Someone Special Read Online Free PDF Page A

would go gently, win her confidence. She was such a child, with no more knowledge of men and women than the wren he had called her. But time would mend her fear, she would trust him, given time.
    ‘I’ll put her down for you. You make us a cuppa. Cold pie’s jest fine, if that’s all we’ve got handy. A man with a child expects up’eaval, so don’t go blamin’ yourself.’
    She sighed tremulously and he heard the rocking chair creak as she stood up, then a pair of thin little arms wrapped themselves round his shoulders and she stood on tiptoe to kiss the back of his neck, a featherlight touch.
    ‘Matthew, I don’t deserve you, you’re the kindest man in the world and I’m probably the worst wife. But I do try … lie her on her back, won’t you? I’m afraid she’ll suffocate if she’s on her front.’
    For a moment he stood very still, more affected by the spontaneous caress than she could ever know. If only she knew how I feel, he thought, if only I could tell her … if only she could love me back! But she will; the old man says love comes late to many a marriage, she’ll love me one day and not spend all her time being grateful because I’m kind…. Kind! When I want her so badly to feel as I do when our bodies join in love. She’s so sweet, so young, so rare. I’d give my eyes to please her. But it’ll come, it’ll come. I must be patient, and I’ve always been a patient man.
    Aloud he said, ‘I’ll put her on her back. Blessed lamb, she’s all but asleep already. Is that kettle boilin’? A nice, hot cuppa would go down a fair treat.’
    It was a very smart nursing home, right in the centre of the city of Norwich. Constance Radwell lay in her private room which overlooked the bustle of Thorpe Road andthe railway station just across the way, and received the homage of friends and relatives, the ministrations of the nurses, and the attentions of the handsome obstetrician who had delivered her daughter ten days ago. She had been allowed up the previous day, to walk as far as the bathroom – and hadn’t the bath been a treat, after sponge-downs for so long? They’d taken her to the nursery too, where she had seen baby Anna in her beautiful, hygienic pink cot; before that the baby had been brought to her at regular intervals for feeding, though the nursing staff had advised her to wean the child on to a bottle as soon as she could.
    ‘Better for your figure, Mrs Radwell,’ the senior staff nurse assured her. ‘It gives you more freedom, too. You’re having a live-in nanny, of course?’
    Constance said wearily that they had engaged a very experienced woman and the senior staff nurse nodded.
    ‘Best to leave the early training to an expert,’ she said. ‘Well, Mrs Radwell, you’ve made an excellent recovery. You’ll probably be able to go home in a week or so.’
    It was an expensive nursing home and they took very good care of their patients. The food was equalled only by first-class hotels, and the staff waited on one hand and foot, but Constance couldn’t wait to get away from it, to go home. Not that it was the sort of thing you admitted – the nurses would think she was insane or sex-mad or something if she said she was missing her husband, and even though she and JJ had only been married a year she knew it was not the sort of thing you told JJ either, not unless you wanted trouble.
    She adored him! That was her Achilles heel, the dark secret which she had managed to hide from him during their courtship, engagement and early married life. Because JJ was used to women adoring him and would never have proposed marriage had he realised that shewas like all the others. He could have had his pick of women, that was understood. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, all swooned at a glance from him. So tall, so dark, so sultry, so incredibly handsome. Constance thought he had finally proposed to her because she had held aloof, but his mother had not agreed.
    ‘He won’t get control of his money