A Very Special Man Read online

  A VERY SPECIAL MAN

  Marjorie Lewty

  Chloe had given up on ordinary men!

  Experience had taught Chloe that ordinary men were a sadly selfish bunch. So she conjured up an ideal. He would have to be rich and generous; tall, dark and handsome; kind to children and animals. And he would possess a sense of humor.

  She and her sister had a good laugh over the requirements. They both knew full well that such a man could never really exist!

  At least that's what Chloe thought—until she met Benedict Dane…

  CHAPTER ONE

  The argument began almost as soon as they left the cinema. The X film had been a fairly steamy one and perhaps it had put ideas into Roger’s head—or rather added heat to the ones already there. By the time they reached the turning into the London suburban road lined with neat villas where Chloe lived with her stepfather’s sister, Miss McBain, Roger had begun to get quite unpleasantly vehement. It was the same old thing, they had gone over it a dozen times before. He wanted Chloe to move out into a flat so that they could live together. She wouldn’t agree.

  ‘This is one hell of a way to be engaged to a girl.’ Roger hunched his shoulders against the east wind as if it were bearing him a personal grudge as they tramped along the darkened road. ‘Me living at home with hordes of bodies milling around,’ he was the eldest of a large family and lived very comfortably at home in St John’s Wood, ‘you stuck here with this old biddy with her Calvinist ideas of what’s proper. I’m beginning to believe that some of that Victorian nonsense has rubbed off on you, Chloe. What is there in it for me? I mean, for both of us?’

  ‘We could get married.’ Chloe wasn’t a stubborn girl, but this was something she felt strongly about. ‘Between us we could manage quite well until you’re making pots of money as a top rank Q.C.’ As soon as the words were out she regretted them. Roger wouldn’t see the joke; only this morning he had been turned down at an interview for the third time in a month. In spite of strings being pulled by his father—a civil servant in the higher echelons—and various friends of the family, it was proving tougher than he had imagined to take even the first step on the road to becoming a barrister. ‘I mean,’ she went on hastily, ‘you’re sure to find a place with a good firm soon, and I could keep on with my secretarial work. At least we could have a proper home together and start to have fun collecting bits and pieces and making the place our own.’

  ‘No way,’ snapped Roger. ‘We’ve been over this ground before, Chloe, until I’m getting sick of the subject. You know damned well I’m not the kind of bloke to live on my wife’s earnings, plus a hand-out from social security, and I can see now that it’s going to be a long slog before I get established. I didn’t realise how long when we got engaged. No, the obvious thing is for you to move out into a place of your own where we could be together.’

  ‘Where we could sleep together, you mean?’ Chloe said bluntly.

  ‘All right, if you like. What’s wrong with that? We’re going to be married, aren’t we?’

  Chloe felt suddenly cold. Even allowing for Roger’s disappointment and frustration there was something in his voice that frightened her a little. But she wasn’t going to give way on this point—she couldn't. ‘Everything’s wrong with it from my point of view,’ she said. ‘It would be absolutely horrid to be stuck away in some poky little flat, furnished by somebody else. I’d feel like a—like a kept woman. We’d get on each other’s nerves pretty soon. I know, I’ve seen it happen too often. I want to start off properly. I want to make a real home for us, Roger. It needn’t be anything elaborate—just the smallest place would do, where we could have the fun of choosing our own things to have around us and sort of—of building for the future.’

  ‘Sounds like a tiny love-nest on a housing estate,’ Roger sneered.

  ‘Well, why not?’ she persisted. ‘That’s how most people start.’

  He heaved an exaggerated sigh. ‘My dear good girl, how often do I have to remind you that I need to keep up a certain standard, to have an address on my notepaper that I wouldn’t be ashamed of? No, if we do it my way I can go on living at home—nominally at least—and keep the St John’s Wood address for professional purposes.’ He put his arm round her, drawing her against him as they walked along. ‘What do you say, darling?’ There was a rough urgency in his voice now. ‘It wouldn’t be for all that long—just until I get a break and we can afford a decent house in a good neighbourhood. Until I can afford to keep a wife and do the thing properly.’

  They had reached Chloe’s aunt’s house now and Roger pulled her into his arms in the darkened street, his mouth fiercely demanding on her, his hands locked round her waist, drawing her body against his with a frank intimacy. ‘God!’ he whispered, his breath hot and quick against her face, ‘won’t you let yourself see what this is doing to me— to us, and our love for each other?’

  She stood still in his embrace. How could he expect her to respond to his lovemaking when they had been arguing and disagreeing all the way home? At last he sensed her reserve and loosened his arms. ‘It’s like that, is it?’ he said. ‘You’re going to hold out on me until I give in ?’

  ‘No, of course it isn’t,’ Chloe said helplessly, ‘it’s just that—oh, I suppose we don’t see things the same way.’ She shivered as the sneaky March wind blew round her legs and found the gap between the top of her boots and the hem of her coat. It was turning out a disastrous evening.

  ‘You can say that again,’ R.oger agreed nastily. ‘It seems to me that you don’t want a man at all, Chloe, you just want a doll’s house to play with.’

  ‘And you don’t want a real marriage with a real home,’ she rejoined sadly. The gulf between them was widening more and more. ‘You just want a girl to go to bed with.’ They stood staring at each other in the lamplit street, a tall, lanky young man with floppy fair hair and brows drawn angrily together, and a girl whose brown head came just above his shoulder; a girl with a slender body and a tweed coat pulled tightly round her against the cold wind, her long scarf from university days wound round her neck; a girl whose blue eyes were dark and troubled in the dim light.

  Whether that would have been the end then and there, or whether they would somehow have patched things up for a time, Chloe was not to know. For just then the telephone rang inside the house and after a moment or two the front door opened and Aunt Catherine’s grey head appeared. ‘Ah, there you are, Chloe dear. I thought I heard your voice. It’s Janice on the phone for you.’

  ‘Coming now,’ Chloe called, and ran up the front path.

  She heard Roger swear under his breath, but he followed her in and wandered into the front sitting room.

  Chloe picked up the receiver. ‘Hullo, Jan.’ Janice was five years older. She lived in a semi-detached house in Kenilworth, had two young children and was separated from her husband, Derek.

  ‘Chloe? Oh, I’m so glad. I thought you were out.’ Jan’s voice sounded hoarse and very far away.

  ‘Just come in. We’ve been to see a film,’ Chloe said brightly. No use letting Jan guess her state of mind— poor old Jan had troubles enough of her own. ‘How are you, Jan, you sound a bit murky, it must be a bad line.’

  ‘Not the line,’ croaked Janice. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Jan, what is it—are you ill?’

  Silence.

  ‘Jan?’

  A faint voice from the other end. ‘All right, Emma love, I’m coming.’ Then, louder, in Chloe’s ear, ‘I’ll have to go. Emma’s been sick again. I just wanted to tell you…’

  ‘Jan,’ pleaded Chloe, ‘just say what’s the matter.’

  ‘ ’Flu,’ wheezed Janice. ‘ ’Flu or something—we’ve all got it.’

  ‘Have you had the
doctor? Jan, have you had the doctor?’

  ‘Um? Oh—the doctor. She’s coming in—when she can—very busy…’ Janice’s voice trailed away weakly.

  Chloe said, ‘I’m coming up to you, Jan. Now, take some aspirins and get into bed and stay there as much as you possibly can. I’ll be with you tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Chloe, you can’t!’ wailed Janice. ‘Your job— Roger…’

  ‘I'm between jobs. And Roger will understand. No, don’t say anything, I’ve made up my mind. You just hang on until I get there and don't worry!’

  She replaced the receiver and turned to Roger with a worried frown. ‘Jan and the children have all got ’flu. She sounded really rotten, as if she was running a high temperature. I said I’d go up to Kenilworth tomorrow to help out for a day or two.’ She saw his expression harden and added, ‘I simply have to go, Roger, don’t you see?’

  ‘No, I don’t see. Of course you don’t have to go, it’s not your responsibility. Surely there’s someone she can get, neighbours or something.’

  ‘They’ve all got some children of their own—the infection—’

  ‘And what if you catch the bug? What good will you be then? No, I don’t think you should go.'

  Chloe looked at him incredulously. This couldn’t be Roger, this man with the peevish mouth and the frown between his eyes. She had never seen him look like this before. ‘But—’ she faltered, ‘—but Jan’s my sister.’

  ‘I’ve got three sisters, but I don’t find it necessary to go hareing off all over the country when they get themselves into jams. I’m the man you’ve promised to marry. Have you considered me at all? Where do I fit in while you’re playing your Good Samaritan role?’

  She tried to make allowances. Roger was disappointed and in a bad mood and Jan was nothing to him, after all. She said placatingly, ‘I’ll only be away a couple of days, just until Jan’s got things sorted out.’

  ‘Your sister isn’t the kind to get things sorted out,’ Roger said nastily. ‘Once you’re there she’ll hang on to you like a limpet.’

  Chloe had always imagined that Roger liked Jan. On the one or two occasions when they had met he had seemed to get along very well with her. But now he launched into quite a tirade about her faults and shortcomings. She was possessive, she was fussy, she was selfish—Chloe couldn’t recognise her warm-hearted, good-natured sister in the vicious harpy he was describing. But she wasn’t going to make an issue out of it. She guessed that he was using Jan as a convenient target to vent his frustration on. It wasn’t a very admirable quality in him, but she expected that most men acted like this sometimes.

  When he finally ran out of adjectives she said, ‘You don’t really think Jan’s like that, do you?’

  He scowled. ‘Yes, I damn well do. I can see very well why her husband walked out on her. And another thing, Chloe’—he wagged a finger at her, just as if he were already addressing a jury—‘if you intend to go on like this—if you mean to put your own interests and that of your family before the expressed wishes of your fiancé, then we’d better think again about our engagement.’

  She took a step backwards as if he had struck her. He didn’t mean it—he couldn’t! This wasn’t the Roger she knew—this man was a stranger, a petulant, spoilt little boy. Her own anger rising, she said the unforgivable thing. She said, ‘Roger darling, do grow up!’

  That was apparently the final straw. She had never realised that he had it in him to be so nastily and deliberately offensive. Within minutes she had handed him back his ring and he had stamped off into the night, slamming the front door behind him. Aunt Catherine, who could hardly have helped hearing every venomous word, appeared from the kitchen to find Chloe, sheet-white and shaking with nerves and shock. But somehow she managed a travesty of a grin. ‘Jan and the children have all got ’flu,’ she said through stiff lips, ‘and now Roger’s walked out on me. It’s just not our day, is it?’

  One way and another there wasn’t much sleep for Chloe that night. At five o’clock she was up and dressed and the cold darkness of the March morning fitted in very well with her mood. By six she was driving up the M1 in Aunt Catherine’s red Mini, on her way to Kenilworth, the historic old town in the heart of England where she had grown up.

  ‘You take the car, dear,’ Aunt Catherine had insisted, ‘then you’ll be with poor Janice much earlier than if you waited for the train. You know I don’t like driving now, with the traffic getting so bad, and I can easily get a bus to the shops. Keep the car just as long as you want to stay with your sister. I’d like you to have it,’ she added sincerely.

  In her emotional state Chloe had wanted to weep at this generous gesture. Sometimes it was difficult to realise that Aunt Catherine wasn’t a real relation at all. When Hugh McBain married Chloe’s mother, five years ago, and took her to live in Australia, it had been arranged that his sister, recently retired from her post as headmistress of a large girls’ school, should give Chloe a home, and Chloe had spent all her university days at the little house in Potters Bar. After she left university she had taken a secretarial course, as an insurance against not finding the kind of job she had in mind—something that would utilise her knowledge of modern languages. It was fortunate that she had just finished one temporary office job and was on the point of looking for another when Jan’s S.O.S. had arrived.

  Janice was tied to the Midlands by a house and two small children and Aunt Catherine hardly knew her, but she had been genuinely grieved when Jan’s marriage broke up, nearly a year ago now, and only last weekend she and Chloe had been making tentative plans for persuading Jan to bring the children to London for a visit.

  Chloe fixed her gaze doggedly on the bright strip of cat's eyes that sliced the road ahead into its three lanes. This time yesterday everything seemed normal and ordinary. And now—Janice was ill, and the children too, and as for herself and Roger… As she drove on, the months since she became engaged seemed to merge into each other, a mosaic of happiness and of doubt, of hopeful planning and worried self-questioning. Falling in love with Roger had been so easy when she first met him at the house of one of his sisters, a student friend of Chloe’s from university days. Roger had good looks, charm, the kind of eager enthusiasm that carried her along with it. And he loved her—or he said he did. She remembered some of the things he had said before he slammed out of the house last night and felt sick inside. The cat’s eyes blurred before her eyes and she blinked hard and concentrated on her driving. She wouldn’t be of any use to Jan if she ended up slewed across the central reservation of the motorway; and helping Jan was the first thing on the agenda.

  Jan’s home was a between-the-wars semi, small and solid and well-built, with pebbledash front and a narrow, neat garden. Dawn was breaking as Chloe turned the Mini off the road and parked it with its nose up to the side garage. There was a long wait after she had pressed the front door bell and heard the chime echo inside the house. Then the sound of muffled footsteps reached her, the hall light was switched on and Janice’s voice demanded weakly, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me—Chloe. Open up, love, I’m freezing!’

  The door was opened and she stepped into the warm little hall. Thank goodness Jan had been sufficiently in charge of things to remember to leave the central heating switched on. Chloe closed the door quickly and stood with her back to it, looking at her sister with troubled eyes. Janice was in a thin pink wrap. Her brown hair was lying flat and damp against her head, her cheeks were heavily flushed and her blue eyes dull. She was undoubtedly running a high temperature. She frowned, blinking against the light, passing a shaky hand over her forehead. ‘Chloe, I wasn’t expecting you yet—how did you…’

  ‘First things first.’ Chloe took her sister’s arm firmly and turned her back to the staircase. ‘What about the children?’

  ‘Asleep.’ Jan’s voice was a mere thread. Reaching the stairs she stopped, holding on to the handrail, knees sagging. ‘Oh, Chloe, it’s so good to see you.’ Her eyes filled with tears.<
br />
  ‘And just about time,’ said Chloe, more briskly than she felt. ‘Bed for you, my girl.’ She was suddenly overwhelmingly glad she had come, even if it had meant the end of her engagement to Roger. But the end would have come soon, anyway, she thought sadly, as she helped Jan up the stairs. Going against his ‘expressed wishes’ had merely been the excuse he had used. She was probably lucky that she hadn’t married him and found out what he was like afterwards. Look at poor Jan, struggling to be mother and father to two small children! Tightening her arm round her sister, she thought, Men!

  She would be happy to do without them in her life for a considerable time to come.

  It was a long, long week. Chloe had arrived on Tuesday morning and by Friday the children had bounced back to their normal lively selves. But Janice didn’t bounce; indeed, she looked as if she would never bounce again and the doctor, when she called, looked at her white, strained face very thoughtfully.

  ‘Your sister’s taking it rather hard,’ she said as Chloe followed her downstairs. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on her. Her husband’s away?’

  ‘Permanently,’ said Chloe shortly, and the doctor, a youngish red-haired woman, raised her eyebrows but didn’t look particularly surprised. Then she sighed in an exasperated way. ‘As if life weren’t difficult enough! Ah well, we must do what we can for her. You live near?’

  ‘No, I live in London, but I’ll stay and see my sister through this.’

  ‘Good. Well, don’t hesitate to be in touch if you’re worried.’

  Chloe was certainly worried, but on Thursday, just as she was on the point of phoning the surgery, Jan’s temperature dropped with a bump. On Friday she was sitting up and being persuaded to eat, and on Saturday afternoon she struggled downstairs for the first time. Chloe had surprised even herself by the way she had managed to take over a house and three invalids and keep things going without any major disaster. Keeping the children from overtiring their mother had been the major problem, but somehow she had managed to accomplish it.