The Nurse's Child Read online

  THE NURSE'S CHILD

  Abigail Gordon

  A family in the making?

  GP Richard Haslett isn’t looking for a wife and has promised his adopted daughter never to replace her mother, However, he finds himself drawn to beautiful Freya Farnham, the new Resident Nurse at Amelia’s school.

  When Richard discovers that Freya is Amelia’s real mother, he panics. He has to protect his daughter. Only now Richard has a dilemma -- some time soon he is going to have to tell Freya the truth -- but when he does he could lose the woman he loves…

  CHAPTER ONE

  The interview in front of the school's board of governors was at nine o'clock in the morning so Freya had booked herself in for bed and breakfast at a local hostelry and had driven down from London the night before.

  The hotel was a bright, chintzy place in a Cotswolds village not far from the famous girls' boarding school where she was seeking employment, and once she'd deposited her belongings in a first-floor bedroom she went down to the dining room to eat.

  It was full and she was asked if she would mind waiting until there was a free table.

  'Yes, of course,' she agreed, and pointed herself towards the bar.

  With a glass of white wine in front of her, she sat in a vacant seat and prepared to wait, still with the feeling of unreality that had been there ever since Poppy had come bursting into her Kensington apartment to proclaim that she had some mind-bending news to impart.

  'What is it?' Freya had asked warily, knowing that her friend's enthusiasms made her prone to exaggeration.

  'You knew that we were driving down to the Midlands today to take Alice to her new school, didn't you?' she'd asked.

  'Er...yes.'

  'Well, when we got there all parents and pupils were asked to assemble in the great hall to hear a few words from the headmistress...and there was a child there who looked like you. Same hair colour, eyes, features, same scowl—it was incredible.'

  Freya had groaned.

  'Oh, no, Poppy,' she'd said wearily. 'Don't start me on that track again. I just can't take any more. And I don't scowl!'

  'She was the right age,' Poppy had insisted. 'One of the new intake of eleven-year-olds like Alice.'

  Freya could feel her heartbeat quickening but she chose to ignore it. She'd made investigations with the authorities and drawn a blank, and she'd stood outside more school gates peering at childish faces than she'd had hot dinners. Of course, it never came to anything.

  She knew that Poppy meant well, but she was weary. The searching was too exhausting. It had gone on for too long and it hurt too much.

  Yet always at the back of her mind when this sort of thing happened was the thought that the one lead she didn't follow up might be the one that would take her to the child who'd been taken away from her.

  'And what is more,' Poppy said with undiminishing enthusiasm, 'you could be on the inside of Marchmont School if you wanted. If I'm wrong about the girl with the cornflower hair and eyes like deep blue pansies, the answer to one of your other problems could be found there.'

  Freya sighed.

  'I'm afraid you've lost me. What are you on about, Poppy?'

  'They're advertising for a resident nurse-type person to attend to the medical needs of the boarders. You would fit the bill admirably. A qualified staff nurse looking for something less demanding than hospital work and under doctor's orders to take more care of yourself. Just think, you'd be breathing the clear country air instead of London smog.'

  'Yes, sure,' she agreed lethargically, and waited for her friend to depart and leave her in peace, but Poppy had one last argument to put forward.

  'You could keep an eye on my Alice for me, too. I'm going to miss her like crazy.'

  'That's your own fault,' Freya told her. 'Yours and Miles's. How often have I told you that boarding school is hell? But tell me about the girl,' she said tonelessly, and when Poppy had finished describing her remarked that there must be hundreds of young girls who looked like that and if they'd been in an old Bette Davis movie her child would have had something more definite to identify her by than eyes and hair, like an unusual birthmark or something similar.

  Yet, unable to resist the bait that Poppy had dangled in front of her, she took note of what she'd said and remembered what Arthur Thomas, an old friend of her father's and her GP, had said the last time she'd had a chest infection.

  'You're young and strong, but you're never ever going to be in brilliant health,' he'd told her. 'The time you spent living rough when you were younger did you no good whatsoever. It's left you with a weak chest. You need to get away from all this pollution and at the same time find an easier occupation than hospital nursing.'

  As she'd eyed him in dismay he'd gone on relentlessly, 'Do you have to work? I believe your father left you well provided for.'

  'He did,' she'd told him flatly. 'But nursing means everything to me. And in any case money doesn't come into it. I need to work...to be occupied.'

  She could have gone on to say that having no employment would leave her with too much time to think, which would be all very well if the thoughts were nice ones, but not when regret was the all-consuming emotion.

  But she had taken heed of his advice up to a point and had temporarily given up her job as a staff nurse on the children's ward in a big London hospital.

  When Poppy burst in on her she was at the point of trying to decide where to go from there, and in a crazy sort of way she'd felt that providence might be working somewhere in the background of her life.

  The people nearest to her in the bar were a noisy lot, Freya thought as she looked idly around her. There were five of them, two women and three men, obviously out for the evening. There was a lot of teasing going on and much laughter, and in anything but that-kind of mood herself she eyed them sourly.

  One of the men had met her glance a couple of times and there'd been mild curiosity in his appraisal, though she couldn't think why.

  Maybe it was because everyone there seemed to know each other, with the exception of herself, she thought. Or perhaps he wasn't as tuned into the merriment as those he was with. She didn't know and she didn't care.

  Her thoughts were on tomorrow. The interview...and the young girl that Poppy in her sweet concern wanted to be the child that Freya had allowed to be taken from her eleven yeas ago because she'd been too hurt and bewildered to think straight.

  After she'd given in to her father's demands and signed the adoption papers for the baby that she'd given birth to when she'd been sixteen years old, she'd watched Social Services take the child into their care and had then disappeared, escaping from the two men who had turned her adolescence into a nightmare of pain and humiliation—her father and her child's father.

  During the months of her pregnancy she'd had to accept that the man who was the father of her child had seen her only as sweet temptation and, desperate to escape the consequences of his actions, he'd taken his wife and family to Australia to start a new life. Leaving behind the adoring sixteen-year-old who'd been one of his pupils at the boarding school where she'd been housed while her one remaining parent had been on one of his extended visits abroad.

  When she'd found that her history tutor had made her pregnant, Freya had quixotically refused to name the father of her child, believing in her innocence that he would have laid claim to it himself if he'd really loved her...but he hadn't. He'd turned his back on her, leaving all her youthful emotions in shreds.

  She was known at school as something of a wild child, and once the pregnancy became known the headmistress sent for her father.

  He was furious at having to deal with what he described as his daughter's stupidity and took her out of school until after the birth, taking no responsib
ility for his lack of parental care during her adolescent years.

  'You'd better get used to the idea of adoption,' he told her grimly during the long weeks of waiting. 'Because that's how it's going to be. You're too young and I'm too busy to take on the responsibility of a baby.'

  Whenever she protested he told her bluntly. 'There's no point in arguing. That is how it's going to be.'

  There were countless times when she longed for her mother's presence but never more than then and, because she was feeling used and miserable all the time since her lover's departure, Freya finally accepted the punishment being meted out to her—that was the only way to describe what was happening to her.

  Now, at twenty-seven, older and wiser but still hurting, she was a wealthy young woman with a smart place of her own, who was quite unable to maintain any sort of stable relationship with the opposite sex.

  In a strange way the career she had chosen had filled the gaps in her life. Because there had been no one to care for her when she'd needed someone, there had arisen in her a desire to care for others and in nursing she'd found her niche.

  But even that was being put in jeopardy by her foolishness of long ago and she sometimes thought that it would be payback time for evermore.

  If her mother had been around at that time it would have been different. For one thing she wouldn't have been at boarding school. They'd have had a close and loving relationship and her mother wouldn't have wanted to be separated from her.

  But she'd died of a sudden heart attack the year before and Freya's father had sold their house in a select London suburb, bought an apartment and, once his daughter was off his hands, had continued to pursue the business interests that kept him abroad most of the year.

  Someone was calling across to the man at the next table and against her will Freya tuned in.

  'Where's young Amelia tonight?' a middle-aged female of the horsy type was asking.

  He smiled and for the first time she began to take note of crisp dark hair and deep hazel eyes in the sort of face that women usually registered at first glance.

  But she wasn't other women, was she? Freya thought bleakly. The man didn't exist who could make her heart beat faster. Not after the way she'd been treated by the only two men who'd ever mattered to her.

  She'd become a rich woman when her father had died, nevertheless she knew in her heart she'd have given it all up for a bit of tender loving care...

  'Amelia's staying at a school friend's for the night,' he said lightly. 'So I'm off the hook for once.'

  'I bet that makes a change, eh, Doc?' someone else said, and the man nodded, his smile diminishing.

  The woman behind the bar leaned across and tapped him on the shoulder. 'There's a phone call for you, Rick,' she said. 'You can take it in the back room if you like.'

  He nodded, got to his feet and disappeared, and as he went through a doorway at the end of the bar one of the men at his table began to choke on peanuts that he was stuffing into his mouth.

  He got to his feet in a panic and those he was with began slapping him on the back, but it didn't seem to be having any effect. As he clutched at his throat with eyes popping Freya pushed back her chair and moved towards him.

  Brushing to one side those who were hovering over him, she stepped behind him and told them to give him some space. Then, bringing her arms from round the back, she clasped them tightly beneath his rib cage, jerked hard and out came the offending nuts like bullets from a gun.

  As he sank down back onto his chair, with perspiration glistening on his brow and gasping for breath, a cheer went up and a voice said from close by, 'I couldn't have done better myself.'

  Freya eyed the man whom they'd called 'Doc' unsmilingly, nodded to acknowledge his comment and then went back to her seat, aware that if she'd been inconspicuous before, she wasn't now.

  There were several pairs of curious eyes upon her and she was relieved when a girl from the restaurant appeared at her elbow to say that her table was ready.

  But it wasn't turning out quite as she'd expected. The group of five from the bar were being shown to a table nearby, and before he seated himself the hazel-eyed one came across and said pleasantly, 'I'd like to buy you a drink. You saved my friend from what could have been a very nasty situation. He's quite shaken.'

  'A peanut in the wrong place can be lethal. But there's no need for you or your friend to feel indebted to me. I only did what was necessary... And now, if you'll excuse me...' she said.

  The waitress was hovering with the menu and, sensing the chill in her refusal, he said smoothly, 'All right, then, but thanks again.' Still not ready to leave her in peace, he added, 'Maybe when you've finished eating you'd like to join us.'

  She almost groaned out loud. Handsome though he was, she didn't know these people from Adam, and if they were intending making a night of it she wasn't.

  There was the interview in the morning. She wanted to be at her best when she faced the school governors. Though heaven knew why she was putting herself through such an ordeal at a boarding school of all places. It was the last kind of place she'd ever thought of revisiting.

  'Thank you,' she said crisply, 'but I have some important business first thing in the morning and I'd like to have an early night.'

  'Fine,' he said easily. 'I'll get back to my friends. Nice to have met you.'

  And I'm sure you don't mean that, Freya thought wryly as he left her side. She'd been barely polite. Would the day ever dawn when she could behave naturally with attractive men?

  When she got up to leave the dining room they all looked across and there were smiles from the men and one of the women. The other one, a flat-chested, smartly dressed woman with light brown streaked hair and of a similar age to herself, was eyeing her glacially and Freya thought that if she was popular with the rest of the party, she wasn't cutting any ice with that one.

  Perhaps she was the handsome man's wife, she thought as she climbed the stairs to her room. Yet Freya hoped that she wasn't. He didn't look as if he deserved anyone as stone-faced as that.

  As he walked home alone beneath a harvest moon Richard Haslett was thinking about the woman in the hotel. She was a stranger to the village, but that wasn't unusual. The beauty of the Cotswolds and the villages dotted amongst them was legendary. They attracted tourists from far and wide, who didn't usually arouse any undue interest amongst the locals, yet she had been different.

  To begin with, she'd saved Charlie from choking to death. The poor guy had been in a desperate state and she'd known exactly what to do. She'd been so calm and efficient that he wondered if she'd had medical training.

  The brown-haired stranger with the dark blue eyes had also been abrupt, and had made it clear that no one was going to scrape an acquaintance with her because of the incident.

  His smile had irony in it as he thought that she didn't need to worry as far as he was concerned. He knew that friends and colleagues thought he should look around for a new wife and a mother for Amelia. He'd seen other men who'd been left with young families do it with all speed and hadn't passed judgement, but it wasn't for him.

  It was barely six months since he'd lost Jenny and it was still agony every time he went into the empty house. Amelia was hurting, too, but her pain was showing in difficult behaviour. Sulky and rebellious, the poor child didn't know what ailed her. But at least tonight she would be happy, cuddling up to her friend and gossiping until all hours.

  As he undressed in the silent house Richard groaned. What was the matter with him? The only woman who'd invaded his consciousness since losing Jenny had been an abrupt stranger with eyes of deepest blue and a mouth that looked as if smiles graced it rarely.

  Minutes later he was asleep, his problems put to one side. It was something he'd learned to do over the years because, as senior partner in the village practice, every day was a busy one and now there was the added responsibility of caring for his motherless daughter.

  The evening he'd just spent with friends had been
the first time he'd been out socially since Jenny's death, and he'd only gone because Amelia was in safe hands. He'd laughed and joked with them because he knew they were concerned about him, but on his first free night he'd have enjoyed a quiet walk through the fields more.

  Driving along country lanes to the imposing building of golden Cotswold stone that was Marchmont Boarding School for Girls, Freya was resisting the impulse to turn back.

  What on earth was she thinking of? she'd been asking herself ever since awakening in the autumn dawn. Letting Poppy persuade her to get involved in the boarding school set-up of all things.

  If it had been anyone else's idea but Poppy's she might have thought that her dearest friend was dangling the everlasting carrot of a child that might be hers to manoeuvre her into a situation where she could keep an eye on Poppy's own beloved daughter, Alice.

  But it had been Poppy who had found her huddled in a shop doorway, shivering with the onset of pneumonia all those years ago and had taken her home to her own parents to be nursed back to health.

  They'd been the kind of family that she'd yearned for, and when her father had finally traced her and taken her back to school for the last few terms she'd been almost back to her normal self, or so he'd thought.

  Past experience had taught her that there had been no point in telling him that her arms had ached to hold her child, that her heart had been a leaden lump in her breast and that she was never going to rest until she at least knew what had happened to her baby. That had been when the quest had begun and it was still going on in spite of the futility of it.

  Her friendship with Poppy had endured. Next to nursing it had been the most important thing in her life ever since, and she knew just how much her friend wanted her to find her lost child. But this was crazy. Not the clutching at straws again but actually contemplating working in a boarding-school environment.

  There were a few day pupils arriving as she parked her car beside smooth green lawns and memories of the past told her that the rest of the two hundred girls of Marchmont School would have already breakfasted on the premises and at this time in the morning would be making their way to the great hall for morning assembly.