Nurse for the Doctor Page 17

  “Yes?” sharply. “What did he hint?”

  She thought perhaps she should not have involved Michael, but it was too late now.

  “I think he honestly thought you were planning to marry Miss Petersen. He said that Dona Maria thought so, too.”

  “Maria knew—from the beginning—how I felt about you.”

  “Oh!”

  “So Michael let you believe I was serious about Sylvia? Did he?” She nodded. “And what did you think—last night? When you arrived for the party?”

  “I thought—it was a party at which you would announce your engagement.”

  “To another woman?—Although I love you!”

  “I couldn’t be sure, I ... And you were very attentive to Miss Petersen—always!” She suddenly felt a little indignant, when she thought of her sufferings of that day—and worse sufferings the night before. “If you were merely playing the part of host, you did it very well, and you must remember I had no real idea how you felt about anything. I think most people in my position would have believed you were going to marry Sylvia. Michael honestly, I am sure, thought so, and at least he did ask me to marry him several weeks ago.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. And I think he was serious—at the time. Poor Michael doesn’t know what he wants from life.”

  “One thing is certain,” he said, between his teeth, “he will not have you.” She was amazed to feel him trembling with a kind of fury. “Last night he completed the misery that rushed over me when you arrived with that devoted Cavalho in attendance. Tia Amelie must have had one thought only in mind when she decided to get you included as a guest, and that was to issue me a warning in case I waited too long. And you were so cool and distant to me—you looked at me even with a kind of contempt—that I was afraid I had already delayed too long. And I telephoned this morning to invite myself to dinner tonight, for the sole purpose of seeing you, and having things out with you.”

  “I know—I mean, I know you invited yourself to dinner. But I didn’t want to see you.” She caught her breath as she recalled how unhappy she had been that morning. “And in order to avoid seeing you I decided I must go home.”

  Carlos’s arm strained her to him, and he muttered something huskily in Spanish. She had already discovered that in moments of stress his English evaded him a little.

  “And how do you think I felt,” he asked, after a moment, “when Tia Amelie contacted me when you had actually left for the station and told me that you were going home to England? Apparently she had been trying to get in touch with me all day, but I was out; and although she tried my clubs—everywhere she thought I might be—it was not until you were practically leaving Madrid that she got through to me. Oh, Josie,” his voice sounding actually strangled, “that was the cruellest thing you could do to me, and if I was wrong not to make myself clear to you weeks ago then at least you can feel now that I have been punished. With so very few minutes to snatch you off the train I thought I was living in a nightmare.”

  “I’m sorry,” Josie said but at heart she was glad that he had suffered just a little. And then her conscience pricked her, and she put up a hand and touched his cheek in the darkness. “What would you have done if—if it had been too late to snatch me off the train?”

  “Chartered a plane and flown after you to England, of course,” he answered immediately. “But the thought of you and your unhappiness would have upset me very much, because Tia Amelie did tell me you were very unhappy—she knew that!”

  “Dear Dona Amelie!” Josie’s eyes grew very soft as she thought of her, and the efforts she had made on her behalf. And then her love for him rushed up and filled every corner of her heart, and she added, in rather a choking little voice: “Oh, Carlos—darling! I’m sorry I did what I did. It was rather cruel—I realize that now. But you must understand that never—at any time—have I been sure of you.”

  “Except now? You are sure of me now?”

  She quivered in his hold, pressing herself against him. “Yes, I’m—sure of you now.”

  And then as he kissed her again she wound her arms around his neck and held him tightly to make up for the fact that he had only one arm with which to do the same to her.

  Some ten minutes later, when the car still seemed to be travelling along very smoothly, although there were not quite so many lights, he recollected their immediate position.

  “I promised Tia Amelie to take you back at once,” he said; “but my instruction to Fernandez was to drive on until I ordered him to stop, and I had better do so now.” He addressed the Chauffeur through the speaking-tube. “We will now return to Tia Amelie,” and he lay back and drew her back into the hold of his arm. “She is old, and will be growing very impatient.”

  “You—she—she approves of your—your interest in me?” she asked shyly, not knowing how otherwise to put it.

  “She approves of my wanting to marry you.”

  “But you have not yet asked me to marry you—not really asked me!”

  “No; but I will. At the moment we are arriving, so I cannot do so with all the formality you seem to require, and which is of course desirable; but before the evening is out I will most decidedly ask you to marry me.” And he smiled at her very tenderly as he helped her from the car.

  Dona Amelie didn’t wait to receive them in her drawing room; she came out into the hall.

  “So you’ve brought her back!” she said, and her old face seemed to be working a little as she looked at her nephew.

  “Yes, I’ve brought her back,” he said quietly.

  Dona Amelie held out both her arms to Josie, and for a few seconds the girl was folded close, and the perfume of sandalwood enveloped her. Then she heard the indomitable old lady she had lived with for weeks say in a tone of heartfelt gratitude: “I’m so glad! I couldn’t have borne to lose her—except when the right moment comes!”

  But she didn’t elaborate on the right moment, or say anything else appropriate, of inappropriate—according to what had taken place in the car on the way from the station, and which she had yet to learn—to the situation just then. Instead she announced that dinner was ready to be served, and they could dispense with formality for that one night, since Carlos had not had time to change into evening things, and Josie was wearing her travelling suit. But the girl looked curiously radiant, she thought, and she had never before seen Carlos look quite as he looked now. So she ushered them both towards the big dining room, and didn’t seem at all surprised when neither of them seemed very hungry, although the fact that she ordered champagne to be served with the meal indicated that she had high hopes of hearing something she wished to hear before very long.

  But she was the essence of tact, and they had had rather a gruelling day—or certainly Josie had—and she had no intention of attempting to extract information before they were willing to pass it on to her. So as soon as they returned to the main drawing room, she declared herself not yet capable of staying up very late, and intimated she would like to retire to bed immediately. So Josie saw her upstairs to her room and handed her over to the devoted ministrations of Carlotta before flying along to her own room and making sure that her appearance was all that it should be.

  When she went downstairs again the coffee-equipage had just been wheeled into the drawing room, and Carlos was standing over by one of the big windows and looking out at the lights of Madrid. He turned as soon as she entered, waited until the servant had withdrawn, and then crossed the room to meet her.

  Filled with shyness she found herself unable to meet his eyes.

  He put her into a chair.

  “You—you will have some coffee?” she asked.

  A tender smile appeared in his eyes.

  “The correct thing to say would be: ‘Will you have some coffee, Carlos, my darling?”

  Her hand trembled as she lifted the heavy silver sugar tongs.

  “You—you aren’t—officially—my darling yet,” she reminded him.

  “True.” He
stood looking down at her, at the small, shapely head covered in soft, fair curls, the delicate complexion—no amount of Costa Brava sun had been able to really tan it—the little unexpectedly firm chin, the flowerlike mouth. And his gaze having arrived at her mouth he suddenly dropped to his knees beside her chair, and huskily repeated “True!” Then he removed the sugar tongs from her hand, lifted her other and managed to secure them both tightly as he asked: “Josie! Please say you will be my most beloved wife ... I’ve never asked a woman to marry me before, but a Spaniard should be correct about these things, and there is your father who should be approached. However, he is not here, and you don’t think he will hesitate to give you to me, do you, darling?” as if the sudden fear that he might had crossed his mind.

  Josie smiled a little whimsically.

  “My father has never thought of possessing a marquis for a son-in-law. If you were just a very ordinary person like himself, I know he wouldn’t hesitate about it,” she ended a little breathlessly.

  Carlos looked at her gravely.

  “And you Josie? Would you prefer it if I were just an ordinary Spaniard—a farmer, like your father?”

  She touched his empty sleeve gently.

  “If you—had to work for your living—I could do so much to help you. If you were a poor man I could do the things a woman loves to do for a man—sew buttons on his shirts, and mend his socks, and cook for him. None of that will be necessary if I marry you. But,” looking at him with anxious eyes of her own, “there is another side of the picture. Sylvia Petersen would have made you entirely the right sort of wife—she is far more beautiful than I can ever hope to be, she has lived her life in the sort of world you’ve lived yours in always, and she would never be likely to fail you. I—I’m so ordinary .”

  “Josie,” he said sternly, “do you wish me to smother you with kisses before you’ve said that all-important ‘yes’?”

  Josie’s eyes filled suddenly with bright and shining tears. Her lips quivered with emotion.

  “I only want to say ‘yes’ quickly,” she managed, and was caught and held fast.

  His lustrous eyes looked down at her adoringly.

  “If you ever fail me, Josie,” he said, “then I shall never believe in anything again!”

  Later he inquired anxiously: “And it doesn’t distress you that I have only one arm? One arm with which to hold you close?”

  She shook her honey-gold head.

  “Why should it, when I have two?”

  He kissed her eyes, the entrancing soft curve of her cheek, the tip of her nose, and again her lips.

  At last he said: “We will invite all your family here for the wedding, and I want us to be married soon ... As soon as it can possibly be arranged.”

  Josie’s brown eyes looked up with complete capitulation.

  “It couldn’t be too soon for me,” she answered, and was horrified that she was incapable of dissimulation.

  And then suddenly she remembered something. She remembered the morning when she had seen him riding into the stable courtyard at the villa, with Sylvia perched on his pillion. And she asked, although she was certain she knew the answer: “Why did you suggest that I should ride with you one morning, and then take Sylvia Petersen pillion-riding instead? Because it was Sylvia, wasn’t it?”

  He remembered the morning just as clearly as she did. “No, my darling, it wasn’t. It was the daughter of my bailiff, who is just fourteen years old, and on holiday from her convent school farther along the coast. Why,” his eyes sparkled, “I believe you were jealous!”

  “I wasn’t merely jealous—I was devastated,” she confessed. “You see, up till that time you hadn’t asked Sylvia, and it was the first thing that made me hope at all when you—asked me!”

  “Beloved,” he breathed, against her lips, “in future, whatever we do we will do together. There will be no question of asking anyone else. It will be Josie and Carlos—Carlos and Josie. You will be my marquesa, and you will also be my heart’s desire.”

  THE END