Jan must have given him some idea of the position, but he couldn’t know whether she and Roger had made up their quarrel and got together again. She must think, and think fast.
But the touch of those cool, hard fingers through the stuff of her dress rendered her completely incapable of thought. Of its own free will, it seemed, her hand went up to cover Benedict Dane’s and she turned shining blue eyes to his. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you’re back!’
There was no mistaking the message—and he took it. He said softly, ‘Yes, I’m back,’ and he bent and kissed her.
By the time she returned to earth from the dizzy heights where the kiss had left her, Roger was reacting with all the sangfroid of the established barrister. He had found that he had a few things to settle up with Chloe, he was explaining to Benedict, and had decided that it would be more convenient to meet rather than try to do it all by phone. He gave a flawless performance of a busy and important man, sparing a short time to tidy the loose ends of a relationship that was being wound up in the most modern fashion, with no regrets or hard feelings on anybody’s side.
‘Well, I’ll be on my way. I’ll leave Chloe in good hands.’ With great good humour he wished them luck, shook Benedict by the hand and kissed Chloe’s cheek. Then, with a word to the girl at the reception desk, he turned to the lift.
Benedict waited until the lift had disappeared. Then he put a hand at Chloe’s elbow. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s remove ourselves before he comes down again—darling.’
She didn’t dare look at him, but she knew that the little devils were busily dancing in his dark eyes. In silence she followed him out to where his car was parked.
Oh lord, she thought, what have I let myself in for? And deep inside she felt an odd, gripping sensation that was like fear.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I take it,’ said Benedict, as the car left the lights of Kenilworth behind and thrust its long nose into the darkness of the countryside, ‘that your friend Roger has already given you dinner?’
‘Dinner?’ echoed Chloe vaguely. ‘Dinner—oh yes, of course, I’ve had dinner.’ She had no recollection of what she had eaten.
‘Well, I haven’t. I had a small plastic meal on the plane a long, long time ago and I’m very hungry, so I think we’ll make for our own little hotel. You can watch me eat?’
‘Plane?’ repeated Chloe. She seemed incapable of doing more than echo everything he said. ‘Sorry. I'm not really with you at present.’
‘Fortunately,’ he said with emphasis, ‘that’s exactly what you are. With me, I mean, and not with Roger Thingummy. Why do you think I picked up my car at Heathrow and drove like Jehu up the motorway if it wasn’t because I was pretty sure he’d come crawling back when he’d had time to think about it? I didn’t want to take the risk of your giving in to his special pleading.’
‘I’m not as weak as all that,’ she told him, indignation dispelling her confusion. ‘We were just saying goodbye when you turned up.’
‘Well done—a girl who knows her own mind, I see. But I had to make sure. As I told you before, when I want something I leave no stone unturned, as the saying goes, to get it.’
‘It,’ she said distantly, ‘meaning me, I presume?’
She heard a faint chuckle. ‘Well, in this instance we’ll say “her”.’ He was silent as the car roared down the hill and slowed for the narrow bridge over the river. ‘Sorry I had to let you down yesterday. I promised to come back, didn’t I?’
‘Emma,’ said Chloe primly, ‘was very disappointed.’
‘Point taken,’ he said, and didn’t speak again until they reached the hotel.
He swung the car into the half-empty car park and switched off the engine. Then he turned to her. ‘There was a bit of a crisis and I had to fly over to Spain. My grandmother had a heart attack three days ago. They should have let me know sooner.’ She heard the anger in his voice and thought that he would be frightening if he were really angry. He could be easy and pleasant and charming, but underneath she sensed a hardness, an almost ruthless determination that sent a small shiver down her back. ‘I’m so sorry about your grandmother,’ she said. ‘She’s not…?’
He shook his head. ‘She’s over the first critical period, praise be. She has to rest now, for some time, with good care and no worries.’
No worries! Chloe thought she knew what this was leading up to. ‘You’ll be relieved, I’m sure.’
‘Very. So—will you forgive me for breaking my date with you ? There wasn’t time to let you know or I would have done.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It didn’t matter at all.’
‘It did to me,’ he said shortly.
She looked up at him and in the light from the hotel frontage she saw that his face was grim. This apology did not stem from the upbringing he had had in Spain, which had no doubt come down heavily on the side of formal good manners. He was merely taking good care to be courteous to her because he wanted something out of her. The whole matter was deliberate and calculated and she wanted none of it, she assured herself.
He sat back in his corner, half turned towards her, his dark eyes fixed on her under their thick, sweeping lashes. For a long moment his look held hers and her heart began to beat heavily. She wanted to challenge him, to resist him, to refuse to fall in with the plans he had for her, but she was held powerless by the sheer animal magnetism of the man. She felt warm and soft and pliant. She had a crazy longing to stretch out her hands and touch him and feel his arms holding her
No emotional involvement, he had said.
With an effort she reached for the handle of the car door. ‘I thought you said you were hungry,’ she said in a high, brittle voice.
‘So I did,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank you for reminding me.’ He got out of the car and came round and opened the door for her, and she thought he was being careful not to touch her. No emotional involvement. But she was suddenly and irrelevantly glad that she was wearing a dress that made her skin look creamier, her hair more burnished, and clung in flattering closeness to the pretty curves of her body. And as she walked beside Benedict into the restaurant, comfortably filled with diners, she had a curious desire to smile at them all.
They sat at the table they had had before, by the window, only now the window was covered by long, fluted curtains in scarlet and white and each table had its own red-shaded lamp, throwing a nimbus of light round a Wedgwood pot of lilies-of-the-valley. It all looked cosy and intimate.
Chloe drank coffee and sipped the pale green liqueur that Dane insisted on ordering for her, while he made short work of a healthy-sized mixed grill. When he had finished he took a thin cigar from a silver case and held it up. ‘Have I your permission?’ he asked with the formal manners that every now and then took her by surprise.
Fresh coffee was brought to the table. Benedict lit his cigar, took a couple of slow, satisfying puffs at it and laid it aside, leaning across the table towards her. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we must talk. May I infer from the way you greeted me just now that you’ve decided to accept my offer?’
She felt the heat rise into her cheeks. ‘N-no, not really. That was just because—’ She stopped, took a breath, and tried again, unnervingly conscious of the dark eyes fixed on her unsmilingly. ‘You see, Roger came all the way up to see me, expecting me to agree to be engaged to him again, and I had to make him believe that I didn’t want to. It seemed—kinder—to let him think I’d met another man and been swept off my feet, so…’
‘Kinder?’ The dark brows lifted. ‘I shouldn’t have thought he rated that much consideration.’
‘Perhaps not. Only—only he was so pleased and excited because he’d just landed a splendid new appointment with a law firm—something he’s been trying to get for ages and ages—and it seemed so brutal to brush him off. He probably didn’t mean all the beastly things he said that night. He’d just been miserable and frustrated.’
‘But you hadn’t the heart to tell him that you couldn�
�t forgive him?’
She said slowly, ‘It wasn’t exactly that I couldn’t forgive him. I just knew that if I’d loved him it wouldn’t have mattered.’
He nodded. ‘Exit Roger. That clears the way for my plan, and I think you can guess what that is. To spell it out in detail—I promised my poor grandmother to return to Spain next week, immediately after the wedding, and bring my bride with me. I left her looking stronger and happier, with that promise to hang on to.’
He let that sink in for a few minutes, then he picked up his cigar again and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m in your hands, Chloe.’
‘And what do you intend to do if I refuse?’
He firmed his lips. ‘That's something I won’t allow myself to contemplate.’
Heavens, but he was autocratic under that urbane manner of his! She said feebly, ‘It’s blackmail. Emotional blackmail.’
‘Possibly,’ he admitted. ‘Emotional blackmail can only work with people who have feelings. You’ve just shown me, by the way you dealt with Roger, that you’re one of those people.’
She stared down at the blue pot in the centre of the table. The sweet, clinging perfume of the lilies-of-the-valley mingled with the cigar smoke. Oh yes, she thought, she had feelings all right. Too many and too dangerous. If she were going to agree to this marriage on a non-emotional basis, then what she ought to be feeling was quite clear: friendship and liking for the man himself, compassion for his grandmother whom he so obviously cared for, pleasure at the prospect of having Woodcotes to refurbish and look after, perhaps satisfaction at the perks that would come from being a rich man’s wife.
She lifted her eyes and met his—sombre now, hooded, telling her nothing, and she knew that her real feelings were quite different. She felt like a bit of stick that had been tossed into a fast-flowing river and was being carried along half-submerged in the turbulent water.
It was inevitable that she should do what he wanted. It had been inevitable from the moment he asked her, she admitted to herself now. But she had to pretend to be still unsure, to be thinking it over.
He sat smoking his cigar quietly as if her decision was of no great importance to him and she had a strong impression of just how self-contained and self-controlled this man was. But at last he moved and his eyes sought hers. One eyebrow went up questioningly. ‘Well?’ he asked.
She allowed herself the faintest of smiles. ‘I accept the job, Mr Dane. It’s too good an offer to refuse. I hope I can give satisfaction.’
For a moment he went very still and his eyes were black, deep pools under their thick lashes. ‘I’m sure you will,’ he said softly.
Then, like pressing a switch, the laziness was gone. He was all dynamism, all go. He signalled to the waiter, who came hurrying across as if he had caught some of the electric current. ‘My bill, please,’ Benedict said, and stood up.
He came round the table, picked up the silk shawl from Chloe’s chair and draped it round her. His hands were warm and firm and he gave her shoulder a hard squeeze. ‘Thank you, Chloe,’ he said, ‘I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t regret it. I don’t need to tell you how much this means to me.’
She watched him as he paid the bill, saw the smile on the waiter’s face widen with his ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ as he saw the size of the tip. Rich and generous, she thought, oh yes, the man had everything she had wanted —or said she wanted—when she and Jan had joked about it. Only there was just one matter she had forgotten to mention. One thing more vitally important than all the others put together.
That was, of course, that he should love her, which wasn’t possible in Benedict Dane’s case because he was in love already—with some woman in Spain whom he couldn’t marry.
‘Come along,’ he said, putting a hand at her elbow as they left the restaurant, ‘no time for dreaming, there’s a lot to be arranged in a short time.’ He smiled as he spoke but she heard the impatience behind the words. ‘We’ll go straight back to your sister’s, shall we, and enlist her help. And by the way’—as they reached the darkness of the car park—‘don’t you think you might start to call me Benedict? All my friends do.’
Did she call you Benedict? Or enamorato? Or bienquisto? Or did she murmur something even more intimate when you took her in your arms? As Chloe climbed into the car and he slipped in beside her, she said, ‘All right— Benedict,’ and he put a hand briefly on her knee in acknowledgment.
But it wasn’t all right, it was all wrong, she thought, and she was suddenly afraid of what she had done and of what lay ahead.
Chloe laid her head against the back of the seat and looked down through the plane’s window at the steel ribbon of the English Channel disappearing below, passing into French fields, and after that puffs of cotton-wool cloud, and she thought: It’s true, you can live through a whole week and feel that it’s all been a dream.
She turned her head and looked at the man in the next seat, so dark and handsome in the lightweight suit and cream silk shirt he had worn for the wedding this morning that her heart nearly stopped beating. This man was her husband, but she still couldn’t make herself believe it.
He had his briefcase open and was leafing through some papers, but he must have felt her eyes on him, for he turned and smiled at her. ‘All right? Quite happy?’
‘I’m fine.’ She smiled back and the muscles round her mouth felt suddenly tense. Happiness didn’t really come into it, nor did unhappiness. Not yet. Meanwhile she was floating somewhere above the clouds, in both senses of the words.
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift back over the extraordinary happenings of the past week. She remembered Jan’s comical bewilderment that night when Benediet walked straight into the kitchen where she was clearing up after supper and said, ‘Prepare yourself for a surprise, Jan. Chloe and I are going to be married next week,’ and how she had stood with her back to the sink, a tea-towel suspended from one hand and a glazed look in her eyes.
Chloe had been reduced to a fit of giggles and at last managed to say, ‘It’s all right, Jan, you don’t have to say any of the conventional things. I’ve just decided to accept the offer of a job, that’s all,’ and to Benedict, ‘I had to put Jan into the picture—you don’t mind?’
‘Certainly not, Jan’s one of the family.’ He had taken an arm of each of the girls and led them back to the sitting room.
They had sat up late that night, making plans, the three of them. Should the wedding be in Warwick or London? Was there time to arrange for guests or should it be just Jan and another witness?
‘We’ll try and get your Aunt Catherine and my uncle and aunt from London to come up here, I think,’ Benedict had decided finally. ‘If we settled on London it would make it awkward for Jan. It’ll have to be register office, Chloe, do you mind?’
And Chloe who, like most girls, had cherished a dream of one day floating up the aisle in an exquisite white wedding dress, had said briskly, ‘As we’re not exactly pledging ourselves to each other for life, I think a register office is most appropriate.’ For some reason Benedict shot her a quick, frowning glance when she said that, which she returned with a bland, untroubled smile. If he disliked her flippancy, she told herself, that was too bad. She was merely playing the game according to the rules— rules that he had set himself. No emotional involvement.
Once Warwick was decided upon, the telephone began to buzz. Calls to Aunt Catherine in Potter’s Bar, to Benedict’s uncle and aunt in Finchley, to Benedict’s colleague in the company—one Keith Dodds, in Birmingham. (‘You’ll like Keith, he’s a good chap.’) Then, just after midnight, a call to Chloe’s mother in Australia. That had been extremely tricky, as Chloe hadn’t so far had the heart to write and tell her that the engagement to Roger was off. In the end it was Benedict who did the explaining. Chloe and Jan sat and looked at each other and listened with amazed admiration as he told the story, selecting just the right facts to dwell on, avoiding the difficult bits.
‘I realise I’ve got the most
colossal nerve, Mrs McBain, but will you take me on trust, as Chloe has done?’ he had added to his explanation. ‘I intend to bring her over on a visit at the first opportunity and I’m looking forward very much to meeting you and your husband. Meanwhile I promise faithfully to look after her.’
When Chloe took the receiver again to say goodbye Mother had sounded stunned but resigned—even, Chloe thought, halfway won over. If Benedict Dane could work his magic from the opposite side of the world, what chance had she had?
By the time the telephoning was finished it was too late for Benedict to think about a hotel room and he had stayed overnight in the spare bedroom, while Chloe moved in with Jan. It was all friendly and informal and he fitted in so well with the family that he might have known them all their lives. When he left for London next morning Jan was positively dewy-eyed about him, and Chloe had to remind her that this was no romantic love-match.
‘Oh, I know all about that.’ Jan waved away the point as of minor importance. ‘Give it time, that’s all. Just give it time.’
Benedict arranged everything, so of course everything went smoothly. Chloe saw almost nothing of him, except for the day he arrived at lunchtime with an engagement ring, a large and beautiful single diamond, and slipped it on to her finger. ‘Good, it fits,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘And whatever happens in the future, Chloe, will you keep this as your own. As my way of saying thank you,’ he added quickly, when she opened her mouth to demur.
Half an hour later he left again, on his way to his office in Birmingham, leaving Chloe slightly bemused every time she looked at the ring, and Jan frankly jubilant. ‘I bet he’s falling in love with you, whatever you say. He’d never have bought you such a smashing ring if it was just going to be a business arrangement.’
A Very Special Man Page 9