Britannia All at Sea, chapter 1

I think this will shape up to be a medical plot, but we'll have to wait and see. It looks like one, definitely - Britannia (or Staff Nurse Smith, whichever you'd rather call her) meets Professor Jake Luitingh van Thien when he comes to the hospital to consult on some cases. Handily enough, he first sees her when she is protecting a helpless nurse from a mean one. He's quiet at first, then a bit of a jerk ("an ill-tempered man, and arrogant, she considered", p. 15).
But despite that, the very next sentence is this: "And over and above that [the ill temper and arrogance], she discovered with an almighty shock, the man she wished to marry", because although they just met a few hours before, she's in love with him.
Oooo-kay. Any objectivity I might have had about Britannia just flew out the window; she fell in love with a jerk by page 16! She has to work overtime, so he does take her out for tea and sandwiches later in the chapter. I guess that's something in his favor.
He asks her whether she's in love, and she says yes - with him, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if that causes some confusion later on.

Awakened Heart, chapter 1

This is a ridiculous set of tags to have on one post! Betts wrote by formula, natch, but this is ridiculous.
Sophie is a beautiful Night Casualty Sister at a London hospital. Dr. Rijk van Taak ter Wijsma (!) is a visiting brain surgeon. They meet because she gets the heel of her shoe wedged in a gutter. She has two plastic shopping bags in her hands, so she can't bend down to unlace the shoe, because heaven forbid she get a plastic bag on the wet ground. She just stands there in the rain, patiently waiting until the Betts hero comes to free her.
No, no, I'm not speaking metaphorically. This is what happens, really!
This is a first so far in this blog: Rijk thinks Sophie is attractive and good at her work, so he comes over to ask her out. He asks her out, as though they're ordinary people, not a controlling man and a doormat of a woman! She's not thrilled by the idea of going out with him, because he's arrogant about so doing, but still - I'm encouraged by any signs of normalcy in a Betts novel.
Oh, but then at the end of the chapter he becomes something of a stalker - coming over to ask whether she wanted a date was forgiveable (though: how did he know exactly where she lived?). But when they go out for a few hours (the aforementioned, almost normal date - or so I thought), he has found out which small town she came from. He asked a co-worker. Despite this rather creepy invasion of privacy, he's less awful than other Betts heroes I could mention.

Apple from Eve, chapter 5

The end of chapter four was such a cliffhanger that I didn't even notice that I read chapter five as well! Well, no, I'm not quite serious - I was eating dinner while I read Betts last night, and so I wasn't paying attention to how much I read.
Anyway, Euphemia's walking down the driveway with this injured child, and Tane pulls up in a taxi. So they take the kid to the hospital - he'll be fine in a few days. He escorts her back home, because she's untidy from her morning's efforts, and while she's changing, Tane finds out about how unhelpful Diana and her aunt were. Euphemia is thanked by the friendly housekeeper, who is related to the injured boy, and who resents Diana's aunt's attitude (while talking about "peasants", Diana's aunt made no effort to keep her voice down). Diana makes every effort to be charming to Tane, so maybe he doesn't mind. Euphemia and Tane go shopping and sightseeing while Diana rests, and Euphemia realizes she has fallen in love.
Looks aren't essential to me - I mean, I don't define a character by them - but it does seem strange that although Euphemia was described unfavorably in chapter 1, she is called beautiful in chapter 4. Then in this chapter, both Tane and the omniscient narrator describe her that way as well. Odd!
Diana's actions in the last few chapters have earned this book an inappropriate fiancee tag.

All Else Confusion, chapter 1

I decided to go alphabetically through my bookcase, so I'm starting with All Else Confusion (Mills and Boon, 1982), chapter 1. One gets an inkling of Betts's views on the verso, where she decides to quote from Tennyson's The Princess:
"Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion."
Annis, the woman in this romance, is a typical Betts heroine: "although she was moderately clever, she had an endearing dreaminess, a generous nature and a complete lack of sophistication."
She stays at home to help her mother, which makes very little financial sense; the family's strapped for cash, so why doesn't Annis get a job so they could buy some labor-saving devices (such as an up-to-date stove and a washing machine that works)? The other relevant things in this chapter are the discussion of Annis's frail sister Audrey (since Betts mentions Audrey's smallness and timidity repeatedly, you know it'll come up again), and her introduction to the laughably-named Jake Royle, the wealthy businessman and hero of the piece, who is first seen on horseback. He's virile, don't'cha know. Also on horseback is a nice neighbor named Matt - despite All Else Confusion's faults (and believe me, we'll get to those in the next week or so), it's a pleasant change for Betts to mention another man whom the heroine could have loved.
At the very end of the chapter, Annis agrees to stay with a woman she has just met: Matt's aunt, Mrs Duvant.