Nurse for the Doctor Read Online Free Page A

Marquis de Palheiro is charming, and his sister is even more charming. She is a well known Spanish novelist...”
    As Josie looked, for some reason that she herself didn’t completely understand, a little surprised, Mrs. Duveen said rather crisply: “There are novelists and novelists, my dear. Maria Cortes—which is of course a pseudonym—is brilliant but delightful, and she is also young. The marquis has a villa on the Costa Brava, and we are invited to stay there for as long as we care to do so. You can’t think how thankful I am that we have received such an invitation at this time...”
    “It does seem as if it might—as if it might have very beneficial results,” Josie heard herself murmuring.
    “It couldn’t fail to have beneficial results,” Mrs. Duveen stated quite definitely. “And that’s why I want to know how soon you think my son will be fit to travel.”
    “But surely that is a question for Dr. Arbuthnot to decide?”
    “Dr. Arbuthnot is a fussy old man, and he said rest for a few weeks in the country. Well, Michael can rest for a week or so ... And then I would like us to get away. You will come with us, of course. It was because I had this trip in mind that I insisted on a nurse who would not look too much like a uniformed attendant, and you struck me as being more the type who could act as a kind of companion to myself—as well as being on hand when, and if, Michael needs you. But I want him to forget this horrible episode of illness and disappointment as quickly as possible.
    It was plain that she was obsessed with her plan to give Michael a new outlook on life, and to blot out the unhappiness in his past as quickly and effectually as she could. But as Josie made her way back to her patient at last, she wondered why the name of Maria Cortes had been so deliberately introduced.
    “There are novelists and novelists ... brilliant but delightful, and she is also young ...”
    Surely, Josie thought, with a frown between her brows, not even the doting mother of an only son would be so foolish as to try and interest him in another woman when he hadn’t yet recovered from the effects of wantonly risking his life because one he badly wanted to marry had turned him down.
    And when she entered his room and found him lying with a look of deep, quiet contentment in his eyes she found it difficult to believe that he had wantonly risked his life; that the past was something that had got to be blotted out for him.
    “You fit in here, Nurse,” he told her, watching her cross the carpeted space to his bed. “That green uniform makes you look like a dryad—or it would if you didn’t cover it up with an apron. Must you wear the complete outfit?” he demanded rather querulously, as she possessed herself of his wrist and checked the steady beat of his pulse with her cool fingers.
    She looked down on him in the way she had been trained to look at patients when they had to be humored.
    “Would it make very much difference to you if I didn’t?”
    “I’d like it—my mother would like it, too! It might rob you of a little of your authority, but I’d feel less as if I was still at Chessington House. It’s the psychological approach when a patient has reached the convalescent stage that is so important you mustn’t forget, Nurse.”
    She smiled, a dimple appearing at one corner of her mouth; and while she produced a thermometer and prevented him from making further utterances he lay regarding that dimple with a sleepy look in his eyes. The sleepy look was still there, but the dimple had vanished by the time she had reassured herself that his temperature was normal and as she straightened his top sheet and turned his pillows for him she suggested: “I’ll draw the curtains, and then you might like to have a little nap before tea.”
    But he reached out and caught her by her arm and prevented her from moving toward the wide window with its silken hangings flowing from a pelmet of the same rich