Dearest Mary Jane

“Would you like me for a brother-in-law, Mary Jane?”About the AuthorTitle PageCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECopyright

“Would you like me for a brother-in-law, Mary Jane?”

She wouldn’t like him for a brother-in-law; she would like him for a husband, and why should she suddenly discover that, now of all times, sitting opposite him, being cross-examined as though she were in a witness-box, and fighting a great wish to fling her arms around his neck and tell him that she loved him? It was clear Sir Thomas Latimar preferred her beautiful sister, Felicity, so he would hardly welcome Mary Jane throwing herself at him, too!

BETTY NEELS spent her childhood and youth in Devonshire before training as a nurse and midwife. She was an army nursing sister during the war, married a Dutchman and subsequently lived in Holland for fourteen years. She lives with her husband in Dorset, and has a daughter and grandson. Her hobbies are reading, animals, old buildings and writing. Betty started to write on retirement from nursing, incited by a lady in a library bemoaning the lack of romantic novels.

Dearest Mary Jane

Betty Neels

CHAPTER ONE

IT was five o’clock and the warm hazy sunshine of a September afternoon was dwindling into the evening’s coolness. The Misses Potter, sitting at a table in the window of the tea-shop, put down their teacups reluctantly and prepared to leave. Miss Emily, the elder of the two ladies, rammed her sensible hat more firmly on her head and addressed the girl sitting behind the tiny counter at the back of the room.

‘If we might have our bill, Mary Jane?’

The girl came to the table and the two ladies looked at her, wondering, as they frequently did, how whoever had chosen the girl’s name could have guessed how aptly it fitted. She looked like a Mary Jane, not tall, a little too thin, with an unremarkable face and light brown hair, straight and long and pinned in an untidy swirl on top of her head. Only when she looked at you the violet eyes, fringed with long curling lashes, made one forget her prosaic person.

She said now in her quiet voice, ‘I hope you enjoyed your tea. In another week or two I’ll start making teacakes.’

Her customers nodded in unison. ‘We shall look forward to that.’ Miss Emily opened her purse. ‘We mustn’t keep you, it’s closing time.’ She put money on the table and Mary Jane opened the door and waited until they were across the village street before closing it.

She cleared the table, carried everything into the small kitchen behind the tea-room and went to turn the notice to ‘Closed’ on the door just as a car drew up outside. The door was thrust open before she had time to turn the key and a man came in. He was massively built and tall, so that the small room became even smaller.

‘Good,’ he said briskly. ‘You’re not closed. My companion would like tea...’

‘But I am closed,’ said Mary Jane in a reasonable voice. ‘I’m just locking the door, only you pushed it open. You are not very far from Stow-on-the-Wold—there are several hotels there, you’ll get tea quite easily.’

The man spoke evenly, rather as though he were addressing a child or someone hard of hearing. ‘My companion doesn’t wish to wait any longer. A pot of tea is all I am asking for; surely that isn’t too much?’

He sounded like a man who liked his own way and got it, but Mary Jane had a lot to do before she could go to her bed; besides, she disliked being browbeaten. ‘I’m sorry...’

She was interrupted by the girl who swept into the tea-room. No, not a girl, decided Mary Jane, a woman in her thirties and beautiful, although her looks were marred by her frown and tight mouth.

‘Where’s my tea?’ she demanded. ‘Good lord, Thomas, all I want is a cup of tea. Is that too much to ask for? What is this dump, anyway?’ She flung herself gracefully into one of the little cane chairs. ‘I suppose it will be undrinkable tea-bags, but if there’s nothing else...’

Mary Jane gave the man an icy violet stare. ‘I do have drinkable tea-bags,’ she told him, ‘but perhaps the lady would prefer Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe?’

‘Earl Grey,’ snapped the woman, ‘and I hope I shan’t have to wait too long.’

‘Just while the kettle boils,’ said Mary Jane in a dangerously gentle voice.

She went into the kitchen and laid a tray and made the tea and carried it to the table and was very surprised when the man got up and took the tray from her.

In the kitchen she started clearing up. There would be a batch of scones to make after she had had her supper and the sugar bowls to fill and the jam dishes to see to as well as the pastry to make ready for the sausage rolls she served during the lunch-hour. She was putting the last of the crockery away when the man came to the doorway. ‘The bill?’ he asked.

She went behind the counter and made it out and handed it silently to him and the woman called across. ‘I imagine there is no ladies’ room here?’

Mary Jane paused in counting change. ‘No.’ She added deliberately, ‘The public lavatories are on the other side of the village square on the road to Moreton.’