Nurse in Love by Jane Arbor Page B

flushed with embarrassment as Adam leaned across to open the nearside door for her. “You shouldn’t have waited,” she protested.
    “I told you I was going all the way. Where next?”
    “Wherever you usually park. Or on Ship Market” — mentioning the town’s main thoroughfare.
    “There’s no parking in Ship Market. I park at the Ulverstone, as I sometimes lunch there. Will that do?”
    “Perfectly, thanks.”
    “When are you on duty again?” Adam a s ked.
    “At two.”
    “And you are going back to lunch in hospital beforehand?”
    “Yes.”
    Adam was negotiating the drive-in to the hotel’s courtyard, and said no more until he had pulled up and was reaching for his gloves. Then: “In that case” — his tone was casually polite—“perhaps, when you’ve done what you have to do, you would lunch here with me? We could make it as early as you like, so that I could get you back in time for duty.”
    For a moment Kathryn felt as if she had been trapped into the admission that she had nothing but a morning’s shopping and a routine hospital meal before her. Now, however reluctant she was to accept his invitation, she could not possibly refuse it. But in the next instant she realised that if her last night’s resolve had been anything more than the mere stuff of a false courage, here probably, was her chance to offer the explanation she had planned. Across a luncheon table they would achieve a brief intimacy that would have nothing of permanence behind it, of course, but which should give her an opportunity to bring in Steven’s name and to refer without too much embarrassment to last night’s occurrence, at which she still blushed.
    They parted, agreeing to meet in the lounge of the Ulverstone at twelve-thirty. Kathryn, meanwhile, went about her errands in a kind of daze, and in the end was a little late for the appointment, owing to some delay over Matron’s business.
    Adam chose the luncheon with a flattering concern for her preferences, and if only she had not had the shadow of that explanation hanging over her, Kathryn could have given herself up to the sheer, rare pleasure of being with him in such circumstances.
    She had not realised, however, how difficult it would prove to bring Steven’s name into their talk of t heir young patients on the ward and of some research, involving many hours of his time, which Adam declared he wanted to do. At each brief silence she was tempted to try to switch on to personal matters, but Adam would always have begun to speak again before she ha d plucked up courage and words for it. And in the end it was he who surprised her utterly.
    They were having their coffee in the lounge, and as he took the cup she handed him he said: “I’m glad you were able to lunch. Otherwise I should have had to make some other opportunity to tell you that I owe y ou a very deep apology. Last night — ”
    Because her fingers were trembling so, Kathryn set down her own cup. She began desperately: “Last night was —”
    But Adam went on: “Mine was an unpardonable intrusion, I know. But it was entirely accidental, I assure you.” He paused for so long that Kathryn raised her eyes questioningly to his. And his glance held hers unerringly as he went on: “I mentioned last night because it is since then that I’ve wondered just why at our first meeting, you did not deny the outrageous accusation I made against you?”
    “I tried to deny it — ”
    “No. You denied the possible effect upon Steven. You didn’t attempt to deny what I accused you of—a wanton, heartless rejection of him that any man would despise you for—if it were true. It wasn’t. And yet you let me go on believing it !” Across the small table between them two of his fingers came to rap its surface imperiously. “Why did you do that?” he asked.
    (Because you were intolerant and unjust. Because later, when I learned that you had accused me on Thelma’s evidence alone, pride would not let me. Because