Dear Tiberius; (aka Nurse Nolan) Read Online Free Page A

Nurse Nolan was to remain with her. She wound her thin arms around Lucy ’ s neck as she bent over her the following day to loop a ribbon through the fair hair, and gave her quite a powerful hug.
    “ It ’ s wonderful! ” she declared. “ And it ’ s still more wonderful that you ’ re going to wear ordinary clothes! ”
    Lucy laughed.
    “ Church-going clothes! ” she elaborated.
    “ Yes, church-going clothes! ”
    “ But if that is the desire of your royal highness I shall have to go to London to pick up rather more of my wardrobe. I ’ ve only got a few things here that I can wear, and in any case I didn ’ t imagine I would be away so long, so I ’ ll have to leave you for a brief spell. ”
    It was true that when she had obeyed the summons to go to Ketterings she had more or less “ downed tools ” and dropped everything, and she had certainly not imagined that the case would occupy so much of her time. She was provided with a room in her sister ’ s Chelsea apartment when she was not nursing, and that room housed practically all her possessions in this world.
    Sir John, when he was given to understand that Nurse Nolan required leave of absence for a few days, gave permission readily. And then he took Lucy completely aback by announcing that he intended to visit his firm ’ s London office and offered to drive her to London himself in his own car—or rather, he invited her to accompany him in the backseat of the car while his chauffeur drove them!
    At first Lucy was almost awed by the very thought of sharing the silver gray upholstered seat of the big Bentley for several hours with her employer, but that did not prevent her from feeling grateful for the invitation. And she accepted with a suitably demure expression that might, or might not, have deceived him.
    Against all precedent. Sir John stayed at Ketterings until Thursday. When he and Lucy left, Miranda and Miss Fiske waved to them from the window of the room that had once been Miranda ’ s schoolroom, and that overlooked the driveway. And then, as they glided away through the subdued brilliance of a perfect September morning, Lucy lay back against the seat and decided that she might as well make the most of this unique experience.
    They shot between the curly, wrought-iron gates that guarded the approach to the residence, and out into a winding country road bordered by high hedges alive, with rose hips, and the pink and orange flowers of the spindle tree. Beyond the hedges were brown fields where the newly turned earth was shimmering with gossamer, and beyond the fields the purple outline of the moor, with the white road cutting across it like a white ribbon unfolding itself until it reached the deeper purple distance, and the wavy line of hills.
    Lucy, in her neat gray tailored suit and little hat that sat more insecurely on her brown curls than her cap ever did—the outfit that so aroused Miranda ’ s admiration on Sundays—was unaware that Sir John ’ s eyes rested on her in rather a speculative fashion, but she did know that in her heart she was deeply pleased to think that she was coming back to Ketterings, and that this departure did not mean farewell to it.
    They stopped for lunch at a little hotel where the service was excellent and the food good, and Sir John ordered wine with the meal. Lucy was so charmed by the unchallengeable antiquity of the dining room, with its carefully chosen pieces of period furniture, and the view of a sleepy market town out of the window, that she was only partly attentive to Sir John ’ s conversation that, however, was of a purely conventional order and required no flights of imagination to follow it.
    She rather gathered—or she had gathered when they were traveling side by side in the car—that he preferred long spells of silence, broken by a few observations occasionally concerning the scenery they passed through, to a bright and entertaining flow of chatter.
    He set her down outside her sister ’