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  In the afternoon the housekeeper who came in each weekday would meet them from the bus and would stay with them until she, Henrietta, had finished at the surgery. It had all been arranged by their mother and she had yet to meet the lady who kept the house in order under her sister’s watchful eye.

  When she arrived at the surgery on the main street of the village, John Lomas was already there and looking tense. ‘I really do hate having to do this, Dr Mason,’ he said aplogetically, ‘but I am going to have to leave you in charge. My father has just phoned to say that my mother is gravely ill. Her condition has worsened overnight and I must go to her.’

  He pointed to one of the receptionists smiling at her from behind the counter. ‘Judy will show you the ropes and I’ve instructed all staff to give you every assistance. Matthew Cazalet is on his way home, but he hasn’t shown up so far. So do you think you’ll be all right taking the surgery this morning. I’m afraid that the waiting room is rather full.’

  ‘It would seem that I have no choice,’ Henrietta said wryly. ‘I’d better gather my wits and get organised before it starts. I’m so sorry to hear about your mother. I lost mine some time ago and can imagine what you are going through. I do hope that you’ll find her improved.’

  He flashed her a grateful smile and was gone, leaving her to think that it was a bit much, the senior partner not being there. It was all very well doing his bit overseas, but this fellow Cazalet had a duty to his patients here and to herself.

  ‘Does it matter which room I use?’ she asked Judy.

  ‘No. I don’t suppose so,’ was the reply. ‘Both doctors are absent.’ Judy gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘You’re in charge.’

  Henrietta swallowed hard and settled herself behind the desk in the nearest of the two consulting rooms.

  ‘I’ll go and get the patient’s notes,’ Judy said, ‘and then you’ll be ready.’

  ‘Yes, do that, but before you go, if I need to send a patient to see one of the practice nurses how many are on duty?’

  ‘Two. Both poised for action,’ Judy assured her.

  ‘I’m glad that somebody is,’ Henrietta told her with a wry smile.

  Matthew Cazalet was tired. He’d been at the site of the earthquake a month and it had been hard. Very hard. No sooner had the team he’d been working with treated one of the injured homeless than there had been hundreds more begging for help.

  He was back sooner than intended because of John’s family crisis. The last time they’d spoken the older man had still been holding the reins at the practice and had taken on another doctor to fill the gap that he was about to leave.

  Before he did anything and, heaven only knew, he was longing for a shower and some food, he was going to call in at the surgery to make sure that everything was under control. But he didn’t intend going in through the front door because he looked a sight.

  The dark thatch of his hair needed cutting. There were deep creases beneath eyes that were red-rimmed through lack of sleep, and he desperately needed a shave. The last thing he wanted was for the villagers to see him in that state, so it was the back door through which he intended making his entrance.

  He could hear raised voices in the reception area and recognised one of them as that of Gregory Hicks, a farmer who always caused friction when he attended the surgery. The other belonged to one of the receptionists. It was a heated argument that was taking place and he frowned. Where was John?

  The door of his consulting room was ajar and he halted in his tracks when he saw the woman sitting behind his desk. He was too jaded to be bothered with the niceties and asked abruptly, ‘So who might you be? Where’s John, and this Henry fellow that he’s taken into the practice? It’s bedlam out there.’

  Henrietta got slowly to her feet. This was the last straw, she thought wildly. If this was the prodigal doctor, he needed a lesson in manners…and hosing down!

  ‘It must have been a bad line when you were talking to your colleague,’ she said, trying to keep calm. ‘There is no Henry fellow. I am Henrietta Mason. It is my first day here and I’m having to cope on my own. Dr Lomas had to leave the moment I arrived as his mother has taken a turn for the worse.

  ‘I was told that you—I’m presuming that you are Matthew Cazalet, as you haven’t introduced yourself—were somewhere between here and Pakistan. A situation that has not made my introduction to rural medicine one of the highlights of my life. Regarding the racket that was going on in Reception, it seems to have quietened down. I was about to go and see what the problem was when you appeared.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s just that you were a surprise. I sneaked in the back way because I don’t want my patients to see me until I’ve recharged my batteries. But I had to stop off to make sure that all was in order here.’

  ‘And now you find that it’s not.’

  He didn’t reply to that. ‘I’ll be back the moment I’ve showered and changed my clothes, and then we’ll talk. I take it that you’ve managed to cope with morning surgery.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She wasn’t going to tell him that it had been a doddle compared to what she’d been used to, and if it hadn’t been for the row in the passage he would have arrived to find all in order, plus an empty waiting room. ‘I was just about to start doing the home visits in an area that I’m not at all familiar with, so your arrival is opportune, to say the least.’

  Henrietta hid a smile as she watched his jaw tighten. She could tell he was used to being in charge. So she wasn’t going to tell him that she’d done hundreds of home visits in strange places without batting an eyelid in her previous job. It went with urban living.

  ‘Don’t start them until I get back,’ he said tightly. ‘Unless there is anything urgent.’

  She nodded. ‘Whatever you say. I’ll be having a look through them while I’m waiting.’

  ‘Yes, do that,’ he said, still with no warmth in his voice. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Matthew had asked the taxi driver who’d brought him from the airport to wait outside the surgery and now, as he was driven to the house where he’d lived alone since losing Joanna, he was facing up to the fact that he wasn’t going to be throwing himself into bed once he’d showered. He’d been expecting to find John in control and Dr Henry Mason filling in, only to discover that John was gone and Henry was Henrietta.

  The leggy woman with the long brown hair had made it clear that she took a dim view of the way she’d found herself thrown in at the deep end and he understood her annoyance. She had arrived to find herself piggy in the ‘muddle’, he thought with grim humour. Once he was back in charge any chaos would level out and the practice would be what it had always been—an efficiently run centre of health care.

  When the taxi driver stopped outside his own house, a bleak-looking semi-detached built from local limestone, he thought, as he’d often done before, that it was time he stopped mourning Joanna. Nothing was going to bring her back.

  He’d known the moment he’d seen her lying at the foot of a steep drop below one of the peaks that she was gone from him without any farewells. She’d been out with the rambling club from the village and when a teenage lad had been showing off and fallen over the edge of the drop she’d reached down to pull him back up again off the bush that he’d landed on. But in his fear he’d grabbed at her to pull himself to safety, causing her to lose her balance, and she’d gone hurtling down onto rocks below.

  It had been three years ago and he’d proved wrong the saying that time healed all wounds. He still missed her terribly and every time he thought about all the plans for the future they’d had, plans that had included starting a family, it was like a knife turning in his heart.

  He smiled when he went into the tidy kitchen. There was a note on the table that read, ‘Did a big bake yesterday. Your freezer is full for when you come home. I’ve missed you, Matthew. Love, Aunt Kate.’

  Kate Crosby was his mother’s younger sister. She’d brought him up after his m
other had died when he’d been twelve and his father had remarried and gone to live abroad, and after he’d lost Joanna she’d stepped back into the role that had been hers during his early teens, until he’d gone to study medicine.

  She was a strong, sturdy woman, with boundless energy, some of which she spread around as daily housekeeper to the wealthiest family in the village.

  He didn’t know Pamela and Charles Wainwright very well as they didn’t belong to the practice, but he heard about them from Kate and once they’d invited him to a dinner party. It had been shortly after Joanna’s death and the last thing he’d wanted had been to be pitied or put on show as an eligible widower, so he had politely refused.

  As he put Kate’s note back on to the kitchen table he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror in the hall and gave a grim smile. It was a wonder that the indignant Henrietta hadn’t called for help when such an unsavoury looking character had appeared.

  In recent weeks there had been no time for smart haircuts and shaving, and, more importantly, little time for sleeping and eating. The needs of those he’d met had been endless. Yet in a strange sort of way he’d been happier out there than at any time since he’d lost his wife.

  He was back at the practice within the hour, scrubbed clean, shaved, dressed in clean clothes and munching on a huge barm cake filled with cheese and ham.

  Henrietta almost smiled when she saw him. Matthew Cazalet had looked exhausted when he’d appeared out of the blue, but it would seem that he was resilient enough when he had to be.

  Was he married? she wondered. Had he got a caring wife who’d made him the sandwich and had then had to sit back and watch him dash off again the moment he’d arrived home?

  But there was work to be done and the private life of the man who’d perched himself on the corner of the desk while he wolfed down the sandwich was of no interest to her whatsoever.

  ‘One of the home visits was urgent,’ she told him. ‘So I went out on it while I was waiting.’

  Dark brows were lifting. She was a cool customer, this one.

  ‘Really? Who was it you went to see?’

  ‘An old fellow in a remote cottage set amongst fields. There were dead foxes hanging from his garden wall.’

  ‘That would be Jack Yardley,’ he said immediately. ‘He’s obsessed with pest control. And so what ails him? He’s a tough old rascal. We don’t often see him down here.’

  She smiled and he thought that her eyes were her best feature. They were dark hazel with long lashes and there was a directness in her glance that might have appealed to him if he hadn’t been on the receiving end of her disenchantment.

  ‘That has changed, I’m afraid. He’s in with the nurse now. Jack has got a badly infected hand. Gashed it on some barbed wire and hasn’t been looking after it as he should. I’ve put him on a course of antibiotics and am hoping that those and the nurse’s attentions might prevent it going septic.’

  Matthew nodded. ‘That sounds fine. He’s a strange old guy. Almost a hermit.’ He was seating himself in the chair behind his desk, which she had tactfully left vacant.

  ‘So tell me about yourself. Where were you working previously, and are you living locally?’

  ‘I’ve been working as a locum at a large practice in the city centre.’

  ‘What made you leave?’

  ‘My sister, who lives in the village, asked me to look after her children for a few months while she went with her husband on a diplomatic posting. He’s a civil servant in the Foreign Office.’

  He was observing her incredulously. ‘Are you telling me that you are related to the Wainwrights?’

  ‘Yes. Pamela is my older sister.’

  ‘I see,’ he said slowly. ‘And you had to change jobs to do what she asked?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t mind. I’ve always envied Pam and her husband living in a place like this, and I’m very fond of Mollie and Keiran. Looking after them will be a pleasure. It’s the rest of it I’m not sure about.’

  ‘I take it that you are referring to this practice. I intend to reassure you about that. I didn’t go out to Pakistan as a tourist, you know, and while I was there didn’t spend the time twiddling my thumbs. I saw a great need and tried to do my bit, leaving the practice in John’s capable hands.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She nodded. ‘It must have been a nightmare out there.’

  ‘It still is, but at least I’ve done a little to help, and I’m sorry if I was ratty when I arrived. The last thing I expected was to find a stranger in charge, and Hicks throwing his weight about didn’t help. Whatever it was, he soon went, so they must have sorted him out in Reception. I wouldn’t have liked you to have that thrown at you as well on your first day.’

  Then he gave her a quizzical smile, and Henrietta found herself smiling back. ‘So, are we going to call a truce?’

  ‘I don’t have much choice, do I? I have to earn a living.’

  She could have enlightened him further but didn’t see why she should. Her personal life had nothing to do with this dark-haired doctor with the tired eyes and decisive manner. She was still feeling low after the breakdown of her affair with Miles and was in no mood to be confiding her affairs to anyone, least of all a stranger.

  ‘Right, shall we start on the home visits?’ he was saying. ‘We’ll do them together for a couple of days until you know the area better.’

  Henrietta nodded. She was feeling less fraught now that some sort of order was being maintained, and wished that she hadn’t been so snappy when they’d first met.

  The man observing her from behind his desk may have not been Mr Charm himself, but going to Pakistan showed that he was a doctor through and through. And at that time he hadn’t expected that the man he’d left in charge of the practice would have had to leave in such a hurry.

  As they drove along the main street of the village towards their first call, Matthew was thinking that the woman beside him didn’t fit in with the wealthy Wainwrights. Pamela was well meaning but patronising, and Charles went about with the smug expression of a man of importance.

  He hadn’t told Henrietta that his Aunt Kate was their housekeeper. He didn’t know why, unless it was because he wished she wasn’t. But Kate liked looking after the immaculate White House and if that was what gave her a buzz, it wasn’t for him to interfere.

  The woman sitting beside him would find out soon enough that he and Kate were related and probably be just as surprised as he’d been to know that she was Pamela Wainright’s sister.

  When he stopped the car in front of a wooden building on a large plot of land across the way from a small country railway station, Henrietta looked around her questioningly.

  ‘This place used to be the cattle market in years gone by,’ he explained ‘but now the building is a café run by a young couple who have tried to keep the atmosphere, which you’ll see when we go inside. They sold their house to buy it and have put every penny they possess into it. The result is that they’re having to live in a caravan at the back of the premises. So let’s go and see how Jackie Marsland is doing.’

  When they went into the café Henrietta understood what he’d meant about keeping the atmosphere. The inside was divided up into alcoves similar to cattle stalls and there was clean straw on the floor. On the counter there were small milk churns full of home-made cookies and an array of wholesome-looking sandwiches.

  Every table was occupied and when the young fellow behind the counter saw them he said, ‘Dr Cazalet, Jackie is in the caravan. She’s got severe stomach pains.’

  ‘Come in,’ a voice called weakly when Matthew knocked on the door. As the two doctors went inside Henrietta saw a woman of a similar age to herself lying on one of the bunk beds.

  ‘So how long have you had stomach pains, Jackie?’ Matthew asked as he bent over her.

  ‘Since I got up this morning,’ she told him.

  ‘Any diarrhoea?’

  ‘No. It’s not like a gastric upset, Doctor. I’m twelve weeks pre
gnant and am scared that I might be losing the baby.’

  ‘Are you bleeding?’ he asked gravely.

  ‘Yes, I am a bit.’

  The young woman on the bed was looking at Henrietta. ‘Who’s this?’ she asked, drawing her legs up as another stab of pain came.

  ‘Dr Henrietta Mason,’ he informed her. ‘Would you like her to examine you?’

  ‘I’m not bothered,’ Jackie said. Tears threatened. ‘I feel so guilty. We didn’t want a family just yet. We simply can’t afford it, so instead of being happy about my pregnancy we’ve been fed up, feeling that we have enough responsibility at present without more of it coming our way. But now that I might be going to have a miscarriage I’m ashamed of what I’ve been thinking.’

  When he’d examined her Matthew said, ‘OK, Jackie, we’ll get you admitted to hospital and they’ll take it from there.’ His tone was gentle. ‘And, please, try not to blame yourself. You won’t be the only woman who’s felt that way, so don’t feel guilty about not being as happy about it as you might have been under other circumstances.’

  He turned to Henrietta. ‘Would you mind going to the café to tell Jackie’s husband that we are having her admitted to hospital and then phoning for an ambulance?’

  ‘Of course.’ Henrietta smiled reassuringly at Jackie and headed for the café, impressed with Matthew’s gentle handling of the distressed patient. Here was a doctor clearly devoted to the people in his care and, despite their rocky start earlier this morning in the surgery, it gave her hope for a good working relationship if nothing else.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DRIVING around the village and through the nearby countryside, Matthew could smell Henrietta’s perfume in the warmth of the car and it was achingly familiar, so much so that he clenched his teeth in anguish.

  It was the same one that Joanna had worn. He was sure of it, had smelt it often enough, and he wondered why this woman doctor, who was nothing out of the ordinary except for her eyes, was wearing an expensive perfume while on duty. It didn’t go with the image.