She resisted the impulse to squeeze back, and said, ‘In a way it is part of being a nurse. You watch people so much that you starting noticing odd details. I don’t just mean medical things, but about their lives.’ She gave a little chuckle.
‘What? Tell me.’
‘I got so that when a man brought his wife into the ward I could tell at once how things were between them. I knew which husbands were going to be faithful while their wives were in hospital, and which ones were going to live it up.’
‘How?’
‘Something in the voice. If he called her “darling” every second word I knew he’d be on the phone to a girlfriend before he left the building. The ones who were going to go home and worry didn’t say very much, just looked.’
‘You’ve got us all ticketed, then?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said, trying to ease the mood by making a joke of it. ‘No man can spring a surprise on me. You’re all boringly predictable.’
There was one man she hadn’t told Ruggiero about-a soldier, who’d brought his wife to the ward and had seemed to think he was on parade, talking at the top of his voice and bullying everyone. But afterwards she’d found him sitting in the corridor, staring into space.
‘Boringly predictable’ had been a joke, and far from her real thoughts. It was that desperate soldier who’d given her the clue to Ruggiero.
He interrupted her thoughts by saying suddenly, ‘Does Brian know how you think?’
‘Well, I don’t talk to him that way. A woman should keep her secrets.’
‘From the man she loves?’
‘Especially from the man she loves,’ she said firmly.
‘And he doesn’t suspect?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Keep the poor fool in blissful ignorance, eh? I guess that runs in the family.’
He said the last words so quietly that she didn’t need to respond to them, but their bitterness wasn’t lost on her.
‘What kind of man is Brian?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Does he tend to be faithful, or go the other way?’
‘I’ve hardly had time to judge.’
‘But with you being so preoccupied this last year-you weren’t afraid that he’d stray?’
‘I haven’t been putting his fidelity to the test,’ she said, with perfect truth.
‘Is that because you’re afraid to try, or because he doesn’t have enough spirit to be unfaithful?’
‘You make infidelity sound like a virtue?’ she said, half laughing.
‘Not exactly. But to be as sure of him as you are-he sounds like a suet pudding.’
‘I promise you he’s not a suet pudding. Brian’s lively enough, but he spends long, exhausting days looking after people who need him.’
‘And when you get together you talk about test tubes. That must be thrilling.’
She hadn’t wanted this discussion, but it was useful. Being close to Ruggiero like this affected her so strongly that she was terrified he would sense it, and Brian was a useful shield. So she played along.
‘Anything can be thrilling if you share the same interests,’ she mused.
‘And that’s what you talked about when you saw him yesterday?’
She chuckled. ‘I don’t think we talked much.’
‘But didn’t he try to persuade you to stay with him-in between doing whatever you were doing?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Of course not? Does he love you or not?’
‘He does, but he knew I had to come back for as long as I’m needed here. He understands about putting duty first.’
‘Another thing you share?’
‘Another thing we share.’
‘You told him that you’re crazy about him but you had to return to this grumpy so-and-so who’ll collapse without you? That and test tubes? How did you tear yourself away from such passion?’
‘Nurse Bossy-Boots never lets down a patient,’ she said primly. ‘And passion can be found in the oddest places.’
She found she was enjoying this conversation too much for safety, and hurried to say, ‘But I don’t think I ought to discuss him any more. He wouldn’t like it.’
Ruggiero threw her a grim look. His nerves were stretched from the two tense days he’d spent waiting for her, wondering if he would ever see her again.
He was a man with no gift for self-analysis. He could dismantle an engine both actually and in his head. He even had some faint understanding of others. But to himself he was an almost total mystery.
In the last two days he’d been miserable, thinking of the pictures that Polly might or might not remember to bring back. He’d focused on that because he understood it, but somewhere along the line it had blurred with the fear that she might not return at all.
Arguments had raged in his head. His strong, reliable Nurse Bossy-Boots was a woman of her word. She wouldn’t let him down because that wasn’t her way. But the ties holding her back were immense-including the man she loved, who might be fed up with waiting and demand to come first in her life.
Perhaps she’d give the pictures to Hope and leave, confident that she’d done her duty?
But she wouldn’t have done it, he told himself firmly. She was the one person he could talk to, and she had no right to desert him.
Hope had called him that morning to say they were returning together. He’d breathed again, but even so he’d been shocked by the explosion of relief that had attacked him when she’d appeared at Naples Airport. It had the perverse effect of making him abrupt, even angry with her. And this, too, he did not understand.
CHAPTER SIX
HIS EYES WERE on the photographs. Sapphire. Briefly she’d faded, but now she flamed back into his consciousness, as sharp and poignant as ever. He drew in a sharp breath at the sight of her radiant beauty on the day she’d married another man.
‘They’re lovely pictures, aren’t they?’ Polly said.
She began to turn the pages. Freda had been at her best on that day: her extravagant beauty flaunted in a glamorous satin creation, George’s wedding gift of diamonds on her head, holding in place a veil that stretched to the floor.
There she was with her new husband, looking adoringly into his face because she wanted to be convincing in her role. George had been good for several more diamonds yet.
There she was with her chief bridesmaid, poor cousin Polly, looking horribly out of place in a frilly pink satin dress, her dullness cruelly contrasted with the bride’s lustrous looks.
One picture was a close-up of Freda alone, with a soft, sweet smile and a tender expression that had seldom been there in real life. She’d been an accomplished actress, and for this shot she’d managed to banish the gleam of greedy triumph from her eyes. The woman in that picture was enchanting: soft, generous, giving, yielding; everything that she had not been.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I shouldn’t have brought the wedding pictures.’
‘Why?’ he asked sharply. ‘Do you think I’m afraid of them?’
‘Perhaps you ought to be. What difference can it make now?’
‘Don’t say that. I can’t rid myself of her just because she’s dead. In some ways I feel I’ve only just met her, and I need to know everything.’
She shook her head, but she didn’t say aloud what she was thinking-that ‘everything’ was precisely what he couldn’t endure knowing. Instead she begged, ‘Let the past be. It’s the future that matters-your future and Matthew’s.’
