She lifted the hand away but made herself repeat the word.
‘Please…Before you go. Come and see Frank with me. He’s the owner of the dog and he’s here in the same building-only over the other side.’
‘Yes, I heard you had twin animal and human hospitals,’ Niall grinned. ‘A Health Department nightmare.’
‘What the heart doesn’t know…’ Jessie said demurely and matched his grin. ‘We’re a long way from officialdom here, thank heaven, and the arrangements have worked well until now.’
‘And now?’
‘Dr Hurd doesn’t like my animals.’ Jessie shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can be very separate when we try. Will you come and see Frank?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Paige will be waiting…’ Then he looked up at Jess and smiled, that heartwarming, heart-stopping smile that was all the things that Jess considered most dangerous in a man.
‘Ten minutes, Dr Harvey,’ he smiled. ‘Ten minutes more of human contact before I go back to being the Ogre of Barega.’
He knew. He knew of his reputation.
Jessie felt herself flush crimson but Niall Mountmarche was smiling in a way that showed he didn’t mind the title in the least-in fact, by the look of it, he rather liked it!
They wheeled Harry down to the kitchen and settled him into a cage beside the big slow combustion stove. Jess worked with swift efficiency but Niall Mountmarche stopped at the kitchen door and stared in amazement.
‘Good grief!’
‘What?’ Jess was lifting the dog from trolley to cage, careful not to tangle his intravenous line, and Niall recovered from shock enough to move to help her.
‘It’s hardly a clinically clean kitchen-pristine for cooking,’ Niall told her. He hooked the bag of saline above the cage.
‘It’s clean enough for me.’
Niall shook his head. Having settled the dog, he stood and stared around the room.
It certainly was unusual. The house had been built with mass entertaining in mind and now, even though it was separated into two wings-hospital and vet clinic-Jess had been able to keep the original kitchen for her own use. She used every inch of it.
The vast slow combustion stove was the kitchen’s heart but surrounding it was ordered jumble. Bags of animal formula were heaped along one wall; there were tiny woollen bags with heating pads-obviously used for injured wildlife-hanging from chairs and, above their heads, bunches and bunches of sweet-smelling lavender hung like fragrant clouds.
‘You eat your cornflakes in here?’ Niall demanded incredulously and Jessie smiled. Her fingers were smoothing Harry’s soft ears, settling him from anaesthetic to deep, natural sleep. The longer he slept now the better. He wouldn’t worry the intravenous line and she could get maximum fluid and antibiotic into his starving body.
‘I like it,’ she said, and her voice was a little defensive. Separate your work from your home life, they’d told her at vet school, but Jess had never quite managed it.
‘I think I like it too,’ Niall smiled. He bent down over a woollen pouch. ‘Anyone home?’
There was. A moist, pinkish-brown nose emerged, followed by two huge brown eyes. The baby wallaby checked the intruder out, cast a doubtful glance across at Jessie as much as to say, ‘What are you doing letting us be disturbed when it’s not dinner time?’ and squirmed back down into his cocoon of wool.
‘For heaven’s sake…’ Niall Mountmarche’s normally grim face was transformed. He straightened and stared round the room. ‘Four pouches. Are they all…’
‘Only two are in use,’ Jessie told him. ‘I’m…I’m not taking new orphans at the moment.’
‘Not taking…’ Niall frowned. ‘You mean these aren’t pets?’
Jessie shook her head. ‘They’re wild creatures found orphaned or injured. The islanders know I care for them so they bring them to me. But I can’t cope with any more than two babies without help.’
‘And you’re without help?’
Jessie shrugged. ‘I do have a little,’ she admitted. ‘One of the nurses’ daughters comes in for emergencies. Lucy plans to be a vet and I’ve taught her to prepare and give formula. Lucy fed these two this morning while I searched for Harry. But I was lucky it was a school half-holiday. Lucy goes to school and doesn’t do night feeds and two-hourly feeds get a bit much when you’re by yourself.’
‘But you haven’t always been by yourself?’
Niall Mountmarche was prowling the room, fingering equipment and formula bags as though fascinated. He threw the question at her from the other side of the room.
‘My cousin and his wife are the normal island doctors and when they’re here they live on the other side of the hospital,’ Jessie told him. She was still absently stroking Harry but Harry was beyond feeling. Safe and warm, he was sleeping the sleep of the angels. ‘They help-but without them it’s difficult. For the next six months…’
‘Oh, yes.’ Niall nodded. ‘For the next six months you have the horrid Lionel Hurd who doesn’t like animals. I would have thought you would have written that into the job description.’
‘We didn’t have a choice,’ Jessie said tightly. ‘It was Lionel or nothing. And I guess he’s better than nothing.’
‘But you’re not sure.’
Jessie shook her head. ‘Sometimes I’m not,’ she admitted, thinking of the last time that she’d had words with Lionel. The man gave her the creeps.
She pushed the thought away and crossed to the sink to wash her hands. It was impossible to think of Lionel when Niall Mountmarche was in her kitchen. Impossible to find two such different men…
The feel of Niall Mountmarche in her home was sending strange sensations through Jess-sensations that she wasn’t at all sure she should be encouraging. He stood looking at the domestic chaos around him and Jessie felt the weight of the past six months shift focus-as though here was someone to share her burden.
Who cared like she did…
Ridiculous. This was the Ogre of Barega she was thinking of-not some knight in shining armour charging into her life, stethoscope flying, to take over the medical cares of the island.
‘Will you come and see Frank before you go back to Paige?’ Jess asked for the second time and was aware that her words sounded abrupt. She couldn’t help it. She was suddenly badly unsettled.
Niall nodded. He glanced at his watch again.
‘I have five minutes,’ he told her. ‘Five minutes more of being a doctor before 1 transform again. Lead on, Dr Harvey. Whither thou goest, I will follow.’
Odd. There was a tone in his voice that suggested that he was only half joking.
Jess led the way through to the hospital side of the building with a light heart. She’d left Frank Reid desperate this morning. The elderly farmer had been beside himself when he knew that Harry had disappeared, furious with the girl who’d been caring for Harry for being afraid to tell him sooner that the dog was missing and furious with himself for not being well enough to go home.
‘Danged leg,’ he’d sworn, and thrown in a few more expletives besides. ‘Get me a wheelchair, Jess, and I’ll look for him myself.’
Only Jessie’s absolute assurance that she’d search as thoroughly as Frank himself would had made him lie back on his pillows again and his face when Jess had left was of total misery. He knew what the dog’s absence of almost a week most probably meant.
But now…Now the news that Jess could give the old man was a lot better than she could have expected. She pushed the ward door open with a smile and stopped in dismay.
Frank was in no condition to receive visitors.
The old man was vomiting. He’d been vomiting for a while, Jess could see, as he was past the stage where he was able to sit and hold the kidney basin for himself. He was dry-retching, heaving uselessly as the nurse watched helplessly beside him.
Jess stared down in dismay.
This was no normal gastric upset. Frank’s eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. His skin was parchment dry and the hand clutching the coverlet was gripping convulsively.
‘What’s happening, Sarah?’ Jess asked quickly, moving across to Frank’s side. Frank was so far gone that he
