Magic in Vienna

She stood uncertainly. “Good night, Dr. Trescombe.”

He came to stand very close to her. “Do you know my first name, Cordelia?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, of course, Charles.”

“But of course you couldn’t call me that, could you?” His face was grave but he sounded amused.

“No, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t do at all.”

He sighed. “Life is never going to be the same again,” he observed, and when she gave him a puzzled look, he bent and kissed her swiftly. “Good night, Cordelia.”

She puzzled again over that remark while she got ready for bed. Was he referring to leaving Vienna? Or was he going to marry one of the beautiful women she had seen that night? She shed a few tears at the hopelessness of the whole thing and fell into a troubled sleep.

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

THE ROOM WAS large, shabbily furnished and inadequately heated by old fashioned radiators, its discomforts heightened by virtue of the dull April morning. Its occupants sat round the heavy old fashioned table in the middle of the room eating their breakfast, presided over by a young woman whose large, long lashed hazel eyes redeemed an otherwise ordinary face from plainness. She was very neat, with pale brown hair coiled on the top of her head. As much of her person as was visible above the table, was clad in a knitted sweater which looked faded by most standards but was carefully pressed. She poured tea from the large pot before her while she listened to a girl of fifteen or so, sitting at the other end of the table. The girl was pretty, fair haired and blue eyed, her prettiness marred by a sulky mouth.

‘I think Mother’s mean to make me have my meals with you and the children,’ she declared. ‘Just because she swans around with her boyfriends and doesn’t want any competition I have to stay here in the schoolroom. Well, I won’t and no one can stop me.’

She glared defiantly at the girl she was addressing who said bracingly, ‘Don’t talk like that in front of the children, Chloë. Why don’t you go down presently and have a talk with your mother? But you are only fifteen you know.’

The boy sitting between them spoke with a full mouth. ‘Much good that’ll do you.’ He thrust his cup down the table. ‘Give me some more tea, Cordelia.’

‘Please…’

He turned pale blue eyes on her. ‘Why should I say please? Mother treats you like a servant so I shall too.’

The hazel eyes took fire but her voice was steady and quiet. ‘We shared the same father, Matthew.’

‘And he’s dead. You’ll be stuck here with the twins for years because you’ve nowhere to go.’

The girl didn’t bother to answer but turned her attention to the two small children sitting at the other side of the table. Six year old twins, a boy and a girl, eating bread and butter and jam and taking no notice of anyone. She had done her best to love them but they weren’t lovable children; her father had died soon after they were born and since her stepmother, who had never wanted them in the first place, ignored them as much as possible, she had tried to be a mother to them, more for her father’s sake, she supposed, for she had loved him. But now after six years, she had to admit that she had very little affection for them, largely because they had shown her none. She remembered very clearly her shock and apprehension when her father had told her that he was to marry again, and produced, almost immediately, a stepmother with two children of her own from a former marriage. Chloë and Matthew had been quite small then but they had looked at her with hostile eyes and although she had done her best to get on good terms with them, she had been defeated, largely because her stepmother had encouraged them, almost from the first day, to treat her as a kind of superior servant. It had been done very subtly, so that her father never had an inkling of what was going on and her stepmother had always been careful to behave charmingly towards her when her father was with them. Cordelia, a girl of spirit but sensible as well, could see no good coming of bringing the true state of affairs to his notice, and now all these years later, she was glad that she hadn’t.