* * *
If it worked, then it worked. Society lunches and bidding for a weekend in the presence of a prince wasn’t a strategy that Nell had been called on to adopt before, and neither was washing a patient. But talking to someone, learning what made them tick and suggesting ways of coping was. And if the sudden closeness with Hugo had left her wanting to just touch his skin, simply for the pleasure of feeling it under her fingertips, then that could be ignored in the face of a greater good. Her job here was not really to look after him in a medical sense but to get behind his suave, charming exterior, and find out what drove him so relentlessly that he was willing to risk his health for it.
Nell rang down to the palace kitchen, wondering if anyone was there at this time in the evening, and found that not only was the phone answered immediately but there was a choice of menu. She ordered a salad, on the basis that it was probably the least trouble to make.
Apart from raiding the fridge, of course. Nell had suspected that the top-of-the-range fridge in Hugo’s kitchen was pretty much for show, and when she’d opened it, she’d found a selection of juices and other drinks. Nothing that involved any culinary activity other than pouring. She could have made him a milkshake, but that was about all, and a decent meal would help him recover.
The formal dining room in his apartment seemed a little too much like keeping up appearances, when that was exactly what she was trying to encourage Hugo not to do. A small table on a sheltered balcony was better, and she opened the French doors at the far end of the kitchen and arranged two chairs beside it. It would have made an excellent place to cook and enjoy food, and it was a pity that Hugo’s gleaming kitchen didn’t look as if it saw too many serious attempts at cooking. Nell wondered what he would say if she expressed the intention of baking a cake, and smiled to herself. Maybe she’d try it, just to see the look of bewilderment on his face.
Their meal arrived, and Nell directed the young man who carried a tray loaded with two plates and various sauces and condiments through to the balcony. He looked a little put out that she’d laid the table herself, and adjusted the position of the knives and forks carefully.
She called Hugo, and he appeared from the bedroom, looking relaxed and rested. When Nell had chosen his clothes, she been considering comfort, and hadn’t spared a thought for how well they might fit or how her eye was drawn along the hard lines of his body. Chest. Left arm. It was permissible to allow her gaze to linger there, on the grounds that she was checking up on him. The strong curve of his shoulder, the golden skin of his arm, which dimpled over bone and muscle, were both visual pleasures that Nell could pretend not to have seen.
‘Thank you. This is nice.’ Hugo pulled one of the seats away from the table, waiting until Nell sat down before he took his own place. Even now, he couldn’t quite let go and let her look after him.
‘I just made a call down to the kitchen. Is someone always there?’
‘No, not always. My parents are hosting a dinner party tonight.’ He smiled at her, and in the muted lights that shone around the perimeter of the patio his face seemed stronger. More angular and far more determined, if that was even possible.
‘So calling down for a midnight snack is usually out of the question.’ Nell picked up her fork, stabbing at her food.
‘Yes.’ He grinned. ‘If I want a midnight snack, I usually have to walk all the way down there and make it myself. Life at the palace can be unexpectedly hard at times.’
Nell couldn’t help smiling in response to the quiet joke. Hugo knew exactly how lucky he was. Maybe not exactly, he probably hadn’t ever battled his way around the supermarket on a Saturday morning, but he understood that he was privileged.
‘If we’d been at my place, this might have been cornflakes. With chocolate milk if you were lucky.’
‘You think I haven’t done that?’ Hugo looked slightly hurt. ‘I trained as a doctor, too. You’re not the only one who’s eaten cornflakes with chocolate milk at three in the morning then fallen asleep on the sofa.’
Probably a nicely upholstered sofa, and not too much like the lumpy one that had been in Nell’s shared digs, when she had been training. She wondered if Hugo’s memories of medical school were quite as good as hers were.
‘Where did you stay in London?’ Holland Park, perhaps. Somewhere near the embassy.
‘Shepherd’s Bush. We had a flat over a pizza place for a while, and it always smelled of cooked cheese. Then we moved to Tottenham. That was a great flat, in a high-rise. You could see right across London.’
Perhaps his experience had been a little more like Nell’s than she’d thought. ‘It must have been a bit of a culture shock for you.’
He laid down his fork. ‘People are people. That’s what every doctor learns, isn’t it?’ He said the words as if he was explaining a simple concept that Nell had somehow failed to understand.
‘Yes, of course. But some people find things easier than others.’ Waiting lists. Doctors who had enough time to see to the physical needs of their patients but not always the opportunity to talk for as long as was needed... The list could go on.
‘You met Justine and Henri earlier today. What did you think, that they were a couple of privileged people who like a nice lunch?’
‘They...’ Yes, that was exactly what Nell had thought. ‘They were very generous.’
‘Yes, they always are. They lost their son to heart disease when he was only two years old. Justine became very depressed and it was years before she would even talk about him. Holding a lunch event is a massive step for her. It’s not all about the money. Yvette lost her father to heart disease when she was fifteen.’
Nell felt herself flush. ‘I’m sorry. I did think less of what they were doing because they’re rich, and that was wrong of me.’
Hugo shook his head. ‘You’re not entirely wrong. A lot of the people who were at the lunch today were there because they wanted to be seen in the right places. But many of them have a real and personal commitment to what we’re trying to do.’
‘The little girl in the leaflet. She’s really a heart patient?’ Nell had had her doubts, wondering if the leaflet was principally an exercise in PR. It was important now, to know whether she’d been wrong.
‘Yes, she is. One of my patients, in fact. She had her ninth operation a few days ago. She wanted to help me build her new clinic.’
Nell laughed. ‘Her new clinic.’
‘Yes, it’s hers. She might let a few other patients in if she likes them. No boys. And she wants it to be completely pink, like a giant marshmallow.’ He was smiling now.
‘Sounds like my kind of hospital.’
‘So what are you doing here?’ He asked the question quietly. ‘You don’t strike me as the kind of person whose ambitions lie in the direction of keeping errant princes in check.’
Hugo had a way of dropping the charm and cutting right to the chase. It was uncomfortable. ‘I’m...in between jobs at the moment.’
‘I saw your curriculum vitae. Someone with your talents isn’t usually in between jobs unless she wants to be.’
He’d seen what the employment agency hadn’t, and there was no explaining it away with clichés. Nell wanted to tell him the whole truth, but that probably wouldn’t be all that wise.
‘My last job was challenging, both professionally and personally. I want to spend six months looking around for another that will...’
‘Just be challenging professionally?’
Nell caught her breath. How did he know so much about human nature, when he seemed so protected from it? ‘Something like that.’