American Heiress by Dorothy Eden

Author:Dorothy Eden [Eden, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-2937-6
Publisher: Open Road Media Young Readers
Published: 2013-05-28T19:26:00+00:00

10

“HETTY!”

A small anxious voice came out of the mist, the memory of agonising pain, the weakness. She tried to move, pushing away the horrid debris floating on the waves, struggling to cling more firmly to the lifebelt.

“Hetty, you’re not going to die, are you?”

“No, no, I’m a survivor,” she shouted, and with reviving consciousness knew that her voice was inaudible to the bewildered little face at the side of her bed.

“Freddie!” Memory surged back. Her relief was so great that she was almost able to move her stiff lips in a smile. “You’re safe!”

“I wasn’t lost, Hetty. I was only up in the roof with Tom. He helped me up the ladder. Nanny needn’t have got into such a taking.”

“Now, young man, you must go!” Someone in nurse’s uniform was pushing Freddie to the door. A nurse. Good heavens, was she ill?

Yes, she was ill. She felt pain in her head, and a nasty sinister ache in her womb. She had a sensation of nausea and deep apprehension.

“Are you a nurse?”

“I’m Sister Best, Lady Hazzard.”

“Then where am I?”

Not in her lovely shadowy bedroom at Loburn, in the wide bed, with Hugo’s side kept immaculately for his return. This was a small dreary room, the bed narrow and iron-framed.

“You’re in the Cirencester hospital, my dear. You had a riding accident. You don’t remember?”

She tried to shake her head, but it hurt. Beneath the sheets her hands lay on her flattened womb.

“My baby?”

“You’ve lost that, I’m afraid. Couldn’t expect much else, could you?” Sister Best wasn’t kind after all. Her face was humourless and disapproving. “Don’t they teach expectant mothers in America to be careful?”

“Freddie—he was lost—we had to look—Nanny was in a taking. So was Julia.” She was babbling.

“Should have left that to someone else. Now you must rest. Doctor will be in later.”

Tears began to flow down her cheeks.

“Why are you so unkind to me?”

“I’m not unkind. I’m practical. Doctors and nurses spend their lives mending things foolish people bring on themselves. We have a military wing here full of seriously wounded soldiers. We haven’t really time for silly young women.”

“Then go away, go away!” Hetty whispered.

Nevertheless she drifted into sleep, not because the sister had told her to, but because she seemed to be so weak. Her next visitor, when she awoke, was much kinder than the stern sister. Kitty in her V.A.D. uniform, harassed as usual, but smiling, although her eyes were full of tears.

“Hetty, Hetty, what a terrible pity. Doctor Bailey tried so hard to save the baby, but it was no use.”

“What’s today?” Hetty asked, looking at sunlight outside the dusty window.

“Thursday. It all happened in the night. Head aching?”

“Yes, it is.”

“You had some concussion, too. That’s why you don’t remember much. Freddie was devastated.”

“Julia said he was lost in the woods, that he’d gone off because of me reading him the Iliad and filling his head with myths.”

Did Kitty’s face tighten? At least there was no doubt about the disapproval in her voice.

“Oh, Julia! I never would have thought she had it in her to panic.

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