City Doctor, Country Bride

by Abigail Gordon

  He wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Henrietta, he thought, when he arrived at the village green

  Not because she’d persuaded him to play cricket again, but because getting to know her had changed his life, made him want a new start. Matthew wished she could be there.

  When he looked up she was standing on the boundary, holding Mollie by the hand, and he had to look again to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Then he was striding across to them, smiling his pleasure. “You’re the last two people I was expecting to see here.”

  “It will be wonderful watching you get back into village life again,” Henrietta said softly.

  He reached out and traced his fingers gently across her cheek. “We both know who we have to thank for that, don’t we?”

  They were calling him, and as he walked to the crease everyone present—players, spectators and those preparing the food—began to clap. It went on for some minutes, until someone shouted, “Welcome back, Doc.” He raised his bat in salute and the game began.

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you will enjoy getting to know the close-knit community of a beautiful English village as you read City Doctor, Country Bride.

  It is a place where cricket is played on the village green on a Saturday afternoon, beside a pond where ducks swim and water lilies lie gracefully on its surface. Where the long-necked heron swoops into the ever-flowing river to catch the unsuspecting fish that will be his next meal.

  It is also a village where health care is efficient and easily available, where doctors and patients are often friends and where a young doctor from one of the north’s biggest cities finds the love of her life in the man who is in charge of the village practice.

  Matthew and Henrietta have both experienced heartache, and as they get to know each other, conflict and misunderstandings are swept away by tenderness and passion.

  Do read on, so that we can get to know each other in the pages of my book.

  Abigail Gordon

  City Doctor, Country Bride

  Abigail Gordon

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE Cheshire countryside was just as beautiful as she remembered it from her last visit, Henrietta thought as she drove down the steep brow to where the river flowed endlessly through the village, and it was about to take her into its fold.

  She loved the place and the thought of being part of its rural community for the next few months was like balm to her bruised heart. The air was clean, the pace of life slower, and people smiled at each other. Most of them had lived there all their lives and for those who hadn’t there was always a delightful settling in process.

  Village life was far removed from working in Manchester, where she was employed as a locum in a busy general practice. Facing up to crowded waiting rooms, and visiting patients in tower blocks, pokey back streets and smart residential suburbs, before going back to an empty flat.

  Yet she’d been happy enough in her urban surroundings. The days had flown with the demands of an endless number of patients and there had been Miles.

  When her older sister had phoned to ask if she would pull up sticks and move into her house in the Cheshire countryside to look after her children for the next few months while she accompanied her husband on a diplomatic posting, Henrietta had been taken aback.

  ‘I’d love to, Pamela,’ she’d told her. ‘But I do have to earn a living, you know. I love Mollie and Keiran, and if it had been two weeks, instead of a matter of months, I wouldn’t hesitate.’

  ‘You could change jobs.’ Pamela had said, not to be put off.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ she’d commented dryly. ‘And how would I do that?’

  ‘There’s a vacancy for a locum at the village practice. They’re going to need some extra help over the next few months too. With regard to ourselves we don’t want to take the children out of school before they break up in July. Then we’ll be coming back for them and settling in Scandinavia for the forseeable future.’

  As she’d listened, Henrietta had a vision of stone cottages with flower filled gardens nestling at the foot of the peaks and an easy-flowing river that housed herons and kingfishers along its banks. She’d also had a vision of a life without Mollie and Keiran, the nephew and niece that she adored. If they were going to be living abroad she would see little of them. So having them to herself for a while would be a pleasure too precious to pass by.

  ‘Let me think about it,’ she said.

  ‘All right, but don’t be too long,’ urged Pamela. ‘We are due to leave in a six weeks. I have to sort something out for the children and I won’t be easy in my mind until I have. It would also be nice for Charles and I to have some time on our own.’

  There was silence at the other end of the line, and Pamela said, ‘Henny, you haven’t seemed very happy recently. You don’t have to tell me what’s going on, but maybe a change could be good for you as well.’

  Henrietta grimaced. Pamela had no idea what went on in her private life, but it was clear she’d picked up on something during the occasional telephone chats they’d had. ‘And how do the children feel about you leaving them behind,’ she asked. Steering away from the topic.

  ‘They’ll be fine if they’re with you, Henny. You know how much they love you.’ She adopted a wheedling tone, ‘So shall I suss out this vacancy at the village practice, then?’

  ‘You can suss it out, yes,’ Henrietta said. ‘But don’t get your hopes up. There is nothing to say they’ll take me on if I apply for it.’

  That had been the beginning of it and what was happening today was the result, she thought as the road levelled out and she found herself driving beside the river.

  She hadn’t slept the night after Pamela’s phone call. As she’d tossed and turned it had been as if the village had been reaching out to her. She’d stayed with her sister and her husband a few times when she’d had a free weekend. Pamela was the only family she had, and each time she’d fallen more under the spell of the place. There was also another reason why her sister’s suggestion had been tempting.

  It was connected with one of those things that Pamela assumed she didn’t have…a relationship. She desperately needed a change of scene. It had come at just the right moment.

  She’d got to know Miles Somerby because he’d had an apartment just across the hall from hers and they had often passed each other, going in and out. He was of a similar age to herself, pleasant, not unattractive, with a rather reserved manner that she’d responded to.

  As their acquaintance had progressed, Henrietta had thought that maybe here was the man she wanted to marry. Someone who would give her children and a happy family life. He’d made no secret of the fact that he was keen to see more of her and everything had been fine, until one day his ex-wife had knocked on her door and warned her that he was the father of a four-year-old boy that he never took the time to take out or visit.

  ‘Miles can see our child whenever he wants,’ she’d told a dumbstruck Henrietta. ‘Georgie is always asking where his daddy is, but Miles can’t be bothered to come and see him. If you’ve got something serious going with him, don’t bank on him being a family man.’

  When she’d gone Henrietta had crumbled beneath the hurt of what she’d just heard. Miles hadn’t told her he’d been married before and that he had a child. She loved children, would want some of her own, and he couldn’t even be bothered to go and see his.

  She’d tackled h
im about it. First for not telling her he’d been married before, and he’d told her he hadn’t thought it necessary. That had been hurtful enough, but when she’d brought up the matter of his little boy, the hurt had gone much deeper.

  ‘I’m not really into kids,’ he’d said with a shrug.

  ‘But you know that I am, don’t you? And you never said,’ she’d flung back at him. ‘Your ex-wife has done me a favour. We’re finished, Miles. You having been married before I could have coped with if you’d told me, but your attitude towards your son is unbelievable. I feel I’ve had a lucky escape.’

  When he’d gone she’d cried, not so much for her hopes and dreams, but because of his deceit. How could any man not want to see his child and not feel it necessary to inform her of the little one’s existence. It had left an aching void in her life. Made her wary of other relationships, and that had been how it had been when Pamela had got in touch.

  Looking after her nephew and niece would be the icing on the cake if she agreed to do what Pamela wanted, she’d thought during the long hours of that night. Also it would be something to remember them by once they’d moved abroad.

  Her sister knew that Mollie and Keiran would be safe with her until she and Charles came back and it would avoid them having to leave their school before the end of the school year.

  The next day when Pamela had phoned to say that she’d got details of the position at the village practice, Henrietta had asked her to send them to her and it had all moved on from there.

  In the month before Pamela and Charles had been due to leave she’d been interviewed for the vacancy along with other applicants, and had then sat back and waited.

  ‘If I don’t get the job you’ll have to have a rethink,’ she’d told Pamela. ‘I’m not prepared to give up my present position until I know I have something to move to.’

  ‘You’ll get it,’ her sister had said confidently, and Henrietta had wished that life would treat her as kindly as it did her sister. She had a loving husband on a fantastic salary. Two children who were dear to Henrietta’s own heart, even though pressure of work meant that she didn’t see them as often as she would have liked. Pamela also had a figure that curved in all the right places, which made her feel like a stick insect, when in truth she was a slender, fine-boned, twenty-nine-year-old with hazel eyes and dark brown hair.

  She had been interviewed by a pleasant, middle-aged GP, who had explained that he was having to move south for a while to be near his elderly parents, and that the senior partner who had gone out to give medical aid after an earthquake in Pakistan, had asked him to find a replacement, so that he wouldn’t come back to a practice without a doctor.

  ‘When Matthew Cazalet left for Pakistan neither he nor I had cause to expect I would be caught up in a family crisis that would mean me being absent for some time,’ John Lomas had said. ‘I’m going to try and hang on until he gets back, and. if I can’t, whoever I appoint will just have to do the best they can until his return.’

  She hadn’t liked the sound of that one bit and if it hadn’t been for the joyous welcome she’d received that day from Mollie and Keiran when she’d turned up for the interview, she might have had second thoughts about the job side of the arrangements.

  At that time he hadn’t made any decisions, but she’d known if she was offered the position she wouldn’t be able to refuse for the children’s sake and for her own. She needed the tranquillity of the countryside to take away the hurt that Miles had caused. She’d put on a cheerful face for Pamela and her family but deep inside she had been feeling lost and lonely.

  A few days later she’d been offered the position and from then on Henrietta had felt as if she was on a roller-coaster. There’d been her notice to give in at the city practice, the flat to rent out, and a host of other things to do in connection with moving house, but now, at last, she had arrived in the place where she’d longed to be.

  The property where her sister and brother-in-law lived was called The White House and it had everything but the American president installed behind its impressive white portals. Smooth green lawns surrounded the house, and its interior was so expensively furnished Henrietta always felt a touch uncomfortable inside it. But, like it or not, it was going to be her home for some time to come.

  As she drove through large ornate gates at the entrance to a winding driveway, she was telling herself that she was going to have to get used to it. That she wasn’t there just for the weekend this time.

  Since being offered the position at the practice she’d had a further conversation with John Lomas, and been told that the senior partner was still in Pakistan, but should be back soon. With regards to himself he’d said that he hoped to be there to show her the ropes but might have to leave soon afterwards.

  ‘It’s been rather chaotic since Matthew went,’ he’d told her. ‘Coping without him, and then my mother having a serious stroke, which is why I’m moving south for a while to be near her. But once he’s back in charge again I’m sure you’ll find a rural practice a pleasant change from urban health care.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she’d told him doubtfully at the thought of being caught up between one doctor’s departure and another’s return.

  And now the time had come to take on the two new roles that she’d let herself be talked into—childminder and country doctor—and she had a feeling that the first was going to be the easiest.

  When she pulled up in front of the house in her modest car Pamela came out to greet her and as they hugged each other her sister said, ‘I’ve prepared the largest guest room for you, Henny. Had it decorated, the drapes cleaned and new carpeting fitted.’

  ‘You didn’t have to,’ she protested as they stood in the doorway of a bedroom that was as big as the whole of the flat she’d just left. ‘I’m not used to a life of luxury.’

  ‘So now is your chance,’ she was told. ‘The children’s rooms are on each side of you. They didn’t want to go to school this morning when they knew you were coming, but I reminded them that this isn’t your usual hasty visit. That they’ll be seeing a lot of you…and you of them.’

  Henrietta smiled. Six-year-old Mollie, who had her mother’s fair colouring, and Keiran, a year older with a mop of russet curls, were the least of her worries when it came to looking after them. It was the responsibility that went with it that she was concerned about. Just as she was apprehensive at the thought of becoming a member of a practice that seemed to be short on doctors.

  She was hoping that John Lomas would still be there when she reported for duty on the following Monday. As for his absent partner, she would cross the hurdle of meeting him when she came to it.

  Whatever he turned out to be like she had to hand it to him for taking his skills to the land so badly damaged by an earthquake. She wondered how long he’d been out there and what his family thought about it, presuming that he was married.

  There was the sound of running feet on the fine gravel of the driveway outside and the high pitch of children’s voices. Mollie and Keiran had just been dropped off by the mother of a child who went to the same school, and as they flung themselves into her arms Henrietta felt tears prick.

  Not so long ago she’d thought that she was moving towards family life. That she’d met the man who would father her children. Only to discover that he’d already been there, done it, then shaken off the shackles in the divorce court.

  ‘What’s this Matthew Cazalet person like?’ she enquired of her sister over dinner that evening. ‘I believe he’s in Pakistan, helping out after an earthquake.’

  ‘Yes, so I’m told,’ Pamela replied. ‘I’m afraid that I don’t know much about him as we have private health care. I invited him to a dinner party once but he made the excuse that he was too busy.’

  ‘In other words, our local doctor is not one of Pamela’s conquests,’ her husband said with an affectionate smile. ‘She likes to feel that under her mantle of lady of the manor she has them all docketed and filed, but not so Matthew
Cazalet.’

  ‘Nonsense, Charles,’ Pamela protested. ‘When I invited him to my dinner party I was hoping to do a little matchmaking.’

  ‘Not with Cazalet!’ he hooted. ‘If ever there was a man capable of organising his own life, it’s him.’

  It was time to change the subject, Henrietta thought. The more she heard about the man who was to be her new boss, the more she was thinking that the job part of her move into the countryside didn’t sound like a piece of cake.

  For one thing she was going to have to get used to the more personal nature of village health care. In her last job, the people she’d come across had been mainly just sick bodies and faces that had soon been forgotten. Except for Miles, who was still living in the flat across the hall from hers.

  It was Monday morning. Pamela and Charles had departed on the Saturday and Henrietta and the children had made the most of a wonderfully sunny Sunday by swimming in the pool at the back of the house in the morning and taking a picnic up onto the moors in the afternoon.

  Mollie and Keiran had loved that. Romping amongst the heather and bracken and shouting excitedly when a sheep had trotted past. There were just a few properties up there, the odd cottage and one or two remote farms, which she thought would be pleasant enough to visit in the summertime if someone needed a doctor, but might be seen in a different light in the snow, or when high winds blew.

  But she might be gone before winter set in if the surgery didn’t need her any more and Pamela and Charles had come back to take the children to a new life.

  As they had come chasing towards her, happy to be roaming free, she’d set out the picnic and told herself to make the most of what circumstances were offering.

  The children went to school happily enough. Henrietta drove them down to the pick-up point for the special bus that would take them to the private school that they attended, and they’d skipped on board. The novelty of having their favourite aunt around the place had prevented any upset from waving their parents goodbye.