Swallowbrook's Winter Bride (10 page)

‘That would be great.’

While they were eating she asked with her glance on the dressings on his hands, ‘Do you think we should have gone to the burns unit at the hospital to have your hands treated?’

‘Not in this weather,’ he said as the wind howled outside. ‘I’ll see how they are when I get back to the practice in the morning. For the moment the pain is under control. I’ll take some more painkillers later before I go to bed,’ and with a question in the eyes looking into hers, ‘Where will I be sleeping?’

‘There are three bedrooms. I’ve got the big one on the front. There is a ground-floor room just across the hall and a smaller bedroom opposite mine. The one on this level is very attractive. I think you would be most comfortable there.’

I would be ‘most’ comfortable in yours with you,
he wanted to tell her, but didn’t know how much of Libby’s warmth towards him sprang from gratitude rather than affection because he’d stopped her from getting burnt and been scorched himself in the process.

She may not realise that he wasn’t bothered about that as long as
she
was unharmed, but was not going to tell her as the last thing he wanted was to worm himself into her affections by playing the hero. But at least he would have her to himself for a while.
He was inside the fortress.

After dinner in the early evening they spent the next couple of hours watching a drama on TV and chatting about life in general. Libby brought up the subject of Christmas again and was surprised to find that after her previous mention of it Nathan was well ahead of his shopping for the event, which was more than she was, and rather knocked on the head any ideas she might have had about them doing their Christmas shopping together.

‘Would you like to have a look at your room?’ she asked when they’d exhausted every topic of conversation they could think of that wasn’t about them.

‘Yes, sure,’ he said easily, and when she’d shown him around he nodded without a great deal of enthusiasm and said with a change of subject, ‘I need to check that the boat is safe for the night before I turn in. I won’t be a moment, Libby.’

She held out a restraining hand and told him firmly, ‘No, I’ll see to it. You don’t know the layout of the landing stage in the dark like I do.’ And before he could protest she’d gone.

The thought of any more harm coming to him was just too much to bear, she thought as she made her way towards where the boat lay still safely tethered. As it rocked to and fro on the surface of the lake a shaft of moonlight brought the name that he had given it into focus and her face stretched.

Painted in black on its dazzling white timbers was the word ‘Pudding’.

He had followed her out of the house and as he came up behind her saw that her shoulders were shaking and knew why.
You idiot!
he told himself.
You’ve upset her. Libby doesn’t see it as a joke. Or maybe she does and finds it in bad taste. You aren’t going to woo her with that sort of humour.

She was turning to face him and it was his turn to be taken aback.

It was laughter that her shoulders were shaking with. ‘Are you sure you want to call it that?’ she gurgled in the dark November night. ‘You could run a competition to guess what it means.’

‘So you’re not mad at me, then?’

Her eyes were wide and luminous in the lights of the landing stage and she said softly, ‘Just as long as you don’t think I’m a pudding now, how could I be angry with you when you’ve been hurt because of my carelessness?’ Laughter still bubbled. ‘I don’t think you’ll find another boat with a name like that.’

When he took a step towards her she didn’t side step or back away. She just stood there and waited for him to take hold of her and when he did it was as if they were on another planet where only they existed as he kissed her until she was limp with longing.

‘How am I going to make love to you with hands covered in these things?’ he murmured as with arms still entwined they stopped every few moments to kiss on their way back to the house.

‘I’m sure you’ll find a way,’ she breathed with all her doubts and uncertainties disappearing as the wonder of the night closed in on them.

When they were inside he pointed to the downstairs bedroom and said, ‘Do I
have
to sleep in there, Libby?’

‘Not unless you have powers that I am not aware of and are going to make love to me by remote control,’ she said softly, and taking his hand led him towards the stairs.

It was how she’d always known it would be if they ever got that far, she thought as they made love. The wasted years were forgotten, the future was beckoning, and when at last she slept in his arms it was with the knowledge of just how much Nathan loved her.

Until she awoke the next morning to find him gone, and a note on the pillow beside her that turned a grey November day into a black hole. It said,

Libby,

Am ashamed that that I took advantage of your gratitude with regard to the incident with the fire, and those brief but memorable moments when you saw your childhood name on the boat.

I had invaded the privacy that you were so desperate for and then proceeded to use it to my advantage. At the time that I was doing so it seemed the right thing to do, but when I awoke in the dawn and found you curled up beside me I wasn’t so sure. None of what happened was how I’d planned it was going to be since I came back to Swallowbrook. I do hope you will understand that and we can still be friends.

Be careful on your own out here and don’t light any more fires,

Nathan.

When she’d read the note Libby sank back against the pillows, too stunned for tears. Surely Nathan wasn’t saying that the night before had been just a one-off that he’d engineered because he’d known she was vulnerable and willing due to what had happened previously, and now he’d gone, leaving a note instead of telling her to her face that he was still not willing to commit himself?

Fair enough, he wanted them still to be friends, did he, so friends they would be when Toby was around and at the practice, but for the rest of the time he would not exist as far as she was concerned. He’d made her feel cheap and cheap she was not!

Nathan had left the island at six o’clock with the motor of the boat not at full throttle so as not to awaken her, but once he was clear of the place he sailed at full speed and once the boat had been moored did as he’d said he would do, took a taxi back to his cottage in Swallowbrook where he showered and changed before picking Toby up for school and then on to the practice.

Everything was going to plan at this end, he thought as he ate a hasty breakfast, but what about Libby on the island? She would have read his note by now and he prayed that she understood what he’d meant by it.

He’d wanted her so much and when she’d responded to him the night before like she had he’d taken the moment, made love to her and it had been fantastic. But afterwards he’d wished that he hadn’t got carried away and had waited as he’d planned to do until he knew that she was sure of him, trusted him not to break her heart again, and now he was thinking that by leaving her the note he might have done that all over again.

Toby was full of what he and Grandfather Gallagher had been doing by the riverside when he called at his father’s place to take him to school and John, who knew about the surprise he was planning for him, said when he wasn’t within hearing distance, ‘You look a bit down. Did you get the boat?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, forcing a smile. ‘I’m taking him to see it this afternoon after school. Do you want to come?’

‘No,’ was the reply. ‘Let it be just the two of you there when he sees it for the first time. I’m going to put my feet up for the rest of the day. Your boy takes a bit of keeping up with, but I wouldn’t want to miss having him here for the world. He’s given me a new reason for living, and for Toby you’re giving him everything you can to make him happy except maybe a woman in his life, a mother figure.’

‘Yes, well, they don’t sell them down at the supermarket, you know.’

‘Which is perhaps all to the good,’ his father commented dryly. ‘He talks about Libby a lot. Is there anything that he and I can look forward to in that direction?’

‘There might have been once,’ he said flatly, ‘but I made a mess of things and she is wary of me now, so don’t raise your hopes only to have them dashed. Maybe Santa might have a mummy for Toby when he comes.’

‘Now you’re being flip about something very important,’ he was told, and Nathan thought that his approach to Libby was anything but flip. If it was he would already be making capital out of the happenings of the night before instead of taking a step back to give her time to take a long look at what had happened in the house on the island.

As if to give emphasis to the conversation he’d just had with his father, Toby asked on the way to school, ‘Will Libby be there when I get home this afternoon?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said gently, ‘but I’ve got something to show you that I think you will like.’

‘What is it?’ he wanted to know.

‘It’s a surprise.’ And as the school gates were looming up ahead Toby had to be satisfied with that.

When Nathan arrived at the practice Hugo asked in surprise, ‘What’s wrong with your hands?’

‘I had an argument with a bonfire,’ he said with a dismissive shrug of the shoulders, and then had another question to answer when the other man said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Libby at all, have you?’

He sighed. For some reason she was the main topic of conversation this morning when all he wanted was to be left alone to gather his thoughts, which had been almost impossible since he’d left the island at half past six to anchor the boat, then gone home to change, and finally had driven to the lodge by the river to pick Toby up.

But Hugo was asking out of genuine concern and, knowing that Libby would not want her whereabouts to be public knowledge after the way he’d gatecrashed her quiet time and turned it into a night that she would either want to remember always or be in a hurry to forget, he said, ‘No, nothing as yet, Hugo, but she has only been gone a couple of days.’ And then steered the conversation towards practice matters.

The two of them had decided that today Hugo would do the house calls, while Nathan took Libby’s place, with one of the nurses to assist, at the Monday morning antenatal clinic. When she had dealt with blood-pressure checks and sent off any urine or blood samples that were required he would see each one in turn to make sure that the pregnancy was progressing satisfactorily and he found that even there Libby’s name was cropping up.

‘Where is Dr. Hamilton today?’ one of them asked. ‘It’s unusual for her not to be here.’

‘She’s taking a short break,’ he said levelly, ‘and will be with you as usual next week.’

Most of them were in good health and giving no cause for alarm, but when the nurse informed him of the results of the blood-pressure reading for one of them, he told an apprehensive forty-year-old who was expecting her first child, ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to give you some bed rest as your blood pressure is very high. I’m going to send for an ambulance to take you straight to hospital because you need to be under their immediate supervision.’ As the colour drained from her face he told her reassuringly, ‘It can happen to any pregnant woman that their blood pressure gets out of hand. Once you are resting it should level out and it will be monitored constantly all the time you’re there.’

‘It’s our first baby,’ she told him, dabbing at her eyes. ‘We’ve waited so long for me to become pregnant, we couldn’t bear to lose it.’

‘Of course not,’ he sympathised. ‘That’s why I’ve sent for an ambulance. While you are waiting, have a word with the receptionist if you want your husband to be contacted, or anyone else that needs to know what is happening.’

When the ambulance had been and gone and the clinic was over it was back to seeing his own patients and the first ones to present themselves were a young mother with a little girl of a similar age to Toby.

‘So what is the problem?’ he asked with a smile for the child when they’d seated themselves opposite. He’d seen her following Toby around in the school playground like a small golden-haired shadow and had thought it was like history repeating itself.

‘Cordelia has got a sore eye,’ her mother said. ‘She was poked in it by one of the boys in her class yesterday. I bathed it when we got home but it doesn’t seem to have had much effect. When she woke up this morning it was all red and sticky around the bottom lid.’

‘Can I have a look at your eye, Cordelia?’ he asked gently, and she nodded solemnly. It was as her mother had said, quite inflamed, and when he’d finished checking that the eyeball wasn’t damaged and that the soreness was reserved for the membranes of the socket he told her mother, ‘I’ll give you some drops that should clear it up in a day or two, and if you still aren’t happy when you’ve used them all, come back to see me again.’

As they were about to go he said to the child, ‘It wasn’t Toby who poked your eye, was it, Cordelia?’

She shook her head emphatically and her blonde ponytail swung from side to side with the movement as she told him still in solemn mood, ‘No. Toby is my friend.’

Her mother butted in at that moment to say, ‘Everyone thinks you’re doing a wonderful job with the boy, Dr Gallagher. It can’t have been easy.’