The Silver Thaw

The Silver Thaw
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. Amelia and Tom had been engaged a long time - too long!She was beginning to worry about why he was so reluctant to set a date. So when her father first suggested that the three of them should have a holiday in Norway, Amelia thought that in such relaxed surroundings she and Tom would finally be able to settle their future.Instead, Amelia found Gideon van der Tolck often at her side, and his company became increasingly appealing…

“My dear Amelia, what are you waffling on about? This is just silly girl’s talk. I thought better of you. You are a sensible young woman.”

She whispered, “I’m not, I’m not, and soon I won’t be young anymore. Oh, Tom, what about children and making a home together and having a dog and a cat and going out for picnics on Sundays…?” He was silent.

She tried just once more. “Tom, won’t you look for a job in England? For my sake?”

He smiled kindly. “Amelia, you know how important my work is to me.”

“More important than I am?”

He considered that carefully. “That’s hard to answer, but if I must be honest—yes, it is.”

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.

The Silver Thaw

Betty Neels

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

THE OPERATING THEATRE was quiet; not a peaceful quiet, though. Mr Thomley-Jones was in a bad temper and although he was working with his usual meticulous care and skill, he was making life hard for those in attendance upon him, snapping and snarling his way through a cholescystectomy, two nasty appendices—both pushed in between the other cases because they could have perforated at any moment—and now with a still nastier splenectomy almost completed, he was venting his wrath on the hapless house surgeon who was assisting himself and his registrar. The unfortunate young man, clumsy in any case, became even more so, dropping things, tightening retractors when they should have been loosened, using the wrong scissors and generally making a fine muddle. His chief waited in mounting impatience and a silence which spoke for itself while his assistant cut the ends of gut with which Mr Thomley-Jones was reassembling his patient’s inside and then let out a great roar as the unfortunate young man cut too close so that the stitch was no longer a stitch. The registrar sighed soundlessly and took over, the thunder of his chief’s rage leaving him unmoved.

Just as unmoved was Mr Thomley-Jones’ theatre Sister, who in one swift movement removed the scissors from the hapless surgeon’s hand, gave him a swab to hold, handed more gut to Mr Thomley-Jones, threaded another needle ready for the mattress stitches and swept her gaze round the theatre. The theatre mechanic was standing stolidly by the anaesthetist, her staff nurse was checking swabs, the more senior of the student nurses was looking frightened but doing just as she should, and her companion, fresh in the theatre that very morning, was in tears.

She put the needle and gut into Mr Thomley-Jones’ impatient hand and said in a quelling voice: ‘Sir, you’ve made one of my nurses cry.’

‘Bah!’ exclaimed Mr Thomley-Jones, ‘she shouldn’t be in theatre if she’s got no guts for it.’

Theatre Sister looked at him from a pair of fine dark eyes, heavily lashed. ‘Unlike many of the people who come here, she has got guts, but when you get annoyed you’re rather awesome, sir.’

He glanced at her and although she couldn’t see his face she knew that he was pleased at being called awesome—it sounded godlike.

‘Impertinent young woman, aren’t you, Sister?’

‘I’m sorry if you think so, sir, but I try to look after my nurses.’

He held out a hand for more gut and she inserted it into the needle-holder with great neatness.

‘Oh, you do that all right, teach ’em well, too. You’re a good one at your job, Amelia.’

When he called her by her name she knew that she had been forgiven. They had worked together now for four years and had a proper respect for each other’s job; as the operation drew to its close he mellowed visibly so that the houseman was emboldened to take up the scissors again and the registrar winked at Amelia.

The surgeons went away presently to drink their coffee in her little office down the corridor, and, the patient safely despatched to his ward, the anaesthetist wandered away to join his colleagues, leaving the mechanic to tidy up after him while Amelia collected her nurses and set about the task of clearing away and setting up for the afternoon list. But presently she left Sybil, her staff nurse, and the student nurse and guided her new member of the team into the anaesthetic room where she was at pains to explain to the still tearful girl that Mr Thomley-Jones’ bark was a great deal worse than his bite, that in time she would find that she could continue with her tasks in theatre whatever happened and that she had done very well for her first morning. ‘And just you remember,’ said Amelia soothingly, jumping down from the trolley where she had perched herself, ‘one day you’ll probably be a theatre Sister yourself. It’s a splendid job, you know.’

With which heartening words she took herself off to join the gentlemen; they liked her to be there while they relaxed after a list, to pour their coffee and hand them biscuits and make an attentive audience of one while they chewed over their work. It was a nice job, she mused, going down the corridor, but after four years she was beginning to wonder if she wanted it for much longer; she was twenty-seven now, almost twenty-eight and although she had been engaged for a year to Tom Crouch, the Medical Registrar, he had made it evident that he expected her to go on working for some years after they were married, and as his reasons were sound and sensible she had stifled her disappointment and agreed to stay at St Ansell’s. Tom was clever and doing well and he wanted to do better. He was anxious to make a success of his life and give her the things he considered that she should have; he was quite stubborn about this, and it was a pity, for she was the only daughter of a very comfortably placed village squire, able to provide all the comforts and luxuries Tom wanted her to have as well as helping him up the ladder. It seemed a waste of time to go on working while he saved enough to buy himself into a practice when she could have married him at once and enjoyed all the pleasure of running her own home. She saw his point of view, of course, but sometimes when she was tired at the end of a long day, she wondered if he weren’t being selfish—well, not selfish, just a bit thoughtless…

There was almost no coffee left; she went in search of more, was scolded by the theatre maid and returned to pour second cups and the remainder for herself. She drank it fairly quickly and then excused herself and went back to the theatre, thankful that it was one of the days when only one theatre was in use.

The afternoon list, with Mr Godwin operating, went peacefully. He was a small, good-natured man, not in the least temperamental, and a good surgeon. But he was slow; by five o’clock Amelia was tired and a little cross. Thank heaven, she thought, Tom was free and they would go out to dinner somewhere quiet, and in two days she would go home for her days off. The thought got her through the rest of the afternoon and presently she was curled up on the rather shabby sofa in the Sisters’ sitting room, drinking the teapot dry and contemplating her evening.

Tom had said seven o’clock, and well before that time she climbed the stairs to her room, had a bath and got changed, and because she had the time to spare she took extra trouble with her face and hair. The result was satisfactory even to her critical eye; her hair, a rich deep brown, she had brushed smooth into a chignon, her pretty face, with its delicately tilted nose and wide curved mouth, she had made up with care and her dress, a lacy knit jersey in a lovely rich ochre, although plain and very simple, had the simplicity of good cut and material. It suited her tall well-built figure to perfection and for once she found no reason to moan over her shape, which while it left nothing to be desired, was on the Junoesque side.

She was still a little early, but she put on an angora coat against the September chill and went downstairs.

Tom wasn’t there, but she hadn’t expected him to be. She whiled away ten minutes or so talking to Giles, the Head Porter, and then turned at Tom’s quiet: ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Amelia.’

She beamed up at him, wishing secretly that old Giles or no, he would kiss her or at least take her hand—after all, they had been engaged for some time now and there was nothing secret about it. She stifled regret and told herself that Tom always did the right thing and whereas she was impulsive and inclined to want her own way, he was invariably correct in his behaviour and deliberate in his decisions. She went out to his well-kept Rover and got in beside him, and he drove, with all due regard for the Rules of the Road, into the stream of evening traffic.

They almost always went to the same restaurant, an Italian one in the Brompton Road, and the head waiter showed them to their usual table with a welcoming smile. As they sat down Tom observed: ‘That’s a new dress, isn’t it, Amelia?’

‘Yes—do you like it?’

‘Very much—I suppose it cost a month’s salary?’ He smiled at her as he spoke, but it was a thin smile, and she sighed a little when she saw it.

‘It was expensive, Tom—I like clothes, most women do, but I’d cheerfully wear the same old thing for years if it would help you—but you won’t be helped…’

‘No. Will you mind after we’re married, not being able to buy anything you take a fancy to?’

She felt surprise. ‘But Tom, you won’t mind me spending my own money, will you? You know I’ve got an allowance, and it isn’t just one Father gives me, you know—it’s from some money my mother left to me. It doesn’t matter what I do, it’ll be paid to me for as long as I live.’

Tom was studying the menu. ‘When we marry, it will be when I can support you fittingly as my wife, my dear—you will have an allowance from me.’

She gave him a bewildered look. ‘But if I’m still working…?’

‘That’s a different matter. We shall both be earning and saving for our future.’