“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

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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.’

Lady Fox looked astounded. ‘But my dear girl, it is such a splendid opportunity for you to see something of the sophisticated world—you might even meet some suitable young man. If you are worried about clothes I’m sure—’

‘No, I’m not worried about clothes, Lady Fox. I’m not sure that I want to go to London. I really must have a day or two to think about it.’

Lady Fox’s formidable frontage swelled alarmingly. ‘Well, really, I don’t know what to say. It is most important that Roseanne should go—she is so—so countrified and gauche. Vera and Mary are so much younger and already quite self-possessed.’

Matilda, who disliked the two teenagers, agreed politely; Roseanne was dull and had no backbone worth mentioning, but at least she wasn’t rude.

Lady Fox rose. ‘Well, since you seem to want time to think over this splendid offer, perhaps you will let me know as soon as you have decided? Now, will you see to the post and wash the Sèvres? I have to go in to Sherborne. I shall be back for lunch—Sir Benjamin is out so there will be just myself, Roseanne and yourself. Tell Cook, will you?’

She hurried away, looking cross, and Matilda wandered off to the kitchen where she discussed lunch with Cook and had a cup of tea before going through the post.

She was in the china pantry washing the precious Sèvres china when Roseanne wandered in.

‘Matilda, you will come with me, won’t you? I won’t go unless you do. Mother keeps on and on, if I don’t go I won’t stay here either, I’ll run away.’

Matilda eyed her carefully. Roseanne meant it. The worm had turned, and, let loose on an uncaring world, Roseanne wouldn’t stand a chance…

‘I’ll have to discuss it with Mother and Father but I don’t think they would mind, just for a few weeks.’

‘You’ll come? Oh, Matilda, I’ll never be able to thank you enough—I’ll do anything…’

‘No need,’ said Matilda prosaically, ‘I dare say it will be quite fun.’

Her parents raised no objection; she told Lady Fox the next day that she was willing to go with Roseanne and listened to that lady’s monologue about the benefits of London to a girl like Roseanne. ‘Of course you may not get invited to the dinner parties and dances her godmother will arrange, but I dare say you will be glad of that.’

‘Why?’ asked Matilda with interest.

Lady Fox went an unbecoming red. ‘Oh, I have no intention of being rude, Matilda—what I mean is that you will need time to yourself occasionally and there will be no need to attend all the parties Roseanne is bound to go to. I rely upon you to see that she buys only suitable clothes, and please discourage any friendships she may strike up if the—er—young man isn’t suitable. She is very young…’

Twenty-two wasn’t all that young, thought Matilda, and it was high time Roseanne found her own feet and stood on them.

At home, she inspected her wardrobe and decided that there was no need to buy anything new. She had two evening dresses, both off the peg and by no means new, but nevertheless pretty. She had a good suit, blouses and sweaters enough, a skirt or two and a rather nice jersey dress bought in the January sales. She climbed the narrow stairs to the attic, found a rather battered case, hauled it downstairs and packed it without enthusiasm. London in the spring would come a poor second to Abner Magna.

Each day she was taken aside and lectured by Lady Fox about the London visit; she must do this and not that, young men were to be scrutinised and Roseanne wasn’t to go gallivanting off…

Matilda forbore from pointing out that the girl was the last person on earth to gallivant, and anyway with those spots and that unfortunate nose she wasn’t likely to get the chance. Let the poor girl have her fling! However timid, she was a nice girl and perhaps with her mother out of the way she might even improve enormously.

She made suitable replies to Lady Fox’s remarks and that lady, looking at her, wished for the hundredth time that it could have been someone else but Matilda ffinch who was going with Roseanne; the girl was too pretty—more than that, that hair and those wide eyes weren’t to be ignored. She would have to drop a word in Roseanne’s godmother’s ear to make sure that Matilda attended as few dances and parties as possible; no one—no man—would look at the dear girl while Matilda was there, although give the girl her due she wasn’t a young woman to push herself forward; she knew her place, Lady Fox reflected, happily unaware of the superiority of the ffinches over the Foxes.

They were to travel up to London in the Foxes’ Daimler driven by Gregg the chauffeur and gardener. Matilda got up early, made a tour of the rather untidy garden, ate a good breakfast and presented herself at the manor at nine o’clock sharp.

Roseanne, wearing expensive mud-brown tweeds, quite unsuitable for the time of year, looked as though she would change her mind about going at any moment; Matilda bustled her briskly into the car with the promise that they would telephone as soon as they arrived and they drove away.

It was a pleasant morning, chilly still but the sun shone and Matilda, chatting bracingly about the pleasures in store, wanted very much to get out of the car and walk or get on to her old bike and potter off for the day. She listened sympathetically to Roseanne’s uncertain hopes for the next few weeks, bolstered her up with the delights of London in store for her and whenever she had a moment thought about Mr Scott-Thurlow.

The Honourable Mrs Venables lived in Kensington, in a massive red brick flat, furnished with splendour and a regrettable tendency to overdo crimson velvet, gilding wherever possible and dark, heavy furniture. She received them graciously and somewhat absent-mindedly, since she was holding a lengthy telephone conversation when they arrived. They sat while she concluded this and were then handed over to a dour-looking woman who led them down a long corridor to two rooms at its end, overlooking a narrow garden and more red brick walls.

‘There’s the bathroom,’ they were told. ‘You share it. My name’s Bertha.’

‘I’m not going to like it,’ declared Roseanne when they were alone in her room. Her lip quivered. ‘I want to go home.’

‘We’ve only just got here,’ Matilda pointed out. ‘At least let’s give it a try. It’s all a bit strange—you’ll feel better after lunch.’

She was right; Mrs Venables had a great deal to say over the meal, laying out for Roseanne’s approbations the various entertainments she had arranged for her. ‘We shall have a quiet evening here today,’ she said, ‘but tomorrow we might go shopping and there’s an excellent film we might see in the evening. I shall leave you two girls to amuse yourselves during the day—there is plenty to see and do. I have arranged a dinner party or two and there are several invitations for you.’ It all sounded rather fun so that when Roseanne telephoned her mother after lunch she said nothing about wanting to return home.

They spent the next day or two finding their feet. The mornings were taken up with shopping; Roseanne had plenty of money and urged by Matilda bought the clothes she had always wanted and never had the smallest chance to since her mother had always accompanied her. It was a surprise what a difference they made to her appearance, especially when Matilda, given carte blanche at the cosmetic counters, found a cream to disguise the spots and chose lipstick, blusher and eye-shadow and applied them to her companion’s face. ‘Don’t you want to buy anything?’ asked Roseanne. ‘Clothes?’

Matilda assured her, quite untruthfully, that she didn’t.

It was their third day there and they had been shopping again. It was Matilda who stopped outside an art gallery with a discreet notice, ‘Exhibition Within’, and suggested that they might take a look.

The gallery was a series of rooms, very elegant and half filled with viewers, and the first person Matilda saw there was Mr Scott-Thurlow.

CHAPTER TWO

MR SCOTT-THURLOW WASN’T alone: there was a tall, willowy girl beside him, a fashion-plate, so slim that she might have been cut out of cardboard. She was exquisitely made up and her hair was a teased-out halo, lacquered into immobility. She was beautiful but there was no animation in her face; indeed, she looked bored, far more interested in arranging the pleats of her long skirt than viewing the large painting before which they stood.

Matilda, after the first shock of delight, wanted perversely nothing so much as to get as far away from Mr Scott-Thurlow as possible, but Roseanne had seen him too. She darted up to him and caught his sleeve.

‘Fancy seeing you here, Mr Scott-Thurlow—’ for once she had forgotten her shyness ‘—and Matilda’s with me…’

He took her hand and shook it gently and his voice was kind. ‘How delightful to see you again, Roseanne. Are you staying in town?’ He turned to his companion. ‘Rhoda, this is Roseanne Fox; we met in Dorset a few weeks ago.’ He smiled at Roseanne. ‘My fiancée, Rhoda Symes.’

He looked past her to where Matilda was waiting and his smile faded, indeed he looked angry but so fleetingly that watching him she decided that she had imagined it. There was nothing else to do but to join Roseanne, greet him politely and be introduced in her turn to the girl with him.

Rhoda Symes was everything that she wasn’t, reflected Matilda sadly, thinking of her own pleasant plumpness and kind of knowing that in the eyes of this girl she was just plain fat, size fourteen, wearing all the wrong make-up and with the wrong-coloured hair… All the same she gave the girl a friendly smile—if she was going to make Mr Scott-Thurlow a happy man, then she, Matilda, would make the best of it; she loved him too much to think otherwise.

The girl was lovely. Matilda supposed that in all fairness if she were a man she would undoubtedly fall for all that elegant beauty.

They stood and talked for a few minutes until Matilda observed that they still had almost the whole of the exhibition to see and since Roseanne was interested hadn’t they better get started?

She bade Mr Scott-Thurlow a colourless goodbye and smiled without guile at Rhoda Symes, trying not to see the very large diamond on her left hand—a hand which that lady flourished rather too prominently.

‘I say,’ said Roseanne excitedly, ‘isn’t she absolutely lovely? I wonder if we’ll get asked to the wedding?’ She added, not meaning to be rude, ‘Not you, of course.’

Matilda, contemplating a large oil-painting which she thought privately looked as though the artist had upset his paint pots over the canvas, agreed cheerfully to this remark; wild horses wouldn’t drag her to Mr Scott-Thurlow’s wedding—he was, as far as she was concerned, a closed book. Or so she told herself.

Roseanne’s godmother gave a dinner party on the following evening; just a few friends, the Honourable Mrs Venables had said, most of them unattached men of suitable age with a complement of safely married ladies; Roseanne must have her chance and a dinner party was a very good way of getting to know people. Matilda was to attend too although her hostess would have been happier not to have had the competition; she consoled herself with the thought that men didn’t care for such bright red hair.

Matilda did her best to look inconspicuous; she did her hair in a severe french pleat, wore an unassuming gown—grey crêpe and several years out of date—and stayed in the background as much as possible. Nevertheless she attracted the attention of the company, and since she was a nice, unassuming girl the ladies of the party liked her as well as the men. She did her best to see that Roseanne was a success and her godmother had to admit that Matilda hadn’t made any attempt to draw attention to herself. All the same, an excuse would have to be found for Roseanne to go without her to the dinner dance later that week, and Matilda, being told on the morning of that day that she looked poorly and perhaps it would be wise if she didn’t go out that evening, agreed for Roseanne’s sake that she had a very bad headache and an early night would do her the world of good.

Of course, during the days she was expected to accompany Roseanne wherever she had a fancy to go, leaving her godmother to pursue her own busy social life, and it was a day or so after the dinner dance that they found themselves in the National Gallery. It was while they were admiring some splendid examples of the Netherlandish school that the young man standing close by spoke to them, or rather to Roseanne.

‘Forgive me,’ he began, ‘I overheard you discussing this picture—you know something about it, do you not? Are you interested in oil-paintings of that period?’

When Roseanne nodded, her beaky nose quivering with the unexpectedness of it all, he asked, ‘You paint yourself?’ Then when she nodded again, ‘Then let me explain…’

Which he did at some length, taking her from one painting to the next with Matilda, intrigued, keeping discreetly in the background. He seemed all right; he had a nice open face, not good-looking, but his gaze was direct, and he had introduced himself and shaken hands. ‘Bernard Stevens,’ he told them, working as a picture restorer for a famous art gallery and painting when he had the time. Roseanne had to be prised away from him after half an hour or so but only after she had promised to meet him there on the following morning, ostensibly to discuss more paintings but Matilda, studying her face, thought that was only partly the reason.

‘You won’t tell Aunt Maud?’ begged Roseanne.

‘Roseanne, you’re twenty-two, old enough to decide whom you want to know. Of course I shan’t breathe a word.’

All the same she played discreet gooseberry the next morning, and again on the following afternoon, only now it was the Tate Gallery. She had been reassured to hear him mention the names of several people whom Roseanne’s godmother had talked of from time to time and he appeared well dressed and had good manners; she was no snob, but just supposing the gentle little flirtation turned into something more serious—she would have to answer to Lady Fox.

They were to go to the theatre on the next evening, quite a small party and Matilda found herself paired off with an elderly man, a widower who told her at great length about his late wife’s ill health, and during the interval, when she had hoped to escape him for a short while, he led her firmly to the bar where he fetched her a tonic and lemon without asking her what she would like. ‘I don’t approve of pretty young ladies drinking alcohol,’ he told her and, because she had a kind heart, she accepted it nicely and sipped at it. She really needed something strong. Vodka? She had never tasted it. Brandy and soda? She looked around her—everyone there appeared to be drinking gin and tonic or champagne.

She took another sip and while appearing attentive to her companion’s remarks—still about his wife too—glanced around her. There were some lovely dresses, and the grey crêpe was drowned in a sea of silks and satins. There was a vivid scarlet gown worn by someone with her back to Matilda and standing beside it, looking over the silk shoulder, was Mr Scott-Thurlow, watching her.

She went pale with the strength of her feelings at the sight of him and then blushed. It seemed impossible for her to look away but she managed it and she hadn’t smiled because he had looked unsmilingly at her.

She tossed off the tonic and lent a sympathetic ear to her companion’s description of his late wife’s asthma, murmuring in all the right places and not really hearing a word.

She went to bed later, feeling unhappy, longing for a scarlet gown in which she might dazzle Mr Scott-Thurlow and at the same time wanting to go home then and there. She even wept a little and then her common sense came to the rescue; scarlet would look hideous with her hair and no way could she go home and leave Roseanne just as the girl was beginning to find her feet—perhaps she would find romance too.

And it seemed likely; two days later, attending a preview of an up-and-coming portrait painter and this time with their hostess, Matilda was intrigued and delighted to see Bernard Stevens. He was with a friend of Mrs Venables and naturally enough was introduced, and presently he bore Roseanne off to make a tour of the rooms while Matilda stood between the two older ladies and listened with interest while Mrs Venables asked endless questions about Mr Stevens. The answers seemed to satisfy her and Matilda reflected that their month in London would make one of them happy, at least. That night after they had gone to bed Roseanne came along to her room, brimming over with excitement. She should get excited more often, thought Matilda, sitting up in bed, lending a sympathetic ear; it added a sparkle to Roseanne’s plain face; even the unfortunate nose seemed less prominent and her mouth had taken on a softer curve.

Bernard, Roseanne told her, now that he had made the acquaintance of her godmother, was going to find a way to meet her parents; her godmother was one of the few people her mother listened to, and Mrs Venables liked him. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ breathed Roseanne. ‘Our meeting like that? He thinks I’m pretty, only my clothes are wrong—you always said that too, didn’t you? He’s going to meet me one day and go with me to choose an outfit. I wish we were staying here forever.’

‘Well, if you want a super wedding you’ll have to go home to get ready for it, and the sooner you do that the sooner you can get married. Big weddings take an awful lot of organising.’

Which started Roseanne off again until she gave a final yawn and said goodnight, but on her way to the door she stopped. ‘I’m ever so glad it’s happened to me—I wish it could happen to you too.’

‘Nothing,’ declared Matilda in a falsely cheerful voice, ‘ever happens to me.’

She was wrong; fate had a testy ear tuned in to that kind of remark.

* * *

THEY HAD BEEN for a morning walk and now they were hurrying home as rain, threatening to be heavy, began to fall. There was a short cut to the house through narrow streets lined with small, rather shabby shops and used a great deal by drivers avoiding the main roads. They were turning into it when they saw half a dozen people standing on the edge of the pavement looking down at something.

‘I’m going to see what it is,’ said Matilda and despite Roseanne’s peevish reluctance went to look. A small dog was lying in the gutter, wet, pitifully thin, and also obviously injured.

No one was doing anything; Matilda bent down and put out a gentle hand. ‘Leave it alone, miss,’ said a large untidy man roughly. ‘‘’E’ll bite yer—’it by a car, ’e’ll be dead in no time.’

Matilda flashed a glance at him and got on to her knees, the better to look at the little beast. It cowered and showed its teeth and then put out a tongue and licked her hand.

‘How long has it been here?’ she demanded.

‘‘Arf an hour…’

‘Then not one of you has done anything to help it?’ She turned to look at them. ‘Why, you’re nothing but a bunch of heartless brutes.’

‘‘’Ere, that won’t do, lady—it’s only a stray, ’arf starved too.’

No one had noticed the car which drew up on the other side of the street; Mr Scott-Thurlow was beside her, bending his great height, lifting her to her feet before anyone had spoken again.

‘Oh, dear, oh, dear,’ he said softly, ‘Miss ffinch helping lame dogs…’

‘Don’t you start,’ she warned him fiercely. ‘This poor creature’s been here for half an hour and no one has lifted a finger.’

Mr Scott-Thurlow wasted no time. ‘Get me a piece of cardboard,’ he ordered the man nearest him, ‘flat, mind you, and please be quick about it.’

The people around suddenly became helpful; suggestions filled the air, even offers of help, unspecified. The cardboard was brought back and everyone stood aside watching; they weren’t unkind deliberately, only indifferent—if the big gent liked to get bitten by a dog that was going to die anyway, that was his look-out and they might as well be there to see it.

He wasn’t bitten; he slid the cardboard under the dog, lifted it with the animal trembling on it and carried it across the street to his car, closely followed by Matilda and Roseanne. Matilda turned back halfway across to address the untidy man.

‘Now you know what to do next time an animal gets hurt,’ she told him, and added kindly, ‘I dare say you didn’t think, did you? Standing and looking at something that needs to be done is such a waste of time.’

She smiled at him and he smiled back, mostly because he hadn’t seen green eyes like hers before.

Roseanne was already in the car, sitting in the back. ‘Get inside beside me,’ ordered Mr Scott-Thurlow, ‘and I’ll lay the cardboard on your lap.’

‘A vet?’ asked Matilda. The little dog looked in a bad way.

‘Yes.’

He had nothing more to say until he turned into a side-street and got out. ‘Stay there, I’ll be back,’ he told her and opened a side-door in a long brick wall. He came back almost at once with a burly, bearded man who nodded at Matilda and cast an eye over the dog.

‘Let’s have him in,’ he suggested, and lifted the cardboard neatly off her knees. ‘Coming too?’

Matilda got out of the car, but Roseanne shook her head. ‘I’d rather stay here…’

Mr Scott-Thurlow held the door open and they went in one after the other down a long passage with the surgery at its end. ‘You wait here,’ the vet told her. ‘I’ll do an X-ray first—you can give a hand, James.’

Matilda sat in the waiting-room on a rather hard chair, cherishing the knowledge that his name was James. It suited him, though she doubted if anyone had ever called him Jimmy or even Jim. Time passed unheeded since her thoughts were entirely taken up with James Scott-Thurlow; when he joined her she looked at him mistily, shaken out of her daydreams.

‘The little dog?’

‘A fractured pelvis, cracked ribs, starved and very, very dirty. He’ll live.’

‘May he stay here? What will happen to him? Will it take long? If no one wants him I’m sure Father will let me have him…’

‘He’ll stay here until he’s fit and he’ll be well looked after. I should suppose he’ll be fit, more or less, in a month or six weeks.’ Mr Scott-Thurlow paused and then went on in a resigned voice, ‘I have a Labrador who will be delighted to have a companion.’

He was rewarded by an emerald blaze of gratitude. ‘Oh, how good of you; I’m not sure what kind of a dog he is but I’m certain that when he’s well again you’ll be proud of him.’

Mr Scott-Thurlow doubted this but forbore to mention it. ‘Were you on your way back to Kensington? I’ll run you there; Mrs Venables may be getting anxious.’

‘Oh, I don’t suppose so,’ said Matilda airily. ‘We may do as we please during the day, you know, unless there is some suitable young man coming to lunch. Do you know Mrs Venables?’

They had reached the door but he made no move to open it. ‘I have a slight acquaintance. Rhoda knows her quite well, I believe.’

‘Oh, then I expect you will be at the dinner party next week—a kind of farewell before we go back to Abner Magna.’

He had categorically refused to accompany Rhoda when she had told him of the invitation. Now, on second thoughts, he decided that he would go with her after all.

He opened the door. ‘Then we shall meet again,’ he said as they reached the car. Before he drove off he reached for the phone and said into it, ‘I shall be half an hour late—warn everyone, will you?’

He drove off without a word, leaving Matilda guessing. Was he a barrister, defending some important client, she wondered, or someone in the banking world, making decisions about another person’s money? It would be a clerk at the other end, middle-aged, rather shabby probably with a large family of growing children and a mortgage. Her imagination ran riot until he stopped outside the Kensington house, bade them a polite goodbye and drove off.

‘He doesn’t talk much, does he?’ Roseanne wanted to know. ‘I think I’m a bit—well—scared of him.’

Matilda looked at her in astonishment. ‘Scared? Of him? Whatever for? I dare say he was wrapped up in some business transaction; of course he didn’t want to talk. Anyway you’ll change your mind next week—he’s coming to your godmother’s dinner party, so we shall see him then.’

She saw him before then.

The days had passed rapidly, too fast for Roseanne, not fast enough for Matilda; she wanted to go home—London, she felt, wasn’t for her. True, while she was there there was always the chance that she would see Mr Scott-Thurlow, but what was the use of that when he was going to marry Rhoda? A girl who was undoubtedly beautiful, clever and wore all the right clothes regardless of expense. She and Roseanne had gone shopping, gone to more exhibitions than she could count, seen the latest films and plays and accompanied Mrs Venables on several occasions when that lady, an enthusiastic member of several committees, introduced them to their various other members, mostly middle-aged and not in the least interested in the two girls. Roseanne found them a waste of time when she might have spent it in the company of her Bernard.

There were only a few days left now and preparations for the dinner party that night were well ahead. They were finishing their breakfast, which they took alone since Mrs Venables had hers in bed, when the dining-room door was thrust open and the kitchen maid—who should have known better, as Roseanne was quick to point out—rushed up to the table.

‘It’s Cook—cut herself something awful and the others down at the market getting the food for tonight. Whatever shall I do?’

‘My dear good girl,’ began Roseanne, looking alarmingly like her mother, but she was not allowed to finish.

‘I’ll come and look, shall I?’ suggested Matilda calmly. ‘If it’s very bad we can get her to the hospital, but perhaps it looks worse than it is.’

Cook was sitting at the table, her hand wrapped in a teatowel. She was a nasty green colour and moaning faintly. Matilda opened the towel gently, making soothing noises the while. There was a lot of blood, but if it was a deep cut she could tie the hand up tightly and get a taxi to the nearest hospital. Since both of her companions were on the edge of hysteria she told them bracingly to close their eyes and turned back the last of the towel. She would have liked to have closed her eyes too; Cook’s first and second fingers had been neatly severed just above the second joints. Matilda gulped and hoped her breakfast would stay down.

‘Milly—it is Milly?—please go and ring for a taxi. Be quick and say that it’s very urgent. Then come back here.’

‘Is it a bad cut?’ asked Roseanne from the door. ‘Should I tell Aunt Maud?’

‘Presently. I’ll go with Cook to the nearest hospital and perhaps you’ll tell her then.’ She glanced at the girl. ‘Would you get a shawl or something to put round Cook?’

‘There’s blood everywhere,’ said Roseanne, and handed over a cape hanging behind the door, carefully looking the other way.

Matilda hung on to her patience. ‘Thanks. Now find a table napkin or a scarf and look sharp about it…’

‘No one speaks to me like that,’ declared Roseanne.

‘Don’t be silly! I dare say you’ll find a cloth of some sort in that cupboard.’

Roseanne opened drawers in an aggrieved manner and came back with a small teacloth. It was fine linen and beautifully embroidered and Matilda fashioned it into some kind of a sling, draped the cloak round Cook’s shaking shoulders and propelled her gently out of the kitchen across the hall and out to the waiting taxi. They left a trail of red spots across the floor and Matilda heard Milly’s gasp of horror.

‘The nearest hospital,’ urged Matilda, supporting a half-fainting and sturdily built Cook, ‘as quick as you can.’

The cabby drove well, taking short cuts, cutting corners, beating the lights by a hair’s breadth. At the Casualty entrance they got out and he got out too and between them they got poor Cook in to Casualty.

There was a young man standing talking to a nurse near the door. Matilda paused by him. ‘Would you please pay the cabby? I’ll let you have the money as soon as I can leave Cook.’

He looked astonished, paid the man while Matilda offered hasty thanks, then took his place on the other side of Cook.

‘She’s cut off her fingers—two of them—they’re there, inside the towel. Could someone get a doctor?’

‘That’s me. Casualty officer on duty. Let’s have her in here.’

The place was half full, patients on chairs waiting to be seen, nurses going to and fro, several people on trolleys and a fierce-looking sister coming towards them.

‘Well, what’s this?’ she wanted to know and with a surprising gentleness turned back the towel. She lifted Cook’s arm and pressed the bell beside the couch and, when a nurse came, gave her quick instructions and then glanced at the young man.

‘Shall I get her ready for Theatre? Nurse is taking a message—the quicker the better.’

Matilda was holding the other hand and Cook was clinging to it as though she would never let it go. Her skirt and blouse were ruined and her hair was coming down but she didn’t give them a thought. She felt sick.

The shock of seeing Mr Scott-Thurlow in a long white coat over an excellently tailored grey suit dispelled the sickness. He was coming towards them with calm speed and fetched up beside the couch. He gave her a cool nod and she said in a wondering voice, ‘Oh, I’ve been wondering just what you did…’ and blushed scarlet as he gave a faint smile as he bent over Cook. The casualty officer was doing things—a tourniquet?—some kind of pressure so that the bleeding wasn’t so bad any more and Sister was handing swabs and instruments to Mr Scott-Thurlow. Matilda, feeling sick again, looked at the curtains around the couch.

She heard him say, ‘Right, we’ll have her up right away, please, before I start my list. Warn Theatre, will you?’ He bent over Cook. ‘Don’t worry too much, my dear, I’m going to stitch your fingers on again and you can stay here for a few days while they heal. Nurse is going to give you a little injection now to help the pain.’ He patted her shoulder. ‘You’re very brave.’

He spoke to Matilda then. ‘What did she have for breakfast?’ he wanted to know.

‘I don’t know, but she would have had it quite early—about seven o’clock. She was slicing bacon with one of those machines…’

Matilda felt cold and looked green; the thought of the bacon had been too much. ‘I’m going to be…’

Mr Scott-Thurlow handed her a bowl with the manner of someone offering her a hanky she might have dropped or a glass of water she had asked for. He was just in time.

There was someone beside her, a young nurse being sympathetic and helpful, and when Matilda lifted a shamed face everyone had gone.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the nurse, ‘there’s somewhere where you can wait and I’ll get someone to bring you a cup of tea. Mr Scott-Thurlow is going to operate at once so you’ll know what’s happening quite soon. Do you want to phone anybody?’

‘Yes, please, only I haven’t any money.’

She was led away to a rather bare room lined with benches with a kind of canteen at one end and two telephones on the wall. The nurse gave her twenty pence, patted her on the shoulder in a motherly fashion and hurried away.

She phoned Mrs Venables. ‘How could she?’ cried that lady in an outraged voice. ‘When we have the dinner party this evening and absolutely no chance of getting a cook at such short notice. What am I to do? She must have been careless—’

‘She’s cut off two fingers,’ said Matilda. ‘I’ll stay here until I know what is happening to her. She’s been very brave.’

She didn’t wait for Mrs Venables’s reply.

She sat for an hour, revived by a cup of hot strong tea, thinking about Cook and Mr Scott-Thurlow. She shouldn’t have blurted out her silly remark in Casualty—she went hot again just thinking about it—and then to have been sick… She wriggled with humiliation. He had been kind to Cook; she hoped that he would be able to sew the fingers back on—surgeons were clever and she supposed that he was very experienced.

The kind little nurse who had lent her the twenty pence came into the waiting-room and she got up to meet her.

‘She’s going to be all right,’ said the nurse. ‘Mr Scott-Thurlow did a good job, and her fingers will be as good as new—well, almost. He’s a wizard with bones. Sister said will you arrange for Mrs Chubb’s clothes—nighties and washing things and so on—to be brought in? She’s to stay a few days.’

Matilda nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Which ward is she in?’

‘Women’s Orthopaedic, second floor. You’ll be able to see her.’

‘I’ll go and get everything now and come back as soon as I can. Thank you, you’ve all been awfully kind.’

She was back within the hour, Cook’s necessities in a case, with a couple of paperbacks she had stopped to buy and a bunch of flowers, Mrs Venables’s unfeeling, complaining voice still ringing in her ears.

‘The woman will be of no use to me,’ she had said impatiently. ‘Now I shall have to get another cook.’

Matilda had turned a thoughtful green gaze on to her hostess. ‘Has she worked for you for long?’ she asked.

‘Oh, years,’ said Mrs Venables. ‘I must say it is most inconvenient—’

‘I dare say Cook finds it inconvenient too, and very painful.’

She had received a very cold look for that; a good thing they were going home in a few more days.

Cook was in a small ward, sitting up in bed, looking pale. Matilda put everything away in her locker, fetched a vase for the flowers and offered the paperbacks—light romantic reading which she hoped would take Cook’s mind off her problems. She parried the awkward questions she was asked, skimming smoothly over the future, and invented one or two suitable messages from Mrs Venables. ‘I’ll pop in some time tomorrow,’ she finished, ‘just to see if there’s anything you would like.’

‘That’s kind of you, miss. We all said in the kitchen what a kind young lady you were, and so very understanding.’

Matilda said goodbye and found her way out of the hospital, trying not to wish that she might meet Mr Scott-Thurlow. But of course she didn’t.

She got back to the house to find Mrs Venables raging up and down the drawing-room floor while Roseanne sat in a corner looking obstinate. She had intended to spend the morning with Bernard and she had had to put him off. Her mouth was set in a thin line and she looked very like her mother.

Mrs Venables, pacing back to the door, saw Matilda. ‘I’ve telephoned every agency I can think of,’ she declared. ‘There is not a decent cook to be had at a moment’s notice. I am distraught.’ She wrung her hands in a dramatic fashion and glared at Matilda.

‘You will be relieved to know that Mrs Chubb’s operation was successful and that she is comfortably in bed.’ Matilda glared back. ‘I can cook—I’ll see to dinner this evening.’

Mrs Venables’s glare turned to a melting sweetness. ‘Matilda! Oh, can you really cook? I mean cordon bleu? My dear girl, however can I thank you—what a relief, you have no idea how worried I’ve been.’ She reeled off the menu: consommé royale, poached salmon, roast duck with orange garnish and brandy, straw potatoes and a selection of vegetables, some sort of a salad—she had left that to Cook—and then peach condé and coffee mousse. ‘Can you manage that?’ She patted Matilda’s arm. ‘So good of you to do this for me.’

‘I’m doing it for Cook,’ said Matilda.

She didn’t wait for Mrs Venables’s outraged gasp but took herself off to the kitchen, where she explained matters to the domestic staff and sat down at the kitchen table to get organised. She had plenty of willing help, and, satisfied with the arrangements, she went away to tidy herself for lunch, an uncomfortable meal with Mrs Venables suppressing her ill temper in case Matilda should back out at the last minute, and Roseanne still sulking.

Matilda spent most of the afternoon preparing for the evening. She enjoyed cooking and she was an instinctive cook, quite ordinary food turning into delectable dishes under her capable hands. She had her tea in the kitchen, which rather upset the butler and the kitchen maid and certainly upset Bertha, who had disapproved of the whole thing to start with. ‘Ladies,’ she had sniffed, ‘don’t belong in the kitchen,’ a remark to which Matilda didn’t bother to reply.

Everything went well; as the first guests arrived and the butler went to admit them, Matilda gave the ducks a satisfied prod, tasted the consommé and began to make a salad. There was half an hour before dinner would be served and she enjoyed making a salad.

The Honourable Mrs Venables greeted her guests with an almost feverish eagerness. She had planned the evening carefully and if anything went wrong she would never recover from it. She cast an anxious eye over the laughing and talking people around her. Bernard had come and she sighed with relief, for Roseanne had stopped sulking at the sight of him and even looked a bit pretty. There were two more to come, Rhoda Symes and Mr Scott-Thurlow, and they entered the room at that moment. A handsome couple, she conceded; Rhoda looked magnificent, but then she always did. Mr Scott-Thurlow looked much as he usually did, rather grave; always courteous and lovely manners, though. She went forward to welcome them.

Mr Scott-Thurlow had seen Roseanne as soon as he entered the room but there was no sign of the bright head of hair he had expected to see. He listened politely to one of the guests trying to prise free advice from him while he glanced round the room. Matilda wasn’t there. He caught Rhoda’s eye and she smiled at him. She was looking particularly beautiful, exquisitely made up, her hair a blonde halo, her cerise dress the very latest fashion. She would make him a very suitable wife; she was a clever woman as well as attractive, completely at ease against a social background, cool and undemonstrative. The uneasy thought that her charming appearance hid a cold nature crossed his mind and he found himself wondering why he had asked her to marry him. He knew the answer to that: she made no demands upon him and appeared quite content with the lack of romance between them. He had been an only child and had lost his parents in a plane crash when he had been a small boy. He had gone to live with his grandparents, who had loved him dearly but had not known what to say to him, so he had learned to hide his loneliness and unhappiness and had grown up into a rather quiet man who seldom allowed his feelings to show, channelling his energy and interest into his work. It was his old nanny, Mrs Twigg, who kept house for him, who had begged him to find himself a wife and he had acknowledged the good sense of that; his friends were all married by now and despite his absorption in his work he was sometimes lonely.

He and the man to whom he was talking were joined by several more people and the conversation became general until they were summoned to dinner, where he sat between two young married women who flirted gently with him.

It was someone at the other end of the table who remarked loudly upon the delicious duck. ‘You must have a splendid cook,’ he remarked, laughing.

‘I’ve had her for years,’ declared Mrs Venables. ‘She’s a treasure,’ and Mr Scott-Thurlow, happening to glance at Roseanne across the table, saw the look of surprised rage on her face and wondered why.

It was some time afterwards when they were all back in the drawing-room that he made his way to her side. ‘Nice to see you, Roseanne, and you look charming. Is Miss ffinch ill?’

Roseanne said softly, ‘No, of course not—she never is. She’s in the kitchen. She cooked the dinner.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘We’ll go and see her if you like.’ Before he could answer she said loudly, ‘It’s rather warm—shall we go on to the balcony for a minute?’

There was a small staircase at one end of the balcony and she led the way down it and round the house and in through a side-door.

The short passage was rather dark and smelled vaguely damp. Roseanne opened the door at its end, revealing the kitchen.

Matilda was standing at the kitchen table, carving slices off a roast duck. She wasn’t doing it very well and there was a large pan of rather mangled bones and bits beside her. She looked up and saw them as they went in. She was flushed and untidy and swathed in one of Mrs Chubb’s aprons, many sizes too large for her, and despite that she still contrived to look beautiful. When she saw them she smiled and said, ‘Oh, hello…’

‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’ asked Mr Scott-Thurlow with a good deal of force.

She chose to misunderstand him. ‘Well, I never could carve—the bones will make splendid soup and there’s still plenty of meat…’

His tone was measured. ‘That is not what I meant, and you know it. Why are you working in the kitchen when you should be in the drawing-room? That abominable woman…’ He stopped, mindful of good manners. ‘Do you mean to say that she asked you to cook dinner?’

‘No. I said that I would—to help Mrs Chubb; you know she was in such a state. They tell me that you did a splendid job on her fingers. Are you a consultant or something?’

‘Yes. Let us keep to the point, Matilda.’

She looked meek, but her eyes sparkled because he had called her Matilda and not Miss ffinch. A tiny step forwards perhaps?

She picked up the knife again and started on the other side of the duck and he stepped forwards, took the knife from her, carved the rest of the bird with a practised 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.’

‘Very well. Have you had your dinner, Matilda?’

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

CHAPTER THREE

MATILDA, PACKING THE remainder of her things ready to leave in the morning, reflected sadly that it really had been goodbye and not goodnight. From upstairs at the landing window she had watched the dinner guests go home and it seemed to her that Mr Scott-Thurlow was quite devoted in his attention towards his fiancée as they left the house. Rhoda had really looked quite stunning.

She was glad to be going home; Mrs Venables had thanked her for her services rather coldly, remarking at the same time that she had no idea how she was going to manage with the temporary cook whom she had engaged. Matilda, who had been to see Mrs Chubb again, had observed rather tartly that she would appreciate Mrs Chubb’s services all the more when she returned, ‘Because, of course, she will be coming back here, will she not? After all these years?’

A remark which received no answer save a non-committal murmur which could have meant anything or nothing.

Gregg fetched them soon after breakfast and the two girls bade their hostess goodbye. She embraced Roseanne warmly and begged her to visit her again very soon, but when she shook Matilda’s hand she observed rather distantly that she supposed that the daughter of a rector had much to occupy her and that they were unlikely to meet again.

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