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“Mr. Van Tecqx, I haven’t thanked you properly for all you’ve done for Father and me. I’m very grateful. Life is suddenly quite different….”
She didn’t see the little smile. “There I must agree with you, although for me it is quite another reason.”
“Oh, well, I expect so—I mean, you’re going back home, aren’t you?” She paused, getting what she wanted to say exactly right. “By the time you’ll want to operate on Father’s other hip, I shall have enough money saved to pay your fees….”
She was brought up short by his curt “That will do, Emily. We made a bargain, you and I, and we will keep to our side of it. I wish to hear no more about it.”
She said reasonably, “Well, I dare say you don’t, but you have no need to sound so annoyed, although I expect it’s because you haven’t had enough sleep.”
He uttered a crack of laughter at that but said nothing—indeed, he had nothing to say, not even when he drew up before the cottage.
Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of Betty Neels in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality. She was a wonderful writer, and she will be greatly missed. Her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.
The Fateful Bargain
Betty Neels
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER ONE
SUMMER LANE wasn’t living up to its name; for one thing it was mid-October and the rain, being lashed down by a nasty chilly wind, was even chillier; moreover it was barely eight o’clock in the morning and gloomy. At that early time of day there were few people about; a milkman whistling defiantly as he dumped down milk bottles, a handful of people scurrying along towards the nearest Tube station and a solitary girl walking away from it, head bowed against the weather, clutching a plastic bag. The street lined with shabby old houses, let out in rooms or flats, was so familiar to her that she didn’t bother to look up as it turned a sharp corner, which was why she ran full tilt into someone coming the other way.
The plastic bag, already wet, split and spilled its contents over the pavement, and the girl skidded to a halt which almost took her feet from under her, to be hauled upright by a powerful arm.
‘You should look where you are going,’ the owner of the arm observed irritably, a remark the girl took instant exception to; she was dog-tired after night duty and in no mood to bandy words with someone who sounded as cross as she felt.
All the same, she said in a reasonable voice, ‘Well, that goes for both of us, doesn’t it?’ and looked up at the man towering over her. He wasn’t only tall, he was large as well and remarkably good-looking, and when he smiled suddenly, she smiled back.
He let go of her then and bent to pick up the contents of the plastic bag—knitting, the wool already very wet, a rather battered manual of nursing, two apples and a notebook. He collected them, gave her the book and the knitting and said with rather impatient kindness, ‘Do you live close by? Suppose I carry these odds and ends as far as your door?’
‘Thank you, but I live down that street…’ she indicated a narrow side street a few yards further on. ‘I can stuff everything in my pockets.’
He took no notice of that but turned and started walking briskly towards the street that she had pointed out.
‘A nurse?’ he wanted to know.
The girl trotted beside him. ‘Yes, on night duty at Pearson’s. I’m not trained yet, I’m in my second year, almost at the end of it.’
She stopped before one of the elderly terraced houses, its gate wedged open, its tiny strip of garden a mass of soggy weeds. ‘This is where I live.’ She held her arms out for the things he had been carrying.
He didn’t give them to her at first but stood looking at her. She wasn’t much to look at: small, inclined to plumpness, with a nice little face redeemed from plainness by a pair of fine grey eyes. Her hair under an unfashionable woolly cap was pale brown and very wet. Her coat had seen better days, but it was well cut and her shoes and gloves, as shabby as the coat, were good. He smiled again. ‘When do you go on day duty again?’ he asked.
‘Oh, in another week or so; it will seem very strange after two months. I like night duty, though; there aren’t so many people around.’
‘People?’ He asked the question casually, concealing his impatience to be gone.
‘Well, doctors and surgeons and Ward Sisters.’ She went rather pink. ‘They’re a bit frightening, you know. Staff Nurse was telling me that there’s a visiting honorary—a surgeon—he’s Dutch and everyone is crazy about him. Because he’s foreign, I suppose; I do hope I don’t go on to the Orthopaedic side.’
‘You have no wish to meet this foreigner?’
‘No, oh, no. There was a French surgeon in the summer; he shouted at me and asked me to be quick, and I dropped a tray of instruments. I dare say that’s why I’m on night duty longer than usual.’ She put out a tongue to lick away a trickle of rain running down one cheek. She said breathlessly, ‘I’m sorry, I’m keeping you in the rain. Thank you very much. I hope you won’t be late for your work.’
She held out her arms for the apples and the notebook, said a hasty goodbye and whisked up the narrow path and in through the shabby front door. As she climbed the stairs she thought vexedly that she had talked too much; probably the man had been bored to death, and what had possessed her to chatter like that? It was quite unlike her. She was universally known at Pearson’s Hospital as a quiet girl, friendly enough but shy and studious, reliably calm and collected about her work and guaranteed to give a helping hand without grumbling.
She opened her door, to be greeted by a rotund tabby cat with a slightly battered look, obviously delighted to see her.
It was nice to be in her room again after a busy night. It was small, but its windows, cheerfully curtained, overlooked the narrow back garden and, bare as it was, it was green. There wasn’t much in the room: a divan bed, a small easy chair, a table by the window and a small sink and even smaller cooking stove in one corner, but it was her own just so long as she paid Mrs Winter the rent. Of course, a room in the Nurses’ Home would have been more comfortable, but then she wouldn’t have been able to keep Podge, and she had found him, hungry to the point of starving, several months ago, crouching in an empty doorway, and she had no intention of abandoning him to further misery. Indeed, he saved her from loneliness and was perfectly content to live with her in her cramped room, carried downstairs to the back garden when needful while Mrs Winter turned a blind eye. That lady didn’t approve of pets in her house, but Emily had treated a nasty boil for her and moreover cleaned and bandaged a cut finger for one of her numerous grandchildren.
Mrs Winter came to the top of the basement stairs where she lived as Podge was borne in from the garden. “Ere’s a letter for yer,’ she announced. ‘Miss Emily Grenfell, it says—yer pa, I’ve no