A Secret Infatuation

That is his loss. You are just right for a parson’s wife, bossy and outspoken and managing and capable.’

Her bosom swelled with rage and regret and sorrow that that was how he thought of her. She said quietly, ‘This is a pointless conversation, isn’t it? Let’s talk about the weather.’

He laughed then but remained silent except for the odd remark from time to time—the kind of remark he might have made to a chance passenger he didn’t know or someone to whom he was giving a lift as a favour.

At the hospital he got out of the car and helped her out, got her bag and walked with her to the entrance. Here she stopped.

‘Thank you for the lift. It was most kind of you.’

He smiled down at her. ‘I shall see you again,’ he told her. ‘Goodnight.’

Of course he would see her again. She was on duty in the morning, wasn’t she? And there was a bypass scheduled. ‘In the morning,’ she reminded him. ‘Goodnight.’

She didn’t sleep well, her mind too active with thoughts of Mr Rijnma ter Salis, so that she was glad to get up and go to her breakfast and then to Theatre. Sister Cross greeted her in her usual snappy manner, but Eugenie, happy at the prospect of seeing him within the next hour, wished her a cheerful good morning and went to make sure that everything was ready for the morning’s work.

She was about to scrub when the senior registrar strolled into the theatre. ‘Look out for old Pepper,’ he warned her kindly, ‘he’s a bit snappy this morning …’

‘Mr Pepper? Is he doing the bypass?’

‘Yes. Rijnma has gone to Edinburgh—a heart transplant—there’s an unexpected donor. He’ll be there for a couple of days, I should imagine.’

‘But he was in the hospital last night …’

He gave her a quick glance. A discreet man who liked her, he had seen the pair of them when they had returned but he wasn’t going to say so.

‘He drove up overnight. There was no time to be lost—it was suggested that a plane should be chartered but he preferred to drive himself. With a car like his, it wouldn’t take any longer than flying up by the time he had got to the airport and been collected at the other end!’

‘I hope the op will be successful …’

‘It won’t be any fault of his if it isn’t. He’s a good chap.’

He went away and she started to scrub, and presently bore with Mr Pepper’s ill humour. She quite liked him but this morning he was living up to his name.

Without Mr Rijnma ter Salis’s vast person to distract her thoughts, Eugenie put her mind to her future. She took herself off to a number of agencies and put her name down on their lists for private nurses. There was quite a demand for them but most of them were in London or the Home Counties. Perhaps she would do better to try an agency nearer home—Exeter or Bristol or Plymouth. Mr Symes, doing his best to be helpful, suggested that she tried a private hospital, but they, when she enquired, wanted contracts too. It seemed that opportunities for experienced surgical ward sisters and theatre sisters were few and far between—private nursing, she was told, was more a matter of staying in the patient’s own home and performing any nursing duties the doctor might order.

Mr Rijnma ter Salis came back four days later, performed a complicated open heart operation which took hours, thanked her briefly and disappeared again. She had days off again the next day and spent them going round the agencies; time was running out.

Back on duty she met him on her way to dinner. She would have passed him with a polite, ‘Good morning, sir’, but he put out an arm and stopped her.

‘Not so fast. Where have you been?’

‘Days off.’

‘You leave soon?’

‘In about ten days’ time.’

‘You have another job?’

‘Not yet.’ She inched away from him. ‘I’m rather late for my dinner, sir.’

He took no notice. ‘I shall be going back to Holland in two weeks’ time. My theatre sister there is leaving to have a baby. I should like you to take over while she is away.’

She goggled at him. ‘Me? Holland?’

‘Not the end of the earth, Eugenie. A temporary post only but it will give you time to decide what you want to do.’

She opened her mouth to refuse, but he said testily, ‘No, I don’t want your answer now. Go and eat your dinner and think about it. Let me know in a couple of days’ time.’

He had gone, leaving her standing in the middle of the corridor wondering if she had dreamt the whole conversation. Over her shepherd’s pie and carrots she decided that it hadn’t been a dream; he wasn’t a man to waste his time on elaborate jokes or light-hearted suggestions.

‘You look very strange, Eugenie,’ observed one of her friends at the table. ‘Miles away.’

Which she was—mentally at least—in Holland.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2ec0e145-9d00-5a8a-8131-ba77de397e26)

IT WASN’T difficult for Eugenie to decide what to do about Mr Rijnma ter Salis’s offer. It was a gift from heaven, a good omen, although she wasn’t sure what good it would do her, except allow her to be with him for a few weeks, when she had been steeling herself to wish him goodbye, never to set eyes on him again. Perhaps she would be able to discover something of his life, find out about his family and his home and this girl he intended to marry.

The knowledge would do her no good, of course, but it would stop her daydreaming …

The tiresome man had gone again; Sister Cross told her that over their coffee the next morning. ‘Birmingham,’ she said. ‘A stab wound—missed the aorta by a whisker—but nicked the pericardium. He went up overnight.’

Wishing to know more, Eugenie said in a diffident voice, ‘He seems to work very hard.’

‘Too hard. Time he settled down with a wife to nag him. He plans to marry in Holland, so I hear. A good thing too; half the nurses are in love with him.’

To which remark Eugenie had nothing to say. She didn’t mind the nurses; it was the girl in Holland, the one who had stolen his heart before Eugenie had met him.

She went away presently to check the theatre, and it wasn’t until much later that day that she had the leisure to think about him once more. She could see that taking the job he had offered her could lead to other things; she wasn’t a conceited girl but she couldn’t help knowing that she was strikingly beautiful, tolerably intelligent and had never lacked eager young men anxious to take her out. She felt fairly sure that given the opportunity she could stir up in Mr Rijnma ter Salis something more than the cool friendliness she had been shown by him. She was nice as well as beautiful, and if he loved this girl then she would be no more than his temporary theatre sister and show the same cool friendliness that he showed her. It would be hard, but she was quite prepared to do it. She told herself that she would make the most of the few weeks she would be with him and then get on with life without him. A bit like a heroine in a romantic novel.