Читать книгу Swallowbrook's Winter Bride - Abigail Gordon - Страница 8

SPENDING two weeks in Spain with her best friend had been great, but as Libby Hamilton drove the last couple of miles to Swallowbrook village, nestling in a lakeland valley below the rugged beauty of the fells, she was happy to be back where she belonged.

A month ago, on what was not as frequent an occasion as she would like it to be, she had met up with Melissa Lombard for lunch in Manchester, and on seeing how pale and tired Libby looked, the only person she’d ever told what a mistake her tragically brief marriage had been had said, ‘I’m going to our villa in Spain for a couple of weeks. That husband of mine can’t go with me. There is a big audit due at the office and he’s in charge. So why don’t you join me, Libby? It would be lovely if you could.’

She’d hesitated and Melissa had said coaxingly, ‘Surely they can manage without you at the Swallowbrook practice for once, and if they can’t, they can get a temp. I’m no doctor but I think I can safely prescribe two weeks of lazing in the sun to bring some colour back to your cheeks.’

‘It would be a change, I suppose,’ Libby had agreed wistfully. ‘I haven’t had any time off since Ian had the dreadful accident. It’s as if I haven’t been able to stop and think since the funeral. I guess I’ve been using work as an excuse these past few months.’

Melissa had nodded gravely and gone on to say sympathetically, ‘So what better reason for joining me could there be than having spent months of hard graft without a break?’

Libby had smiled at her across the table and told her friend, ‘You have just talked me into two weeks in Spain, Mel, but not a moment longer. Our senior partner, John Gallagher, retires at the end of the month and I’ve taken over as senior partner. He has virtually given up already, but I know if I ask him he’ll take up the reins again for two more weeks while I have a break.’

Driving back now, alongside the fells beneath a harvest moon, she was feeling much more like her old self after a healthy dose of sun, sea and a complete rest. Yet as was always the case on the rare occasions she was absent from the practice, coming back to Swallowbrook and her cottage across the way from the surgery was heart-warming, and today was no exception.

The practice building had once been her childhood home. In those days it had been a farmhouse, but in her late teens it had been put up for sale due to her father’s neglect of it after her mother had died, and it was now the village medical centre in the middle of the lakeside beauty spot.

When the lease had run out on the old practice premises and somewhere else had needed to be found, the spacious farm building had been an ideal choice. The outside of it was mostly unchanged, but the inside had been modernised and now provided health care for the hardy folk of Swallowbrook and the surrounding areas.

When the transfer had been made six years ago John Gallagher had been senior partner, with his son Nathan, also a doctor, working alongside him, and two years later Libby, who had gone straight into general practice after receiving her doctor’s degree, had joined them as the third and youngest member of the trio.

But it had turned out that one of them had itchy feet, and where she had been content to stay in the place she loved best, Nathan Gallagher had other ideas in mind. He was three years older than her and she’d worshipped the dark-haired, dark-eyed, dynamic doctor since her early teens, but in those days she’d been just a kid with a brace on her teeth as far as he was concerned.

Though she’d never admit it to him, one of the reasons she’d joined the practice had been so that she could be near him, and another had been because the building had once been her home, and to be as close to it as she could she’d bought an empty farm cottage across the way.

When she’d joined the practice Nathan had seen that the girl who had always been hovering while they had been growing up had become a slender blonde with eyes like brown velvet and the warmest smile he’d ever seen. They’d shared a brief flirtation but he was aware that Libby had long since had a crush on him and didn’t want to lead her on.

And besides he’d had his hands full with a fiancée who had been pushing hard for a gold band to go beside the solitaire diamond on her finger and he had begun to feel that the engagement had been a mistake because he hadn’t been as keen on the idea as she had been.

When he’d informed Libby that he was leaving the practice to go and work abroad she’d been devastated. ‘The engagement is off,’ he’d told her, and it would have been news she had been happy to hear if it hadn’t been followed by, ‘So I’m free to work in Africa, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve agreed to take up a position in a hospital in a small town out there where doctors are needed urgently.’

‘How long will you be gone?’ she’d asked with the colour draining from her face.

‘As long as it takes, I suppose, but my contract is for three years.’

He’d noted the effect that the news of his departure had had on her. ‘Why don’t you come along?’ he’d suggested casually. ‘There’s always room for one more doctor out there.’

‘No, thanks,’ she’d replied hastily before she did some crazy thing like letting her longing to be wherever he was take over, and had gone on to say, ‘It wouldn’t be fair to your father, two of us gone from the practice at the same time, and my father is still around, don’t forget, forever sick and remorseful at having to sell the farm. Also it has always been my dream to practise medicine in the place that was once my home. I feel I owe it to our community.’

She was almost home. As Libby took the next bend in the road it was there, Swallowbrook, beautiful in the moonlight, a familiar cluster of houses built out of lakeland stone, and outside The Mallard, the local pub, there was the usual gathering of fell walkers and locals seated on wooden benches, drinking the local brew.

Down a side turning not far away was Swallowbrook Medical Practice and across the way from it Lavender Cottage, where recently she’d spent far too many lonely nights at the end of long busy days.

The cottage was semi-detached. The property next to it had been on the market for quite some time and as she turned onto her drive she was surprised to see a van belonging to one of the big furniture stores in the nearby town pulling away from in front of it.

Her eyes widened. It was almost ten o’clock, deliveries weren’t usually made so late in the evening. It seemed from the number of lights blazing out into the night from the cottage next door that she was to be blessed, or otherwise, with new neighbours.

But she had other things to think about besides that, such as the longing to be back in her own bed after a quick cup of tea. The flight home hadn’t taken long, but the airport procedures at the UK end had been slow and then there had been a thirty-miles-plus drive home after she’d collected her car from where it had been stored while she had been away, so now she was ready to flake out.

She hoped that the people who had moved into next door would be sociable and easy to get on with. Yet wasn’t she the last person who should be concerned about socialising? She could barely remember what it was like to enjoy herself in the company of others.

After losing Ian in a fatal riding accident, a lukewarm marriage had come to an end, and since then the practice had been the only thing in her life that she could rely on for comfort and stability. As long as the new neighbours didn’t intrude into that she supposed she would cope.

The surgery had been in darkness when she looked across, which was hardly surprising in the late evening, and as it was Friday would be closed all over the weekend. But as the head of the practice she would need to be there bright and early on Monday morning. Maybe during the weekend she would get the chance to meet the newcomers, but the main thing on her mind at the moment was sleep.

After the cup of tea that she’d been longing for on the last part of the journey home Libby climbed the stairs to her bedroom beneath the eaves and in moments was under the covers and ready to drift into oblivion when someone down below rang the doorbell.

She groaned softly but didn’t move. When it rang a second time she slipped a robe over her nightdress and went quickly downstairs. Before opening the door she peered into the porch and with the moon’s light filtering in saw the broad-shouldered outline of a man and beside him was a small child dressed in pyjamas.

It all looked innocent enough, she decided. The two of them must be part of the family who’d moved in next door, and without any further delay she unlocked the door.

‘Hello, Libby,’ Nathan Gallagher said easily, as if it had only been yesterday that she’d last seen him. ‘We saw your car pull up a while ago and had no intention of disturbing you, but Toby needs his bedtime drink of milk, won’t settle without it, and it’s the one thing I’ve overlooked in the provisions I bought in the store this afternoon. I noticed you had a couple of pints that someone had delivered and wonder if you could spare one?’

She could feel her legs caving in at the shock of seeing him there.

‘Come in,’ she croaked, opening the door wide, and as they stepped inside she added, ‘I’ll get you one from the fridge.’ With her glance on the tousle-haired small boy at his side she paused in the doorway of the kitchen. ‘So it’s you and your family who have moved into next door? You found yourself a wife while in Africa? It seems strange that your father never mentioned a thing!’

‘Not exactly,’ he said with a wry smile, and she wondered what that meant. Maybe the child’s mother was a partner rather than a wife and she’d been rather quick to be asking those kinds of questions in any case.

Obviously Nathan hadn’t come for a cosy chat about what he’d been doing during the last few years. Taking a pint of milk out of the fridge, she handed it to him and came up with a question of a more basic kind.

‘Are your beds made up? Tell your little boy’s mother I can lend you some bedding if you haven’t had time to get them sorted.’

‘Thanks, but everything is fine,’ was the reply. ‘We’ve been here since early this morning. As soon as Toby has had his milk he will be settling down for sleep in a small single bed next to mine. It’s been a long day so I don’t think either of us will need much rocking.’

‘How long have you been back in the UK?’ she asked as he was about to depart with the little boy clutching his hand tightly.

‘A month. We’ve been in London until now on business, but I was anxious to get away from the crowds. I want Toby to grow up in Swallowbrook like we did, and the vacant cottage next door to yours seemed to be the perfect answer.’

Answer to what? she wondered. Whatever it was it wouldn’t be anything to do with her. He’d asked her to go out to Africa with him all that time ago because they were short of doctors, not because he’d wanted her near, and at the time she’d come up with a few reasons for refusing.

It was like a knife in her heart seeing him with his small son. It meant that he’d found someone that he did want, while she’d been letting common sense fly out of the window by agreeing to marry Ian, whose interests had revolved around his horses and pleasure, and seen her career as a hindrance to his lifestyle, instead of giving it meaning.

With no wish to remind herself of how all that had ended she switched her thoughts to the mother of the child and wondered where she was. She probably had other things to do, having just moved into next door, and curious though she might be, there was no way she was going to ask Nathan why the sleeping arrangements he’d described didn’t sound as if Toby’s mother was included in them.

When Libby went back upstairs to bed the feeling of tiredness had been replaced by bleak amazement as she recalled those incredible moments with Nathan and the silent child. Wide-eyed and disbelieving, her gaze was fixed on the dividing wall between the two properties.

He would be sleeping at the other side of it, she thought. Just a short time ago she’d seen him in the flesh, heard him speak, watched him smile a strange smile when she’d asked him if he had married while out in Africa.

He’d said, ‘Not exactly,’ and she cringed at her unseemly haste in asking the question only seconds after he’d appeared at her door. It would have been the last thing she would have come up with if he hadn’t had the boy with him.

Had his father known for the last month that he was back in England and not told her? If that was the case, it would have been on Nathan’s instructions. John would never do anything like that to her.

Tomorrow she would have to prepare herself for meeting the little boy’s mother with pleasantness and a warm welcome to Swallowbrook, while hoping that she would be able to hide her true feelings, and with those kinds of thoughts to cope with she got up and put the kettle on for a second time.

Behind the dividing wall Nathan was not asleep but Toby was, curled up and content after having drunk some of the milk that Libby had provided. As the man looked down at the child the stresses and strains, the sorrow and confusion of past months seemed less dreadful because he was back home in Swallowbrook once more.

The last time he’d seen Libby Hamilton had also been from the shelter of a porch, but not the one next door. It had been in the shadowed stone porch of the village church after he’d flung himself out of the taxi that had brought him from the airport, hoping that he might get the chance to speak to her before she became the wife of Ian Jefferson.

He’d needed to know if it was because of his leaving that she was marrying the pleasure-loving owner of the local stables … on the rebound. Or if the feelings that she’d said she had for himself had been just a passing attraction that she’d soon moved on from and there was no longer any need for him to carry the burden of guilt that his leaving her had created.

A delayed flight had denied him the chance to clear the air between them and he’d arrived at the church just as the vicar had pronounced them man and wife. As he’d watched Libby smile up at her new husband he’d turned and departed as quickly as he’d come, deciding in that moment he had his answer. Her feelings for him had been a passing fancy and a prize fool he would have appeared if anyone had seen him hovering in the church porch for a glimpse of her.

When he’d reached the lych gate in the churchyard a bus had pulled up beside him on the pavement and he’d boarded it, uncaring where it was bound in his haste to get away before he was seen.

As he’d waited for a flight to take him back to where he’d come from he’d thought sombrely that his arrogance all that time ago when in her despair at the thought of him going away Libby had confessed her love for him and been told he wasn’t interested, had only been exceeded by him expecting her to want to talk to him of all people on her wedding day.

She had turned up at the airport on the morning he had left for Africa and been the only one there. He’d said his farewells to his father the night before and told everyone else he didn’t want any send-offs, so it had been a surprise, and he’d had to admit a pleasant one, to see her there.

They had been due to call his flight any time and during those last few moments in the UK Libby had begged him not to go. ‘I love you, Nathan,’ she’d pleaded. ‘I always have. Until I awoke this morning I had accepted that you were going out of my life. Then suddenly I knew I had to see you just one more time.

‘I know the importance of the work you are going to do in Africa, but there would still be time for that when we’d had our time, some life together in happiness and contentment and maybe brought up a family.’

She had chosen the most inopportune moment to make her plea, with only minutes to spare before he boarded the plane, and with the memory tugging at him of a failed engagement not so long ago that had done neither he nor his fiancée any credit.

There had been tears in her eyes but instead of making him want to comfort her he’d reacted in the opposite way and been brusque and offhand as he’d told her, ‘How can you face me with something like this at such a time, Libby? I’m due to leave in a matter of minutes. Just forget me. Don’t wait around. Relationships aren’t on my agenda at present.’

Then, ashamed of his churlishness, he’d bent to give her a peck on the cheek. Instead their lips had met and within seconds it had all changed.

He’d been kissing her as if he’d just walked into light out of darkness and it would have gone on for ever if a voice hadn’t been announcing that his flight was ready for boarding.

As common sense had returned he’d said it again. ‘Don’t wait around for me, Libby.’ And almost before he’d finished speaking she’d been rushing towards the exit as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

Aware that his behaviour had left a lot to be desired, and cursing himself for trampling on what was left of her schoolgirl crush, he’d vowed that he would phone her when he arrived at his destination and apologise for his flippancy, but in the chaos he’d found when he’d got there his private life had become non-existent, until he’d received his father’s phone call some months later to say Libby was getting married on the coming Saturday.

Then it had all come flooding back—her tears, the loveliness of her, and his own arrogance in brushing to one side her feelings for him by telling her not to wait for him, indicating in the most presumptuous way that he wasn’t interested in her.

But, of course, by then it had been too late. How could he ever forget how happy she had looked when the vicar had made his pronouncement to say Libby and Ian were man and wife? And he’d thought how wrong he’d been in considering that she might be marrying Jefferson on the rebound.

Now, as he looked down at Toby, young and defenceless beneath the covers, he knew that there would be barriers to break down in coming months and bridges to build, not just in one part of his life but in the whole structure of it, because his contract in Africa was up. He was home for good, and coming back to Swallowbrook was his first step towards normality.

He’d done nothing when he’d heard that Jefferson had died. To have appeared on the scene then might have seemed like he’d been waiting in the wings and it would not have been the case. But now he’d had no choice but to come back to England because his best friend and his wife had been amongst tourists drowned on a sinking ferry somewhere abroad. The tragedy had changed his life and that of the sleeping child for ever.

As she sat hunched over the teapot Libby was thinking what a mess her life had turned into in the three years since she’d last laid eyes on Nathan. Anxious to prove to the world, but most importantly to herself, that her feelings for him were dead and buried she’d turned to Ian Jefferson, someone who had already asked her to marry him twice and been politely refused.

And so six months later, with Nathan’s never-to-be-forgotten comments at the airport still painfully remembered, she’d agreed to marry Ian at his third time of asking.

They’d been reasonably happy at first, living in Lavender Cottage, across from the surgery, but as the months had gone by she had discovered that Ian had merely wanted a wife, any wife, to give him standing in the village, and the blonde doctor from the practice had been his first choice.

Marriage hadn’t made him any less keen on spending endless hours on the golf course, sailing on the lake by Swallowbrook and, while his staff looked after the stables, riding around the countryside on various of his horses, which had left him with little time to comprehend the burden of care that Libby carried with her position at the practice, a position that left her with little time or energy to share in his constant round of pleasure.

It had been one night whilst out riding that he had been thrown from a frisky mare and suffered serious injuries that had proved fatal, leaving her to face another gap in her life that was sad and traumatic, but not as heartbreaking as being separated from Nathan.

When she’d drunk the teapot dry Libby went to bed for the second time and after tossing and turning for most of the night drifted into sleep as dawn was breaking over the fells. She was brought into wakefulness a short time later by voices down below at the bottom of the drive and when she went to the window the dairy farmer who delivered her milk was chatting to Nathan, who, judging from the amount of milk he was buying off him, was making sure that he and Toby would not have to go begging for his bedtime drink again.

Not wanting to be seen watching him, she went slowly back to bed, grateful that it was Saturday with no need to get up if she didn’t want to, and as a pale sun filtered into her bedroom she began to go over the astonishing events of the previous night.

Nathan is back in Swallowbrook, a voice in her mind was saying, but not because of you. He has a family. He has made his choice and it has to be better than the one you made.

She surfaced at lunchtime in a calmer state of mind and, dressed in slacks and a smart sweater, went to the village for food and various other things she needed from the shops after being away.

There had been no sign of anyone from next door when she’d set off, but Nathan’s car had still been in front of the cottage, so either they were inside out of sight or had ventured out for the boy to see where they had come to live, and the man to reacquaint himself with the place where he had been brought up amongst people who had been his patients and friends.

To make her way home she had to pass the park next to the school that strangely for a Saturday was empty, except for Nathan and the boy, who was moving from one amusement to another in the children’s play area.

Don’t stop, she told herself. Nathan has had all morning to see you again if he wanted to, so don’t give him the satisfaction of thinking you’ve followed him here.

The two of them looked lonely and lost in the deserted park. He was pushing Toby on one of the swings, but on seeing her passing lifted him off. Now they were coming towards her and she was getting a better look at the prodigal doctor than in her mesmerised state the night before.

His time in Africa had taken its toll of him, she observed as he drew nearer. He was leaner, giving off less of the dynamism that had so attracted her to him over the years, but his hair was the same, the dark thatch of it curling above his ears, and his eyes were still the unreadable dark hazel that they’d always been where she was concerned.

‘I can’t believe you were going to go past without speaking,’ he said as they drew level.

‘Why?’ she asked steadily. ‘What is there to say?’

‘On my part that I was sorry to hear of Jefferson’s fatal accident, and for another—’

He was interrupted by the child at his side tugging at his hand and saying, ‘Can I go on the slide, Uncle Nathan?’

‘Yes, go along,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’ As Libby observed him in a daze of non-comprehension he explained, ‘I’m in the process of adopting Toby. Both his parents are dead. They were lost when a ferry sank while they were touring Europe. Thankfully he was saved. His father was my best friend and I am the boy’s godfather.

‘I went out to bring him home when it happened and applied to adopt him as there were no other relatives to lay claim to him. The paperwork is going through at the moment and soon he will be legally mine.’

‘How do you cope?’ she asked as the heartache of thinking that Nathan had a family of his own began to recede.

‘It was difficult in the beginning because although Toby knew me well enough, naturally it was his mummy and daddy he wanted. He is adjusting slowly to the situation, yet is loath to ever let me out of his sight.’

Poor little one, she thought, poor godfather … poor me. How am I going to cope having Nathan living next door to me with the memory of what he said that day at the airport still crystal clear? He has never been back to Swallowbrook since and now, as if he hadn’t hurt me enough then, he has chosen to live in the cottage next to mine.

He was observing her questioningly in the silence that her thoughts had created, and keen to escape the scrutiny of his stare she asked, ‘How old is Toby?’

‘He’s just five, and the ferry catastrophe occurred three months ago. You might have read about it in the press or seen an account of it on television.’

That was unlikely, she thought wryly. In the mornings it was a quick breakfast, then across the way to the practice, and in the evenings the day’s events had to be assimilated and paperwork brought up to date.

‘What will you do now that you’re here?’ she asked, trying to sound normal. ‘Enrol Toby at the village school?’

‘I’ve already done so and am not sure how he is going to react to yet another change in his life. I have to tread softly with his young mind. He soon gets upset, which is to be expected, of course.’

She felt tears prick. It was all so sad that Nathan had been forced to take on such a responsibility and felt he had to return to Swallowbrook for the child’s sake if nothing else.

As they went to wait for Toby at the bottom of a small slide the man by her side was smiling, which was strange, as given what he had just told her he hadn’t got a lot to smile about.