Swallowbrook's Winter Bride Read Free

knew I had to see you just one more time.
    ‘I know the importance of the work you are going to do in Africa, but there would still be time for that when we’d had our time, some life together in happiness and contentment and maybe brought up a family.’
    She had chosen the most inopportune moment to make her plea, with only minutes to spare before he boarded the plane, and with the memory tugging at him of a failed engagement not so long ago that had done neither he nor his fiancée any credit.
    There had been tears in her eyes but instead of making him want to comfort her he’d reacted in the opposite way and been brusque and offhand as he’d told her, ‘How can you face me with something like this at such a time, Libby? I’m due to leave in a matter of minutes. Just forget me. Don’t wait around. Relationships aren’t on my agenda at present.’
    Then, ashamed of his churlishness, he’d bent to give her a peck on the cheek. Instead their lips had met and within seconds it had all changed.
    He’d been kissing her as if he’d just walked into light out of darkness and it would have gone on for ever if a voice hadn’t been announcing that his flight was ready for boarding.
    As common sense had returned he’d said it again. ‘Don’t wait around for me, Libby.’ And almost before he’d finished speaking she’d been rushing towards the exit as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
    Aware that his behaviour had left a lot to be desired, and cursing himself for trampling on what was left of her schoolgirl crush, he’d vowed that he would phone her when he arrived at his destination and apologise for his flippancy, but in the chaos he’d found when he’d got there his private life had become non-existent, until he’d received his father’s phone call some months later to say Libby was getting married on the coming Saturday.
    Then it had all come flooding back—her tears, the loveliness of her, and his own arrogance in brushing to one side her feelings for him by telling her not to wait for him, indicating in the most presumptuous way that he wasn’t interested in her.
    But, of course, by then it had been too late. How could he ever forget how happy she had looked when the vicar had made his pronouncement to say Libby and Ian were man and wife? And he’d thought how wrong he’d been in considering that she might be marrying Jefferson on the rebound.
    Now, as he looked down at Toby, young and defenceless beneath the covers, he knew that there would be barriers to break down in coming months and bridges to build, not just in one part of his life but in the whole structure of it, because his contract in Africa was up. He was home for good, and coming back to Swallowbrook was his first step towards normality.
    He’d done nothing when he’d heard that Jefferson had died. To have appeared on the scene then might have seemed like he’d been waiting in the wings and it would not have been the case. But now he’d had no choice but to come back to England because his best friend and his wife had been amongst tourists drowned on a sinking ferry somewhere abroad. The tragedy had changed his life and that of the sleeping child for ever.
    As she sat hunched over the teapot Libby was thinking what a mess her life had turned into in the three years since she’d last laid eyes on Nathan. Anxious to prove to the world, but most importantly to herself, that her feelings for him were dead and buried she’d turned to Ian Jefferson, someone who had already asked her to marry him twice and been politely refused.
    And so six months later, with Nathan’s never-to-be-forgotten comments at the airport still painfully remembered, she’d agreed to marry Ian at his third time of asking.
    They’d been reasonably happy at first, living in Lavender Cottage, across from the surgery, but as the months had gone by she had discovered that Ian had merely wanted a wife, any wife, to give him standing in the village, and the