Swallowbrook's Winter Bride Read Online Free PDF

checking her heart, Libby exclaimed, ‘How on earth have you managed to get here in this state, Henrietta?’
    ‘My son has brought me,’ she gasped.
    ‘I’m glad to hear you haven’t walked,’ she told her soberly. ‘Your heart is completely out of control and is affecting your lungs. I’m sending you to the coronary unit at the new hospital straight away by ambulance. You will be attended to more quickly that way than if your son was to take you. I’ll get one of the nurses to help you back into the waiting room to join him while I send out an emergency call. You’re an amazing woman, Henrietta, I’m not giving up on you. Once they get you into Coronary Care, you’ll be in safe hands.’
    ‘If I live that long,’ she said with a grimace of a smile, and Libby thought it was typical of the woman that she was facing up to what might happen with the same sort of stoicism that was always there in every crisis that brought her to the surgery for help. Her family, who were devoted to her, must live on a knife edge where their mother’s health was concerned.
    As the day progressed like any other busy Monday at the practice there was no time to wonder how Nathan was occupying himself until Toby came out of school, or let her thoughts wander to how a small orphaned boy might be coping on his first day. Maybe she would find out tonight when her day at the practice was over and she was back at the cottage.
    She was about to make a snack meal for herself that evening when there was a knock on the door, and when she opened it Toby was smiling up at her and announcing, ‘Uncle Nathan says would you like to come and eat with us?’
    Clever uncle, she thought. He knows I won’t refuse if he sends Toby with the invitation, but didn’t he get the message when we were on the steamer and I came up with an excuse for not accepting the invitation to join them at his father’s place?
    He was gazing up at her innocently, waiting for an answer, so she said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely, Toby. When shall I come?’
    Taking her hand in his, he tugged her towards him and said, ‘Now, Dr Hamilton.’ And having just been given her full title once again, she thought that if she and Toby were going to be seeing much of each other he must be allowed to call her something simpler than that.
    ‘We’re having fish fingers and ice cream, Toby’s choice,’ Nathan told her when she appeared hesitantly in the kitchen doorway, ‘to celebrate his first day at school,’ adding in a low voice that was for her ears only, ‘which he has enjoyed, thank goodness.’
    ‘I can imagine how relieved you are about that,’ she replied with her glance on the boy who had gone into the garden and was kicking a ball around while he waited to be fed.
    He nodded sombrely but didn’t reply. Instead he asked, ‘How do you like my efforts to make it seem like a home to him?’
    She looked around her. ‘Impressive. Just the right blend of luxury and cosiness.’
    ‘That is what I wanted to achieve. There wasn’t much of that about where I was based in Africa, and since I’ve become involved in adopting Toby we’ve been living in a rented apartment in London while I’ve been sorting out his parents’ affairs for him.
    ‘Now that we’ve crossed the hurdle of his first day at school and are settling into this place I’m hoping that we can put down some roots and become part of the community, the same as I was before.’
    ‘You can’t be a much bigger part of the community than serving them as a GP,’ she pointed out, ‘or have you changed your mind about tomorrow?’
    ‘No, of course not. I’m looking forward to it even if you aren’t.’
    He watched the colour rise in her cheeks and thought that where she’d been beautiful before, now she was divine. Still, she’d made it quite clear that their relationship was to be purely professional and he supposed he deserved no more after the way they had parted.
    But only he knew the truth of the