Last April Fair

Last April Fair
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. She’d found…the perfect husband.Phyllida Cresswell had definite ideas about love. She knew she didn’t love Philip and couldn’t marry him. So when the chance of a nursing job abroad came up, she took it. Things didn’t go smoothly in Madeira and Phyllida found herself stranded.Fortunately, the dashing Pieter van Sittardt was on hand to rescue her. Pieter, Phylllida discovered, was a man she could love. In fact, she’d be happy to marry him. All he had to do was ask.

“You haven’t been around much, have you?” His voice was as gentle as his fingers.

She knew what he meant. “No, I suppose not, there’s not a lot of time for a social life—one comes off duty tired and only longing to kick off one’s shoes and make a pot of tea. I used to go out more often before I met Philip.”

“You didn’t go out with him?” Pieter sounded surprised.

“Well, yes, of course—I meant we didn’t go dancing or to shows or anything like that….”

There was no expression on her companion’s face. She gave another tug at her hand beneath his.

“No, leave it where it is. You’re a pretty girl, Phyllida. You should have your chance to play the field, meet people, and by that I mean men of your own age. Who knows? If you go into the wide world and fall in and out of love a few times, you may go back to your Philip after all.”

She didn’t fancy the idea somehow. Philip seemed far away, belonging to another world. The thought crossed her mind that it might be fun to fall in love with Pieter. Just a little, of course….

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.

Last April Fair

Betty Neels

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

MRS GREGSON’S elderly voice, raised in its never-ending vendetta against the nurses making her bed, penetrated throughout the entire ward; it even penetrated Sister’s office, so that its occupant rose from her work at her desk with a sigh, opened the swing doors and made her way down the long ward to where her troublesome patient lay. She was a very pretty girl, tall and slim and nicely curved in her navy uniform. She had corn-coloured hair, cut short and swinging around her neck, with a fringe over her blue eyes and a nose which tilted very slightly above a softly curved mouth so that despite her twenty-six years she reminded anyone meeting her for the first time of a small eager girl wanting to be friendly with everyone.

She reached the bed just as its occupant, sitting in a heap in the middle of it clutching a blanket round her frail person, drew breath to begin on a fresh round of abuse. ‘Yer ter leave them blankets,’ she shrilled, ‘me bed’s fine—it don’t need making.’

‘And what is our Doctor Thorpe going to say when he comes presently and finds you in that untidy heap?’ Phyllida Cresswell’s voice was quiet and quite unworried by Mrs Gregson’s tantrums.

“E won’t saynothin’, ’e’ll be too busy looking at yer pretty face.’

Phyllida wasn’t in the least put out. ‘There you go again, making up stories. You just wait until I tell his wife!’

Mrs Gregson cackled happily. ‘Just me little joke, Sister dear, though you mark my words, some feller’ll come along one day and run orf with yer.’

‘It sounds exciting,’ agreed Phyllida. ‘And now how about this bed?’

‘Well, if yer say so…’

Phyllida smiled at the old lady, smiled too at the two student nurses and started off down the ward again. It was a good thing that Philip Mount was the Surgical Registrar and rarely came on to her ward; Mrs Gregson’s sharp eyes would have spotted that they were rather more than colleagues within minutes. Phyllida frowned slightly. Philip was getting a little too possessive just lately. It wasn’t as though they were engaged. Her frown deepened; perhaps it would have been better for them both if they had been, although she couldn’t remember that he had ever suggested it, merely taken it for granted that one day they would marry. And he was a good man; there weren’t many like him, she knew that; not particularly good-looking, but well built and pleasant-faced and rarely bad-tempered, ready to make allowances for everyone—she wasn’t good enough for him and she had told him so on several occasions. But he had only laughed at her, refusing to take her seriously.

She went back into her office and sat down at her desk again and picked up the telephone. There was the laundry to warn about the extra sheets she would need, the dispensary to argue with over the non-arrival of a drug she had ordered, the office to plead with for the loan of a nurse because one of her student nurses had gone off sick—she sighed and lifted the receiver.

The day went badly, with no nurse to replace the one who had gone off sick, two emergencies, Doctor Thorpe’s round and him in a nasty temper and not nearly enough clean linen returned from the laundry. Phyllida, a sunny-tempered girl, was decidedly prickly by the time she went to her midday dinner, a state of mind not improved by her friends wanting to know why she was so ratty, and made even worse by one of her friends demanding to know if she had had words with Philip.

‘No, I have not,’ she declared crossly, and thought suddenly that a good row with him would be better than his even-tempered tolerance when she was feeling illhumoured. She added rather lamely: ‘I’ve had a foul morning and Doctor Thorpe was in one of his tetchy moods; the round took for ever.’

The talk became general after that and presently, back on the ward, she regained her usual good nature so that Mrs Gregson stopped her as she was going down the ward to say: ‘That’s better, Sister dear. Black as a thundercloud yer’ve been all morning.’She grinned, displaying impossibly even false teeth. ‘We ain’t such a bad lot, are we?’

Phyllida had stopped to lean over the end of her patient’s bed. ‘You’re the nicest lot of ladies I’ve ever met,’ she assured her.

Mrs Gregson nodded, satisfied. ‘Going out this evening?’ she wanted to know.

Phyllida said that yes, she was and she still had a lot of work to do as she went on her way. She and Philip were going to have dinner with his elder brother and his wife. They lived in Hampstead in a pleasant house; privately she found them a dull couple with two dull children, but they seemed content enough and she had, upon occasion, detected a gleam of envy in Philip’s eye at the sight of their comfortable home with its neatly kept garden, well-behaved dog, gleaming furniture and shining windows. She frowned a little as she bent to take her newest patient’s blood pressure. It wasn’t that she didn’t like cleanliness and order and furniture polish, but somehow there was too much of it. She thought with sudden longing of her own home, an old rambling house in a village near Shaftesbury, standing on high ground so that it creaked and groaned in the winter gales and captured all the summer sun there was on its grey stone walls. Her father was the village doctor with a practice scattered miles in every direction and her mother ran the house with the help of old Mrs Drew who was really past it, as well as coping with the large untidy garden, two dogs, a variety of cats, an old pony and some chickens and over and above these such of her four children who might happen to be at home, and they usually brought friends with them.

It was late March, thought Phyllida, neatly charting her findings; the daffodils would be out and the catkins, and in the wilder corners of the garden there would be violets and primroses for the picking. She had a week’s holiday due to her, only a few days away now. The thought cheered her enormously and she felt guilty at the relief of getting away from Philip for a little while—perhaps while she was at home she would be able to make up her mind about him. And really, she chided herself as she went from bed to bed, with a nod and a word for the occupants, there should be no need of that. He was a splendid man, generous and honest and thoughtful—he would make a perfect husband. He would be dull too. She wiped the thought from her mind as unworthy and concentrated on his good points so that by the evening when she went off duty she was almost eager to see him.

She took extra pains with her face and hair as she changed out of her uniform and then poked around in her wardrobe. She had clothes enough, for unlike many of her friends she had no need to help out at home, but now she dragged out one dress after the other, dissatisfied with them all, until, pressed for time, she got into a grey wool dress with its matching long coat, tied a bright scarf round her neck, caught up gloves and handbag and skipped down the austere staircase of the Nurses’ Home. Philip was waiting in the hospital yard. That was another nice thing about him; he never kept her waiting and he never grumbled if she were late. She smiled widely at him as she got into the elderly Rover he cherished with such care.

‘I’ve had a foul day, Doctor Thorpe was as sour as vinegar and they sent up two chest cases. What about you?’ she asked.

‘Oh, quite a good list, one or two tacked on, of course, but Sir Hereward was in a good mood.’ He turned to smile at her. ‘Shall we go to Poon’s?’

Phyllida didn’t really like Chinese food, but she agreed at once. Poon’s was well away from the hospital and not expensive, and although Philip wasn’t mean, he hadn’t anything other than his salary. They drove through the City, cut into Long Acre and into Cranbourne Street and turned into the Charing Cross Road. There was a good deal of traffic as they turned into Lisle Street and found a parking meter, and the restaurant was crowded too. Phyllida sat down at the corner table found for them and let out a long contented sigh.

‘This is nice. I love my work, but it’s good to get away from it. I’ve got a week’s holiday in a few days, too.’

‘Going home?’ Philip was studying the menu.

She chose sweet and sour pork before she replied. ‘Yes.’ She gave him a questioning look.

‘I’ve a couple of days owing to me…’ His nice face beamed at her across the table.

‘Then come down for them. I’m going on Sunday evening—when can you manage to get free?’

‘Wednesday—until Friday midnight. Your mother won’t mind?’