The Clarrington Heritage by Ardath Mayhar

Author:Ardath Mayhar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, suspense, gothic, romance, murder
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2017-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Edenson’s Room

In the decade since her death, Marise had felt guilty about her relationship with Edenson. From the first she had allowed the nurse’s defensive attitude to hold her at arm’s length, and the thought still bothered her.

After all, she had possessed everything any woman could want. She was young and strong, well loved, if not beautiful, and she was busy with an absorbing profession, in addition to her husband and son. At the time Edenson had seemed simply a part of the furnishings, and once the woman made it clear she wanted no personal relationship with Marise she had left it at that.

Yet even before Elizabeth Clarrington’s death, Marise had begun feeling somewhat unhappy about her relationship with the other nurse who had only her patient to fill her days. Edenson had worked faithfully for twenty years, putting everything she had into her patient’s comfort and wellbeing.

Marise had worked with many nurses in her professional career in medicine, and she knew that others would never consent to work seven days a week, without even a day off for themselves. They had lives of their own, and the fact that Edenson never consented to take a single day’s holiday from her duties betrayed her lack of family and friends outside the Clarrington house.

By the time Marise came to live there, the nurse had been there for so long and her refusal to leave her patient was accepted so completely, those in the family thought nothing about this unusual situation. During the eleven years Marise knew her Edenson seemed totally intent upon her work.

That had made Marise a bit uneasy. So much so she once took it up with Dr. Pell. “I know she is completely dedicated, Doctor, but this seems unhealthy to me. It is like something you find in an English novel—the devoted Nanny syndrome. Such selfless service doesn’t exist in the world we know now. No nurse I ever knew, including myself, could or would have given up any semblance of a personal life in this way.”

The gray little doctor, a bit mussed as usual, had turned those alert eyes on her. He smiled rather sadly and said, “I’ve thought that myself, to tell the truth. But Edenson’s is a most unusual situation, and her relationship with Mrs. Clarrington is not the normal nurse-patient one.”

He leaned against the table in the library, where she had caught him after a conference with Father Clarrington, and said, “I have known Edenson all her life. Her mother, Hester, went to school with Elizabeth and me. She was no beauty, but she was a highly determined young woman.

“She was, of course, unpopular in school. Single, focused young women tend to frighten young men witless. Her people were dirt farmers, well fed but without money. However, she intended to make something of herself or die in the attempt. She worked her way through nursing school and became a damn good nurse.”

He looked about, found a chair and sat at the long library table.

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