‘I am rather pushed for time,’ she told him, still uncomfortable in his presence, ‘especially if you want me to drive you back to the village.’
Ross shook his head.
‘I don’t. I’ll walk. The exercise will do me good—and I know that you don’t really want me with you.’
‘I was glad to have you with me here at the farm,’ she protested as the colour rose in her cheeks. ‘My dad usually sifts out what he thinks will be the most serious cases and visits them himself, but he couldn’t have taken note of what Kate’s mother said when she rang in.
‘I’m afraid that he isn’t as meticulous as he was and I’ve been carrying a lot of the weight of the practice. I’ve asked countless times when he was going to replace Millie and he’s fobbed me off. Little did I know that instead of filling one vacancy he was contemplating creating another.’
‘And then I appeared,’ he said wryly. ‘The last person you wanted to see.’
When she opened her mouth to protest again he said, ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to deny it. You have a right to be upset. Both your father and I treated you badly all that time ago and he doesn’t seem to have improved much with time.’
‘Did he send you away because I was neglecting my studies?’
‘Something like that.’
He wasn’t going to tell her that Paul had threatened to testify to the police and the GMC that he was having an affair with his daughter that had started in her early teens. While it wasn’t true, he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of her innocence being trampled upon.
‘Things are going to change once I’m in control of the practice,’ he told her, bringing his thoughts back to the present. ‘You will not be expected to do more than your fair share.’
She sighed. ‘I won’t say no to that. My social life of late has been virtually non-existent.’
‘So you do have a social life?’
‘Yes, of sorts…when I get the chance.’
The dark eyes in the face that she’d never forgotten were twinkling across at her as he asked, ‘So you’re not spoken for?’
Isabel had to laugh.
‘No, kind sir,’ she told him. ‘I am not “spoken for”. I have no suitors asking for my hand in marriage. For one thing I’m always working and for another I’m no beauty. If I had any doubts about that, the disappointment in my father’s eyes when he looks at me would quickly dispel them.’
That father of hers had something to answer for, Ross thought angrily. It was a pity he hadn’t had some love for the living as well as the dead.
‘Don’t you ever look in the mirror?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘You are crazy,’ he told her chidingly. ‘Some women would kill for eyes and hair like yours.’
‘But not for the face that goes with them.’
‘Too much beauty can scare a man.’
‘So can being a doctor. They expect you to be cold and antiseptic and if you’re not, to have all the birth control arrangements sorted.’
‘I can’t imagine either of those two things applying to you.’
‘What?’
‘You being cold or quick to jump into bed.’
He supposed she would be thinking that she certainly hadn’t been ‘cold’ when he’d known her before. She’d been lovestruck and vulnerable and he’d ached for what he and her father had done to her. As for the sex side of it, he supposed that, like most of their generation, she would have done some experimenting along those lines, but not just with anyone, he hoped.
‘I don’t know what I am any more,’ she said, turning away, ‘but there is one thing that I do know.’
‘And what is that?’
‘I have patients waiting who are more interested in their own lives than they are in mine, and if I don’t get a move on I’ll be too late to sample one of the Eccles cakes that you made last night.’
Leaving him to gaze after her thoughtfully, she manoeuvred the Mini out of the farmyard and drove off into the summer morning.
He could throttle Paul, Ross was thinking. With a father like that it was a miracle that Izzy had turned out like she had. Her description of herself had been given in a matter-of-fact manner, as if she was resigned to it and wasn’t losing any sleep over it. If he’d thought he was coming back to awaken Sleeping Beauty, he had another think coming.
As he walked back to the village, with the shadows of the towering peaks all around him, Ross was telling himself that he was to blame for Izzy’s self-denigrating attitude. His rejection of her that day when he’d left the village to commence his long exile had made her feel unwanted and unlovely.
He hoped he was wrong, but was pretty sure he wasn’t.
* * *
When Millie opened the door that night to her friend and colleague of many years’ standing her first words were, ‘So is the plan working?’
Paul shook his head. ‘Not so far,’ he replied. ‘I feel that I’ve gone the wrong way about it. That I should have told Isabel that Ross was coming to take over the practice, instead of being so secretive about it and thrusting him back into her life like I have.
‘She isn’t exactly overjoyed to see him. He tells me that she would rather it had been a stranger taking over the practice than him, which makes my theory that she is still in love with him seem rather ridiculous.’
‘Give Isabel time,’ Millie said. ‘It’s seven years since Ross left the village. It must have been a complete shock for her to find that he’s back again. And if that was him that I caught a glimpse of coming down off the tops at around lunchtime, he is still very much a man that any woman would look at twice.’
‘Maybe,’ Paul said somberly, ‘but I would remind you that my daughter isn’t just any woman. She’s the one who begged him to take her with him when he left. Who was madly in love with him, or so she thought, and has never had a serious relationship with a man since.’
Millie had poured him his usual sherry and as she handed him the glass she patted his thinning locks and said consolingly, ‘At least you are trying to make amends, even though it’s been a long time coming. Just let it ride for now and give your attention to what next week has in store. In a few days’ time you’ll be off the medical merry-go-round and settled in Shangri La next door, where you can sit back and watch how your successor runs the practice.
‘Ross has come back for two good reasons that we know of. One to take over the practice and two to be near his mother. It is possible that getting to know Isabel all over again doesn’t come into it.’
* * *
The call from the farmhand at Arrowsmiths’ farm didn’t materialise. Instead, the farmer himself rang the surgery in the early evening as Isabel was getting ready to go home. He said that Kate was being kept in for tests and that he’d dashed home for a few hours to get the hay in with the farmhand’s assistance and that she and Ross wouldn’t be needed.
Isabel breathed a sigh of relief. She would have gone as promised if she’d been needed but, after a seven-year fast, having Ross at her elbow every time she moved was proving too much like a banquet of indigestible, rich food.
‘How is Kate?’ she asked.
‘No different,’ he said flatly. ‘We’re worried sick about her. They’ve hinted at what we can expect and it doesn’t look good.’
When he’d gone off the line Isabel sat deep in thought. Kate’s mother had said that she’d been fighting off a gastric upset. She should have asked what she’d taken for it, if anything.
Going into Reception, she took her notes down off the shelf and flipped through them to see if her father had prescribed anything for Kate over recent weeks, but there was no mention of any house call or visit to the surgery.
Ross appeared at that moment at the end of a long discussion with the local plumber and the decorator, and on observing her furrowed brow asked what was wrong.
‘I’ve been wondering if Kate’s convulsions could be due to her taking some form of medication that c
an have that effect,’ she told him. ‘But she hasn’t been seen by either my father or myself in recent weeks. Unless Dad has forgotten to enter it in her notes.’
‘That is good thinking,’ he said slowly. ‘Very good thinking. Why not ring and ask him?’
‘He’ll be at Millie’s,’ she said, and picked up the phone.
No, he hadn’t seen Kate Arrowsmith in recent weeks, he said when she explained what was wrong with her, but he had treated her mother.
‘What for?’ Isabel asked immediately.
‘Excessive vomiting and nausea over a prolonged period,’ was the answer. ‘In the end I sent her to hospital for tests but nothing showed up. In the report they sent to me it said that she’d been prescribed metoclopromide and I’ve not seen her since, so it must have done the trick.’
There was silence for a moment, then he said, ‘I can see what you’re getting at. It’s a drug that has been known to cause brain disturbance in some people. But it wasn’t prescribed for Kate. It was her mother who had the severe gastric problem.’
‘Yes, but from what I can gather Kate has been suffering from something similar. Maybe the family are prone to that kind of thing. Supposing her mother had some tablets left, gave her some, and they’ve had an adverse effect.’
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ he said dubiously, ‘but surely—’
Isabel didn’t give him time to finish. She wished him a brief goodbye and turned back to Ross who had been listening intently.
‘Did you hear all that?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘I got the gist of it and would say that a phone call to Mr Arrowsmith is your next priority. If he says that Kate has been taking her mother’s medication you will be doing them a tremendous service as the convulsions will disappear once the metoclopromide is out of her system.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if I rang the hospital?’
‘Ask him first and if he can’t give you a straight answer then ring the hospital. I’ll be surprised if they haven’t already asked if Kate has been on any medication. But some people are negligent about such things and forget what they’ve taken.’
There was no answer when she rang the farm and Ross said, ‘He’ll be out in the field, bringing the hay in. We’ll have to go up there.’
‘I have to feed my animals first,’ she told him. ‘They are used to me arriving home at a certain time and they’ll fret if I don’t appear.’
‘OK,’ he said equably. ‘And when you’ve done that we’ll go to Tor Farm.’
‘And what if we’re wrong?’
‘It’s too big a coincidence that tablets known to cause convulsions are in the house and both mother and daughter have had the same problem with sickness and nausea.’
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN they arrived at the farm Kate’s father looked down at them anxiously from the top of a truck loaded with bales of hay and asked, ‘What’s up now? Is our Kate worse?’
Isabel shook her head.
‘Not that we know of. We’ve come for a different reason.’
‘And what’s that?’ he wanted to know as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
‘Your wife was ill some time ago with severe nausea and sickness, brought about by frequent migraines, wasn’t she?”
‘Aye, she was,’ he said slowly. ‘Kate has been the same, though not as bad. Headaches and upset stomachs seem to run in the family.’
‘Do you know if your wife had any of her medication left, and, if she had, has your daughter been taking it? We believe the prescription was for a drug called metoclopromide.’
Light was beginning to dawn.
‘Yes, I do believe she has. Her mother said that the medicine had done the trick for her and Kate might as well have what was left.’
‘It might have cured your wife,’ Ross told him levelly, ‘but if she had referred to the instructions supplied with the drug she would have seen that it can cause convulsions in some cases, and it is never, ever wise to take a drug that has been prescribed for somebody else.’
‘So you think it was her mother’s medication that has made her like she is!’ he croaked. ‘That wife of mine is a thrifty soul. She would be trying to save money that a new prescription would have cost. I can’t believe it! That a few doses of some drug could do that to our girl.’
‘It hasn’t been proved yet,’ Isabel said, ‘but I think that you are going to have to believe it.’
‘So what happens now?’ he asked.
‘We notify the hospital immediately and leave it in their hands. With luck, once the metoclopromide has left her system the convulsions will stop.’
‘It didn’t affect the wife like that.’
‘Obviously not,’ Ross said gravely. ‘Or she wouldn’t have given it to your daughter. What some people don’t seem to realize is that drugs can affect different people in different ways.’
‘Phone them now,’ he said to Isabel. ‘The sooner the shadow hanging over Kate is removed the better.’
She eyed him questioningly.
‘Me ring them?’
‘Yes, you. You are the one who came up with a possible solution.’ In a low voice for her ears only he added, ‘It was clever thinking, Dizzy Izzy.’
‘Don’t call me that!’ she muttered angrily as she reached for her mobile. ‘That was then. This is now! I’m no longer your Dizzy Izzy. You think you can stroll back into my life as if it was only yesterday that you broke my heart. Well, you can’t!’
As soon as the words were out she wanted to take them back. Ross would now be thinking that what had happened between them in the past was far from being ‘water under the bridge’, as she’d described it the day before. Why had she let him see that it still mattered?
* * *
Stephen Beamish, a youthful-sounding neurologist who was treating Kate Arrowsmith, listened carefully to what Isabel had to say and then commented, ‘We were beginning to think that might be the case. The patient is unable to make herself understood and initially her mother insisted rather uncomfortably that she hadn’t taken anything, but I think she is about to change her mind.’
‘We have it firsthand from Kate’s father, and blood tests, I’m sure, will confirm that she has been taking metoclopromide left over from a prescription of her mother’s,’ Isabel told him.
‘That’s fine, then. Thank you for letting us know. The next time I’m in your part of the world I’ll buy you a drink, Dr West.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said, ‘You’ll find me at the surgery or at Goyt Cottage down by the river.’
While she’d been speaking to the hospital the farmer had been listening carefully and now he said, ‘If what you’re saying is right, we have a lot to thank you for, Isabel. I’ll have to tell that wife of mine to be less tight with the pursestrings in future.’
She smiled, aware that Ross’s face had been wiped blank while she’d told the doctor at the hospital where he could find her. She’d done it on purpose, of course, and wasn’t proud of herself for being so obvious, but she was still simmering at the way he’d trotted out the pet name he’d once had for her as if nothing had changed.
‘You’ll have to wait and see if I’m right,’ she told the farmer, ‘but the doctor I’ve just spoken to seemed to think there was a very good chance that it is the medication that is causing the convulsions. By the time you get back to the hospital they might have some good news for you, but don’t take anything for granted unless they give you the all-clear.’
As she drove back to the village Isabel was expecting Ross to say something about the way she’d flared up when he’d used his pet name for her and had then been so friendly with a strange doctor. But there was no comment forthcoming. He sat beside her in silence until the tea shop came in sight and then merely said, ‘You can drop me off here. I haven’t seen my mother today.’
She was fighting the urge to make him say something about what had happened at the farm, but she resisted. Ross had already caused her grief in a big way once in
her life. She was going to have to keep telling herself that he was here to work and keep an eye on his mother. The fact that she happened to be still around was coincidental.
Once he was out of the car Ross bent and looked at Isabel through the open door, and as she turned to meet his glance she felt her face warm. Since his arrival they seemed to have been in each other’s company non-stop. How was she going to cope if it continued to be like this, when just the mere sight of him made her blood run warm?
‘I can’t keep expecting you to drive me where I need to go, so I’m going to buy a car in the morning, which means that I won’t be around first thing,’ he said, ‘and bear in mind that we’re sorting out some colour schemes when the surgery is closed in the evening.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she told him. ‘I don’t forget anything.’ Especially how much I loved you a long time ago, she thought, and wondered what Ross would say if he had to listen to that.
‘So it would seem,’ he said dryly. Leaving her to her thoughts, he moved towards the door of the tea shop with a long easy stride.
* * *
It was lunchtime the next day when Ross arrived at the practice in a new black BMW. Isabel was on the surgery forecourt, about to set off on her rounds, when he pulled in beside her.
‘Very impressive,’ she said. ‘Both the car and the speed with which you’ve found what you wanted.’
‘I don’t beat about the bush. I’ve got some carpet samples in the back for you to give an opinion on,’ he told her with a quirky smile that made her think he’d soon forgotten the things they’d said to each other the day before.
‘What colour?’ she asked.
‘Various shades of honey, as you suggested.’
Isabel sighed and he observed her enquiringly. ‘Does the sigh mean that you’ve changed your mind?’
Coming Back For His Bride Page 5