Swallowbrook's Winter Bride (8 page)

‘Hmm, the infection could have originated from that and lain dormant for a while,’ she told him as she felt the swollen fleshy part of the top of his foot. ‘I’m going to give you a course of amoxicillin. Are you all right with that? You’re not allergic to it?’

‘No,’ he said easily. ‘I’ve had it before without any side effects.’ He got up to go. ‘Do tell Nathan that I hope the boy will soon be better. We’re having a big barbeque on bonfire night on the usual field behind the park and the young’un won’t want to miss that.’

‘Hopefully we’ll all be there,’ she told him, with the dread of what Toby had told them heavy on her, and wished that Nathan would phone, but as it was barely an hour since she’d left him maybe she was expecting too much.

She’d been anticipating having to dash around in the lunch hour to find something to take back with her for Toby, but the nurses had forestalled her and one of them turned up at that moment with sweets and toys that they’d collected amongst the staff.

‘Is it right that Toby might have been eating the berries of the deadly nightshade?’ she asked. ‘I heard you telling Dr John something like that and it sounded really awful.’

‘Yes,’ she told her. ‘He only ate a couple, but it is very worrying just the same as the berries can kill.’

At that moment Nathan came through on her desk phone and the practice nurse departed. ‘How’s Toby?’ she asked urgently.

‘Sleeping more naturally,’ he replied. ’His tummy should now be washed clear of the poison, and if what they’ve done at the hospital is sufficient to make him better, we might see some improvement soon. It makes me shudder to think what he would have been like if he’d eaten more than just two of the ghastly things.

‘How are things at your end?’ he wanted to know. ‘Had Dad finished morning surgery when you got back?’

‘Yes, more or less. He is on his way to the hospital now. John was devastated when I told him what Toby had been up to and is most upset that it had happened while he was in his care. He said it could only have occurred while they were playing hide and seek in the bushes on the edge of the field. So do please have a kind word for him, Nathan.’

There was silence at the other end of the phone for a moment and then he said dryly, ‘Why, what do you think I’m going to do? Blame him for being kind enough to look after Toby during the half-term break?

‘I can tell that you’re not very pleased with me, Libby, and I apologise for being a tactless fool when I told you to go back to the surgery, but there are others who need you besides Toby. We can’t expect to monopolise you all the time. So am I forgiven? I never get it right with you, do I?’

‘There is nothing to forgive, just as there is nothing to thank me for,’ she told him with a lift to her voice. ‘I’ll see you this evening as soon as I’ve finished here.’

When she’d replaced the receiver another patient was waiting to be seen and after that there were twice as many home visits to do because she was the only doctor available. But that was what it was all about and Nathan had been right as usual in insisting that she make the surgery her priority in spite of her longing to be with the two of them.

When she arrived at the hospital in the evening he was sitting beside the bed, watching over Toby, who was sleeping once more with his small chest rising and falling steadily, unlike the distressed breathing of earlier in the day.

But he was still very pale and poorly-looking and as she came to stand beside them Nathan looked up and said with a wry smile, ‘He has asked a couple of times when you were coming with the “goodies” so it would seem that Toby’s thought processes have not been affected.’

She was bending over the child in the bed, observing him with a glance that was a mix of the keen eye of the medic and the tender concern of someone who cared a lot for the small motherless child and the man watching over him.

It had been a long and tiring day, but it was as nothing compared to what Nathan had been going through, she thought. Yet when she turned to face him the smile was still there, somewhat frayed at the edges but a smile nevertheless. She wasn’t to know that just the sight of her after one of the worst days of his life was comforting beyond belief.

However, Libby’s thoughts were centred on the urgencies of the moment and she asked, ‘So what is the verdict on the gastric lavage and Toby’s condition in general?’

‘Improving,’ he replied soberly. ‘The lavage should have washed the poison out of his system and we have to hope that he will gradually recover. Dad has been and gone in an awful state. He’s going to investigate all the plant life where Toby was hiding and see it off when he finds the belladonna so that no other child will be tempted to eat what they think are juicy black grapes.

‘And what sort of day have you had?’ he asked. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask?’

Nightmarish would be a truthful answer to that question, she thought, with the two of them constantly in her thoughts and a huge workload to cope with.

Instead she told him, ‘I’ve had better, but Hugo will be back tomorrow and then the pressures from the surgery will slacken off, and as for now would you like me to sit with Toby while you have a break?’

‘No, Libby. I’ll be fine,’ he said, not wanting to miss a moment of being with her now that she was there.

He was doing it again, she thought, pushing her away, keeping her on the edge of the trauma he was going through. Was he afraid that she would see their togetherness at this awful time as a bond that might tie him to her?

She wanted to run away and hide, but not before Toby saw that she had kept her promise. Producing the bag of toys and goodies, she said levelly, ‘The surgery staff have sent these, everyone is most concerned for Toby and yourself.’ And still persisting, she asked, ‘Have you had anything to eat since we came here this morning?’

‘No. Food would choke me. I’ve had a few cups of coffee, which are all I’ve needed so far.’

She nodded and, pulling another chair up at the opposite side of the bed, sat facing him in silence for what seemed like an eternity until Toby opened his eyes and on seeing her asked, ‘Have you brought them, Libby?’

‘Yes, my darling,’ she told him. ‘I’ve brought lots of things for you to eat and play with as soon as you’re feeling better. They’re in this big bag.’ She held it up where he could see it and he nodded then closed his eyes and dozed off again.

Nathan had been silent during their short conversation. As he’d watched the two of them together all his vows to wait until the right moment to open his heart to her had disappeared.

As she was placing the bag in the locker at the side of Toby’s bed he rose to his feet and, fixing her with his dark hazel gaze, said in a low voice that she alone could hear, ‘Libby, will you marry me? It would be so much the right thing to do.’

‘Nathan, how can you ask me that now? Of course I can’t,’ she breathed, taking a step back on legs that had turned to jelly. ‘I’m not in the market for another marriage of convenience, this time yours!’ She moved even further away from him. ‘I will be here to see Toby this time tomorrow, or before if he needs me, and it would help if you aren’t around.’

‘You still haven’t forgiven me for rejecting you all that time ago, have you?’ he said flatly.

‘This is not about forgiveness,’ she told him in an anguished whisper. ‘It’s about a word that seems to be missing from your vocabulary where I’m concerned, so subject closed!’ And once again she set off down the hospital corridor with pain in her heart.

But this time it was for the
two of them.
It was crystal clear that Nathan’s lukewarm proposal had been because he
was
considering her as a mother figure to help him bring Toby up, and this crisis had settled any doubts he might have had. If that was the limit of his affection for her, the miseries of the past would seem as nothing compared to those of the future.

As he’d watched her go he had wanted to chase after her and tell her that his love for her was a clear and constant thing, that since he had got to know her better she was never out of his thoughts. But it was clear from Libby’s reaction to his ill-timed proposal that
her
thoughts were not running along the same channels as
his.

And so what had he done? Let his heart take over his mind and asked her to marry him in the worst possible setting. At a time when she was bound to feel that he wanted her in his life to help with Toby, who was lying beside them recovering from an illness that could easily have killed him, and when all around them was the smell of antiseptic when it should have been lilies or roses.

The only good thing to come out of his crazy impulse was to know that she was still on Toby’s case, loving and gentle towards him,
caring for him like a mother.
So
if he, Nathan, had put himself beyond the pale in Libby’s estimation, at least her feelings towards Toby weren’t going to change.

He loved everything about her, he thought achingly, the golden fairness of her, the soft brown velvet of eyes that were only ever watchful and wary where he was concerned. He admired the way she ran the practice and treated the staff, and sometimes wondered how that father of hers could bear to be so far away from his only child. Yet fool that he was, hadn’t
he
stayed away from her for three long years and now was desperate to make up for it?

As Libby drove back to Swallowbrook at the end of one of the most stressful days she’d had in a long time, her spirits were at a low ebb. It had started badly and got steadily worse, the final straw being Nathan’s impromptu and emotionless proposal.

Her refusal had been prompt and painful, and she’d had control of the situation until now, but on the last mile of her journey home she was weeping at the futility of her feelings for a man who understood her so little.

Roll on her short vacation in the house on the island in the middle of the lake, she was thinking as she put the car away for the night. Just a couple of weeks and she would be away from everything that hurt.

Hopefully by then Toby would be better, because if he wasn’t she wouldn’t want to be away from him no matter how desperate she was for some time on her own, and if Nathan was back at the practice along with Hugo she would be able to go away with an easy mind. But for the present the sting of being proposed to because of her usefulness rather than her appeal was not easy to cope with.

Normality was coming back into his life in everything except his relationship with Libby, Nathan reflected on the morning that Toby was discharged from hospital. That had died a death on the day that he’d asked her to marry him and been well and truly put in his place.

It had been crazy to throw away the closeness that had been developing between them in a moment of intense longing, and now there was not a lot left between them, he decided as he drove home with an excited Toby beside him.

She
had been diligent in her visits to the boy, and he’d done as she’d asked and kept out of the way in the early evening of each day, which was when she came, using the break from his bedside to go home and have a shower and a change of clothes.

By the time he’d got back she had been and gone. Sometimes they’d passed each other on the way and he’d thought grimly that it wasn’t a crime he’d committed. He could think of one or two local, unattached women who would jump at the chance of marrying him, but he didn’t want them. He wanted Libby beside him in the dark hours of the night and across from him at the breakfast table. What it was going to be like when he returned to the practice he shuddered to think.

It had been a Friday when he’d brought Toby home from the hospital and he would be going back to school on the Monday. Nathan had seen little of Libby over the weekend, but Toby had spent some time with her as it seemed that she’d promised him on the night before his discharge that he could go across to her place to play whenever he wanted if it was all right with his uncle.

Nathan hadn’t had any quarrel with that, just a wish that he might have been included in the invitation, and now it was Monday morning and after seeing Toby safely into school Nathan presented himself at the practice once more with the determination inside him that as far as he was concerned he was there to work, ready to slot himself back into the busy medical centre where at least he would be able to see Libby, even if
she
didn’t want to see
him.

He was in for a surprise. Along with the rest of the staff she greeted him cordially enough, as if nothing between them had changed, and he observed her thoughtfully when she wasn’t looking in his direction. He was getting the message. It was going to be business as usual at the surgery and the cold zone at any other time.

It was the first time she had seen him properly in days she was thinking as the morning got under way and noticed that although Nathan was dealing with his patients with his usual brisk efficiency he looked tired and gaunt, like someone carrying a heavy burden, and she felt that her love would be a poor thing if she didn’t do something about it, because love him she did, she always had, and no matter what he did or said, nothing was ever going to change that.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A
T
the
end of the morning surgery she said to him, ‘Would the two of you like to come for a meal tonight? It would save you cooking as long as you don’t mind eating somewhat later than you usually do.’

He was observing her with raised brows but his reply when it came was easy enough. ‘That would be very nice, except for the fact that Dad is picking Toby up from school and taking him back to his place for his evening meal to celebrate him being well again. Thanks for the thought, though.’

As she’d listened to what he had to say she knew that the obvious thing to do was to say that the invitation was still open if he wanted to come alone, but she’d been relying on Toby as the bond between them to keep the atmosphere less taut than it had been since Nathan had asked her to marry him as those hurtful moments haunted her constantly.

He was tuned into her thoughts on
this
occasion and said, ‘I’m sure you would prefer it if he was with us, so perhaps another time would be better, and by the way, as I don’t have to pick Toby up from school, I’m available until we close here if you want an early finish for a change. I can imagine what the workload has been like while Hugo and I have both been absent.’

It was
her
turn to refuse
his
offer. ‘I asked you to come for a meal as you look as if you haven’t been eating much over recent days, and as this evening will be your first free time since Toby was ill I wouldn’t want you to be putting in extra time at the practice on my behalf. So do we understand each other? The offer still stands if you would like to come on your own tonight.’

She wasn’t going to tell him that she was achingly aware of the strain he’d been under, and that she could not stop herself from caring about him just as long as he understood that was where it ended. He’d spoiled the rest of it by making her feel that he wanted her as a mother figure for Toby and was seemingly prepared to go along with the
wife
part of it for the child’s sake.

He couldn’t refuse again, Nathan was thinking. The thought of having Libby to himself for a couple of hours until his father brought Toby home at his bedtime was not to be refused twice, so he said, ‘Yes, all right, I’d like that, but before I set off on my house calls I’d like to make it clear that I
will
be working the extra hours this afternoon in spite of what you say.

‘I know that you would rather see less of me than more, which makes your invitation to dine with you tonight somewhat of a surprise, but with regard to this place I’m part of a team and am already conscious that my contribution is a lot less than yours, so today I am on full steam.’ While she digested that he went out to his car and within seconds drove off to visit the sick in the cottages and in the bigger houses on the leafy lanes that surrounded the village.

Hugo followed him shortly afterwards to do his share of the house calls and while they were gone Libby went across to Lavender Cottage and prepared a casserole, which she put in the oven on a low setting.

Once that was done she laid the table with the cutlery and crockery that had been her mother’s pride and joy. Then it was back to the practice where the waiting room was filling up again for the second surgery of the day.

As she crossed the space that separated the cottage from the practice building the lake was glinting in the distance beneath a pale winter sun and the house on the island was caught in its rays as a reminder that soon she would be there, away from the practice for a little while and from the man who was never out of her thoughts.

Maybe when she wasn’t seeing Nathan all the time at the surgery and in his comings and goings to the cottage next to hers she might find some peace of mind, if only briefly, she thought, but loving him had become a way of life, a reason for living, even though she was miserable most of the time because of that same love.

At the end of the day they left the building that had once been her home together and separated outside the cottages while Nathan went to change and Libby hurried inside to check that the casserole hadn’t dried up.

It hadn’t, so she dashed up the stairs, flung off her working clothes, and after a quick shower put on pale grey slacks and a black silk top and was coming down the stairs when he rang the bell.

Her eyes widened when she saw the bouquet of all the flowers she liked best that he was holding, and as she stepped back to let him in, with her composure slipping into confusion, he handed them to her and said whimsically, ‘I’m not going to use the “thanks” word, but I don’t know how I would have got through the last couple of weeks without you, Libby. You were my rock to hold onto in the midst of the horror of Toby’s illness.’

He was explaining the other side of that ghastly proposal, she thought with tears pricking, and unable to stop herself she reached forward and kissed his cheek.

As he turned his head, surprised by the gesture, their lips met and the moment became a torrent of longing as his arms tightened around her and she gave herself up to kisses that were a much better thing than her lips against his cheek.

The ringing of the doorbell broke into the moment and Nathan groaned as they drew apart. ‘Are you expecting someone?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘No, but I’d better see who it is.’ Moving towards the door reluctantly, she pulled back the catch to reveal John in the porch, holding a heavy-eyed Toby by the hand.

‘Sorry to arrive so soon,’ he said apologetically. ‘When Nathan rang to say that he would be eating here tonight I told him that I would bring Toby back at half past seven as he’d already been asleep for a couple of hours after school, but his first day back has taken it out of him and he needs to be tucked up in his bed.’

Nathan had appeared behind her. ‘It’s all right, Dad,’ he said, and with a smile for Libby, ‘Would you consider bringing the food over to my place while I get Toby settled for the night? It would solve the problem.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed weakly, still under the spell of his kisses and the joy of being in his arms. There had been none of the awful feeling of being used, just the supreme delight of a moment that had come out of nowhere and might have progressed into something special maybe.

Yet, she thought as John said a brief goodbye and Nathan picked Toby up into his arms ready to take him to where he belonged, some things that happened came in the form of a lesson from life and were meant to cause those involved to stop and think before committing themselves.

As the door closed behind them she took the casserole out of the oven and placed it on a tray, then followed them across, and while Nathan was putting Toby to bed set the table in his dining room instead of hers.

‘The sleepy one is asking for a kiss, Libby,’ he called down some minutes later. ‘Can you come up?’ When she appeared in the doorway of the smaller of the cottage’s two bedrooms Toby was smiling at her from the pillows and clutching his comforter, which had been with him all the time he’d been in hospital.

As tears pricked she thought how wonderful it would be if she was there every night at his bedtime because Nathan loved her for herself and not her usefulness.

Nathan was watching her expressions change and knew that what his father’s ring on the doorbell had interrupted was not going to happen again when Toby was asleep. It had been a moment of bliss that had ended as quickly as it had begun. Once again the timing had been wrong.

His surmise was correct. As they ate the meal that Libby had prepared the conversation was about everything except those kisses, such as their day at the practice and village affairs, including the barbeque and bonfire that was to take place on the coming Friday night.

‘There has been that kind of thing on Bonfire Night ever since we were young, hasn’t there?’ he commented, remembering how she had always been somewhere near on the night. ‘That is what is so enchanting about this kind of community. I would imagine that everyone rallied around like they do when you lost Jefferson.’

‘Yes, they did,’ she said quietly, wishing he hadn’t brought up the awful mistake she’d made out of loneliness and rejection while they were in the middle of chatting about general things, and that wasn’t the end of it.

‘You never talk about your marriage, Libby. Did you love him?’ he asked gravely, and more importantly, ‘Did he love you?’

He was remembering them again, those ghastly moments in the church porch, and suddenly he had to know if he’d made the second-biggest mistake of his life in thinking that Libby had been totally happy on her wedding day.

‘I think I was more in love with love than I was with Ian,’ she said, as if the words were being dragged out of her. ‘I was in my late twenties with no family around me. I’d lost my mother, and my dad had moved away because he couldn’t stand the thought of how he’d had to sell the farm due to his own carelessness.’

There was a pause and he felt himself tense as she continued, ‘And you’d made it clear that you had no feelings for me. You never came back. Not even for a visit.

‘Ian had already proposed to me twice and I’d turned him down, but the third time…well, you know the rest. With regard to if
he
loved
me
, not in the true sense, I felt. He wanted a wife. I was sitting there on the shelf. In truth it wasn’t the marriage I wanted it to be, but the way it ended was a tragedy and not something I’d wish on anyone. It’s not something that I like to talk about, Nathan, so can we please change the subject?’

‘Yes,’ he said with the gravity still upon him, ‘but just one thing before we do.’

‘And what is that?’ she asked tonelessly.

‘How in a thousand years could you have ever thought you were on the shelf? Not every guy in Swallowbrook was as blind as I was at that time.’

She shrugged slender shoulders inside the black silk top. ‘Maybe they just didn’t appeal to me. Ian was different, he didn’t ask a lot of me because he was so absorbed in his own lifestyle. I asked him once why he’d married me and he said he’d felt he was at the stage in his life where he should have a wife, and I obviously fitted the bill for him. So you see, neither of our hearts was ever in it. If Ian hadn’t died we would have been divorced by now, I’m sure of it.’

They were closer than they’d ever been in these few moments, he was thinking, but Libby wanted to talk about something less revealing and he had promised her that he would, so returning to the subject of Friday night he asked, ‘What about the bonfire and barbeque? Have you got something planned, or should the two of us take Toby? Today has exhausted him, it was plain to see, but by Friday he should be more his usual self and if he’s not we won’t take him. Agreed?’

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t made any plans regarding it. I don’t have much time,
or inclination
, for socialising these days.’

‘So can’t we do something about that? When things are really back to normal with Toby, and Dad will have him for the night, why don’t we live it up somewhere in the town, or hereabouts if you know of somewhere special?’ As she observed him doubtfully he said dryly, ‘With no strings attached.’

‘Yes, maybe we could do that some time,’ she agreed, and thought it wasn’t
strings
she was concerned about, it was
bonds
,
the bonds of the love that bound her to him, while for all she knew Nathan might be wanting to use her for some light relief in the restricted life that was now his.

She didn’t stay long after that. His questions had opened old wounds, brought back the uncertainties of the past that were always there somewhere in the background, and just because the moment they touched they became two different people she wasn’t going to turn back into the romantic innocent that had been given her marching orders that day at the airport.

Her timing had been so horribly wrong. There had been weeks before he’d gone when she could have told him how much she loved him, and when he’d casually suggested that she go with him she’d begun to hope.

But in love with him though she was, her loyalties to the practice, his father, her father and to the place she loved most on earth had made her refuse. Hoping all the time that he would change his mind about working abroad if only for a little while, and begin to see her as something other than just a face at the practice.

When she opened the door to leave there was a chill wind blowing and Nathan took a jacket of his off a hook in the hall and wrapped it around her protectively. When she looked up at him from the circle of his arms it was there again, the awareness that was so strong between them. Turning it into trivia before it took hold of them again, she said, ‘My door is only yards away. I’m not going to catch cold.’

‘Nevertheless,’ he said, releasing her from his hold, ‘you wouldn’t be out in it even for such a short distance if it wasn’t for my affairs, and there’s no rush to return the jacket. I have others.’

He gave her a gentle push. ‘Away with you, and thanks for the food. It would seem that the next time we dine together will be at Friday night’s bonfire, subject to Toby not being too tired. Every time I think about what he has recovered from I feel weak with thankfulness.’

‘Yes, you must be,’ she said gently. ‘I was only on the outside of things and I was transfixed with horror, so what it must have been like for you I shudder to think.’