‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, you have to make a success of your interview. In my experience, these high-flying surgeons can be an arrogant lot, especially when dealing with a woman.’
‘Trust me, I know the type.’
‘That sounds like the voice of bitter experience.’
‘It is, believe me,’ Sheila said, noting too late the questioning look on Flora’s face. ‘That impertinent manner of yours, Miss Fraser,’ she continued quickly, in an excellent imitation of Lady Carmichael, ‘will likely get you into trouble. I suggest you remember your place in the order of things and stick firmly to it.’
Flora’s peal of laughter told her she had successfully averted any potential reference to Dr Mark Seaton. Good! It could stay that way.
Chapter Four
I
t had been a long drive, through countryside that had become less and less familiar with every passing mile. Which was a good thing, wasn’t it? This was, after all, a new chapter in his life. An exciting new challenge. An opportunity to deploy all the skills and techniques he had worked so hard to acquire. A chance to finally leave his past behind.
The last leg of the journey was along a ribbon-like road that seemed to be carved into the hillside. The sheer drop was breathtaking. Far below in the valley, a track snaked alongside the path of a river. At the bottom of a steep descent, he passed through a village before turning through two large gate posts into a wide, curved driveway. Glen Massan House, the sign read in florid script, and beside it, a familiar-looking military sign read Argyll War Hospital. Soon, as soon as he could manage it, the house would reopen in another incarnation under his management. Though he mocked himself for it, he couldn’t help but feel a burgeoning sense of pride.
Passing a small lodge of grey granite, Luc drove along a wide, winding driveway, catching glimpses of a sparkling blue stretch of water before pulling up in front of the large house. Stepping out of the car onto neatly swept gravel, he noticed with amusement that it was bordered by the army’s trademark white-painted boulders.
The house itself was built of pale grey granite and stood on a promontory facing out over the loch. A mass of turrets and sloping roofs, with a larger turret bolstering one side, it was a real Highland castle. He hadn’t been expecting that. The car engine ticked as it cooled, but there was no other sound to disturb the scene. Though he knew the army had vacated the place only a few weeks before, it felt eerily empty, the windows shuttered, the huge door closed. Funnily enough, it had felt like a huge door opening when he received the letter offering him the position. He had been so excited by the prospect, he hadn’t really considered the implications. The terms of the trust responsible for setting the hospital up were somewhat vague, for though it wasn’t run by the military, it would be in effect a privately funded military hospital, with ex-servicemen for patients. At this moment in time, however, there was no hospital at all, only an empty shell that he would have to equip and staff.
He was a surgeon, he knew nothing about such administrative matters, but help was on hand in the form of a family member from the trust, a Mrs Flora Cassell. A few discreet enquiries had reassured him. She had a formidable reputation for administration, which would leave him free to concentrate on what he’d come here to do. Save lives. Make lives better. He turned towards the house, where the huge front door was opening. That would be her now presumably. He stepped forward, a professional smile on his face, and removed his hat.
There were two of them, both considerably younger than he had expected. The taller one had a cloud of copper hair. Beside her, the other woman, also tall and slim, had bright gold hair cropped in the new fashion to her shoulders. Dark brown eyes, fixed on him. A pink mouth that turned up at the corners, the plump bottom lip contrasting with the shortness of the upper.
She wore no army overcoat, no neatly tied VAD cap and her hair was shorter, but it was her, all right. She had inhabited his dreams too many times for comfort since that night for there to be the slightest vestige of doubt, and now here she was standing in front of him, looking as stunned as he felt. What the hell was she doing here?
When he stepped forward, the redhead did so, too. ‘Forgive me, I hadn’t expected you to be so...’ She stopped, disconcerted. ‘What I mean is, I had expected someone much older. Welcome to Glen Massan, Doctor. I am Flora Cassell.’
He shook her hand distractedly.
‘Enchanté
.
’
Flora Cassell stared at him. The other woman—Sheila!—was determinedly looking anywhere else but at him, obviously as flabbergasted as he was. He looked pointedly at her.
‘Oh, yes,’ Mrs Cassell said with a faint start, ‘may I present Miss Sheila Fraser who, I hope, will be your right-hand man, so to speak, in the coming weeks.’
A heart-rending plea from those speaking brown eyes begged him not to admit to their previous acquaintance, something he was more than happy to do. ‘Miss Fraser,’ Luc said, with a slight nod of the head.
‘Doctor...?’
‘Durand.’ She had come slowly forwards to stand on the gravel beside him. She held out her hand. He took it. A frisson of shared memory shot through them and she snatched her hand away as if it had been electrocuted. In the bright spring sunlight, she looked more mature than he remembered and far lovelier, though the sparkle had gone from her eyes. Now he knew why the accent of the landlady in the little inn he’d stayed in last night had been vaguely familiar.
‘Doctor Durand?’
As if she could not quite believe it.
‘Vraiment,’
he said, and was rewarded with a ghost of a smile.
‘I am afraid I have some packing to do and must beg to be excused,’ Flora Cassell said. She gave Sheila a look that, if Luc didn’t know better, might have been construed as a wink. ‘I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Miss Fraser, Dr Durand. She was raised in the village here. There is no one who knows the house and the estate better, outside my immediate family. I am certain she will prove satisfactory to your needs.’
* * *
Of course Flora did not intend the double entendre, Sheila thought as she turned from her friend’s fast-disappearing figure to face the man who held her professional fate in his hands. The man who had, for one torrid night, been her lover, who was no doubt, thanks to Flora’s unwitting remark, remembering exactly that. If only the ground would open up or the sky fall or a thunderbolt would strike. Why did these things only ever happen in books? And why, why, why, did he have to be so much more devastatingly attractive than she remembered? It wasn’t fair. Flora had certainly been impressed by him. That little look she had given her, as if to say, ‘Well, look at this handsome stranger who’s fallen into your lap.’ Luckily, she had no idea that, while he was undoubtedly handsome, he was no stranger!
Doctor Luc Durand. Doctor! She hadn’t even noticed the medical insignia on his uniform. Not that she had been paying much attention to his uniform that night, being much more concerned with the man underneath. The man who would now be her boss. She could feel her face flaming. She had to get control of herself. She was not going to allow history to repeat itself, absolutely not! ‘You didn’t tell me you were a doctor,’ she said, turning to him accusingly.
‘I hardly though it mattered at the time. I don’t recall that you even told me your surname.’
He sounded equally defensive. The realisation was both reassuring and disconcerting. ‘Those rooms of yours—why weren’t you living in the hospital grounds like the rest of us?’
‘I was on secondment only, to several of the hospitals run by the Americans. It was easier to rent a room than fight for space with the permanent staff. And I like my privacy.’
She was horribly flustered. She couldn’t look at him without imagining him naked, without remembering the way he had felt, his mouth on hers, his skin, the low growl of his laugh, the harsh cry he’d let out when he’d climaxed. She closed her eyes, trying to blot it all out, but it only made it more vivid.
‘I suppose it made it easier for you to entertain women,’ Sheila said. For heaven’s sake, now she sounded petty, jealous, even, but it was too late to retract her words.
‘I am not in the habit of
entertaining
in that manner,’ he replied.
She eyed him with disbelief. He wasn’t classically handsome in the way that Douglas Fairbanks was, but he was unforgettable, and even out of uniform he had an air about him that commanded attention. ‘Next you’ll be telling me I was an exception,’ Sheila said sarcastically.
‘It’s the truth.’
Was he teasing her? He didn’t look as if he was. He looked—no, it would be better if she didn’t look at him like that. She narrowed her eyes. ‘How much of an exception?’
‘The only one.’
His answer would have made her reel if she wasn’t reeling already. ‘Why me?’ she blurted out.
‘I have absolutely no idea.’ When she said nothing, because she could think of absolutely nothing to say, he shrugged, a very Gallic gesture, and smiled wryly. ‘I saw you dancing. You had such
joie de vivre
. I thought you were like—I don’t know, the spirit of the night. I wanted to capture it, what you possessed. You think that sounds fanciful?’
‘I think it sounds rather delightful.’ She ought not to have told him so, but these past few months had rather knocked the stuffing out of her
joie de vivre
. ‘It was like no other night, that night,’ she said softly.
‘Certainly, I am not usually given to dancing.’
‘That much was obvious,’ Sheila said, smiling faintly at the memory.
He was standing close enough now for her body to protest that it wasn’t close enough. His hair had grown since she’d last seen him, curling over the starched white collar of his shirt. His eyes were dark brown in the light of day. He said he’d made an exception for her. That she was the only one.
In how long,
she wanted to ask him. She wanted to tell him that for her, too, he had been an exception, but how could she explain what she meant without explaining too much, without sounding as if he meant too much? ‘It all seems like a dream now,’ she said. Which was not at all what she meant to say, but his nearness was confusing her.
‘Do you regret it?’
Did he? She studied him, his striking but not quite handsome face, the strong, lean figure that looked just as good in his civilian suit as in uniform. Embarrassed and appalled by this outrageous twist of fate as she was, she could not deny her body’s response to him. ‘Regret it, no. But I definitely think we should forget it,’ Sheila said resolutely, ‘especially if we are to work together.’ She tried to sound as if it were something to be taken for granted, their working together, but it came out as a question all the same.
‘That is still to be decided,’ he said firmly, ‘especially in the circumstances.’
She should have guessed. He was going to send her packing. This job, no matter how temporary, mattered to her. She could not let him dismiss her without even giving her a chance to prove herself something other than easy. She
would
not let that happen. ‘Doctor Durand,’ Sheila said urgently, grabbing hold of his sleeve, ‘let’s both agree to forget that night. You say nothing, and I say nothing. Not to anyone. Let’s pretend we’ve just met, that we’re complete strangers. Let me give you the guided tour. Let me tell you a little more about myself and my nursing experience. I can help you, Dr Durand. Let me help you. Please. I need this job.’
* * *
There was an edge of desperation to her voice. He couldn’t reconcile this anxious, almost insecure woman with the one he’d met on Armistice night. One minute she was smiling, the next she sounded as if she was going to burst into tears. What on earth was going on?
Luc disengaged himself, because even the touch of her fingers on his jacket was making him think of the other ways she’d touched him, and threw his hat into the back seat of his car. There was no doubt that he needed assistance. Surely the formidable Mrs Cassell—who didn’t look at all formidable—would not have suggested Sheila Fraser to him if she was going to be a waste of space. This hospital was to be named after Mrs Cassell’s dead brother. It was her former family home. The lands that would provide funds for the place were her family’s estate. And Sheila—would he now have to call her Miss Fraser?
Luc grimaced. What mattered was that she knew the family, the locals, the house. He would be a fool to dismiss her out of hand. But would he be a fool to think they could work together after what had passed between them?
He surveyed her covertly, with the barrier of his car between them. In the light of day, he was embarrassed by the passionate way he had responded to her, by his complete loss of control. Forget what had happened between them, she had said, pretend they’d never met. Was it possible?
Since Eugenie, he had dedicated himself to his work. His work had been his wife, his mistress, his life. Not once since his marriage ended so tragically had he wanted another woman until he’d met this one, so very different from Eugenie in every way. Was that why he had been attracted to her? Had it been some sort of final exorcism? Or perhaps a symbolic new start. The end of the war. The final burying of his past.
He laughed inwardly at himself. What nonsense. Eugenie was dead, and the gap she had left had been filled—with his work. He had no room in his life for anyone else. He was perfectly content as he was. Alone. With his work and his patients. He was most certainly not interested in pursuing a dalliance with Sheila Fraser, no matter how attractive he found her. It would pass. The only thing that interested him about Sheila Fraser was her ability to help him with his work. And absolutely nothing else.
Luc reached into the car for his leather-bound notebook and slammed the door behind him. ‘Very well, let us agree that we have never met.’
She caught his sleeve. ‘You promise you won’t say anything, because this is a small village, Dr Durand?’
‘I don’t gossip, Miss Fraser, and I’ve no more desire to have anyone know our rather unconventional history than you have.’