Swallowbrook's Winter Bride. Abigail Gordon

pleasantness and a warm welcome to Swallowbrook, while hoping that she would be able to hide her true feelings, and with those kinds of thoughts to cope with she got up and put the kettle on for a second time.

      Behind the dividing wall Nathan was not asleep but Toby was, curled up and content after having drunk some of the milk that Libby had provided. As the man looked down at the child the stresses and strains, the sorrow and confusion of past months seemed less dreadful because he was back home in Swallowbrook once more.

      The last time he’d seen Libby Hamilton had also been from the shelter of a porch, but not the one next door. It had been in the shadowed stone porch of the village church after he’d flung himself out of the taxi that had brought him from the airport, hoping that he might get the chance to speak to her before she became the wife of Ian Jefferson.

      He’d needed to know if it was because of his leaving that she was marrying the pleasure-loving owner of the local stables … on the rebound. Or if the feelings that she’d said she had for himself had been just a passing attraction that she’d soon moved on from and there was no longer any need for him to carry the burden of guilt that his leaving her had created.

      A delayed flight had denied him the chance to clear the air between them and he’d arrived at the church just as the vicar had pronounced them man and wife. As he’d watched Libby smile up at her new husband he’d turned and departed as quickly as he’d come, deciding in that moment he had his answer. Her feelings for him had been a passing fancy and a prize fool he would have appeared if anyone had seen him hovering in the church porch for a glimpse of her.

      When he’d reached the lych gate in the churchyard a bus had pulled up beside him on the pavement and he’d boarded it, uncaring where it was bound in his haste to get away before he was seen.

      As he’d waited for a flight to take him back to where he’d come from he’d thought sombrely that his arrogance all that time ago when in her despair at the thought of him going away Libby had confessed her love for him and been told he wasn’t interested, had only been exceeded by him expecting her to want to talk to him of all people on her wedding day.

      She had turned up at the airport on the morning he had left for Africa and been the only one there. He’d said his farewells to his father the night before and told everyone else he didn’t want any send-offs, so it had been a surprise, and he’d had to admit a pleasant one, to see her there.

      They had been due to call his flight any time and during those last few moments in the UK Libby had begged him not to go. ‘I love you, Nathan,’ she’d pleaded. ‘I always have. Until I awoke this morning I had accepted that you were going out of my life. Then suddenly I 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 blonde doctor from the practice had been his first choice.

      Marriage hadn’t made him any less keen on spending endless hours on the golf course, sailing on the lake by Swallowbrook and, while his staff looked after the stables, riding around the countryside on various of his horses, which had left him with little time to comprehend the burden of care that Libby carried with her position at the practice, a position that left her with little time or energy to share in his constant round of pleasure.

      It had been one night whilst out riding that he had been thrown from a frisky mare and suffered serious injuries that had proved fatal, leaving her to face another gap in her life that was sad and traumatic, but not as heartbreaking as being separated from Nathan.

      When she’d drunk the teapot dry Libby went to bed for the second time and after tossing and turning for most of the night drifted into sleep as dawn was breaking over the fells. She was brought into wakefulness a short time later by voices down below at the bottom of the drive and when she went to the window the dairy farmer who delivered her milk was chatting to Nathan, who, judging from the amount of milk he was buying off him, was making sure that he and Toby would not have to go begging for his bedtime drink again.

      Not wanting to be seen watching him, she went slowly back to bed, grateful that it was Saturday with no need to get up if she didn’t want to, and as a pale sun filtered into her bedroom she began to go over the astonishing events of the previous night.

      Nathan is back in Swallowbrook, a voice in her mind was saying, but not because of you. He has a family. He has made his choice and it has to be better than the