Shortly before lunch she went below decks to freshen up and stopped at the door of the Barclay cabin. She rapped lightly and heard Nora’s voice and opened the door.
Nora was still in bed, her bandaged wrists lying on the cover, her miserably unhappy eyes on the porthole through which a glimpse of sun-drenched blue sky was visible.
She turned her head as Claire came in. Color poured into her young face, and her eyes were dark with shame.
“I wonder you’d even be willing to speak to me, Claire,” she mumbled like an abashed child.
“Well, now that’s a nice thing to say to your nurse.” Claire made her voice gay and mocking, as she expertly examined the bandaged wrists and saw, as she had expected, that the cuts were healing nicely. “There’s no reason, when I’ve put fresh dressings on, why you shouldn’t get up for lunch.”
“Oh, no! I couldn’t!” Nora shuddered and her eyes closed tightly. “I can’t ever face those other passengers again — I’d die of embarrassment.”
Adjusting the dressings, Claire said lightly, though her eyes were worried, “Then I’m afraid you’re going to get awfully hungry. I don’t think they serve meals in bed to passengers on the Highland Queen! There’s only one steward, Carl, and the captain’s cabin boy, who, by the way, is someone you really should see. Cabin boy! Why, I’ll bet he’s sixty if he’s a day, and he looks like a little gnome.”
Nora brushed the attempted levity aside with a question that came straight from her heart, “Have you seen Mac this morning?”
“Mac? Oh, you mean MacEwen Russell.” Claire nodded. “He was asking about you at breakfast. He seemed quite worried. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, scaring us all?”
Nora winced and tried to crawl further beneath the thin covers.
“Oh, yes, I’m ashamed — so terribly ashamed — I wish I could die!” she stammered. “That’s how ashamed I am!”
“Well, don’t let it go that far.” Claire was still trying to rally her from her desperate mood. “After all, nothing can be quite that bad.”
Nora’s smile seemed to crawl across her white, convulsed face like an evil shadow.
“Let’s forget about last night, shall we?” Claire said briskly, smiling at her. “It’s a perfectly gorgeous day and you should be out on deck, basking in the sunshine. And I’m sure MacEwen will be waiting for you.”
That lit a spark in Nora’s eyes, and Claire laughed a little as she went on to her own quarters to freshen up for lunch. Knowing that MacEwen would be waiting for her was the best medicine that Nora could have at the moment. But Claire could not rid herself of the uneasy memory of Vera’s vicious attack on MacEwen that morning. Would she make another scene in the salon when Nora came in?
She tried to reassure herself on that point, but came into the salon as the bell rang, glancing swiftly about and relieved to see that, while MacEwen was in his accustomed place, neither Nora nor Vera was there.
Curt greeted Claire with every evidence of pleasure as she took her place, and as usual Carl gave her his warmest smile as he served her.
“How’s the patient this morning?” Curt asked her, keeping his tone lowered so it would not reach beyond her.
Claire smiled at him as she unfolded her napkin.
“She’ll be in to lunch soon,” she told him. “She’s fine.”
“That’s good news,” said Curt with relief.
MacEwen leaned closer to Claire and asked anxiously, “She really is going to be all right?”
“Of course she is,” Claire comforted him.
He scowled at his plate and seemed to take no further interest in what was going on around him, and lunch was almost over before Nora appeared in the doorway, looking fresh and neat in her thin printed cotton frock.
All eyes turned upon her, and she hesitated. For a moment it appeared as though her courage would fail her. Then she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin defiantly and walked to her chair. She looked the length of the table, up one side and down the other, meeting the curious, interested eyes that were upon her. Her color rose, and she tucked her bandaged wrists behind her.
“I’m terribly ashamed I made such a fool of myself last night,” she told them all, steadying her voice with an effort. “And I want to apologize to everybody.”
And as though she could no longer endure the eyes turned upon her, she swept about and was gone.
MacEwen was on his feet, running after her, calling to her, and the next moment they were both gone.
A little murmur ran along the table like wind through dry leaves, and Claire said quietly, “I do hope we can all forget what has happened. She’s frighteningly young and terribly embarrassed and — well, I’m sure all of us can remember times when we were that young and life seemed too complicated for endurance. Let’s all be very kind to her and pretend it never happened, can’t we?”
She looked up over her shoulder at Carl, who was serving her more coffee.
“Carl, she told me earlier that she was hungry,” she confided in him. “Do you suppose you could find her something to eat and let me take it to her?”
“Well, of course, miss. I’ll take it to her cabin,” Carl offered eagerly.
“You’d better let me, Carl. She’s feeling as if she’d like to crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after her. So we’d better let her alone as much as we can. She’s become accustomed to me,” Claire told him.
“Well, yes, miss. You’re right, I’m sure,” Carl agreed. “I’ll see to it right away, miss.”
When he had gone, Claire turned to Curt apologetically.
“I’m told service aboard ships like the Queen doesn’t run to room service of meals. I hope I’m not upsetting the established routine.”
Curt chuckled, his eyes warm upon her.
“After what you’ve done, Claire, my dear, the Queen is yours to command, and everybody aboard her — including the Captain and me, as well.”
“Careful, friend!” Claire mocked him lightly. “Somebody will take you seriously one of these days.”
“It is my fondest wish that you will,” Curt told her quite simply, and for a startled moment, Claire’s eyes widened beneath the impact of what she saw in his. “I mean that, Claire, with all my heart.”
Color burned high in Claire’s face and she glanced uneasily along the table and saw the others had gone. And Curt, reading the swift, uneasy glance, said quietly, “Don’t be frightened, Claire.”
She turned her head swiftly and managed to meet his eyes and hated herself because her face was still hot.
Her hands shook a little despite her efforts to hold the tray steady. Halfway down the corridor, Major Lesley, loitering, obviously waiting for her, came to meet her.
“Is that for the little girl?” He indicated the tray and, at her nod, smiled. “She’s not in her cabin. She’s on deck, with that young MacEwen Russell.”
Claire laughed. “Then maybe I shouldn’t bother trying to feed her, though she told me she was getting hungry quite a while ago.”
“I’ll show you where she is,” Major Lesley offered, and reached for the tray. “May I?”
“Thanks, but I’d better carry it, don’t you think? I’ve had a great deal of experience carrying trays!”
He guided her along the deck and to the spot where she had had her own deck chair set up and where she and Nora had talked before. As she rounded the corner, she stopped short and looked down.
Nora sat in Claire’s deck chair, MacEwen in the one beside her. He was holding both her hands very gently, and their voices were low-pitched and intimate.
Claire stood for a moment, hesitant, unnoticed; and then briskly she made her presence known and deposited the tray firmly on Nora’s lap and said as firmly, “You have to keep your strength up, you know.”
MacEwen scrambled to his feet, obviously annoyed at the interruption. But Nora, steadying the tray across her knees, looked up at Claire, beaming eagerly above a small tissue-wrapped package that had been held between her two palms, as MacEwen held her hands together.
“Oh, Claire, look at the lovely thing Mac gave me.” She glowed, unwrapped the tissue and revealed a necklace and a matching bracelet made of the tiniest possible sea shells, no larger than grains of wheat, intricately woven into tiny, colored flowers. “Aren’t they lovely?”
Claire lifted the package and examined the necklace, and echoed Nora’s delighted praise.
“Where in the world, Mac, did you find anything so exquisite?” Claire asked. “It’s beautiful.”
MacEwen looked pleased and happy.
“Oh, it’s nothing much,” he said cheerfully. “I picked it up in a little shop in Port-au-Prince. The natives make them, I understand. It looked like flowers and — well, I liked it. So when I wanted to give Nora some flowers, such as you always send somebody you like when they’ve been sick, I thought of this.”
He looked down at Nora, who was ignoring the tray across her lap and crooning like a happy child over the gift.
“Well, for Pete’s sake,” he pretended to scold her, “it’s not the Russian crown jewels, nor yet the Hope diamond. It’s just a silly little trinket I picked up and thought you might like to have.”
“Oh, I’d much rather have it than either of those, Mac! It’s so different from anything I’ve ever had. Fasten it around my neck, will you, Mac?” She bowed her head and held the necklace in place while his fingers fastened the small catch.