Country Midwife, Christmas Bride

Country Midwife, Christmas Bride
Abigail Gordon

Country Midwife, Christmas Bride

Abigail Gordon

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u97cc0e3e-6f54-5ad2-ad62-389f08f2238d)

Title Page (#u252d567f-38f4-5a8f-ae7d-e9a5e14b52d3)

Dear Reader (#u814d9152-572f-5ed7-b7f9-081e88c2cb34)

About the Author (#ub371b5cd-67f9-5b6f-8f66-61608e9a8b61)

Chapter One (#u91acd777-5d4e-51ad-91f7-712826fe4405)

Chapter Two (#uba4bd455-81d5-5ae9-a752-fe48a7e4be17)

Chapter Three (#u337c711b-fe04-540e-a394-1b360fa8ee78)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

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.

If you have been following the lives and loves of the doctors and nurses in the Cheshire village of Willow-mere as the seasons come and go, I do hope that you have enjoyed my quartet of books about this close community of caring country folk. Maybe soon we will go back there once again to see what has been happening in Willowmere. For now I hope you enjoy COUNTRY MIDWIFE, CHRISTMAS BRIDE, featuring Dr James Bartlett and new midwife Lizzie Carmichael.

Whatever the future holds for the beautiful village of Willowmere, I wish you all happy reading.

Abigail Gordon

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.

If you have been following the lives and loves of the doctors and nurses in the Cheshire village of Willow-mere as the seasons come and go, I do hope that you have enjoyed my quartet of books about this close community of caring country folk. Maybe soon we will go back there once again to see what has been happening in Willowmere. For now I hope you enjoy COUNTRY MIDWIFE, CHRISTMAS BRIDE, featuring Dr James Bartlett and new midwife Lizzie Carmichael.

Whatever the future holds for the beautiful village of Willowmere, I wish you all happy reading.

Abigail Gordon

Abigail Gordon loves to write about the fascinating combination of medicine and romance from her home in a Cheshire village. She is active in local affairs, and is even called upon to write the script for the annual village pantomime! Her eldest son is a hospital manager, and helps with all her medical research. As part of a close-knit family, she treasures having two of her sons living close by, and the third one not too far away. This also gives her the added pleasure of being able to watch her delightful grandchildren growing up.

CHAPTER ONE

THE first thing Lizzie Carmichael did when she arrived back at the cottage after the wedding was to ease her feet out of the elegant but not very comfortable shoes she’d worn as part of her outfit.

The second was to put the kettle on, and while it was coming to the boil there was something else she needed to do—take stock of the rented property that she’d moved into late the night before.

There’d been no time during the morning as the marriage of her friend Dr David Trelawney to Laurel Maddox, a practice nurse, had been arranged for eleven o’clock and by the time she’d sorted out some breakfast in a strange kitchen and dressed carefully for the special occasion it had been time to present herself at the church in the Cheshire village of Willowmere where the wedding was to take place.

The cottage she was renting had been David’s temporary home while he’d been having an old house beside a beautiful lake renovated for Laurel and himself. He’d only moved into his new home the day before, which had made her arrival a last-minute thing.

The wedding had been a delightful occasion and a pleasant introduction to the surrounding countryside, but Lizzie was in Willowmere to work. She’d transferred from St Gabriel’s, the big hospital in the nearest town where she’d been employed ever since she’d qualified as a midwife, and where she’d got to know David, to take up a position in local health care that she just hadn’t been able to refuse.

She’d been offered the chance to take charge of a new maternity centre that would be functioning in just one week’s time in an annexe adjoining the medical practice on the main street of the village.

It would be a place where local mothers who wanted to have their babies at home would not have to rely on the services of a community midwife from the hospital some miles away, but would receive care before the birth, during the birth and in the sometimes traumatic days afterwards on a more personal level and from a much nearer source, under the supervision of a senior midwife.

The project was being funded by Lord Derringham, a local landowner who was on the board of governors at St Gabriel’s, and it was due to be officially opened on the coming Friday by his wife.

Before then Lizzie would be taking a keen interest in the final arrangements that were being put in place and if necessary introducing ideas of her own, while at the same time getting to know the rest of the staff in the village practice.

The person she was going to be involved with the most was the senior partner at the practice, James Bartlett. She would be answerable to him with regard to any emergencies that occurred either before a birth or during it, and would take his advice as to whether the mother-to-be should be transferred to St Gabriel’s with all speed, or just as a necessary precaution.

He’d been best man at the wedding in the old stone church and before the ceremony had begun she’d introduced herself to him. He’d seemed pleasant enough, but there hadn’t been time to say much under the circumstances and she was hoping that come Monday it would be different.

She’d brought some ideas of her own with her and would be eager to discuss them with him, and at the same time be ready to take note of what he had to say from his point of view. Until then she was going to spend what was left of the weekend getting to know the place that was going to be her home for the foreseeable future.

When she’d been asked if she would take on the responsibility of the new venture she’d agreed without hesitation. Since she’d lost Richard, her husband, in a pile-up on the motorway three years ago and in the horrendous aftermath of the accident had also lost the baby that would have been their firstborn, her job had become the only thing she had left to hold on to and she gave it everything she’d got.

David had also worked at St Gabriel’s, then as a registrar, before deciding to move into rural health care, and she was going to be doing the same.

When he’d mentioned that he would soon be vacating the cottage he was renting in Willowmere to start married life in the house by the lake, she’d got in touch with the letting agents and now here she was. Just across the way was one of the special attractions of the place: a flower-filled peace garden that she’d been told was the pride of the local folk who had paid to have it put there and contributed to its upkeep.

She’d sold their house after Richard and the baby had been taken from her, unable to bear seeing the nursery he’d been working on half-finished, and conscious all the time of the empty half of the bed that would always be there to remind her.

The leafy suburb where they’d lived had been left behind and she’d moved into an apartment near the hospital…and at the same time had bought a single bed.

It had been a modern, impersonal sort of place where she’d eaten and slept, and she would probably have stayed there for ever if the Willowmere position hadn’t come up. Now she’d gone to the other extreme and was renting a small limestone cottage in an idyllic Cheshire village that she hadn’t seen until the night before.