Annie Claydon - From Doctor To Princess?

Dr Penelope. He didn’t dare call her that, she’d told him she preferred Nell. Which was charming in its own way but didn’t seem to sum her up quite so well. Fierce, beautiful and unstoppable.

It was a little easier to think when she was out of the room. A little easier to remind himself of the flat in London, right at the top of a tenement block, where the lift sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

A little pang of regret for times that had seemed altogether simpler. The sofa that had creaked slightly under the weight of two people too tired to move and yet happy to just be together. The awful green bedspread that Anna had chosen, and which hadn’t matched the curtains but which Hugo had liked because she had. It had been the one time in Hugo’s life when duty hadn’t weighed heavy on his shoulders. All he’d needed to do was work hard at medical school and love the woman who shared his life.

He’d brought Anna back to Montarino, two newly minted doctors, full of so many possibilities and dreams. The ring on her finger had been replaced by something more befitting a princess, but Anna had always preferred the old one, which Hugo had saved for out of his allowance. It wasn’t until she’d left that Hugo had stopped to think that maybe she had been unhappy at the palace.

And that had been his doing. Anna had trained to be a doctor, not a princess. She had fitted the bill well enough, but it hadn’t been her mission in life. Hugo had been too intent on pursuing his own mission to see that until it had been too late and Anna had been packing her bags, a ticket back to London with her name on it lying on the bed.

‘If you’d just looked, Hugo, you would have seen that this isn’t enough for me. I have a career, too.’

There had been nothing that he could say because he had known in his heart that Anna was right. He’d let her go, and had watched from afar as she’d risen to the top of her chosen field, like a cork held underwater for too long and bouncing to the surface of a fast-flowing stream. One that had taken her away from him, and had never brought her back again.

Since then, Hugo had confined himself to women whose career aspirations were limited to being a princess. And if he hadn’t found anyone who truly understood him yet, then one of these days his duty would outweigh the yearning for love and he’d marry regardless. It had never made its way to the top of his to-do list, though, and it could wait.

The sound of a chair being pushed across the carpet towards his broke his reverie. It seemed that the doctor was ready for him now.

‘Would you unbutton your shirt for me, please?’ Nell sat down opposite him, briskly reaching into a small nylon bag to retrieve a stethoscope.

Suddenly he felt slightly dizzy. At the hospital, he’d submitted to one examination after the other, distancing himself from the doctors and nurses who quietly did their jobs while he thought about something else. But Nell was different. She challenged him, demanding that he take notice of what was happening to him.

‘My notes are...somewhere...’ He looked around, trying to remember where he’d left the envelope.

‘I have them. They were emailed through to me yesterday. I’d like to check on how you are now.’

Whether he’d managed to throw any spanners in the works. Her meaning shone clear in her light brown eyes, almost amber in the sunshine that streamed through the high windows.

He looked away from her gaze. Hugo had no qualms about his body, he knew that it was as good as the next man’s and that he didn’t have to think twice before he allowed anyone to see it. But things were different now. The new, unhealed scar felt like overwhelming evidence of his greatest weakness.

Nell sat motionless opposite him, clearly willing to wait him out if need be. He reached for the buttons of his shirt, his fingers suddenly clumsy.

* * *

Hugo was finding this hard. Nell pretended not to notice, twisting at the earpieces of her stethoscope as if she’d just found something wrong with them. The very fact that he seemed about to baulk at the idea of a simple examination told her that Hugo wasn’t as confident about his recovery as he liked to make out.

That was okay. Nell would have been more comfortable if she could maintain a degree of professional detachment too, but that wasn’t going to work. The main thing at the moment was to maintain their tenuous connection, because if that was lost then so was their way forward.

‘What about official engagements?’ She’d pretty much exhausted all the things that might be wrong with her stethoscope, and perhaps talking would put him at ease.

‘My father’s beaten you to it. He’s taken care of all my official engagements for the next month. There are various members of the family stepping in.’

‘I’ll have to be quicker off the mark next time,’ Nell commented lightly, trying not to notice that he was slipping his shirt off, revealing tanned skin and a mouth-wateringly impressive pair of shoulders. She concentrated on the dressing on Hugo’s chest, peeling it back carefully.

‘There’s still the hospital project.’ He shot her a grin and Nell felt her hands shake slightly. Being this close to Hugo added a whole new catalogue of ways in which he made her feel uneasy. The scent of his skin. The way she wanted to touch him...

‘What does that involve?’ Nell did her best to forget about everything else and concentrate on the surgical incision on Hugo’s chest.

‘We’re building a new wing at the hospital. It’s going to be a specialist cardiac centre, with outpatient services, a family resource department and a unit for long-stay paediatric patients.’

‘That sounds like a very worthwhile project.’

‘Yes, it is. And there’s no alternative but for me to be out there, raising money for it.’

‘There’s always an alternative...’ Nell murmured the words, clipping the stethoscope into her ears and pressing the diaphragm to his chest.

‘The work’s already started and we’ve run into some unforeseen problems. There’s an underground chamber that needs to be investigated and made safe. With men and equipment already on-site, every day of delay costs money, even without the cost of the new works. If we don’t raise that money, we can’t afford to complete the project.’

‘And you’re the only one who can do it?’

‘No, but I have the contacts to raise what we need in the time frame we need it. We’re looking for large donations.’

Nell frowned. There might be a grain of truth in Hugo’s assertion that he was indispensable and couldn’t take a break, although she still wasn’t ruling out the possibility that pig-headedness and ego were also factors. ‘I don’t know much about these things but...couldn’t your father help out with a loan?’

‘I’m sure he would have made a donation, and I would have, too. But the Constitution of Montarino forbids it.’

‘Really? You can’t give money to charity?’ Nell’s eyebrows shot up.

‘We can and we do, but it’s very strictly regulated. The royal family is only allowed to donate five percent of the total cost of a public endeavour, and that ceiling has almost been reached already. You can blame my great-great-grandfather for that—he tried to buy up key parts of the country’s infrastructure in an attempt to maintain his influence, and so the legislation was rushed through. For all the right reasons, in my opinion, but at the moment it’s an inconvenience.’

‘But it’s okay if you raise the money?’

‘Yes. History and politics always make things a great deal more complicated.’

As a doctor, this wasn’t complicated at all. But Nell could feel herself being dragged into a world of blurred lines. Hugo’s charm, the way her fingers tingled when she touched his skin. That was one line she couldn’t cross.