Coming Back For His Bride

by Abigail Gordon

  But the letter had changed all that. For one thing, if his mother wasn’t well he wanted to be where he could take care of her, and at the same time give what help he could to his Aunt Sophie, who had been surprised the day before at the way he’d mastered the art of making puff pastry. She wasn’t one for dishing out praise, but she’d had to give him a pat on the back when the Eccles cakes had come out of the oven.

  ‘Why have you come back?’ she asked as she was lifting them off the baking stray onto a cooler. ‘Is it because of your mother, the practice or young Isabel? She was the reason you left, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ he admitted as he took off the baker’s apron he’d been wearing. ‘I imagine most people knew that. But Izzy is grown up now, so there’s no problem.’

  He left it at that without answering her question and was relieved that she hadn’t persisted. He had come back to be with his mother and he wanted the practice. Isabel was another matter. He’d just wanted to see for himself that she was all right. That what had happened all that time ago hadn’t blighted her life. And he’d soon discovered that it hadn’t.

  It would seem that she was well over her crush on him. The lonely, emotional teenager was now a cool, independent example of modern womanhood, who hadn’t hesitated to express her views on the secrecy during the changeover negotiations, and had been very wary of him the night before on the riverbank. She wouldn’t be throwing herself into his arms this time around.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ROSS had asked Paul if he could inspect the apartment above the surgery and had purposely waited until Izzy and her father were on their rounds before he did so. He didn’t want her around while he was viewing the place where he’d often found her bored and lonely all that time ago and had gone out of his way to brighten up her life.

  She’d assured him the previous day that what had happened then was water under the bridge as far as she was concerned. An apt description, as they’d been standing by the riverbank at the time, with the old stone bridge that was central to the village only yards away. But she hadn’t met his glance. Those startling violet eyes of hers hadn’t been looking into his…

  As he climbed the steep flight of stairs Ross was thinking that it had been a dismal place when he’d been part of the practice previously, with heavy, ugly furniture and dated décor, and he wasn’t expecting it to be much different now.

  When he pushed back the door and stepped into a drab hallway he groaned. He hadn’t been wrong in his assumption. Its only concession to comfort was that it was clean. The surgery wasn’t the only part of the premises that was going to need revamping, he decided, but this place would have to wait. Brighter surroundings for the patients must come first.

  It wasn’t surprising that Izzy had moved into a place of her own after living in this place for so long, he thought, and wondered what the inside of the cottage was like, as he hadn’t been invited in the night before. All that they’d had to say to each other had taken place on the riverbank.

  When he heard light footsteps coming up the stairs he knew it wasn’t Paul’s measured tread, and when Isabel appeared in the doorway Ross wondered why she was back so soon.

  ‘I forgot something,’ she told him in answer to his questioning look. ‘When I asked where you were, the receptionists said that you were looking over your palatial new home, so I thought I’d pop up to see what the verdict is.’

  He smiled. She looked fresh and businesslike amongst the dismal clutter. ‘How about “ghastly” for starters?’ he suggested whimsically.

  Isabel looked around her.

  ‘Seems a bit mild for this place,’ she said with a grimace. ‘How about claustrophobic? Medieval? Monstrous? My father will be dazzled by the glare of a bright new apartment after living here for so long.’

  ‘After the place I had in Holland, this is going to seem like something out of the Dark Ages,’ he said wryly.

  There was nothing evasive about her glance now. She was looking him straight in the eye and asking, ‘So why did you come back? You could have refused my father’s offer.’

  He didn’t reply immediately and as silence hung between them Isabel found that she was holding her breath. Yet his answer, when it came, was to be expected. ‘I do have a sick mother, in case you’ve forgotten,’ he said, his smile gone.

  She nodded quickly.

  ‘Yes, of course. Having you back will have given Sally a new lease of life.’

  ‘I must admit that it’s good to have somebody who is glad to see me, as you weren’t exactly welcoming.’

  ‘Why? Was I supposed to be?’ she asked, her voice rising. ‘Not only are you here to remind me of one of the most embarrassing times of my life, but I’ve been excluded from the negotiations about you taking over the practice, and so was not given the opportunity to express an opinion. If you expect me to be pleased about that, Ross, you are very much mistaken.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you that I didn’t know your father wasn’t keeping you informed?’ he said levelly. ‘Although, knowing him, it doesn’t surprise me. And as for what happened long ago, from what you told me last night it sounded as if you were over it almost before I’d boarded the flight out of Manchester Airport.’

  How little he knew the truth of that, Isabel thought, but it was what she’d given him to understand, so what could she expect? But like a dog with a bone, she wasn’t letting go yet.

  ‘What was in the letter that my father sent to you when he asked if you wanted the practice?’

  ‘Just that really. That he wanted it to be in safe hands and was I interested? He also used my mother’s illness as a carrot to dangle in front of me.’

  He didn’t tell her that it had contained no apologies for the accusations her father had made against him. It had been in this very room that Paul had bellowed, ‘I want you out of here. I’ll report you on grounds which could lead to you being struck off if you don’t leave Isabel alone. All she can think of is you! Her studies are suffering to the extent that she’s never going to make a doctor at this rate, and you are to blame for that. For distracting her and playing on her emotions all the time.’

  He’d gone on to say grittily, ‘You are the type that women will always be attracted to. You could have any woman you want, so why work so hard to make my plain teenage daughter fall in love with you?’

  If Paul had been angry, so had he.

  ‘Your “plain” teenage daughter has got a crush on me, that’s all,’ he’d said in cold rage. ‘And why? It’s because I’m the only person who takes any notice of her. Who cares about her loneliness. I make her laugh. Reassure her when she feels that nobody cares. All functions that should be yours. But you’re so wrapped up in mourning that dead wife of yours, you’ve never given your daughter a chance. Maybe if Isabel had inherited her mother’s looks you might have thought more of her, but one day, when you can rise above your own miseries, take a good look at your daughter. Beauty comes in different guises.’ On that note he’d slammed down the stairs and immediately set in motion the wheels of his departure.

  He’d been appalled at Isabel’s distress when she’d discovered that he was leaving the practice, and had been tempted to find himself a new slot close by, but common sense had said that wouldn’t solve anything. That she would seek him out and it would lead to further heartbreak for her.

  In the turmoil around him he hadn’t stopped to analyse his own feelings. All he’d been able to think of had been not to cause any more grief for the lonely girl at the village practice.

  When she’d begged him to stay, or take her with him, he had almost weakened because he’d been so devastated at the extent of her distress, but Paul’s words had kept coming back to haunt him. He’d said that Isabel had wanted to study medicine until she’d become infatuated with him. That if he stayed in the village she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on her studies as she should and would one day live to bitterly regret it.

  Ross was able to see the reasoning beh
ind that and if he stayed he would persuade her to get her mind fixed once more on a degree in medicine. But it was the fact that her father was making their friendship seem sordid that made him see red. As if he were a streetwise doctor taking advantage of the emotions of an eighteen-year-old girl to pander to his own ego.

  As the years went by he never forgot those horrendous moments when he’d been leaving. Having to put Isabel away from him so abruptly in case he weakened as she sobbed in his arms, and then having to drive off to he knew not where.

  His mother kept him informed about her from time to time. First of all with the news that she had gone to college, albeit unwillingly, and that eventually she’d begun to look more cheerful when she came home on vacations.

  Much later, bulletins contained the news that Isabel was back to stay, working as a junior doctor in the practice, and for the first time it made his sacrifice seem worthwhile.

  She wasn’t married, or even dating, his mother told him, and receiving those two heartening snippets of information was the start of him wanting to go back to see for himself what sort of a woman Izzy had turned out to be. Before he had the chance to act, her father’s letter arrived and it seemed as if the fates were taking a hand.

  And now he was back in Cheshire, had seen Izzy again, and the change in her was incredible. She was still no raving beauty, but her hair and eyes had always made up for a face that had a wide mouth and a snub nose, and as for the rest of her, the coltish slenderness of her teens was still there, with one or two added curves.

  But it wasn’t the physical changes that had him bemused. They were almost how he would have expected them to be. It was the change in her personality that was gripping him.

  Her father had referred to her in his letter as a mature adult. In other words he’d been telling him there would be no repeat of what had happened before. So he reckoned that the old martinet must have felt it was now safe to entice him back to the village.

  ‘I have to go or I’ll be late for afternoon surgery,’ Isabel said, breaking into his thoughts. ‘My first visit is to the Arrowsmiths at Tor Farm on the tops. Do you remember them?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Weren’t they the ones who had the foot-and-mouth scare a couple of years back and it turned out to be a false alarm? I remember my mother telling me about it at the time. What’s wrong now?’

  ‘I won’t know until I get there,’ she told him. ‘They have a daughter, Kate. She was in my class at junior school and later took a degree in farm management. Her mother rang earlier to say that she has had some kind of fit in the milking shed and was nearly trampled on by the cow she was dealing with.’

  To her dismay he said, ‘I’ll come along for the ride. You have no idea how much I’ve missed the peaks while I’ve been living in Holland. It’s so flat.’

  Isabel eyed him curiously.

  ‘If you were so homesick, why didn’t you come back sooner?’

  ‘Would you have wanted me to?’

  ‘No,’ she told him, experimenting with the truth again.

  ‘So there’s your answer,’ he said smoothly. ‘And now shall we get moving? I’m not intending getting into the thick of things until next week, when your father goes, but it will do me no harm to get the feel of a country practice again in comparison to the clinic I’ve been involved in recently.’

  The last thing she wanted was Ross breathing down her neck while she was examining Kate Arrowsmith, Isabel thought, and neither did she want to be closeted in the car with him so soon after his return. She felt there were things being left unsaid but didn’t know what they were.

  ‘Are you sure that you’re not coming along to check up on me?’ she asked tightly. ‘To see how competent I am?’

  ‘No, I’m not. If that were the case I would tell you. I merely want to have a change of scene for a short time. Do you mind?’

  ‘No. Why should I?’ she replied, and led the way to the secondhand racing green Mini Cooper that came second on her list of most prized possessions, the cottage taking first place.

  * * *

  When they went into the low-ceilinged sitting room of Tor Farm, Isabel’s reluctance to have Ross with her changed to relief. Kate Arrowsmith was thrashing around convulsively, still, it would seem, in the throes of the fit that her mother had described.

  ‘How long have you been like this?’ she asked the stricken woman as Ross looked on gravely.

  When she tried to reply, all that came out was a slurred jumble of words and her mother informed them distractedly that she’d been like that for over an hour.

  ‘Kate hasn’t been well over the last few weeks,’ she told them as Isabel examined her daughter. ‘Nausea, vomiting, headaches and weakness of the muscles, but every time I suggested she call in at the surgery she said she was too busy. But this morning she collapsed in the milking shed and her father and I had to carry her back inside. Do you think it is an epileptic fit?’

  ‘It might be,’ Isabel told her, after having checked Kate’s heart and blood pressure and looked into her eyes with a small torch, ‘but epileptic fits don’t usually last this long.’

  She glanced across at Ross, who so far hadn’t interfered, and asked, ‘Do you think it might be some kind of chorea? Kate’s blood pressure is high, her heartbeat faster than it should be…and with the convulsions, too?’

  ‘Yes, it is possible,’ he replied. ‘I suggest we call an ambulance and get her admitted to hospital as quickly as possible.’

  Even as he was speaking Ross was putting out a call to the emergency services on his mobile phone, and once the message had been received he answered the plea in the writhing woman’s eyes and told her gently, ‘At this stage we don’t know what is wrong with you, Kate. I don’t think it is epilepsy and neither does Dr West. But until tests have been done it is impossible to make a diagnosis. I’ve stressed the urgency of your condition with the emergency services and an ambulance should be here within minutes.’

  She was trying to speak between the convulsions but, as before, her speech was slurred and unintelligible.

  ‘This is how people speak when they’ve had a stroke, isn’t it?’ her mother said anxiously. ‘Are you sure that isn’t what it is?’

  ‘The severity of the convulsions don’t indicate a stroke,’ Ross told her. ‘They will have to give your daughter some strong sedation, followed by blood tests and a brain scan. The essential thing is to get her to hospital. She is far too ill for us to treat her at home.’

  ‘Be prepared for them to ask you if she is on anything, such as hard drugs, and they will want to know if she is in the habit of bingeing on alcohol as both of those things can have peculiar side effects if overdosing occurs.’

  ‘Kate isn’t involved in anything like that,’ she said tearfully. ‘I would know if she was.’

  At that moment her father came in. He’d been finishing the interrupted milking and asked anxiously, ‘So what’s up with our girl, Doctor? Kate runs the place these days and we are only too happy to take a back seat. We can’t manage without her.’

  Ross didn’t speak and Isabel realised that he was letting her take charge again as this was her patient.

  ‘We’ve sent for an ambulance, Mr Arrowsmith,’ she told him. ‘Kate is going to need tests and a brain scan before anyone can be sure what is wrong. It should be here any moment, and if you both want to go with her we’ll lock up here. Just tell me where to leave the keys.’

  ‘Thanks, Isabel,’ he said sombrely. ‘Hang onto them for the time being. I’ve got a spare set on me. This has turned out to be a bad day for us.’

  ‘I know,’ she said gently. ‘We’ll be waiting to hear what they say at the hospital.’

  He managed a smile and, turning to Ross, said, ‘We should have been haymaking today, Kate and myself, but it doesn’t look as if that’s going to materialise. Is it in your line? I remember you when you were here before. Aren’t you the son of Sally Templeton from the Riverside Tea Shop?’

  ‘’Yes, I’m Ross Te
mpleton,’ he said. ‘And, no, I don’t know anything about haymaking, but if you’re pushed I’ll give it a try.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Isabel told him. ‘I’ve done it often enough before, but it will have to be after the late surgery.’

  ‘That would do,’ the farmer agreed. ‘If I’m not back by then, my farmhand will give you a ring.’

  The ambulance came screeching into the farmyard at that moment and all else was put to one side as Kate and her parents were taken on board.

  When Isabel had locked the place up, Ross said, ‘What did you think was wrong with that young woman? You soon picked up on the chorea.’

  ‘Hmm. That was because I know that most forms of chorea cause uncontrollable body movements.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you had to make a guess?’

  ‘Dyskinesia?’

  ‘Impressive! Where did you get that idea from?’

  She smiled. ‘Not from my great fund of knowledge, I’m afraid. I’ve never actually been involved with anyone who had it, but there have been two programmes about it on TV recently and Kate looked just like the poor women who were featured in them. It is nasty and is usually a symptom of another underlying cause. I hope that I’m wrong for all their sakes, Kate’s and her parents’.’

  ‘I have had experience of a patient with dyskinesia,’ he said, ‘and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Until recently it’s been incurable, but there is now some hope for those who have it, in the form of an operation, where electrodes are implanted into the brain to control the incessant contortions.’

  Isabel nodded, ‘That was in the TV programme. But let’s hope that it isn’t that, or anything similar. Sydenham’s chorea also has that kind of effect on a patient. Though in the few cases that I’ve seen, as it’s very rare that one comes across it these days, the speech wasn’t affected. Whereas Kate’s is.’

  ‘Sydenham’s chorea was known as St Vitus’ dance in the old days when living conditions were poor, with damp houses, malnutrition and the rest of the discomforts that go with poverty,’ said Ross. ‘The name comes from a place in France where there was a spate of it amongst the inhabitants many years ago. Its underlying cause is usually Rheumatic Fever. But I’m sure you will have gone into all that in your studies and don’t want a lecture from me in the middle of your rounds.’