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Victory for Victoria
Betty Neels
Mills & Boon presents the complete Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart-warming romance by one of the world’s best-loved romance authors. She needed to believe in herself! Victoria was a very pretty girl, but with three sisters even prettier than she, Victoria had developed a bit of a complex about her looks. So when attractive Alexander van Schuylen made it clear he liked her, she really didn’t expect much more from him.How could she, when he was so impressed with her sisters’ beauty? But if his feelings for Victoria actually did run deep, she could be in danger of losing him – entirely through her own fault!
“I doubt if I shall ever be sure of myself as far as you’re concerned,” Alexander remarked quietly.
“And serenity is the last feeling I have when I’m with you. Rather, you stir me up…but of this I am sure, I am completely happy.”
Victoria drew a breath. “So am I.” She spoke simply; the words had tumbled out without her even thinking about them.
He pulled her close. “Oh, my dear Victoria, my dear delight,” he said softly, and kissed her and kissed her again. They were still alone and there was all the time in the world. He let her go just a little. “I want you to come to Holland, Vicky, and meet my parents. I should like to take you back tonight, but that’s impossible, isn’t it? Will you go to Matron and resign this evening? Tomorrow morning I suppose it will be. When you leave I’ll come and fetch you and take you home, your future home in Holland.”
“But,” said Victoria, “I can’t. I don’t have a job…”
“You won’t need one, darling. You’ll be my wife.”
About the Author
Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of BETTY NEELS in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality. She was a wonderful writer, and she will be greatly missed. Her spirit and genuine talent will live on in all her stories.
Victory for Victoria
Betty Neels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://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
IT was going to rain very shortly; the grey woolly clouds, blown into an untidy heap by the wind, were tearing across the sky, half hiding the distant island of Sark and turning the water to a reflected darkness. Miss Victoria Parsons, making her brisk way along the cliff path from St Peter Port to Fermain Bay, paused to watch them, sighing with content and pleasure as she did so, for it was the first day of her holiday and she was free to tramp where she wished, uncaring of wind and rain, uncaring too of her appearance, a fact amply demonstrated by her attire; a guernsey, quite two sizes too large for her, which gave her slim curves a deceiving bulkiness, and a pair of slacks, well fitting but decidedly worn, but after several months of nurse’s uniform they were a delight to wear besides, there was no one to see her on this windy March afternoon. She stood, sniffing the air and calculating how long it would be before the clouds reached Guernsey and the rain started. Ten minutes, she thought, perhaps a little less, and she was barely halfway. She had passed the new houses built overlooking the sea, there was nothing now until she reached Fermain Bay, only the narrow up and down, roundabout path between the trees, halfway between the cliff top and the sea below. She went a little nearer the edge of the cliff now and stared down at the rocks below and a gust of wind tore at her hair, loosening the pins, so that she took the remainder out and let the coppery mass tangle in the wind.
A drop of rain fell on to her face as she turned back on to the path once more and she remembered, just in time, the old disused powder magazine cut into the cliff, not so very far away. She could shelter there; the rain was coming down in earnest now and while her guernsey kept her dry, her hair was already hanging wetly around her shoulders and the rain pouring down her face, and by the time she reached the magazine she was drenched and a little breathless from hurrying.
The magazine was built of granite and had lost its door long ago, but its four walls were solid, as was its roof. She squelched inside; here at least it was dry—the rain wouldn’t last long and there was time enough before she need be home again. It was dim inside and quite warm, she turned her back on the interior to peer out at the sky, squeezing the wet from her sopping hair as she did so; it might be an idea to take off her guernsey and give it a good shake— She was on the point of pulling it over her head when a voice from the furthest corner of the magazine said mildly: ‘Er—if you would wait one moment…’
Victoria spun round, indignation at being frightened out of her wits eclipsing her fear. She snapped: ‘Who are you, and what are you doing here?’
‘Why, as to who I am, I imagine that’s hardly relevant to the occasion, and I’m doing exactly the same as you—sheltering from the weather.’
The owner of the voice had advanced towards her as he spoke—a tall man, wide in the shoulder, with dark hair and blue eyes and the kind of good looks which on any other occasion would have caused her to wish to know him better. But not now; she said crossly: ‘You could have said something…’
‘My dear good woman, I was sitting in the furthest corner of this—er—building with my eyes closed.’ He eyed her coolly. ‘Having a nice rest,’ he added. ‘You disturbed it.’ And while she was still searching indignantly for a rejoinder to this candid remark, he went on: ‘You’re very wet. Here, have my handkerchief and at least wipe your face.’
His look implied that her appearance was so awful that drying her face wouldn’t be of much use anyway. She took the handkerchief he was holding out to her, dried her face and began on her hair; it was a pity that her usually ready tongue was incapable of fashioning any of the biting remarks jostling each other so hopelessly inside her pretty head. She seethed quietly, handed the handkerchief back with a muttered thank you and retreated against a wall.
‘Now don’t do that,’ said her companion in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Come here and I’ll dry as much of your hair as I can.’ And when she hesitated, ‘Don’t be a fool, girl,’ he added in a lazily amused voice which sent the blood to her cheeks. It would be silly to refuse and anyway she liked his face—his mouth was firm and kind and his eyes steady. She advanced with dignity and turned her back at his bidding while he began to rub her hair with the damp handkerchief.
‘Untamed,’ he remarked, ‘your hair, I mean. Don’t you find it a nuisance?’
Really, thought Victoria, what a man he was! Could he say nothing pleasant? He had done nothing but find fault with her, and now her hair… Her beautiful tawny eyes flashed, she said with deceptive sweetness: ‘No, not in the least—I like it like this,’ and heard him laugh softly.
‘Ah,’ he commented in the same mild voice with which he had first spoken, ‘one of those young women who are above fashion and suchlike nonsense. There, that is the best I can do, and the rain has stopped.’ He stuffed the sopping handkerchief into his pocket. ‘Shall we go? You’re on your way back to St Peter Port, I suppose?’
Victoria gave him a considered glance. She could of course go on to Fermain Bay as she had planned to do, but on the other hand, although he had vexed her quite unnecessarily and frightened her out of her life, she felt a strong urge to find out a little more about her companion. When, after a moment, he said: ‘You’re quite safe, you know,’ any doubts about the advisability of joining him on the return walk were instantly swamped by indignation, and as if that wasn’t enough he added: ‘It’s rather a lonely walk for a girl on her own, isn’t it?’
Victoria looked down her nicely shaped nose. ‘I’m twenty-three,’ she informed him in a voice which, though controlled, throbbed with anger.
‘That isn’t quite what I meant.’ He spoke carelessly as he turned away from her. ‘The path will be abominably muddy. Shall I go first?’
She walked behind him, answering his occasional remarks with a politeness which admitted of no wish to be friendly on her part. Not that this seemed to worry him; his own friendliness was quite unforced and he made no attempt to find out anything about her, and Victoria, who was used to men looking at her at least twice and certainly wanting to know something about her, felt let down. She wasn’t a conceited girl, but she was a remarkably pretty one and she would have been a fool not to know it. It irked her now that she had made no impression on this man; he had even implied that she had no idea how to dress. She eyed his broad back resentfully; it was a pity that she was unlikely to meet him again when she was dressed with her usual careful eye to fashion.
‘Do you live here?’ she asked.
He didn’t slow his pace but said over one shoulder, ‘No,’ and nothing more. She was right, her chance of seeing him again was negligible. For some reason she felt sorry, then she told herself that it was because she had taken a dislike to him and it would have given her great satisfaction to have met him again, herself becomingly dressed, and put him in his place. She began reviewing her wardrobe, deciding what she would wear for that occasion, and then grinned ruefully to herself because of course they wouldn’t meet again. He was probably an early visitor to the island; there was nothing about his clothes to suggest otherwise—a guernsey, just like her own—but a great many visitors bought them as a matter of course—and bedford cord slacks which had seen better days. She longed to ask where he came from; she had detected a faint accent when he spoke. Before she could stop herself, she asked: ‘You’re not English, are you?’ and exactly as before, got a ‘No’ over one shoulder. After that she didn’t speak again, not until they were past St George’s Fort and the town was in full view, not ten minutes’ walk away. He stopped then and asked, ‘Which way do you go?’
She answered briefly, ‘Havelet,’ not caring if he knew where that was or not. Apparently he did, for he said: ‘I’m going to the harbour. Would you like me to walk up with you first?’
She forbore to tell him that, born and bred on the island, she knew every yard of it, and as for St Peter Port, she could walk blindfold through its length and breadth and know exactly where she was. Her reply was a sedate refusal. She thought, she added pleasantly, that she could find her way. His, ‘Oh, good,’ was disconcertingly casual.
They parted at the end of the cliff path, she to turn up the narrow hill away from the sea, he presumably to walk along the sea front to the harbour. The Jersey boat was in, so possibly he was going to board her—a great many people came over for the day, although he didn’t look like a day tripper, for despite his clothes he had an air of assurance, almost arrogance. Victoria frowned as she wished him a coolly polite goodbye, and was left gaping at his parting words.
‘You’d be quite a pretty girl if you smiled more often,’ he pronounced—and he didn’t say goodbye either. She crossed the road and then turned to watch him walk away without a backward glance.
Her parents lived almost at the top of Havelet, in a pleasant elderly house tucked away from the road. It had a glorious view of the harbour and the sea beyond, and a garden which, although not large, was a riot of colour for most of the year. Victoria climbed the steep, narrow road without effort, went through the gate—just wide enough to take the car—and into the house through its open front door.
‘If that’s you, Victoria, shut the door, will you, darling?’ called her mother from somewhere upstairs. ‘Did you have a nice walk?’ her parent continued as she began a descent of the staircase. Victoria shut the door and turned to meet her mother. Mrs Parsons was a large woman, still very handsome and despite her size, surprisingly youthful in appearance. She had a commanding presence and a voice which, while not loud, was so clear that no one ever failed to hear it. She paused on the stairs now and peered down at her daughter.
‘Victoria, my dear child, did you really go out looking like that?’
‘No,’ said Victoria reasonably, ‘I was dry then, Mother. I got caught in that downpour.’ She advanced to plant an affectionate kiss on her mother’s cheek, reaching up to do so because Mrs Parsons was five feet eleven inches tall and Victoria, the eldest of her four daughters, was only five feet six. Her mother returned the salute with warmth.
‘Well, I’m sure you enjoyed yourself, child. I must say you need the fresh air after London—why you have to work there…’ she sighed. ‘Your father could speak to—’
‘Yes, Mother dear,’ interposed Victoria hastily, ‘but I do like nursing, you know, and when the Old Crow retires next year, I’m hoping to get the ward.’
Her mother fingered the sleeve of her guernsey. ‘You’re wet,’ she said rather absently, and then: ‘Don’t you want to marry and settle down, Vicky dear?’
‘Only when I meet the right man, Mother.’ She had a peculiarly vivid memory of the man in the powder magazine as she spoke and dismissed it as nonsensical.
‘But they fall over each other…’
Her daughter smiled. ‘I bet they fell over each other for you before you met Father.’
Mrs Parsons’s composed features broke into a smile. ‘Yes, they did. Your father will be home in a minute, so you’d better go and change, Vicky—your sisters are upstairs already. They take so long to dress, try and hurry them up, dear.’
Victoria said, ‘Yes, Mother,’ and went up the stairs to a half landing which had a door on either side of it; she passed these, however, and went through the archway at the back of the landing and up half a dozen more stairs leading to a corridor running at right angles to them.
There was a good deal of noise here; her youngest sister, Stephanie, sixteen years old and already bidding fair to out-shine them all with her beauty, was hammering on the bathroom door with a good deal of strength.
‘Come out, Louise,’ she shouted. ‘You’ve been in there ages, you’re mean…’ She broke off as she saw Victoria. ‘Vicky darling,’ she begged, ‘get her out, I’ll never be ready…’
Victoria approached the door and knocked gently. ‘Louise?’ she called persuasively, ‘do come and see my dress and tell me what you think of it.’
The door was flung open and her sister sailed out. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘but let it be now, this minute, so that I’m not interrupted while I’m doing my face. Where’s Amabel?’
‘Here.’ Amabel was two years younger than Victoria and the quietest of the four. The two of them followed Victoria to her room and fell on to her bed while she took the dress from her cupboard and held it up for their inspection. It was a midi dress of leaf green crêpe with a demure collar like a pie-frill above a minute bodice and a very full skirt. It was admired and carefully examined and Louise said, ‘You’ll put us all in the shade, Vicky.’
Victoria shook her head. She was a very pretty girl, but her three sisters took after their mother; they were tall—even Stephanie was five feet ten and she hadn’t stopped growing—and magnificently built with glowing blonde hair and blue eyes. Their faces were beautiful. Victoria, putting the dress away again, looked at them and wondered how it was that she, the eldest, should have copper hair and tiger’s eyes and be of only a moderate height; she was slim too and although she had a lovely face it couldn’t match the beauty of the other three girls. She grinned at them suddenly. ‘Me for the next bath—I’ll be ten minutes,’ and started for the bathroom, shedding the guernsey as she went.
They collected in her room as they were ready, squabbling mildly and criticising each other’s dresses as she sat at the dressing table putting up her hair. She had combed it back from her forehead and arranged it in three thick loops on her neck and it had taken a long time, but the result, she considered, staring at her reflection in the mirror, had been worth the effort. Rather different from her hair-style of that afternoon—it was a pity… She dismissed the thought and said briskly: ‘If we’re ready we’d better go down.’ She eyed her sisters with loving admiration. ‘I must say you all look smashing, my dears.’ And they did, with their fair hair combed smoothly over their magnificent shoulders and their gay dresses. As usual, they would create a small sensation when they entered the restaurant presently. She smiled proudly at them, for they were such splendid creatures and the dearest sisters.
Their parents were waiting for them downstairs. Victoria’s mother, splendid in a violet crêpe dress which was the exact foil to her grey, simply-dressed hair, was sitting by the small fire in the sitting room, and her father was standing at the window, looking out on to the harbour, but he turned round as they went in and crowded around him, for they hadn’t seen him since early that morning. He saluted them each in turn with a fatherly kiss and being just a little taller than they were, he was able to look down upon them with benign affection. He said now:
‘You all look very nice, I must say. Shall we walk or do you want the car?
A routine question which was merely a concession to their finery, for the hotel was only a few minutes’ walk away, but it was asked each time they dined there, and that was frequently, to mark each of their birthdays as well as the first evening of Victoria’s holidays. They chorused a happy ‘no, thank you’, picked up their various coats and wraps and left the house in a cheerful chattering group with Mr and Mrs Parsons leading the way.
The restaurant was full, but they had a table in one of the windows overlooking the harbour. Mrs Parsons, sweeping regally through the doors, acknowledged the head waiter’s bow with a gracious smile and sailed in his wake, seemingly oblivious of the four eye-catching girls behind her, and they, by now used to being stared at and not in the least disconcerted by it, followed her; Stephanie first, then Amabel, Louise and lastly Victoria, quite dwarfed by her sisters and her father behind her.
They sat down, with Victoria on her father’s left with her back to the semi-circular room, and her parents facing each other at each end of the table. They had finished their soup and were awaiting their crabmeat patties when Stephanie, sitting opposite Victoria, remarked:
‘There’s a man across the room—I’ve never seen him before.’ A remark sufficient to awaken interest in the two younger Miss Parsons, for they knew most of the young men on the island and they had deduced, quite rightly, that the man was good-looking and tolerably young—otherwise she wouldn’t have noticed him.
It was Louise, sitting next to Victoria, who asked: ‘How old? Is he nice-looking? Dark or fair?’ Before her sister could reply her mother interposed.
‘Louise, you should know better, encouraging Stephanie like that! We don’t know him, I fancy, do we, dear?’ She raised her eyebrows at her husband, who laughed.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I can hardly inspect the man without embarrassment on both our parts, but if you’ve never seen him before, then I’m fairly sure that I haven’t either.’
Victoria speared her last morsel of patty. ‘All the same, I’m dying of curiosity and I can’t turn round, can I?’ She looked enquiringly at her mother, who smiled a little and said, ‘Oh, very well, but he’s with a very pretty young woman, so it really is a waste of Stephanie’s time.’
Stephanie ignored the young woman. ‘He’s very large and he’s got dark hair and one of those high foreheads—he doesn’t laugh very much, but he looks swoony when he smiles. He’s got one of those straight noses, just a little too big for his face, if you know what I mean—he turns me on.’
This vivid description met with her sister’s interested approval, but her mother said briskly before any of them could speak:
‘That is a vulgar expression which I dislike, Stephanie, you will be good enough to remember that.’
‘Amabel says it,’ muttered her youngest born rebelliously.
‘Amabel is twenty-one,’ said her mother sweepingly as she helped herself to poached salmon, and Stephanie made a mutinous face so that Victoria said swiftly, before the mutiny should become an open one:
‘I thought of going down to Castle Cornet tomorrow to see Uncle Gardener’—the curator and an old family friend, and such a ferocious horticulturist that they had called him by that name all their lives. ‘Anyone want to come with me?’
A cheerful babble of argument broke out as she had known it would. Her holiday this time was a short one, and her family, anxious that she shouldn’t waste a precious minute of it, were full of suggestions.
‘It’ll have to be in the afternoon, then,’ said Amabel. ‘Remember we’re going to the market in the morning and you’ve got some shopping to do—if you don’t do it straight away you’re sure to forget it and go back with only half the things you want.’
‘There’s a dress in the Jaguar shop,’ began Louise. They settled down to a happy discussion as to what Vicky should do with her days and the stranger across the restaurant was forgotten—or almost. Only Stephanie glanced across at him once or twice and Victoria, eating her ice pudding with a healthy appetite, wondered if he could possibly be the man she had met that afternoon. It seemed so unlikely that she dismissed the idea from her mind and bent it instead to the conversation going on around her.
They lingered over the cheese board and the coffee; it was only when Mr Parsons suggested that they should go to the bar below the restaurant for a drink before they returned home that the family made a move. They left as they had entered, Mrs Parsons in the lead, her daughters following and Mr Parsons ambling along behind them, and this time the girls contrived to get a good look at the man Stephanie had described. Victoria, waiting for the others to file out ahead of her, had the best chance of all of them to study him. It was the man of the afternoon, this time elegantly dressed and, as her mother had remarked, in the company of a very pretty woman. He was smiling across the table at her and as she lifted her hand for a brief moment Victoria, who had excellent sight, clearly saw the rings on her left hand. His fiancée, his wife even. She felt a sudden surprising sensation of loss and after that one look followed Louise through the restaurant, aware as she went that he had seen her.
She spent the next morning shopping with her sisters, stocking up on soap and lipsticks and face powder because they were all so much cheaper in Guernsey. They were clustered round the door of ‘La Parfumerie’ arguing where they should go for their coffee when Victoria saw him again, looking exactly as he had done when she had met him, and accompanied by a man of his own age, similarly attired. He was holding a very small boy by the hand too, which substantiated her guess about the pretty girl with the rings. She stared after him and Louise, looking up, caught her at it and said at once: ‘There he is again, that man Stephanie was so smitten with—and that was a waste of time, ducky, he’s trailing a kid.’
They all laughed, and if Victoria’s laughter sounded a little hollow, nobody noticed. They went, arm-in-arm, into the arcade, to Maison Carré for coffee and enormous cream puffs, which should have spoiled their appetites for lunch, but didn’t.
As it turned out, Victoria went alone to Castle Cornet, for it began to rain after lunch and none of the others liked the idea of getting wet doing something which they could so easily do on a fine day, but Vicky, they all agreed, should certainly go if she had a mind to. After all, it was her holiday, and she, who would have gone whatever her sisters had said, agreed pleasantly to be home in good time because they were all going to the theatre that evening. All parties being satisfied, she set off, sensibly dressed in slacks and a hooded anorak, down the hill and along the Esplanade, deserted now, and along Castle Pier to the castle. Uncle Gardener would be on the battlements, brooding over his spring flowers whatever the weather.
She entered by the visitors’ gateway and waved to the woman sitting idly in the little booth where summer visitors paid their fees, and walked on to the Outer Bailey and so eventually to the ramparts, where sure enough, Uncle Gardener was working. He was at the far end and Victoria made her way unhurriedly towards him, pausing to look down to the rocks below and then out to sea. There was a wind, but it was surprisingly light for the time of year and the sea had been beaten flat by the rain. All the same, it was hardly the weather to take a boat out, she thought, watching a yacht, its white-painted hull and brown sails showing up vividly against the greyness of the sea and sky, coming out of the harbour, running fast before the wind, going south towards Jerbourg Point. She could see the orange-coloured lifejackets of the two people aboard—two men, one at the tiller, the other…there was no reason to be so sure that it was the man she had met on the way to Fermain Bay, only—even at that distance—his size.
Victoria began to run along the path beside the battlements until she reached Uncle Gardener, who looked up and smiled. ‘Uncle,’ she wasted no time in greeting him, ‘have you got your binoculars with you?’ and when he handed them to her without speaking, turned and raced back along the ramparts. It was the same man, and his companion was the man she had seen him with that morning. There was no sign of anyone else on board, but they could be in the cabin, for it was a fair-sized boat—a Sea King—built for a family, although surely he wouldn’t take his family out on a day such as this one was? She watched it pass the castle and alter course out to sea—Jersey, perhaps? She walked slowly back to where the man she had come to visit waited. ‘And what’s all that about?’ he wanted to know.
He was elderly and short and rather stout and her father’s closest friend, and like him, was one of the Jurats of the island, perhaps the highest honour a citizen of Guernsey could aspire to. Victoria had known him all her life; when she had been a small girl and his wife had been alive, they had come frequently to her home, but now he was alone and although they saw him often, he seldom came to see them any more. Nevertheless, she knew that he was always delighted to see them. She looked at him with deep affection and said: ‘Oh, nothing. Just that yacht, it seems such a daft sort of day to sail.’
‘Well, as to that, it’s a matter of who’s sailing it, isn’t it? It seemed to me that the boat was being handled by someone who knew what he was about. Do you know him?’
Victoria perched herself on the end of the wheelbarrow. ‘No—yes, well, we met—just for a little while when I was out walking. I’ve no idea who he is.’ She shrugged her shoulders and added falsely, ‘And I don’t really care.’
Mr Givaude, alias Uncle Gardener, lifted a face which bore strong traces of his Norman ancestors and stared at her rain-wet face. He didn’t answer, only made a grunting sound and said: ‘How about tea? It’s early, but I’ve finished here. Come on up to the house.’
His home was tucked away to one side of the Prisoners’ Walk, and although it was still early, as Mr Givaude had observed, his housekeeper was waiting for them, ready to take Victoria’s wet anorak and then to bring in the tea-tray with the old silver teapot and the cherry cake she made so well. Victoria ate two generous slices while she told Uncle Gardener about hospital and how she hoped to get the ward within a year, and how beastly London was except when she went to the theatre or out to dinner, when it was the greatest possible fun.
‘Want to live there for ever?’ her companion asked.
‘No,’ she sounded positive about it.
‘Then you’d better hurry up and find yourself a husband. After all, you’re the eldest, you should have first pick.’
She grinned at him. ‘And what chance do I have when the others are around?’ she demanded. ‘They’re quite spectacular, you know. I only get noticed when I’m on my own.’
Her companion took a lump of sugar from the pot and scrunched it up.
