Betty Neels - Roses and Champagne

Lucius laughed softly. “Why do you think of yourself as a staid old woman who’ll never see forty again? You’re twenty-seven and you look ten years younger. And I’m not paying compliments—I know you too well for that.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Katrina, not liking the sound of that laugh.

“Do? Why, call your sister’s bluff. I shall turn my attentions to you, Katie. In due course we shall become engaged, and when you’ve had time to gather together whatever it is that girls gather before they marry, we’ll be wed. Here in Upper Tew.”

For a big man he was very fast on his feet. Before she could gather her wits to answer, he had left her, closing the door very quietly behind him.

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.

The Best of Betty Neels

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

THE WINTRY SUN, shining in through the wide windows, gave the room a false warmth, for there was no fire in the handsome steel grate and there was a decided chill in the air; a chilliness strongly echoed by the two people in the room, facing each other across the handsome Soumak carpet, a young woman with pale brown hair and beautiful brown eyes in an unremarkable face, sitting very upright in a Victorian balloon chair, and a man in his thirties, dark-haired, grey-eyed and with a high-bridged nose which didn’t detract from his good looks. He was a tall, well built man and the armchair he was leaning against creaked as he folded his arms along its back.

‘What a silly girl you’re being, Katrina,’ he observed in a voice tinged with impatience. ‘Anyone would think that it was you whose heart had been broken!’ He grinned at her and she made a small indignant sound.

‘I can find no possible excuse for you…’ she began. She had a nice quiet voice, waspish at the moment though.

‘My dear girl, I’m flattered that you should try to find excuses for me.’

She shot him a furious look, her black brows drawn together in a frown.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she begged crossly. ‘It’s the last thing I’d do. You’ve broken Virginia’s heart…’

He came round the chair and sat down stretching out his long legs in comfort. ‘Now who’s being ridiculous?’ he wanted to know. ‘Virginia hasn’t got a heart, from the moment she could toddle you know as well as I do that she made a point of twisting everyone round her thumb. She did it charmingly too.’ He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘You never did that, Katrina.’

‘Much good it would have done me.’ She was matter-of-fact about it. And then, her voice cold with anger again: ‘She’s in her room, crying…’

She was interrupted: ‘Of course she’s crying—spoilt girls who can’t have their own way always cry. She’ll stop presently.’

‘You’re heartless, Lucius.’ Her eyes searched his face and saw nothing but mockery there. She got to her feet. ‘Will you go away? I don’t want to talk to you—there’s nothing to say anyway.’

He sauntered to the door. ‘Not while you’re in this silly sentimental mood.’ As he went through the door he said: ‘I passed young Lovell on my way here, so Virginia had better repair that broken heart pretty quickly.’

‘You’re unspeakable!’ declared Katrina, and heard him laugh as he shut the door.

She went to a window presently and watched him make his leisurely way across the lawn, taking the short cut to the side gate which would lead him to the stables where Gem, his mare, would be. It was a pity, she thought sadly, that they could no longer be friends. She had a sudden vivid memory of him, a ten-year-old schoolboy sitting his pony patiently holding the leading reins of her own fat Shetland. She had been three years old and Virginia wasn’t even thought of…

And they had stayed friends, and even when Virginia, the spoilt darling of the family had made a threesome, they had neither of them minded; indeed, as the years passed, Lucius and Virginia spent more and more time together, naturally enough, for by then Katrina’s talent for drawing and painting had got her a job illustrating children’s books. Her father had had one of the attics turned into a studio for her and she had worked there contentedly, making a tolerable income for herself, although that was quite unnecessary. But she had been glad of it when her parents were killed in a car accident, for a good deal of money died with them and the pleasant quite large house and its several acres of ground absorbed a lot of the income which was left. All the same, she had contrived very well; Virginia had finished her expensive education, had all the clothes she wanted and ran her own small car. Now at twenty she was the darling of the neighbourhood, as pretty as a picture and taking it for granted that every man she met would fall in love with her. Which, more or less, they did. Katrina, a year earlier, used to Virginia’s constant brief love affairs, but anxious that at nineteen she should turn her hand to something useful, had roped in Lucius. ‘Look,’ she had said, ‘Virginia’s got so many boyfriends she can’t remember their names—I don’t mind, it must be fun,’ just for a moment she had sounded wistful and he had given her a long thoughtful look, ‘but I wondered if she would train for something, meet older men perhaps. What do you think?’

That had been a year ago. He had laughed and agreed and said: ‘I’m an older man, aren’t I? She can start on me. What do you want me to interest her in? Bookkeeping? Or how to run an estate?’

He hadn’t done either thought Katrina sadly, although he was a chartered accountant and Stockley House and its surrounding acres belonged to him. Instead he had given Virginia her head, whirled her up to London to dine and dance and visit theatres, ridden with her almost every day, and although he had never given her a ring, it was a foregone conclusion that it was only a question of Virginia making up her mind between emeralds and rubies.

And now it was all over and Lucius was behaving abominably. Katrina paused to think here; according to Virginia he had behaved abominably and he certainly showed no signs of remorse about that, although she hadn’t actually asked him…Well, what could she have said anyway? Ever since she could remember, he had retired behind an expressionless face if he didn’t want you to know something; he’d worn that face this morning, and she hadn’t dared probe too deep.