The Convenient Wife by Betty Neels

Author:Betty Neels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1988-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

IT WAS astonishing to Venetia to find how quickly she settled into her new life. The house ran on oiled wheels and, although she saw Truus each day about the meals, arranged the flowers and went through the contents of the linen cupboards, she had nothing much to do. Yet her days were filled. Anneta was determined to turn her into what she called a fashionable young wife, and, although some of her ideas were rather more than Venetia could accept, she knew which shops to go to, and within a week Venetia had acquired a wardrobe carefully planned to cover any social occasion, as well as more mundane tweed suits and woollies.

Venetia found herself wondering why Duert had been so anxious to have someone in his home to be with Anneta. The girl seemed contented and happy enough, even though her clothes were sometimes outrageous and she was at times silent. She seldom spoke of her school and the friends she had made there, and the young people who came to the house seemed harmless enough, even if noisy. Venetia met them all and, being not much older than they were, enjoyed herself with them. She would have liked to have told Duert this, but she only saw him for short stretches of time each day, and Anneta was almost always there.

When they did find themselves alone he had little to say, other than polite enquiries as to whether she was settling down, had enough money, was ready to start Dutch lessons…

To all of which she replied in her sensible way that everything was fine and the lessons couldn’t be started soon enough as far as she was concerned.

It was at the beginning of the second week that Anneta told her that she had an appointment with the dentist. ‘I go to a man in den Haag. He’s good, but very slow. I arranged to go while you have your lesson in the morning, then we can go out in the afternoon if you like.’

‘How will you go?’

‘I’ll get a lift in the car—the gardener’s going in for some bulbs, and if I’m not ready he can come on home and I’ll get a taxi. It’s only a mile or two.’

Venetia, her lesson over, was in the garden, crunching through the frozen snow, muttering Dutch verbs, when she heard the car coming back and went off round to the garage to meet Anneta. She wasn’t there. Wim, the gardener, shook his head and smiled and then said, ‘OK, mevrouw,’ with which she had to be content. It was almost lunchtime when she heard Anneta’s voice as she came into the house, and she hurried out to meet her.

‘I was getting quite worried,’ she began. ‘Are you all right? Was it very painful?’

Anneta flung a careless arm around her shoulders. ‘Not too bad, but I went and had coffee afterwards and sat for a bit. I hate the dentist.’

They went together into the dining-room. ‘Well, at least it’s over for six months,’ said Venetia.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.