Free Nurse Lang by Jean S. Macleod

four-poster—”
    He turned to stare at her. She had been about to tell him that she thought it a delightful room, as indeed it could have been, but the conventional words stuck in her throat as she saw the greyness of his face and the harsh, determined line of his mouth.
    “Kerry’s room!” he said, and the words seemed driven from him against his will. “No one must be there—ever again—in this house!” He went down the stairs as if he had forgotten that she was standing there and she could not bring herself to follow him. Her limbs felt frozen as she waited, and suddenly the silence in the great house seemed ominous.
    Somehow she knew that Serena was waiting down there in the hall, and then she heard Grant’s heavy tread on the bare flags and Serena’s short, mirthless laugh.
    “Where is Philip’s nurse?”
    “She’s in the room you gave her.” Moira could scarcely recognize the voice as Grant’s. It was harsh and deeply shaken with subdued passion and she imagined that his cousin must recoil before it. “Why did you do this, Serena?” he demanded. “Why did you put her in that room when you knew how much it means to all of us?”
    Moira fled before she could hear Serena’s answer, running back along the corridor to the room the other woman had allotted her for some motive of her own. There could be no denying the fact that Serena had put her there deliberately and Grant’s reaction had been all that she had expected.
    Reluctantly she made her way back to the top of the staircase. There was silence in the hall below, and as she went down she saw Grant waiting there. His mouth was still compressed and the expression in his grey eyes was hard to define.
    “I’ve arranged for you to have the room next to Philip’s,” he said briefly. “Serena made a mistake in her choice of rooms. I shall arrange to have your suitcase taken along there after lunch and the room will be aired before you use it. You will find it more convenient for attending to Philip.”
    It was a difficult meal. Serena directed her conversation solely to Grant, asking about Philip’s accident and their journey home.
    “Of course, he should never have gone out there,” she said decisively. “It was a foolish thing to do, even though it was mostly reaction. I still think you should have done something to stop him, Grant, instead of encouraging him by financing the trip.”
    “There was no other way, within reason,” he said stiffly. “He had to get it out of his system.”
    “And what has happened now?” Serena asked deliberately. “I can’t exactly see Philip accepting the future philosophically.”
    “No philosophy has ever been strong enough to reconcile youth to such a fate,” Grant returned harshly. “In spite of himself, Philip must be made to believe in this operation—the hope of its success. He must be made to see it as the answer to his future.”
    “What do you believe?” Serena asked pitilessly. “What is the real truth?”
    “He has a chance. I can’t say anything more than that.”
    The words themselves might have conveyed a sense of defeat if his voice had not sounded so grimly determined, and Serena forestalled Moira by saying:
    “You’ll do your best for him. I know that. When he is well enough Philip will go across to the hospital,” he told Serena, “but in the meantime I think that he should be here, away from the constant reminder of operations and the medical background. At the moment he’s extremely sensitive to that sort of thing.” He rose, looking across the table at Moira. “I’m going across there now,” he said. “Would you like to come?”
    She got up thankfully, conscious of Serena’s displeasure like a drawn sword quivering in the air between them.
    “Is there nothing I can do for Philip?” she asked.
    “He ought to be asleep by now,” he said, “and it will let him relax if he knows you are not available to answer his bell all afternoon.”
    Moira went to find her hat,