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      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      SISTER SOPHIA Greenslade wrinkled her straight little nose under her muslin mask and thought longingly of her tea. The theatre list should have been finished an hour ago, but an emergency splenectomy had had to be fitted in during the afternoon. Now the last case, a simple appendicectomy, was on the table. The RSO, Tom Carruthers, put out a gloved hand to take the purse string she had ready. She fitted a curved, threaded needle into its holder, and glanced at the clock. Five minutes, she calculated, and she’d be free. Staff had been back on duty for more than half an hour; she could hand over to her. She passed the stitch scissors at exactly the right moment; nodded to the junior nurse to check swabs, and started to put the soiled instruments into the bowl of saline nearby, pausing only to put a threaded skin needle into the mute demanding hand of the RSO. Raising a pair of nicely-shaped eyebrows at a watching nurse, who had been long enough in theatre to know what the gesture signified—to whisk the bowl away—Sister Greenslade got down from the small square stool behind her white-draped trolleys and stationed herself by the houseman opposite Tom Carruthers, ready to clap on the small piece of strapping over the neatly stitched wound. This done to her satisfaction, she said ‘Porters, please’ in her nice, unhurried voice, and followed the RSO over to the sink, stooping to pick up his gown and cap which he had shed as he went. Inured to the ways of surgeons, she said nothing, but put them wordlessly into the bin and stood quietly while a nurse untied the tapes of her own gown, then took off her theatre cap and mask, revealing a pleasant face, redeemed from plainness by a pair of magnificent eyes with very dark lashes. Her nose was nondescript, and her mouth too large; her complexion was good, and her hair, drawn severely back into a coil on top of her head, was a delicate shade of mouse. She was barely middle height, but her figure, which was charming, more than compensated for her lack of inches.

      She joined the two men at the sinks in the scrubbing room, and they stood in a row, relaxed and friendly, all of them anxious to be gone.

      ‘What’s the time?’ asked Tom.

      Sophia went on scrubbing. ‘Almost six,’ she said. ‘If you hurry and your wife’s waiting and ready, you’ll just about get there as the curtain goes up.’

      She smiled up at him, and he thought for the hundredth time that her smile transformed her whole face. He was a happily married man himself, he couldn’t understand why Sister Greenslade hadn’t been snapped up before now. He started to dry his hands.

      ‘What about you? Got a date tonight?’

      She turned off the taps and said with a twinkle, ‘They’re falling over themselves to get at me—it’s my fatal beauty.’ She chuckled at her own remark, and went away to hand over.

      Ten minutes later, she was on her way home. The early October evening was already chilly, but after the warmth of the theatre she welcomed its freshness. The hospital was in a pleasant part of London; the houses around it were for the most part elderly and terraced and well cared-for. There were lighted windows in most of them as she hurried towards her own home. She had been a very small girl when her father, a consultant at the hospital, had bought it. When he and her mother had been killed in a road accident, she had been just twenty-one, newly registered, and staffing in theatre. Her parents’ death had been a sorrow she had been forced to bury deep under the responsibilities she had shouldered. The three younger children had still been at school then, and somehow she had been able to keep the home together, dividing her busy life between the exacting roles of mother, housekeeper and nurse with a success which had been earned at the expense of a much curtailed social life. In this she had been greatly helped by Grandmother Greenslade, who lived with them, and Sinclair, who had been her father’s batman in the army during the war, and had somehow attached himself to his household when they had been demobbed. Indeed, he was the staunch friend of the whole family, and stood high in their affections.

      She turned the last corner into the street where she lived. The house was half way down; she could see it quite clearly, even in the dusk. She could also see a small boy standing on the pavement—her younger brother, Benjamin. She frowned, and walked faster. Ben had a habit of getting into scrapes, which was probably why the tall gentleman with him was holding him so firmly by one shoulder. As she reached them, her mouth was open to utter some soothing phrase. She was forestalled, however.

      ‘Ah, Sister Sophy, I fancy.’ The voice sounded impatient and faintly mocking. She took a look at the speaker; he was not only tall, but big, with an air of self-confidence, almost arrogance, which made his good-looking face seem older than it probably was. He returned her look with the coldest blue eyes she had seen for a very long time.

      Sophy listened to the sudden thump of her heart. She was, she told herself, very angry.

      ‘Yes, my name is Sophy,’ she said coolly. ‘Though I can’t imagine why you should be so ill-mannered and—and familiar.’

      He put his handsome head a little on one side—the street lamp’s thin light turned his grey hair to silver—and said silkily, to madden her,

      ‘My dear good madam, why should I wish to be familiar with you? I used your name merely as a means of identification.’

      Sophy choked, drew a long calming breath, and turned to her brother.

      ‘What