Betty Neels spent her childhood and youth in Devonshire before training as a nurse and midwife. She was an army nursing sister during the war, married a Dutchman, and subsequently lived in Holland for fourteen years. Betty started to write on retirement from nursing, incited by a lady in a library bemoaning the lack of romantic novels. Betty Neels has sold over thirty-five million copies of her books worldwide.
Three of Betty’s timeless classics appear in Innocent Brides-To-Be which is available in shops now, and don’t miss her Summer Engagements, part of The Queens of Romance programme, which is out in August.
The Doctor’s Girl
by
Betty Neels
CHAPTER ONE
MISS MIMI CATTELL gave a low, dramatic moan followed by a few sobbing breaths, but when these had no effect upon the girl standing by the bed she sat up against her pillows, threw one of them at her and screeched, ‘Well, don’t just stand there, you little fool, phone Dr Gregg this instant. He must come and see me at once. I’m ill; I’ve hardly slept all night…’ She paused to sneeze.
The girl by the bed, a small mousy person, very neat and with a rather plain face enlivened by a pair of vivid green eyes, picked up the pillow.
‘Should you first of all try a hot lemon drink and some aspirin?’ she suggested in a sensible voice. ‘A cold in the head always makes one feel poorly. A day in bed, perhaps?’
The young woman in the bed had flung herself back onto her pillows again. ‘Just do as I say for once. I don’t pay you to make stupid suggestions. Get out and phone Dr Gregg; he’s to come at once.’ She moaned again. ‘How can I possibly go to the Sinclairs’ party this evening…?’
Dr Gregg’s receptionist laughed down the phone. ‘He’s got three more private patients to see and then a clinic at the hospital, and it isn’t Dr Gregg—he’s gone off for a week’s golf—it’s his partner. I’ll give him the message and you’d better say he’ll come as soon as he can. She’s not really ill, is she?’
‘I don’t think so. A nasty head cold…’
The receptionist laughed. ‘I don’t know why you stay with her.’
Loveday put down the phone. She wondered that too, quite often, but it was a case of beggars not being choosers, wasn’t it? She had to have a roof over her head, she had to eat and she had to earn money so that she could save for a problematical future. And that meant another year or two working as Mimi Cattell’s secretary—a misleading title if ever there was one, for she almost never sent letters, even when Loveday wrote them for her.
That didn’t mean that Loveday had nothing to do. Her days were kept nicely busy—the care of Mimi’s clothes took up a great deal of time, for what was the point of having a personal maid when Loveday had nothing else to do? Nothing except being at her beck and call each and every day, and if she came home later from a party at night as well.
Loveday, with only an elderly aunt living in a Dartmoor village whom she had never met, made the best of it. She was twenty-four, heartwhole and healthy, and perhaps one day a man would come along and sweep her off her feet. Common sense told her that this was unlikely to be the case, but a girl had to have her dreams…
She went back to the bedroom and found Mimi threshing about in her outsize bed, shouting at the unfortunate housemaid who had brought her breakfast tray.
Loveday prudently took the tray from the girl, who looked as if she was on the point of dropping it, nodded to her to slip away and said bracingly, ‘The doctor will come as soon as he can. He has one or two patients to see first.’ She made no mention of the clinic. ‘If I fetch you a pot of China tea—weak with lemon—it may help you to feel well enough to have a bath and put on a fresh nightie before he comes.’
Mimi brightened. Her life was spent in making herself attractive to men, and perhaps she would feel strong enough to do her face. She said rudely, ‘Get the tea, then, and make sure that the lemon’s cut wafer-thin…’
Loveday went down to the basement, where Mrs Branch and the housemaid lived their lives. She took the tray with her and, being a practical girl, ate the fingers of toast on it and accepted the mug of tea Mrs Branch offered her. She should have had her breakfast with Mrs Branch and Ellie, but there wasn’t much hope of getting it now. Getting Miss Cattell ready for the doctor would take quite a time. She ate the rest of the toast, sliced the lemon and bore a tray, daintily arranged, back upstairs.
Mimi Cattell, a spoilt beauty of society, prepared for the doctor’s visit with the same care she took when getting ready for an evening party. ‘And you can make the bed while I’m bathing—put some fresh pillowcases on, and don’t dawdle…’
It was almost lunchtime by the time she was once more in her bed, carefully made up, wearing a gossamer nightgown, the fairytale effect rather marred by her sniffs. To blow her nose would make it red.
To Loveday’s enquiry as to what she would like for lunch she said ill-temperedly that she had no appetite; she would eat something after he had visited her. ‘And you’d better wait too; I want you here when he’s examining me.’
‘I’ll fetch a jug of lemonade,’ said Loveday, and sped down to the kitchen.
While Ellie obligingly squeezed lemons, she gobbled down soup and a roll; she was going to need all her patience, and the lowering feeling that the doctor might not come for hours was depressing.
She bore the lemonade back upstairs and presently took it down again; it wasn’t sweet enough! She was kept occupied after that—opening the heavy curtains a little, then closing them again, longing to open a window and let a little London air into the room when Mimi sprayed herself once more with Chanel No 5. By now Mimi’s temper, never long off the boil, was showing signs of erupting. ‘He has no right to leave me in such distress,’ she fumed. ‘I need immediate attention. By the time he gets here I shall have probably got pneumonia. Find my smelling salts and give me the mirror from the dressing table.’
It was getting on for two o’clock when Loveday suggested that a little light lunch might make her employer feel better.
‘Rubbish,’ snarled Mimi. ‘I won’t eat a thing until he’s examined me. I suppose you want a meal—well, you’ll just have to wait.’ Her high-pitched voice rose to a screech. ‘I don’t pay you to sit around and stuff yourself at my expense, you greedy little…’
The door opened by Ellie, and after one look the screech became a soft, patient voice.’ Doctor—at last…’
Mimi put up a hand to rearrange the cunning little curl over one ear to better advantage. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she purred. To Loveday, she said, ‘Pull the curtains and get a chair for the doctor, and then go and stand by the window.’ The commands were uttered in a very different voice.
The doctor opened the curtains before Loveday could get to them and pulled up a chair. ‘I must introduce myself, Miss Cattell. I am Dr Gregg’s partner and for the moment looking after his patients while he is away.’
Mimi said in a wispy voice, ‘I thought you would never come. I am rather delicate, you know, and my health often gives cause for concern. My chest…’
She pushed back the bedspread and put a hand on her heart. It was annoying that he had turned away.
‘Could we have the window open?’ he asked Loveday.
A man after her own heart, thought Loveday, opening both windows despite Mimi’s distressed cry. She would suffer for it later, but now a few lungfuls of London air would be heaven.
From where she stood she had a splendid view of the doctor. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders and fair hair flecked with grey. He was good-looking too, with a rather thin mouth and a splendid nose