelling companions and if one steps out of line, even for an instant . . .”—he spread his hands in an expressive gesture—“very soon, it’s common knowledge.”

“Yes, but”—Margaret found her tongue at last— “at the risk of seeming impertinent, Mr. Freyton, why should it matter to you if I did happen, at one time, to have been engaged to Mr. Fellowes? It was quite a long time ago and Mr. Fellowes is married now. I don’t see what business it is of yours, quite honestly.”

“It’s none of my business,” Mr. Freyton conceded. “Except that”—his expression hardened—“I was called to the hospital last night to operate on an emergency because David Fellowes, who was the registrar on duty, wasn’t there and couldn’t be found. When he eventually turned up, he was in a very odd state indeed, Sister. He informed me, when I asked him where he’d been, that he had been saying goodbye to the only woman in his life. Putting two and two together, I can only conclude that you were the woman in—er—in question. I’d hoped it wasn’t so, but on your own admission you didn’t get to bed until after two—which was about the time Fellowes returned to the hospital. He wasn’t at his flat because the switchboard repeatedly called him there, and he’d left no message as to where he could be contacted, if he was wanted.”

“David wasn’t with me until two,” Margaret protested, dismayed. “He —”

“But you saw him last night, didn’t you, Sister?”