Betty Neels - Never the Time and the Place

They rounded the lake, made their way through the grottos and went through the gates as twilight descended on the little cottages beyond it.

“Let’s go into the church?” suggested Mr. van Tacx, and took her arm. It was still open, the last of the daylight lighting up the stone knight on his tomb just inside the door. They wandered down the aisle and went into the tiny chapel on one side. Then they wandered back toward the door and stopped by mutual consent to look back at the dim gentleness of the interior.

“I should like to be married here,” said Mr. van Tacx surprisingly. And when Josephine gave him an amazed look— “To you, of course, Josephine.”

He sounded quite sure about it.

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, and her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

THE RAIN pouring down from a grey, sodden sky had turned the gold and red of the October afternoon into a landscape of gloom, with rivulets of water trickling on to the road from the high banks on either side of it and a never ending shower of leaves drifting down from the trees clustered behind them. But the girl squelching along the lane didn’t in the least mind the weather; to be in the country, away from chimney pots and little mean streets of small dismal houses and the never ending noise, was contentment. She was going at a good pace, well wrapped against the weather, tendrils of bright chestnut hair hanging bedraggled around her pretty face, wet from the rain. She was a tall girl and well built and even the wringing mackintosh she wore couldn’t disguise her splendid figure.

There was a dog with her; a black Labrador, his sleek coat soaked, plodding along beside her with evident enjoyment, tongue lolling, his eyes turned to her face every moment or so, listening to her quiet voice. ‘So you see, Cuthbert, you’ll not have me to take you for walks—you’ll have to make do with Mike or Natalie when they’re home. Of course, I’ll come home whenever I can but Yorkshire is a long way.’ She came to a halt and stared down at the devoted creature. ‘I ought to be feeling very happy, but I’m not. Do you suppose it’s wedding nerves? I’ve got the awful feeling that I don’t want to get married at all. Oh, Cuthbert…’ She bent right down and twiddled his wet ears, and he licked her hand gently.

Very few cars came along the lane and what with the noise of the rain and the wind in the trees, she hadn’t heard the car coming up the hill behind them; a Bentley, sliding to a dignified halt within a few feet of them. She stood up then, hushed Cuthbert’s indignant bark, and went to poke her head through the window by the driver.

‘You should have sounded your horn,’ she told the man at the wheel severely. ‘You could have run us down.’

She found herself looking into two of the coldest blue eyes she had ever seen. His voice was just as cold. ‘Young lady, I am not in the habit of running anyone or anything down. Is this a private road?’

‘Lord no. It leads to Ridge Giffard from East Giffard and after that there’s Tisbury.’

‘I am aware of my surroundings. I was wondering why you had the effrontery to criticise my driving on a public road.’

Gently the girl’s softly curving mouth rounded into an indignant O and her large grey eyes narrowed. A rat trap of a mouth in a rugged, handsome face; pepper and salt hair, cut short, and a commanding nose; she surveyed them without haste. At length she said kindly, in the tone of voice one might use to humour an ill tempered child, ‘You’re touchy, aren’t you? And a stranger to these parts?’ She straightened up. ‘Well, don’t let me keep you. You say you’re aware of your surroundings, so I won’t need to tell you that they’ll be moving the cows across at Pake’s Farm a mile along on the next bend.’ She added, ‘A pedigree herd, too.’

The man in the car gave a low rumble of laughter although he didn’t look amused. ‘No, you don’t need to tell me, young lady, but I can see that it gives you a good deal of satisfaction to do so.’ He asked to surprise her, ‘Are you married?’

And when she shook her head, ‘Something for a man to be thankful for.’

She wasn’t in the least put out. ‘That could be a compliment,’ she told him sweetly. ‘Mind how you go.’

The cold eyes swept over her before he drove away. It was like a bucket of cold water.

‘Anyone else would have offered us a lift,’ she told Cuthbert. ‘Not that we would have accepted.’

She started walking again, the afternoon would soon turn into an early evening and they had another mile or so to go.

The pair of them negotiated a gate presently and took to the fields, going at a right angle to the road, to cross a stile at the end of the second field and come into a narrow lane running between trees. It went quite steeply down hill in a series of bends, passing a cottage or two on the way until the village appeared; a cluster of cottages, a shop or two and half a dozen larger houses, with ancient tiled roofs and eighteenth century fronts. The girl went past them all, waving once or twice to the few people in the street, and turned in through an open gateway at the end of the village. The drive was short, leading to an outbuilding used as a garage and then turning to broaden out before the low, sprawling house. It was built of red brick like most of the houses in the village but it had a thatched roof and mullioned windows and a very solid front door, ignored by the girl who turned down the side of the house, went through a tumbledown stone archway and opened a door leading from the garden.

The room she went into was small with a stone flagged floor, probably in earlier days a garden room, but now a repository for a collection of shabby coats and mackintoshes, shapeless caps and hats and an untidy row of footwear of all kinds. She took a towel from a peg on the wall, rubbed Cuthbert dry and then took off her own mac and opened another door leading this time to a short passage which in its turn ended in the kitchen. A large, low ceilinged room with an old-fashioned scrubbed table in its centre, windsor chairs at either end of it, and a wooden dresser taking up most of one wall. There was an Aga Stove and a rag rug spread before it on the brick floor, occupied by a tabby cat who hardly moved as Cuthbert flung himself down with a contented sigh. There were a number of doors leading from the room, one of which was partly open.