Heidelberg Wedding

“This is really very nice, and it’s such a heavenly day, too.” Eugenia gave a happy sigh. “I love April.”

The calm expression on her companion’s face didn’t alter. “I must agree, but I think I’ll wait for May.”

She turned a puzzled face to Mr. Grenfell. “Why do you say that?”

“Somebody—Edward Way Teale, I think—wrote ‘All things seem possible in May.’”

She was just as puzzled. “Oh, are you—that is, do you plan to get married then?”

He said gravely, “You take the very words from my mouth, Eugenia.”

For some reason she felt depressed. Mr. Grenfell’s choice of a wife was his own business, of course, but she couldn’t help feeling that if he married Miriam he would be making the mistake of a lifetime.

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.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

A CHURCH CLOCK somewhere close to the hospital struck the hour and Sister Eugenia Smith sighed, put down her pen, gave her muslin cap an unnecessary twitch and got to her feet, to walk, as she had done on so many previous occasions, out of her office and into the ward. She went unhurriedly, casting an eye here and there as she passed, to make sure that everything was just so, and came to a halt by Staff Nurse Bristow, waiting with her bundle of charts under one arm while one of the student nurses hovered with a trolley, equipped with all the odds and ends which might be required on the round. Eugenia smiled widely at her right hand as she joined her. ‘One day,’ she said softly, ‘I shall leave the office a few seconds late and Mr Grenfell will arrive a few seconds early—that’ll make history!’

She composed her features into a suitable seriousness as the swing doors were pushed open and the Senior Consultant Surgeon strode through them, ready to make his weekly round. Hatty Bristow, watching him greet Sister Smith with impersonal courtesy, wondered for the hundredth time how it was possible for the pair of them to be so indifferent to each other, for they were surely meant to fall in love at first sight; Mr Grenfell, with his tremendous height and size, his lint-fair hair and sleepy blue eyes, and Sister Smith, dark-haired, dark-eyed and lovely to look at—a tall girl, generously built. Hatty, mousey-haired and flat-chested, envied her from the bottom of a loyal heart. She considered that Eugenia was throwing herself away on Humphrey Parsons, the Medical Registrar at St Clare’s, although he was a good-looking young man, clever at his work and with a charm she had never trusted—but then he had never bothered himself over her; she was a plain girl and shy, and she was ready to admit that perhaps that was why she didn’t like Sister Smith being engaged to him. And as for Mr Grenfell, he was engaged too—to a beanpole of a blonde, beautifully made up and dressed, who had come to the ward at Christmas and ignored everyone. Not nearly good enough for him, Hatty had decided. She sighed, a shade too loudly so that Mr Grenfell looked at her, and when she went red, smiled nicely and wished her a good morning before turning to Sister Smith.

His polite: ‘Shall we start, Sister?’ received an equally polite: ‘Certainly, sir,’ and she led the way to the first bed, followed by Mr Grenfell, his registrar, his house surgeon, Hatty Bristow, the lady social worker, in case Mr Grenfell should require her services, and hovering on the perimeter, Nurse Sims and her trolley.

It was a small ward, only twelve beds, none of them ever empty for more than a few hours, for the waiting list was a long one, and although St Clare’s was an old hospital, the chest unit was modern, well equipped and meticulously run by Eugenia. She had taken over the ward three years ago from Sister Atkins, a dear old thing thankful to retire from the modern world of a profession suddenly full of technology which she had never quite understood. Eugenia had realised at once that Mr Grenfell was brimming over with new ideas and spent the first enthusiastic six months carrying them out, marvelling the while that he had never so much as hinted to Sister Atkins that he had them in mind. By the end of that time, the ward had been modernised, equipped with the very latest of surgical aids, and ready to admit the steady flow of patients in Mr Grenfell’s care.