Читать книгу: «Passionate Nights: The Mistress Assignment / Mistress of Convenience / Mistress to Her Husband», страница 3

Sighing faintly, he nodded and repeated, ‘To drive into town and pick Kelly up at seven-thirty and then escort her to the charity ball. If Julian Cox makes any kind of play for her I’m to act jealous but hold off from doing anything to deter him.’

‘Not if, but when,’ Dee corrected him firmly, and then added, ‘And don’t forget, no matter what happens or how hard Julian pushes, you must make sure you escort Kelly safely back to the flat.’

‘You really ought to do something about those maternal instincts of yours,’ Harry told her, and then stopped abruptly, flushing self-consciously as he apologised awkwardly, ‘Sorry, Dee, I forgot; I didn’t mean …’

‘It’s all right,’ she responded coolly, her face obscured by her long honey-blonde hair.

Seven years his senior, Dee had always been someone Harry was just a little bit in awe of.

Dee’s father and his had been brothers, and Dee had been a regular visitor to the family farm when Harry had been growing up. It had surprised him a little that she had chosen to continue her career in such a small, sleepy place as Rye-on-Averton after her father’s death. But then Dee had never been predictable or particularly easy to understand. She was a woman who kept her own counsel and was strong-willed and highly intelligent, with the kind of business brain and aptitude for making money that Harry often wished he shared.

There had only been one occasion that Harry could recall when Dee had found herself in a situation over which she did not have full control, a situation where her emotions had overruled her brain, but any kind of reference—no matter how slight—to that particular subject was completely taboo, and Harry would certainly not have dared to refer to it. As well as being in awe of his older cousin, it had to be said that there were times when he was almost, if not afraid of her, then certainly extremely unwilling to arouse her ire.

‘Kelly will be expecting you. You’ll like her,’ Dee informed him, adding almost inconsequentially, ‘She’d fit in very well here, and your mother …’

‘My mother wants me to marry and produce a clutch of grandchildren—yes, I know,’ Harry agreed wryly, before daring to point out, ‘You’re older than me, Dee, and you still haven’t married. Perhaps we’re a family who don’t …’

‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ Dee reproved him. ‘You have the farm to think of. It’s been passed down in the family for over four hundred years. Of course you’ll marry.’

Of course he would, but when he was ready and, please God, to someone he chose for himself. Although he tried desperately to hide it, considering that such idealism was not proper for a modern farmer, Harry was a romantic, a man who wanted desperately to fall deeply and completely in love. So far, though, he had not met anyone who stirred such deep and intense emotions within him.

CHAPTER THREE

VERY gently Kelly fingered the soft silk of her gown. Once on it suited her even more perfectly than she had expected, the colour of the chiffon doing impossibly glamorous things for her colouring.

As she looked up she saw that Dee’s cousin Harry was watching her rather anxiously. She smiled reassuringly at him as they waited in the receiving line to be greeted by their host and hostess. She had known from the moment he arrived to pick her up that she was going to like Harry. He was that kind of man—solid, dependable, reassuring, as comfortable as a familiar solid armchair, with the kind of down-to-earth, healthy good looks that typified a certain type of very English male. Just having him standing there beside her made her feel not merely remarkably better about the scheme which Dee had dreamt up but somehow extraordinarily feminine and protected. It was rather a novel sensation for Kelly, who had never been the type of woman to feel that she needed a man to lean on in any shape or form.

‘That colour really suits you,’ Harry told her earnestly as he arched his neck a little uncomfortably, as though he longed to be free of the restriction of his formal dinner suit.

‘Dee chose it,’ Kelly informed him, adding truthfully, ‘I feel rather like Cinderella being equipped for the ball by her fairy godmother … Although …’ She paused and then stopped. There was no point in discussing with Harry her doubts about what she was doing.

They had reached the line-up of dignitaries now. Kelly smiled mischievously as she caught the discreetly admiring second look the Lord Lieutenant of the county gave her before he shook her hand.

It’s all right, it’s not me, it’s the dress, she wanted to reassure his rather austere-looking wife, but then, remembering her new role as a femme fatale, instead she gave him a demure little smile plus a wickedly sultry look from beneath lowered lashes. It worked … His Lordship might be close on sixty, but there was no doubt that he was still a very virile man—at least if the look he was giving her was anything to go by.

Perhaps the evening wasn’t going to be so much of a challenge to her thespian talents as she had originally believed, Kelly mused as they passed down the line and then turned to accept a glass of champagne from one of the hovering waiters.

As Kelly already knew, the tickets for the ball had been unbelievably expensive, with only a relatively small number available, but, as she glanced appreciatively at her surroundings, she could well understand why.

Instead of more conventionally attaching a large marquee to the house to accommodate the event, guests were allowed to wander at will through the elegant antique-furnished reception rooms. Her own Regency-inspired dress couldn’t have been more felicitously in keeping with the decor, Kelly recognised, her attention caught by a pretty inlaid Chinese lacquered cabinet in one corner of the room, its shelves filled with what she suspected were Sèvres figurines.

Touching Harry’s arm, she pointed it out to him.

‘I’d like to go over and have a closer look,’ she told him. Nodding, Harry gallantly forged ahead to make a pathway through the throng of people now filling the hallway.

Kelly had almost reached her destination when abruptly she stopped dead. There, not a dozen feet away from her, stood Julian Cox. He hadn’t seen her as yet. He was busy talking with a pretty fair-haired young woman standing with him. In looks she was very similar to Beth, Kelly recognised, and she looked somehow as though she too possessed the same gentleness of nature that so characterised her best friend.

She doubted very much that that same description could be applied to the man standing on the opposite side of her. Tall, with incredibly powerful shoulders and frowning heavily, he looked extremely formidable and extremely masculine, Kelly recognised as her heart gave a sudden unsteady lurch against her ribs and her breathing quickened idiotically.

As though—impossibly, surely—he was somehow aware of her attention, he turned his head, seemingly focusing fiercely on her.

Kelly’s heart gave another and even sharper lurch. He had the most intensely dark blue eyes, and such a penetrating gaze that she felt almost as though he could see right into her soul.

Now she was being ridiculous, she told herself stoutly, firmly assuring herself that there was no way that either he or anyone else could have guessed what was going through her mind as she looked at him. And anyway, she reminded herself as she determinedly looked away from him, she was not here to start fantasising about the admittedly very interesting sensual allure of an unknown man; she was here for a very specific purpose, and that did not include allowing herself to be side-tracked by anyone or anything—not even her own still very disturbed heartbeat.

Even so, she managed to sneak a second brief glance at him, and she wished she had not done so as she saw the tender and protective way in which he was bending towards the soft-featured blonde girl who was standing close to Julian. Was she, as Kelly had first assumed, the new woman in Julian’s life, or was the other man her partner? Had those magnetic blue eyes that had focused on her so directly and so immediately been giving a stern warning that he was not available to any other woman, rather than conveying a virile, masculine awareness of her female curiosity?

Well, no doubt before the evening was over she was going to find out, she reminded herself. Julian had not seen her yet, but … She took a deep breath and started to move discreetly into his line of vision.

‘Are you okay?’ she heard Harry asking her in concern. ‘You look a bit flushed. It’s pretty crowded in here and hot …’

Rather guiltily Kelly gave him a reassuring smile. Any heat flushing her face had rather more to do with her emotional and physical reaction to the sexily masculine good looks of the man standing with Julian Cox than with the heat of the room.

Irritatingly, Julian had now turned away to talk to someone so that she was out of his line of vision. Boldly she deliberately changed direction, plunging through the crowd in order to bring herself back into it and, in the process, losing Harry, who became separated from her by the busy throng.

Julian might not be aware of her presence, she recognised after a discreet glance in the trio’s direction, but he, whoever he was, most certainly was. Slightly breathlessly she instinctively curled her toes, and a delicious thrill of feminine reaction ran through her as she realised just how intently she was being studied. Sternly she reminded herself of just why she was here and the role she had to play. The temptation to abandon it and to revert to her normal self beckoned treacherously. She had never been a flirt, never been the kind of woman to go all out deliberately to attract a man’s attention—she had never needed to and she had certainly never wanted to!

But, almost as though it was fate, just as she was wavering, a direct pathway opened up between her and Julian. Sternly she made herself take it.

‘Julian … How lovely to see you …’

Had she got the note of flirtatious invitation in her voice pitched correctly? Anxiously she held her breath as Julian turned his head to look at her, wariness giving way to a look of lustful male appreciation as she continued to smile at him.

‘Kelly! What a surprise …’

‘A pleasant one, I hope.’ Kelly pouted, deliberately stepping closer to him, angling her body so that she was placing herself with her back to the blonde girl standing silently at Julian’s side and thereby excluding her from their conversation.

‘I thought for a moment that you’d forgotten me …’

‘Impossible,’ Julian assured her with heavy flirtatiousness, his glance deliberately and meaningfully lingering on her body.

Really, he was a total creep, Kelly decided.

‘Here on your own?’ Julian quizzed her.

Throwing back her head, Kelly gave a small, sexy laugh.

‘Of course not,’ she chided him, her voice and the look she gave him emphasising that she was the type of woman who would never be without a male escort.

‘You’re looking very well,’ she praised him, adding purringly, ‘Very well …’

‘Then that makes two of us,’ Julian told her smoothly.

‘Julian, I think it’s time we started to make our way to the table.’

The cool, authoritative male voice intruding on their conversation caused Kelly to turn her head to look at its owner.

Close up he was even more sizzlingly sensual than she had first imagined. It must be the new persona she had assumed that was making her aware of him in such a very intimate and sexual way, she decided dizzily as her glance slid helplessly from the dark watchfulness of his eyes to his very sensual mouth. Certainly she could never remember an occasion previously when she had been so immediately and so shockingly physically aware of a man’s sexuality.

‘Oh, must you go so soon?’ She pouted again, a little disconcerted to recognise how easily both the pout and the teasing but deliberately flirtatious glance she had given Julian’s companion came to her. ‘We haven’t even been introduced …’

She could sense Julian’s surprise at the way she was behaving, and managed to hide her own reservation at her unfamiliar behaviour. Kelly could sense Julian’s reluctance to comply with her request, but his companion was already saying with a steely, not to say with a grim note in his voice, ‘Yes, Julian, do introduce us to your friend …’

‘Er … Eve, Brough, may I introduce you to an old friend—Kelly? Kelly, please meet Eve and her brother, Brough Frobisher.’

While Kelly waited for him to expand a little more on the relationship between the other couple and himself she could see from the look in Brough Frobisher’s eyes that he was decidedly unimpressed by her flirtatious manner.

At least she had had one of her questions answered, she acknowledged as Harry finally arrived at her side just as Brough was determinedly turning away from her.

Eve and her brother, Julian had said.

Ridiculous to feel that dizzying surge of excitement and relief just because Brough Frobisher appeared to be unattached.

‘We’re on table twelve,’ Harry was informing her as he manfully forged a pathway for them both through the press of people making their way towards the banqueting room.

Table twelve was well positioned, with a good view of the top table and close enough to the long row of French windows which opened out onto the terrace to offer the comfort of a cool walk along it should one wish to avail oneself of such a facility.

Curiously, though, as they approached the table a small altercation appeared to be taking place there between a harassed-looking couple, the man red-faced and plainly angry whilst his wife looked flushed and embarrassed.

‘You told me we were on table twelve,’ he was saying to her as Harry and Kelly approached.

‘And so we were … At least, that was what Sophie said …’ his wife was responding, adding helplessly, ‘She must have got it wrong. You’ll have to go back and check the table plan.’

As she watched the hapless couple making their way back to the entrance to the room, Kelly couldn’t help feeling a little bit guilty. Was she being overly suspicious in suspecting Dee’s magical sleight of hand might somehow be responsible for their missing seats, especially when she could quite plainly see from where she stood that the place cards the couple had been studying with such bewilderment bore hers and Harry’s name?

A middle-aged couple and their daughter, the Fortescues, Kelly realised, were taking their places at the table, and another couple were taking their seats opposite Harry’s and Kelly’s own, which left three spare seats to Kelly’s left. Discreetly she leaned across to study the place cards, her heart thumping just a little bit too fast as she read, ‘Mr Julian Cox, Miss Eve Frobisher, Mr Brough Frobisher.’ She had no idea just how Dee had managed to get them seated next to Julian, nor did she wish to be enlightened. Dee was turning out to be a master tactician, an expert in the art of gamesmanship and subterfuge.

‘Kelly, you’re on our table! What a coincidence!’ Julian was exclaiming with very evident pleasure as he walked up.

Demurely Kelly said nothing, instead simply smiling at him from beneath down-swept lashes.

Half an hour later, when they had all been served with their main courses, Kelly acknowledged that Julian was even less likeable than she had previously guessed. Ignoring his girlfriend to flirt with her, he had progressed from blatantly sexually motivated compliments to the kind of sensual innuendo which Kelly found teethgrittingly unwelcome.

Her conscience overcoming her sense of duty, she leaned across the table to ask Eve gently how long she had been living in the town and if she liked it.

‘It’s very pretty,’ was her slightly hesitant response, and Kelly didn’t miss the way she looked first at her brother before replying to her, as though seeking either his support or his approval.

Kelly felt distinctly sorry for her. She was no match for a man of Julian’s unwholesome calibre, that much was more than evident to her, and Kelly hadn’t missed the way she had bitten her lip once or twice when Julian’s compliments to herself had pointedly underlined just how sexually attractive he found her.

‘What do you do?’ Kelly asked her, trying to draw her out a little, but it seemed she had asked the wrong question because immediately the younger woman flushed and looked helplessly at her brother before replying.

‘Oh, nothing … I’m afraid my art degree isn’t … doesn’t …’

Her voice trailed away and Julian cut in boastfully, ‘Eve doesn’t need to work, do you, my sweet? She has her own income … a trust fund …’

As he spoke he reached for her hand and squeezed it, lifting it to his lips to kiss her fingers in what Kelly considered to be an excessively exaggerated and insincere manner, but to judge from the pretty pink blush that coloured Eve’s pale skin she didn’t seem to find anything wrong with his manner towards her.

What would she say, Kelly wondered grimly, if she knew that whilst he was kissing her fingers his other hand was resting meaningfully on Kelly’s chiffon-clad knee, and she had in fact just had to edge determinedly away from him to stop him from rubbing his leg potentially even more intimately against hers?

He really was totally repulsive, Kelly acknowledged with repugnance as she started to turn towards Harry, stopping when unexpectedly Brough Frobisher entered the conversation, telling her coolly, ‘As a matter of fact, Eve works for me. What about you? What do you do?’

Before Kelly could answer him, the Master of Ceremonies called on them for silence whilst their host made a speech.

Gratefully Kelly got to her feet, glad to have the opportunity to shake off Julian’s wandering hand. Her dislike of him was growing by the minute—and not just on her own behalf. The minute Julian had mentioned Eve’s trust fund Kelly had immediately been aware from his avaricious expression just where the other girl’s attraction for him lay. Poor thing, like Beth before her she was obviously too unworldly and naive to see through him, but surely her brother must be able to recognise just what Julian was like.

Although he had listened in silence to Julian’s conversation throughout the meal, more of an observer than a participator, Kelly had been keenly aware of the intensity of his silent scrutiny of them all. Was she being over-sensitive in thinking that he had been particularly watchful where she was concerned? At one point, just before the Master of Ceremonies had provided his welcome diversion, Kelly had actually felt as though Brough Frobisher’s gaze was somehow burning a laser-like beam right through the table to where Julian’s hand was resting on her leg. Not that she had wanted it to be there. She gave a small shudder. He repulsed her now even more than he had done before.

‘I can’t encourage him. I don’t like him. He’s loathsome,’ she had protested despairingly to Dee last night.

‘All you have to do is let him think that you’re interested in him,’ Dee had soothed her. ‘All we need is for him to show himself in his true colours so that we can …’

‘So that we can what?’ Kelly had pounced, but Dee had simply given her a mysterious smile.

The speeches were almost over; the Master of Ceremonies had announced that there would be dancing in the ballroom. Hopefully then she would be able to escape Julian’s unwelcome attentions, since he would be duty-bound to dance with Eve.

‘Your lipstick’s all gone and your hair needs brushing,’ she heard Julian saying critically to Eve as the speaker sat down.

‘I’m afraid Eve doesn’t really have much idea about how to dress properly. She isn’t into designer clothes. I dare say you didn’t have much change out of a thousand pounds when you bought yours?’ he questioned, and Kelly knew from the look in his eyes that the news of her supposed inheritance had already reached him via that mysterious ‘grapevine’ Dee seemed to know so much about. As he spoke Julian’s glance slid from Kelly’s eyes to her mouth, and he murmured in a much lower voice, ‘Mind you, one has to admit the poor darling doesn’t exactly have the right kind of raw material … unlike you … Has anyone ever told you that you have the most amazingly sexy eyes … and mouth …?’

Kelly had to fight to suppress the dark tide of colour threatening to betray her feelings. It wasn’t embarrassment that was driving the hot blood up under her skin, but anger. How dared he behave so insultingly towards his girlfriend? No wonder she was looking so unhappy. But that was no reason for her brother to give her, Kelly, such a contemptuously angry look. She wasn’t the one who was responsible for Eve’s humiliation.

‘I was just going to go to the Ladies to tidy up myself,’ she fibbed, smiling warmly at Eve. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

‘Oh, yes …’

Smiling with relief, Eve got up to accompany her.

‘Have you known Julian long?’ she asked Kelly shyly as they stood side by side in the elegantly decorated cloakroom, studying their reflections in the mirrors in front of them.

‘Mmm … quite a while,’ Kelly responded.

‘He’s a very special person, isn’t he?’ Eve enthused, her eyes shining with emotion, her expression betraying just how deeply involved with him she was.

Kelly’s tender heart ached for her, and she only just managed to resist the impulse to tell her exactly what she thought of Julian Cox and why. Instead she asked, ‘What about you? Have you known him long?’

‘Er, no … not really … That is …’ She paused and then said in a breathless rush, ‘He’s asked me to marry him. Everything’s happened so quickly between us that I still can’t quite … It’s quite a frightening feeling when you fall in love, isn’t it?’ she asked Kelly with a small, poignant smile. ‘This is the first time that I … Brough thinks it’s too soon … Julian gets quite cross with me sometimes because he thinks I rely too much on Brough, but he’s taken care of me ever since our parents died and …

‘I haven’t met many of Julian’s friends yet,’ she confided, changing the subject slightly. ‘Julian says that he wants to keep me … us … to himself for a little while …’ She smiled and blushed. ‘He’s so very romantic and loving.’

Oh, yes, Kelly wanted to agree sarcastically. So very romantic and loving that he broke my best friend’s heart, just the same way he is probably going to break yours. But caution made her hold her tongue.

How much did Eve know about Julian’s relationship with Beth?

Along with the revulsion and dislike Julian had aroused within her was a growing sense of anger and an unexpected surge of desire to protect Eve from suffering the same fate as Beth. Perhaps she herself was a rather stronger and more determined character than she had previously realised, Kelly acknowledged. With every word that Eve spoke she could feel an increasing awareness of how right Dee was to want to have Julian exposed in his true colours, and an increasing desire to help achieve that goal, even if it meant putting herself in an unpleasant, but thankfully temporary, position. Much as it went against the grain with her to subtly encourage Julian’s amorous advances, much as she disliked the role she was being called upon to play, there was a real purpose to it.

Checking her own freshly applied lipstick, she gave Eve a warm smile.

‘Don’t let Julian bully you,’ she advised her.

The younger girl’s face went scarlet.

‘Oh, he doesn’t. He isn’t … It’s just that he’s used to women who are so very much more glamorous than me and of course he wants … expects …’

‘If he loves you then he must love you just the way you are,’ Kelly pointed out, but she could see from Eve’s expression that she did not want to hear what Kelly was trying to say.

Perhaps when she saw exactly what kind of man Julian really was she’d realise just how unworthy of her love he was. Kelly certainly hoped so.

Brough frowned thoughtfully as he watched his sister and Kelly weaving their way back through the crowd to their table. Kelly puzzled him and, yes, if he was honest, intrigued him as well.

Having watched the way she behaved towards Julian, subtly encouraging his advances, it would be easy to assume that she was an extremely sophisticated and worldly young woman who was used to using her undeniable feminine sensuality and attractiveness to get whatever she wanted from life—whoever she wanted from life, regardless of whether or not the man in question was attached to someone else. But Brough had also observed the way she behaved towards her escort, Harry, and to his own sister, and there was no denying that with them she displayed a warmth, a consideration, an awareness and respect for their feelings that couldn’t possibly be anything other than genuine.

One woman, two diametrically opposite types of behaviour. Which of them revealed the real Kelly, and why should it be so important to him to find out? Not, surely, just because the man she was making a play for was the same man her sister claimed to be in love with? After all, there was nothing he wanted more than for something, someone, to make his sister see just how unworthy of her Julian Cox actually was.

Discreetly he studied Kelly. Her dress was expensive, and fitted her as though it had been made for her, but something, some experienced male instinct, told him that she was not quite so comfortable and at home in it as she wanted others to believe. Every now and again she gave a betraying glance down at herself, rather in the manner of a little girl uncertain of the wisdom of wearing her mother’s borrowed clothes. As Julian had so admiringly pointed out, she was immaculately groomed, but personally Brough would have rather liked to see her dressed casually in jeans, her skin free of make-up, her wonderful hair soft and tousled and her even more wonderful eyes and mouth …

His eyebrows snapped grimly together as he recognised the direction his thoughts were taking. It was a long time since a woman had attracted him as powerfully or as immediately as Kelly—or as dangerously. On two counts. If she was the type of woman she was portraying to attract Julian Cox’s attention, then she was most decidedly not his type. And if she wasn’t … if that unexpected and alluringly enticing chink of vulnerability and uncertainty he had so briefly glimpsed beneath the sophisticated image she was trying to portray was the real Kelly … then that would make it even more imperative that he didn’t involve himself in any way with her. His life was already complicated enough as it was, with Eve. One day he would marry, settle down, with a nice, calm, sensible girl—a woman who did not pretend to be something she wasn’t.

Of course, there was one way he could probably find out just what sort of woman Kelly really was. The way a woman responded, reacted, to a man’s first kiss could say an awful lot about just what kind of person she was, Brough mused.

His frown deepened. What on earth was he thinking? There was no way he could justify that kind of behaviour—or those kinds of thoughts.

His last serious relationship had been when he was in his very early twenties. He had thought himself in love—had thought that she loved him. They had met at university and then she had taken a year out to travel while Brough had stayed at home to be near Eve. When they had met up again both of them had been forced to acknowledge that whatever they’d had had gone.

Since then he had dated … there had been women … but by the time he had reached thirty he had decided that he must be the kind of man in whom logic and responsibility always won out over passion and impetuosity. And so he was … wasn’t he?

‘I want to dance with you.’ Kelly’s heart sank as she saw from the loaded, explicitly sexual way that Julian was regarding her as he spoke to her just how successful Dee’s plan had been. There was no doubt just what was on Julian’s mind, even without the heavy, lingering glance he gave her breasts.

He was being too obvious, too potentially hurtful to Eve and insulting towards her, Kelly decided as she shook her head and reminded him, ‘You haven’t danced with Eve yet …’

‘I don’t want to dance with her; I want to dance with you,’ Julian insisted as he reached out to raise her from her seat.

Unhappily Kelly fought her conscience. This was too much, and inexcusable. Just how much wine had Julian had to drink? she wondered uneasily, wishing that Harry hadn’t chosen just that moment to disappear.

‘Kelly has already promised this dance to me.’

The interruption from Brough Frobisher was just as unexpected as his coolly uttered, authoritative fib.

Without allowing Julian the opportunity either to protest or argue, Brough came over to her, holding out his hand. Shakily Kelly stood up. She didn’t particularly want to dance with him, but dancing with him was infinitely preferable to having to dance with Julian.

Good manners suggested that she ought to thank Brough Frobisher for rescuing her, but to do so would surely be to step out of the role Dee had cast for her and, perhaps even worse, to give him the opportunity to point out that she herself had been actively encouraging Julian to believe that she was interested in him.

‘Your sister is very sweet,’ she commented awkwardly as Brough led her onto the floor.

‘Sweet?’ His dark eyebrows lifted as he gave her an appraising look. ‘An excess of sweetness can be unpleasantly cloying. I don’t consider her to be sweet, rather a little too naive and vulnerable. How long have you known Cox?’

His abrupt question caught her off guard.

‘Er … a while … He … we’re old friends,’ she stammered, boldly remembering her role.