The Right Kind Of Man

by Jessica Hart

  Skye woke, jerking upright as the scream stuck in her throat. Her heart hammered against her ribs as the terror lingered, and she struggled to breathe in short, jerky little gasps. Her screams lingered on and on in her mind, and it was only gradually that the nightmare faded enough for her realise that the noise she could hear was the wind, screeching around the corner of the building, while the rain threw itself ferociously at the window. Below, the lights had long been extinguished and the darkness in the room was thick and menacing and utterly still compared to the fury outside.

  A vicious crack of lightning only made the blackness around Skye more absolute, and she began to shake as childhood terrors replaced those of the nightmare. It was silly to be so frightened of the dark, she tried to remind herself. It was just because of Harry and that horrible cupboard. She was perfectly safe. Still, she groped across to the bedside table and clicked the light switch.

  Nothing happened.

  Skye clicked it again, and again more frantically, but it was completely dead and her brave attempt at thinking rationally dissolved in the remembered fear of that afternoon seventeen years ago. Every ghastly detail was still clear in her mind: the click of the lock, the boys’ giggles and whispers as they ran away, the choking, suffocating darkness and the terror that had built up inside her so that once she had started screaming it had been impossible to stop.

  She had to get some light. It took all Skye’s courage to throw back the blankets, swing her legs off the bed and step into the darkness, her arms stretched stiffly ahead of her. She walked straight into something—a chair?—which scraped across the floor, but somehow she made it to the door and fumbled for the light switch, whimpering when she found that didn’t work either.

  Skye had the chilling conviction that she had woken to find that the nightmare was real after all, and her precarious control slipped as she panicked and grappled for the door, terrified of remaining alone in this malevolent blackness. If she could just find Lorimer, she would be safe. The mere thought of him was enough to steady her and she edged along the wall of the corridor. There had been a light switch out here somewhere, but where? Where?

  The sound of the storm was muted in the windowless corridor, and her own rasping breathing sounded eerie and unnaturally loud as she felt along the wall for the switch. Disorientated, she tried to remember where Lorimer’s room was, and found that she was muttering, ‘Please let me find him, please, please, please,’ under her breath like an incantation.

  Her hand closed over a handle, and she turned it with shaking fingers just as a sharp click behind her made her whirl round with a stifled scream.

  ‘Skye?’ Lorimer’s voice spoke out of the darkness and Skye burst into overwrought tears.

  ‘I’m here, I’m here,’ she sobbed, stumbling towards the sound of his voice. He must have taken a step towards her, for she came smack up against the infinite reassurance of his hard body and clutched frantically at him, giving a great sigh of relief as Lorimer’s arms closed tightly about her.

  ‘Skye? What is it?’ he asked, his voice rough with anxiety at her obvious distress, but Skye couldn’t speak. She could only shudder and burrow her face into the hollow between his throat and his shoulder.

  He had pulled on a pair of trousers, but his chest was bare and Skye clung to his warm, sleek strength as if it was her only refuge. She was wearing a frivolous satin nightdress, and she could feel his hands smoothing rhythmically over the flimsy material, burning through to her skin with their hard reassurance as he murmured soothingly against her soft hair.

  ‘What is it?’ Lorimer asked again when her terrified sobs had subsided into hiccuping gasps. He made as if to draw back slightly so that he could look down into her face but Skye’s arms tightened instinctively around his back in panic.

  ‘The dark,’ she muttered into his shoulder, just becoming aware of his warm, bare skin but unable to face the prospect of letting go.

  ‘The storm must have brought down an electricity pole.’ She could hear his voice rumbling in his chest as he spoke. ‘None of the lights is working. What were you doing out here if you’re afraid of the dark?’

  Skye’s eyelashes flickered against his skin. ‘Looking for you,’ she whispered. ‘But I couldn’t remember where your room was.’

  ‘It’s just as well I heard you, in that case,’ he said, a dry edge to his voice. ‘You were heading in quite the wrong direction. I heard something crash over in your room, and then whimpering out here, so I thought I’d better come and see what was going on. It was only when I tried my switch that I realised the lights were off.’ He had been rubbing his hand gently up and down her spine as if soothing a scared animal, but he paused now and Skye heard the frown in his voice. ‘You’re shivering! Come on, let’s get you back to bed.

  He kept one arm about her as he guided her back to her room and felt through the darkness for her bed. ‘Here we are,’ he said, locating it at last and throwing back the blankets. ‘In you get.’

  Skye sat down, then clutched at him, panicking at the thought of being left alone again. ‘You won’t go?’ she pleaded, and then, as he hesitated, ‘Please, Lorimer.’ She hated the tearful waver to her voice, but it was too late for pride now. ‘I know it’s stupid, but…please don’t go.’

  ‘All right, I’ll stay,’ said Lorimer with a sigh, pushing her down on to the pillow. ‘But only if you get into bed right now.’ He sounded brusque, but his hands were tender as he tucked her in and then lay down beside her, drawing the eiderdown up to cover them both. Shifting himself into a more comfortable position, he lifted his arm wordlessly to let Skye snuggle up against him. When she was settled, he let his arm enclose her, smoothing his thumb almost absently over her silken skin while she listened to the slow, steady, infinitely reassuring beat of his heart.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said very quietly after a while, when her own heartbeat had calmed.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Lorimer in a wry voice, and then, in a quite different tone, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  Skye swallowed. She felt warm and comfortable and safe in his arms, as if she had come home after a long journey. ‘It’s silly,’ she mumbled into his chest.

  ‘It can’t be that silly,’ said Lorimer. ‘You were rigid with terror out there in the corridor, and you’re not the kind of girl who bursts into tears over nothing.’

  Slowly, haltingly, Skye told him about being shut in the cupboard. She told him of her fear and her panic and the shame she felt at her irrational phobia. ‘It sounds so babyish, being afraid of the dark,’ she said in a small voice. ‘And I don’t mind usually, when there’s enough light from street-lamps or the moon. It’s just the pitch-dark that terrifies me, like the cupboard, or waking up tonight.’

  ‘Or the stairs up to your flat?’ Lorimer said above her head, and his hand tightened suddenly on her shoulder in self-recrimination. ‘You told me you were afraid of the dark, and I didn’t believe you then.’

  Skye lay very still, remembering. She remembered how he had jeered, how he had taken her in his arms and kissed her and left her shaken by the passion he had unleashed within her. Was Lorimer remembering too? She was agonisingly aware of him, his broad bare chest beneath her cheek, his hand smoothing over her arm, the beat of his heart and the warmth of his skin, and the slippery satin that was all there was between them. She wished Lorimer hadn’t mentioned the incident in her darkened hallway. She had just been beginning to relax, and now her nerves were strumming again, although this time it was not with fear.

  ‘You weren’t to know that I was really frightened,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I wouldn’t have told you tonight if you hadn’t seen me crying like a baby. I feel so stupid…’ She trailed off and he lifted his hand to stroke the curls tangling softly beneath his chin.

  ‘There’s no need to feel embarrassed about it. We all have secret fears.’

  ‘I bet you don’t,’ said Skye in a rather muffled voice. It was still absolutely dark, but Lorimer’s arms ab
out her kept every fear at bay. He was so decisive, so invulnerable, that it was impossible to imagine that he could be afraid of anything.

  ‘Not now, perhaps, but it doesn’t mean I can’t remember what it was like.’ His fingers were entwined in her hair and she could feel his chest rising and falling steadily beneath her arm. His thoughts seemed to be far away. ‘Do you know why I was so prejudiced against you when I first met you, Skye?’ he asked after a long moment.

  ‘Because of Caroline ruining all your plans?’

  ‘There was that, but my distrust of the English goes back a long way before Caroline. I told you I grew up not far from Glendorie; I didn’t tell you that my mother left my father for an Englishman when I was eight.’ He paused. Skye said nothing, but her arm tightened slightly around him, thinking of an unhappy and bewildered little boy.

  ‘My father was very bitter,’ Lorimer went on at last. ‘Richard had been a friend of his, and that betrayal of trust hurt him nearly as much as my mother’s. I stayed with my father in Scotland and I suppose I absorbed a lot of his bitterness. It taught me to be very cynical about marriage. Theirs had seemed so happy on the surface, but obviously it had been no more than a charade. I think my father realised that too. After my mother left, he just didn’t care about anything any more, and I was left to run pretty wild. He died a couple of years later, by which time I was almost uncontrollable, and my mother was horrified when she came to take me away to live with her and Richard in Surrey. I didn’t want to go, and I don’t think they wanted to have me much either. I was homesick and determined to hate everything about England, and in the end they sent me away to school-to civilise me, they said.’ Lorimer’s voice was bitter. ‘That was even worse. I was tormented about my accent and bullied mercilessly for being different. I tried to run away three times, but I never got very far. I cried myself to sleep every night.’

  Skye was swept by a wave of tenderness for the unhappy little boy Lorimer had been. She tilted her head slightly and laid her palm against his cheek. ‘Poor little boy,’ she said gently.

  ‘I survived.’ Lorimer’s fingers resumed caressing her soft hair. ‘I’ve never told anyone that before,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In fact, I probably didn’t realise quite how much my attitudes towards the English had been affected by what happened. Not talking about it to anyone just made things worse. I’d have been very wary of marriage in any case, but perhaps I should have realised sooner that it’s stupid to generalise about nationalities. My mother could have run off with another Scot, and the misery would have been the same. Prejudices are just excuses for our own unhappiness, and it certainly wasn’t fair of me to take them out on you.’ Lorimer hesitated. ‘That’s really what I wanted to say at the beach.’

  ‘You didn’t need to apologise,’ said Skye. ‘Nobody could blame you for hating the English after an experience like that. It’s funny, I never thought of myself as being particularly English before, but I suppose I am.’

  ‘You are.’ There was a hint of amusement in Lorimer’s voice. ‘You couldn’t be anything else.’

  ‘I’ll try and be less English from now on,’ she offered.

  ‘I don’t think you should change,’ he said firmly. ‘Not when I’ve just got used to you the way you are.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like a man to love you for being the way you are?’

  Why should she remember Vanessa’s words now? Lorimer had only said he was used to her. It was a long way from loving her, but still Sky© felt a glow simmer and burn along her veins until it beat insistently under her skin. Her hands itched with the need to drift over his tautly muscled body. She wanted to turn in his amis and let her lips drift up his throat to his mouth. She wamted him to pull her roughly beneath him and explore her eager body with his mouth and his hands. She wanted him to kiss her and tell her that he was more than used to her, that he wanted her and needed her just as she needed him.

  Lorimer didn’t seem to notice the way her slender body thrummed in his arms. He yawned. Making love to her was evidently the last thing on his mind, Skye realised in humiliation.

  ‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘Do you think you’ll be all right on your own now? Or do you want me to stay?’ he added in a dry voice as she clutched at him in instinctive panic at the suggestion that he might leave.

  Skye knew that she ought to let him go back to his own room, but the darkness seemed to leer at her from outside the circle of Lorimer’s arms. The storm shrieked and rattled the window as if auditioning for the sound effects on a horror film. It would be very dark and very cold and very lonely in here without him.

  ‘Would you mind staying?’ she asked in a small voice, lifting her head to peer doubtfully through the darkness into his face.

  She caught the brief gleam of a smile as Lorimer brought her head back down to his shoulder. ‘No, I don’t mind,’ he said.

  Skye woke slowly, aware of an unfamiliar sense of security and blissful comfort but too content to wonder as she stirred and stretched sleepily.

  ‘At last! I thought you were going to sleep all day.’

  Lorimer’s dry voice brought Skye fully awake and her eyes flicked open. She was lying pressed against his side, her head on his chest and her arm flung possessively across him, but even as her gaze focused Lorimer was lifting his arm from around her and sitting up.

  The events of last night flooded back and Skye’s cheeks were tinged pink with embarrassment as she struggled to disentangle herself from him. ‘Y-you should have woken me,’ she stammered awkwardly.

  ‘I didn’t like to. You were dead to the world, and I thought you’d be exhausted after last night.’ Lorimer stretched and flexed his shoulders as he drew the curtains. The storm had miraculously blown itself out and the sky was blue and bright, dispelling the last gloom of the long night. ‘Besides,’ he said, turning back to her with a half-smile, ‘you look very peaceful when you’re sleeping.’

  Skye was very conscious of his bare chest, of her frivolously revealing nightdress and the unbearable intimacy of the rumpled sheets, and she dropped her eyes, feeling the colour deepen in her cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she said with difficulty.

  Lorimer crossed back to the bed and sat down on the edge, studying her averted face. ‘There’s no need to apologise.’

  ‘Well… thank you for being so understanding.’ Skye swallowed. ‘It must have been very uncomfortable for you to have me clinging to you like a limpet all night.’

  Lorimer’s grin was rather twisted. ‘Uncomfortable is one word for it,’ he agreed with a cryptic look. ‘I can think of others.’

  Skye turned her head almost unwillingly to meet his eyes and there was a pregnant silence as they looked at each other. Suddenly Lorimer got to his feet. ‘I’m going to dress. You’d better do the same if you don’t want to miss breakfast. I’ll see you in the dining-room.’

  It wasn’t the most romantic exit line, but his prosaic words helped dissolve some of Skye’s awkwardness, and by the time she had showered and dressed she felt quite herself again. She found Lorimer, as promised, in the dining-room, drinking coffee and reading The Scotsman, but he looked up and smiled as she came in.

  Skye felt a reckless happiness balloon and blossom inside her. She had been afraid that the humiliating fear of the night, and the embarrassment of waking up in his arms, would make things awkward between them, but if anything it had dissolved the ever-present strain of their relationship and left them both oddly light-hearted.

  True, Lorimer called Skye to order for talking too much and distracting him while he was trying to read his paper, but his heart wasn’t really in it and he was unable to hide his grin as he folded it up with a long-suffering air and laid it aside.

  They had a day to fill before the presentation dinner that evening, and Lorimer proposed that they should ask Mrs Brodie for some sandwiches and a Thermos of coffee so that they could have lunch at the manse. Skye agreed happily, but she would have been happy to do anything he sug
gested that morning.

  Outside the air was diamond-bright and the sea glittered silver in the winter sunshine. An irresistible exhilaration seeped along Skye’s veins as she waited for Lorimer to unlock the car, stamping her feet against the cold and blowing on her fingers. She wore bright leggings, a bulky, vividly patterned jumper and a pink beret set jauntily on her wild curls. Colourful wooden tropical fish swing inappropriately from her ears.

  The road dipped and rolled inland before they could turn off towards the coast once more. They drove between emerald-green fields scattered with gorse bushes and grey granite outcrops, the low heather-covered hills behind them and the silver firth ahead. Skye was chattering excitedly, invigorated by the sharp, clean air and Lorimer’s amused presence beside her, but when he turned up a rough track and drew up outside the manse she could only stare in silence.

  It seemed to grow out of the ground, a safe, solid white-washed house with a black door and black windows and a row of dormer windows like raised eyebrows in the roof. Set snugly back into the hill on a headland, it looked across to England on one side and across the estuary on the other to the hills rolling down into the sea until they faded into the blue distance. The garden was little more than a rough field, and at the bottom a path led down a steep cliff-path to a tiny cove with round pink and grey pebbles and a narrow strip of golden beach between the rocks.

  ‘Well?’ Lorimer switched off the engine and turned to look at Skye. There was the merest trace of anxiety in his voice but Skye was still staring at the manse and didn’t notice. ‘It’s not like you to have nothing to say! What do you think?’