Too Long a Sacrifice
By
Yvonne Whittal
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
'Thanks for the lift,' Julia said, slamming the door behind her with unnecessary vigour, but Nathan caught up to her before she could undo the catch on the garden gate.
'I'm coming in with you,' he said, taking her arm in a firm grip and propelling her along the path to the front door.
'No, you are not coming in with me!'
'All I want to do is talk to you, and there is absolutely no reason for you to behave like a petrified virgin in fear of being raped. It's ten-thirty,' he said abruptly, glancing at the gold watch strapped to his lean wrist. 'I doubt that you would have complained had Warren Chandler kept you out this late.'
She stiffened at that hint of mockery in his voice. 'I happen to enjoy Warren's company.'
'Meaning you don't enjoy mine?'
Another book you will enjoy
by
YVONNE WHITTAL
BID FOR INDEPENDENCE
Rich girl Maura Fielding didn't need to work, but she was determined to be a teacher and live a normal life. Her stepbrother, Clayton, however, thought she was just being stubborn and wilful, and opposed her all the way. Could she ever prove to him that she was an adult now?
First published in Great Britain 1988
by Mills & Boon Limited
© Yvonne Whittal 1988
Australian copyright 1988
Philippine copyright 1988
This edition 1988
ISBN 0 263 76002 2
CHAPTER ONE
The waiting-room had been packed with patients waiting to see the doctor that Saturday morning, and the fan whirring on the tiling-cabinet had fought a losing battle to circulate the air in the room. It was January in southern Africa when the summer was at its peak, and the northern Transvaal was noted for its sweltering heat, but Julia Henderson succeeded in projecting an image of cool, calm professionalism in her white nurse's uniform.
Sophie Breedt was the last patient in the waiting-room at twelve thirty. She was a woman well into her sixties with grey hair combed back into a neat, old-fashioned bun in the nape of her neck. Her ample figure was ensconced in an armchair and, when she looked up to find Julia's glance resting on her, she closed the magazine she had been paging through and placed it on the table beside her chair.
'I've sold Honeywell,' she said chattily, but there was a deep sadness in her watery hazel eyes. 'George and I never had any children and there is no point in staying on alone at the farm now that he is no longer alive.'
Julia Henderson's greatest problem as a nursing sister had always been her inability to distance herself from the suffering of others, and her grey glance clouded with sympathy and concern when this woman's pain became her own.
'Where will you go?' she asked the woman whom everyone in Doornfield knew as Tant Sophie.
'My sister is also a widow, and she has invited me to stay with her at Potgietersrus for a while.' There was a hint of despair in the vague gesture she made with her plump hands. 'If I like it there then I might buy a small place of my own later.'
'Have you sold the farm to someone local?' Julia asked the older woman conversationally, while she closed the appointment book and began to straighten her desk.
'No, I sold it to a doctor from Johannesburg who made me a better offer than anyone else in the district.' Tant Sophie frowned in concentration. 'I haven't met the man, but I think my lawyer said his name was Nathan Corbett.'
Nathan Corbett! Julia reeled mentally as if she had been dealt a vicious blow, and the blood drained from her face to leave her chalk-white. There could not be more than one Nathan Corbett in the medical profession, and the name alone conjured up memories which were still too painful to dwell on. She had thought that they would never meet again, but for some obscure reason fate was bringing him here to Doornfield.
'You look ill,' Sophie Breedt was saying as if from a great distance away. 'Are you feeling faint?'
Julia took a deep, steadying breath and made a supreme effort to pull herself together. 'No, I'm fine.'
'It's this terrible heat,' said Tant Sophie, placing her own interpretation on the cause of Julia's paleness. 'It took me years to get used to this bushveld heat.'
A pregnant young woman emerged from the consulting-room. Her appearance created a mild diversion, and it gave Julia those extra few seconds to regain complete control of herself before she rose behind her desk with Sophie Breedt's file in her hands.
'You may go in now, Tant Sophie,' she announced, her feelings carefully hidden behind an outwardly calm expression as she held out her hand to help the older woman out of the chair.
Julia's temples were pounding when the consulting-room door closed behind Sophie Breedt's ample figure, but she sat down behind her desk and tried to concentrate on the things she still had to do before she could go home to her safe little cottage on the outskirts of the town.
Safe? The word mocked her ruthlessly. How safe was she going to be with Nathan Corbett owning a farm in the district?
Roland de Necker, in his early fifties and greying swiftly, emerged from his consulting-room half an hour later, and Sophie Breedt was clinging to his arm as if she was reluctant to let go of the man who had been her doctor and her friend for so many years. She said a tearful goodbye, and Julia had a lump in her throat when she followed the elderly doctor back into his consulting-room where he slumped into the leather armchair behind his desk.
'It's been quite a morning,' he sighed tiredly, taking off his gold-rimmed spectacles and cleaning them vigorously with his while linen handkerchief before he put them on again, and gestured Julia into the chair. His green gaze settled on her rigidly controlled features and his mouth tightened. 'I presume you have already heard the news that Sophie Breedt has sold her farm.'
Julia stared down at her clenched hands in her lap. 'Yes, she told me.'
'There is no reason to believe that the man who has bought Honeywell is the same Nathan Corbett you used to know.'
The corners of her soft mouth lifted in a mirthless smile. 'There can't be more than one Nathan Corbett in the medical profession.'
'I imagine that's true,' grunted Roland de Necker, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. 'You're not going to do something foolish such as running away, are you?'
'The reason why I ran away once before no longer exists.'
Her grey eyes clouded with memories which still had the power to hurt her to some extent, and Roland got up and circled his desk to place a comforting hand on her shoulder.
'I admire you for laying your own happiness on the sacrificial altar, but there is such a thing as making too long a sacrifice,' he warned, his fingers tightening on her shoulder as if to stress his statement. 'You have been with me for almost three years, and in all this time you have never allowed another man near you. You have shut off your feelings so securely that one day, when you choose to open the door to your heart, you might find nothing there worth giving to someone else.'
Her throat was too tight to speak, and she placed her hand briefly over his where it rested on her shoulder as an indication that she had heard and understood what he had said. Roland de Necker and his wife had been good friends, and she appreciated his concern.
It was not quite true that no other man had been allowed to get close to her. There was Warren Chandler, whose friendship meant a great deal to her. After her arrival in Doornfield s
he had declined all invitations simply because she had felt that none of the men had matched up to Nathan, and later she had found herself admitting to a general lack of interest. Warren Chandler had persisted, and he had become a friend in whose company she could relax without fearing that he might make certain emotional and physical demands on her.
Julia knew a sudden sense of alarm. She had always imagined herself married and with a family of her own at the age of twenty-seven. The importance of that desire had diminished over the years, and she could almost say that she was content and happy on her own. Was it possible that, as Roland had said, she had already made too long a sacrifice?
She thrust these disturbing thoughts aside when she left the consulting-rooms with Roland de Necker and drove herself home in her white Toyota.
Jacaranda trees lined the almost deserted main street, and flowers in window boxes had wilted in the heat of the sun. This was bushveld country, and Doornfield was a quiet, unpretentious little village situated in the heart of it. Progress and industry had almost passed it by until they had started delving for coal four years ago on an open tract of land ten kilometres out of town. The influx of miners and their families had necessitated the erection of a school and a well equipped hospital, but the peace and tranquillity had somehow remained undisturbed.
Julia reduced her speed to a crawl as she negotiated her car on to the narrow lane which led to her cottage. The gravel lane continued past her cottage, curving and twisting down among the tall bluegum trees towards the river where the local residents occasionally spent their weekends angling in the rushing waters, or picnicking beneath the shady trees.
She unlocked the door of her thatch-roofed cottage a few minutes later, and walked down the short passage to her bedroom where she flung her handbag on her bed and kicked off her shoes. There was peace in her surroundings, but there was no peace in her heart at that moment as she turned towards the dressing-table and pulled the combs from her honey-brown hair to let it cascade in glossy waves on to her shoulders.
Have I changed much? she wondered as she unintentionally appraised herself in the mirror. Candid grey eyes stared back at her from beneath attractively arched brows. Her nose was small and straight, and there was an upward tilt at the corners of her wide, generous mouth which suggested that she smiled easily. Her glance became somewhat critical when she studied her figure. She had lost a considerable amount of weight five years ago, and she had regained very little of it, but her slender body had lost none of its resilience.
Julia did not linger in front of the mirror, and even if she had she would not have noticed the appealing beauty of her fine-boned features. There was strength in the firmness of her chin, and a natural grace in the way her supple body moved, but she was not aware of this as she went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.
She was tired, and she felt clammy beneath the spotless white uniform when she filled the electric kettle and switched it on. She drew aside the curtains to stare out of the window, but she did not see the vegetable garden she had cultivated with such care, neither did she see the rocky hills shimmering in the heat beyond the river. The door had been slammed securely on her past, but Sophie Breedt had wrenched it open with her disclosure, and Julia could no longer curb the memories that spilled out into her mind.
She had met Nathan Corbett on a date which had been arranged by Damian Squires, a mutual friend in the medical profession. Julia had been attracted to Nathan at first because of his outward appearance. He was tall, with dark hair which had a tendency to curl on to his broad forehead, and he had the bluest eyes she had ever seen. Later she had liked him for very different reasons. He had not made an issue of the fact that, at thirty, he was a qualified neuro-surgeon, while she was a junior theatre sister. He had been eight years her senior, but Julia had been able to talk to him in a way in which she had never been able to talk to any other man. He had a quick mind, and a sharp, sometimes stinging wit which had appealed to her intellect. She had found him both bracing and challenging to be with, and it had perhaps been inevitable that she should eventually fall in love with him.
They had been engaged to be married when Nathan was offered the opportunity to spend four years working with some of Europe's most eminent neuro-surgeons, and it had been an opportunity which he could not afford to reject. Their wedding date had been brought forward so that Julia could accompany him, but, with less than a month to go before their wedding and subsequent departure for Europe, fate stepped in to alter the course of their lives.
The whistle on the electric kettle went off like a siren, jolting Julia back to the present, and for a few minutes she busied herself making a small pot of tea, but the memories of the past came rushing back to the fore when she sat down at the well scrubbed wooden table with her cup of tea in front of her.
She did not think that she would ever forget the day when she was told that her grandmother had cancer. The doctor had given Alicia Henderson a year to live, and, with special treatment, perhaps two or three. Julia had suddenly found herself in a position where she had to make the most difficult decision of her life. She had loved Nathan, and she had desperately wanted to marry him, but she could not go away with him and leave the woman who had reared her almost from infancy after the tragic death of her parents.
Julia drank her tea and tried to relax, but those long-buried memories would give her no peace, and she was forced to recall those last few weeks in Johannesburg before Nathan's departure for Europe. She had been forced to make a traumatic decision, and if Nathan had noticed anything different about her, then he had not mentioned it. The problem was, perhaps, that she had known him loo well. If she had told him the truth he might have forfeited the opportunity to go to Europe in order to stay with her, but Julia had known that she could not allow him to sacrifice his career for her sake. Nathan was destined for greater heights in his profession as a neuro-surgeon, and her mind, if not her heart, had told her that she was the one who would have to make the sacrifice.
She fell the perspiration break out on her forehead at the memory of her predicament. She had been incapable of facing Nathan and saying the words which she knew had to be said. He would have known that she was lying, and she had had to resort to writing him a letter. It had taken her days to compose something which she had hoped would ease the hurl for him, but in the end she had realised that there was no nice way of breaking off their engagement, and she had severed their relationship in a few brief words which had sliced deep into her own soul. She had added her engagement ring to the letter in the envelope, she had sealed it carefully, and she had had it delivered by hand to Nathan's rooms in the city, but, by the lime he received it, she had left Johannesburg with her grandmother on a holiday from which they did not return until she had heard that Nathan had left the country.
That had been five years ago, and Damian Squires was the only one who had known the truth. He had been someone she could trust, someone she could confide in, and she had known that he would never reveal her secret to anyone who might unwittingly pass it on to Nathan.
Alicia Henderson had lived a little more than two years and, after her death, Julia had sold the house which had been her home for so many years. She had wanted to get away, and Doornfield had seemed the ideal place at the lime. She had needed to regain an inner peace, and the tranquillity of this small town had given her that… and more.
Julia poured herself a second cup of tea and got up to fetch the headache tablets which she always kept in the kitchen dresser. Her head was throbbing, and she gulped down two tablets with a mouthful of tea.
There was nothing strange about Nathan's buying a farm. Many professional men possessed farms these days, and they used them as a retreat from their pressurised lives in the city, but fate had in some diabolical way guided Nathan to choose the Doornfield district in which to buy a farm. Why? Oh, God, why? It had to be sheer coincidence. No one would have told him where she lived; Damian would have kept her secret, and there was also no reas
on to suspect that Nathan would go to any great length to meet her again. Not after what she had done to him.
Dear God, she had had no choice! Nathan did not know that, and she wondered what his feelings were when he thought of her. If he ever thought about her.
Julia changed into an old pair of slacks and a faded T-shirt. Her headache was subsiding, and she had always found it therapeutic to work in her small garden. Barefoot, and with a dilapidated old straw hat planted firmly on her head, she went down on to her knees in her flower garden to loosen the soil between the seedlings she had planted a week ago.
She worked steadily for more than an hour before she went inside to pour herself a glass of fruit juice which she took out into the garden with her. She seated herself on one of the garden chairs which stood in a shady spot, and she drank thirstily from her glass while she glanced about her appreciatively.
The lawn was green, but the edges needed to be trimmed again. At the farthest end of the small garden the poinsettia was blooming, its flowers a brilliant scarlet in the sunshine. Beside the gate the hibiscus was flowering, and her pink and yellow roses were ranked in profusion along the low picket fence. The cottage was small with whitewashed walls and green shutters at the windows which were more decorative than functional. It presented a peaceful picture, and Julia began to relax at last. It was silly to get herself into a panic about Nathan, she told herself eventually. The fact that he had bought Honeywell did not necessarily mean that they would be bumping into each other at every turn. It was quite possible that he might never even discover that she was living in Doornfield. He was, after all, not going to take up permanent residence on the farm. Was he?
Despite all her efforts to the contrary, Julia lacked her usual calm during the ensuing weeks. Sophie Breedt's departure from Doornfield had aroused an anxiety in Julia which made her quake inwardly every time her telephone rang at the cottage and, when she did her shopping in town, she could not prevent herself from glancing repeatedly over her shoulder as if she expected to see Nathan coming up behind her.
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