The Doctor’s Proposal

by Marion Lennox

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ she said. ‘You know, this castle is just the sort of crazy extravagant thing Rory might have built. Tell me about it.’

  ‘It saved this district’s soul,’ Jake told her and she paused in mid-toast-buttering.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘This is a fishing town,’ he said, flipping the omelette then moving in to remove her toast crusts with meticulous care. Boris moved in to take care of the waste. ‘The town was dependent on ’couta. Fish,’ he told her when she looked mystified. ‘Nearly all the boats were designed to catch barracouta, but forty years ago the ’couta disappeared, almost overnight. The locals say there was some sort of sea-worm that decimated them. Anyway, the boats all had to be refitted to make them suitable for deeper sea fishing but, of course, no one had savings. The locals were desperate-half the town was living on welfare. Then along came Angus, Earl of Loganaich, and his eccentric, wonderful wife. They took one look at the place and decided to build their castle. The locals called it a crazy whim, but now, after knowing Angus for so long, I’d say it’s far more likely he knew the only way to save the town was to give the locals a couple of years’ steady income while they worked on their boats part time and regrouped.’

  ‘You think that’s what happened?’

  ‘Who knows? But the locals won’t have a word said against him. No one laughs at this castle. Do you think this’ll do?’

  She looked down at his plate. He’d cut two pieces of toast into perfectly formed triangles, without crusts. He’d flipped his perfect omelette into the centre.

  ‘Whoops,’ he said, and crossed to the back door. Seconds later he was back with one tiny sprig of parsley. It looked wonderful.

  The man wasn’t a doctor. He was a magician.

  ‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I need to feed my patient. You reckon she’ll eat it?’

  ‘I…um, I reckon,’ she whispered. Her stomach rumbled.

  ‘The rest is for you,’ he told her, motioning to the remaining eggs. ‘I’d do it for you, but I really am busy.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, but he was already gone, striding toward the bedroom where Susie lay, not wanting to eat.

  I’d eat, Kirsty thought, dazed. If Jake was standing over me having cooked me a meal…

  How could she help but eat?

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘HE’S gorgeous.’

  Sitting on the end of her sister’s bed, Kirsty knew exactly who she was talking about. Who else?

  There was an empty plate on her bedside table. Susie had eaten everything. Two slices of toast and a two-egg omelette. Now she was cradling a cup of tea as if she was enjoying it.

  ‘He is gorgeous,’ Kirsty admitted, and smiled. ‘Mind you, I can see that he’d put on a special effort when you’re around. You’re one glamorous widow.’

  ‘Kirsty…’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Rory’s death was still too new, too raw for her sister to even think that at some time in the future she might feel sexual attraction rekindled.

  ‘No, but you,’ Susie said thoughtfully. ‘Kirsty, this is an extremely attractive male.’

  ‘With a wife and daughter. Or daughters.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He said he had to get home to his girls.’

  ‘Darn.’ Susie finished her tea and snuggled further under the covers. Her toss out of the wheelchair seemed to have done her little harm, Kirsty thought. She looked brighter than she’d been for months. She looked interested. ‘Angus is nice?’

  ‘Angus seems lovely.’

  ‘I thought he must be. Rory told me he was special. It was only Kenneth being so awful that stopped him bringing me over to meet him.’

  ‘Why is Kenneth so awful?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Susie said wearily. ‘Rory seemed to think he’s mentally unstable. He made Rory’s childhood miserable. Kenneth came over to America just before Rory died. He came to the front door one night and he was just…weird. Rory didn’t let him stay. He took him out to dinner but he came home so shaken… I thought then that Rory would never want to return to Australia. The only good thing about Australia as far as I could see was Rory’s Uncle Angus and his Auntie Deirdre. Do you suppose Angus really is an earl? Why do you think Rory didn’t tell me?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Kirsty told her. ‘Can I take your blood pressure again before you go to sleep?’

  ‘If you must. But it’ll be down.’

  It was, too, and by the time she’d checked it, Susie’s eyes were already closing.

  ‘Do you think we might stay here for a while?’ she asked sleepily.

  Kirsty thought, Why not? There was the little matter of her medical career back home, but…well, maybe she had a medical career right here.

  She certainly had two patients, both of whom needed her.

  As long they both shall live, she told herself fiercely. Please.

  Kirsty found herself a bed in a bedroom that was just as sumptuous as Susie’s. She set her alarm and checked her patients twice during the night, but both were sound asleep and the next morning she woke to find they’d decided to live a little longer. She made them tea and toast, bullied them into eating it, gave Angus more of the morphine Jake had left her, and then, feeling like someone caught between sleep and waking-not sure what was real and what was a dream-she showered in a bathroom that had not only a chandelier hanging from the ceiling but also had a vast oval portrait of Queen Victoria gazing sternly down on her nakedness.

  She was just drying her toes and trying her hardest to ignore Her Majesty’s displeasure when the doorbell rang. It was eight in the morning. Too early for casual visitors. It rang again two seconds later and she thought either Angus would try to go downstairs and open the door or Susie would go.

  She had no choice. She wrapped her towel around her and ran.

  Jake was at the door. And Boris.

  ‘I thought you had a key,’ she said, glowering, and he had the temerity to grin.

  ‘Keys aren’t half so much fun.’

  She tried to slam the door but he shoved his foot through and walked in without so much as a by your leave.

  ‘I could have used my key but I wasn’t sure what sort of déshabillé I might find you in.’

  ‘Yeah, I was swanning round naked.’

  ‘Were you?’ he asked with interest, and she flushed crimson.

  ‘What do you think?’ Then, as Boris nosed her towel, she backed sharply away. ‘Can you keep your mutt back? This towel is precarious, to say the least.’

  ‘Don’t mind Boris,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You needn’t think his intentions are dishonourable.’

  ‘What is he?’ she asked, momentarily distracted. He really was the strangest-looking mutt. Part bloodhound, part greyhound, part…ET? Huge droopy ears, a whippet-thin body and sad, protruding eyes that took over most of his weird-looking face.

  ‘He’s one of a kind,’ Jake said, and Boris woofed in agreement, so enticingly she let go of one edge of the towel to scratch his ear. Very quickly she decided that wasn’t a good idea. Both males were watching her towel-apparently with hope.

  ‘You had him bred to your requirements?’ she asked, and Jake gave a rueful and maybe even a resigned smile as she regained firm hold on her dignity.

  ‘He’s not my dog.’

  ‘Sure he’s not.’ The dog was leaning against his leg, adoration oozing from every pore.

  ‘Well, not for long,’ he explained. ‘Boris belonged to one of my patients. Miss Pritchard was the local schoolteacher, long retired by the time I knew her. She introduced me to Boris. I scratched his ear, just like you just did, and when she died six months ago that gesture had cost me a mention in her will. I told the public trustee there was a clause in the statutes saying doctors can’t inherit from their patients, but the public trustee seemed to think Boris was an exception. No one would fight me for Boris.’

  ‘You were fond of Miss Pritchard, as well as the dog,’ Kirsty said slow
ly, working things out for herself, and now it was Jake’s turn to look discomfited.

  ‘Maybe. How are our patients?’

  But the idea of his sort of country practice had her fascinated and she wasn’t finished with questioning yet. Even dressed only in a towel. She might never get this chance again and she intended to use it.

  ‘Were you born here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How long have you been practising here?’

  ‘Four years?’

  ‘Only four? Why on earth did you come?’

  ‘I like it,’ he said defensively.

  ‘Sorry. Only asking.’ She smiled down at Boris, who was sniffing her painted toenails with interest. ‘How did your wife react when you turned up one day with Boris in tow?’ she asked, and that was the end of the laughter. His smile died so fast she might well have imagined it.

  ‘I need to get on,’ he told her, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll see Angus now. Would your sister like to see me as well?’

  ‘I’d like you to see her,’ she said frankly, abandoning Jake’s past in the face of current medical need. ‘To be honest…’ She hesitated.

  ‘To be honest, what?’

  ‘When I came to Australia I thought I could look after her. But medically it’s been a disaster. To be a loving sister and yet be a doctor as well…’

  ‘You can’t do the grumpy bits,’ he said, softening slightly.

  This was such a weirdly intimate setting. They were standing in the great hall, two Made-In-Japan suits of armour flanking the stairway behind them, Boris wagging his tail between them as if urging his master to hurry up-and Kirsty was standing in her bare feet with a two-foot width of towelling keeping her only just decent. Of course it was intimate. But Jake was now hardly noticing, Kirsty thought.

  She should be grateful. She was grateful. But…

  But what?

  But nothing, she told herself crossly. Move on.

  ‘I do the grumpy bits,’ she said, and suddenly her voice was doing weird things, like she was having trouble finding a normal doctor-to-doctor tone. Well, what did she expect when talking to a colleague dressed like this? ‘I tell her not eating will harm the baby. I tell her she has to be more optimistic, for the baby’s sake if not her own.’

  ‘Doesn’t work, huh?’

  ‘No,’ she said frankly. ‘And how can I blame her? I remember how lovely Rory was and I want to weep myself. How much worse must it be for Susie?’

  ‘So no professional detachment.’

  ‘None at all,’ she said ruefully. ‘Not one little bit. That’s why I’m really pleased to see you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Um…do you deliver babies?’

  There was a lengthy pause. Maybe she should have gone and got dressed and talked about this on the way out, she thought, but there were a lot of decisions to be made here, and she suspected that many would be made in the next half-hour.

  Would Angus keep his oxygen tube in place? Would he still be transported to the nursing home? If not, who would stay to take care of him? Maybe it could be her. But if so…that would mean that Susie stayed, too, and if she stayed then the baby would be born here and this man would have to deliver her. And-

  ‘We’re going too fast,’ Jake said, and she blinked.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Has Angus met Susie yet?’

  ‘No. I thought-’

  ‘Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we?’ he said, his smile a little wry. ‘First things first. I’ve learned my triage, Dr McMahon, and I’m figuring out priorities. You know what I suggest you do first?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get yourself decent,’ he told her. ‘You have a very nice cleavage, and it’s still just a cleavage but only just. That towel is way too skimpy. You’re messing with my triage and making my priorities all wrong. So go cover priority number one with a T-shirt or similar while I find our patients. Then we can figure out what may or may not be more important than one scant inch of towelling.’

  Dressed in record time, but still flushing bright crimson, Kirsty remerged from her gorgeous bedroom. There were voices coming from the room next to hers. Susie’s room.

  To her astonishment they were all in there. Susie was sitting up in bed, looking interested. Angus was seated in the armchair beside the bed. He was obviously still having breathing difficulties, but his colour was better than the night before. His nasal tube was taped in place and there was a small wheeled oxygen cylinder beside him. Like a tame pup.

  The not-so-tame pup-Boris-was draped over the bed, looking adoringly up at Susie, and Susie was scratching his ears. Jake was beside the window.

  They were all staring out the window to the garden beyond.

  ‘He’s not thriving,’ Angus was saying in a voice that said the end of the world was nigh. ‘I may as well go to that nursing home. If Spike dies…’

  ‘Do we have another patient?’ Kirsty asked, mystified, and they all turned to look at her.

  ‘That’s better,’ Jake said, his eyes twinkling a little as he examined her demurely clad figure-but then he shook his head. ‘Or maybe I just mean safer.’

  She ignored him. Almost. ‘Who’s Spike?’

  ‘Angus’s pumpkin,’ Susie said, and Kirsty blinked.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘He’s a Queensland Blue,’ Susie told her, as if that should explain all. ‘Look at that veggie patch out there. Have you ever seen such a veggie patch?’

  Kirsty crossed cautiously to the window and peered out, worrying that she had three demented patients on her hands. And a demented dog.

  But it was indeed a veggie garden-and a veggie patch to take the breath away. It stretched over maybe a quarter of an acre, row upon row of vegetables and fruit trees of every imaginable variety with what looked like a conservatory on the side.

  ‘Wow,’ she said faintly.

  ‘Wow’s right.’ Susie was pushing back her bedcovers-and pushing back Boris. ‘I have to get out there.’

  ‘You really think you can help?’ Angus asked, and Susie gave him the sort of look Kirsty reserved for relatives of a patient who might well die. Huge sympathy and not wanting to encourage false hope.

  ‘I’ll do my best. We’ll run soil tests. Maybe it’s too damp. I’d imagine this rainfall’s unseasonal for early in autumn. Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Angus said, with doubt. ‘It’s normally much drier.’

  ‘Then maybe we can lift the whole vine-just enough to get it off the surface dirt and maybe get a bit of sunlight underneath. It can be done by thinning out the leaves. That should help the plant a lot. We need to be so careful. Dampness can cause rot this late in the growing season.’

  ‘Rot,’ Angus said in the voice of a parent hearing the word leukaemia, and Susie winced.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you. But we need to get out there and see.’

  ‘But you’re pregnant, lass,’ Angus said, looking at her with real concern. His old eyes misted with emotion. ‘Pregnant with Rory’s child.’

  ‘And Rory wouldn’t thank me if I just lay here while his Uncle Angus’s pumpkin rotted,’ she retorted. ‘Kirsty, you have to help.’

  ‘And you,’ Angus said, turning and poking Jake in the midriff. ‘You helped me come down to meet my new niece without so much as a jacket and Wellingtons. They’re packed away in the back of my wardrobe. Get them for me, there’s a good chap.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Jake said-and grinned.

  Ten minutes later Jake and Kirsty were standing at the back door, onlookers to the main medical question of the day. Which was why Spike wasn’t at his best.

  The patient in question was a vast grey-green pumpkin. Susie was balancing on her crutches, trying not to wobble as she examined him from every angle, and Angus had pushed his oxygen cylinder onto its side so he could use it as a seat.

  ‘Um…do we or do we not have a miracle happening here?’ Jake asked, and Kirsty glared at him, as if by saying it he could jinx it.

  ‘Don
’t even think it. Just hold your breath, hold your tongue and cross everything you possess.’

  ‘Susie’s weight-bearing is better than I thought.’

  ‘I told you yesterday. She’s weight-bearing but unsteady and she won’t practise. The ground here’s so soft and squishy, though, she’s being forced to use her legs.’

  ‘Praise be,’ he said softly. ‘And…you said Susie’s a landscape gardener?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So Angus has a niece by marriage, pregnant with Rory’s child, who shares his passion for gardening. A niece who needs accommodation for a few weeks.’

  ‘You’re going too fast,’ she told him, and he raised his brows.

  ‘Am I? Tell me you’re not looking out at your sister and thinking this might work.’

  ‘It’s too soon to tell.’

  ‘Yesterday you had a sister who was non-responsive and I had a patient who wanted to die. I don’t see him refusing oxygen now.’

  ‘He needs the tank for a garden seat,’ she said, but grinned. ‘OK, Dr Cameron, I concede you’ve done very well so far.’

  ‘Most Australian doctors know enough to prescribe pumpkins for advanced pulmonary failure and severe depression,’ he said, smiling in return. ‘Hasn’t that reached the States as standard practice yet?’

  She choked on a bubble of laughter, and then looked out at Susie balancing precariously over the pumpkin but not even thinking about how wobbly her legs were, and thought, This is great. This could just work.

  ‘Hey, Angus, I’d arranged to take you to the nursing home this morning,’ Jake called, and the two pumpkin inspectors turned with identical expressions of confusion.

  ‘Nursing home?’ Angus said-and then he remembered and his face fell. ‘Oh, aye. That’s right.’ He turned to Susie as if explaining. ‘I agreed to go.’

  ‘Why are you going to a nursing home?’ Susie asked in astonishment, and he shook his head, defeat written all over him.

  ‘It’s time, lass. I can’t keep on here. The doc is calling on me twice a day as it is, and he can’t keep doing that indefinitely.’