‘Yes, I do. And please forgive me if my welcome has fallen short of expectations. Your presence here wasn’t my choice, it’s my father who thinks I need a minder.’
Nell swallowed down the temptation to take the bait. ‘I’m a doctor. If my duty of care to you, as my patient, makes me seem like a minder then...’ She shrugged.
Hugo leaned forward, the cushion at his side slipping to the floor. ‘Why don’t you go ahead and say it? I can take it.’
If he thought that she couldn’t look into his green eyes and say exactly what she meant, he was going to find out differently. Nell met his gaze and felt shivers run down her spine. Okay, so it was difficult to do. But not impossible.
‘If you think that I’m here to be your minder, then that says a lot more about your approach to this than it does mine.’
‘I suppose it does. But I want to make one thing clear. Duty to my father and professional courtesy to you require that I listen to your advice. But I have specific goals, in connection with a project at the hospital, that need to be met over the next six weeks. I won’t allow anything to get in the way of that.’
‘Even at the cost of your own health?’
‘I can handle it.’
The battle lines had been drawn, and in the heat of his gaze it felt almost exhilarating. Then Nell came to her senses.
In the last three weeks, Hugo had faced a crisis. If that appeared to have had no effect on him, then maybe that just meant he was more adept at covering his emotions than most. He was hurting and unable to trust his own body any more, and if his reaction to that was stubborn failure to face facts, it was her job to get him to a place where he felt strong enough to admit how he felt.
His smouldering green eyes were suddenly too much for her to bear, and she looked away. ‘Compromising on the way you get there doesn’t necessarily mean you have to abandon your goals. Let me help you.’
He thought for a moment. ‘What kind of compromise did you have in mind?’
Nell took a deep breath. This might be the first of many hurdles, but she’d made a start. ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll need to examine you first and hear exactly what your commitments are. Then we can talk about it.’
‘All right.’ He smiled suddenly, as if he’d just remembered that he ought to do so. ‘I’ll make an effort to be a model patient.’
Somehow Nell doubted that. ‘I appreciate the thought. But you’ve a long way to go before you qualify for the title of my most awkward patient.’
This time Hugo really smiled. ‘Shame. I’ll have to try harder.’
‘Yes, you will.’ Nell rose from her seat, picking the cushion up from the floor and putting it back in place, behind his shoulder. ‘You can plan your strategy while I go and get my medical bag.’
Maybe his father knew him better than Hugo had thought. His doctor at the hospital had been highly qualified, deferential, and had treated the whole thing as if it were an afternoon at a health spa. Nell was something different. Honest, no-nonsense and quite capable of cutting him down to size when he tried all the usual diversionary tactics.
Dr Penelope. He didn’t dare call her that, she’d told him she preferred Nell. Which was charming in its own way but didn’t seem to sum her up quite so well. Fierce, beautiful and unstoppable.
It was a little easier to think when she was out of the room. A little easier to remind himself of the flat in London, right at the top of a tenement block, where the lift sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.
A little pang of regret for times that had seemed altogether simpler. The sofa that had creaked slightly under the weight of two people too tired to move and yet happy to just be together. The awful green bedspread that Anna had chosen, and which hadn’t matched the curtains but which Hugo had liked because she had. It had been the one time in Hugo’s life when duty hadn’t weighed heavy on his shoulders. All he’d needed to do was work hard at medical school and love the woman who shared his life.
He’d brought Anna back to Montarino, two newly minted doctors, full of so many possibilities and dreams. The ring on her finger had been replaced by something more befitting a princess, but Anna had always preferred the old one, which Hugo had saved for out of his allowance. It wasn’t until she’d left that Hugo had stopped to think that maybe she had been unhappy at the palace.
And that had been his doing. Anna had trained to be a doctor, not a princess. She had fitted the bill well enough, but it hadn’t been her mission in life. Hugo had been too intent on pursuing his own mission to see that until it had been too late and Anna had been packing her bags, a ticket back to London with her name on it lying on the bed.
‘If you’d just looked, Hugo, you would have seen that this isn’t enough for me. I have a career, too.’
There had been nothing that he could say because he had known in his heart that Anna was right. He’d let her go, and had watched from afar as she’d risen to the top of her chosen field, like a cork held underwater for too long and bouncing to the surface of a fast-flowing stream. One that had taken her away from him, and had never brought her back again.
Since then, Hugo had confined himself to women whose career aspirations were limited to being a princess. And if he hadn’t found anyone who truly understood him yet, then one of these days his duty would outweigh the yearning for love and he’d marry regardless. It had never made its way to the top of his to-do list, though, and it could wait.
The sound of a chair being pushed across the carpet towards his broke his reverie. It seemed that the doctor was ready for him now.
‘Would you unbutton your shirt for me, please?’ Nell sat down opposite him, briskly reaching into a small nylon bag to retrieve a stethoscope.
Suddenly he felt slightly dizzy. At the hospital, he’d submitted to one examination after the other, distancing himself from the doctors and nurses who quietly did their jobs while he thought about something else. But Nell was different. She challenged him, demanding that he take notice of what was happening to him.
‘My notes are...somewhere...’ He looked around, trying to remember where he’d left the envelope.
‘I have them. They were emailed through to me yesterday. I’d like to check on how you are now.’
Whether he’d managed to throw any spanners in the works. Her meaning shone clear in her light brown eyes, almost amber in the sunshine that streamed through the high windows.
He looked away from her gaze. Hugo had no qualms about his body, he knew that it was as good as the next man’s and that he didn’t have to think twice before he allowed anyone to see it. But things were different now. The new, unhealed scar felt like overwhelming evidence of his greatest weakness.
Nell sat motionless opposite him, clearly willing to wait him out if need be. He reached for the buttons of his shirt, his fingers suddenly clumsy.
* * *
Hugo was finding this hard. Nell pretended not to notice, twisting at the earpieces of her stethoscope as if she’d just found something wrong with them. The very fact that he seemed about to baulk at the idea of a simple examination told her that Hugo wasn’t as confident about his recovery as he liked to make out.
That was okay. Nell would have been more comfortable if she could maintain a degree of professional detachment too, but that wasn’t going to work. The main thing at the moment was to maintain their tenuous connection, because if that was lost then so was their way forward.
‘What