A Very Special Man

by Marjorie Lewty

  ‘Then how are you so sure he’s married?’

  Chloe put down the tea-towel and sighed. ‘Look, love, just let it ride, won’t you? I happened to meet the man when I went out to look at Woodcotes, just for old times’ sake. I thought the house was still for sale and I was prowling round, peeping through windows, when he turned up and said he’d bought it. Then it started to rain and he offered me a lift back and that was all that happened. I don’t know him from Adam and I shan’t ever see him again. He’s very good-looking, certainly, but I’m not the least bit interested in him.’

  ‘No?’ enquired Jan innocently.

  ‘No. And he’s not the least bit interested in me. So stop fabricating a big romance out of nothing, there’s a dear.’

  Jan washed a mug thoughtfully. ‘I just thought—the way he looked at you…’

  'Jan! Stop it, will you?’

  There was a short silence while Jan washed three plates. Then she said dreamily, ‘He was so dark, he didn’t look altogether English.’

  Without thinking Chloe said, ‘He isn’t, he’s a quarter Spanish.’ And to her annoyance she felt the colour rising into her cheeks.

  Her sister gave her a long, old-fashioned look and said, ‘Really?’ with heavy emphasis.

  Chloe picked up the tea-towel again and dried the plates with great thoroughness. ‘All right then, we did talk a bit. You can’t sit in a car with somebody and remain completely silent. Now let’s forget about Mr Benedict Dane, shall we?’

  ‘So you know his first name too? Benedict!’ sighed Jan. ‘What a romantic name! Wasn’t there a Benedict in one of Shakespeare’s plays? The one about the two people who loved each other all the time, but—’

  ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ Chloe interrupted. ‘Which is exactly what you are making of this little episode, my darling sister. And that character spelled his name with a K—Benedick.’

  Jan grinned. ‘What an education can do for you!’ Then, at Chloe’s expression she burst out laughing. ‘Don’t mind me, love. I’m just a romantic, born out of period. That’s why—’ She stopped and an unusually stubborn look came into her fair, pretty face.

  It was Chloe’s turn to question. ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why I’m sure that one day Derek is going to walk through that door and say, “I’m back.” It might happen any day—today—tomorrow. I just know he’ll come back.’

  ‘And you’d take him back—just like that?’

  ‘I love him,’ said Jan simply.

  There was a long silence. Then Chloe said, ‘There’s no answer to that one, is there?’ and Jan shook her head and said, ‘No. If you love a man you’re stuck with it. At least, I am.’

  Chloe remembered that remark as she was getting into bed that night. If she had really loved Roger perhaps she would have given in, and done what he wanted. And yet she had thought, she loved him. She had been in such a blissful whirl of planning, and window-gazing into furniture shops, and poring over Ideal Home magazines, that she had never questioned her love.

  Perhaps Roger had been right about her; perhaps it had been just the idea of getting married and making a home that she had been in love with. In a way it helped to admit that what she had felt for Roger hadn’t been love—not the kind of love that Jan was talking about.

  She burrowed her head into the pillow, impatient with herself for trying to analyse a thing like love in cold blood. It just couldn’t be done. But for the first time she felt free of Roger. She needn’t lose any sleep over him, as he certainly wasn’t losing any sleep over her.

  It wasn’t difficult to keep that resolution. For as she was drifting over into nothingness it was certainly not Roger’s clean-cut, youthful features that floated before her, but the mocking dark face of Benedict Dane. And the little devils were dancing in his eyes.

  ‘Your car’s all ready for you, Miss Martin.’ The service manager pushed a large account form across the counter.

  Chloe looked at the total, winced, and got out her cheque book. The least she could do, when Aunt Catherine was lending her the Mini, was to pay the running expenses, but many bills like this one would have a disastrous effect on her bank balance unless she landed a good job soon.

  ‘Better day than yesterday,’ remarked the service manager, receipting the bill.

  ‘Hmm?’ Chloe was still thinking of her bank balance. It seemed so idiotic, as things had turned out, to have spent her savings, week by week, on things for the home that she was going to share with Roger. A whole chest, back in Potter’s Bar, was full of pretty sheets and frilled pillowslips and kitchen gadgets.

  ‘Rain cleared up,’ the man was explaining as he reached up to the rack for the Mini’s keys. ‘Fair soaker it was yesterday, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh! Oh yes,’ agreed Chloe vaguely. Yesterday seemed weeks ago. This morning, walking along streets, up and down office stairs, looking for a job, had been endless.

  She and Jan, poring over advertisements yesterday evening, had imagined that it would be easy for Chloe to land a suitable job, at least for the time being, but in the event it had been hopeless. Every single vacancy advertised in the paper was already filled and the agencies who took her address and telephone number merely said they would let her knew—which meant, she knew, just what it seemed to suggest—a long wait.

  She got behind the wheel of the car and turned its nose towards Jan’s home. Well, that was Kenilworth and Leamington accounted for. This afternoon she would tackle Coventry. A big, bustling city, Coventry, and there must surely be a job for her there. But the prospect of working in a big, bustling city was depressing just now. Leaving London had given her a fresh taste for living and working in a small town, with real country almost at the end of the street.

  Still, she thought, cheering herself up, if it had to be Coventry then it had to be. She could at least come home to Jan’s at night and there would be the weekends to enjoy the old familiar countryside. Woodcotes, though, would be well and truly out of bounds. She didn’t want to risk encountering that Dane man again.

  The sun came out as she drove past the shops and turned into the residential part of the town. It seemed a good omen and her spirits began to rise a little. She even hummed a snatch of song as she reached the end of St Michael’s Close. Then, in a split second her foot came off the accelerator and on to the brake and the Mini stopped with a screech. If there had been a giant Euro-lorry in the narrow road she couldn’t have reacted more promptly. Instead of which the thing that had provoked Chloe’s immediate reflexes was nothing more than the sight of an olive-green, rakishly low car with a black hood, pulled up at the end of the road, outside Jan’s house.

  She sat quite still, aware that her heart was thumping uncomfortably and that the engine had stalled. Taking a deep breath, she started the engine again, drove up behind the olive-green car, locked the Mini carefully and walked into the house, a fixed smile on her mouth.

  It was a friendly little scene that greeted her as she went into the sitting room. Jan was in one chair, Benedict Dane in another, with his leather coat tossed casually on the sofa and Emma perched on his knee. James was building a tower with coloured cubes on the carpet between them.

  ‘Ah, here you are, Chloe, I said you couldn’t be very much longer.’ Jan’s face was flushed, her eyes bright. She had evidently been enjoying herself.

  The man put Emma down beside her brother and got to his feet courteously. ‘Hullo again,’ he said, and the sound of that deep voice vibrated up and down Chloe’s nerves as if they were tensioned violin strings.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Dane.’ She managed, by a quirk of her nicely-shaped eyebrows, to make the words delicately into a question.

  Jan answered it. ‘Mr Dane very kindly called in to make sure that Emma wasn’t any the worse of her tumble.’

  ‘An’ he gave me this.’ Emma held up a small doll, exquisitely dressed as a Spanish dancer in red satin skirt and white embroidered blouse with spangles. She had long black hair, arranged on top of her head and
held with a tiny comb, and plastic castanets were secured to her hands so that they clicked convincingly when she moved. ‘Listen,’ said Emma, entranced, and whirled the doll from side to side.

  ‘It was very kind of Mr Dane to bring it,’ said Chloe politely, without looking at him. If Jan approved of Emma accepting expensive gifts from strangers then it was nothing to do with her. She stood in the doorway, aware that both grown-ups in the room were eyeing her expectantly.

  ‘Well?’ enquired Jan. ‘Come and sit down and tell us.’

  ‘Tell you what?’ Chloe picked her way over James’s brick tower and sat on the edge of the sofa and Benedict Dane seated himself again in his chair. Polished manners the man had! she thought peevishly. She had no idea why she felt so waspish towards him; she supposed it must be a kind of defence.

  ‘Your sister has been telling me that you had gone out to clinch an interesting job,’ he said. ‘How did it go?’

  Chloe eyed Jan suspiciously. Keeping up the family end was all very well, but there was no need for a build-up like this. Clinch an interesting new job indeed! She gave a brief thought to her fruitless quests of the morning and said shortly, ‘It fell through.’

  ‘Oh, what a shame, dear!’ cooed Jan. The man Dane said nothing, which fact, for some reason, made Chloe shrug in a couldn’t-care-less manner and add, ‘It didn’t turn out particularly interesting after all.’

  He spoke then. He said ‘Ah!’ in a tone of voice whose import escaped Chloe completely.

  Jan stood up and somewhat fussily tried to remove her offspring to the kitchen for their dinners. James, bored with his bricks, went toddling off gladly enough, but Emma hung back, her large grey eyes fixed on the man. She put her hand in his. ‘You come too?’ she invited, ogling him shamelessly.

  ‘Not now,’ Jan told her. ‘Mr Dane wants to talk to Aunt Chloe.’

  Emma held out her arms. ‘Carry me, then.’ He smiled, hoisted her on to his shoulder and disappeared with her through the doorway.

  Chloe sat where she was. He had certainly lost no time in making himself at home, though why he should want to do so defeated her. And what could he possibly want to talk to her about?

  He came back, still smiling. ‘She’s missing her father pretty badly.’ He looked down at his buckskin shoes and then up at Chloe. ‘Your sister told me the position.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ she said coolly. Again, if Jan wanted to confide intimate family matters to a complete stranger that was her business.

  He nodded. ‘Yes.’ Then, looking at her rather hard, ‘She also told me one or two other things—because I asked her.’

  There was no mistaking his meaning now. Her head went up. ‘About me?’

  ‘Precisely.’ He smiled at her and she felt curiously weak, which was annoying, just when she wanted to tell him in no uncertain terms what she thought about such uncalled-for curiosity on his part. He added, ‘But I really did call to enquire about Emma, you know. Well— partly.’

  There was a short silence while he sat looking at her speculatively, the long dark lashes fanning almost to his cheeks. At last, when she could bear the silence no longer she burst out, ‘Look, what is all this about? What has Jan been telling you about me?’

  ‘Only a few basic facts,’ he said soothingly. ‘That you were recently engaged and are engaged no longer. That you’ve promised to stay here with her for the time being. That you’re looking for a suitable job in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Is that all?’ She was furious now, but not with Jan. Jan wouldn’t stand a chance against a man like this if he really wanted to find something out. ‘And have you got all the information you require? You wouldn’t care to know how my engagement came to be broken off, or how many A-levels I have, or what cereal I like for breakfast?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that will be necessary.’ The smile had disappeared. He had that same look that she had first seen on his face when he had watched her in the kitchen at Woodcotes. ‘You think I’ve been prying into your affairs for no good reason, Miss Martin?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I can’t see what reason you can possibly have,’ she said distantly.

  He relaxed suddenly, leaning back in his chair. ‘Just hold tight for a while and all will be revealed.’

  A bellow from the direction of the kitchen filled the air. ‘James,’ said Chloe automatically.

  Another, shriller, screech of wrath followed. ‘Emma,’ she added. ‘They fight.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ said Benedict Dane. ‘The old battle of the sexes.’ He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘It happens all the time.’

  And that, Chloe admitted to herself, spikes my guns fair and square. This man had a way with words, just as Roger had. The difference was that Roger had a maddening way of laying down the law whereas this Dane man to give him his due, had a certain humour about him. Nevertheless, she had no intention of allowing herself to be beguiled.

  The noise from the kitchen was increasing in volume, if that were possible, and Jan’s voice, scolding and pleading, was now adding to it.

  Mr Dane smiled comfortably. ‘A homely sound, but not the best background for the discussion of important matters. Suppose you come out to lunch with me?’

  That took her by surprise. ‘I—I don’t know if I can manage it,’ she said feebly.

  He studied her face quizzically. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘admit you want to accept.’

  The sheer arrogance of the man! ‘Whatever gives you that idea, Mr Dane?’

  ‘Two things. The first because, as a woman, you are curious to know what I have to discuss. The second, because I want you to come.’ He smiled deliberately into her eyes and something very odd happened to her breathing.

  She tightened her lips, trying to ease the constriction in her throat. ‘And I suppose, like all men, you expect to get exactly what you want?’

  ‘Of course. What would be the point of wanting something if you didn’t expect to get it?’ he said reasonably, and reached to the back of the chair for his coat. ‘But enough of this sparring, let’s go.’ He stood up.

  Chloe stood up too, because sitting down put her at a disadvantage. ‘I don’t think…’ she began, looking down at her neat tweed suit.

  He was laughing at her. ‘For Pete’s sake don’t say your clothes won’t do, because you look quite delightful. Any running repairs can be done when we get there.’

  He put a hand at her elbow and urged her towards the door.

  ‘Jan…’ she said weakly. ‘I must tell her.’

  ‘No need, she knows already that I meant to take you to lunch.’

  Her neatly-marked eyebrows lifted themselves. ‘You had it all arranged between you, I suppose?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Come along.’

  She had a moment of panic. She could refuse to go, she thought wildly. She could listen to the voice inside her that was saying loud and clear that her immediate future would be much more comfortable if this man were not a part of it. The tidal wave was approaching again. She could see it towering above her, its curling green height waiting to engulf her. Sink or swim, she thought desperately.

  The hand on her arm increased its pressure. Chloe sank. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘That’s a good girl,’ smiled Benedict Dane in the voice of a man who had been sure all the time that he would get what he wanted.

  The hotel stood back from the country road, modern and custom-built, new since Chloe had lived around here. She refused her host’s offer of an aperitif, left the ordering of lunch to him, and repaired to the ladies’ powder room, which was empty. Here, sitting on a furry pink stool under pink-tinted lights, she repaired her make-up and drew a comb through her shining light brown hair, persuading the ends to flick into an outward curl as they lay against the collar of her jacket.

  She was aware of a faint, queasy feeling of excitement inside as she thought of the man waiting for her, which was absurd really, for this couldn’t be an ordinary date, could
it? There was nothing about her to make a man like Benedict Dane fall so hard and so immediately that he couldn’t wait to see her again, to ask her out to lunch? No, his motives must be something different, but what were they?

  She stood up and checked in the long mirror. She saw a nice-looking, tallish girl in a blue-flecked suit of fine tweed, and a silky blue blouse that matched her eyes and tied in a big, floppy bow under her firm little chin. A girl with honey-brown hair, a cared-for complexion, white, even teeth in a mouth that was a little too wide and smiled easily. Plenty of girls like her around. Why, then, should a fabulous man like Benedict Dane have made such a point of seeing her again? Mystified, but tingling with an odd, not unpleasant feeling rather like fear, she dropped a coin in the saucer left by the cloakroom attendant, and went out to join her host in the restaurant.

  He was sitting at a table by a window overlooking smooth lawns. He stood up and pulled back a chair for her before a waiter could reach them.

  ‘Quite pleasant, isn’t it?’ he said, glancing around the room, which was long and narrow and decorated elegantly and unobtrusively in pastel shades. It looked expensive, and no doubt it was. The only other table which was occupied was at the far end of the room, where a party of businessmen were gathering and greeting each other with much bonhomie. ‘They tell me,’ went on Benedict Dane, ‘that come the Royal Show at Stoneleigh they’ll be bursting at the seams with visitors, but just now is their slack time. Will you have your coat off?’

  He helped her with expert ease, his hands touching her shoulders only momentarily, just long enough to cause a little quiver to run down her back. Ah well, his sex-appeal was all part of this rather fantastic occasion, so why deny it, she thought, sitting back in her chair as the waiter approached with the wine list.

  Her host ran a lean brown finger down the page and paused, raising his eyebrows towards the white-coated man standing beside his chair. ‘Hm—didn’t expect to meet that one,’ he remarked. ‘Rather special, isn’t it?’ The waiter, a balding, middle-aged man, very tall and thin, bent his head respectfully. ‘Quite right, sir, only most guests don’t go for it, preferring the French or the German. But this one was recommended to us by a regular of ours who travels in Spain a lot, and we got a case in, mostly for him.’