Vintage Love (226 page)
James and Hilda were the last of the wedding guests to leave. Then Joy and Colin mounted the great stairway to their bedroom for their wedding night. She quickly changed into a suitably decorative nightgown, and he joined her in a brocade robe which had been a gift from her.
He kissed her and then said, “Let us go out on the balcony for a moment. It is a lovely spring night.”
“Why not?” she asked.
He opened the doors to the balcony, and they went out and stood there in the darkness. He said, “Some milder than the Crimea when we landed there.”
“I shall never forget that cold,” she said, snuggling in the arm of her bridegroom.
“And yet the Crimea will never really be all that remote from us,” he said. “If only because of my missing arm.”
She chided him. “We agreed not to discuss that.”
He smiled. “True. We did. But I must say something about it. Though tonight may not seem the proper time. I have a kind of special wedding gift for us.”
She stared up at his handsome face. “Whatever are you talking about?”
He said, “Have you not wondered what I have been doing these past weeks?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been far too busy with my own affairs. And preparing this house for the marriage.”
“Just so,” he said. “But I have not been idle. Nor do I propose to be in the future.”
“Please explain.”
“You must have noticed that the London Streets are filled with invalided men back from the war. A pitiful reminder of a badly-managed campaign.”
“I know,” she said. “Miss Nightingale discussed it with me when last I saw her. It distresses her.”
Colin smiled, “Well, something is to be done about it!”
“What?”
“A new hospital is to be opened for the wounded to care for them until they are ready to be discharged, and to offer them what help is possible for their futures. It is to be in a renovated hospital in Wellington Street and guess who has been named as Superintendent in charge of its management?”
She was filled with incredulous delight. “You!”
“Yes, me!” he said with a laugh. “I’ve found a proper job for a man with one arm. And better than that, I need a Nursing Supervisor and I have made a recommendation.”
“Whom? Miss Nightingale?”
“She has more important work to do,” he said. “No. I have been so bold as to proffer the name of my wife for the post. What do you say to that?”
“Dearest Colin, I love you so,” she said, happy tears filling her eyes.
He pressed her close to him in her shimmering white nightgown. She felt she had truly come home at last. For a brief instant she let the past skim through her mind. She thought of her beloved father, and of poor, dear Lisa who had died so tragically! And of John Hastings and the people of Invermere. Never would she forget John!
But this was a new marriage and a new life for her. And she formed a silent prayer in her mind. A prayer of gratefulness, and asking forgiveness. A prayer for all whom she had passed along the way, especially those whom she loved, both the living and the dead!
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 1978 by Clarissa Ross
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-7427-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7427-6
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7426-X
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7426-9
Cover art © 123rf.com
Clarissa Ross
Avon, Massachusetts
To my friend Dr. George Skinner
and his lovely wife, Ruth.
Chapter One
By the time Lucy Dorset took a glistening turbo-jet plane from Boston to St. Andrews, a quaint town on the Bay of Fundy, twenty miles from the Maine border on the Canadian side, Jennifer Woods had been dead for nearly a hundred years. And yet the lovely, pale ghost of Jennifer was to play a leading role in Lucy’s life, and especially to influence her marriage with her young doctor husband, Fred Dorset.
Whenever Lucy looked back on that first year of her marriage she thought of Jennifer and of the old stone house known as Moorgate. For the frail ghost of Jennifer and the impressive, ancient house on the hill overlooking the town and the bay had served to change her life. From the second-story windows of Moorgate she could see Minister’s Island as well, the small wooded island a mile from the shore, and accessible by a sandy road only when the tide was low.
Gradually she came to know the names and places well and the way they were linked with Jennifer’s sad history. The passage of close to a century had not erased the facts of the romantic story, and the characters involved seemed undimmed in the minds of the modern dwellers in the seaside town to which she had come as a happy young bride.
Her husband was one of those rural doctors who still felt that office calls were not the only thing. And so on the certain evenings when he was not in his office or at the hospital in St. Stephen he would travel around the area in his small red foreign car making visits to patients too ill or infirm to call at his office. Then she was often alone in the old house waiting for his return.
Many a summer evening she would stroll at dusk in the gardens of the old stone house on the hill. And in the sighing of the tall white birch trees surrounding the gardens she felt she could hear the long-ago voice of Jennifer, sad and wistful. The spirit of the lovely girl who had once lived within the vine-covered, gray stone walls of Moorgate.
For Lucy it had all begun a year before in Boston at a Back Bay party given by a girl friend of hers. Because Patricia, her friend, was a lab technician, the party had more than its share of hospital people. Quite a number of young nurses and their boy friends were there, as well as a few doctors. One of the few doctors was Fred Dorset. A serious thirty-two, the red-haired young man with his squarish, pleasant face stood out from the others.
Lucy had attended the party in the company of a rather fussy and precious young English professor who amused her but who didn’t interest her at all in a romantic fashion. Patricia, knowing this, took her aside in the hallway of her crowded apartment, and pointed out Fred Dorset, who was standing alone by the blaring record player.
Patricia’s eyes were sparkling with mischief as she said, “See that red-haired young man?”
“Yes,” Lucy had replied, wondering why he had been singled out by her friend.
“He’d make the perfect husband for you,” Patricia told her.
Blonde, green-eyed Lucy had opened her eyes wide in surprise. “You must be joking!”
“I’m not,” Patricia replied. “He’s exactly your type. And he’s leaving Boston to take over his first practice in a small Canadian town. I have an idea a pretty girl who also happens to be a nurse is exactly what he’d like to have along with him.”
Lucy blushed. “You’re talking a lot of nonsense.”
“I’m being extremely practical for a change,” her friend said. “If I weren’t already engaged I’d go after him myself. I might even think about it yet if you’re not interested. So better meet him and consider him just to save him from me.”
Lucy laughed, but she wasn’t at all sure her friend didn’t mean what she said. And she at once felt sorry for this rather handsome young doctor who was obviously the target for romantic plotting by so many of the young females present. Her sympathy was to prove her undoing.
Ignoring her protests, Patricia took her across the crowded living room to the serious young doctor and introduced her as “My dearest friend, Lucy Miller, one of the most dedicated nurses I know.” And with that she left them standing facing each other.
Dr. Fred Dorset showed a wry smile on his squarish face as he said, “Are you all that dedicated, Lucy Miller?”
She was blushing again. “Patricia has a weird sense of humor. You’ll have to forgive her.”
“But you are a nurse?” he asked, almost anxiously.
“Yes, I’ll admit to that,” she said with a smile.
He had nice blue eyes which brightened now. “You work here in Boston?”
“At New England Baptist Hospital,” she said.
“I know it well. I’ve been at Tufts.”
“It’s very good.”
“Sure,” he said, glancing from her to the crowd and then giving the record player a scowl. “I’m supposed to be attending this but the patient is behaving noisily enough by itself. Let’s get away from its caterwauling.” He took her by the arm.
She looked up at him nervously. “I can’t imagine where we can go. It’s not a large apartment and every inch of it has far too many people.”
“Population explosion, apartment type,” he replied. “But it’s a June night and not cold outside and I noticed a small balcony at the end of the entrance hall which I think no one else may have spotted.”
“Isn’t that optimistic?” she laughed.
“The key to my character is optimism,” he told her. “Come along.”
They elbowed their way through the chattering cocktail-party crowd and at last reached the tiny balcony with its wrought-iron railing overlooking staid Beacon Street. The French windows leading to it had been hidden by draperies and no one else had been aware of its being there. As they stepped out into the fresh air of the balcony Dr. Fred Dorset closed the doors after them.
He drew a sigh of relief. Smiling at her in the shadows, he said, “Now this is a lot better.”
“Do you think people are supposed to come out here?” she asked.
He offered an extravagant wave of his hand. “Why else would they have built it?”
She laughed. “I was thinking it might be merely ornamental.”
“Much too sturdy,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.”
She was coming to the decision that he was a fairly brash young man who could take care of himself quite well. She turned to lean on the railing and gaze down at the tree-lined street with its rows of tightly parked cars along each side.
She said, “I’m an extremely unexciting person, like my name, Lucy.”
“I find Lucy an enchanting name,” he said. “Tell me about your work, where you come from, what you think of Boston — the possibilities are endless, and I’m a good listener.”
Lucy smiled at him. “You’re fairly overwhelming, aren’t you?”
“Not really,” he said. “That aggressive approach is the trick of a shy young man, believe me.”
“I wish I could,” she said. Then she went on. “About myself, I was brought up in a small Maine town, my parents are elderly and are living in Florida in retirement. I’m a surgical nurse, and I live with two other girls near the Common in a big apartment building.”
“You’ve left out the most important things.”
“Such as?”
“Are you engaged or married?”
She shook her head. “Neither.”
“Neither am I,” he said.
She lifted her nicely arched eyebrows. “You’re almost an exception. Medical students seem to marry young these days. Wives usually help to put them through college by holding a job on their own.”
The red-haired young man nodded. “I know. There’s nothing wrong with it. I’ve just never met the right girl.”
“I wouldn’t think she’d be all that hard to find.”
“For me it’s been an unrewarding search,” he told her. “But right now I have the feeling I’m about to do better.”
“There goes that line again,” she told him with a smile and a teasing light in her eyes.
“No, I’m serious,” he insisted.
And as it turned out, he was. He took her phone number and called her the next evening. After that there was a series of dates. She found him excellent company, whether at a ball game or seated on the banks of the Charles River listening to one of the Boston Symphony outdoor concerts. And somewhere along the line she began to think about him seriously.