Betty Neels: The Edge of Winter

“But I see now that you’re exactly the same as you were when we met….”

“Do tell me.” He sounded amused and not in the least repentant.

“Bad tempered and impatient and laughing at me.” She drank the rest of her coffee and said in a small, polite voice, “Thank you for my lunch,” and put out a hand to pick up her purse, but his own large hand came down, very gently, onto hers.

“I’m all those things, and more,” he told her quietly, “but could you not like me a little despite them?”

She sat looking at his hand. It felt cool and strong, cherishing hers in its grasp—the hand of someone who would help her if ever she needed it. She said uncertainly, “I don’t understand you, or know anything about you, but I do like you.”

The hand tightened just a little. “Good,” said the doctor.

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

THE little town was small and snug, tucked in between the Cornish hills and cliffs, and the late afternoon sun shone on its slate roofs and brightened the whitewashed walls of the cottages clustered round its small harbour, although there was a chilly wind blowing in from the sea. It was not yet five o’clock, but the October afternoon was already drawing in, and the girl climbing the path from the harbour towards the car park at the side shivered a little as she paused to look back before she rounded the corner, to thread her way through the few cars there and then follow the cliff path.

It was a little late for a walk, she reflected, but she had been playing backgammon with her father all the afternoon, sitting in the lounge of the Lobster Pot Hotel, and she had stolen frequent glances out of the old-fashioned bow window overlooking the harbour and felt envy of the intrepid yachtsmen gowling briskly out to the open sea. It would have been nice to have gone sailing, but although several of the younger men staying in the little town had scraped the beginnings of an acquaintance with her, it had come to nothing; her father and aunt had absorbed all her leisure, and quite unwittingly; they were darlings and she loved them devotedly, but they tended to forget that she was all of twenty-five with a responsible job, a life of her own, and well able to take care of herself.

She turned her back on the harbour, left the car park behind and took the path along the cliff top. Round the next great headland of grey rock was Falmouth, but it might have been a hundred miles away, for there was nothing to see but the rough grass around her and the sea below. She stopped again to watch the gulls wheeling in from the sea; the wind was freshening, but despite this there were still two or three sailing boats out to sea and she sat down for a moment on a tussock of coarse grass the better to watch them, pulling the high neck of her sweater closer and retying her long honey-coloured hair. She was a pretty girl, with large dark blue eyes fringed with honey-coloured lashes which she didn’t darken and a straight little nose above a generous mouth; her long legs were encased in old slacks and when she stood up she showed herself to be a little above middle height and slim without being skinny.

The path was a narrow one, sometimes running close to the cliff edge so that she had a clear view of the sea surging amongst the rocks below, sometimes turning inland between trees and shrubs. She walked briskly, her thoughts busy. Tomorrow she would be leaving Cornwall and returning to London; to St Katherine’s, where she was the Accident Room Sister, and in a way, she reflected, she wouldn’t mind going back. She loved her father and Aunt Martha dearly, but they were elderly now, content to sit with a book or play cards and take a daily walk along the harbour, activities which weren’t enough for her own youthful energy. But the week of doing almost nothing had done her good; she felt rested and relaxed, ready to tackle a hard day’s work, and besides, there was another week’s holiday to look forward to—just before Christmas, when she would go home to the pleasant little house in its small, well kept garden, tucked tidily into one of the narrow side streets of the Somerset village where she had been born and brought up. It was delightful once the summer tourists had gone, with its wide main street and Dunster Castle towering over it, and if she felt like it, she could walk down to the water to catch a glimpse of Wales on the other side of it, and if that wasn’t enough, there was always Minehead a mile or so away.

The path had found its way back to the edge of the cliff once more and she slowed her pace to watch the clouds bunched angrily on the horizon. It would rain, but not yet. She had time to walk back to the hotel without fear of getting wet, and the faint sea mist beginning to creep up didn’t worry her either; she had walked the path almost daily and knew it well enough.

She was on the point of turning back when her eye caught something moving far below her—something white. There was someone there, waving, and leaning precariously over the cliff face, she could hear a faint treble shout. She looked carefully round her; there was no boat within miles and certainly no other human being, and right before was an apology of a path, trickling out of sight down the rough cliff face. Someone had apparently gone down that way and was unable to get back. She could, of course, go back to the town and get help, but that would take too long; it would be dark by then and almost certainly raining. Whoever it was down there was unable to walk or climb and they would get soaked and cold. If she went down now, she and the unfortunate below would be back on the cliff top within fifteen minutes or so, and if they were injured and couldn’t climb—well, all the more reason for her to go down and see what could be done.

The path was steep but perfectly safe, and she didn’t find it too difficult; heights didn’t bother her and she was surefooted enough. She was halfway down when she saw that it was a child on the little patch of sand between the sharp spines of rock, and she quickened her pace, for the child wasn’t moving.