The Doctor’s Proposal

‘With a wife and daughter. Or daughters.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He said he had to get home to his girls.’

‘Darn.’ Susie finished her tea and snuggled further under the covers. Her toss out of the wheelchair seemed to have done her little harm, Kirsty thought. She looked brighter than she’d been for months. She looked interested. ‘Angus is nice?’

‘Angus seems lovely.’

‘I thought he must be. Rory told me he was special. It was only Kenneth being so awful that stopped him bringing me over to meet him.’

‘Why is Kenneth so awful?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Susie said wearily. ‘Rory seemed to think he’s mentally unstable. He made Rory’s childhood miserable. Kenneth came over to America just before Rory died. He came to the front door one night and he was just…weird. Rory didn’t let him stay. He took him out to dinner but he came home so shaken… I thought then that Rory would never want to return to Australia. The only good thing about Australia as far as I could see was Rory’s Uncle Angus and his Auntie Deirdre. Do you suppose Angus really is an earl? Why do you think Rory didn’t tell me?’

‘I have no idea,’ Kirsty told her. ‘Can I take your blood pressure again before you go to sleep?’

‘If you must. But it’ll be down.’

It was, too, and by the time she’d checked it, Susie’s eyes were already closing.

‘Do you think we might stay here for a while?’ she asked sleepily.

Kirsty thought, Why not? There was the little matter of her medical career back home, but…well, maybe she had a medical career right here.

She certainly had two patients, both of whom needed her.

As long they both shall live, she told herself fiercely. Please.

Kirsty found herself a bed in a bedroom that was just as sumptuous as Susie’s. She set her alarm and checked her patients twice during the night, but both were sound asleep and the next morning she woke to find they’d decided to live a little longer. She made them tea and toast, bullied them into eating it, gave Angus more of the morphine Jake had left her, and then, feeling like someone caught between sleep and waking-not sure what was real and what was a dream-she showered in a bathroom that had not only a chandelier hanging from the ceiling but also had a vast oval portrait of Queen Victoria gazing sternly down on her nakedness.

She was just drying her toes and trying her hardest to ignore Her Majesty’s displeasure when the doorbell rang. It was eight in the morning. Too early for casual visitors. It rang again two seconds later and she thought either Angus would try to go downstairs and open the door or Susie would go.

She had no choice. She wrapped her towel around her and ran.

Jake was at the door. And Boris.

‘I thought you had a key,’ she said, glowering, and he had the temerity to grin.

‘Keys aren’t half so much fun.’

She tried to slam the door but he shoved his foot through and walked in without so much as a by your leave.

‘I could have used my key but I wasn’t sure what sort of deshabille I might find you in.’

‘Yeah, I was swanning round naked.’

‘Were you?’ he asked with interest, and she flushed crimson.

‘What do you think?’ Then, as Boris nosed her towel, she backed sharply away. ‘Can you keep your mutt back? This towel is precarious, to say the least.’

‘Don’t mind Boris,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You needn’t think his intentions are dishonourable.’

‘What is he?’ she asked, momentarily distracted. He really was the strangest-looking mutt. Part bloodhound, part greyhound, part…ET? Huge droopy ears, a whippet-thin body and sad, protruding eyes that took over most of his weird-looking face.

‘He’s one of a kind,’ Jake said, and Boris woofed in agreement, so enticingly she let go of one edge of the towel to scratch his ear. Very quickly she decided that wasn’t a good idea. Both males were watching her towel- apparently with hope.

‘You had him bred to your requirements?’ she asked, and Jake gave a rueful and maybe even a resigned smile as she regained firm hold on her dignity.

‘He’s not my dog.’

‘Sure he’s not.’ The dog was leaning against his leg, adoration oozing from every pore.

‘Well, not for long,’ he explained. ‘Boris belonged to one of my patients. Miss Pritchard was the local schoolteacher, long retired by the time I knew her. She introduced me to Boris. I scratched his ear, just like you just did, and when she died six months ago that gesture had cost me a mention in her will. I told the public trustee there was a clause in the statutes saying doctors can’t inherit from their patients, but the public trustee seemed to think Boris was an exception. No one would fight me for Boris.’

‘You were fond of Miss Pritchard, as well as the dog,’ Kirsty said slowly, working things out for herself, and now it was Jake’s turn to look discomfited.

‘Maybe. How are our patients?’

But the idea of his sort of country practice had her fascinated and she wasn’t finished with questioning yet. Even dressed only in a towel. She might never get this chance again and she intended to use it.

‘Were you born here?’

‘No.’

‘How long have you been practising here?’

‘Four years?’

‘Only four? Why on earth did you come?’

‘I like it,’ he said defensively.

‘Sorry. Only asking.’ She smiled down at Boris, who was sniffing her painted toenails with interest. ‘How did your wife react when you turned up one day with Boris in tow?’ she asked, and that was the end of the laughter. His smile died so fast she might well have imagined it.

‘I need to get on,’ he told her, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll see Angus now. Would your sister like to see me as well?’

‘I’d like you to see her,’ she said frankly, abandoning Jake’s past in the face of current medical need. ‘To be honest…’ She hesitated.

‘To be honest, what?’

‘When I came to Australia I thought I could look after her. But medically it’s been a disaster. To be a loving sister and yet be a doctor as well…’

‘You can’t do the grumpy bits,’ he said, softening slightly.

This was such a weirdly intimate setting. They were standing in the great hall, two Made-In-Japan suits of armour flanking the stairway behind them, Boris wagging his tail between them as if urging his master to hurry up- and Kirsty was standing in her bare feet with a two-foot width of towelling keeping her only just decent. Of course it was intimate. But Jake was now hardly noticing, Kirsty thought.

She should be grateful. She was grateful. But…

But what?

But nothing, she told herself crossly. Move on.

‘I do the grumpy bits,’ she said, and suddenly her voice was doing weird things, like she was having trouble finding a normal doctor-to-doctor tone. Well, what did she expect when talking to a colleague dressed like this? ‘I tell her not eating will harm the baby. I tell her she has to be more optimistic, for the baby’s sake if not her own.’

‘Doesn’t work, huh?’

‘No,’ she said frankly. ‘And how can I blame her? I remember how lovely Rory was and I want to weep myself. How much worse must it be for Susie?’

‘So no professional detachment.’

‘None at all,’ she said ruefully. ‘Not one little bit. That’s why I’m really pleased to see you.’ She took a deep