Read Online Nurse for the Doctor by Averil Ives - Free Book Online Page A

answered, smiling at her reassuringly. But in spite of the smile she found herself recalling the moment when Michael had kissed her the night before, and she wondered what his reaction had been when he thought about it afterwards and realized that he had kissed an employee! She didn’t suppose he had ever done such a thing in his life before. “Of course not, she repeated, smiling as if she didn’t merely understand, but was in entire agreement. “And as a matter of fact I’ll be much happier having a meal up here in my room. If someone could be persuaded to bring it to me fairly early I could have it outside on the balcony, and that would be most pleasant, particularly as someone has supplied me with a couple of new novels.”
    Mrs. Duveen actually beamed at her.
    “My dear, I’ll see to it that you have something really nice brought up to you here. I’m sure a word in Dona Maria’s ear ... Or perhaps that nice maid Magdalena will arrange everything. I’ll speak to her while she’s helping me to dress.”
    And she went away to begin changing with quite a load off her mind, for although she thought Josie was quite a nice inoffensive girl, she could hardly expect to have her included in such a select gathering as the marquis might see fit to surround himself with. And sometimes Michael could be irritating, and he might talk to the girl more than he should, when there were others with a definite right to his attentions...
    Left alone in her room Josie slipped out of her own dressing gown and into a severe little tailored dress of pearl-grey linen. It had a white collar and cuffs, and was almost as good as a uniform, and she felt more correct when she was wearing it. She also felt as if she had been put rather severely into her place, and that in future it would be wise if she didn’t trespass from it.
    Wise—and much less likely to lead to complication in the future. By which she knew she meant a recurrence of that breathtaking little experience of the night before.

 
    CHAPTER VI
    Magdalena, when she brought her tray, looked surprised and sympathetic.
    Magdalena was a Catalan girl with gentle dark eyes, and a soft, attractive voice, and she attempted to put her sympathy into the few words of English that she knew.
    “It is dull for the senorita .” She set the tray down on a table near the window, because the light was dying fast outside—Josie had forgotten how late private families dined in Spain—and already stars were piercing the mystic haze that had dropped like a mantle upon the garden, and the colorful coast which it overlooked. “It is a little lonely, too, up here in this room?” The melting dark eyes looked all their sympathy, because the English girl looked so slight and small in the grey dress, and it wasn’t as if she was of a different caste to the women who would be dining downstairs. Indeed, the voluble Mrs. Duveen, with her lavender-colored hair, had offended by offering an overlarge tip before any tip was due, with the object no doubt of buying Magdalena’s services, which were already at the disposal of an employer who paid her well.
    “I’ll be quite all right, thank you, Magdalena,” Josie assured her, smiling gratefully because a little consideration was a heart-warming thing just then. And perhaps because it was the first time that she had dined alone in Spain—so very far from home—and the dusk was deepening moment by moment in the garden outside, and seemed to be stealing in through the open window to envelop her, she was conscious of the need to have her heart warmed a little.
    Of course, Mrs. Duveen was absolutely right, or so she kept telling herself. The Marquis de Palheiro was a marquis, and amongst the guests who would come to the villa during their stay there, there would almost certainly be those who would be extremely distinguished, and anyone like herself could hardly expect to be granted the freedom to mix with them all the time. And it was as well to begin as one