Nurse with a Dream Read Online Free Page B

hesitated questioningly, the dark eyebrows raised.
    “Jacqueline. Usually called Jacky.”
    “Aye you would be. Waste of a lovely name. I shall call you Jacqueline. Breakfast is at nine.”
    The feather-bed was a dream of comfort. Jacqueline snuggled down with a sigh of pleasure. Poor Alan—he looked too tall for a folding-bed. Hope he’s comfortable. I feel a mean beast, but a deliciously cosy beast. It’s a nice name—Alan. He has an obstinate chin—was that a scar or a trick of candlelight? Not disfiguring, anyway. I liked him.
    It was a morning when the world seems newly starched and ironed, clean and crisp. There were marigolds in narrow beds under the Moor Hen’s windows; a patch of worn cobbles and a mounting-block. Then a narrow white road and a dry-stone wall. Beyond the wall, the moors, clothed in royal purple and gold.
    Alan, coming back to the inn after an early-morning walk with Andy, the Medways’ miniature white poodle pup, saw Jacqueline come out of the door, pause to draw, a deep breath of the sweet air, then cross the road to lean on the stone wall and stare at the purple slopes.
    He halted silently, checking the pup. He did not wish to interrupt. He had an absurd feeling that she might vanish if he disturbed her. She felt herself alone, and although he had a vague sense of intrusion, he could not stop looking at her. He knew at once that she was seeing the moors in glory for the first time, and that their beauty had her by the throat, as they still gripped him even after many years. Her oval face was still as a pool, yet it reflected her emotion as a pool reflects the blue sky. He was watching a girl fall in love.
    The puppy sprawled at his feet, temporarily exhausted by its scamper. Trained to move quietly, he groped for his pipe and clamped it between his teeth. The moors, even now when the heather was in bloom, were not everybody’s cup of tea; some people liked trees, or rivers, or a pattern of fields and hedges, or maybe mountains. But these treeless, rolling hills, curve upon curve, like a smooth swell on the deep sea under a vast sky—they held the hearts of those who loved them, and for ever called one back.
    The breeze, with its tang of heather and thyme, a delicate edge of cold air even on this summer morning, blew her neat golden-tan dress against her, revealing the slim lines of her figure. She was a little older that he had guessed last night—nineteen or twenty, and he had put her down as perhaps sixteen, almost a child. Her red lips were softly parted in delight, and her rounded chin was—he chuckled as he studied that deceptively soft chin. The girl had a will of her own, by golly! He remembered with wry appreciation her swift flare of temper last night. Booted him out of his own room, neck and crop, she had!
    The chuckle betrayed him. She flashed round, startled. Her fine hair, boyishly straight, shone under the morning sun, and she put a hand up to tidy it. Her eyes, he decided, must be blue.
    She nodded towards the moor. “Why is it beautiful?”
    He shrugged. “Can beauty be analysed?”
    “But so plain,” she said almost crossly. “No lakes, no trees, just— that .”
    “You’re disappointed?” Oddly, he was disappointed, too. He had for a moment believed her a moor-addict, like himself.
    “No,” she breathed gently. “Oh no! This is the most wonderful sight I’ve ever seen.” She looked at him directly, and he thought, I’m right, her eyes are blue, dark as violets.
    “They call to their own, these hills. The Swiss mountains for spectacle, they say—the Italian lakes for colour—but the English moors for your soul.”
    She nodded, grave with understanding. “This is my first time. All my life I’ve lived in France, but now I am home.”
    “Come for a walk with me this morning, and I will introduce you properly.”
    “That is kind—but shouldn’t I be in the way? Mrs. Medway said you photograph birds.”
    He laughed, scooping up the white puppy which