Christmas at Rivercut Manor

Book 6: Medical Romances

by Gill Sanderson

Genres: Romance; Contemporary Romance; Medical Romance; Workplace Romance

Synopsis

Dr Mike Curtis was coming home to Rivercut. He was tired of London, wanted the peace of the North Yorkshire Moors. He wanted to look after daughter Bethany and perhaps free himself from the memories of his dead wife Sarah. There had been tragedy and betrayal from someone she loved in District Nurse Grace Fellowes' life and she was losing the home that had been in her family for generations. But she loved her work, loved the people and life in the village. Christmas was coming. Could two unhappy people find happiness together? A night sleeping in a in a snow covered barn suggested yes.

Release date: May 14, 2017

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 184

Sample

District Nurse Grace Fellowes looked at the patient in front of her with mild exasperation. The trouble with these moors farmers—even ones like Albert who'd long since handed over the reins to his son—was that they thought if they slowed down for more than a few minutes they'd be dead. She put on a severe expression. 'You've been walking on this leg, haven't you?'

Albert shifted his ulcerated leg irritably on the footstool. 'Give over, young Grace. As if you haven't already found out from my boy that I just stepped down to the barn to run my eye over the flock and a sheep got in my way.'

'I'm not young Grace today, I'm your nurse and I know what I'm talking about. One in fifty people over the age of eighty get ulcers like yours and because of your blood pressure problems there isn't enough new blood getting to the tissue to repair it very quickly.'

In truth, almost the only hope with venous ulcers was to dress the wound and then cover it with a compression bandage, but Grace didn't mention that. 'We've kept the germs out so far, but you must be more careful when you move about. Your son's right to be worried about you. How does your leg feel now?'

'Not too bad. Sometimes it itches, sometimes there's a sort of heavy feeling.' He watched as Grace dusted on the dressing, then covered the ulcer with an antiseptic pad and eased on the elasticated support stocking. 'Thanks, lass. That's tight, but I can feel it working. Still seems odd, you junketing all over the moors to see to us. Who'd have thought twenty years ago that young Grace Fellowes from Rivercut Manor would grow up to be our district nurse.'

Grace stood, went to wash her hands in the sink at the side of the farmhouse kitchen and then put on her fleece jacket. 'Be glad I am,' she said lightly. 'You might have a fearsome stranger telling you off instead. I'll be back in a week for another look. Any problem before that—give me a ring. And don't go banging into anything!'

'I suppose,' said Albeit. He hesitated. 'Before you go— I'm sorry you've had to put the old place up for sale.'

Grace swallowed. 'Ah, well. That's life. I'm luckier than most. I've got a job I love, a cottage that needs hardly any housework and the nicest patients in the world.' She blinked to clear her eyes and walked quickly to the farmhouse porch, slipping her feet out of her comfortable flatties and into her Wellingtons. It might look a bit odd—a nurse in a smart blue uniform with rubber boots up to her knees—but in most farmyards it was necessary even when they weren't ankle-deep in snow like today. A couple of quick words with Albert's son and then she was back in her car.

As she drove through the high moor tops Grace grinned. 'Young Grace from the Manor' indeed! When was Rivercut valley going to emerge into the twenty-first century? It was a bit isolated—but not that much. You could get to London from York in three hours. Then she chuckled. Provided you could get to York at all with the North Yorkshire moors snowed up as they were at the moment.

The back road she was on dropped down into a narrow valley. She slowed, seeing that the surface ahead was covered in water. This often happened in winter—the drain under the road was just not big enough to cope with the stream that ran through it. It was fortunate that Grace had grown up here and knew all about the local hazards. Her elderly Land Rover only skidded a little as she carefully drove through the flood.

Climbing the hill again, she caught her breath at how beautiful the countryside was with its blanket of white. Snow had come very early this year—this was only the beginning of December. And the forecast was that the snow was going to last. She knew a cold winter would cause trouble but they were used to it round here. Garages would be stocked with snow chains and antifreeze, dispensaries would have supplies of cough linctus and crutches.

Grace's next call was at a village called Nestoby. Not that anyone in the large Leeds nursing college where she had done her training would have called it a village. There was only a handful of houses, no pub or post office, just a corner shop that sold an incredible range of goods even though it was situated in the front room of a cottage.

Mr and Mrs Kipps ran the shop—and had done for the past forty years. They'd taken it over from Mrs Kipps's parents. Grace parked outside, opened the shop door and was greeted by an outburst of coughing. She looked at the wizened figure bent double behind the counter. 'Not doing very well, are we, Mr Kipps?' she asked sympathetically.

Mr Kipps was suffering from emphysema. He had smoked all his life until he'd had a bad attack of bronchitis which had laid him up for months. Even so, James Curtis—the GP Grace worked for—had had to put the fear of God into him before he had been persuaded to stop. Now Grace called in regularly to check up on Mr Kipps's condition and to arrange for physiotherapy visits to drain his lungs of fluid.

Mrs Kipps came through to look after the shop. She was a large, unsmiling woman and as a child Grace had found her rather frightening until she had realised her bark was worse than her bite, and most of that barking was directed at the lads who were intent on getting tuppence out of their penny-worth of sweets. 'I'm sorry about the manor,' Mrs Kipps said abruptly now.

Grace gave a rueful smile. 'Thanks, but it's the way of the world. I just hope I can sell it to a family who want to make a home rather than to some faceless company to use for corporate entertaining.' She followed Mr Kipps into the back room to take his blood pressure, listen to his heart and check up on his general well-being. His condition was as good as could be expected for a man who had smoked forty a day for more years than the twenty-eight Grace had been alive.

'How are you feeling?' she asked. 'Not too much pain from the coughing? I know these cold days must be hard on you.'

A voice came from the shop. 'He came home late last Wednesday with the smell of tobacco on him. Told me it was because he'd walked home with one of our neighbours who smokes. I told him that if I found him with a cigarette in his mouth, he'd be out on the moors all night with only his cigarettes to keep him warm.'

'I wasn't smoking!' Mr Kipps wailed.

Grace decided to say nothing. The situation appeared to be under control.

Outside it was snowing again, the hard small snowflakes that landed and settled adding another layer to the smooth, soft outlines of the winter landscape. Grace loved the way snow turned the moors into a whole new land, more beautiful even than the myriad greens of the heather and scrub. She could forgive it making the drive to her last call of the day tricky. She noticed that the Christmas spirit seemed to be abroad. All the isolated farmhouses on the way to Fellowes Top had illuminated Christmas trees in the windows. Grace felt an excited wriggle inside her at the sight. She did love Christmas.

At Fellowes Top Farm she made short shrift of Young Jack Stanley (so called to distinguish him from Old Jack Stanley, his father), who seemed to think that the proper care of a pitchfork wound in his upper leg so deep that it had only just missed the femoral artery was to sweep up slurry in the pigsty. Leaving him chastened, she set off for home. It was a longish journey, Fellowes Top being the most outlying of the properties her family had once owned, but Grace quite liked a drive at the end of a good day. It gave her a chance to unwind from the busyness of health issues resolved and problems fixed.

***

It was dusk now and the snow was still falling. Grace's dashboard thermometer indicated that the temperature was well below freezing. She snuggled further inside her warm fleece as she drove, thankful that the Land Rover had four-wheel drive. She really must make room in next week's schedule for a service. Maybe Bert Machin wouldn't charge her too much, especially as he would also have heard about the manor going up for sale. Grace bit her lip. Everybody this afternoon had mentioned it, saying how sad it was and how brave Grace was being. And Grace had smiled cheerfully and uttered platitudes and hadn't admitted once that it was tearing her apart to have to sell her childhood home in order to pay off the twin burden of death duties and her mother's debts.

She blinked back tears and concentrated on the road—and realised with a spasm of alarm that she'd automatically chosen the shorter cross-country route home from the farm instead of the gritted main road. Oh, heck, she'd really need her wits about her now. Still, she'd driven along part of it earlier and it had been okay. She'd just have to be extra careful.

She was miles from the nearest farm when the accident happened. She was taking a right-angle bend, not at all too fast, when the rear wheels broke away and slid sideways. She couldn't believe it! She did everything correctly, didn't oversteer, braked very gently and steered into the direction of the skid. All to no avail. She was coming off the road.

At quite a slow speed the Land Rover slid backwards. There was just a moment when Grace felt completely helpless, then a jerk as the back wheels dropped into a ditch and her head whiplashed forward. The engine cut out. The car was still. Oh, no, she thought.

For a minute she simply sat there stupidly, her headlights pointing upwards at an odd angle. Shock, diagnosed a detached, professional part of her brain, and with that she clicked back into being Grace Fellowes, District Nurse, again. No part of her was injured, that was good. She was facing the right direction, also good. She had four-wheel drive. With any luck she'd simply be able to drive out.

She took a deep breath and started the engine again. The car lurched forward a couple of feet and then slowly slid backwards. She could hear the whirring of the wheels skidding in the slush of the ditch. Grip, she told them, grip. Then she remembered that at her last MOT the mechanic had told her the tyres were only just within the legal limit and had nothing like the traction that they should have. Buying new tyres had been a luxury she had been putting off.

She was not going to panic. She turned the lights off to save the battery, took out her mobile to call the garage, remembered—irrationally—that she'd once seen an adder slither out of one of these ditches and cross in front of her and decided she'd get a much better signal on the road. So she clambered out of the car, not thinking about snakes, and took a large step up the side of the ditch.

Under the snow it was more slippery than she'd expected. She lost her footing, fell on her knees then pitched forward. Her phone flew out of her hand into the slush and the mud. No! Grace scrabbled frantically for it, but when she eventually closed her fingers around its solid, comforting form it was obvious that no way would it work.

It was as much as she could do to bite back a sob. She felt bewildered. All this had happened so quickly, so easily, that she was having difficulty in comprehending it. Not ten minutes ago she had been happily driving through the snow covered landscape, looking forward to getting home. And now she was stranded, on a lonely country road, she was covered in mud, the light was failing, she had no means of calling anyone and it was at least three miles to the nearest farmhouse. What had happened to her good day?

Another deep breath. This was simply shock. Think positive. She had a torch, she knew exactly where she was and there were worse things in life than an early-evening walk in the snow.

But before she could take a single step she saw lights in the dusk ahead. Oh, thank goodness. What a stroke of luck! A car was coming this way. She stood on the side of the road and shone her torch across it, preparing to wave the driver down.

The car was travelling quite slowly, its engine a muted mutter. She waved vigorously. The car's lights flashed, telling her she'd been seen. Then it drew up to her and stopped.

She recognised the make of car, a top-of-the-range Range Rover, just the kind of vehicle she would love for herself. Hard on that came a momentary touch of apprehension. She knew most of the people around there and none of them had a car like this. The car was driven by a stranger.

A man got out. 'Are you all right?' he called.

'Yes,' Grace called back, 'but I've slid the road.'

'Just a moment.' The man opened one of his rear doors and a minute or so later fetched out a powerful torch. He walked towards her, snowflakes falling through the beam of light playing on the ground.

'You've had an accident?' he said. 'Are you hurt? I'm a doctor.'

'It's all right,' she said. 'I'm a nurse myself. I'm not hurt, just annoyed and feeling a bit stupid. Not only have I skidded into a ditch, I also dropped my mobile into the slush and it's stopped working.'

'Ah. Then you'd better be careful. Accidents always seem to happen in threes. Think carefully, what else could go wrong?'

He had a gorgeous voice, deep and comforting. And now he knew no one was hurt, it held a touch of humour too. She felt as if she could listen to it for ever. He was probably a consultant, Grace judged, by the expensive car and the fact that he must surely be on his way to join some country party at a big house or a hotel. 'Nothing more will go wrong,' she told him firmly, feeling more cheerful by the moment. 'It's nearly Christmas and I won't allow it. But if I could just borrow your mobile to ring the garage...?'

He chuckled. 'What's the number? Are you cold? Would you like to wait in my car while we contact them?'

'I'm fine, really. Oh, damn.'

'What?'

'The number of the garage is in my phone.'

'Ah, that would be the phone that doesn't work?'

'Yes.' She took a breath. This was perhaps a bit much to ask but he could always refuse. 'Could you give me a lift to the nearest farm? It's only three miles down the road.'

'Certainly I can, but won't they mind?' He sounded startled.

Grace stared at him in the dimness. This was definitely no local. 'No, of course not! They'll either ring Bert Machin for me or start up the tractor and haul me out of the ditch themselves.'

'Goodness. Well, hop in.'

But as she approached the large, powerful Range Rover, an idea occurred to her. 'Or we could maybe get the tow-rope out of my boot and use your car to pull mine out. That would be even quicker.'

He seemed startle. . .