Dearest Eulalia. Betty Neels
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Название: Dearest Eulalia
Автор: Betty Neels
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
Серия: Mills & Boon M&B
isbn: 9781408983324
isbn:
She poured herself another cup of tea. Of course he might be late for his appointment—with a girl? She allowed her imagination to run riot and then told herself sternly to stop being a fool. He was almost a stranger; she had only met him a couple of times; she knew nothing about him… So why was it that she felt so at ease with him, as though she had known him all her life?
If she had hoped to see him at the hospital the next day, she was disappointed. Her journeys into the hospital proper were limited to her visits to the supply department, the general office for requisitioning something for the canteen or taking money from the canteen at the end of the day to one of the clerical staff to lock away, but those trips took her nowhere near the wards and, since she had no idea as to what he actually did, even if she had the opportunity she had no idea where to look for him.
Filling rolls with cheese as the first of the day’s patients began to surge in, she told herself to forget him.
Since it was the haematology outpatients clinic the benches were filling up fast. She recognised several of the patients as she poured tea and offered rolls. Anaemia in its many guises took a long time to cure, and if not to cure at least to check for as long as possible…
The clinic was due to start at any moment. She glanced towards the end of the waiting room to the row of consulting rooms and almost dropped the teapot she was filling. Mr van der Leurs, enormous in a white coat, was going into the first room, flanked by two young doctors and a nurse.
‘But he’s a mister,’ said Eulalia to the teapot. ‘A surgeon, so why is he at this clinic?’ She had picked up quite a bit of knowledge since she had been working at St Chad’s, not all of it accurate but she was sure that haematology was a medical field. He had disappeared, of course, and he wouldn’t have seen her.
In this she was mistaken.
When the clinic was finally over she was at the back of the canteen getting ready for the afternoon’s work and didn’t see him leave.
It was six o’clock by the time she had closed the canteen, checked the takings and locked up. She got into her coat, picked up the bag of money and went through to the hospital. The clerk on night duty would lock it away and she would be free to go home. It was a pity that she had seen Mr van der Leurs again, she reflected. It had unsettled her.
She handed over the money and made for the main door. With any luck she wouldn’t have to wait too long for a bus and the rush hour was over.
She pushed open the swing doors and walked full tilt into Mr van der Leurs.
He said easily, ‘Ah, Eulalia, I was on my way to look for you. I have a book for your grandfather and I wondered if you would like a lift?’
She said slowly, ‘I saw you in Outpatients this morning. I thought you were a surgeon—Mr, you know?’
He had taken her arm and was leading her to where the Bentley was parked.
‘I am a surgeon, but I do a good deal of bone marrow transplanting and I had been asked to take a look at several patients who might benefit from that.’
He popped her into the car, got in beside her and drove away.
Eulalia said, ‘Oh, I see,’ which wasn’t very adequate as a reply but it was all she could think of, and she answered his casual enquiry as to her day just as briefly; she hadn’t expected to see him again and it had taken her by surprise.
He went straight up to the Colonel’s room when they reached the house and when he came down again after ten minutes or so she was in the hall. There wasn’t a fire in the drawing room. If he accepted her offer of coffee he would have to drink it in the kitchen; the drawing room would be icy…
He refused her offer. ‘I’m leaving for Holland in the morning,’ he told her, then he smiled down at her, shook her hand, and was gone.
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