Betty Neels: Tabitha in Moonlight

She sat up straight and faced him squarely, her plain face animated into near beauty by her rage.

“How dare you?” Her pleasant voice was a little shrill but well under control. “Until you came, I had my life planned and everything was… Can’t you see you’ve stirred me up? I was happy before.”

“Happy? With your broom and no chance of a glass slipper?” He got up and pulled her out of her chair and held her hand in his.

“Tabitha, shall we not be friends? After all, I expect to see a great deal of you in the future.”

Tabitha stared ahead of her at his white drill coat. She was thinking that, when he married Lilith, it would be so much more comfortable if they all got on well together.

She said in a bewildered voice, “Could we be friends?”

Tabitha felt his hands tighten on her own. “Yes, Tabby.” He let go of one hand and lifted her chin and gave her a long look, then kissed her on the cheek.

A nice brotherly kiss, thought Tabitha.

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

MISS TABITHA CRAWLEY opened the door of Men’s Orthopaedic ward with the outward calmness of manner for which she was famed throughout St Martin’s Hospital, although inwardly she seethed with the frustration of having to leave her half-eaten supper, combined with the knowledge that within half an hour of going off duty after a tiresome day, it would be her almost certain lot to have to remain on duty to admit the emergency she had just been warned of. She had already calculated that the patient would arrive at about the same time as the night staff, which meant that she would have to admit him, for the night nurses would be instantly caught up in the machinery of night routine and the night sisters would be taking the day reports.

She frowned heavily, an act which did nothing to improve her looks, for her face was unremarkable enough with its undistinguished nose, wide mouth and hazel eyes, whose lashes, of the same pale brown of her hair, were thick enough but lacked both curl and length. Her hair was one of her few good points, for it was long and thick and straight, but as she wore it tidily drawn back into a plaited coil, its beauty was lost to all but the more discerning. Not that many of those she met bothered to look further than her face, to dismiss her as a nice, rather dull girl; if they had looked again they would have seen that she had a good figure and quite beautiful legs. The fact that they didn’t look for a second time didn’t bother Tabitha in the least—indeed, it gave her considerable amusement, for she was blessed with a sense of humour and was able to laugh at herself, which, she reminded herself upon occasion, was a very good thing. She had plenty of friends anyway, and although she was considered something of a martinet on the ward, the nurses liked her, for she was considerate and kind and didn’t shirk a hard day’s work.

Nurse Betts and Mrs Jeffs, the nursing auxiliary, tidying beds at the far end of the ward, watched her neat figure as she walked towards them, and Betts said softly:

‘You know, Mrs Jeffs, she’s got a marvelous shape and a lovely voice. If only she’d do something to her hair…’ She broke off as Tabitha reached them.

‘An emergency,’ she said without preamble. ‘Will you get one of the top beds ready, please? We’d better have him near the office—it’s a compound fracture of tib and fib. He’s eighty years old and he’s been lying for hours before he was discovered. They’re getting some blood into him now, but they won’t do anything until tomorrow morning; he’s too shocked. I’ll lay up a trolley just the same.’ She smiled a little and looked almost pretty.

The trolley done, she went back into the ward to start her last round, an undertaking which she always thought of as the Nightingale touch, but the men seemed to like it and it gave her the chance to wish each of them an individual good night as well as make sure that all was well as she paused for a few seconds by their beds. She started at the top of the ward, opposite to where Nurse Betts and Mrs Jeffs were still busy, coming to a halt beside a bed whose occupant was displaying a lively interest in what was going on. He was a young man of her own age, recovering from the effects of a too hearty rugger scrum, and he grinned at her cheerfully.

‘Hullo, Sister—hard luck, just as you’re due off. Hope it’s someone with a bit of life in ’em.’

‘Eighty,’ said Tabitha crisply, ‘and I fancy he’s the one you should be sorry for. How’s the leg?’

He swung its plastered length awkwardly. ‘Fine. Pity old Sawbones is out of commission, he might have taken this lump of concrete off—I bet the new bloke’ll keep it on for weeks. What’s he like, Sister?’

‘I haven’t an idea,’ said Tabitha, ‘but be sure you’ll do as he says. Now settle down, Jimmy, there’s a good boy.’ Her voice was motherly and he said instantly, just as though she were twice his age: ‘Yes, Sister, OK. Goodnight.’

Tabitha went on down the neat row of beds, pausing by each one to tuck in a blanket or shake a pillow and now and then feel a foot to make sure that its circulation was all it should be.

The ward was almost aggressively Victorian with its lofty ceiling and tall, narrow windows, and the faint breeze of the summer’s evening seemed to emphasise this. Tabitha had a sudden longing to be home, instantly dismissed as she fetched up by Mr Prosser’s bed. Mr Prosser had two broken legs because the brakes on his fish and chip van failed on a steep West Country hill when he was on his way to the more remote villages with his appetising load. Tabitha’s nose twitched at the memory of the reek of fish and chips which had pervaded the ward for hours after his arrival. Even now, several weeks after his admission, the more humorous-minded of his companions in misfortune were apt to crack fishy jokes at his expense. Not that he minded; he was a cockney by birth and had migrated to the West Country several years earlier, satisfying a lifelong urge to live in the country while at the same time retaining his native humour. He said now: