Betty Neels - Matilda's Wedding

“Yes, oh, yes!” said Matilda. She turned to the doctor, beaming up at him. “Thank you very much for taking me out to dinner.” She sounded like a well-mannered child. “It was a wonderful evening, you know—the kind of evening one always remembers….”

“Indeed, I shall always remember it, too,” said the doctor. “Sweet dreams, Matilda.” And he bent and kissed her, very much to Mrs. Chubb’s satisfaction and even more to Matilda’s.

And, with a smiling glance at Mrs. Chubb, he was gone.

Matilda turned a dreamy face to the housekeeper. “I’ll go to bed,” she said, and kissed the smiling lady and floated upstairs to her room, for the moment wrapped in a dream world of her own.

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.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

DR LOVELL looked across his desk to the girl sitting in front of it. She would have to do, he supposed; none of the other applicants had been suitable. No one, of course, could replace the estimable Miss Brimble who had been with him for several years before leaving reluctantly to return home and nurse an aged parent, but this girl, with her mediocre features and quiet voice, was hardly likely to upset the even tenor of his life. There was nothing about her appearance to distract him from his work; her mousy hair was in a smooth French pleat, her small nose was discreetly powdered, and if she wore lipstick it wasn’t evident. And her clothes were the kind which were never remembered… She was, in fact, suitable.

Matilda Paige, aware that she was being studied, watched the man on the other side of the desk in her turn. A very large man, in his thirties, she guessed. Handsome, with a commanding nose and a thin mouth and hooded eyes and dark hair streaked with silver. She had no intention of being intimidated by him but she thought that anyone timid might be. A calm, quiet girl by nature, she saw no reason to stand in awe of him. Besides, since the moment she had set eyes on him, not half an hour ago, she had fallen in love with him…

‘You are prepared to start work on Monday, Miss Paige?’

Matilda said yes, of course, and wished that he would smile. Probably he was tired or hadn’t had time for a proper breakfast that morning. That he had a good housekeeper she had already found out for herself, whose brother did the gardening and odd jobs. She had also discovered that he was engaged. A haughty piece, Mrs Simpkins at the village shop had said—been to stay accompanied by her brother once or twice, hadn’t liked the village at all and said so.

‘Rude,’ Mrs Simpkins had said. ‘Them as should know better should mind their manners; grumbled ’cos I didn’t ’ave some fancy cheese they wanted. Well, what’s good enough for the doctor should be good enough for them. ’E’s a nice man, none better, just as ’is dad was a good man, too. A pity ’e ever took up with that young woman of ’is.’

Matilda, sitting primly on the other side of his desk, heartily agreed with Mrs Simpkins. All’s fair in love, she reflected, and got up when he gave his watch a brief glance.

Dr Lovell got up too; his manners were nice… She bade him a brisk goodbye as he opened the surgery door for her and then, shepherded by his practice nurse, left the house.

It was a pleasant old house in the centre of the village. Queen Anne, red-bricked with massive iron railings protecting it from the narrow main street. Lovells had lived there for generations, she had been told, father passing on his profession to son, and this particular twentieth-century son was, from all accounts, acknowledged to be quite brilliant. He had refused offers of important posts in London and preferred to remain at his old home, working as a GP.

Matilda walked briskly down the street, smiling rather shyly at one or two of the passers-by, still feeling that she didn’t belong. The village was a large one, deep in rural Somerset, and as yet had escaped the attention of developers wanting to buy land and build houses, probably because it lay well away from a main road, astride a tangle of narrow country lanes. Because of that, inhabitants of Much Winterlow were slow to accept newcomers. Not that there was anything about the Reverend Mr Paige, his wife and daughter to which they could take exception. Upon his retirement owing to ill health, her father had been offered by an old friend the tenancy of the small house at the very end of the village and he had accepted gratefully. After the rambling vicarage he had lived in for many years, he found the place cramped but the surroundings were delightful and quiet and he would be able to continue writing his book…

Matilda could see her new home now as she came to the end of the last of the cottages in the main street. There was a field or two, ploughed up in readiness for the spring next year, and the house, facing the road—square and hardly worth a second glance, built a hundred years or so earlier as home for the agent of the big estate close by and then later left empty, to be rented out from time to time. Her mother had burst into tears when she had first seen it but Matilda had pointed out that they were fortunate to have been offered it at a rent her father could afford. She’d added cheerfully, ‘It may look like a brick box but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a pretty garden.’

Her mother had said coldly, ‘You are always so sensible, Matilda.’

It was a good thing that she was, for her mother had no intention of making the best of a bad job; she had led a pleasant enough life where her husband had been rural dean; true, the house had been too big and if it hadn’t been for Matilda living at home and taking most of the household chores onto her shoulders there would have been little time to play the role of vicar’s wife. A role Mrs Paige had fulfilled very well, liking the social status it gave her in the small abbey town. But now she was forced to live in this village in a poky house with barely enough to live on…