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‘I must go,’ he said, unaware that she was surmising about his love life. ‘I have a few visits to make and am already late after the callout to Mrs Tate.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Elaine said, and to Laurel’s horror she went on, ‘Would you like to come over for dinner one evening so that I may show my appreciation for the way you looked after my niece yesterday?’
Ugh! Laurel thought, taken aback at the suggestion and its implications. It made her appear to be some sort of helpless, clinging vine, just as she’d been when they’d met at the station and afterwards. But she wasn’t usually like that. It was just unfortunate that David Trelawney had been an observer of her moments of weakness.
If she was taken aback, so was he, she thought, seeing his surprise, but he soon recovered his poise and said politely, ‘Er…yes…I’d love to.’ He glanced warily in her direction. ‘But please don’t feel that you owe me anything for yesterday. It was just a matter of common politeness.’
As Elaine nodded understandingly Laurel thought wistfully that it would be, wouldn’t it? The time was gone when she attracted admiring looks, or handsome men asked her out to dinner.
‘When would you like to come?’ Elaine was asking.
He gave a wry grimace. ‘I’m free most nights. I spend most of my time house hunting or dreaming of renovating an old house I’ve seen.’
‘And where would that be?’ she questioned curiously, while Laurel stood by silently once more.
‘It’s a derelict building in one of the fields beside Willow Lake.’
‘Ah! I know the one. It’s called Water Meetings House. Why that one, though, when there are lots of nice properties in the area? It would need huge restoration work to make it habitable again. It’s been like that for years.’
‘Mmm, I know, but I do have my reasons,’ he said, and without questioning him further Elaine returned to the subject of dinner.
‘So how about one night next week?’ she suggested. ‘Say Friday when there is no surgery the following day?’
‘Yes, fine,’ he replied. ‘What time?’
‘Sevenish, if that’s all right.’
He nodded and with a wave of the hand drove off.
As his car disappeared from view Laurel groaned openly and Elaine said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. That it is unkind of me to invite David to dinner when you want to keep a low profile, but Laurel, I’m not match-making. He is a stranger in the village, just as you are, and we in Willowmere are renowned for our hospitality.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said contritely as the moment of gloom disappeared. ‘The last thing I want is to become a me, me, me sort of person. Self-pity is a form of selfishness.’
‘It can be,’ Elaine agreed gently, ‘but not in your case. And now let’s take you home and put you to bed for a couple of hours and I guarantee that as each day passes you are going to feel more ready to face the world, and whatever you think of Willowmere you couldn’t be recuperating in a better place.’
‘You might be right,’ Laurel said with spirits still lifting as she thought that it was more likely to be the village’s inhabitants than its peace and fresh air that were going to help her take a hold on life again.
Yet as she looked out of her bedroom window before going to bed that night and saw a golden sun setting on the skyline, with the lake glinting in the distance amongst the drooping willows that had given it its name, it didn’t all feel quite so strange as it had the night before.
Within minutes of placing her head on the pillows she slept and for once there were no smoke and flames turning her dreams into nightmares.
Beth called at Glenside Lodge for a chat in her lunch hour the following day and as the three of them relaxed over coffee she said, ‘James must be feeling that it is one departure after another at the surgery. First it was Anna and Glenn going to work in Africa. Then Georgina and Ben had a blissful reunion, which resulted in them remarrying and her giving birth to Arran in the spring, so she is going to be missing for quite some time too, hence David’s most welcome appearance, and now I’m about to try a new slant on village shopping. You will be most welcome in the practice, Laurel, if you can sort something out with James, but are you happy that it might only be temporary?’
‘Yes, it would suit me fine,’ she replied. ‘I’m rather at a crossroads in my life at the moment, so it would give me a short breathing space before I make up my mind what I want to do and where I’m heading.’
Elaine was nodding in silent agreement. Laurel was improving physically, but it was the mental scars that worried her. Her niece had been a bright and trendy twenty-five-year-old when it had happened, totally dedicated to the career she’d chosen and enjoying life in the big city when she hadn’t been working, but now all of that had gone.
Her interest in the village surgery had been lukewarm when she’d taken Laurel there, as had been her interest in life in general, but she wasn’t going to sit by and let her stay in the doldrums. Her beautiful girl still had a lot to offer to those needing health care and to the man who would one day love her for who she was.
Willowmere in summer was a bright haven of colour. The new life that had come bursting through in fields and gardens in the spring was now established in abundant growth. Trees along the riverside, some of them hundreds of years old, were in full leaf, providing a background of fresh greenery against the flimsy craft of the canoe club as they sailed along on practice days, and bird life of every kind imaginable was to be found in cottage gardens and in the park that ran parallel with the river.
The charm of the village attracted walkers and visitors from miles around and as the days passed Laurel was aware that the Hollyhocks Tea Rooms were busy all the time with those seeking appetising meals to complement a summer day, and The Pheasant, its only pub, did much trade with others who had less discerning tastes but could guarantee a thirst.
Often it wasn’t until late in the evening that the quiet that she’d been so dubious about descended. It was on one of those occasions that she went for a stroll in the gathering dusk beside the lake that was visible when she looked through her bedroom window.
Elaine had gone to bed and she’d been about to do the same when the urge to go out into the gloaming had overtaken her. The sunset had been magnificent and now it was still and sultry with a yellow moon above.
She’d been wearing a sundress in the house and instead of changing into something less revealing threw a light cardigan across her bare shoulders and sallied forth, minus the gloves.
There were still a few people about loath to be inside on such a night, but they thinned out as she drew nearer to the lake, and by the time she was only a field away she was alone, and looming up in front of her in the moonlight were the ruins of a big stone house. Could this be the place that David Trelawney had mentioned? she wondered. If so, what a mess it was in, yet what a position, just a hundred feet or so from Willow Lake, and on the other side of the house, not far away, the place where the two rivers that flowed through the village met. There was a tattered sign on the fencing that separated the field from the road and as she peered at it she saw that it said appropriately ‘Water Meetings House.’ She shook her head in disbelief. Was the man insane? It would take forever to restore this place.
‘Hello, there,’ a voice said from behind her.
She turned slowly and he was there, the village doctor who was considering rebuilding the shell of what must have once been a gracious home.
‘Hi,’ she said lightly, pulling the cardigan tightly around her shoulders. ‘I came out for a stroll and stumbled upon this derelict house. It’s the one that you mentioned the other day, isn’t it?’
He was smiling. She could see his teeth gleaming whitely in the moon’s light. ‘Yes, it is. I expect you think I’m crazy to be considering restoring it.’
‘Yes, I do as a matter of fact,’ was the reply. ‘Yet I can see why. It’s in a fantastic position and so aptly named.’
She was a dedicated city dweller, but there was something about the moment with the two of them wrapped around by the silent night and the remains of the limestone house shining palely in the moonlight that was firing her imagination, and she thought whimsically that it was as if there were forces abroad that were out to entrance her, when she didn’t want to be entranced.
As he observed her bemused expression David was thinking along similar lines. It was weird that Laurel of all people should be so much on his wavelength about this place and the ruins of his mother’s old home. Meeting up with her out there in the moonlight was just as odd as on the other times they’d met.
It had come at the end of a very strange day. In the early afternoon he’d had a phone call from one of the Texan wives who’d been in Caroline’s group when he’d first met her in London.
He’d been surprised to hear from her and even more so when he’d heard what she had to say. She’d rung to tell him that Caroline had married the senator that she’d been seeing at the time they’d ended their relationship.
‘My Jerome said we should let you know,’ she’d said gently in a soft Texan drawl, ‘so that if you hear it from someone else it won’t be such a shock.’
He’d thanked her and after chatting briefly had finished the call with no feelings of regret. There’d been just the relief of knowing that the big mistake he’d almost made had reached its final conclusion, and it would be a long time before he made such an error of judgement again.
He’d picked up the phone again and rung his father, and when he’d told him about the call from America and that it was definitely over with his ex-fiancée Jonas had exclaimed, ‘Praise be! But I thought it already was?’
‘Yes, it was, but now there is closure, Dad,’ he said calmly.
‘And are you sure you’re all right with that?’
‘Spot on,’ he replied. ‘It would never have worked. We had a different set of values.’
‘One day you’ll meet the right woman and when it happens you will know beyond any doubt,’ Jonas said. ‘When I met your mother I knew she was the only one for me, and it will be the same for you.’
‘If you say so,’ he agreed dubiously, with the old proverb about once bitten, twice shy in mind.
With the feeling of contentment still there he went to the local estate agent’s while out on his calls and ended his uncertainties about the house by the lake by making an offer for it and the land it stood on.
In the summer twilight he’d gone to gaze upon what he hoped would soon be his and found that the strange day was not yet over. He’d found Laurel Maddox there, standing silent and alone in front of what had been his mother’s childhood home.
CHAPTER THREE
HER eyes looked huge in the light of the moon. She was still clutching her cardigan tightly around her, and once again he wondered what it was with this strange newcomer to the village.
She was different from any woman he’d ever met. There was a sort of touch-me-not aura about her and yet he sensed hurt and vulnerability there too.
‘I’ll walk you home,’ he suggested. ‘We don’t get much crime around here, but even so it isn’t a good idea to be out on your own in the dark.’ She didn’t reply, but as he began to move in that direction she fell into step beside him.
As they walked along the road that separated the house from the lake she tripped over a loose stone and his arm came out to steady her. He felt her flinch at his touch and let his hold fall away as soon as she’d regained her balance.
She was happy enough when she was with Elaine, he thought, and no one at the surgery had had any adverse comments to make about her after she’d been introduced to them, so maybe it was him that she didn’t care for.
Two in one day, he thought wryly. Caroline marrying her rich lover and Laurel behaving as if he’d got the plague, yet it didn’t prevent his concern about her increasing.
When they reached Glenside Lodge and stopped at the gate he said, ‘Take care, Laurel. If we don’t meet before, I will see you on Friday.’ Leaving her to go quietly up the stairs without disturbing Elaine, he strode off towards the village green and the cottage he was renting.
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