LITMIR.BIZ

       Dear Reader

      Having been brought up happily enough in a Lancashire mill town, where fields and trees were sparse on the landscape, I now live in the countryside and find much pleasure in the privilege of doing so. It gives me the opportunity to write about village life with its caring communities and beautiful surroundings.

      So, dear reader, welcome to the second of my four stories about Willowmere, a picturesque village tucked away in the Cheshire countryside. During the changing seasons you will meet the folk who live and work there, and share in their lives and loves.

      Spring has come to Willowmere when Georgina and Ben meet up again, after a long separation brought about by the kind of heartbreak that either makes a stronger bond between those experiencing it or, as in their case, drives them apart. In A BABY FOR THE VILLAGE DOCTOR, they discover that the flame of love still burns brightly.

      Happy reading!

       Abigail Gordon

       The Willowmere Village Stories Look out for David and Laurel’s story in the summer!

      A BABY FOR THE VILLAGE DOCTOR

      BY

      ABIGAIL GORDON

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND IRENE SWARBRICK RNA SWWJ

      CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS a bright spring morning but as Georgina Adams drove along the rough track that led to the gamekeeper’s cottage on the Derringham Estate she was oblivious to what was going on around her.

      April was just around the corner and daffodils and narcissi were making bright splashes of colour in cottage gardens. Fresh green shoots were appearing in hedgerows and fields where lambs covered in pale wool tottered on straight little legs beside their mothers.

      On a normal day she would have been entranced by the sights around her but today the beauty of the countryside in spring wasn’t registering.

      The only new life that Georgina was aware of was the one she was carrying inside her. She was pregnant and though there was joy in knowing that she was going to have a child, there were clouds in her sky.

      Ben had never replied to the letter she’d sent, explaining that they needed to talk, and that she would travel to London to see him if he would let her know when it would be convenient. The weeks were going by and he didn’t know about the baby.

      She’d only written the once, and it had been very difficult, agonising over what to say and how to say it, because she wanted to tell him that he was going to be a father again face to face. He was entitled to know that he’d made her pregnant, and she needed to be there to see his reaction.

      In the end she’d written just a few bald sentences, sealed the envelope before she changed her mind, and gone straight away to post it to an address that she knew as well as she knew her own name. He hadn’t replied, and it was now beginning to look as if that was the end of it.

      The fact that the baby’s father didn’t know she was pregnant was the biggest cloud in her sky, but the hurt and loss from over three years ago had never gone away. Remembering how Ben had been then, it wasn’t altogether surprising that he hadn’t been in touch, but she did wish he had.

      Half of the time she was gearing herself up for the role of single parent and for the rest she was battling with the longing to have Ben beside her as she awaited the birth of their second child.

      At almost eight months pregnant there was no way of concealing it and she was conscious all the time of the curious stares of those she came into contact with. She’d lived alone since she’d joined the village medical practice three years ago as its only woman doctor and had kept her private life strictly under wraps.

      To her colleagues at the practice, her patients and the friends she’d made since settling in the Cheshire village of Willowmere, Georgina was pleasant and caring, but that was as far as it went.

      The only person locally who knew anything about what was going on in her life was James Bartlett, who was in charge of village health care and lived next door to the surgery with his two children.

      He had told her that if she ever needed a friend, she could rely on him, and had left it at that. James hadn’t asked who the father of her baby was, but she knew he would have seen her around the village with Nicholas during the weeks leading up to Christmas and it would have registered that he’d not been on the scene since the New Year.

      Soon she and James would have to discuss her future role in the practice, but before that happened, replacements were required for two staff members who had recently gone to work in Africa.

      When she stopped the car outside the grace-and-favour cottage of the woman she’d come to visit, the husband came striding out, dressed in a waterproof jacket with boots on his feet, a cap on his head and to complete the outfit he had a gun tucked under his arm.

      Dennis Quarmby was gamekeeper for Lord Derringham, who owned Kestrel Court, the biggest residence in the area, and with it miles of the surrounding countryside. But at that moment the main concern of the man approaching was not grouse or pheasants, or those who came to poach them on his employer’s estate.

      His wife was far from well and on seeing that the lady doctor from the practice had arrived in answer to an urgent request, he waited for her to get out of the car before going on his way.

      ‘Our eldest girl is with the missus,’ he told her, his anxiety revealed in his expression. ‘I wanted to be here when you came but Lord Derringham has just been on the phone to me because someone has been breaking down the fences up on the estate and he wants me there right away. He rang off before I could tell him I was waiting for a doctor to visit Christine. Her eyes and mouth are so dry she’s in real distress, and with the rheumatoid arthritis, as well, she’s feeling very low.’

      Georgina nodded. She’d seen Christine Quarmby a few times recently and on one occasion had had to tell her that she was suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Now there was this and there could be a connection that had serious implications.

      When

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