That Wonderful Feeling E-Book

Vivian Stuart

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

Seitenzahl: 347

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

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.    Ann Royston glanced back at the great, grey building that was St. Martha's Hospital. Lights gleamed from it, bright against the gathering dusk of evening, and, in imagination, she saw beyond the walls and the windows, into the wards, the theatres, the laboratories ... And suddenly she was seeing it all through a mist of tears. Memories came flooding back; she remembered the years she had spent there as a student, with Michael Loder, and she remembered, as if it had been yesterday, her first meeting with his brother Nicholas ... "It's rather a wonderful feeling, belonging to a place like Martha's, isn't it?" Nurse Fitzgerald said. Her words found their echo in Ann's heart.

Leseprobe

That Wonderful Feeling

That Wonderful Feeling

© Vivian Stuart, 1958

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-413-2

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.

Chapter one

Ann Royston first heard about the brilliant Nicholas Loder from his brother Michael, but it was not until she had passed her Finals and was appointed to St. Martha’s Hospital as a junior house surgeon that she met him in person. Up till then, she only knew what Michael had told her about him.

From the outset, Ann and Michael were friends. It was natural that, making each other’s acquaintance as third year medical students, they should become friends, for they had a great deal in common. Age, for one thing: Ann was twenty-four when she started her clinical studies at St. Martha’s, Michael thirty, and both had a shattered career behind them.

The majority of their fellow students were younger in age and experience, addicted to Rugger and Rock ’n’ Roll and light-hearted ragging, and they spoke a language which Ann tried hard to understand but seldom did. Michael, with his dark, clever face and his air of maturity, stood out from the rest to so marked a degree that Ahn had taken him for a senior member of the resident staff and had addressed him initially as “sir.” He had never allowed her to forget her mistake: it became one of their private jokes, of which they had many, as their acquaintance ripened into friendship.

“Michael,” she would say, and “Sir—to you—Miss Royston,” he would answer and give her the slow, charming smile that always made her feel tender and protective towards him. No hint of sentimentality ever entered their relationship and this was so because, from the beginning, they had mutually agreed that it must not, if they were to take their work seriously and qualify.

Ann’s father had died the previous year, leaving her reasonably well provided for, and his estate, divided between her stepmother and herself, was administered by trustees, who paid her fees and made her an allowance to enable her to live until she qualified. Michael was paying his own fees and living on a disablement pension which covered little more than the cost of his room and his meals/ He was not, of course, disabled in any but the strictly Service meaning of the word, and until he mentioned casually that he had a metal plate in his head as the result of a plane crash, she had not imagined that there was anything wrong with him. He had been in the Royal Air Force and, after having been shot down in Korea, had spent almost a year as a prisoner in Chinese hands, after which he had been invalided out.

“Luckily I’d already started medicine before I joined the R.A.F.,” he explained. “With my first two years behind me, the obvious thing to do seemed to be to go back to it, and the University very decently agreed to reinstate me, so . . . here I am. A bit long in the tooth for a medical student, I fear, and with a younger brother who’s already through, but what would you do? I’m not ambitious, like Nick, and to be quite honest, I’d set my heart on flying as a career, but medicine is a sort of family tradition, so no doubt I shall settle to it quite happily. My father used to be in Harley Street and Nick aims to follow him there eventually, but I look no further than a nice, quiet country practice under the Health Service when Martha’s lets me loose on an unsuspecting world. Which won’t be for a few years yet. What about you? You started late too, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Ann had agreed briefly, conscious as always of the ache in her throat which invariably came when she was forced to speak of the accident which had ended her own career and robbed her of all her bright, wonderful childhood dreams. “I was with the Sadlers Wells Ballet. I started dancing when I was six and I was just beginning my first season as a solo dancer when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“I fractured my left ankle. It was the silliest thing, not in the least dramatic—I slipped, stepping off a pavement.” She managed a smile and recited from the textbook: “It was a Pott’s fracture-dislocation, involving rupture of the internal lateral ligament, and the fibula was also fractured obliquely five centimetres above its lower end. The foot was everted and displaced backwards, with the internal malleolus projecting through the skin.”

“Nasty,” was Michael’s comment, delivered with a thoughtful frown. She was grateful for his matter-of-factness.

“Yes,” she admitted, “it was, and unfortunately a wellmeaning attempt on the part of a passer-by to give me firstaid made matters worse. Although it healed quite well in the end, they wouldn’t let me go on dancing. So”—she shrugged—“that’s why I’m here at the advanced age of twenty-four.”

“But”—he still wasn’t quite satisfied, his dark eyes gravely searching her face— “why medicine? Why not the stage or films or modelling or something? I should have thought—”

“That they’d be closer to the ballet than medicine? Well, I thought that too, at first. But they aren’t, you know, they’re poles apart. I tried modelling for a time but I hated it. There’s a tremendous dedication in dancing, Michael. It takes everything you have to give. Oddly enough, I think medicine comes closer to the sort of life I was leading before than anything else.”

“So you’re dedicating yourself to medicine then?” Michael suggested. When she didn’t answer, he pursued: “But what made you think of it in the first place?”

This wasn’t a difficult question to answer and Ann smiled. “Well, I was in and out of hospital, having treatment for my ankle. Eventually they sent me here, to Sir Howard Phelps. I found I was interested in the work that was being done and in the people who were doing it It fascinated me, and so did the other patients who came in with me. I used to talk to them by the hour in Out Patients, while we were waiting for our appointments. Then I went up to Yorkshire and stayed with an uncle of mine who is in practice there, and he suggested I should study medicine. I think he sensed that I was rather lost and—oh, I suppose I talked about the hospital rather a lot. I decided to take his advice, but it was an impulsive decision, really; I mean, I’d never have thought of doing anything of the kind if Uncle Robert hadn’t put the idea into my head. He’s a widower and both his sons were killed in Italy in the war. He’s quite well off and he has a big practice—he’s promised to take me in with him when

I get through. If—as he puts it—I survive the matrimonial hazards to which he is convinced all women medical students fall victim sooner or later!”

“And do you think you will survive the hazards?” Michael had asked.

“Oh, yes, I’m sure I shall. I want to be a doctor very much, you see.”

It was then that they had made their pact and Michael had said laughing: “I must take care that you never run up against my brother Nick.”

“Why? Don’t you think I’d be able to resist him?”

“You probably would—it’s he who wouldn’t be able to resist you.”

“That’s a strange argument, surely? If you can——”

“Ah,” Michael had said, “Nick and I are opposites. As different as chalk from cheese. Nick’s brilliant, where I’m just a plodder. And he’s a great lady’s man and a social success where I’m a dull dog. He is a connoisseur of feminine beauty and he would look at you and see perfection. You’re very lovely, Ann, you know. And—I suppose it’s your early training as a dancer—but you have so much grace and dignity. You may dress up in a white coat and call yourself a medical student, but you still don’t look like the others. Or move or talk like them! Nick would fall for you the instant he set eyes on you. And that would be a pity.”

“Why would that be a pity?”

“Oh, because Nick is Nick. You’ll understand when you do meet him. You spoke of dedication just now. Well Nick’s dedicated to surgery and he’s ambitious. He’ll get to the top, not only because he’s got a terrific brain but also because there’s a strong streak of ruthlessness in him. He will sacrifice anything or anybody, including himself, to get what he wants. And whilst he likes women, I don’t think he’ll ever marry. He won’t want to be tied. Certainly not for years, his plans don’t allow for any serious entanglements. If he does take a wife, it won’t be until he’s completed Phase One of his plan and then he’ll either marry a girl who can be of use to him professionally or socially, or else a colourless mouse, who’ll run his house and entertain his friends, without making any other claims on his time or his attention. I know—he’s told me about it dozens of times.”

“What is he doing now?” Anne wanted to know.

“He’s house-surgeon to Sir Clement Wills at St Alfred’s. When he finishes there, he’s going to the States for two years on an exchange Fellowship which he hopes will lead him, in the fullness of time, to the Mayo Clinic. I expect it will—Nick always gets what he wants and knows exactly where he is going. Phase One will be completed when he gets his Master of Surgery degree and a consultant’s appointment at Martha’s or Alfred’s. He reckons it will take him five years from now, allowing a year in a senior resident appointment here when he comes back from the States.”

“Oh,” said Ann, a trifle flatly. She was not altogether sure that she liked the sound of Nicholas Loder. But Michael so obviously admired his brother that she only said mildly: “Well, I hope it all goes according to plan for him. So few things in life ever do, though, do they? After all, look at our plans, yours and mine. You wanted to fly and I wanted to dance. I don’t know what your secret dream was, but mine was to dance Swan Lake and to watch an audience rise to me because they were so deeply moved they couldn’t help it.”

“Mine was to break the altitude record,” Michael said, and sighed. “I never came near to doing it But Nick’s different. Things always go right for him, perhaps because it never enters his head that he could fail. He passes exams without visible effort. Which reminds me”—he opened one of his textbooks and passed it across to her—” hear me in virus infections, will you? From page eighty-six.”

Ann complied.

From time to time, as she and Michael worked their way slowly towards their final year, he gave her news of his brother’s progress. Sometimes he read Nicholas’ letters aloud to her, but more often he quoted them from memory. And it seemed that, for Nicholas, things were going according to plan. He was an intern in a vast New York hospital on the East Side for the first six months: then he took a post-graduate course at John Hopkins and this was followed by a senior internship in another hospital in Chicago, where he was able to do a great deal of major surgery. Finally, after eighteen months in America, he wrote that he was going to the Mayo Clinic to work under the world famous heart surgeon Willard Pottinger. He had gained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons before leaving England. Now he returned briefly in order to submit his thesis for the senior degree and, as might have been expected, this was on the operative treatment of valvular diseases of the heart and was brilliantly successful.

Michael saw him on two or three occasions whilst he was in London, Ann not at all, and he went back to the Mayo Clinic crowned with fresh glory and with the promise of a senior resident’s post at St. Alfred’s whenever he should choose to apply for it—a promise offered quite spontaneously by his old chief Sir Clement Wills just before he sailed.

For Ann and Michael, both doing their practical midwifery in the East End of London, his visit was vaguely unsettling. They were working long hours in the worst possible weather, with broken nights and little sleep and with the threat of their Finals hanging over them, and somehow Nicholas’ extraordinary, seemingly effortless success filled Ann, at all events, with bitterness. She quarrelled, for the first time since they had met, with Michael, standing in the hall of a draughty tenement house near the Docks in which she had just delivered twins. The quarrel was a stupid one and they quickly made it up, but Ann didn’t forget it.

She was, she realized, very fond of Michael, and she depended more than she cared to admit on his easy, good-natured company, but—it was a big but—she couldn’t share or even understand his strangely humble devotion to his younger brother. She was coming increasingly to realize that it was bound up, so far as Michael was concerned, with lack of personal ambition. Michael worked hard but he was content to scrape through his exams, and he wasted time, when he should have been studying, with things that didn’t matter. He formed friendships with the people he met on his midwifery visits, spent money he could ill afford on buying presents for the babies he delivered and went back, unnecessarily, to see them.

Ann herself was soft-hearted: the poverty she saw and the conditions in which her patients lived moved her deeply, but she accepted the fact that, until she qualified, there was little she could do to be of practical assistance beyond the task alloted to her. And the important thing was, of course, to get through the Finals. She brought to her work the same studied concentration that she had given to her dancing; she took it seriously but she forced herself to regard it impersonally, in the same way as she forced herself to regard Michael impersonally. At this stage, textbooks had to come before people. It was a crucial stage for both of them and there was so much to learn and to remember.

She spent what spare time she had with Michael. They partnered each other to the hospital dances and were invited as a couple to any parties that were going: it was taken for granted that Michael and she went about together and the fact that they were older than the others set them apart, as it always had. Even if they had wanted to separate, it would have been difficult—the habit of years is hard to break and, in any case, neither of them wanted to break this habit. There seemed no reason why they should.

If there were moments when Ann Sensed that Michael regretted their decision to keep sentiment from entering their relationship with each other, she quietened her conscience by reminding herself that he never openly said so. He had had a number of girl friends in his Air Force days, but only one had been serious. He seemed satisfied with their casual, platonic companionship most of the time: on occasions, if he took her out to dinner or brought her home from a dance, he kissed her good night, but she didn’t encourage him to do so at any other time. And he never complained, had seldom to be reminded of their pact. They were both working under great pressure as the date of the Finals approached, and they were anxious and tired, snatching what sleep they could, concentrating wholly on their work and spending every moment, when they weren’t on the wards, poring over their notes or devouring textbooks at a sitting.

The Finals came at last and occupied more than a week, with orals following the written papers and practicals interspersed with these.

After the first two days of it, Ann went about in a sort of strange, frozen calm, her brain seeming to function as a separate entity over which she had little control. She answered questions from memory but had no idea, when she had answered them, whether they were right or wrong, although occasionally, during an oral, the gleam of triumph in an examiner’s eyes would warn her that she had erred. She ate meals at widely separated intervals but tasted little of what she ate and could not have said afterwards where or what she had eaten.

In the evenings, over coffee with Michael at the shabby little cafe which most of Martha’s students patronized, because of its cheapness and its proximity to the hospital, she compared notes with him on the day’s experiences but was little the wiser after she had done so. It seemed to add to rather than detract from her feeling of acute depression.

“How do you think you got on?” he would ask her, when they had given their order to old Luigi behind the counter. And: “Oh, so-so, I suppose,” she would answer and they would look at each other and sigh.

I thought the first was worse.”

“The Gynae. paper stank. I did the first part all right but the second. . .”

“Good Lord, did you? I didn’t think it was too bad.”

At the other tables, similar questions were being asked and the same replies or variations of them being given in strained weary voices. An atmosphere of hushed gloom hung over the room with its crowded tables and its blue clouds of cigarette smoke. Even the third-year students were grim and silent, in sympathy with their seniors. The others, aware that this ordeal would be theirs all too soon, were grim and silent on their own account. Only old Luigi, beaming as always from behind his shining urn, remained cheerful and unconcerned. Finals were part of life to him.

And then miraculously, it was all over. The die was cast, for good or ill, and there was nothing more to be done, save wait with growing tension for the results.

“Do you think you passed, Ann?” Michael demanded.

Ann could only shrug. “I don’t know, Michael, I simply and honestly don’t know, and I’m too tired to weigh up my chances. What about you?”

“I think I may have scraped through by the skin of my teeth. I got Sir Clement for my Surgery viva and it was hell. He and Nick hit it off like anything, but I can’t imagine why. He was peevish and obviously suffering from indigestion, and he set out to trick me into making an ass of myself—needless to tell you, I did.”

“He was rather sweet to me,” Ann confided. She didn’t add that he had congratulated her when she left him. “It was Mr. Humphries who was my undoing. I fell into every single trap he laid.” She sipped her coffee with closed eyes. It tasted like nothing she could remember drinking before. Michael talked on, analyzing, going back over the exam, step by step, and she heard him in a daze.

“All things considered,” he said at last, “I think I’m through. I certainly hope so. I can’t imagine anything worse than going through all that again.”

“Nor can I,” Ann agreed, rousing herself and reaching across the table for his hand. “Michael, let’s forget it, shall we, and talk about something else?”

“All right, let’s. Ann, I”—his strong brown hand tightened about hers and suddenly, in spite of her weariness, she was aware of a change in him, aware of his eyes fixed on her face and burning with a strange, bright radiance she had never seen in them before—“there is something I want to talk to you about. Something I want to tell you. I hadn’t meant to say anything until the results came through but—” he hesitated.

She guessed what he was going to say and was filled with inexplicable panic. “Why not wait till we know the results?” she suggested weakly.

“Do you want me to? Ann don’t you know how I feel about you? Surely you must!”

“I—yes, I suppose I do. But I’m awfully tired, Michael, nothing’s making sense I’m so tired. Couldn’t it wait? This isn’t the time or—or the place. And we did promise each other. The pact was made until we both qualified. It’s not much longer to wait, is it, really?”

He didn’t argue, but the light faded from his eyes and she was instantly contrite. She was so fond of Michael.

“All right, Ann,” he said slowly, “if you’d rather wait.”

“I would, I—oh, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m being stupid and childish, but all the time we’ve known each other, I’ve been so careful just to think of you as—as a friend. My best friend, the friend I value more than any other. It will take a little time to—well, to think of you as anything else.”

“You could start thinking though, couldn’t you?” Michael persisted. He reddened. “I’m afraid I did that some time ago, darling. I’m thirty-three, you know, and this sort of life, seeing you every day . . .” He broke off and spread his hands helplessly. “I’m afraid it was inevitable, Ann.”

“What was?” Ann asked. The moment she had said it, she knew that it was a mistake. He raised her hand to his lips. “That I should fall in love with you, darling,” he told her quietly.

“Oh. Oh, I see. But, Michael, we—that is——”

“We can’t get married yet, I know,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “Not till I’m in practice. But we could get engaged, couldn’t we? If you’d like to . . . once we’re through, I mean. With any luck, we’ll both get house jobs at either Martha’s or Alfred’s, and it would be fun to be engaged, wouldn’t it? In other circumstances we’d have married each other a couple of years ago.”

“Yes,” Ann admitted, “I suppose we would.” She managed to smile at him but it was an effort. She felt completely drained of emotion and so exhausted that it was difficult to keep her eyelids from drooping. Michael saw it and got to his feet, holding out both hands to her.

“You’re just about asleep,” he reproached her, without rancour. “If it comes to that, so am I. We’ll call it a day, shall we? And I’ll postpone my official proposal to a more fitting occasion. The day we hear the results, we’ll go and dine in the West End and I’ll do my stuff to soft lights and sweet music, with champagne flowing like water and all the trimmings thrown in. I’ll sweep you off your feet with my ardour, darling, so that there’ll be no possibility of your turning me down. There”—he paid the bill, responded to old Luigi’s cheerful goodnight and, tucking her arm under his, thrust a way to the door. “Come on, I’ll see you home. And you can sleep the clock round—there’ll be nothing to get up for tomorrow, thank heaven. And not a thing to worry about, except those infernal results.”

“No,” Ann answered, “not a thing, Michael.” But as she followed him into the darkness of the drab street, she knew that what he had said would worry her. It wasn’t, of course, entirely unexpected but—it was a shock, all the same. She was deeply attached to Michael yet until this moment she hadn’t ever asked herself if she were in love with him. And even now, she wasn’t sure. For the three years she had known him, she had put her work first, but Michael had always been there, sharing it with her, part of it and of her life—an inseparable part. She would miss him unendurably if he were to leave her now. To lose Michael would be—why, it would be like losing a limb. But, like his brother Nicholas, she was ambitious, Ann thought. She, too, wanted to get to the top of her chosen profession now: she felt about it as she had once felt about dancing, only with more intensity. It would be a waste of all these years of study and training—six years, now, she had given to it—just to marry Michael and settle down as his wife in a country practice somewhere in some sleepy market town.

Michael, she thought, wouldn’t get any further than that, he didn’t want to, but—she did. She wanted a house surgeon’s appointment on Mr. Lyle’s firm or Sir Martin Fitzcarron’s. She wanted to use the knowledge she had acquired and go on using it. Like Nicholas, she didn’t want to be tied, she wanted to be free of claims on heir emotions, even though it was Michael who made them. If Michael had been prepared to stay in London, it would have been easier. She could have married him and still gone on doing the work she wanted to do in the way she wanted to do it. At Martha’s, progressing steadily up the scale, learning as she went . . . but . . . her mouth curved suddenly into a smile. She was being premature, they both were. The results were yet to come, and not an hour ago, she had been convinced, in her heart, that she had failed.

They might both have failed, if it came to that, although Michael, for him, had been fairly confident. Michael saw her smile and misunderstood it. He hailed a taxi and helped her into it.

“Damn the expense,” he said, putting his arm round her shoulders as the taxi drew away from the curb. “And who cares if your flat is only just around the next corner? I want to kiss you, Ann. I want to make you fall in love with me.” He held her close. “Nick’s coming home next month,” he went on, an odd, almost wistful note in his voice. “I’d like you to meet him. But not until you’re engaged to me, Ann.”

Ann was reminded suddenly of their quarrel, which had been the result of his refusal to introduce her to his brother. “Is that why”—she sat up, staring at him in the dimness of the taxi—“is that why you’ve never let me meet him before?”

Michael sighed. “Yes,” he admitted, “that’s why. I know Nick, you see. You’re just his type. And once before—oh, it was ages ago—he took my girl away from me. It didn’t matter then, I wasn’t in love with her. But now it matters, Ann. I’m in love with you, darling.”

His mouth found hers and he crushed her fiercely to him. “I don’t know how I’ve had the strength to keep up our pact until now,” he told her softly. “It’s been the devil of a strain. But we’ll get engaged when the results come through, won’t we? Ann, you do care about me a little, don’t you? Please, darling, tell me the truth!”

“You know I care about you, Michael. I care about you a great deal, far more than I care about anyone else.”

“Good,” whispered Michael exultantly. He released her as the taxi drew up outside her block of flats. “Roll on the twenty-fifth!”

On the twenty-fifth, the results of the Final Examinations were posted on the notice board at St. Martha’s Hospital.

Ann’s name appeared at the top of the list as the winner of the Duffield Gold Medal, but Michael’s wasn’t on it.

Chapter two

Nicholas Loder stood at the entrance to the First Class Lounge of the R.M.S. Shagreen and looked about him with narrowed eyes.

Sir Martin Fitzcarron and his wife were sitting at a table by themselves, some distance from the band. They were talking in desultory fashion, but Lady Fitzcarron, who was American and many years younger than her distinguished husband, was tapping a neatly shod foot in time to the music and looking frankly bored. Sir Martin was a tall, handsome man in his late fifties, renowned for his wit and charm, but he didn’t dance if he could avoid it and at this moment did not appear to be exercising either wit or charm for his wife’s benefit. He had some papers he was studying and clearly would have preferred to be anywhere but where he was.

Nicholas hesitated, fingering his tie. He had been placed at the Fitzcarron’s table in the dining-saloon and Sir Martin had been extremely affable to him, remembering his name—although he had been only a junior houseman the last time they had met—and even showing a flattering knowledge of the course his career had taken over the past few years.

“Let’s see now—you’ve been working at the Mayo Clinic under Willard Pottinger, haven’t you? Wonderful experience for you, my boy—experience few of our young surgeons are ever lucky enough to get. I heard about your thesis. A number of my colleagues were very much impressed by it and it’s been talked about quite a bit. And what now, eh? I imagine the sky will be your limit once you get back to London. Where are you heading for— Harley Street, I suppose?”

Nicholas hadn’t been given the chance to answer him, for Lady Fitzcarron discouraged the talking of “shop” in her presence. She liked the conversation to be light and brittle and meaningless, and good manners demanded that, at meal times at all events, her wishes must be studied. He had studied them, gratified to find himself on friendly terms with her and pleased by Sir Martin’s interest. Sir Martin Fitzcarron was at the very top of his profession: he had impressive rooms in Harley Street and was one of the examining board of the Royal College of Surgeons, in addition to which he was senior surgical consultant to St. Martha’s Hospital, with a long string of letters after his name. An important and very influential man, and it was frustrating to have to sit opposite him three times a day and be compelled to talk of nothing more significant than Lady Fitzcarron’s opinion of England, Paris fashions and the weather. A unique opportunity to make a good impression on a man who could have helped him considerably if he chose, but an opportunity of which Nicholas had been unable to make use because Sir Martin was travelling with his wife . . . it was a pity. Lost opportunities seldom repeated themselves.

Not, of course, that he had to worry too much about influence now, Nicholas reflected. His work, his degrees and the experience he had gained in his two years in the States would open doors to him which had been closed before. He had the promise of a job at Alfred’s under his old chief, Sir Clement Wills, but it would only be an ordinary surgical registrar’s job and he wanted more than that. He could only afford to give another year to resident hospital work—two at the outside. The pay, in British hospitals, was very poor, but to have attempted to set up in Harley Street without that year would, he knew, be madness. He had to bring himself to the notice of men like Sir Martin Fitzcarron so that, when the time came for him to apply for a consultant appointment, he could count on their backing. And in Harley Street one needed the cases which recently qualified students, launching out in general practice, were able to send one: ex-students of Alfred’s and Martha’s naturally sent their cases to consultants with whose work they were familiar. The only way in which he could familiarize the present students with his work was to do it where they could see it, in the hospital. So he had to do at least one more year, there was no way round it, but he wished, glancing again in Sir Martin’s direction, that for once—even if it were only for ten minutes—Lady Fitzcarron would leave him by himself.

The registrarship on Sir Martin’s firm meant automatic assumption of the duties of senior resident surgeon, a position of considerable authority in a hospital of the size of Martha’s. And Sir Martin could dish it out to whom he chose. . . .

Nicholas wondered, standing there, still nervously fingering his tie, whether he should go and ask Lady Fitzcarron to dance with him. As he hesitated, she caught his eye, smiled and turned to her husband, evidently calling the great man’s attention to his presence. They exchanged a few brief words and then he saw sir Martin’s blunt well-kept hand rise in an inviting gesture. Eagerly he strode across the crowded dance floor to join them, a tall, slim, extremely good-looking young man, his normally grave face lit by a delighted smile.

Lady Fitzcarron said softly, as he made his way towards them: “What an attractive boy that is—those blue eyes, with such dark hair, most unusual. And his manners are charming. You like him, don’t you, Martin?”

“Oh, yes, very much. He’s one of the best students we’ve had in the last ten years. A first-class brain. And he’s a Martha’s man. But” —he paused, watching Nicholas and a hint of dryness crept into his voice as he went on: “I sometimes wonder if he isn’t too perfect.”

“What do you mean? I think he’s very natural and diffident. And—considering all he has achieved—he’s extraordinarily modest. He seems to have every degree under the sun and he’s—how old? Thirty?”

Sir Martin’s iron grey brows came together. “No, he isn’t thirty. Twenty-eight or nine, probably. He’s come a very long way in a short time. Rather a contrast to his elder brother, who’s a student at Martha’s now—used to be in the Air Force . . . Michael. He’s just been ploughed in his Finals.”

“How strange.” The dance ended and a stream of people leaving the floor came between Nicholas and themselves. Lady Fitzcarron said: “Isn’t he just what you’re looking for, Martin? You said yourself that——”

“I know what I said,” her husband interrupted. He was still frowning. “And I’ve been thinking about him, I must confess. Thinking pretty seriously. Academically, of course, I can’t fault him. It’s just that—I don’t know. He’s had it comparatively easy, it’s no effort to him to pass exams and acquire degrees. But doing that doesn’t make a surgeon. It’s the human element that counts. I tell you, that young man is too perfect. I sometimes wonder if he’s got a heart and if he has, whether he follows it. Ambition is a good thing in a young man, but it’s got to be tempered with humanity. A cold, efficient technician isn’t a successful surgeon, you know.”

“Isn’t he?” Lady Fitzcarron was losing interest in this discussion. “Nicholas Loder would be very useful at dinner parties,” she pointed out. “And he certainly doesn’t strike me as inhuman. Not with those eyes! Why, I guess every woman he meets falls for him hard — even I experienced a little fluttering of the heart when he looks at me, Martin. You don’t mind, do you?”

He smiled at her with understanding. “Then off you go and dance with him,” he suggested. “And you can sound him out for me, if you like. See how he reacts. I gather Clement Wills wants him back, but I don’t suppose he’d object if I took him on instead—I can give him a better job. And then you’ll have him for your dinner parties.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “I could go with him. Your last registrar may have been both human and a good surgeon but he certainly wasn’t a social asset, was he? And you, dear Martin, are so seldom willing to dance with me.”

Nicholas approached her chair. “I wondered,” he said diffidently, “if I might have a dance, Lady Fitzcarron? If you’ve no objections, sir?”

“I have no objection at all, Loder. My wife is longing to dance and I’m sure she’ll enjoy dancing with you. Away you go with my blessing. When you’ve had enough, come and join me in a nightcap. I’d like to talk to you.”

“Thank you, sir. Nothing would please me more.” Nicholas was aware of a quickening of his pulses as he took Lady Fitzcarron into his arms. But it wasn’t the fact that he was dancing with so lovely a woman that pleased him and set the blood pounding in his veins. She might have been any woman, so far as he was concerned, old or young, slim or plump, attractive or the reverse. She was the wife of Sir Martin Fitzcarron and Sir Martin had invited him to share a nightcap, had said he wanted to talk to him, which could and might mean anything.

Lady Fitzcarron said suddenly: “You dance very well, Mr. Loder.”

“Do I? I don’t normally. I think it must be because I’m dancing with you.”

“A very pretty speech,” she told him, laughing up into his face. Her eyes were wide and dark but they were shrewd eyes and he found their scrutiny oddly disconcerting.

“It’s the truth,” he protested, continuing lightly to hold her as the music ceased. “Shall we go on? I’d like it very much it you would—if only in order to prove my point.”

“Which is?”

“That I enjoy dancing with you, Lady Fitzcarron.”

“I see. I shall call you Nicholas, if you don’t mind. And you can call me Barbara.”

He reddened, faintly shocked by her directness and suddenly aware of her as a woman. “Of course, I’d love it if you would use my Christian name, but I don’t think I should use yours. In view of your husband’s position, in relation to my own.”

“Have it your own way.” The dance band went into a quickstep and she moved closer to him. “My husband,” she went on, as his arms tightened about her, “is thinking of offering you a job, Nicholas, which could lead you in the direction you want to go—eventually. He’s not young and he finds his practice too much for him to manage single handed. He’s looking for a young man—the right young man—to act as his assistant. It would mean working with him at St. Martha’s to begin with, as a member of his— what do you call it? Firm. We call it ‘team’ in the States, of course.”

“Yes,” Nicholas confirmed, “I know.” His voice was strained, his heart beating so fast now that it threatened to suffocate him. This was opportunity undreamed-of, unprecedented, and it was his to seize. But a natural caution restrained him. He waited for Barbara Fitzcarron to continue. She did so, smiling up at him.

“I have a good deal of influence with my husband,” she said. “As you probably know, I’m his second wife and we’ve only been married five years. I have to do a lot of entertaining for him and it would be a help if his assistant were a personable young man like you, Nicholas—I need an assistant almost as much as he does, you see. A bachelor, of course.”

“I’m a bachelor, Lady Fitzcarron.”

“And do you intend to remain one for the next few years?”

“Yes,” he said firmly, “I do.”

“From my angle,” she told him frankly, “you’re ideal. My husband is less certain of you from the professional angle, but it would be up to you to convince him, wouldn’t it? And I’m sure you could, Nicholas. If I use my influence to set your feet on the first rung of the ladder, that’s all you’d need, isn’t it?”

“I think so, yes. I do know my job, Lady Fitzcarron.” He was at pains to avoid her questioning gaze. “What do Sir Martin’s professional doubts amount to, if I may ask?”

“You shouldn’t ask me,” she reproached him, “and I ought not to betray a confidence. But I’m going to, because Martin will tell you nothing and he won’t mention the chance of a partnership until you’ve resolved his doubts. Put quite simply, he wonders if your ambition is tempered with humanity. He’s afraid you may be a cold efficient technician without a heart.”

“And”—Nicholas was visibly taken aback—“do you think I’m inhumanly ambitious, Lady Fitzcarron?”

“I don’t know,” she returned lightly. “Our acquaintance is very recent and superficial, isn’t it? But we shall improve it. Instinct tells me that you are all you seem and my instinct isn’t often at fault, I go by it a lot. My husband is always accusing me of being too impulsive, but I’m not British, I’m American. You’ve been in America for long enough to know the difference, surely?”

“I—yes, perhaps I have.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you have. You accept frankness. You’ve just accepted mine.”

“I prefer it, Lady Fitzcarron.”

“Then I can promise you that you shall always have it, Nicholas.”

“Thank you,” he said, still a little out of his depth with her. The quickstep ended but she remained in his arms. “I think you should understand,” she told him softly, “that I’m devoted to my husband. But he is a very busy man and I don’t see as much of him as I should like to, and—I get very lonely. Besides, I’m much younger than he is and I enjoy things he doesn’t enjoy—the theatre, dancing, automobile runs, picnics. Only they’re not much fun if one has to do them alone, are they?”