The Doctor’s Proposal

by Marion Lennox

  Since his illness he’d drawn in on himself. He barely tolerated the housekeeper being here. Could he accept strangers?

  How much had he loved Rory?

  Jake held his breath some more.

  ‘Rory’s widow,’ Angus whispered at last. ‘What would she be like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jake told him. ‘I only met the sister. Kirsty. She seems…temperamental.’

  ‘What does temperamental mean?’

  ‘I guess it means she’s cute,’ Jake admitted, and Angus gave a crack of laughter that turned into a cough. But when he recovered there was still the glimmer of a smile remaining.

  ‘Well, well. Signs of life. Time and enough, too. That wife of yours has been gone too long.’

  ‘Angus…’

  ‘I know. It’s none of my business. You’re saying these women are at the gate now?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll go and let them in if it’s OK with you.’

  ‘You think they should be staying here?’

  ‘I think they should stay.’

  Angus surveyed his doctor for long moment. ‘She’s cute?’ he demanded, and he seemed almost teasing.

  ‘Not Rory’s wife,’ Jake said stiffly. ‘I’ve only met-’

  ‘I know who you’d be talking about,’ Angus said testily. ‘Rory’s wife’s sister. She’s cute?’

  ‘Yes, but-’

  ‘And if she’s staying the night…You’ll be back in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, but-’

  ‘Let’s leave the buts,’ Angus said, and his lined face creased into mischief. ‘I’ll not be flying in the face of providence. Cute, eh? Well, well. Of course they can stay.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  OK, SO Angus was matchmaking but that was fine by him. Anything to get him to agree to have them stay, Jake decided as he made his way down the magnificently carved staircase.

  He walked out the front door and stopped.

  He’d left his car blocking the castle entrance, with only just enough room for a pedestrian to squeeze past. The verge on either side was rough, corrugated by recent rains.

  He’d expected Kirsty and her sister to walk along the cobblestones.

  What had happened was obvious. One of the women hadn’t been able to walk.

  Halfway along the walkway was a wheelchair, upturned. A woman was lying in the mud. Kirsty was bending over her.

  Jake took one look and started to run.

  She was Kirsty’s sister. There was no doubting it. An identical twin? Maybe. The similarities were obvious but there were major differences. The girl lying in the mud was heavily pregnant. Her face was bleached white and a fine hairline scar ran across her forehead. She lay in the mud and her eyes were bleak and hopeless. Jake had seen eyes like this before, in terminally ill patients who were alone and who had nothing left to live for. To see this expression on such a young woman was shocking.

  ‘Oh, Susie, I’m so sorry,’ Kirsty was saying. She was kneeling in the mud, sliding her hands under Susie’s face to lift her clear. ‘There was a rut. It was filled with water and I didn’t realise how deep it was.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Jake knelt and automatically lifted the woman’s wrist. ‘You fell?’

  ‘You really are smart,’ Kirsty muttered, flashing him a look of fury. ‘I tipped her out of the wheelchair. Susie, what hurts? Have you wrenched your back? Don’t move.’ She sounded terrified. One hand was supporting Susie’s head; the other was holding her sister down.

  Jake’s fingers had found the pulse, automatically assessing.

  ‘Did you hurt yourself in the fall?’ he asked, and the young woman in the mud shook her head in mute misery.

  ‘I’ll live.’ She put her hands out to push herself up, but Kirsty’s expression of terror had Jake helping her hold her still.

  ‘What do we have here?’ He held the woman’s shoulders, pressuring her not to move. ‘Can you stay still until I know the facts?’ He spoke gently but with quiet authority. ‘I don’t want you doing any more damage.’

  ‘She suffered a crush fracture at T7 five months ago,’ Kirsty told him in a voice that faltered with fear. ‘Incomplete paraplegia but sensation’s been returning.’

  ‘I can walk,’ Susie said, into the mud.

  ‘On crutches on smooth ground,’ Kirsty told Jake, still holding her twin still. ‘But not for long. There’s still leg weakness and some loss of sensation.’

  ‘Let me get my bag.’

  ‘I can get up,’ Susie muttered, and Jake laid a hand on her cheek. A feather touch of reassurance.

  ‘Humour me. I won’t take long, but I need to be sure you’re not going to do any more damage by moving.’

  It took him seconds before he was back, kneeling before her, touching her wrist again. Her pulse was steadying. He glanced again at Kirsty. If he had to say which was the whiter face, his money was on Kirsty’s. Such terror…

  ‘I’m going to run my fingers along your spine,’ he told Susie. ‘I’d imagine you’d have had so many examinations in the last few months that you know exactly what you should feel and where. I want you to tell me if there’s anything different. Anything at all.’

  ‘We need help,’ Kirsty snapped. ‘We need immobility until we can get X-rays. I want a stretcher lift and transport to the nearest hospital.’

  But Jake met her eyes and held. ‘Your sister’s break was five months ago,’ he said softly. ‘There should be almost complete bone healing by now.’

  ‘You’re not an orthopaedic surgeon.’

  ‘No, but I do know what I’m doing. And it’s soft mud.’

  ‘Hooray for soft mud,’ Susie muttered. ‘And hooray for a doctor with sense. OK, Dr Whatever-Your-Name-Is, run your spinal check so I can get up.’

  ‘Susie…’ Kirsty said anxiously, but her sister grimaced.

  ‘Shut up, Kirsty, and let the nice doctor do what he needs to do.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Jake said, and smiled.

  So he did what he needed to do, while Kirsty sat back and alternatively glowered and leant forward as if she’d help and then went back to glowering again.

  It was like two sides of a coin, he thought as he tested each vertebra in turn, lightly pressing, examining, running his fingers under Susie’s sweater, not wanting to undress her and make her colder but finding he could examine by touch almost as easily as he could if she had been undressed. They had to be identical twins, he decided as he worked. One twin battered and pregnant. One twin immobilised by terror.

  But Susie’s spine was fine, he decided. Or as fine as it could be at this stage of recovery. As far as he could see, there was no additional damage.

  There was still a complication. ‘How pregnant are you?’

  ‘Eight months,’ she told him. ‘Four weeks to go.’

  ‘There’s already been a false labour,’ Kirsty muttered.

  ‘So you decide to go travelling,’ he said dryly. ‘Very wise.’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Kirsty snapped.

  ‘Be nice,’ Susie told her twin, and Kirsty looked surprised, as if she wasn’t accustomed to her sister speaking for herself.

  ‘You’ve flown from the US to Australia at eight months pregnant?’ he asked Susie, but Susie didn’t answer.

  Kirsty waited for a moment to see if her twin would answer, but when she didn’t, she spoke again. ‘We came a month ago. We thought it might help Susie if she could find Rory’s Uncle Angus and talk to him about Rory. But Susie went into prem. labour and it’s taken a month before we’ve been game enough to leave Sydney. Enough of the inquisition. Could we get Susie warm, do you think?’

  Kirsty’s anger and distress were palpable. She’d have liked to direct them straight at him, Jake thought, but he could see the warring emotions on her face and knew that the anger and the distress were self-directed. She was blaming herself.

  But he had to concentrate on Susie. Triage decreed that psychological distress came a poor second to possible spine damage. He was helping Susi
e into a sitting position, and now he smiled at her, encouraging.

  ‘Slow. I don’t want any sudden movements.’

  ‘This doctor’s almost as bossy as you are,’ Susie told her sister. ‘Nice.’ She turned back to Jake. ‘But be bossy with Kirsty,’ she told him. ‘She needs bossiness more than me.’

  ‘I’ll deal with your sister after you,’ Jake told her, and glanced between the two of them. There was more going on here than a healing back and pregnancy. Why was Kirsty so terrified?

  Susie was so thin.

  ‘Is anything else hurting?’

  ‘My pride,’ Susie told him, and some of her bravado was fading. ‘I have mud everywhere.’

  ‘Can we take her inside?’ Kirsty demanded in a voice full of strain, and Jake glanced at her again. OK. Enough of the mud.

  He stooped and lifted Susie up into his arms. Despite her pregnancy, she was so light she alarmed him even more.

  Kirsty gave a sigh of relief and started tugging the wheelchair forward, but instead of placing Susie into it he turned toward the gate.

  ‘Hey,’ Kirsty said. ‘Put her in here.’

  ‘The chair’s wet,’ he said reasonably. ‘And we still have to get past the truck.’

  ‘You can’t carry her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You should say Unhand my sister, sir,’ Susie told her sister, and Kirsty’s eyes widened. She seemed totally unaccustomed to her sister even speaking, much less making a joke.

  ‘My stupidity with the car blocked your path,’ he told Kirsty, sending her a silent message of reassurance with his eyes. Relax, he was telling her. We need to get your sister warm. The least I can do is provide alternative transport.

  And it seemed that finally she agreed with him.

  ‘Well, if you think you can bear the weight…’

  She was trying to smile, but he could still see the fear.

  ‘We Aussie doctors are very strong,’ he told her, striving to match her lightness, and at last she managed to smile. He liked it when she smiled, he decided. She had a great smile.

  A killer smile.

  ‘Australian doctors are trained in weightlifting?’

  ‘Part of the training-just after learning where lungs are. But if you want to see strong… I have it on good authority that the man you’re about to meet was an all-time champion cabertosser in his youth. Small but tough is our Lord Angus.’

  ‘What’s a caber?’ Susie asked, bemused, and he grinned.

  ‘Who knows? That’s a Scottish secret. I’m not privy to such things. But just between you and me, I suspect it’s some sort of medieval instrument. Probably made out of boar’s testicles, meant for stirring porridge.’

  And to the sound of Susie’s chuckling-and Kirsty’s gasp of amazement-he led one woman and carried another up the steps of Loganaich Castle.

  He’d made her sister smile.

  Kirsty helped Susie wash and undress, tucked her between sheets in the most sumptuous bed she’d ever seen and then stood back while Jake examined her. He examined her thoroughly, as if he had all the time in the world. The man who’d been in such a hurry a few minutes ago was acting now as if time was not important.

  He made Susie laugh.

  But as he did, he checked everything about her. Her heart rate, the baby’s heart rate, the baby’s position, her back. He examined the scarring. He checked sensation all over. He even found a set of bathroom scales and made Susie weigh herself. Normally an examination like this would have Susie climbing walls, but Susie tolerated it with equanimity and she even laughed some more.

  She never laughed these days.

  He told the best jokes, Kirsty thought as she stood well out of the way and watched the skilled way he drew Susie out. He made gentle cracks that you weren’t sure were jokes-or not until you looked into his eyes and saw the lurking twinkle. He was just what Susie needed.

  No, he was just what she needed, she thought gratefully as she watched him take over. For the first time in months the heavy responsibility for her sister’s health had been shifted to someone else.

  Maybe they could stay here for a while.

  She hadn’t even met Uncle Angus yet, she reminded herself. Their host. The earl.

  ‘When did you last eat?’ Jake was asking Susie, and Kirsty had to haul herself together to listen to what he was saying. He had Susie tucked back into bed after the weighing. She was smiling up at him, and the sight of her smiling sister made Kirsty smile.

  ‘When did you last eat?’ Jake asked again, as she failed to answer, and Kirsty blinked and responded for her.

  ‘Um… Lunchtime. Four or five hours ago.’

  ‘What did you eat then, Susie?’ he asked her sister, and Kirsty blinked again. He’d gone straight to the heart of the matter. He was some doctor!

  ‘I had a sandwich,’ Susie said, and Kirsty opened her mouth to say something but Jake glanced at her again. This man could speak with his eyes.

  She shut up-as silently ordered.

  ‘How much of the sandwich did you eat, Susie?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘I want the truth.’ He was smiling but there was something about the way he said it that told Kirsty he already knew the truth.

  ‘Half a sandwich,’ Susie whispered, and then as Jake’s eyes held hers-and held some more-she faltered. ‘A quarter, maybe.’

  ‘Is there a reason you’re not eating?’

  ‘Eating makes me feel sick.’

  Kirsty was holding her breath. The world was holding its breath.

  ‘Has that been happening ever since your husband was killed?’

  They’d been tiptoeing round the edges for so long that this direct approach was almost shocking. Silence. Then… ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you talked to a professional about your problems with eating?’

  ‘Why should I talk to anyone about it?’ Susie whispered. ‘Kirsty keeps on and on…’

  Kirsty opened her mouth but she was hit by that quelling glance again. Shut up, his glance said, and she wasn’t going to argue.

  ‘You don’t see not eating as a problem?’ he asked Susie.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that true? It’s not a problem?’

  ‘The only person who thinks it’s a problem is Kirsty. And she fusses. It’s just I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘I guess you don’t feel like much.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ Susie said bitterly. ‘But people go on and on at me…’

  No need for the quelling glance this time. Kirsty knew when to shut up. If she could, she’d disappear, she thought. He was treading on eggshells but she knew instinctively that none would be squashed.

  ‘You know, Susie, I think you need time out,’ Jake said softly. He glanced at the notes he’d been taking as he’d examined her. ‘For a start, your blood pressure’s higher than it should be and we need to get it down.’

  ‘I’m not going to hospital.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest that,’ he said evenly. ‘But if you think you can bear to slum it here for a while…’

  Susie gazed up at him from her massive eiderdown and her mound of soft down pillows. Astonished.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘You’re Angus’s family. I’m sure he’d be delighted to hold on to you for a week or so. I’ll talk to him about it, shall I? But meanwhile you need to eat, and then sleep.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You know, I’m very sure you are,’ he told her. ‘I cook the world’s best omelette.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Susie complained.

  And Kirsty thought, Ditto.

  ‘But you’ll eat my omelette? I’ll be hurt if you don’t.’

  How could her sister resist an appeal like that? Kirsty wondered. And if there was a tiny seed of bitterness in what she was thinking, who could blame her? Sure, persuade Susie to eat his omelette or she’d hurt his feelings. How many uneaten meals had she cooked for Susie?

  She was being ridiculous. She looked
up at Jake to find he was watching her, and the amusement was back behind those calm grey eyes. Drat the man-was he psychic? Could he read what she was thinking?

  ‘I’ll make some for your sister, too,’ he told Susie, and Kirsty flushed.

  ‘I’ll make my own,’ she told him. ‘If Uncle Angus says I can. It is his castle after all. Isn’t it?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ Jake said gravely. ‘Susie, if you’ll excuse us, I’ll take your sister to meet him. We’ll make your apologies. You can meet him in the morning.’

  ‘What gives you the right…?’ Kirsty was almost speechless but as soon as the door was closed against Susie’s ears she found speech was close to overwhelming her. ‘What gives you the right to invite Susie for an extended stay with a man she hasn’t met? With an uncle who’s dying? Are you his doctor or his keeper? Who are you? And weren’t you late before?’

  ‘I’m his doctor and his friend,’ he said bluntly. He was striding down the hallway so fast that she had to almost break into a run to keep up with him. It seemed his time constraint-his sense of urgency-was operating again. ‘We have it in our grasp to save three lives here, Dr McMahon, and in the face of that, who am I to quibble at being later than I already am?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Susie, her baby and Angus,’ he told her, wheeling into the next corridor. This mansion was vast, Kirsty thought as she struggled to keep up. It was astounding. It was furnished like a palace. Actually…

  ‘It’s not a very exclusive palace,’ Jake commented. ‘Louis XIV meets Discounts-R-Us.’

  It was so much what she was thinking that she gasped.

  ‘Angus’s wife had grand ideas,’ he told her, reaching the stairs and taking them three at a time. ‘But by the time the mansion was built Angus said enough was enough. He’s rich but he’s not stupid. One day this place will be a glorious tourist hotel-the views alone are enough to sell it for millions. He didn’t stint on the building, but furnishings to suit were another matter. So we have a fabulous ballroom with a magnificent but very plastic chandelier. Plus the rest.’