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have no intention of offering you a job, Olympia. I should like you to marry me.’
She had the peculiar sensation that she wasn’t sitting on the enormous chair at all, but floating in nothing. The room came and went in a rather alarming manner and the silence which followed his words seemed to go on for ever. Presently she found her voice to say: ‘You did say marry you?’
‘Yes.’ He was sitting back, quite at ease.
There were a great many things she could have said, but she discarded them all in favour of a bald: ‘Why?’
‘Because it is obviously such a suitable arrangement for both of us…’
She didn’t let him finish. ‘You can’t really mean that!’ and knew as she said it that he most certainly did.
He continued just as though she had said nothing at all. ‘You see, Olympia, I need someone to care for Ria, to love her, if possible, and check her tantrums and, as you so aptly put it, mother her. I need someone to run my house too—I have an admirable housekeeper, but she cannot play hostess to my friends or arrange dinner parties or make a home of it. And you—you want to get away from that domineering… I beg your pardon—from your aunt and that dreary home. You told me yourself that you had promised to remain there unless someone asked you to marry him. Well, I am that someone; we shall both be helping each other, and I think we have seen sufficient of each other now to know that we shall get along very well. You won’t see a great deal of me, but being a nurse, you are already aware of the kind of life I lead, and we neither of us complicate the situation by our emotions.’
Olympia received this dry-as-dust speech in silence and took her time in answering it. ‘I don’t quite understand why you haven’t just asked me to be a governess—I mean you don’t really want a wife, do you?’
He considered gravely before he replied. ‘A wife in the accepted sense, no. But as I told you, I need someone to run my home and act as hostess and of course, care for Ria, someone who is a good friend, who will fit into my way of living.’ His smile was kind; he was quite unaware of her poor trampled feelings. ‘Besides, I enjoy your company, Olympia. You are restful and sensible and even-tempered.’
She felt almost insulted; there were surely other adjectives he might have used. Who wanted to be any of these worthy things? And he was wrong about her even temper; she was aware that beneath her serene front she was nicely on the boil.
‘You might come to dislike me in a month or so—even after a number of years.’
He shook his head and declared positively: ‘No, my opinions do not change easily. I like you, Olympia, and shall always do so, whatever happens.’
He had an answer for everything and she knew nothing at all about him, only the few bare facts he had told her, and yet she trusted him, and he had said that he would like her for his wife—an unusual kind of wife, she thought ruefully, but half a loaf was better than no bread. She was unhappy in the house on Primrose Hill and as far as she could see into the future, she had no hope of leaving it unless she married. Aunt Maria was barely middle-aged and likely to live for many years to come. She had an unhappy little picture of herself in ten, twenty years’ time, with not even youth to give her ordinary face an edge of attractiveness. Undoubtedly this was her chance—she frowned as she remembered the old people she looked after. ‘There’s no one to do my work if I go,’ she told him in a small voice. ‘Mrs Cooper’s only part-time, there has to be a trained nurse…besides, there will be no one at night to get up…’
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. ‘You get up at night as well as working during the day?’
‘Well, I have to.’ She spoke almost defensively. ‘If something happens that needs a trained nurse.’
‘So that is why you have shadows under your eyes—you are also too thin.’
She brushed this aside almost impatiently; what did it matter if she was thin and plain with it? He wasn’t marrying her for her looks, was he? She spoke suddenly. ‘It’s not because you pity me, is it?’
His lips twitched a little at the fierceness of her look. ‘No, I don’t pity you, Olympia.’ He had got up and was standing by one of the windows, looking at her. ‘I think you mustn’t hunt around in your head for reasons which aren’t reasons at all. I have told you why I should like to marry you; there are no other reasons—none at all. But I have taken you by surprise, haven’t I? Perhaps you would like a little time to decide?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I’ll call and see you tomorrow. You are off duty in the morning, aren’t you?’ He added kindly: ‘And if it will help you in any way, I will undertake to find a nurse to replace you, immediately.’
‘Oh, will you really? I…’ She stopped because the door had been thrown open and Mrs van der Graaf, followed by Mary carrying the tea-tray, came in.
She began to talk the moment she was in the room, but not about them; every other subject under the sun, Olympia couldn’t fail to notice, but not one question, not even a look of inquiry. They ate their tea, borne along on a tide of cheerful conversation which Olympia found soothing after her rather surprising talk with the doctor. And when she went back with him presently, by taxi this time, the subject lying so heavily on her mind wasn’t mentioned. Indeed, back in her little basement room, she wondered if she had dreamed the whole thing. An observation of her aunt’s came into her head. ‘Sleep on it,’ she would say. Olympia slept on it.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE SLEPT SOUNDLY, WITH NO half-hoped-for dreams to offer her their guidance, and the pleased old faces which welcomed her as she began her morning’s work offered her a mute but sound reason for refusing the doctor’s offer, although he had said—no, promised—that he would find someone to take her place. But her mind was made up for her in quite another manner; she had been getting the old people on the top floor out of their beds when her aunt had walked in. She had nodded briefly to the patients, for this wasn’t her usual mid-morning round when she stopped and spoke briefly to each one of them, careful never to give them a chance to say much themselves, but now her interest was centred upon her niece.
‘Come outside, Nurse Randle,’ she invited in a voice which boded no good for Olympia, and once they were outside on the little landing, ‘I have been considering the matter, Olympia, and I have decided that there is no point in seeing any more of Doctor van der Graaf.’ She frowned. ‘Indeed, I cannot imagine how I ever allowed myself to be persuaded in the first place—however, I feel sure that by now he will be only too glad to have a decision made for him. I feel sure too that he must be heartily sick of you by now; probably he is too kind a man to say so. When he comes again I shall tell him that you have decided not to see him again.’
Olympia choked back rage, humiliation and sheer fright that what her aunt had said might be true—but how could it be? She said in a quiet little voice which gave no hint of her strong feelings, ‘You are mistaken, Aunt, and I can’t see why I shouldn’t go out with Doctor van der Graaf if I want to. He’s coming to see me this morning…’
‘He’s here,’ interposed the doctor from the stairs behind them, and before either of the ladies could say a word: ‘Good morning, and before you say anything further, Miss Randle, I have asked Olympia to be my wife…’ He paused for a second and shot a glance at her and something in her white face must have given him his answer, for he went on smoothly: ‘And she has consented.’ He crossed the landing and took Olympia’s hand in his and smiled down at her, and she, feeling that events were moving of their own accord without any help from her, smiled nervously back.
‘I shall not allow…’ began Miss Randle, much incensed.
‘Oh, but I think you will. Has not Olympia honoured her promise to you for a number of years? Now it is your turn to do the same, Miss Randle.’ His voice was bland enough, but he didn’t smile and his eyes were cool.
‘I…’ began Olympia, wishing to put her oar in, and was hushed before she could