A nurse had appeared and was announcing, ‘We’re ready to take you to have your head injury seen to and your arm set, Dr Cazalet.’ To Henrietta she said, ‘You can see him any time tomorrow.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said softly. Looking at Matthew, she said, ‘Maybe then we can take up where we’ve left off.’
On the way home Kate said, ‘So what are we going to do without him, Henrietta? There’s the practice and the children to see to. If you can deal with the patients, I’ll look after Mollie and Keiran until you come home. I do that already when they come home from school, so it will be just a bit longer, and it’s only for a few days.’
‘You are a gem, Kate,’ Henrietta told her, adding with a catch in her voice, ‘We could have lost him today.’
‘Was it my fault, Aunt Henny?’ Keiran asked anxiously from the back seat.
‘No, it wasn’t, my darling,’ she assured him. ‘It was an accident, and the man in the car didn’t mean it to happen.’
They had dropped Kate off at her cottage, and now, with the children fast asleep up above, Henrietta was alone with her thoughts. Out of near tragedy had come the future. Matthew was going to be all right, she thought gratefully. She’d seen some traffic accidents in her time and not everyone came out of them alive. She could so easily have been in the same position as he’d been in when he’d lost Joanna. The one she loved taken from her in an instant.
Tomorrow she was going to tell him how she felt, and if he didn’t return her feelings she would get up, dust herself down, and what? She didn’t know.
Henrietta rang the hospital at six o’clock the next morning and was told that Matthew had passed a comfortable night. She doubted it. The phrase was part of hospital jargon. He would be in pain from the fractured arm and would have a very sore head, but it meant that he was stable, that no other problems from the accident had arisen. As she replaced the receiver she knew she was going to be counting every minute until she saw him again.
But before that there were patients to be seen. Practice matters to sort out. Home visits to do. She knew that Matthew wouldn’t want her to neglect any of those things.
She managed to call at The White House for ten minutes during the lunch-hour and all was well there with Kate in charge.
‘Would it be all right with you if I took the children to see him this afternoon?’ Kate asked. ‘It will mean us going on the bus, but they might enjoy the novelty of it.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Henrietta said immediately. ‘Matthew will love that.’ She went on her way, wishing she could go with them. The earliest she would be able to manage would be after the late surgery. Kate had offered to give the children their evening meal so she would be able to visit Matthew then with an easy mind.
When it came to herself it was another matter She wasn’t easy in her mind at all. She might end up a prize fool and, instead of Matthew, have mortification as a bedfellow for the rest of her life, but she had to know.
He was up, needless to say, when she got there, sitting in small garden at the end of the ward and looking the worse for wear as he gazed into space. They’d cut his hair away at the back for the stitches. The fractured elbow was resting on the arm of the seat, bulky with the cast, and Henrietta could imagine just how hampered he was going to be with it.
It had been great to see Kate and the children this afternoon, he was telling himself, but it was Henrietta that he was longing to see. When she showed up he was going to clarify a few things. He was going to find out if she was on the defensive all the time because she didn’t return his feelings or if it was because she felt that he hadn’t really let Joanna go enough to be happy with someone else. Whatever it was, he had to know if she cared. He’d told her that it wasn’t gratitude he wanted from her and given the opportunity he was going to tell he what he did want from her.
When he looked up she was standing there. She flashed him a tired smile and sat down beside him, still dressed in her working clothes, a black suit with a white silk top and sheer stockings on her long, shapely legs.
‘How are you?’ she asked gently.
‘Better for seeing you,’ he replied. ‘What sort of a day have you had?’
‘All right. Busy, of course. It’s what sort of day you’ve had that matters.’
‘My day has been long and thought-provoking.’
‘Has it? Mine’s been a bit like that, too. I’ve got something to say to you, Matthew.’
She saw him tense. ‘Let’s have it, then.’
‘Will you marry me?’
He stared at her. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Oh, Henrietta. I’ve wanted to ask you the very same question for weeks. But always at the back of my mind was the thought that you might think I was asking you to step into Joanna’s shoes.’
She shook her head. ‘If that was the only thing making you have second thoughts, you need have no concerns. If I married you the only shoes I would be stepping into would be my own. I would always respect your love for her, but our marriage would have to be mine and yours alone.’
‘It was a move in the right direction when you came to live in the village and brought me out of the doldrums,’ he said in a voice thick with emotion, and reached out for her with his good arm. ‘Of course I’ll marry you, my beautiful Henrietta, and as we’ve got a lot of kisses to catch up on, I suggest we start now.’ And they did, unaware that a couple of smiling nurses were watching them from the ward window.
‘How soon can we arrange the wedding?’ Matthew asked when they came down to earth for a moment. ‘I can’t wait to make you my wife.’
‘How about a harvest wedding? It’s not far off, but we could do it,’ she suggested. ‘Pamela, Charles and the kids will have gone by then, but they’d be able to come back.’
‘A harvest wedding would be lovely,’ he agreed, smiling at his bride-to-be.
‘Mmm,’ she murmured, dreamy-eyed. ‘I could carry poppies and corn instead of the usual sort of bouquet, but I don’t think we’ll be able to persuade Mollie to change her mind about the rose petals.’
And so it was arranged that the wedding would take place one Saturday in late September, the day after the village’s harvest supper.
Pamela and Charles came back in August to reclaim their offspring, and not long after Henrietta was saying goodbye to the children she adored.
‘But we’ll see you soon, Aunt Henny,’ said Mollie cheerily. ‘You know, when I’m bridesmaid for you and Uncle Matthew.’
All the villagers had been delighted at Matthew and Henrietta’s news, and the couple had found themselves flooded with offers for help with everything from the food to the flowers and the cake. The local seamstress had even offered to make Henrietta’s dress. The days flew past in a flurry of organisation, and very soon it was the Friday before the wedding. Pamela, Charles and the children had arrived that morning, and as the last-minute details were sorted out, Henrietta heard all about the children’s new home and school in Scandinavia.
‘We love it there, but it’s nice to be back here with you, Aunty Henny,’ whispered Keiran, looking adorable as he tried on his pageboy outfit.
When they arrived at the village hall in the evening for the harvest supper, Henrietta observed the scene in amazement. Trestle tables with pristine white cloths on them were laden with fresh bread, every kind of cheese, fresh juices and pickles. And at one side of the room the farmers were standing behind smaller tables with huge joints of beef, pork, turkey and lamb sizzling in front of them and ready to carve.
‘This is amazing,’ she said, smiling at Matthew, who was now very much recovered from the accident.
‘You haven’t seen it all,’ he told her. ‘In the little room at the end there are huge apple pies and clotted cream, which is our traditional desert when we have a harvest supper.’
‘Yummy!’ Keiran cried, while Mollie clapped her hands and Henrietta hugged her beloved niece and nephew.
Kate was beaming at t
hem from across the room with the smile that had been there ever since they’d told her they were to be married. It had followed the tears of joy she’d been shedding as she’d told Matthew, ‘From the moment I saw Henrietta I knew that my prayers had been answered.’
Tomorrow she would be sitting proudly in a front pew of the village church, and so would Pamela, while Charles proudly escorted his sister-in-law down the aisle. The children would follow the bride, a bride dressed in cream brocade and carrying poppies and corn, going to meet her bridegroom. Mollie would be in a pretty long dress and scattering rose petals, and Keiran would be a cherubic pageboy.
Daniel had turned up for the harvest supper with a smiling young nurse pushing his wheelchair. It seemed that he’d got to know her while having the latest treatment for his paralysis.
While they were chatting to him the Martin family arrived with a tall dark-haired youth that Henrietta knew must be their son.
Meriel had been to the surgery during the last week for the results of the blood tests on her swollen foot, which was now back to its normal size, and had been amazed to be told that it was gout.
‘But I don’t drink!’ she’d protested, and Henrietta had smiled.
‘You don’t have to,’ she’d told her. ‘Drinkers do get it, but so do those who don’t, I’m afraid.’
At the end of the consultation the vet’s wife had said, ‘Do you remember me telling you that our son was coming home? Well, he’s due to arrive any day. I thought I’d better mention it.’
Henrietta had told Matthew and he’d said, ‘It’s all in the past, as far as I’m concerned. You’ve helped me to fight my demons. The hurt of what he did will never go away, but when I meet up with him I’ll welcome him back and take it from there.’
She watched as he left Daniel’s side, went across to the Martins and shook their son by the hand, which brought smiles of relief to all their faces.
When everyone was seated the vicar got to his feet and with his glance on the two doctors said, ‘I’m sure that all of you know that tonight isn’t the only big event of the weekend. Tomorrow we have the wedding of two highly respected members of our community, Matthew Cazalet, our dedicated doctor for many years, and Henrietta who came from city to village, also to look after our health, and found a very good reason for staying here in the man sitting beside her. To them both we say, every happiness.’As she listened, with Matthew’s arm around her, Henrietta was reminded of what he’d said to her on the day she’d proposed to him in the hospital garden.
‘It was a move in the right direction when you came to live in the village,’ he’d said, and as they faced each other, with the promise of all the happiness to come in front of them, she knew just how right he had been. She’d changed her job so that she could look after Mollie and Keiran and had met the love of her life.
September had been a month of beginnings for Henrietta and Matthew, with their wedding in the old village church where every seat had been filled, and Henrietta moving into the house that she had helped decorate so willingly.
There had also been an ending, and Henrietta and Matthew had been sad to say goodbye to the children again the day after the wedding. They’d promised to write to each other all the time, and it was on a chilly November morning that Matthew found Henrietta in the kitchen, reading Mollie and Keiran’s latest letter, written in a rainbow of bright colours. Seeing his wife’s expression, he drew her into the comfort of his arms.
‘I love them as if they’re my own,’ she told Matthew with a sad smile.
‘Yes. I know you do,’ he said tenderly, holding her close. ‘What is happening to Mollie and Keiran is what happens to a lot of children in diplomats’ families. But they’ll come back soon, either permanently or on holiday, and with their parents is where they should be.’
He gave her a gentle kiss. ‘The next time we see them our wonderful secret will be out in the open and they’ll have a little cousin to love, won’t they, Henrietta?’
‘Yes,’ she said softly as joy overcame sadness. ‘A family of our own, Matthew.’ He smiled at her, and there was all the love in the world in the eyes looking into hers.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5908-2
CITY DOCTOR, COUNTRY BRIDE
First North American Publication 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Abigail Gordon
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