'Any joy?'
'She's breathing. Her airway was obstructed. I think her tongue had been driven back with the force of the fall. She's just resting.'
He looked down at her, just as Amanda's eyes opened and she looked up at him. 'Will? Look after Henry.'
'I will.'
'Got insurance. Call the vet. Anything...'
'OK. Don't worry about Henry. I've called the vet.'
He shot a glance in the horse's direction, and met Lucie's eyes. So they agreed on that, at least. Henry was in deep trouble. 'They're sending an air ambulance, because of the track. It should be here any minute. It was being scrambled from Wattisham air-base.'
She nodded. 'Good. The sooner the better.'
'I've just got to put out markers.' He ran down the field, opening out the sheets and spreading them in a rough H on the emerging crops. Moments later he was back, and knelt down opposite Lucie. 'Anything I can do? She needs a line in.'
'I know. Can you take over her neck so I can do it?'
'Sure.' His fingers slid around hers, cupping the fragile neck, and she eased her hand away carefully and then busied herself opening her bag and finding what she needed to get an intravenous line in. 'She needs saline.'
'They're bringing plenty of fluids. I told them to expect circulatory collapse.'
'Let's hope they get here soon,' Lucie said, checking Amanda's pulse and finding it weaker. 'Her pressure's dropping. Where the hell are they?'
'God knows, but the horse is going to be spooked by the helicopter.'
She'd got the line into Amanda's hand, and she taped the connector down and looked at Henry doubtfully. 'Can you lead him back to the stable?'
'Are you all right with her?'
'I'll manage. I don't need a terrified horse galloping over me.'
'I don't think he's galloping anywhere,' Will said softly, and she slid her fingers back under his and watched him as he went quietly up to Henry, speaking softly to him and holding out a reassuring hand.
The horse was shivering, clearly in shock himself, and Will led him slowly, hobbling on three legs, up the track and over the field towards the house.
He was back in no time, just as the helicopter came into view over the hill.
'That was quick.'
'I met up with the vet on the track. He's taken him on up,' he yelled, and then his voice was drowned out by the whop-whop-whop of the helicopter, and the grass was flattened all around them and Lucie ducked involuntarily.
Never mind spooking the horse, it didn't do a lot for her, but she was pleased to see it!
Seconds later the paramedic team was there, taking over from her, checking what had been done, getting fluids up and running, giving Amanda gas and air for pain relief and straightening her legs out to splint them, before putting on the spinal boards and lifting her into the ambulance.
Then they were away, and Will and Lucie stood watching the helicopter fade to a dot in the distance. 'I need to ring her mother—they'll have to talk to the vet and make decisions about Henry.'
'What did he hit? She said they hit something on the track.'
They walked back along it, and there, sticking up in the grass, was the end of a steel frame from a piece of redundant farm machinery. It had probably been there for ages, but this wasn't Will's land, and he didn't walk along this track often, he said.
It was just bad luck that Henry had gone so far over to the side, rather than sticking to the centre of the tracks, and it might have cost them both their lives.
Lucie shuddered. To think she'd just been envying them their headlong flight!
They went back to the house and found the vet in the stable with Henry, running his hands over the trembling horse and murmuring soothingly.
'How is he?' Will asked tautly.
'Shattered the cannon-bone of his off fore. It's not a clean break. They might be able to save it, but he'll never work again.'
'She's got insurance.'
The vet straightened up and met their eyes. 'I need to speak to his owners. My instinct is to shoot him now, but sentiment often gets in the way.'
'I'm sure they'd want him saved if possible,' Will said, and the vet nodded.
'I'll call Newmarket. They'll have to come and get him. They have special transport with slings. He can't travel like this, he'll just fall over.'
He came into the house with them, and after Will had spoken to Amanda's parents and told them that Amanda was on her way to hospital, they confirmed that they wanted Henry saved if possible, and so the vet made several calls to set up the transport arrangements.
It seemed to be hours before Henry was loaded and away, the lorry picking its way infinitely slowly along the uneven track.
'I'm going to have to do something about that track,' Will said heavily, and turned away. 'I'm going to ring the hospital,' he said, and went into the house, leaving the door open as if he expected Lucie to follow. She did, sitting impatiently waiting until he finally got through to the right department. After a short exchange he replaced the receiver.
'She's in Theatre. She's got a pelvic fracture, both lower legs and right femur, and a crack in one of her cervical vertebrae, as well as cerebral contusions. Thank God she had her hat on, or she probably would have died of head injuries, but she'll be in for a long time, I think, judging by the sound of it. Her parents are both there, waiting for her to come round.'
Will glanced at his watch, or where his watch would have been, and swore softly before looking up at the clock. 'The day's nearly gone,' he said, and he sounded exasperated and irritable.
'I need another watch,' he went on. 'I don't suppose you feel like a trip to town, do you? I haven't bothered to get one till now because I couldn't wear it on that wrist, but I think the swelling's down enough now, especially if I get one with an adjustable strap.'
'Sure,' she agreed. She wasn't sure how far she could walk. Her feet were rubbed raw after her long walk in the badly fitting wellies—not to mention running up the field in them with her socks gathered up round her toes. Still, she'd manage. She wanted to be with him, if only so she could try and get their relationship back on an even keel after last night.
She didn't know what had happened to change his attitude, but something had, and if nothing else she wanted at least to go back to how they had been, instead of this icy and terrifying remoteness.
Will felt sick. Lucie was so sweet and open, almost as if Fergus was nothing. How could she be so fickle? He couldn't bear to think about it, so he closed his mind and tried to get back to how things had been, but it was hard.
Too hard.
He withdrew into an emotional safety zone, and then had to endure Lucie's puzzled looks for the rest of the day. He found a watch, the same as the one that he had smashed in his accident five weeks before, and the saleslady was able to adjust it so it hung loosely on his still tender and swollen wrist.
'It's taking a long time to get back to normal,' Lucie said as they left the shop.
'I've been giving it a hard time,' he said shortly. 'I've had no choice, unless I resigned myself to total dependence, and I didn't have anyone to depend on.'
'You could have depended on me,' she said softly, and he gave a brief snort.
'I could. I would rather not.'
'So you've pushed your wrist too hard and probably damaged it more.'
'It's my wrist,' he said flatly, cutting off that line of conversation, and Lucie fell silent. He felt a heel, but he was having enough trouble with his own emotions, without worrying about hers. Damn Fergus, he thought, and had to consciously relax his hands because they were clenched into fists so tight both arms were rebelling.
'Let's go home,' he said, without bothering to ask her if there was anything she wanted to do in town, and then had a pang of guilt. She'd driven him there, after all. 'Unless you want something?'
She shook her head. 'No. We can go back.'
The journey was accomplished in silence, and when they got back she said she was
going to sort a few things out and disappeared into the cottage. He let himself into the house, patted Bruno absently and checked the answering machine automatically.
Nothing. No distractions, nothing to take his mind off last night and Lucie's beautiful, willing body under his.
He slammed his fist down on the worktop and gasped with pain. Damn. He really, really had to stop abusing this wrist. He massaged it gingerly with the other hand, and could have cried with frustration.
'You're better off than Amanda,' he told himself, and decided he'd swap places with her in an instant if it gave him a chance with Lucie.
There was nothing, of course, to stop him competing with Fergus—except pride.
Fergus had a car that cost more than he earned in a year, flash clothes that would never have seen the inside of Marks and Spencer, and he'd stake his life that Fergus didn't live in a tumbledown, half-restored excuse for a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest habitation and out of range of a mobile phone transmitter!
There was no way he could compete with Fergus for the heart of a city girl, and he didn't intend to try. He'd just take last night as a one-off, the night that shouldn't have happened, and cherish the memory for the rest of his life.
He struggled unaided into the long veterinary glove, had a bath and then lit the fire, opened the Scotch and settled down for a night's indifferent television. Nothing could hold his attention—not drama, not talk shows, certainly not puerile comedy.
He was about to go to bed when the phone rang, and he got up to answer it, to find that it was Fergus.
'Could I speak to Lucie, please?' he said in his carefully modulated voice, and Will grunted and dropped the phone on the worktop in the kitchen, going across to the cottage in bare feet and rapping on the door.
Lucie opened it, looking bleary-eyed and sleepy, and he wanted to take her in his arms and rock her back to sleep. Instead, he glared at her. 'Fergus on the phone,' he snapped, and, turning on his heel, he strode across the yard, ignoring the sharp stones that stabbed into his feet.
Lucie followed him in and picked up the phone. Will didn't want to hear her talk to him. A huge lump of something solid was wedged in his chest, and he shut the door into the sitting room with unnecessary force and turned up the television.
'Fergus?' Lucie said, looking at the firmly shut door with dismay. 'What is it?'
'I miss you.
'I know. Fergus, we've had this conversation a hundred times now. I can't do anything about it. We aren't right for each other.'
'How's Will?'
Sexy. Amazing. The most incredible lover, better than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.
'He's all right.' Actually, she didn't know how he was. Short-tempered, but that was no surprise, he was usually short-tempered.
Except just recently, and last night.
Last night...
'Sorry, Fergus, you were saying?'
'I was asking if there's any chance for you with Will, or if there's any point in me coming up to see you tomorrow. I want to see you, Lucie. I want to ask you something.'
Oh, no. But, then again, maybe a little competition might sharpen up Will's act.
'Come for lunch,' she said. 'I'll see you at twelve.'
'OK. I'll bring something, don't cook.'
'OK. See you tomorrow.'
She hung up, contemplated the firmly slammed door and shrugged. Will could find out for himself that she was off the phone. She went back to her cottage, shut the curtains and curled up on the chair and howled.
She'd really thought they were getting somewhere, but this morning he'd been so unapproachable, and then he'd said that they shouldn't have made love last night!
How could he believe that? It had been the most beautiful experience of her life, and she didn't think she'd been alone, but there was more going on here than she understood. There had been pain in Will's eyes, a real pain that hinted at some deep and terrible hurt.
A woman in his past? Had he been terribly hurt by her, and was that why he didn't do the morning-after thing very well? Was it that he couldn't bear to confront his feelings, or had he—please, God, no— pretended she'd been the other woman? Had that been why he hadn't been able to look at her in the morning?
Lucie scrubbed at the tears on her cheeks, and stood up. Whatever, she couldn't get any closer to understanding him by thrashing it round and round in her head any more, and she might as well go to bed.
Except that the sheets carried the lingering traces of his aftershave.
She sat up in the midst of the crumpled sheets and took her diary on her lap. 'We made love last night,' she wrote. 'At least, I thought we did. Perhaps it was just amazing sex.'
A tear splashed on the page, and she brushed it angrily away. 'Fergus coming for lunch tomorrow. He wants to ask me something. Hope it isn't what I think it is. Amanda and Henry came to grief on the track by the river. Very dramatic. Thought we were going to lose them both, but apparently not. Oh, Will, I love you, but you drive me crazy. Why can't you just open up with me? I thought we had something really special, but it must have been wishful thinking.'
She put the diary down, lay down in the middle of the crumpled bed and cried herself to sleep.
* * *
Fergus turned up at twelve. Will saw the car coming down the track from the end window in the house. He was struggling to strip the window, working with the wrong hand, and he paused and watched the car's slow progress. On second thoughts, maybe he wouldn't do anything about the track, and maybe Fergus would stop coming down.
He threw the stripping tool to the floor with a disgusted sigh, and shut the window, abandoning his hopeless task. He went down to the kitchen, arriving coincidentally as Fergus drew up, and he watched as Lucie came out to greet him with a kiss on the cheek.
Oh, well, at least it wasn't a full-flown no-holds-barred kiss of the sort he'd shared with her on Friday night. He should be thankful for small mercies—or perhaps Fergus was just too well bred to do it in public. He opened the boot of his car—a ridiculously small boot—and lifted out a wicker hamper.
If it hadn't hurt so much, Will would have laughed.
Game, set and match, he thought, and turned his back on them. He'd seen enough.
CHAPTER TEN
The atmosphere between them remained strained over the next couple of days, but Lucie refused to let Will ruffle her, and by ignoring his moodiness it seemed to defuse it a little. At least, it brought a professional edge to their relationship, and for the first two days of the week it was all business.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, he found her after her clinic and suggested visiting Dick and Pam. 'Dick's had his balloon angioplasty, and it's sort of on the way home. I thought it might be nice to pop in and see them.'
'And scrounge a couple of plants? You could take her back the pots from the others—they're lying dead by the back door, I noticed.'
'I know. I couldn't get them into the ground, and it's been dry,' he said shortly. 'You could have watered them.'
'I could have painted the outside of your house, but it's not in my job description,' she retorted, and put the cap back on her pen. 'Shall we go?'
'Only if you promise not to tell her they're dead.'
'As if I would.' She tossed the car keys in the air and looked at him expectantly. 'You coming, or walking?'
'Coming.' He stood up and headed for the door, holding it open for her so she had to brush past him. She felt him flinch and wanted to howl with frustration.
Why, when they'd been so close?
She drove to Dick's and Pam's in silence, pulling up outside the right white house this time, and she followed Will up the path and stood a little way behind him, admiring the front garden.
It had been five weeks since she'd first seen it, and now it was May, and everything was getting lush and starting to grow away. The bulbs were out, the daffodils finished but the tulips starting to nod their heads, growing up through the perennials that
would soon rush up to swamp them.
So different from the boring, orderly town gardens she saw in London, which more often than not had a motorbike or car parked in them and a tattered fringe of forgotten vegetation round the edge.
She heard the door open, and then Will was hugging Pam, and she was smiling at Lucie and beckoning them in.
'Dick will be so delighted to see you—he's so much better. I'm amazed. He's back to work next week, and he certainly seems ready for it. The difference in him is incredible. He's in the garden, helping me with the daffodil leaves. Come and see him. I'll put the kettle on—can you stop?'
'Just for a short while,' Will agreed, arching a brow at Lucie, and she nodded.
'That's fine. A cup of tea would be lovely.'
They followed her through the house and found Dick tending over, tying off the tops of the daffodils, and as they went out he straightened up and beamed at them.
'Hello, there. Is this a social call?'
'It is, really. I just wanted to see how things were. I gather from Pam you're feeling much better.'
'I am, and it's all thanks to this young lady. My dear, I'm going to kiss you,' he announced, and, putting his hands on her shoulders, he planted a smacking kiss on her cheek. 'There. You're wonderful.'
Will shook his head and laughed. 'What did she say that I didn't?' he asked wryly, and Dick shrugged.
'Probably nothing, except you assumed I was afraid to die. Lucie here pointed out what a waste of my retirement it would be if I wasn't here to enjoy it, and I thought of the years I've paid into a pension just to let Pam sit back and squander it on a cruise, and I thought, Blow it, I'm going to do this! So there. That's all she said—just another angle on the same old theme, but it worked, and I can't tell you how grateful I am.'
Lucie laughed. 'Well, I'm delighted to have been of service. I must say, you do look well.'
'I am. Ah, look, here's Pam with the tea. Let's go and sit down in the conservatory.'
He led them up the garden, a riot of blue and yellow with the aubretia and alyssum foaming over the paths and tumbling down the walls, and they sat in the conservatory in the warm spring sunshine and talked about his operation, and how he'd felt, and they stayed far longer than they'd meant to.
Rescuing Dr Ryan Page 13