And No Regrets

CHAPTER ONE

CLARE stood in the shadows of the Macleans’ veranda, listening to the end-of-party chatter behind her in the bungalow, wincing a little as Patsy Harriman’s laughter was answered by a deep-toned, unmistakable voice. The voice of Clare’s husband.

She moved sharply to the veranda rail and heard all around her the night-time sounds of West Africa. The queer calling of tropical birds, the rustlings in the undergrowth; sounds both primitive and strange, and far removed from anything she had known in England. Clare had never been out of England in her life before, and right now she was clutched by panic, by a sharp sense of unreality
... everything had happened almost too quickly.

Most girls these days laughed at the idea of falling madly in love with a stranger, yet when it had happened to Clare there had been no laughter in her. She had lost possession of herself
... been swept by emotions so blinding that she hadn’t wanted to see the hint of mastery lurking about the mouth of the stranger, or the lack of love in his grey eyes when he had asked her to marry him.

Her hands clenched the rail of the veranda and there sprang into her mind a clear picture of her first meeting with Ross Brennan.

Another party, the place a house in Ridgley. Most of the other guests had already drifted homeward, and Clare, an acquisition to any party because she played the piano so well, stood in the hall trying to fasten the tricky clasp at the throat of her
l
ambswool coat. An exasperated, “Dash the thing!” escaped from her, and
i
n that instant she caught a further glimpse of the face that had disturbed this party for her. Its owner stood tall and lean in the shadows behind her, and his refle
c
tion was shared with hers in the mirror. It was a hard, tanned face; there was a certain charm about it, and also the arrogance of someone who had gone through life getting exactly what he wanted out of it.

He came and stood behind her. “Here, let me have a go,” he said, and she turned like an obedient child and lifted her pointed chin. His steel-grey eyes met hers, and his knuckles pushed into her throat. She caught her breath, and he said heartlessly: “I’ll get this thing fastened if I have to choke you in the process.”

S
uch a ruthless remark warned her that she ought to flee out of the door away from him. But instead she let him walk her home to the bank-cha
m
bers where she had lived since a small child with Aunt Letty and Uncle Fred Burgess. The tanned stranger was tall beside her; he walked as he talked, arrogantly.

He made no secret of liking her company. He took her to London and to Warwick; they picnicked by the river and bathed in it
.
She learned that he had just returned from three years in Nigeria and that he had an option on returning there for a further eighteen months, or waiting on half-pay for the retirement of the superintendent of the Cape Town branch of the company. He said Cape Town was his fancy; he had had more than enough of the tropics. Yet when he described the heat and the rains, the appalling dampness and the frightful monotony, his tone was nostalgic.

From the beginning, Aunt Letty seemed not to approve of him. He was too full of worldly know-how, she said. His opinions were ruthless, his cynicism too ingrained. Perhaps life in the tropics had made
him
that way. At any rate, she considered him the wrong sort of companion for Clare.

It was his difference from the men of Ridgley that set him apart for Clare. There was a boldness about Ross that excited her in a new and rather alarming fashion. When she lay in bed at night, she found herself thinking about his lean dark face
... she wanted to touch it, to smooth the cynicism from it.

Clare had lived all her life over the bank which her uncle managed. Her mother had died at Clare’s birth, and Aunt Letty, her mother’s sister, had taken the baby while her father went abroad. Upon his return to England he had lived a bachelor’s existence, and Clare had stayed with Aunt Letty and Uncle Fred.

Hemmed in by the rather prim environment which surrounded her aunt and uncle, it was no wonder that Clare yearned to escape from Ridgley to the colour and romance of faraway places. As she grew up and began to earn her own living as secretary to a busy local woman, her desire to travel strengthened into an obsession, though it was impossible to voice her longing to Aunt Letty. In her aunt’s opinion Clare had everything a nice girl should want, and like other nice Ridgley girls she would eventually marry a local man and stay here for ever.

That was not Clare’s idea. She knew what she wanted
... Ross Brennan’s entry into her life had shown her that a girl’s shadowy dreams could materialise into substance.

There came a blank week while he was away in London, and the evening he returned, as though Fate set the scene, Aunt Letty and Uncle Fred went out to dine with friends. It was quiet in the lounge as Ross stood lighting a cigarette, his sleek brown head sligh
tl
y bent. Then he raised his head and blew out a stream of smoke.

“My chief at head office has asked me to go back to Nigeria for that further eighteen months,” he said.

Clare was half turned to him on the piano stool, her hands unconsciously gripping the sides of it. “To the plantation in the wilds?” Her voice was strangely calm. “You’re going?”

“I don’t know.” He studied the tip of his cigarette. “At first I refused point-blank. He wanted reasons for
m
y attitude, and we talked them over for hours. He left me with only one leg to stand on—the shattering loneliness. And he suggested a remedy for that.”

She gave a brittle little laugh. “Marriage, I suppose?” He lounged against the table and his eyes, flicked her face as he nodded. He wore grey. He always looked good to her in that particular shade, for it threw into relief his look of lean, dark distinction. Suddenly her heart was torn at the thought of his going, and she swung sharply to the keyboard of the piano and ran her fingers along the keys.

“For heaven’s sake!” He strode o
v
er furiously, and his hands hurt her shoulders as he swung her to face him. “Aren’t you interested in what I’ve got to say?” he demanded.

“I know what you’re going to say,” she threw back at him. “Marriage is out. Even to get back to Nigeria, you won’t marry. I wonder why you’re so down on marriage.”

“A lifetime’s a long while to spend with one woman, honey.” His tone of voice was hard.

“Not if you
... love her. Most men prefer to spend their lives with an understanding woman.”

“There’s no such thing as an understanding woman.” His smile had a twist to it. “I speak from experience, Clare. I’ve met all the types in my thirty-one years.”

“
You’re a cynic,” she accused.

“No, a realist,” he argued. “And that’s why I can say what I’m going to say. Clare, you’re mad to get away from this small, slow town for a while, and I confess that I wouldn’t mind going back to the tropics for a spell. We could go together.”

H
is words seemed to float around the room before she caught at their significance. “No!” She threw the word at him. “I’m keen to get away from Ridgley, but not to the extent of living in sin with a tropical planter!
”

Even to herself her rejection sounded unbearably prim and proper, and she wasn’t surprised when he put back his head and roared with laughter. “Oh, come over here and sit down, Miss Prim!” He near enough lifted her off the piano stool and gave her
a
gentle push to the settee. He sat down beside her and, still chuckling, flicked his eyes over her face. “Your aunt did a wonderful job on you, didn’t she?” he mocked. “But then I guess she had to, for you’re not a bad-looking kid with that cloudy hair and those near-violet eyes.”

“Oh, stop it, Ross, and tell me what you’re getting at.” She could feel herself flushing under his scrutiny.

“Can’t you guess?” he teased.

“A—are you asking me to marry you?” she faltered.

“In a way
.”
He bent to a low table and stubbed out his cigarette. Her eyes flicked his profile and she could see a small pulse hammering in his temple. He had adopted a light tone about all this, but she guessed that it wasn’t coming easy to him, having to propose to someone for the sake of furthering his career.

“You’re not in love with me, are you?” he demanded.

Instinctively she hung on to her pride. “I
... don’t think so.”

“Good. If you were, it would complicate matters. My suggestion is this—that we become husband and wife for eighteen months.”

“
And when the eighteen months come to an end?”

“A clean cut, Clare, and no regrets.”

She sat still and quiet, trying to take in what he was offering her. Travel at last, to a part of the world she could never hope to visit without a man. And marriage,
t
oo. With Ross.

“
You’re not in love with me either, are you?” she said with certainty.

“No, there’s nothing soul-rending in what I feel for you. It’s easy to imagine oneself in love with an attractive girl, but liking your looks and contradictions is a long way from death-defying love.”

The hurt of those bald phrases. But in the silence that followed them, her thoughts leapt into the future. Married to Ross, living alone with him in the bush, she might teach him to love and need her. She turned her head to look at him. His expression was an odd blend of mockery and watchfulness. “Ross,” she murmured, “why me?”

“
You’re rather sweet, and we argue
...
and you’ve got grit.”

“
Is that all?”

“
Enough to last eighteen months,” he returned, callously.

“I
’d be crazy to marry you,” she flared. “You’re cruel here, in this civilised English lounge. I dread to think what you’d be like in the wilds of West Africa.”

“Try me,” he challenged. ‘You’re always on about wanting a more adventurous life than the one you’ve got right now. Remember, honey, it will be an adventure only. You’ll be but a bride of convenience, with no heartache involved for either of us, only companionship.”

Clare stared at him. She thought of his previous womanless three years in the bush
... facing another eighteen months of such an existence might well break the discipline and hardness which she so admired. He needed out there a woman’s companionship if not her love, but was her own love strong enough to accept the little he offered for the chance of building it into something more substantial over the next eighteen months?

“
Well, what do you say?” He feathered her chin with his thumb, and she tensed at the
thrill
that ran like brushfire through her. In these small, meaningless touches lay the danger, she realised. She might sparkle unexpectedly, or melt, and then he would laugh
... or be irritated.

“My aunt will be against the idea,” she said lightly. “She’ll cry, and I can’t bear people I’m fond of to cry.
”

“
Neither can I,” he drawled. “Are you the weepy sort?”

S
he shook her head, rose and walked away from him to the window. Love and anguish ran together in her; he had admitted, in a roundabout way, that she had made a deeper impression on him than other women he had known. He was willing to marry her, and there swept over her the old desire to feel a ship beneath her feet, alien odours on her breath, and the hot blue canopy of foreign skies over her head...