A Christmas Romance Read Online Free Page A

patient—Mrs Bennett. It will probably be late by the time I get home.’
    ‘Well, of course we must stop,’ saidTheodosia. ‘You can’t go without your meals, especially when you work all hours.’ She added honestly, ‘I’m quite hungry, too.’
    ‘Splendid. I could hardly eat a steak while you nibbled at a lettuce leaf.’
    He stopped in the market place at Great Dunmow and ushered her into the Starr restaurant. It was a pleasing place, warm and very welcoming, and the food was splendid. While the professor ate his steak, Theodosia enjoyed a grilled sole, and they both agreed that the bread and butter pudding which followed was perfection. They lingered over coffee until Theodosia said, ‘We really ought to go or you’ll never get to bed tonight, not if you are going to see your patient when we get back. It’s after nine o’clock …’
    The professor ignored the time for he was enjoying himself; Theodosia was good company. She was outspoken, which amused him, and, unlike other girls in his acquaintance, she was content with her lot and happy.And she made him laugh. It was a pity that once they got back to London he would probably not see her again; their paths were unlikely to cross.
    The rest of their journey went too swiftly; he listened to Theodosia’s cheerful voice giving her opinion on this, that and the other, and reflected that she hadn’t once talked about herself. When they reached Mrs Towzer’s house, he got out, opened her car door, collected Gustavus in his basket and her bag and followed her up the stairs to her attic. He didn’t go in—she hadn’t invited him anyway—but she offered a hand and thanked him for her supper and the journey. ‘I enjoyed every minute of it,’ she assured him, looking up at him with her gentle grey eyes. ‘And I do hope you won’t be too late going to bed. You need your rest.’
    He smiled then, bade her a quiet goodnight, and went away, back down the stairs.

CHAPTER TWO
    M ONDAY morning again, and a cold one. Theodosia, going shivering to the bathroom on the floor below, envied Gustavus, curled up cosily on the divan. And there was a cold sleet falling as she went to work. A cheerful girl by nature, Theodosia was hard put to view the day ahead with any equanimity. But there was something to look forward to, she reminded herself; the hospital ball was to be held on Saturday and she was going with several of the clerical staff of the hospital.
    She hadn’t expected that she would be asked to go with any of the student doctors or the young men who worked in the wages department. She was on good terms with them all but there were any number of pretty girls fromwhom they could choose partners. All the same, when she had gone to earlier years’ balls, she had had partners enough for she danced well.
    She would need a new dress; she had worn the only one she had on three successive years. She pondered the problem during the day. She couldn’t afford a new dress—that was quite out of the question—but someone had told her that the Oxfam shops in the more fashionable shopping streets quite often yielded treasures …
    On Tuesday, she skipped her midday dinner, begged an extra hour of Miss Prescott and took a bus to Oxford Street.
    The professor, caught in a traffic jam and inured to delays, passed the time glancing idly around him. There was plenty to catch his eye; shoppers thronged the pavement and the shop windows were brilliantly lighted. It was the sight of a gleaming ginger head of hair whichcaught his attention. There surely weren’t two girls with hair that colour …?
    The Oxfam lights were of the no-nonsense variety; the shopper could see what he or she was buying. Theodosia, plucking a dove-grey dress off the rails, took it to the window to inspect it better and he watched her as she examined it carefully—the label, the price tag, the seams … It was a pity that the traffic moved at last and he drove on, aware of an unexpected concern that she