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Authors: Kate Hardy

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BOOK: A Christmas Knight
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‘My parents and my elder brother, Oliver,' Dominic said. The photograph was just over two years old. When Oliver had still been at the top of his game, a brilliant surgeon and a brilliant horseman. Guilt flooded through him.

‘Mum's got a brother, too. I'd like a brother,' Tyler said reflectively. ‘Or a little sister, even.'

Dominic glanced at Louisa, who'd gone very still.

Tyler shrugged. ‘But I guess Mum would have to get married before she could have a baby.'

‘I'm fine as I am,' Louisa said, though her voice sounded slightly hollow. ‘Those are nice dogs.'

Dominic recognised the distraction technique for what it was.

And, to his relief, it worked. ‘They're way cool.' Tyler looked longingly at the photograph. ‘I'd love a puppy. A wolfhound puppy. That's what a knight would have.'

‘We can't have a dog while we're renting. But if we buy a house next year, we might be able to have a dog,' Louisa said, ruffling his hair. ‘But not a wolfhound. Something smaller.'

‘Absolutely. Having lived with a big dog, I can tell you, if a Great Dane sneaks upstairs and settles on your bed in the crook of your knees, you always end up on the floor when he stretches out. Fudge here is a nightmare for pushing you out of bed,' Dominic said lightly, and to his relief the strain in Louisa's eyes eased.

Well, now he knew what Tyler wanted. A house with a garden, a dog, and a family.

But what did Louisa want? And—at heart—what did
he
really want?

Yet he knew he wasn't quite ready to find out the answers.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
HE
following day found Louisa in Minors.

‘I think I've got something in my eye,' Tim Kershaw, her patient, said.

Given how red and inflamed his eye was, she was fairly sure he was right.

‘I did rinse my eye out, but it feels like I've got a boulder in there,' he added with a grimace.

A few questions elicited the information that he worked on a building site and he'd forgotten to put protective goggles on. To her relief, he didn't wear contact lenses and he wasn't allergic to any medication. ‘What I need to do is have a close look at your eye,' she said. ‘I'm going to put some drops in—they'll sting a bit, but then it'll stop hurting and I can examine you properly.'

Though the examination showed her nothing. ‘I'm going to need to put some dye in your eye,' she said, ‘to show up if there are any scratches. If whatever went into your eye left a scratch behind, it'll feel as if there's something still in there, even though it's gone.'

‘I'm in your hands.'

The dye showed her exactly what she'd suspected. ‘You've got a corneal abrasion,' she said. ‘It'll clear up in a few days, but I'm going to prescribe you some antibiotic ointment and some painkillers. And I need you to wear
an eye patch until you get the sensation back in your eye, otherwise you'll risk getting something else in it and you won't feel it so it could cause a lot more damage.'

When she'd finished fitting the eye patch, Tim smiled at her. ‘Thanks. I already feel a lot better.' He paused, and his gaze flicked to her left hand. ‘Um, can I take you for a drink tonight, to say thank you?'

‘There's no need,' Louisa said with a smile. ‘It's my job.'

‘OK—as a way of getting to know you, then?'

Louisa kept the polite, professional smile on her face. ‘It's very sweet of you to ask, but I can't.'

‘Because I'm a patient and you're a nurse?' Tim guessed. ‘But when I leave here, I won't be your patient any more.'

‘It's not that,' Louisa said, thinking of Dominic. ‘I'm already involved with someone. And it's pretty serious.'

 

Dominic, who was walking through Minors on his way to Reception, heard every single word. And he wondered just who Louisa had meant. Her son? Or—his heart skipped a beat—him? Over the last couple of weeks, the three of them had grown closer. He and Louisa had held hands at the cinema while Tyler had been glued to the screenplay, then gone out for a pizza and talked about their favourite bits of the film. They'd gone for long walks, crunching through autumn leaves while Tyler searched for conkers, or looking for unusual pebbles on the beach. And then there had been the afternoon when they'd gone to the pool and he'd raced Tyler, giving the little boy a head start. ‘Because I'm bigger than you, so it takes me fewer strokes to get to the end, and I've been swimming for a lot longer than you have. Giving you a head start makes it fair—it's not me patronising you,' he'd explained. ‘And if you beat
me, it isn't because I've let you win: it's because you swam better than I did.'

He'd beaten Tyler the first two times. Just by a couple of strokes; although he hadn't wanted to patronise the little boy, he also hadn't wanted to wreck Tyler's confidence. And then he'd spent a quarter of an hour teaching Tyler how to breathe more efficiently between strokes, praising him for trying hard and gently correcting him until he'd got it right.

On their very last race, the little boy had beaten him by a single hand, and Dominic had whooped, lifted him up and spun him round in a victory dance.

Louisa had been close to tears. And, later that evening, she'd held him tightly. ‘What you did today…that meant a lot to Tyler.'

‘Me, too,' he'd admitted. ‘I enjoyed it.' Though he hadn't examined his feelings too closely. They were too new, too far out of his experience, for him to want to analyse them.

Since that afternoon, they'd actually hugged each other goodbye in front of Tyler. And their goodbye kisses when he saw Louisa home after a team night out were starting to linger.

Pretty serious?

Maybe.

Though he was still far from ready to go public.

Apart from anything else, he hadn't told her about Oliver. And he knew he really had to tell her. Sooner, rather than later.

 

‘Mum's found something way cool to do at half-term,' Tyler told Dominic at the stables on Saturday afternoon.

Dominic looked up from where he was cleaning his saddle. ‘What's that?'

‘We're going to see the jousting at Amberhurst Castle.' Tyler hopped from one foot to the other. ‘I can't wait! Do you want to come with us? There's room in Mum's car.'

Oh, hell. How could he have forgotten? The last joust of the season, in the October half-term holidays, just before the ground started getting too boggy from the rain or too hard from the frosts.

Well, he hadn't actually forgotten. He'd deliberately blanked it from his mind. Especially as the joust hadn't been held at Amberhurst for the last two years.

‘Thanks for inviting me, but I can't make it,' he said. ‘Though you'll have a great time. There's always a re-enactment group camping in the castle grounds on the medieval weekends. You'll see the smith making the armour and the horseshoes; that's always good to watch.'

‘Did you ever joust there?' Tyler asked.

Dominic shifted uncomfortably. ‘Yes.' More than that, Amberhurst was his family home. He really had to get round to telling Louisa that; but he was trying to choose his words carefully. And there were other things he needed to tell her first.

‘So you know the people who are jousting?' Tyler asked.

There was no point in lying. ‘Yes.'

‘And you jousted against them?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you win?'

This was torture. Why hadn't Louisa got her usual second sense and come to the rescue? But she was chatting to Bea, with her back to him. ‘Usually,' Dominic said, not wanting to push the little boy away but, at the same time, desperately needing a change of subject.

‘So why don't you start jousting again?' Tyler asked. ‘I know you said someone got hurt, but jousting's really
safe now. It's not like when Henry the Second was killed by splinters from a lance going through his eye into his brain.'

‘Back in 1559, you mean? I'm not
quite
that old,' Dominic said wryly.

But Tyler's focus was elsewhere. ‘They have rubber bits on the end of the lances, and the end bit's made of really soft wood, so it splinters easily and absorbs some of the impact energy. And knights have better helmets now, the frog-shaped ones so they can see through the slit when they lean forward, but they sit up at the last minute to stop the splinters coming through.'

Dominic couldn't help smiling at Tyler's earnestness. The boy had certainly read up about the subject. But how could he answer the question without dragging up things he'd rather not talk about? ‘Ty, I know this sounds like a copout, but sometimes grown-up things are complicated.'

‘Grown-ups make things
too
complicated,' Tyler said. ‘If you miss jousting, and your friends who do jousting miss you, it's obvious that you should do it again. Then everyone will be happy.'

If only it were that simple. Dominic sighed. ‘I'll think about it, OK? I'm not making any promises.'

‘Any promises for what?' Louisa asked, coming over to them.

‘I asked Dominic if he'd come to Amberhurst with us, but he's busy,' Tyler said. ‘And he says he'll think about jousting again.'

‘About time too,' Andy said, coming in to the tack room and clearly overhearing the tail end of the conversation.

‘Hmm. Well, I have a horse to see to,' Dominic said, regardless of the fact that he hadn't finished cleaning his tack. He needed some space. ‘Catch you later.'

He thought about it for the rest of the day.

Jousting.

He'd missed it, badly. The speed and the thrill. And if Oliver could bear to have the jousting at Amberhurst again…would seeing his brother back in the saddle rub extra salt in his wounds? Or did he, like Andy, think that Dominic's sacrifice was self-indulgent and pointless?

There was only one way to find out.

When Dominic got home, later that afternoon, he picked up the phone and called his brother.

 

‘You're jousting at Amberhurst?' Louisa asked, surprised.

‘Yes.'

‘But—I thought you didn't joust any more. What changed your mind?'

‘Certain people nagged me about it.'

She bit her lip. ‘Tyler?'

‘He wasn't the only one.' Dominic looked at her. ‘How would you feel about me borrowing your son for part of the day?'

‘You're going to take him jousting? When Tyler tells me there's a closing speed of
seventy miles an hour
?' She couldn't help her voice squeaking.

‘Of course not. He's a novice rider—no way is he ready to handle a lance,' he reassured her. ‘No, I just wondered if he'd like to be my page and hold my standard when I'm on the field.' He smiled. ‘Actually, I've got a pretty good idea what his answer would be if I asked him. But I wanted to run the idea past you, first, to see how you felt about it.'

How did she feel about it? Panicky, fearful that her little boy could get hurt. But she also knew that it would do wonders for his confidence and his social skills, so she wouldn't stand in his way. And she appreciated the fact that Dominic had been thoughtful enough to take her feelings
into consideration and ask her first. ‘He'd be thrilled to bits. But that's all he'd have to do, hold your standard?'

‘And give Pegasus a good-luck pat. Andy's going to be my squire for the day and check my armour; Tyler will be perfectly safe with him, staying next to the lances at the side of the tilting ground. He won't be anywhere near the horses—or the splinters when the lances make a strike.'

It was as if he'd zeroed in on her fears and answered them all. ‘I don't know what to say.'

‘Yes would be a good start. Oh, and that also means that you won't need to get a ticket for the event. You'll both be my guests.'

She shook her head. ‘That's too generous.'

‘Actually, it's entirely selfish,' he said. ‘Because this will be the first time I've jousted since…' His voice caught.

‘Since the accident?' All she knew about it was that someone had been physically hurt; she had no idea who, or how badly, but it had clearly left deep emotional scars on Dominic. She took his hand. ‘Do you want to talk about it?'

‘No,' he said, and sighed. ‘But I will, because I need to be fair with you. Just so you know what you're getting into. And I'll understand if you change your mind about coming to Amberhurst and you don't want to see me any more outside work—or even work with me.'

She frowned. ‘Whatever it is, it can't possibly be that bad.' She was absolutely sure of that. The man she'd grown to know better was a good man. ‘And I happen to like working with you. You're clear on your instructions, you treat the patients and staff with respect, and your mind works the same way that mine does.'

He took a deep breath. ‘The accident was just over two years ago. Oliver—my elder brother—is now in a wheelchair. And it was my fault.'

She didn't understand how that could be, but she realised that he needed to tell her what had happened in his own time and his own way, so she remained silent.

‘I wanted to beat him. We'd had this sibling rivalry thing going for years—he'd do something, and I'd try to better it. Though not in a nasty way,' he added swiftly. ‘It wasn't putting each other down. I guess we pushed each other to be the best we could be. Being four years older than me, Oliver was always the trailblazer, but I was determined I wasn't going to be left behind; and, the better I did, he harder he blazed the trail because it spurred him on to be even better. I did think about becoming a vet, specialising in horses, but listening to him talk about his course when he was a student decided me: I wanted to help people, too, the way my brother did. That's why I became a doctor.'

‘Was he an emergency specialist, too?'

‘No, he was a cardiac surgeon,' Dominic explained. ‘I thought about specialising in surgery, but when I did my pre-reg training I found that I liked the rush of the emergency department. I talked it over with Oliver, and he said that I'd be an excellent surgeon, but he thought the variety of the emergency department would suit me a lot better. And he was right. I love what I do.' He sighed. ‘But this rivalry thing—it meant we had to be as good as each other outside work, too. Oliver used to play rugby. He was an Oxford Blue, and he could've made a career out of it, but he wanted to be a surgeon. So he used to play for a Sunday side, and coach the kids on Saturdays.' He dragged in a breath. ‘For me, it was horses. I used to ride, do a bit of com petition jumping and eventing, but then some of my friends joined this re-enactment group and dragged me along to see the jousting.' He smiled wryly. ‘When I was Tyler's age, I was just like him. Crazy about horses, used
to pretend I was a knight. I used to dress up with a bucket on my head and carry a mop around.'

She could just imagine it. He would've looked adorable.

‘Then, at the re-enactment event, I discovered I'd never really grown out of it. When I got the chance to try jousting for myself…I loved it. I dragged Oliver along, and he couldn't resist it, either. He found a club in London and trained there. It's a buzz like nothing else. Speed, precision, and a special bond with your horse.'

‘And yet you gave it up.' She was having real trouble understanding that. The way he talked about it made her think he'd loved the sport almost as much as he loved his job. ‘Why?'

BOOK: A Christmas Knight
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