The Fateful Bargain

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.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

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.