The letter had said that someone would be waiting for Celia at the station, but when her train arrived, she was the only person who got off and the platform was empty. She walked down the platform to look for the waiting room and found only the gates to the road. The station, it seemed, was too small and unimportant to have one. Nor was there such a useful creature as a porter to make enquiries to, or to help her carry the over-stuffed carpet bag which held all her worldly belongings and bumped against her knees with every step. She hooked it over her elbow and went through the gates and out into the street beyond. There was nobody waiting here either. The street was empty but for a taxi cab standing on the corner, the horse idly flicking its tail, the driver eating a sandwich with grubby fingers. Surely he could not be the man they had sent to meet her?

He swallowed the last three mouthfuls of his sandwich in one, licked the crumbs from his fingers, and doffed his cap at Celia. "You need to get somewhere, Miss?"

Celia shook her head hurriedly. She did not have the money for a taxi. She hadn't even ha'pence in her pocket for a bun during the wait at Holbeck Station. Besides, they had said that they would send someone to meet her.

"I don't suppose," Celia said in a voice unnaturally high and tight from tiredness and nerves, "that anybody has been waiting in the street? My train... My train I think was a little late."

The driver shook his head. "Been no 'ne but me the past hour gone. But I can take you, Miss, wherever it is you need."

"I don't have any money."

"Ah well," the driver said pragmatically, "you'd best walk then."

Celia was not prepared to walk. She looked around her. The station stood at the edge of a small, quiet village, and the street was nothing more than a row of shabby houses that soon faded into farmland. A sign above the door of one house proclaimed beer, tea, and refreshments. Celia crossed the road, letting her carpet bag slip back down to her hand and bang once more against her knees. Perhaps they were waiting for her in there. When she opened the door, a bell jangled but no urgent movements came from within. It was some time before her eyes adjusted to the dim light and she could make out the shape and form of a woman leaning against the counter of a bar, reading a book.

"Excuse me," Celia said.

The woman glanced up. "Pint?"

"No, no." Celia looked around. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the light, she could see that every crooked chair was vacant, every ale-stained table bare. "I... I don't suppose somebody was waiting here? For, um, for me?"

"Maybe. Who are you?" the woman asked.

"The new nurse for the cottage hospital over at Fernleigh Dean."

"That so? No, no one was waiting for you." The woman looked pointedly at a tray of bilious looking rock cakes sitting beside her on the bar. "Want a bun? Tea?"

Celia shook her head. Even if she had money, nothing could have tempted her to the rock cakes. "I need to find the person who was sent to pick me up."

"Good luck, love," the woman said absently, returning her attention to her book.

Celia went back out into the street. It seemed even sleepier than before. Dead leaves rustled in the gutters. A crow cawed from a tree. She wandered down the street until the row of houses stopped abruptly at a field with two sleeping horses, and then returned to the station. Nobody. Not even the taxi driver, who had disappeared, perhaps in search of a livelier thoroughfare.

Celia's inner child — that spoiled beast, which she had carried around inside her for twenty years now — welled up with tears and fear. No one was coming to pick her up. She had come to the wrong place. The cottage hospital at Fernleigh Dean did not want her after all.

She quieted that child the same way she always had, by digging the nails of her left hand sharply into the flesh of her right wrist. The tears burned in her eyes but did not fall.

I'll go back into the station, she told herself. I'll find the signalman and ask him if he has a telephone or can send a telegram.

A one-platform station in a half-penny town isn't going to have a telephone, her inner child wailed, but Celia told her to shut up and crossed the road.

As she did so, a motor car came roaring around the corner of the street. Its horn bellowed, and Celia flung herself backwards out of the way. The car swerved then jerked to a stop in a cloud of dust, and a man leaped out.

"Are you mad?" he shouted. "I could've killed you!"

Celia trembled on the ground and tried to make sure that she wasn't really dead. Her wrists hurt for breaking her fall. Her carpet bag had split open and was spilling her thick, ugly, practical, worsted stockings into the gutter.

The man strode up to Celia and stooped, one gloved hand raising her chin so he could look her in the eyes. He had searching, pale grey eyes, set under winged, angular black brows.

"What are you doing?" Celia asked.

"Making sure you don't have a concussion."

"I don't."

"How would you know?"

"Because I didn't hit my head. I'm a nurse," she added. "I do know."

The man drew back. "Oh." He looked at his car and then back at Celia. "You're my nurse."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I was sent to pick up the new nurse from the station," he said. "But we're late. We'd better go. Unless you're hurt?"

"I'm alright." Celia stood and brushed wet leaf litter from her skirt. She did feel alright, now that she knew she was where she was meant to be. "We can go."

"Where're your things?" The man looked at the carpet bag on the ground. "Sending them on?"

"I... I don't have any other things." Celia hastily bundled her stockings back into her carpet bag and clasped it shut. "This is what I've got."

"Then you can keep it on your feet," the man said. "Come on. We've got a drive ahead of us."

He turned his back on her and strode to the motor car, pulling the passenger door open on his way. Celia heaved her carpet bag into the car then clambered rather nervously up into the seat. She had never ridden in a car before. The man stopped around the front of the car to crank the beast up, and then, when it was purring, ran for the driver's door and vaulted over it into the seat. It occurred to Celia that she did not know the man's name. She opened her mouth to ask, but it was lost in the roar of the engine.

Celia clutched at the side of the car as they ripped down the quiet country lanes. Her hat lifted in the wind and she grabbed at it and shoved it between her knees then resumed her hold on the side of the car. They flashed past fields of startled cows and muddy rows where the potatoes had been harvested.

I hope I've found the right person, Celia's inner child said anxiously. I hope this man is taking me to the right place.

As the drive went on and the afternoon grew dark, as they drove out into darkening woods and hills, Celia grew more anxious. Perhaps it was some other nurse the man had been meant to pick up. Perhaps he was taking her to the wrong hospital — or a mental asylum. There was no opportunity to ask him, for the roar of the car engine prevented any conversation.

And then — quite suddenly — they were in a village and the car was slowing. It was a nice little village, a sort of up-and-coming village, new houses close to the road with very shiny doorbells and shoe scrapers, and a high street all yellow gas and blue shadows in the dusk, and then older houses, rich, monied houses scattered on the hills beyond. The car puttered down a cobbled lane running down the backsides of some of those new houses and into a yard between the back of a larger, older house and a grand, new brick building with many windows. Here, a sign planted in the yellow earth proclaimed: Fernleigh Dean Cottage Hospital, Back Entry. Celia was so relieved she let go of her grip on the side of the car, though by now they were moving so slowly it was not needed. She pulled her hat back onto her head, grimacing as she found that the wind had queered and bird-nested her hair.

"That's the hospital," the man said, pointing at the brick building. "Go in through the black door then up to the first floor to the matron's office. She'll set you straight."

Celia fumbled with the door of the car and found she did not know how to open it. The man impatiently leaned across her and pushed, and the door swung open.

"I've got to put her away in the coach house," he said. "Go on."

Celia picked up her carpet bag and gingerly climbed down to the ground. Now that the world had stopped moving so fast beneath her, her legs felt wobbly.

"Um," she said.

"What is it?" the man demanded.

"Who are you?"

His angular black eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Nicholas Fane. Doctor Fane. Didn't you know?"

"You never told me," Celia said, but it was lost as the car started up again and Dr Fane directed it gently towards an old stable.

Celia's inner child was well-accustomed to being ignored and made no complaint. The adult Celia, however, spared the quiet thought that Doctor Fane was very rude; he was no doubt one of those doctors who thought that he was the only person in the ward who could ever possibly be busy or important.

As the adult Celia never spoke her thoughts, she hooked her carpet bag over her elbow and headed for the hospital.

She had entered, it seemed, by the offices. A narrow corridor, cluttered with rows of coats on hooks and boots lined against the wall. The smell of stewing cabbage mingling with the smell of hot, acid laundry. Celia went past it all and came out into a large, wood-panelled front hall. A notice board by the bottom of the stairs gave a list of rooms — Accident Ward, Committee Room, Sitting Room, Wash Closet, Women's Ward, Men's Ward, Matron's Office — and subsequent arrows. Celia followed the arrow next to Matron's Office up to the first floor. Here, she could hear the usual hospital noises. A baby crying. Men talking. Somebody groaning. She ignored them all and went to the door labelled Matron's Office directly by the stairs. She peeped through to see a nice, comfortable study, where a woman sat at a desk so intent in writing in a book that Celia had the luxury of several moments' study. She was tall, middle-aged, dark hair liberally streaked with grey, with strong bones about her cheek and jaw.

"Excuse me," Celia said.

The matron looked up. Her eyes were very small and hard, and looked smaller still set in her broad face behind her round glasses. "You must be the new nurse at last."

"Yes."

"Celia Barnes."

"Yes."

"Very well then. I'm Matron Howard — Maria Howard." Matron Howard rang a small bell on her desk. "I'll have Nurse Devon show you to the dormitory. You can rest this evening. We have supper at eight thirty, and unless you are on night duty, you will be in bed by ten every night. Tomorrow you'll begin work under my supervision."

"Thank you."

Matron Howard regarded Celia expectantly, and Celia felt like she ought to say something. She was tongue-tied at the best of times, however, and she could think of nothing intelligent to say right now so she said nothing at all.

A rapid, light footstep sounded from the hallway, and a young woman burst into the room. She was a pretty young woman, slim-waisted and merry-eyed, golden-haired and rose-lipped. She graced Celia with a smile.

"You must be the new nurse," she said. "I'm Zelda — Zelda Devon. I've been waiting an age to meet you. We're going to be friends, you see. We have to be, because there's precious little company around here." The rose lips quirked in a smile. "Well, precious little young company."

"One day," Matron said drily, "you, too, will reach the grand old age of forty, Nurse Devon."

"Not for sixteen years," Zelda answered pertly. "And by the time I do, I'm sure to be married with a dozen children, and no amount of youth can do any good to anyone with a dozen children anyway."

Celia bit back a smile, but Matron allowed herself a chuckle. "Alright," she said. "Go and show Miss Barnes to the dormitory. Help her settle in. I'll mind the wards for twenty minutes."

Zelda enthusiastically grabbed Celia's carpet bag from her arms and hauled it off down the hall. Celia had to scurry after her.

"Is... is Matron nice?" she asked.

"Quite nice as they go," Zelda said. "But don't go thinking you can pull one over her. She's sharp as a tack."

Celia had never in her life tried to pull one over anyone.

"They're all pretty good," Zelda mused as she banged the carpet bag up a set of narrow stairs. "Mrs Smith — she's the other nurse, widowed. Sweet as treacle. Thick as it too, though. Doctor Culpepper — lazy and smiling. You've got to pick up his slack, but he'll never make you do it. I quite like him. And Fane..." Zelda stopped to laugh as they reached the attic floor of the building under a low, pitched roof. "You've met him, haven't you? Matron said he would pick you up from the station."

"Yes," Celia said. "He barely spoke a word to me though."

"Oh, he does that." Zelda shrugged and led Celia into a large room, taking up a good half the length of the attic. Curtains partitioned sections of it from view, but they were pulled back around a comfortable white bed standing under a dormer window. Zelda dumped the bag on the bed. "This is yours. We share the sink and the mirror in the corner, and we take our baths downstairs. Fane doesn't talk. It's a wonder, you know, that he managed to have that affair in London that got him sent down here. Well, some women like the strong, silent type."

Celia sputtered. "What?"

"Didn't you hear? It was quite famous for a while. About two years ago now — big scandal." Zelda sat down on the end of Celia's bed. "Doctor Fane was an up-and-coming physician in Harley Street at the time. I understand his grandmother was a countess or something, so he had a lot of clients who were sirs and ladies and lords. I wish my grandmother had been a countess. Anyway, it was Lady Hilbert. She was one of his clients. Married woman, of course. They had a love affair, and her husband discovered it. Lady Hilbert committed suicide to escape divorce. It saved our Doctor Fane from being caught up in the trial, but it couldn't save his career. His practice failed, and he ended up down here when the hospital was founded. Sir William said that they needed somebody brilliant, and Culpepper is anything but. We're all castoffs, you see. Mrs Smith's daughters won't have her in the house. Matron — well, you can ask her yourself. And me, I was thrown out of St Thomas' in my second year prob. because — apparently — I wouldn't stop flirting with the patients. It's not true at all, you know. It's the doctors I was flirting with."

Celia tried, and did not quite succeed, to follow this narrative. "I'm sure he didn't really have an affair."

"Oh, he did," Zelda said. "I mean, I only came here four months ago, so I only heard it by rumour, but it's a rumour that everybody repeats."

Celia shuddered. "I hope it's not true. I'd be afraid to work with a man like that."

"Afraid?" Zelda raised one thin black eyebrow. "I'm not afraid. I've decided, you see, that if I can't marry a baronet or a patent sauce magnate, I'll marry Doctor Fane."

"I beg your pardon."

"You needn't," Zelda said. "It's just that he must be very rich — he has a motor car, you see, though he doesn't know how to drive it. And I'm determined to marry a rich man." A hard glint appeared in her blue eyes. "What? Do you plan on slaving away as a nurse for the rest of your life?"

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A/N: Last weekend, I was feeling the need for a break from the Regency era, so I scribbled down some ideas for an Edwardian story. I don't quite know where this is going and it's all still a first draft, so don't expect frequent updates. This is a play project for me, something just for fun. But hopefully, some of you will enjoy it too.