The Vicar's Daughter

Perhaps he was married...About the AuthorTitle PageCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECopyright

Perhaps he was married...

The thought was an unwelcome one which Margo thrust aside. Why shouldn’t he be married with a brood of children? It was none of her business. She did want to know, however. Margo being Margo, it was no sooner said than done.

“Are you married?” she asked him. Then regretted it the moment she had spoken; the look of amused surprise on Gijs’s face sent the color into her cheeks and she mumbled, “Sorry. That was rude of me....”

“No, I’m not married.” He ignored the mumble. “I have never found the time.”

BETTY NEELS spent her childhood and youth in Devonshire, England, 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.

The Vicar’s Daughter

Betty Neels

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS a crisp, starry October night and Professor van Kessel, driving himself back home after a weekend with friends in Dorset, had chosen to take the country roads rather than the direct route to London. He drove without haste, enjoying the dark quiet, the villages tucked in the hollows between the hills, the long stretches of silent road, the unexpected curves and sudden windings up and down. There was no one about, though from time to time he slowed for a fox or a badger, a hedgehog or a startled rabbit.

The last village had been some miles back and now there were no houses by the roadside. It was farmland, and the farmhouses lay well back from the road; there would be another village presently and he could take his direction from there. In the meantime he was content; the weekend had been very pleasant and this was a delightfully peaceful way of ending it.

The road curved between heavy undergrowth and trees, and he slowed and then braked hard as a figure darted from the side of the road into his headlights, only yards from the Rolls’s bonnet. The doctor swore softly and let down his window.

‘That was a silly thing to do,’ he observed mildly to the anxious face peering at him, and he got out of the car. ‘In trouble?’

The girl stared up at him looming over her small person. Her face might be anxious but there was no sign of distress or fear.

‘Hope I didn’t startle you,’ she said, ‘and so sorry to bother you, but would you stop at Thinbottom village—it’s only a couple of miles down the road—and get someone to phone for a doctor or an ambulance? There’s a party of travellers in the woods—’ She cocked her neat head sideways over a shoulder. ‘One of them is having a baby and I’m not sure what to do next.’

A plain face, the doctor reflected, but lovely eyes and a delightful voice. What she was doing here in the middle of nowhere at eleven o‘clock at night was none of his business, and considering the circumstances she was remarkably self-possessed. He said now, ‘Perhaps I might help. I’m a doctor.’

‘Oh, splendid.’ She gave his sleeve an urgent tug.

‘Have you got your bag with you? We’ll need scissors and some string or something, and a few towels. There’s a kettle of hot water...’ She was leading the way along a narrow track. ‘I told her not to push...’

The darkness hid his smile.

‘You are a nurse?’

‘Me? Gracious me, no. First aid. Here we are.’

The travellers had set up their camp in a clearing close to the path, with a tent, a small stove, a few bundles and a hand-cart.

‘In the tent,’ said the girl, and gave his sleeve another urgent tug. ‘He’s a doctor,’ she said to the two young women, and to the man and young boy standing there. ‘Did you lock your car?’ she asked the doctor. ‘Because if you didn’t Willy can go and stand guard over it.’

‘I locked it.’ What a little busybody the girl was—probably some vicar’s daughter. ‘I’ll have a basin of that water in the tent. With a towel, if there is one.’

He bent his large frame and edged inside, and a moment later the girl crept in with a saucepan of water and a none too clean towel to make herself small on the other side of the woman, waiting to be told what to do.

The doctor had taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. ‘Something in which to wrap the infant?’ He smiled reassuringly at the woman lying on top of a sleeping bag. ‘You’re very brave—another few minutes and you’ll have your baby to hold.’

The woman let out a squawk. ‘It’s early,’ she mumbled. ‘We’d reckoned we’d be in Sturminster Newton.’

The doctor was arranging some plastic sheeting just so, and getting things from his bag set out on it. He glanced over at the girl. ‘A blanket? Something warm?’