A Girl Named Rose

A Girl Named Rose
Betty Neels

Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors. Through pure chance, Rose met Sybren Werdmer ter Sane, one of the most eminent surgeons in Holland. Their accidental encounter led to a job for Rose, nursing Sybren's godson. She loved everything about her new life - including Sybren!But surely such an important man wouldn't have time to take an interest in her. Yet what Rose didn't realise was that she had the gift of love, and it touched everyone around her - even hard-hearted surgeons.

“Dammit, there’s something I want to say to you—something I must explain before you go back to England,” he said quite angrily.

“The trouble with you,” he continued, “is that I thought that I knew what you were thinking. Now that I’ve gotten to know you better I’m not sure anymore. I’m not even sure if you like me.”

Rose looked at him then and smiled a little and said steadily, “Oh, yes, I like you. I didn’t mean to, though.”

“Good, Rose. What would you say if I were to tell you that I want to get married?” He paused. “Do you know me well enough, I wonder?

“Rose…” he began.

She held her breath, not sure what was going to happen next, aware her insides were turning over and wondering what he was going to say.

Only he didn’t say it; the telephone rang.

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 live on in all her stories.

A Girl Named Rose

Betty Neels

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

THE EARLY summer sky, so vividly blue until now, was rapidly being swallowed up by black clouds, turning the water of the narrow canal to a steely grey and draining the colour from the old gabled houses on either side of it. The two girls on the narrow arched bridge spanning the water glanced up from the map they were studying and frowned at the darkening sky. The taller of the two had a pretty face, framed by dark curly hair, her blue eyes wide with apprehension; the smaller of the two, with unassuming features, straight pale brown hair piled into a too severe topknot and a pair of fine brown eyes, merely looked annoyed.

“It’s going to rain,” she observed, stating the obvious as the first slow, heavy drops began to fall. “Shall we go back if we can, go on, or find shelter?” She added in a matter-of-fact way, “I haven’t the faintest idea where we are.” She began to fold the map, already wet, but before she had done so the rain came down in earnest, soaking them in moments. Worse, there was a sudden flash of lightning and a great rumble of thunder.

The pretty girl gave a scared yelp. “Rose, what shall we do? I’m soaked.”

Her companion took her arm and hurried her off the bridge. “I’ll knock on a door,” she said, “perhaps there’s a porch…”

The brick road they were on was narrow and the houses lining it were solid seventeenth and eighteenth century town mansions built by wealthy Dutch merchants, their doors massive, their windows symmetrical, presenting an ageless calm in this backwater of Amsterdam, and not one of them had a porch. A second flash of lightning sent the smaller girl up the steps of the nearest house, to bang resoundingly on the great brass door knocker.

“You can’t,” objected her companion; she didn’t answer, only knocked again.

The door opened and she found herself staring into an elderly bewhiskered face; it belonged to a stout man, almost bald except for a fringe of hair with a stern expression and pale blue eyes. She swallowed and drew a breath.

“Please may we stand in your doorway?” she began. “We’re wet and lost.”

Before the man could answer a door behind him opened and shut and a voice asked, “English, and lost?” and said something in Dutch so that the man opened the door wider and stood aside for them to go in.

The hall they entered was very impressive; its black-and-white tiled floor partly covered with thin silky rugs, its white plastered walls hung with paintings in heavy frames; the man who stood in its centre was impressive too, well over six feet tall, with great shoulders and the good looks to turn any girl’s head. Any age between thirty and forty, Rose guessed, wondering if his fair hair was actually silver.

She hung back a little; this was the kind of situation Sadie could cope with admirably; her pretty face and charming smile had smoothed her path through three years of training at the children’s hospital where they both worked; they could certainly turn things to her own advantage now.

“Come in, come in.” The blue eyes studied them sleepily. “Very wet, aren’t you? Give your cardigans to Hans, he’ll get them dried for you and come into the sitting-room while I explain where you are.”

He smiled at them both, but his eyes lingered on Sadie’s glowing face, damp with rain, her curls no less attractive for being wet, whereas Rose’s hair hung in damp tendrils, doing nothing to aid her looks.

He held out a large hand and shook their proffered ones firmly. “Sybren Werdmer ter Sane,” he said briskly. It was Sadie who answered him. “I’m Sadie Gordon and this is Rose Comely.” She smiled bewitchingly at him as he opened a big double door and ushered them into the room beyond.

It was a large lofty apartment, its ceiling was plaster with pendant bosses, and a central recessed oval with a border of fruit and flowers. The windows were large and draped with heavy swathes of plum-coloured velvet, and the same rich colour predominated in the needlework carpets strewn on the polished wood floor. The furniture was a thoughtful mixture of the old and the new. Vast display cupboards flanked the steel fireplace with its rococo chimney-piece and mirror, a pair of magnificent seventeenth-century armchairs, elaborately carved and velvet-cushioned, stood on either side of a small table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A pair of William and Mary winged settees were on either side of the fireplace and there were a number of lamp tables and small comfortable easy chairs.

A delightful room, Rose thought, but Sadie said at once, “I say, what a simply heavenly room—you’d never guess from the outside…”

“Er—no, I suppose not. Do sit down; I’ve asked Hans to bring you some tea and in the meantime tell me how I can help you.”

“Oh, Rose will explain; we’re hopelessly lost—my fault, I wouldn’t stop to look at the map.”

“Where are you staying?”

Rose answered him in her quiet sensible voice. “At a small hotel called ‘De Zwaan’, it’s close to the Amstel Hotel, down a narrow side street. We got here yesterday, quite late in the evening, and we’re leaving again in the morning. We’re on a package tour; six of us, but the other four didn’t want to explore. We were all right to start with, but these small streets are all alike, aren’t they? Besides, they are so picturesque we just walked on and on…”

“It is so very easy to get lost!” commented their host. “But you aren’t too far out of your way. Will your friends worry?”

“They went shopping and they won’t be back at the hotel until the shops close. We have a kind of high tea at half past six.”

“Ah yes, of course,” murmured Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane; he had never eaten high tea in his life and indeed was a little vague as to what it was, but there was no need for him to comment further for Sadie, who had been frankly staring around her, wanted to know if the large painting of a family group wearing the stiff clothes of a couple of hundred years earlier were any relation to him. He led her over to take a closer look and when Hans came in a few minutes later with the tea tray, paused only long enough to ask Rose to pour out. “What is it you say in England? ‘Be Mother’.”

She poured the tea from a silver teapot into paperthin china cups, reflecting that no one had ever called her motherly before; homely, plump, dull, uninteresting—all these, repeated so often that they no longer hurt; indeed anything her stepmother said to her now had no effect at all, and even though she was aware that there was truth in what she said, she enjoyed the friendship of a large number of people who didn’t seem to notice her unassuming looks. The others sat down presently and she handed cups and as she did so admired her host’s good manners, and when he turned to her and asked her what she thought of Holland, she answered him unselfconsciously in her pleasant voice. After a few moments she noticed that he was asking apparently casual questions, all of which she answered with polite vagueness, completely wasted from her point of view for Sadie broke in to give him chapter and verse about St Bride’s, with a wealth of unnecessary detail about their training and how they had passed their exams not six months previously and now held Staff Nurses’ posts. “Rose is the gold medallist,” she informed him, “she’s the only one of us with any brains; anyway she studied and we didn’t. There were always other things to do in the evenings when we were off duty.” She added ingenuously, “You know, housemen and the senior medical students.”

Mijnheer Werdmer ter Sane’s blue eyes rested fleetingly on Rose’s face; what he saw there caused him to say kindly, “I imagine that a gold medal is worth at least half a dozen housemen, your family must be very proud of you.”

This tactful remark didn’t have the effect he expected; Rose’s face flooded with colour and then went pale and she mumbled something, luckily lost in Sadie’s chatter. “That’s why we’re here,” she explained, “we’ve been saving up for months to have a holiday—to celebrate, you know. Only a week.” She sighed dramatically. “Back to work in two days’ time.”

She turned blue eyes to him. “You speak perfect English. Have you been in England?”