A Christmas Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

She was ushered into the car, too, and told to wait while the professor went back to pay the bill and tip the doorman.
    ‘How much was it?’ asked Theodosia anxiously as he got in beside her.
    ‘Would it be a good idea,’ suggested the professor carefully, ‘if I kept this food at my house? There’s not any need to unpack it; everything on the list is there and I have the receipted bill.’
    ‘But why should you do that? It may be a great nuisance for you or your wife …’
    ‘I’m not married, and my housekeeper will stow it safely away until Saturday.’
    ‘Well, if it’s really no trouble. And how much was it?’
    ‘I can’t remember exactly, but your aunt must have a good idea of what the food costs and the bill seemed very reasonable to me. It’s in the boot with the food or I would let you have it.’
    ‘No, no. I’m sure it’s all right. And thank you very much.’
    He was driving back to the hospital, taking short cuts so that she had still five minutes of her dinner hour left by the time he stopped in the forecourt. She spent two of those thanking him in a muddled speech, smiling at him, full of her delightful lunch and his kindness and worry that she had taken up too much of his time.
    ‘A pleasure,’ said the professor, resisting a wish to kiss the tip of her nose. He got out of the car and opened her door and suggested that she had better run.
    Despite Miss Prescott’s sharp tongue and ill temper, the rest of her day was viewed through rose-coloured spectacles by Theodosia. She wasn’t sure why she felt happy; of course, it had been marvellous getting her shoppingdone so easily and having lunch and the prospect of being driven to the aunts’ at the weekend, but it was more than that; it was because the professor had been there. And because he wasn’t married.
    She saw nothing of him for the rest of the week but on Friday evening as she left the hospital there was a message for her. Would she be good enough to be ready at ten o’clock in the morning? She would be fetched as before. This time there was no mistaking the twinkle in the head porter’s eye as he told her. Over the years he had passed on many similar messages but never before from the professor.
    ‘We’re going to the aunts’ again,’ Theodosia told Gustavus. ‘In that lovely car. You’ll like that, won’t you?’
    She spent a happy evening getting ready for the morning, washing her hair, examining her face anxiously for spots, doing her nails, and putting everything ready for breakfast in the morning. It would never do to keep the professor waiting.
    She went down to the front door punctually in the morning to find him already there, leaning against Mrs Towzer’s door, listening to that lady’s detailed descriptions of her varicose veins with the same quiet attention he would have given any one of his private patients. Mrs Towzer, seeing Theodosia coming downstairs, paused. ‘Well, I’ll tell you the rest another time,’ she suggested. ‘You’ll want to be on your way, the pair of you.’
    She winked and nodded at him and Theodosia went pink as she wished them both a rather flustered good morning, trying not to see the professor’s faint smile. But it was impossible to feel put out once she was sitting beside him as he drove off. Indeed she turned and waved to Mrs Towzer, for it seemed wrong to feel so happy while her landlady was left standing at her shabby front door with nothing but rows of similar shabby houses at which to look.
    It was a gloomy morning and cold, with a leaden sky.
    ‘Will it snow?’ asked Theodosia.
    ‘Probably, but not just yet. You’ll be safely at your great-aunts’ by then.’
    He glanced at her. ‘Will you be going to see them again before Christmas?’
    ‘No, this is an unexpected visit so that I could buy all those things.’ In case he was thinking that she was angling for another lift she added, ‘I expect you’ll be at home for Christmas?’
    He agreed pleasantly in a voice