The Most Marvellous Summer

“I’m surprised no man has snapped you up.”

Matilda had every quality that turned a man’s head, but she had remained heart-whole and fancy-free despite a number of offers. Then she met eminent surgeon James Scott-Thurlow and fell in love at first sight. But James clearly did not feel the same way. How could he when he was already engaged to the glamorous Rhoda?

She looked meek, but her eyes sparkled because he had called her Matilda and not by her last name.

A tiny step forward, perhaps?

She picked up the knife again and started on the other side of the duck and he stepped forward, took the knife from her, carved the rest of the bird with a practiced hand and laid the knife down on the table.

“Is there no one to help you?”

“They’re having their supper. I’ll stay down here until you’ve all gone home.” She selected a slice of duck and popped it into her mouth.

It was Roseanne who spoke. “Look—” she sounded worried “—we must go back. They’ll wonder where we are.”

He looked as cross as two sticks, she thought lovingly. “I shall take a tray up to my room. Good night, Mr. Scott-Thurlow, or is it goodbye?”

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.

The Most

Marvellous Summer

THE BEST of Betty Neels

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

MATILDA HAD FALLEN in love. She had had no intention of doing so, but there it was. She first saw the stranger during the reading of the first lesson by Sir Benjamin Fox, whose pompous voice, pronouncing biblical names with precise correctness, always set her thoughts wandering. She glanced along the pew at her two brothers, home for the half-term holidays, her two sisters and her mother and then allowed her gaze to wander to the manor pew at the side of the chancel, where Lady Fox sat with various members of her family. They all looked alike, she thought, with their fine beaky noses and thin mouths. She turned her head very slightly and looked across the main aisle and saw the stranger sitting by Dr Bramley. He appeared a very large man with broad shoulders, fair hair which she suspected had a sprinkling of grey, and a splendid profile. A pity that he didn’t look round… Sir Benjamin rolled the last unpronounceable name off his tongue and she fixed her eyes on him once more—green eyes, shadowed by sweeping black lashes, in a lovely face crowned by a wealth of copper hair.

Her father announced the hymn and the congregation rose to sing it cheerfully, galloping ahead of the organ when it had the chance, and then sitting once more for the second lesson. The headmaster of the village infants’ school read it in a clear unhurried voice and this time she listened, until something compelled her to glance across the aisle again. The stranger was looking at her and he was every bit as handsome as she had expected him to be; unsmiling—it wouldn’t have done in church if he had smiled anyway—and somehow compelling. She went faintly pink and looked away from him quickly, feeling all at once as though she were in some kind of blissful heaven, knowing with certainty that she had fallen in love. It was a delightful sensation, and she pondered over it during her father’s sermon, taking care not to look across the aisle again; the village was a small one and rather isolated, so that everyone was inclined to mind everyone else’s business and turn a molehill into a mountain, preferably a romantic one, and that if a girl so much as glanced twice at the same man. She was aware that the village was disappointed that she hadn’t married. She had had three proposals and although she had hesitated over them she had declined them kindly and watched her erstwhile suitors marry without regret. Twenty-six was getting on a bit, as Mrs Chump at the general stores so often reminded her, but she had waited. Now here he was, the man she wished to marry, dropped as it were from heaven into her path. He could of course be married, engaged or a confirmed bachelor—she would have to find out, but, as she was great friends with Dr Bramley, it would be easy to ask him.

The last hymn sung, the congregation filed out, stopping to chat as it went, and since the rector’s family were well liked their progress was slow; they arrived at the church door just in time for her to see the stranger, still with the doctor, talking to Sir Benjamin, and even as Matilda looked Lady Fox tapped him on an arm and pushed Roseanne, her eldest daughter, forwards. Matilda watched him being swept away down the tree-lined avenue which led to the manor-house from the churchyard.

She watched him go, already planning to ask who he was when she got to the manor-house in the morning. Esme, her younger sister, fourteen and as sharp as a needle, tugged her arm. ‘Hey, Tilly—come on,’ and then, ‘I bet you’ve fallen for him—I have. A bit old for me I suppose, but he’d do nicely for you.’

‘Rubbish, love. What nonsense you do talk.’

‘You went all pink when he looked at you—I expect it was your hair—it kind of glows, you know, even under a hat!’

They started to walk along the narrow path which led to the rectory garden and Esme said, ‘Hilary’s seen him too, but of course she’s engaged…’

‘Let’s forget him,’ said Matilda cheerfully. ‘We’ll probably never see him again.’ She uttered the remark with the heartfelt wish that it might not be true. However could she marry anyone else now that she had seen him and knew that she had fallen in love at last? She would have to stay an old maid, if there was such a thing these days, helping with the parish and wearing dreary hats and worthy undateable clothes.

She sighed heavily at the very idea and Esme said, ‘I bet you’ll meet again—I dare say he’s your fate.’

‘Oh, what romantic nonsense,’ said Matilda again and hurried to the kitchen to help her mother dish up the Sunday lunch.

Her mother had her head in the Aga oven, and was prodding the joint with a fork. ‘Put the apples on for the sauce, will you, dear? I wonder who that giant was in church? Did you see him?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘He seemed to know the Foxes. I must keep my ears open in the village tomorrow.’

She emerged and closed the oven door, an older version of her lovely daughter although the hair was streaked with grey. ‘That was a frightful hat Lady Fox was wearing—I wonder where she buys them?’

‘Probably makes them herself.’ Matilda was peeling apples and biting at the cores.

She was up early the next morning and while her mother cooked the breakfast she sorted the wash, got the machine going, made sure that Esme was up and had everything she needed before catching the bus to Sherborne where she was having extra coaching for her O Levels, and then roused the two boys. Hilary, her other sister, was going to stay with her fiancé and was already up, doing the last of her packing. They all sat down to breakfast presently, a meal taken with the minimum of conversation since everyone there had his or her plans for the day. Esme was the first to go, then the boys on a fishing expedition, the rector to visit a parishioner in hospital at Salisbury and then Hilary, leaving Mrs ffinch and Matilda to clear the table and leave the dishes for Mrs Coffin, who came three times a week to help in the house.

‘Don’t be late,’ warned Mrs ffinch as Matilda got Nelson the cat’s breakfast. She sighed as she said it—it irked her that her beautiful daughter should have to go to work each day. Not that it wasn’t a suitable job for the daughter of the rector—social secretary to Lady Fox—even though it was badly paid and covered a multitude of odd jobs which no social secretary cognisant with her normal duties would have countenanced. But, as Matilda pointed out, it paid for her clothes, and the fees for Esme’s coaching, and helped towards the upkeep of the rectory, a large, rambling house with out-of-date plumbing always going wrong, draughty rooms and a boiler which swallowed coke by the ton. All the same, it was comfortable in a shabby way and the family was a happy one.

It was only a few minutes’ walk to the manor-house; Matilda nipped smartly through the light rain and went in through the side-door—not that she wasn’t expected to use the front entrance, but the polished floor of the wide hall showed every mark from damp feet and she was aware that Mrs Fletcher from the village, who obliged each day at the manor-house, would have just finished polishing it. She went along the passage to the kitchen, wished Cook and the kitchen maid good morning and made her way through the baize door into the front of the house. Lady Fox was coming down the staircase, holding a handful of letters.

‘Good morning, Matilda.’ She glanced at the long case clock in the hall, but since Matilda was exactly on time and she had no cause to find fault she went on, ‘Such a number of letters this morning; really, my days are so busy…’

Lady Fox gave Matilda a faintly disapproving look; there was nothing wrong with her appearance—the striped shirt, navy pleated skirt and sensible shoes were, to say the least, not worthy of a second glance—but dowdy clothes couldn’t dim the brightness of Matilda’s hair or the sparkling green of her eyes, and those allied to a delightful nose, a curving mouth and a complexion as smooth and fresh as a child’s. Lady Fox frowned slightly, remembering Roseanne’s regrettable spots and unfortunate nose. ‘I have guests for lunch,’ she observed. ‘I had better see Cook at once while you deal with these.’ She handed the letters to Matilda and hurried away kitchenwards.

Matilda, sorting out butcher’s and grocer’s bills from invitations to dinner and requests from charities, reflected that Lady Fox wasn’t in a very good mood and, since there was no sign of that lady, she put the letters on the desk in Lady Fox’s sitting-room and went along to the chilly little room where she arranged the flowers. The gardener had brought in early tulips and daffodils and some rather overpowering greenery and she was trying to decide what to do with them when Lady Fox’s voice, high and penetrating, reached her. ‘You might do a small centre-piece for the table, Matilda—go into the garden and see what you can find.’

Matilda, well brought up as she had been, allowed herself the comfort of a childish grimace; if it hadn’t been for the useful money needed at the rectory, she would have liked to flounce out of the manor-house and never go back.

The garden was soothing, if chilly, and she took a basket with her and picked primulas and grape-hyacinths, late Christmas roses, lily of the valley and a handful of brightly coloured polyanthus and bore the lot back through the garden door and into the hall, intent on fetching a particular bowl which would look just right on the dining-room table.

Lady Fox was in the hall, talking animatedly to the stranger. She paused to look at Matilda and her companion looked too; Matilda, her fiery head a little untidy, her pretty face glowing from the fresh air, clutching her basket of flowers, was worth looking at.

‘There you are,’ observed Lady Fox with distinctly false bonhomie, ‘but shouldn’t you be arranging the flowers?’ She turned to the man beside her. ‘My companion-secretary, you know—I couldn’t manage without help and Roseanne has her painting—quite talented.’

He gave her a grave, enquiring look and she went on hurriedly, ‘This is Matilda ffinch, the rector’s eldest daughter—Matilda, this is Mr Scott-Thurlow.’

Matilda transferred the basket to her other arm and held out a hand, to have it engulfed by his large firm grasp. Now that she could look at him face to face, she was even more certain that this was the man she had been waiting for. She beamed at him, full of delight, and he smiled a little in return. A firm mouth, perhaps a rather stern one, and his eyes were blue, heavy-lidded and cool; he would be at least thirty-five, perhaps nearer forty.

His polite ‘How do you do?’ was uttered in a deep quiet voice and her smile widened. Her ‘hello’ sounded like that of a little girl who had just been offered something she had longed for.

Lady Fox spoke in the voice she kept for recalcitrant children on those occasions when she had been asked to give away the Sunday school prizes.

‘If you would see to the flowers, Matilda—and since I shan’t need you for a few hours you may go home for your lunch.’

‘Back after lunch?’ asked Matilda.

‘Half-past two.’ Mr Scott-Thurlow would be gone by then; Roseanne on her own could be quite charming, reflected her fond parent, and there would be no competition…

‘Very well, Lady Fox.’ Matilda turned an emerald gaze upon Mr Scott-Thurlow. Her goodbye was cheerful; having found him she didn’t for one moment expect fate to lose him again for her. She would have liked to have stayed for lunch—usually she did—but one lunch more or less would make no difference to the future.

She nipped smartly to the back of the house, arranged the flowers and then took herself off home. She passed Roseanne as she left the house, and since she was a kind-hearted girl she was sorry to see that she was wearing an expensive two-piece in the wrong shade of green—it showed up the spots.

Roseanne stopped when she saw her. ‘I hate this outfit,’ she declared, quite fiercely for her. ‘Mother says it’s elegant but I feel a fool in it.’ She cast an envious eye upon Matilda’s person. ‘You always look right—why?’

‘I don’t know. You’d look nice in the greeny blue…’

‘There’s that man coming to lunch,’ went on Roseanne unhappily. ‘Mother says I must exert myself…’

She hurried indoors and Matilda went back to the rectory to give her mother and father a hand, prepare the lunch and then sit down and eat it.

‘You aren’t usually home at this time,’ remarked her father, ladling shepherd’s pie into exact portions.

‘Got the sack?’ asked Guy, and Thomas added,

‘Shouldn’t be surprised with that hair.’

‘Visitors for lunch,’ explained Matilda, ignoring her brothers. ‘I’m to go back at half-past two.’

‘You usually stay there even when there are visitors,’ mused her mother.

Matilda turned limpid eyes upon her parent. ‘Probably I’d have made the numbers wrong, Mother.’ She handed out the plates. ‘Is it Esme’s evening for dancing class? Do you want me to collect her?’

‘Well, that would be nice, dear; the bus takes so long to get here.’

Matilda went back to the manor-house after lunch and found Lady Fox and Roseanne arguing about the green outfit. They both looked cross and Lady Fox said at once, ‘This silly girl has been invited to stay in London and she doesn’t want to go…’

Matilda had collected the second post as she went in, and she sat down and began to sort it. ‘Why not?’ she asked, pleasantly. ‘I should think it would be the greatest fun.’

‘I don’t know anyone,’ mumbled Roseanne.

‘Well, you don’t expect to until you’re there,’ said Matilda reasonably, ‘but think of the theatres—you know, The Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love and Cats and there’ll be exhibitions at the Tate and the National Gallery. You might meet some artists.’

Roseanne brightened. ‘Well, yes—I suppose that I might; perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.’

Matilda went home again after tea, taken off a tray while she added up the household accounts for Lady Fox. It was a fine evening and the drive to Sherborne would be pleasant. Abner Magna was only a few miles from that town, but the roads were narrow and winding and the evening bus which Esme sometimes took stopped whenever someone wanted to board it or get off, making the journey twice as long. Matilda got a thick knitted jacket, poked at her hair and went to tell her mother that she was about to leave. There was no one in the kitchen but there were voices in her father’s study. She opened the door, stuck her head round it and cried, ‘I’m off to fetch Esme, we shouldn’t be—’ She came to a halt; Mr Scott-Thurlow was standing beside her father, surveying the rather untidy garden.

He said at once, ‘Good evening, Miss ffinch,’ and her father said mildly, ‘John Bramley asked Mr Scott-Thurlow to bring a book over which he had promised to lend me. You have met?’

‘Very briefly,’ observed his guest. ‘I mustn’t keep you, sir. Do I understand Miss ffinch to say that she is driving into Sherborne? I’m on the point of going there myself and shall be glad to offer her a lift.’

A delightful prospect, which she had to refuse with regret. ‘I’m going to fetch my sister—she’s at dancing class, and we’ve no way of getting back here—the last bus would have gone…’

‘I shall be coming back; I have to take something to the hospital for Dr Bramley, a matter of five minutes. We could collect your sister and I can stop at the hospital on our way back.’

‘Oh, well, yes—thank you very much. Do you want to go now?’

‘Certainly.’ He said all the right things to the rector and then stopped in the hall for a moment to bid Mrs ffinch goodbye before ushering Matilda outside.

He opened the door of the car standing there and she skipped inside. ‘What a treat,’ she declared happily, ‘a Rolls-Royce—wait till Esme sees it.’ She added the information that such a vehicle was seldom seen in Abner Magna. ‘Of course Sir Benjamin has a Daimler, but it’s a bit worthy if you know what I mean.’

He made some non-committal answer, but since she felt strangely at ease with him she enlivened their short journey with odds and ends of information, all of them good-natured, about the village and its inhabitants. ‘I dare say you live in London?’ she wanted to know.

Mr Scott-Thurlow was sitting back, not driving fast; he said idly, ‘Yes, I do. Your village is delightful.’

‘Well, I like it, but I was born here. Have you known Dr Bramley long?’

‘Er—he and my father knew each other in their youth…’

‘Oh, well, I didn’t think you were all that old,’ said Matilda kindly. ‘Dr Bramley is always saying that he’ll retire so he must be getting on a bit.’

Her companion allowed himself a faint smile. ‘I am thirty-eight,’ he told her. ‘And how old are you, Miss ffinch?’

‘Me? Oh, twenty-six.’

‘And heart-whole?’

A difficult question to answer. ‘Well, I was… Are you married?’

They were in Sherborne now and he asked, ‘Which way?’ before saying, ‘No, but I’m engaged.’

Matilda knew exactly how a balloon must feel when it was pricked. She said in a rigid voice, ‘I expect you’re looking forward to getting married. Here we are.’

He stopped the car and turned to look at her. ‘Do you know, Miss ffinch, I cannot remember when I was cross-examined so thoroughly?’

She stared at him, stricken. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry—I just wanted—I was interested…’

He smiled then and her heart turned over. ‘I rather enjoyed it. Is that your sister waving to us from the other side of the road?’

A snub, a gentle one, but still a snub. Matilda went a delightful pink and frowned ferociously, remembering the string of questions she had flung at him; he probably thought her a dull country woman with nothing better to do than poke her nose into other people’s affairs. Her daydream had been shattered by a few well-chosen words on his part and life would never be the same again. The quicker he went away and she never set eyes on him again the better. She said in a sober voice, ‘Yes, that’s Esme.’

It was a good thing that Esme elected to sit beside him and chatter non-stop so that Matilda had no need to say much; she thanked him rather primly as he stopped at the rectory gates but it was Esme who urged him to go in with them. An invitation he declined pleasantly enough.

He had gone the next day, or so it seemed from a remark her father made the following evening, and it was then that she realised that she had no idea what he did or who he really was. He had the calm self-assured manner of a solicitor and she had heard him discussing a point of law with the rector during his brief visit. Solicitors, she had always supposed, earned themselves a good living, good enough to run a Rolls—she allowed her thoughts to wander—he might have to get a cheaper car when he married though; his wife would want clothes and the children would need to be educated. She made a resolution then and there not to think about him any more. That she had fallen in love with a man who was on the point of getting married to some other girl was a trick of unkind fate, and there was nothing to do about it.

A week went by, the boys went back to school and so did Esme, and Hilary was home again. Matilda’s days were full: Lady Fox each day, choir practice on Thursday evening, Sunday school, driving her father to one or two of the more distant farms; the pattern of her future, reflected Matilda, indulging in a rare attack of self-pity, and then forgetting to be sorry for herself when she went for a Sunday afternoon stroll through the woods above the village. It really was a delightful day; the sky was blue, the trees were turning green even as she looked at them and there were lambs racing around the fields, and when she sat on a tree stump to get her breath a squirrel came and sat within a yard or two of her. There were compensations, she told herself stoutly.

She was surprised to find Lady Fox waiting for her in the hall when she went there on the Monday morning. She wondered uneasily if she had done something really dire, like sending a letter in the wrong envelope, but from the smile on Lady Fox’s face she thought that unlikely.

‘There you are, Matilda,’ said Lady Fox unnecessarily. ‘Come into the sitting-room, will you? I should like a word with you.’

She nodded to a chair and Matilda sat down, wondering what to expect.

‘Roseanne,’ began Lady Fox, ‘has consented to pay a visit to London—her godmother, you know, the Honourable Mrs Venables. I am delighted; she is bound to meet people.’ Lady Fox really meant young men free to marry. ‘There is simply no one of her age and class here.’

Matilda said nothing, although that was difficult; the ffinches had been in and around Dorset for centuries and were as good, if not better than the Foxes, and what was more her mother was distantly related to a peer of the realm—so distant, it must be said, that her family name was a mere dot on the outskirts of the lordly family tree—all the same, it was there.

‘Such a pity,’ went on Lady Fox in what she considered to be a confidential voice, ‘that Mr Scott-Thurlow is engaged to be married, although of course he would have been rather old for Roseanne—a pity that I wasn’t told.’

‘You were telling me about Roseanne’s visit,’ prompted Matilda while she thought about Mr Scott-Thurlow.

‘I am coming to that. She will go only on the condition that you go with her. The visit is for a month and you would go as her companion. Her godmother has no objection, and I shall of course pay you your usual salary. In a week’s time.’

‘I’ll talk it over with my mother and father,’ said Matilda in a quiet voice which her nearest and dearest would have recognised as the first sign of rage coming to the boil. ‘I shall want to consider it myself.’