A Man To Tame - Rachel Lindsay (Roberta Leigh) (7 page)

I’m delighted I could help you,'
Kate smiled. 'I don't just look after the men at the factory, you know; I'm
also available to their families.’

'I know, and I did go to see Dr
Morris a few times, but I never took to him. He wasn't the sort of man you
could talk to.'

Unwilling to enter into criticism
of another doctor, Kate answered the women yet again that she was available at
any time and drove off, conscious of having made a favourable
impact and hoping something good might develop from it; Yet if she had to rely
on word of mouth before patients started to come to her she might be as old as
Methuselah before she had sufficient work to do; and the one thing she knew for
certain was that she could not continue to go on being idle for much longer.

It was too late to return to the
factory and she went straight home. Only as she parked her car did she notice
the silver-grey Porsche a few yards down the road. Joshua Howard must be
visiting one of her neighbours. Fervently hoping he
would not take it into his head to call and see her at the same time, she
hurried up the path to her front door, afraid lest he come out of one of the
other housed and see her. As she closed the door behind her she gave a sigh of
relief and went into the sitting room. Here the relief gave way to incredulity
as she stared at the tall, black-haired man bent over the desk in the far
corner.

‘What on earth are you doing here?'
she demanded.

Though he had obviously heard her
come in, it was only as she spoke that he turned in her direction, his thick
eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

'I gave Dr Morris a report that had
been, done on factory conditions and he went off
without returning it to me. I need it urgently tonight, so———'

'If you had rung me, I would have
looked it out for you.'

‘I did telephone you, but you'd
already gone out on a call. As I had a key to the house it seemed simpler for
me to come in and get it myself.'

'Do you normally walk uninvited
into other people's homes?' she asked crossly.

‘This is a company house,’ he said
mildly. 'I didn't consider I was trespassing.'

‘That is exactly what you are
doing!' Anger destroyed her discretion. The house may be your property, but
while I'm living here it belongs to me and you have no right whatever to enter
it without being asked.'

Grey eyes clashed with black ones.
The wide, thin-lipped mouth tightened and the soft pink one moved tremulously.
Then the man stepped away from the desk, his massive shoulders almost
obliterating the window behind him.

'I'm sorry, Dr Gibson,' he said in
a voice that was deeper than usual. 'You're quite right, and had I paused to
think about it I would never have barged in like this.' A slight smile
lightened his features. 'I could have caught you in a state of d£shabill6 or something
more embarrassing ! But that's what comes from living
too long surrounded by men. One tends to forget the feminine niceties.’

She was in no way mollified. That
isn't very complimentary to your wife.'

His head tilted back and he seemed
to tower above her, making her more conscious of his height and strong build.
'I have no wife, Dr Gibson. She died six years ago.'

Aghast, Kate stared at him, and
feeing her discomfiture he took pity on it.

'Don't look
so upset. You haven't committed cardinal sin in not knowing.' He glanced back
at the desk and she knew he had not yet found the papers he had come

'As you are here you might as well
get what you want,' she said slowly, and went across the hall to the kitchen.
She half filled the kettle and put it on the gas stove, then took out a cup and
saucer and the coffee jar. She had forgotten to buy any milk and still did not
know whether it was delivered. She really must talk to her neighbours
and find out. It was odd that they had not come in to see her. In a small town
one expected that neighbourliness. It was something
she had subconsciously looked forward to receiving. But then nothing in Llanduff had turned out the way she had anticipated.
Sighing, she spooned coffee into the cup and was turning to put the tin away
when she saw Joshua Howard watching her from the doorway. He diminished it with
his size the way he did the entire house, making it look Lilliputian.

As if he had picked up her thought
he said: 'You're a slip of a thing to be a doctor.'

'It's brain power that counts, not
muscle power.'

‘You still look as if you should be
engaged in more light-hearted pursuits than mending broken bones and curing chickenpox.'

'I can't see your workmen coming
down with chicken-pox.'

‘You know what I mean.'

‘You're^ making it very clear, Mr Howard. judge the contents of a
book by its cover!'

He took the retort in good part and
advanced into the room. She saw him glance at her coffee and hastily asked if
he wanted one. At his nod she got out another cup and saucer.

'It isn't percolated coffee,’ she apologised, 'I don't have any milk either.'

Then I'll skip it entirely. I've
never cultivated a habit for taking it black.'

The Welsh are tea-drinkers, aren't
they?' She was nervous and tried to make conversation. After all, he was her
employer—albeit an unwilling one—and it seemed politic to be polite.

'Yes, we're great tea-lovers,' he
said, 'and home-lovers too.
It's
a throwback to the past when we were
hemmed in by the mountains and turned our homes into our world.' He glanced
round the dingy kitchen. 'I suppose medicine interests you more than
domesticity?'

'I like both.'

His look was sceptical
and she knew he was thinking of the milk less coffee she had offered him. As
she watched him his eyes rested on the boiler, cold and unlit behind her.

'No wonder It's like an iceberg
here!' he exclaimed. 'Don't you ever intend to light that thing?'

'I haven't got round to it yet.'

‘You don't-appear to have got round
to anything.' He was staring past her shoulder at the half-open larder, its bare
shelves clearly visible. ‘You do intend to settle here, don't you, Dr Gibson,
or are you planning Uptake my advice and return to London after all?'

'I have every intention of settling
here, Mr Howard. But it's a question of priorities,
and I consider that my first one is to establish myself in the factory.'

‘You have nothing to establish
there except to take up your position behind
a desk!'
he replied. 'If
you don't do something about heating this house you'll end up with pneumonia.
It will be a case of the doctor being doctored.' His lips
quirked. That wasn't what I meant,' he added quickly.

'I know exactly what you meant, and
you're worrying needlessly. I'm quite happy living here like this.'

'Am I?' Abruptly he stepped past
her and opened a couple of the kitchen cupboards. ‘Not a thing in them. What on
earth have you been living on?'

‘I’ve only been here three days,'
she stormed. 'I intend to go out tomorrow and do some shopping.'

‘You'll need a van!'

'I know exactly what I need. Now if
you don't mind, Mr Howard, I have things to do.'

‘Like making
yourself a dinner of coffee grains and stale biscuits!' One hand in the pocket of his jacket, he surveyed her.
'You disappoint me, Dr Gibson. You look so frail and feminine I thought you
would at least have some of the fair sex's interest in making a home around
yourself. But obviously you're happy to live like an impoverished first year
student.'

Anger choked her and she longed to
tell him how wrong he was; that she hated living in this dreary atmosphere; that
she wanted the house to be warm and bright and the kitchen full of the homely
smells of cooking. But she dared not tell him of her lack of energy. He must
never know the effort it cost her to get out of bed each morning nor the
weariness with which she crawled back into bed at night.

‘Please go,' she said huskily.

Implacably he returned her gaze, then with a shrug he walked out. Kate remained in the
kitchen until she heard the sound of his car die away, and only then did she
return to the sitting room. It was still aromatic from the scent of his Havana
cigar and she longed to open a window and get rid of it. But it was too cold
and instead she went back to the kitchen. These was nothing for her to eat, and
whereas the Kate of four months ago would have found the situation funny and
burst out laughing, the Kate of today found it intolerable and burst into
tears.

At ten o'clock on Saturday morning
Dermot Kane presented himself at the house, disconcerted to find that Kate had
forgotten her promise to go to town with him. 'But we're going shopping for the
house,’ he exclaimed. 'I refuse to believe a woman can forget she's going out
to spend money.'

'I don't feel I have the right to
spend any money on this place.'

‘Why not?'

Reluctant to tell him of her
meeting with Joshua Howard last night, she shrugged aside the question.

'Boiler still not
working?' Dermot asked.

'Don't you start about the boiler,'
she said unthinkingly. 'I had enough of that from Mr
Howard.'

‘When?'

'Last night,' she said shortly.
'He—he called round to collect some papers and said how cold it was here.'

'I'm not surprised. It is cold
here. I meant to get the boiler going for you the night you arrived, but, you
were so determined to show me you could manage on your own that I was scared to
offer my services again. Now I can see you were just being obstinate.'

He marched into the kitchen, stared
at the empty coal scuttle and went out to the backyard. There was a sound of
scraping and a moment later he returned with a bucket of coke.

‘I’ll have the boiler going in no
time,' he promised, and was as good as his word, finding paper and wood,
stacking it competently and setting it alight with amazing ease. In next to no
time the coke was glowing. The radiators should be hot in an hour,' he said as
he washed his hands at the sink. The water is already tepid. Now go and put some
lipstick or whatever it is you have to do, and we'll go out shopping.'

'I don't think——-'

‘You certainly don't think!' he
interrupted. 'So you'd better let me do it for you. Go on,
Kate.'

Docilely she obeyed, enjoying the
sensation of being told what to do even though she knew it would not last. One
day she might be able to take orders from a man but it would have to be someone
of stronger character than Dermot. Putting on the lipstick he had decreed, she
found it strange that she should be so certain that he could never be the man.

‘Very nice too,' he commented as
she came down to the hall where he was waiting for her. 'Have I told you that
you're the prettiest girl in Llanduff ?'

‘Not yet,' she smiled.

‘Well, you are.' He tucked her arm
through his hand led her out to the shooting brake. 'Do you have a list of
things you want to buy?'

‘It
wasn't necessary. In the food line I need most of the
staple things—butter, eggs, soup, sardines——-'

'Don't you like to cook?'

'No,’ she said sharply. 'I don't.'

He gave her a swift look and then
chatted of other things. As on Thursday evening she found him an entertaining
companion, and a surprisingly helpful one too as the morning progressed. The
shopping tired her more than she had anticipated and the crowds in the
supermarket where they went to buy her provisions made her feel claustrophobic,
the way she had felt when she had tried to fight her way out of the blazing
apartment block. Surrounded by a sea of metal baskets and jostling people all
intent on their own affairs, she found reality slipping away from her and tried
to push her way into the street. The
exit
seemed an interminable
distance and her path was blocked by counters stacked with brightly coloured boxes that grew larger as she looked at them; terrifyingly
large
so
that they towered above her like yellow and red sentinels.

‘What's the matter with you, Kate?
You're shaking like a leaf.' Dermot's hand on her forearm brought her back to
sanity and she shook her head.

‘Nothing,’ she mumbled. 'I—it's the
heat in here.’

He caught hold of the trolley she
was pushing and wheeled it to a check-out, looking so much at ease that she
asked him if he was used to doing this sort of thing.

'I often take Mrs
Hughes shopping,’ he explained, 'I find it relaxing to concern myself with
ordinary things like this. It makes a change from all the high-powered
executive mumbo-jumbo I deal with for most of my time,’

'You're certainly a man of many
parts,’ she smiled. 1 suppose you'll confound me next by saying you can cook,’

'That's one thing I can't do. But I
love to eat—which reminds me that it's lunchtime. I know an excellent place,
but we must get there early or we shall never get a table. I suggest we go now
and finish the rest of your shopping this afternoon,’

'I have nothing more to get,’ She hesitated. 'A cushion, perhaps.
Dr Morris seems to have had a penchant for hard backed chairs.’

'Buy yourself a nice relaxing one,’

She shook her head and was glad
when he did not argue with her but instead put the food she had bought in the
back of the shooting brake and then guided her down a side turning to an
unpretentious-looking restaurant.

'Do you have a table by the
window?' he asked the waitress.

They've all been reserved; you're
lucky to get one at all.’

'I know,’ he smiled, and helped
Kate off with her coat before they sat down. There's no menu to choose from,’ he
explained. It's a set meal and you either take it or
leave
it,’

'How odd!'

‘You won't say that when you've
tasted it. This place is only open for lunch, but people come here from miles
around. If's owned and run by a Frenchman and his wife.
She's Welsh,’ he added, 'but he does the cooking.'