An Innocent Bride. Betty Neels
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I will.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘It’s a lovely morning. Would you come back with me to my home and have lunch? We can discuss every small detail at our leisure.’
‘Lunch?’ said Katrina. ‘Lunch with you?’ Her unflatter ing surprise caused his thin mouth to twitch with sudden amusement. ‘But I can’t; I’ve got that digging to do.’ She added belatedly, ‘Thank you.’
Over the years the professor had cultivated a bedside manner second to none: courteous and matter-of-fact, nicely laced with sympathy.
‘How would it be if I do the digging while you do whatever you need to do? Don’t dress up; it will only be the two of us.’
Just as though he couldn’t care less what I look like, thought Katrina peevishly. She said loudly, ‘You can’t dig in those clothes…’
He wore beautifully cut trousers, an open-necked shirt and a cashmere sweater, not to mention the shoes on his large feet.
He didn’t answer her but got to his feet. ‘Fifteen minutes be long enough?’ he wanted to know, and went unhurriedly into the garden.
‘The nerve of him,’ said Katrina to herself, clashing cups and saucers together, and then spun round.
‘Nerve is something which the medical profession have to employ from time to time, Katrina. You don’t mind if I call you Katrina?’ he said mildly. ‘You don’t look like a Miss Gibbs. I came back to ask if there is a bigger spade?’
‘In the shed.’
He went away again, and she put everything in the sink and went up to her room. She wasn’t going to change her dress, for it was apparent to her that he couldn’t care less what she wore, but she changed her old sandals for a better pair and attacked her mane of hair, subduing it to tidiness and a neat coil in the nape of her neck. She powdered her face too, and used lipstick, took a quick look at herself in the little mirror on the dressing table and went downstairs.
She was spooning cat food into a bowl for the little cat when the professor joined her. He noted the lipstick, and the tidy head of hair, but all he said was, ‘What is your cat’s name?’
‘Betsy.’
She put the saucer on the floor for the small creature and said, ‘Had I better come and look?’
He had made a very good job of it. Moreover he had managed to remain as elegant as he had been when he arrived. She thanked him warmly, forgetting how much he vexed her for the moment, and when he asked her if she was ready to leave said that she was, quite meekly. ‘Only I must just open the window in the kitchen so that Betsy can get in and out.’
They went out together, and he locked the door and put the key above it out of sight. ‘At what time shall your aunt return?’
‘She is to spend the day with the Peterses, so soon after tea, I suppose. Supposing she comes back earlier and I am not here?’
‘We will worry about that when it happens.’
Getting into the car, she asked, ‘Where do you live? In London? We’ll never get there and back…’
‘I live in Wherwell—a village south of Andover. I go to and fro to town; it’s an easy drive.’
It was a matter of thirty-five miles or so, and the big car swallowed them effortlessly. Beyond a casual remark from time to time the professor didn’t speak, and Katrina was glad of that as she tried to look into the future.
Of course she had always known that Aunt Thirza wouldn’t live for ever, but she had dismissed such thoughts from her mind as morbid. Her aunt had always seemed the same to her: brisk and matter-of-fact, full of energy, with a finger in every village pie. And as to her own future she had taught herself not to dwell too much on that. She was twenty-four, and the years she might have spent at university and later in some worthwhile job had slipped away, just as her chances of meeting a man who would want to marry her were slipping away.
Indeed, she knew very few young men, and they were either on the verge of marriage or already married. There had been men who had shown an interest in her, of course, but Aunt Thirza had frightened them off, though not intentionally.
She was roused from her thoughts by the professor observing that Wherwell was round the next bend in the country road, and she looked around her.
She fell in love with it immediately. There was no one around and the place drowsed in Sunday calm, the charming houses lining the street grouped round the church like a chocolate box picture.
When he stopped outside his own front door she got out slowly and stood looking around her.
‘You live here?’ she asked, and blushed because it was such a silly question. ‘Such a beautiful house. You’re married, of course, and have children?’
He didn’t speak for a moment, looking down his splendid nose at her, and the blush, which had been fading, returned with a vengeance.
‘I am not married, nor do I have children. There is, of course, always that possibility in the future.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you that. It’s none of my business.’
‘No. It isn’t. You feel that the house is wasted on me?’
‘No, no. It’s so beautiful—and the garden…’
‘Yes. I enjoy the garden; the house has been in the family for a long time.’
Peach had opened the door, gravely welcoming his master and then, when he was introduced to Katrina, shaking the hand she offered. A nice young lady, he thought, a sight nicer than that Mrs Carew. Widow she might be, and handsome enough, but never so much as wished him good day. If ever she managed to marry the professor Peach felt in his bones that he and Mrs Peach would be in for a rough time.
He said now, ‘The dogs are in the garden, sir.’ And indeed their barks made that evident enough. ‘Would you and Miss Gibbs like coffee?’
‘No, thanks, Peach, we’ve had it. May we have lunch in half an hour or so?We have to go back in a couple of hours.’
‘I’ll tell Mrs Peach. Would the young lady like to refresh herself?’
The professor eyed Katrina. ‘She looks all right to me.’
He lifted eyebrows at Katrina, who said coldly, ‘Thank you, not at the moment.’
‘Good. We’ll be in the garden, Peach.’
He walked her down the hall and out of the door at its end, to be met by Barker and Jones. Katrina offered a fist to Barker. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said, and scratched the top of his sleek head, and then bent down to do the same for Jones.
‘Why Jones?’ she asked.
‘We are not quite sure, but we suspect that there may be Welsh blood in him. A trace of Corgi.’
‘They’re friends?’
‘Oh, yes. Jones is Barker’s faithful follower!’
He led the way along a garden path to a gazebo over looking a pool fed by a small rivulet emerging from a clump of trees at the end of the garden. Katrina sat down and looked about her. The garden wasn’t formal; it was like a large cottage garden. In full summer, she supposed, it would be full of old-fashioned flowers. One side sloped downhill to the kitchen garden, with high walls, thatched like the house, and on the other side there was a wide green path bordered by flowerbeds. She gave a sigh of content.
‘Will you tell me what I must do to help Aunt Thirza? And what sort of treatment she is to have.’
‘That is my intention. Bad news is never as bad if it is given in the right surroundings, is it? Now sit still and don’t interrupt…’
He didn’t try to make light of the matter, but neither was he full of gloomy forebodings. ‘We must take each day as it comes. Your