Swallowbrook's Winter Bride (3 page)

He was alone and the first thing she said was, ‘Where’s Toby?’

‘He’s playing with the children’s toys in the waiting room. One of the receptionists is keeping an eye on him,’ was the reply.

Seating himself across from her, he asked, ‘Did you enjoy your meal?’

‘No, not really,’ she admitted.

‘Why was that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it was because I like freshly caught salmon.’

‘But not the guy who reeled it in?’

‘I have no feelings either way about
him
,’
she said and followed it with, ‘I do have patients waiting, Nathan, so shall we proceed? What hours would you be available to join us here?’

‘Half past nine to three-thirty when the primary children finish,’ he said promptly. ‘We’ve been to see the headmaster before coming here and it’s sorted for Toby to start tomorrow. Today I’m going to take him into town for his uniform and a satchell.

‘If it’s all right with you, I feel that Wednesday would be a good day for me to settle back into the practice. It will leave me with tomorrow free in case Toby is reluctant to go when the moment arrives. He’s had so many changes in his life over recent months I wouldn’t be surprised.’

‘Wednesday will be fine,’ she assured him, and had to admire the way he had his priorities sorted. Getting back to the reason for his presence on the premises, she informed him, ‘Your father’s consulting room at the opposite end of the corridor is vacant, and as all the staff are new since you were last with us, apart from Gordon, the practice manager, I’ll introduce you to them while you are here if you like.’

‘Yes, sure,’ he said easily. ‘It would seem that the only things familiar to me are going to be the layout of the place…and you, Libby.’

In your dreams,
she thought. She would accept him as a neighbour because she had no choice, and as a colleague because she knew his worth as a doctor, but that was the limit of it. Familiar she was not going to be.

Nathan didn’t stay long after the introductions had been made. He separated Toby from the assortment of toys provided to keep small patients happy and took him for his school uniform of dark green and gold, leaving Libby to ponder on how much, or how little, she was going to enjoy working with him again.

She saw the two of them go past the surgery window the following morning and a lump came up in her throat to see the small boy resplendent in a green and gold blazer and matching T-shirt and shorts with Nathan holding his hand and looking down at him protectively.

She’d once dreamed of a similar scenario for the two of them, loving each other, loving the children they created, but that was all it had been, a dream. In utter foolishness she’d turned to someone else and that had been a
nightmare
, so where did she go from here? she wondered.

Yet she knew the answer to the question almost before she’d asked it of herself. She and Nathan were going nowhere. That way she would steer clear of any more heartbreak connected with the men in her life. She’d shown herself to be a poor judge when it came to that.

She’d thought sometimes during the long years he’d been gone, Why shouldn’t he have said what he did? At least he hadn’t strung her along into thinking he was interested in her when he wasn’t, which was what Ian had done, pursued the attractive young doctor at the practice when she was at her most vulnerable to satisfy his ego.

But there was work to do, patients to see, and she needed normality to keep her mind free from the events of a very strange weekend.

As she rose from her desk, intending to make a quick coffee before the next patient appeared, Nathan was passing again, homeward bound this time. When she waved he smiled, gave the thumbs-up sign and went on his way, leaving her with the feeling of unreality that had been there ever since she’d opened her door to him on Friday night.

Henrietta Weekes was a regular visitor at the practice with most of her problems associated with a failing heart due to having had scarlet fever when she was a child. A smart, intelligent woman, she usually coped with them calmly with little fuss, but today she was in distress and needing to see a doctor.

After checking her heart, Libby exclaimed, ‘How on earth have you managed to get here in this state, Henrietta?’

‘My son has brought me,’ she gasped.

‘I’m glad to hear you haven’t walked,’ she told her soberly. ‘Your heart is completely out of control and is affecting your lungs. I’m sending you to the coronary unit at the new hospital straight away by ambulance. You will be attended to more quickly that way than if your son was to take you. I’ll get one of the nurses to help you back into the waiting room to join him while I send out an emergency call. You’re an amazing woman, Henrietta, I’m not giving up on you. Once they get you into Coronary Care, you’ll be in safe hands.’

‘If I live that long,’ she said with a grimace of a smile, and Libby thought it was typical of the woman that she was facing up to what might happen with the same sort of stoicism that was always there in every crisis that brought her to the surgery for help. Her family, who were devoted to her, must live on a knife edge where their mother’s health was concerned.

As the day progressed like any other busy Monday at the practice there was no time to wonder how Nathan was occupying himself until Toby came out of school, or let her thoughts wander to how a small orphaned boy might be coping on his first day. Maybe she would find out tonight when her day at the practice was over and she was back at the cottage.

She was about to make a snack meal for herself that evening when there was a knock on the door, and when she opened it Toby was smiling up at her and announcing, ‘Uncle Nathan says would you like to come and eat with us?’

Clever uncle, she thought.
He knows I won’t refuse if he sends Toby with the invitation, but didn’t he get the message when we were on the steamer and I came up with an excuse for not accepting the invitation to join them at his father’s place?

He was gazing up at her innocently, waiting for an answer, so she said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely, Toby. When shall I come?’

Taking her hand in his, he tugged her towards him and said, ‘Now, Dr Hamilton.’ And having just been given her full title once again, she thought that if she and Toby were going to be seeing much of each other he must be allowed to call her something simpler than that.

‘We’re having fish fingers and ice cream, Toby’s choice,’ Nathan told her when she appeared hesitantly in the kitchen doorway, ‘to celebrate his first day at school,’ adding in a low voice that was for her ears only, ‘which he has enjoyed, thank goodness.’

‘I can imagine how relieved you are about that,’ she replied with her glance on the boy who had gone into the garden and was kicking a ball around while he waited to be fed.

He nodded sombrely but didn’t reply. Instead he asked, ‘How do you like my efforts to make it seem like a home to him?’

She looked around her. ‘Impressive. Just the right blend of luxury and cosiness.’

‘That is what I wanted to achieve. There wasn’t much of that about where I was based in Africa, and since I’ve become involved in adopting Toby we’ve been living in a rented apartment in London while I’ve been sorting out his parents’ affairs for him.

‘Now that we’ve crossed the hurdle of his first day at school and are settling into this place I’m hoping that we can put down some roots and become part of the community, the same as I was before.’

‘You can’t be a much bigger part of the community than serving them as a GP,’ she pointed out, ‘or have you changed your mind about tomorrow?’

‘No, of course not.
I’m
looking forward to
it even if
you
aren’t.’

He watched the colour rise in her cheeks and thought that where she’d been beautiful before, now she was divine. Still, she’d made it quite clear that their relationship was to be purely professional and he supposed he deserved no more after the way they had parted.

But only he knew the truth of the affair that had ended in him going to work abroad. He still shuddered at the thought of it, and the fact that Libby had been dragged into its aftermath that day at the airport would always be on his conscience.

His broken engagement to Felice Stopford all that time ago had made him wary of romantic love. It was an emotion he’d felt he hadn’t fully understood, and it had come through in the way he’d been so dismissive when Libby had told him how much she cared for him.

To Felice ‘love’ had meant money and position, expensive gifts, wining and dining, holidays abroad in plush hotels, and he had begun to realise that she was not for him about the same time that Libby had joined the practice.

He’d met his fiancée at a charity luncheon where he had been asked to speak about health care in the area and she’d stood out amongst the soberly dressed audience like a beacon on a hilltop. Dark-haired, voluptuous and quite charming, she’d made a beeline for him when it had finished and introduced herself as an American fundraiser representing similar organisations back in the States.

Her invitation to lunch had been the beginning of a romance that had started on a high and finished on the lowest of lows because he’d gradually discovered that her values were not the same as his. He’d found her to be greedy and shallow as he’d got to know her better and been uneasy about her eagerness for them to marry.

When he’d called the engagement off she’d gone storming back to the States and shortly afterwards he’d discovered through a colleague of hers that she’d had a doting elderly husband back there that she’d been eager to unload to make way for someone like himself.

That item of news had sickened him, made him feel tarnished, and pointed him in the direction of working overseas, which was something he’d been considering before he’d got to know Felice and been sidetracked. It was into that state of affairs that Libby had opened her heart to him. Felice had made him suspicious of love and ultimately it was Libby who’d suffered. The least he could do for her now was to abide by her terms and respect her wishes where their relationship was concerned.

By the time they’d finished eating Toby’s eyelids were drooping and Nathan said, ‘It’s been a long day for him, Libby. If you’ll excuse us, I’ll get him tucked up for the night. There are magazines or the TV if you want to wait until I come down.’ And picking the sleepy child up in his arms, he carried him upstairs.

When they’d gone she went into the kitchen. He’d mentioned magazines and television but there was the tidying up after the meal that would be waiting for him when he came back downstairs. If there was one thing she could do for him it was that, then she would go as quickly as she had come while her resolve to be distant with him was still there.

The kitchen was immaculate and she was seated at the table, scribbling a note to say thanks for the meal, when he came down. As she swung round to face him he was observing her with raised brows.

‘I was about to go and was leaving you a note,’ she explained.

‘Making your getaway while I wasn’t around?’ he questioned dryly.

‘Yes, something like that,’ she told him with cool defiance.

He sighed. ‘Go ahead, then, Libby, don’t let me stop you. I can see it’s going to be a bundle of laughs at the surgery tomorrow.’

‘Not necessarily,’ she told him levelly, ‘as long as we both behave like adults.’

His jaw was set tightly. ‘Why don’t you come right out with it and tell me that I’m not forgiven for what I said at the airport that day?’
And have regretted ever since.

This was laying it on the line with a vengeance, she thought, but was in no mood to bring her innermost feelings out into the open. She’d had a disastrous marriage since then and was older and wiser in many ways.

‘What you said long ago is in the past. I never give it a thought. We’ve both moved on after all,’ she said flatly. With a sudden weakening of her resolve, she added, ‘So why don’t we just get on with living next door to each other, working side by side at the practice, and leave it at that?’

The line of his jaw was still tight, the glint still in his eyes, but his voice was easy enough as he said, ‘Fine by me. I’ll see you tomorrow, Libby.’ As she got to her feet he said, ‘Thanks for tidying the kitchen. I’ll do the same for you one day if I’m ever invited across your threshold.’

Having no intention of taking him up on that comment, she gave a half-smile and, reaching out for the door handle, said, ‘I hope that Toby is as happy at school tomorrow as he’s been today.’ She stepped out into the gathering dark. ‘Goodnight, Nathan.’

‘Goodnight to you too,’ he said as he stood in the open doorway and watched her walk quickly down his drive and up her own.

When he heard her door click to behind her he went back inside and wondered if him joining the practice would cause less tension or more between the two of them.

CHAPTER THREE

L
IBBY
tried not to keep looking
at her watch the next morning as she waited for Nathan to arrive to start his first shift. In spite of her personal feelings she knew he would be as good as his word. The same as his devotion to Toby would not falter. With Nathan’s loving support he seemed to be settling well into his new life. Sadly the one thing he would need the most at his tender age was a loving mother and what his adopted father intended doing about that she didn’t know.

But aware that the man in question still possessed the attractions that had drawn
her
to him, she imagined that there would soon be members of her sex queuing to play the mother role.

Not that she was going to throw herself into the running, of course. She’d tried to make it clear once more last night that there could be nothing more between them, but he was the one who had raked up the past and caused her to put on an act regarding something she would never forget, and no way did she want it to happen again.

She was going to be pleasant but aloof from now on—no more harking back to times past, if only because of the humiliation that came with the memory of them. Life had treated her badly so far with two unpleasant experiences that most women would never have to face in a lifetime, and since Ian’s death she was resolved never to let herself be hurt again in that way.

Besides, now wasn’t the time to be thinking about Nathan—she had patients to see, starting with octogenarian Donald Johnson and when he appeared she asked, ‘What can I do for you today, Mr Johnson? Are you here about the tests I sent you for?’

‘Aye, I am,’ was the reply.

‘Yes, I thought so,’ she said, and told him, ‘I received a letter from the hospital this morning regarding the tests on your kidneys that I requested and was going to phone you. It would seem that one of them isn’t functioning and the other, although performing quite well, is not at full strength.’

‘I see. So one of my kidneys has had it and the other is limping along,’ he commented grumpily.

She smiled across at him. ‘It isn’t such a gloomy outlook as it seems. Our kidneys do gradually deteriorate as we get older, but lots of people survive with only one. We hear of those who have given a healthy kidney to someone else to avoid renal failure and still live a good life with just the one, and although in your case the one that is still working is past its best, I feel sure that it will continue to do its job.

‘The hospital say that they will want to see you every three months, which means they are going to keep a close watch on them, so for the present I would put your worries to one side.’

‘I wouldn’t have had any worries if you hadn’t sent me for those tests,’ he protested.

‘It’s standard procedure for a GP to arrange for those sorts of procedures for the elderly,’ she explained. ‘It won’t have made your kidneys any worse, and now you will have regular checks, which can’t be bad, surely?’

‘Aye, I suppose you’re right,’ he agreed reluctantly, getting to his feet. ‘I’m going fishing at John Gallagher’s place this afternoon, that’ll cheer me up a bit, and John let slip that Nathan is back in the village and he has a young’un to care for too. Is he going to be doctoring in this place again?’

‘Yes, he starts later on this morning, once he’s dropped his son off at school.’

‘That
is
good news!’ he exclaimed. ‘It will be like old times.’

Not exactly, she thought as he went to make way for the next patient on her list.

‘It was a stroke of genius, bringing Nathan Gallagher back into the practice,’ Hugo Lawrence said when he appeared in the doorway of her consulting room in the middle of the morning. ‘Being out of touch with the NHS for so long doesn’t seem to have affected his performance. He’s on top of the job from the word go by the looks of it.’

She smiled at his enthusiasm, but couldn’t help pointing out that it had been more a case of Nathan taking it for granted he would be slotting back into the practice. There had been no inspired thinking on her part with regard to his arrival at dead on half past nine in a smart suit, shirt and tie and oozing cool competence.

The fact that underneath it he was wary of making the wrong move where she was concerned would have amazed her if she had been aware of it. As it was, his presence was a cause for pain and pleasure in equal parts and she would be relieved when the first day of his return to the practice was over.

When she’d asked about Toby starting his second day at school he had said there’d been just a moment’s reluctance to go into lines in the schoolyard, as was the custom before the children went to their classes. But he’d seemed happy enough as he was trooping in with the rest of them.

She’d sensed anxiety in him at that moment, although seconds later he’d been seeing his first patient as if he’d never been away from the place and she’d told herself to stop involving herself in his affairs or she would be asking for more heartache than she had already.

‘Do you want to do the home visits to reacquaint yourself with the area?’ she enquired when the three doctors stopped for their lunch break. ‘Or would you rather give it a few days to settle in before you do that?’

He hesitated. ‘Maybe tomorrow, if you don’t mind. I would rather be around if the school should need to get in touch after the little episode this morning. I know it sounds as if I’m fussing, but…’

Caring wasn’t fussing, she wanted to tell him as a lump came up in her throat, but hadn’t she just been telling herself to stay aloof from his affairs? So instead she replied coolly, ‘Yes, of course. I’ll do them, and leave Hugo and yourself to see the rest of the patients on the list here at the surgery.’

As she drove towards the first of the house calls Libby had to pass the school and on seeing that the children were all out in the yard, on impulse she stopped the car and went to see if Toby was anywhere to be seen so that she could report back to Nathan.

Sure enough, she saw his fair curly mop bobbing up and down as he chased around with another child of similar age, showing no signs of reluctance to be there.

He’d seen her standing outside the railings and came running across breathless.

‘Are you all right, Toby?’ she asked gently.

‘Yes, Dr Hamilton,’ he gasped. ‘I’m having lots of fun.’ And off he went to find the other boy that he’d been playing with.

When she got back in the car she dialled the surgery and asked to speak to Nathan. When he came on the line she told him, ‘Don’t worry about Toby any more. The children were all in the playground when I was going past the school so I stopped the car and went across to see if I could see him. He was fine, running around with another small boy, and came across when he saw me. When I asked if he was all right he said he was having lots of fun.’

There was silence for a moment, then with his voice deepening he said, ‘Thanks for that, Libby. It was kind of you to take the trouble.’

‘It was no trouble,’ she said lightly as if the pair of them weren’t in her every waking thought. ‘I’ll see you later.’ And rang off.

The Pellows were a dysfunctional family who seemed to go from one crisis to another.

Angelina, the mother, was an artist who, when the creative mood was on her, would disappear into her studio for days on end. No shopping would be done or tidying up of the shambolic old house down a lane at the far end of the village where she and her family lived.

Her husband Malik was employed by the forestry commission and during her absences had to do the best he could in looking after their two children and things in general. He didn’t complain much because Angelina almost always sold what she’d painted, but there was relief all round when she surfaced again.

The young ones always seemed robust and healthy enough, but not today, it would seem, with regard to one of them. Malik had phoned to ask for a visit to six-year-old Ophelia, who had recently been diagnosed with measles and now had a high temperature, was very dizzy, and was complaining that her ears hurt.

When Libby arrived at the house she found that another of Angelina’s disappearances was in progress and Malik was busy making a lunch of sorts for him and the child, who was lying on a sofa in the sitting room.

When she examined her ears with an otoscope it was evident that the eardrums were swollen and when she asked the little girl where they hurt she pointed weepily to the area where her cheekbone met the inner ear.

‘I suspect that Ophelia has got viral labyrinthitis,’ Libby told her father. ‘It’s an infection of the middle ear that affects balance and makes the ears quite painful. It sometimes occurs when measles is present and can take some time to clear. There are two kinds of the illness, viral and bacterial. Viral is the less serious of the two but not to be ignored by any means.

‘Your daughter needs to rest, and I’m going to prescribe a low-dosage antihistamine course of treatment because of her age, and an equally mild children’s pain-relief tablet.

‘I see that the measles rash has disappeared so that problem is obviously lessening. It’s unfortunate that in its wake has come labyrinthitis. Ring the surgery if any further problems appear, Malik, and I’ll come straight away.’

She looked around her at the cluttered sitting room. ‘Do I take it that Angelina isn’t available?’

‘Yes, you do,’ he said morosely. ‘She’s having one of her artistic sabbaticals that can go on for days or even weeks.’

A vision of his wife as she’d last seen her came to mind, dressed in a golden kaftan with beads and bangles everywhere, and Libby hid a smile.

Angelina had looked more like a fortune teller than an artist.

The rest of the house calls were soon dealt with and as she drove back to the practice Libby stopped for a few moments beside the lake that was only a short distance from the surgery, a stretch of water that was so beautiful it always took her breath away. The white sails of yachts were outlined vividly against its calm waters, and a house built from the pale grey stone of the area was clearly visible on a tree-covered island in the centre of it.

Above the lake the fells towered in rugged magnificence, but all those who lived in the area knew that they could be dangerous too, that they sometimes asked a grim price from those who loved to climb them. The mountain rescue services were kept busy all the year round on behalf of those caught in bad weather up on the tops, or with others who lacked the experience to stay safe while climbing them.

Nathan had been involved in mountain rescue when he’d lived in Swallowbrook before. An experienced climber, he’d often been called out when the need had arisen, but she couldn’t see that happening now, not with Toby to care for. It was often a risky undertaking bringing to safety those who had succumbed to the dangers of the fells, and poor Toby had already been orphaned once.

As she pointed the car homewards it was a strange feeling to know that when she arrived back at the surgery he would be there, closeted in the consulting room that had been his father’s, and along with Hugo further along the corridor would be dealing with the afternoon surgery until, in a matter of minutes, it would be time for him to pick Toby up from school.

As she was about to take his place he said, ‘It is so good to be back here at the practice, Libby. You have no idea how much I missed it while I was away.’ She stared at him disbelievingly. ‘What? Do you think I don’t mean it?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘Once you’d gone to Africa you never came back to visit, did you, and you were eager enough to be gone in the first place?’

It was a moment to tell her that he had come back all right, but no one had known about it, and the memory of seeing her as a bride smiling up at Jefferson surfaced from the dark corners of his mind once again. The frustration and dismay of that catastrophic dash halfway across the world to hear from her own lips that Libby had put behind her the hurt he’d caused her was something he wasn’t likely to forget.

So it was just the practice that he’d missed, she thought bleakly, not any of those he’d left behind—certainly not her
.

But she hadn’t waited, had she? She’d done a stupid thing during the long empty weeks after his departure. Let the feeling of rejection that he’d been responsible for cause her to make a wrong decision that had been second only in foolishness to letting herself fall in love with him. They had been two great errors of judgement and she wasn’t going to let there be a third.

During that first day of his return they had spoken mainly about practice matters, but Libby had been so aware of him she’d felt relieved when he’d finished for the day and gone to pick Toby up from school.

When she arrived home at a much later hour she was hoping to be able to go in, shut her door and relax with no further sightings of him. It had seemed that her wish might be granted until a ring on the bell when Swallowbrook was bathed in autumn gloaming had her tensing.

It reminded her of the night of his arrival as she went slowly to the door, and sure enough it was her new neighbour standing in the shadowed porch.

‘I know you must have seen enough of me for one day,’ he said apologetically, ‘but on the point of going to sleep Toby has just told me that it’s the harvest festival at the school tomorrow morning and he’s expected to take something, and I haven’t got anything that would be suitable.’