Spring Proposal in Swallowbrook

by Abigail Gordon

  ‘Yes, that would be great as long as Dr Gallagher won’t be annoyed that I haven’t carried out his instructions.’

  ‘No chance,’ he assured her. ‘Nathan isn’t like that. He is highly delighted with you so far and will always listen to reason. It was a bit too much to ask of you on your first time into house calls, it can be like walking into a minefield sometimes.’

  They were back and having a late lunch break before the afternoon surgery when Hugo said, ‘You did well, Ruby. Out of a dozen house calls there was really only the one that had you puzzled, but there could have been others. It’s all the luck of the draw when out on the district. Nathan understood perfectly when I told him how you’d felt about being left on your own, so we are going to do them as a twosome for the rest of the week.’

  He watched her expression lighten and hoped she understood that the togetherness that was suddenly materialising had no motive behind it, other than it was what he would do for any young doctor joining the practice, though he doubted whether asking her out to dine would have been on his agenda if they hadn’t had such a downbeat introduction in the first place.

  ‘And with regard to tonight,’ he said, ‘I rang the hotel on the lakeside as soon as we got back to reserve a table for this evening. That place is always open and the food is good. In a few weeks’ time everywhere will be throbbing with life, the shops, the cafés, on the lake, but tonight it should be reasonably quiet.’

  It would take the edge off the invitation if there was going to be no time to dress up for it and add some glamour to the occasion, thought Ruby, but at least she wouldn’t be dying of hunger while they walked by the lake if they ate first.

  As if to emphasise the ordinariness of the occasion he reverted back to surgery talk and said, ‘I came across something strange when I was called out to a patient the other day and thought you might be interested to hear about it over dinner.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, and thought that short of putting it in writing that it was going to be just food at the end of a busy day at the practice, Hugo couldn’t make it any plainer that he was merely doing the niceties for a newcomer, and wasn’t that what she should want it to be for the sake of her peace of mind?

  She kept telling herself to put a stop to the attraction she had for him, to control the feelings that he aroused in her, that they had come too fast, too soon. It was only a meal they would be sharing, not a night of passion, and whether he had been tied down with family commitments for quite some time or not, Hugo was too much every woman’s dream sort of guy for there not to be someone in his life who would leave a hopeful like herself way behind in the alluring and desirable stakes.

  The food was good, exceptionally so, and after a long and busy day at the practice the two doctors had concentrated on eating rather than chatting, but now they were having coffee in the hotel lounge and instead of talking shop the first thing Hugo said as they settled into its elegant warmth was, ‘So tell me about your family, Ruby. I haven’t heard you mention much about them so far. Where is it that they live again?’

  ‘Tyneside,’ she replied, immediately wary. ‘It’s a lovely part of the country, but it isn’t Swallowbrook. I cried buckets when we left here.’

  He nodded understandingly. ‘Youngsters don’t always take well to being uprooted, especially in their teenage years when it means leaving friends behind and having to change schools.’

  It was more than that, she thought, much more. Anguish that she couldn’t bear to talk about had shattered their lives, most of all Robbie’s, and what had happened to him had brought each of them their own pain to cope with as well.

  Afraid to give too much away and mindful of her intentions to keep Hugo at arm’s length, she sorted through her thoughts, desperate to change the subject. ‘You were going to tell me about something unusual that you came across regarding a patient.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ It was registering that Ruby wasn’t keen to discuss her private life, which was fine by him. He’d only asked about her family out of politeness.

  She wanted to talk shop and he couldn’t fault her for that, but felt vaguely irritated for some reason. Yet he was the one who had made it clear that they were just out for a meal and nothing else.

  ‘Muriel Mason is a fifty-year-old ex-teacher who had to take early retirement due to chronic bronchitis,’ he told her. ‘She’d called me out because her breathing and the cough that is always there were causing her much distress.

  ‘She has a dog, a boxer called Castro. I think in the days when her health was less of a problem she must have been to Cuba.’

  Ruby was laughing with head thrown back and even white teeth on view behind lips that he had a sudden urge to kiss, or at the least touch with gentle fingers, and he couldn’t believe that he was having those sorts of feelings about someone that he’d known for such a short time.

  While he’d lived down south he’d had time to live it up whenever he’d felt like it and was always drawn to curvy blondes with blue eyes, so why on earth was he feeling like this about a girl who was slender, thin almost, with brown eyes and a mane of chestnut hair that would look good in a classy short cut?

  He didn’t know if she was seeing something in his expression that was putting her on her guard or what, but her amusement was dwindling and she was waiting for what he had to say next about the patient and her dog, so he continued, ‘Castro is normally a frisky animal, jumping up at me when I call, but not this time. The poor thing was lying on a blanket on the sofa looking weak and woebegone. When I asked Muriel what was the matter with him she told me to my amazement that he’s got Cushing’s syndrome. Have you come across the illness at all, Ruby? It’s pretty rare.’

  She thought for a moment and then said, ‘I haven’t seen anyone with it, but isn’t it connected with adrenaline and the pituitary gland in some way? A disorder caused by abnormally high levels of corticosteroid hormones in the bloodstream? In humans it causes obesity and a humped back?’

  ‘A perfect description of the disease!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s easy to see why you got a first for your degree. You seem to have life well and truly sorted, with a glowing future in medicine.’

  As if, she thought sombrely. There were more important things than being good at the job or the ability to absorb knowledge, such as the contentment that comes with happiness and good health. But at least she’d chosen a profession that cared for mind and body.

  Her thoughts went out to Robbie with the blight of haemophilia to cope with all through his life and she was grateful that modern medicine in the form of a concentrate of the V111 factor, the blood-clotting agent, was available to him and others like him when tests showed that the body was running low on its own production of it and could be at risk of a bleed.

  She loved her little brother dearly, and always felt that her own problems were minor compared to his, but often in the dark hours of the night they came crowding back and she wept for what she had been denied.

  Hugo was observing the changing expressions on her face and they weren’t exactly as happy as he’d thought they might have been at the praise he had justly bestowed upon her.

  The coffee cups were empty and the moon was there again, lighting up the sky. If they were going to stroll by the lake now was the time, and then for what was left of the evening he was going to see Ruby safely inside the apartment and in the quiet of Lakes Rise get up to date with recent medical journals that had been delivered to the surgery.

  That was the plan and it was working as they stood at the water’s edge and gazed out across the moonlit water to where Libby and Nathan’s second home stood in tranquil solitude on the island in the middle of the lake.

  The two of them were so fortunate, thought Ruby, madly in love, spending their working lives in the medical practice of this beautiful place and raising their adopted son. Soon they would reach the
height of their happiness when their baby was born.

  The feeling of melancholy that had been there when they had been having coffee was back, not because she envied them their lovely life but because hers was always going to be a matter of ‘if only’.

  Hugo was standing just behind her when, haunted by her thoughts, she felt that if she stayed a moment longer, absorbing the beauty of the moon’s light on the water and the fells ruggedly silhouetted against a silver sky, she would want to weep.

  She turned swiftly, cannoned into him and would have overbalanced if he hadn’t been there with arms reaching out to steady her… And then they were around her…he was holding her close and she was liking it, liking it a lot. When she looked up into his face Hugo was smiling, but there was a question in his gaze. ‘So why the sudden rush to get away from here?’

  ‘There isn’t any,’ she said softly from inside the magic circle of his hold. ‘I just had a funny moment but you’ve made it go away.’ And though her voice wasn’t asking him to kiss her, it was there in her eyes.

  Unable to resist the appeal of her, he bent and brushed his lips against hers, then put her away from him gently and said, ‘I think we should make tracks, Ruby. It’s late and I have things to do when I get in, as I’m sure you have too.’

  She nodded. They’d stepped from behind the borderlines of their acquaintance for a few magical moments and now Hugo was ready to call halt.

  They walked back to the car more quickly than when they’d strolled away from it earlier and within minutes he pulled up on the drive of Lakes Rise, and as she was reaching for the doorhandle, he said, ‘See you tomorrow, Ruby. Bye for now.’

  ‘Thanks for the meal, Hugo,’ she said, not willing to be dismissed so quickly. ‘It was the nicest food I’ve had in ages. It has been a lovely evening. I didn’t want it to end.’

  ‘But it had to, didn’t it?’ he said gravely.

  ‘Not for me,’ she said in a low voice, and then she was out of the car and walking quickly towards the apartment and he made no attempt to follow her.

  Once inside Ruby stood gazing blindly into space. This thing she felt for Hugo was what she had always tried to avoid, especially after Darren’s brush-off. A casual fling, the odd date she could cope with, but this could lead to the kind of heartache that was soul destroying.

  Not for him, but for her. Hugo was showing all the signs of caution and didn’t even know about the nightmare that she lived with. His butterfly kiss had been an indication of him not wanting to take the moment any further and his speedy dismissal the moment they were back had been another clear indication that he was in no mood to dawdle.

  She was getting the message from two directions—her own common sense, which had been in short supply ever since their moment of meeting, and his reluctance to get too close to her. From now on she was not going to let the attractions of her landlord get to her in any shape or form.

  Tomorrow was Friday, the last day they would be doing the home visits together, and maybe if she told them at the practice that she felt confident enough now to cope on her own they would agree to her going solo on the last day of the week.

  With that thought in mind she went to bed filled with determination and purpose and surprisingly slept the moment she laid her head on the pillow.

  Not so for Hugo. With the medical journals untouched he sat late into the night, gazing across to where Ruby was deep in dreamless sleep.

  They’d met too soon, he thought. No sooner had he got his life back after Patrice and the children had gone than Ruby had arrived on the scene, tired and bedraggled after a stressful day, and she had never been out of his thoughts since.

  But of late they were not the same kind of thoughts that he’d had then, when he’d had to involve himself in looking after her wellbeing whether he’d wanted to or not. As he’d watched her dancing around the apartment on the night she’d become his tenant, as well as amusement there had been an unexpected feeling of tenderness inside him, and whenever he had cause to congratulate her on her knowledge and expertise in the surgery it was there again, a warm tide of feelings washing over him.

  He was trying to stay aloof from the physical appeal she had for him, but the memory of moments like tonight when she’d ended up in his arms for a few mind-blowing seconds and had let him see how much she liked it were not going to go away.

  In spite of having made a big thing about tonight’s dining out together being just a form of apology for being so boorish when they’d first met if he was honest with himself it had been more than that.

  He’d wanted her to himself for a few hours, away from the surgery and Lakes Rise, in neutral surroundings where he could get to know her better, and it had taken some degree of will power to wish Ruby a brief goodnight and point himself towards the house, when only a short time ago he would have been fretting to get back home to his freedom from care.

  Maybe he was beginning to feel like this about her because with Ruby he had a choice—she asked nothing of him. With Patrice and her children there had been no choice and he had let it cloud his judgement in those first days of Ruby’s arrival in the village.

  He went up to bed at last with no answers for his thoughts and wondered what tomorrow would have in store for the two of them.

  The main topic of conversation at the surgery the next morning was that Gordon, the elderly practice manager, had decided to retire, and the news was generating pleasure because they were all invited to a meal at the end of the month on his last day, and side by side with the pleasure was curiosity as to who would be taking his place.

  For Ruby, who had just expressed to the other doctors her confidence regarding going it alone on the home visits and got their approval, the retirement of the practice manager wasn’t of that much interest because she hardly knew him, and did she want to socialise in Hugo’s company once more and start the heart-searching all over again?

  The days were flying by and their relationship in the surgery was good, but almost non-existent away from it.

  She had discussed how she was attracted to him at length with her mother and Jess Hollister’s heart had twisted to hear that her beloved daughter might have met the man of her dreams and was having to do all she could to put him out of her thoughts, which wasn’t going to be easy, working in the same environment.

  ‘Shouldn’t you explain the circumstances to him?’ she’d suggested gently. ‘There might be a way round it.’

  ‘Mum, we both know that there isn’t, don’t we?’ she’d said, ‘and in any case the attraction is all on my part. Hugo seems intent on keeping things strictly business, so there really is no need to worry about my feelings for him.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AS THE night of the practice manager’s farewell approached spring was settling upon Swallowbrook in all its fresh delight, with new lambs in the fields of the surrounding farms, green shoots on the branches of the trees, and the fells had lost the gaunt look of winter.

  The cafés and shops were filling up with early visitors, the village was alive again, and the magic of it was helping Ruby to count her blessings and be sensible by keeping out of Hugo’s way other than at the practice, which wasn’t too difficult as he was thinking along similar lines.

  Yet it wasn’t blotting out his curiosity about her, or slowing down the racing of his pulse when she was near. He knew he could take his pick of several attractive women locally who were free agents if he wanted to, and that to keep Ruby on the fringe of his life was the right thing to do, but neither solution appealed to him because those moments beside the lake when he’d kissed her kept coming back. How her eyes had been wide with wonderment as she’d looked up at him from the circle of his arms, and how he’d managed to control the desire she’d awakened in him and had merely brushed his lips against hers.

  The leaving event was to t
ake place at the hotel where Hugo had taken Ruby to eat that night straight from the surgery. It would be the second retirement from the Swallowbrook practice in recent months with John Gallagher having stepped down not long before, and Gordon was planning a big affair.

  Although an elderly bachelor, he had many friends and a scattered family who would all be coming for the occasion, as well as all the surgery staff and the local chemist.

  The invitations asked that guests and their partners should wear evening dress, reminding Ruby that whilst she had the dress, she’d no one to escort her. The obvious solution was not to go, to send her apologies with some sort of believable excuse, as she wouldn’t know anyone if she did go, apart from the folks at the surgery, and they would be with husbands and wives or partners.

  She knew that Libby and Nathan were having to take Toby with them for lack of a reliable childminder and suggested that she would look after him if they wished as she was too new to the village as it was now to fit in well with those present at the retirement party, and Hugo, according to surgery gossip, was bringing one of the medical reps who’d been invited.

  They were reluctant to accept her offer at first, but she insisted that it would be a pleasure, which was true compared to being the odd one out at the gathering, so it was arranged that she would go to the cottage across from the surgery at seven o’clock on the evening of the event and take care of Toby.

  She would enjoy looking after him, she was thinking as she drove down to the cottage on the night of the party, and it would take her mind off Hugo and the medical rep, who was glamorous and glossy and would be a perfect foil for his dark attractiveness.