“I think we should get married.”

“What?” Sophie replied. “Are you crazy?”

“It makes perfect sense,” Gregory told her calmly.

“It makes no sense whatsoever. You seem to forget that I’ve already had one bad marriage.”

Gregory flushed darkly. “Why do you assume that ours would be bad?”

“Because it takes more than good sex to make a good marriage,” Sophie told him roughly. “Marriage isn’t a business deal.”

CATHY WILLIAMS is originally from Trinidad, but has lived in England for a number of years. She currently has a house in Warwickshire, which she shares with her husband, Richard, her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, and their cat, Salem. She adores writing romance fiction and would love one of her girls to become a writer, although at the moment she is happy enough if they do their homework and agree not to bicker with one another.

A Reluctant Wife
Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

‘EVERYONE’S talking about him, you know.’ Katherine Taylor—curly blonde hair, brown eyes and a mouth that seemed destined to smile at the slightest opportunity—was perched on the corner of the kitchen table, idly picking on a celery stick because this week was Diet Week, as opposed to last week which had been Eat-All-I-Want-Since-All-Diets-Are-Useless-Week and watching with interest while her friend did amazing things with vegetables, a wok and some herbs. ‘Rumour has it that he’s going to be moving here.’

‘So?’ Sophie had her back to her friend and she could picture the glint of sheer pleasure at this little titbit of gossip. In a small village, and she didn’t think villages got much smaller than theirs, gossip was the oil that made the wheels of daily life turn smoothly.

‘So? So? Is that all you’ve got to say on the subject?’

‘Pretty much.’ Sophie drizzled a few herbs onto the concoction in the pan and liberally poured in some cream. Kat might well be dieting, but woe betide anyone who was foolish enough to encourage her in her efforts. She adored food and would have felt hard done by if she had been offered anything remotely calorie controlled when she was supposed to be eating out and having a good time—even if the meal in question was only a home-cooked meal shared between two.

‘How can you not be bursting with curiosity?’ Katherine asked in an accusing voice, as if Sophie’s indifference was a deliberate ploy to sabotage the conversation. ‘Everyone’s talking about Gregory Wallace. Annabel and Caroline and all the other Great and Good have already plotted his entire social life if the rumour turns out to be true and he does move here.’

‘Poor man. Anyway, food’s up.’

Which diverted the conversation for a few minutes, but as soon as they were sitting in front of their plates of pasta and vegetables Katherine returned to the topic with the relentlessness of someone determined to elicit a response.

Sophie listened to Kat and her endless speculation, but she found the whole thing boring. She would be the first to concede that Gregory Wallace was doing tremendous things for the village. He had been the man behind the building of the new housing estate, which, despite all the initial suspicions, had proved to be tasteful and thoughtfully done, and, of course, all those displaced Londoners in their new executive commuter style homes would boost the economy in their little village no end.

Already there was talk of one of the major supermarket chains opening up, which would do away with the half-hour drive to the nearest one, and the one hotel, which had been growing sadder and shabbier by the year, had suddenly seen fit to have a long overdue face-lift so that it now looked quite elegant, instead of being the local eyesore. But still. Anyone would think that the man was a knight in shining armour, charging in on a white steed to save the poor inhabitants of Ashdown from rack and ruin, instead of a wealthy businessman who was simply out to make a bit more money for himself.

‘I can’t see why the man would want to move here, of all places,’ Sophie finally said, as she placed her knife and fork on her empty plate and watched indulgently as her friend spent a few seconds resisting the temptation of a second helping, then succumbing. ‘Those types need the cut and thrust of living in a big city like London. Don’t tell me that he intends to settle down here, plant his own vegetable patch and take up bird-watching in his spare time.’

‘You’re so cynical, Sophie.’ Katherine took a generous sip of wine and eyed her friend with jaundiced familiarity.

‘I’m realistic. Gregory Wallace is supposedly an eligible bachelor so why would he choose to live in Ashdown? It’s hardly noted for its parade of beauty queens.’

‘Don’t let Annabel and her lot hear you say that. Besides…’ Katherine sat back, cradling the wine glass in her hands and looking at Sophie seriously. ‘There’s you. You’re not exactly a bag lady, are you, Soph? Despite the fact that you spend half your time dressing as though you’d like to look like one.’

Sophie felt colour steal into her cheeks and she hurriedly began to clear away the dishes, stacking them in the sink and then filling the kettle with water.

‘Please don’t start on this old subject again, Kat.’ She hated being reminded of her looks. Everyone seemed to think that good looks could only be a blessing in life, that they opened doors and turned locks and altogether made life a whole lot easier. No one ever seemed to understand that good looks could shut as many doors as they opened, and Sophie was tired of trying to explain that to Katherine.

‘Why don’t you stop wearing all those long, dreary skirts and baggy jumpers? It’s not as though you haven’t got the money.’

‘No,’ Sophie said bitterly, ‘it’s not as though I haven’t. After all, Alan left us more than well provided for.’ She turned and faced her friend. ‘A guilty conscience can be a very expensive commodity, can’t it?’ It still stuck in her throat. Even after five years his name still stuck in her throat and made her want to retch. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this.’

‘Why not?’ Katherine asked bluntly. ‘If you can’t talk to me about it then who can you talk to?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it to anyone, Kat.’ Her fists were curled into balls, and she made an effort to unclench them. ‘Jade and I are both fine. We’re happy. There’s no need to dig up the past.’ At the mention of her daughter’s name Sophie’s eyes flicked automatically to the staircase, but she knew that Jade would be sound asleep.

‘OK.’ Katherine shrugged and watched as Sophie brought two mugs of coffee over to the table and resumed her place. ‘But I think you’re wrong. You’re beautiful, Soph. And I don’t mean beautiful with the help of bottles of hair dye and face paint. But you still insist on burying yourself here.’

‘You’re here. I haven’t exactly seen you rushing out to the train station to purchase a one-way ticket to London.’

‘Point taken.’ She grinned, and Sophie felt herself relax a little.

At least the evening hadn’t ended on a sour note. She would have hated to fall out with Katherine. They had been friends since the days of Barbie dolls and pretend teddy-bear picnics but, even so, the subject of Alan was still too raw to be discussed openly, and normally Katherine respected her reticence.

Later, after Katherine had gone and Sophie had checked on her daughter, she stood in her bedroom and thought about what she had said about Alan. All lies. She wasn’t happy. At least, not in the sense of waking up each morning and being filled with the sheer joy of living.

She only really felt that way when she looked at Jade, but most of the time it was as if she were wrapped up in a blanket of vague unhappiness. Sometimes she could shake it and a waft of joyous air would blow in, like when she had watched Jade’s first nativity play at school last Christmas, but pretty soon the blanket would settle back around her body, never quite strangling her but never quite letting go.

How could she explain all that to Katherine? Katherine felt that divorces happened in their millions and that she, Sophie, was lucky at least to have had the dubious privilege of being married to a rich man who had made sure that she was more than generously compensated. How to explain the belittling circumstances behind the divorce? How to explain the way her precious self-esteem had been battered so thoroughly that it had been impossible to revive it?

She turned and in the half-light of the bedroom she looked at herself fully in the mirror to see the face and body which should supposedly have brought her happiness and fulfilment. She saw flaming red hair which curled down to her waist, large, translucent green eyes, a small, straight nose and full lips. She had no need to strip to see the length of her legs, the slightness of her waist, her full bust.

She looked at herself with no affection. If her looks hadn’t been quite so dramatic Alan would never have noticed her, and if he had never noticed her then her life might have been different—better. Thank goodness for Jade, she thought, turning away. One good thing had come out of that mire of unpleasantness.

Was it any wonder that the thought of attracting another man, of putting her body on show, filled her with revulsion?

That, at least, was one good thing about living in a tightly knit, small community. The men were all accounted for. The occasional unrecognised face might pass through, and when Annabel and her cronies descended from London to rest and recuperate in their parents’ country houses they invariably brought their chums back with them, but their few party invitations to her had been politely refused. Yes, here she felt safe.

When, a few weeks later, Katherine announced to her that Gregory Wallace was, indeed, moving to Ashdown the information barely made an impact on her. As far as she could see, whether he lived in Ashdown or Timbuktu would make zero difference to her lifestyle.

‘And I’ve met him!’ Katherine squealed, over a cup of coffee in the newly opened coffee-shop next to the post office on the high street.

‘Good for you,’ Sophie said warmly. ‘And would you say that you’re a better person for the experience?’ That provoked a warning glare.

‘He’s gorgeous.’

‘Oh, really, In that case, the locals will probably be eating out of his hand within hours. Annabel and Caroline and the Stennor twins will, no doubt, take up permanent residence here. Where is the gorgeous saviour of our little village going to live?’

‘He’s bought Ashdown House.’

‘Ashdown House?’ Sophie sat up and frowned. ‘I thought that old Mrs Frank was determined never to leave the place?’

‘Well, she did. She’s relocated to the cottage on the lane, and work begins on the place next week.’

‘He must have some powers of persuasion.’

‘Absolutely.’ Katherine sighed and Sophie shot her an irritated look. ‘Along with some very persuasive looks and a bank balance to match. And please don’t jump onto your money-isn’t-everything soap box. Play your cards right and he might prove to be a hefty benefactor to help your charity.’

‘I have no intention of running to a perfect stranger with cap in hand, begging,’ Sophie said sharply. Her charity work was a labour of love, and she wasn’t about to join the queue of people desperate to meet the wonderful Gregory Mr Fix-it so that they could squeeze something out of him. In fact, she found the whole charade surrounding his arrival faintly disgusting. At the library, where she worked, all the old biddies were full of stories of Gregory Wallace and his no-expense-spared renovations of Ashdown House.

‘No, I haven’t met the man,’ Sophie had repeated on a number of occasions. Now she had to stop herself from yawning whenever his name was mentioned.

She would doubtless bump into him one day. In Ashdown it was impossible not to bump into your fellow residents on a fairly regular basis, and she was pretty certain that she would recognise him, even though sightings, according to Katherine, had been limited over the past few weeks as autumn began to creep into winter and thoughts turned to Christmas, mince pies and Santa Claus.

‘Maybe now that the house is finished he’s become bored with his little plaything and has decided to switch his allegiances back to London,’ Sophie told her, grinning as her friend shook her head and left the library with a theatrical sigh of frustration.

At this hour, nearly five in the afternoon, it was already dark outside and the library was virtually empty. In a minute she would leave to collect Jade from her child-minder, who had her after school on the two full days that Sophie worked, and they might start work on some Christmas decorations.

In a few days’ time a large, extravagantly expensive gift would arrive from Jade’s father in New York and in due course it would take up residence under their tree. It was the same routine every year—the present, the thank-you note to the man about whom her daughter never enquired. He had had no part in her life and Jade, only five years old, had not yet started asking questions. That would come later.

Sophie was getting ready to leave, filing away her paperwork into the drawer behind the desk, when she looked up and saw someone standing just inside the door to the library. Because most of the lights in the place had already been switched off, the figure was in shadow and her heart gave a leap of pure fear.

‘My hand,’ Sophie said in a clear voice, which reverberated around the empty library and had the instant effect of making her feel like a heroine in a third-rate detective movie, ‘is on the telephone. If you take one step closer I assure you that I’ll phone the police and they’ll be here before you can so much as blink an eye.’

Whoever he was, he was tall and powerfully built. His outline told her that much. She could feel her heart thumping madly in her chest and she hoped to heaven that should she have to call the police they would still be there.’

‘How dramatic,’ the man drawled. He had a deep voice, with enough of a thread of irony running through it to turn it from merely attractive to sexy. He stepped forward out of the shadows and materialised into someone whose looks were so powerful that they bordered on mesmerising—very dark hair, very dark eyes and even encased, as he was, in a trenchcoat, Sophie could see that his body was muscular and graceful.

She recognised the type well. He was very reminiscent of her ex-husband, whose physical appeal and persistent charm had ended up scrambling her brains. She began to put on her coat, and snapped shut the index boxes on the counter.

‘Not as dramatic as being descended on by the police,’ she said sharply.

‘The police? Do you mean the jolly chap who works at the police station and plays Santa Claus in the local pantomime at Christmas?’ He gave an amused, deep-throated laugh and continued to stroll towards the desk.

‘Who are you? The library is closed. If you’re looking for a book you can come back in the morning.’ She fetched her bag from under the counter and from habit looked around her to make sure that everything was in order.

‘I’m Gregory Wallace,’ the man said. She bestowed on him a look of undisguised curiosity for several seconds, then began to head towards the door.

‘And I’m on my way out so, if you don’t mind, you can either follow me or be locked in here until nine-thirty tomorrow morning.’ As she walked past him she caught a whiff of something, some intensely masculine scent, and was struck by how tall he was. It was unusual for her to be faced with a man who wasn’t more or less on her eye level.

‘I’ve come for a book,’ he said, not following her so that she was obliged to turn and look at him, which she found exasperating—not lease because if she didn’t hurry she’d be late, collecting Jade from the child-minder.

‘I’d deduced as much,’ she said with stiff politeness. ‘People who come to libraries are generally looking for books.’ So this, she thought, was the man who had succeeded in throwing their calm little village into an excited frenzy. Viewed objectively, she could understand why. He was good-looking, presumably rolling in money and, if the gossip-mongers were to be believed, single. Look a bit harder, she could have told them, and they would glimpse the trail of broken hearts he had left in his wake.

‘And generally,’ he said dryly, ‘they expect slightly better service. I don’t even know your name.’

‘I’m Miss Turner,’ Sophie told him, without bothering to inject any cordiality into her voice, ‘and, as I said, the library’s closed.’

Surely you can take a few minutes to locate a book for me. Something on the history of this place.’

‘It’s too small to have a history. If you want history, try talking to Reverend Davis.’ She spun around, fished the key out of her coat pocket and walked briskly towards the door, switching off the remaining lights as she went. She didn’t think that he would pursue the conversation if faced with the sobering reality that she might just lock him in, and she was right. What she hadn’t expected was to find him next to her and standing so close that his presence seemed claustrophobic. She was not, by nature, a tactile person. She disliked having her personal space infringed on, and automatically she drew back slightly to put distance between them.

‘You’re the first person I’ve met who hasn’t extended the long arm of welcome,’ he said, meeting her eyes and somehow managing to keep them on his face.

‘You mean here or in life generally?’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you look nothing like a librarian?’

‘Much as I would love to stand here, chatting aimlessly to you, Mr Wallace, I’m afraid I really must go now.’ She stepped outside and slammed the door, turning the key once then testing to make sure that it was locked. Not, she thought, that it was likely to be broken into if the door remained open all night long. Ashdown was low on crime. How could you be a committed thug, she thought, if the person you were mugging had tea with your mum once a week and used to babysit when you were a toddler? Difficult.

She started to walk towards her car, which was parked across the road from the library, and he followed her.

‘I guess,’ he said, as she slipped her key into the car door and unlocked it, ‘you’ve heard that I’ve bought Ashdown House?’

‘I guess I have,’ Sophie agreed, not enlarging on the observation. ‘Well, goodbye. Hope you have some success, finding out what you want to know about the place.’ She pulled open the car door, slid into the driver’s seat, pulled her coat around her so that it didn’t get trapped in the car door after she had shut it—which it had an annoying tendency to do—and started the engine.

He rapped against the window, and she irritably rolled it down.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he enquired, half leaning into the car, and with a shiver of inexplicable alarm she pulled back, her heart beating furiously. Something about her reaction to him unsettled her. She liked men to keep their distance. She purposefully gave off strong signals that she was unavailable, and she expected them to steer a clear course away from her. Gregory Wallace was fast impressing her as a man who had little respect for other people’s signals—the sort of man who blithely went precisely where he wanted to go and ignored any protests that might get in his way.

‘What?’

‘To what do I owe your remarkable show of antagonism?’

‘My gene pool,’ Sophie told him curtly.

‘In other words, you’re like this with everyone?’

‘In other words, I have to go now so kindly remove yourself from my car.’

He stood back. Immediately she wound the window up, manoeuvred the car out of its parking space and raced towards the child-minder’s house. Just before she turned the corner she glanced into her rear-view mirror to see whether he was still there, but he had gone.

She was half an hour late, and when she arrived she found Jade, drawing intently in the lounge, with a stack of paper and crayons around her, happily unaware of her mother’s delay.

‘How has she been?’ she asked Sylvia.

‘A doll. As usual. Collected her from school at one, and she was full of it. Louise Dodwell has asked her over to tea on Friday and she’s thrilled to bits.’

Sophie smiled, and thanked God for the blessing of this small village where everyone knew her daughter and knew how to cope with her disability. How would she have managed otherwise? Oh, of course, she would have found a way, but it was so much easier to be surrounded by people who knew and understood and accommodated.

She approached Jade and spent a few seconds breathing in her presence, quietly treasuring the miniature copy of herself. It was a shame, she often thought, that her parents were not alive to see Jade. Then she walked directly in front of her daughter, stopped and spoke clearly and slowly, using hand movements as necessary to ask her how her day had been. She received a series of hand movements in response.

‘She’s not handicapped,’ the specialist had patiently told her years ago, when Sophie had first noticed that her daughter didn’t seem to respond to sounds the way she should have. ‘She’s deaf. Not profoundly. She can hear, but sounds are a distant rumble and make no sense to her. But deafness isn’t life-threatening, Sophie. You’ll need to take time, but you’ll be surprised at how well Jade will cope with her disability.’

Everyone in the village knew that Jade was deaf, and because all the children had grown up with the knowledge they always made sure that they were standing in front of her when they spoke. They were curiously gentle with her and from day one at school Jessie, Jade’s teacher, had learnt basic hand movements and had taught them to her class, turning the lesson into fun so that gradually the children began to mix their words with movements.

Sophie herself had read everything there had been to read on the subject from the time the diagnosis had been confirmed. She had taught herself how to talk, using her hands, and she had started fund-raising in Ashdown and further afield, money that would go to national children’s charities. All the time she was also relentlessly reliving the despair of her broken marriage.

In time, she had stopped thinking that Jade’s deafness was some sort of obscure punishment for being a failure at holding her marriage together, but thoughts of Alan still left a taste of bitterness in her mouth.

She tried not to think of him, but she knew that she would never again trust a man, never again open herself up to be hurt. In the space of five years she had grown up and shed her youthful vulnerabilities, like a snake that has shed its outer skin.

That made it all the more infuriating to find, as she lay in bed that night, that at the back of her mind there were suddenly images of Gregory Wallace, which flitted about like mosquitoes on a hot night, buzzing in the darkness, waiting to feed.

Hopefully, she wouldn’t lay eyes on him again or, at least, if she did it would be only in passing and from the opposite side of a street. She could always avert her eyes and pretend that she hadn’t seen him. It would be difficult since he stood out in Ashdown like a Martian at a tea party but not totally impossible. Really, he would be around very little. Tycoons had no part in village life. Their bases were always in London and the country house was the status symbol they escaped to once a month if they could spare the time.

When, the following day, she looked up at a little before twelve and saw him approaching her at the counter in the library she wasn’t sure if she was surprised or taken aback. Or both. She just knew that her stomach began to do weird somersaults and the counter, behind which she had been snugly cocooned, now felt like a cage from which rapid escape would be a problem.

In the cold light of day he was even more alarming than he had appeared the evening before. She could now see his face clearly—the harshly chiselled features, the intense darkness of his eyes, the aggressive line of his jaw. He walked with the confidence of a jungle animal, prowling its patch, and stopped on the way to her desk to say something to one of the people in the library.

For someone who had only just arrived on the scene he certainly had established himself, Sophie thought cynically. She assumed it was all that charm and good looks. Alan had had a similar effect on people. He had lived his life creating an outward impression, delighting in the adulation of people who only saw the smooth, easy charm and were ignorant of what lay beneath it.

She looked at him critically as he neared the desk, and remained silent as he finally arrived and stood on the opposite side of the counter.

‘I’m back,’ he said, as though she couldn’t see that for herself.

‘So I see.’

‘And has this bright, freezing day improved your temper?’ He looked at her, and even though he was only looking at her face Sophie had the unnerving impression that he was also taking in everything else about her—her body, her clothes, the way she was standing.

He couldn’t fail to be disappointed if what he’d had in mind had been a bemused country bumpkin eligible for chatting up. Her skirt was long, almost down to her ankles, in sobering black and grey, her tights were thick and her jumper revealed absolutely nothing of what lay underneath it. She had tied her hair back into a long, French plait and was wearing so little make-up that she might well have not bothered.

‘I take it that you’ve returned for your book on the wildly exciting history of Ashdown?’ She pointed to a section of the library just behind her and to the left. ‘You might find something there.’

‘Care to show me?’ He wasn’t smiling but she got the feeling that somewhere inside he was. Cool, urbane, amused by someone, she supposed, whom he considered quaintly lacking in social graces.

‘I’m afraid I can’t leave my post. I can get Claire to show you.’

‘You’re right. You can hardly wriggle out of your box for five minutes just in case there’s a stampede of people, wanting to take books out.’

‘That’s right,’ Sophie said coolly, not bothering to rise to the bait. She knew that she was being ungracious but she had unpleasant memories of men of his ilk, and if he didn’t care for her attitude then that was tough.

‘Why don’t we get Claire to man your post? Where is she?’

‘Oh, all right,’ Sophie told him. She lifted the flap of the counter and slipped out. ‘If you’d care to follow me?’ she said, glancing at him over her shoulder. Before he could reply she headed towards the local section of the library, stopping in front of the one shelf, which she pointed out to him.

‘I’m afraid that’s it,’ she said. ‘Your best bet is…this one.’ She flicked out a wafer-thin book, which she handed to him, and he obediently looked at it, turning it over in his hands.

‘Fine.’ He smiled at her and she grimaced politely in return.

‘Like I told you yesterday, Mr Wallace, if you want any detailed information it’s probably a good idea to chat to a few of the local residents.’ Not, she thought, that you probably haven’t already. Judging from what she had heard thus far, he was well on his way to having a bigger social life than she had, and she had been born and bred in Ashdown.

‘What about you?’ he asked, when she was safely back behind the counter and dealing with his membership of the library.

‘What about me?’ Sophie asked, looking up vaguely at him.

‘Why,’ he continued patiently, ‘don’t you have lunch with me now and you can tell me all about your charming little village?’

‘Sorry,’ Sophie said immediately, ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I work through lunch.’

He looked around him, as though mystified by that statement. ‘Why?’

‘Because…because…’ She sighed heavily and folded her arms. The library was hardly the centre of a buzzing metropolis. Right now there were five people there, if you discounted a handful of pre-school children who were regulars at the library and were generally accompanied by their harassed mothers.

Usually Sophie took over when they came, reading books to the kids and teaching them the rudiments of the alphabet. She enjoyed it and it left their mums time to choose books without the stress of their children in their wake. But none of this necessitated working through lunch, she thought, following his train of thought.

‘Because,’ she said, ‘I just do.’ When he continued to look at her without comment she said irritably, ‘Well, all right. I don’t work through lunch, but I stay here and eat my sandwich and read.’ She threw him a challenging look, which appeared not to rattle him in the slightest.

‘Anyway,’ she carried on, ‘I’m surprised that you have time to have lunch here. Shouldn’t you be at your office in London? Working all the hours under the sun? Building your empires?’

‘Everyone needs a break from empire-building,’ he said, and the corners of his mouth twitched as though he was holding back a hearty laugh.

‘I didn’t think I’d said anything funny, Mr Wallace.’

‘Please stop calling me Mr Wallace. Not even my bank manager calls me that.’

Probably, she thought, because he wants to bend over backwards to be chummy just in case you decide to take your valuable business elsewhere. Alan had had a similar effect on people. They had always pandered to his need to be admired. Instinctively she scowled, remembering her naïveté at the beginning of their relationship when her head had been somewhere in the clouds and she had thought that her personality had drawn him to her.

Before she’d realised that all he’d wanted had been something strikingly ornamental to have draped on his arm. It made her hair curl now to think of how she had been so malleable. She had allowed him to dress her precisely as he had wanted—in dresses that she had found too revealing and shoes which had made her feel like a giant next to most of the other women with whom she had come into contact.

‘I’ve lost you,’ Gregory said, leaning against the counter with one hand tucked into his trouser pocket.

‘What?’ Sophie returned from her pilgrimage into the past and refocused on the man standing in front of her. She wished obscurely that she had never come into contact with him, then she reminded herself that she was being foolish because she hardly knew him and it was impossible for a complete stranger to have any sort of impact on her carefully regulated life. Still, it would help if he didn’t exude quite such powerful charisma.

‘You were a million miles away just then.’

‘Here you are.’ She ignored his remark and handed him his membership card, which he took and tucked away in his wallet.

‘So, now we’ve established that you needn’t stay here for lunch, will you accept my invitation?’

She heard the magnetic, charming persuasiveness in his voice with a vague sensation of terror.

‘No.’

He shook his head and gave her an impatient, perplexed look.

‘When do I need to get this book back to you?’ he asked, straightening and standing back from the counter.

‘Within two weeks or else I’m afraid I’ll have to apply a fine.’

‘Which is?’

‘I can’t remember. Everyone returns their books long before they become overdue.’

‘How virtuous of them.’

‘It’s a virtuous community,’ Sophie said politely, and he raised his eyebrows expressively.

‘Really…’ he said softly. ‘Yourself included?’

She could feel the colour rush into her face and she fought back an instinctive urge to slap his face. He hadn’t said anything rude or insulting, but the mere fact that he had made her blush with embarrassment, which was something she hadn’t done for longer than she cared to remember, made her hackles rise.

‘Especially myself,’ she said, meeting his gaze without blinking. ‘You might want to remember that.’ After a few seconds of silence she turned away and began to return books to their respective shelves.

CHAPTER TWO

FOUR days later Sophie decided to see for herself what was happening at Ashdown House.

She told herself that his was because she seemed to hear nothing but second-hand reports of massive reconstruction, and curiosity had finally got the better of her. Besides, she reasoned, she had a free day, with Jade at school and no work at the library. Despite the fact that it was bitterly cold, it was also temptingly sunny—too sunny to stay indoors, doing housework.

More to the point, Gregory Wallace was safely ensconced in London, according to Kat who seemed to know details of the man’s movements with remarkable intimacy. That was nothing unusual in Ashdown. There was no such thing as a secret life in the village. The smallness of the place made any such thing a complete impossibility.

As soon as she had returned to her cottage, having dropped Jade off at school, she hopped onto her bicycle. She’d made sure that she was securely wrapped up in as many layers of clothing as was humanly possible, without restricting movement, and headed off in the direction of the house.

The place wasn’t far from the village, but set right back from the road and picturesquely positioned on the sloping crest of a hill so that it commanded views in all directions.

In its heyday, before Sophie’s time, it had been the focal point of the village. Angela Frank had lived there with her son and her husband, and had entertained in grand style. Beautiful young things had gathered on the rolling lawns in summer, lazily sipping champagne and dressed to the nines. There had been croquet parties, which had started at lunchtime and supposedly meandered with ever more raucousness well into the late hours of the night. They were all second-hand and third-hand stories, which Sophie swallowed with a hefty pinch of salt since memories were usually unreliable when it came to accuracy.

All she knew for certain was that on the day Angela Frank’s husband and son were killed in a car crash the glamorous life at Ashdown House had come to a grinding halt. That had been over three decades ago, and until the place had been sold old Mrs Franks had lived there, surrounded by memories, with the house pitifully neglected and falling into a gradual state of disrepair.

Until now, Sophie thought as she cycled towards the house. The breeze whipped her hair around her face and promised at least two hours of hard labour to get the tangles out, and her hands, in their black fingerless gloves, gripped the handlebars of the bike. Until Gregory Wallace, that knight in shining armour, had descended on their village, kick-started it into a hum of activity and now, presumably, saw himself poised to become the lord of the manor.

At that thought she instinctively gave a little frown of distaste, and was still frowning when she finally arrived at the house, cutting through the back way so that she emerged facing the rear of the house, with a forested patch behind her and the fields stretching down towards the road.

She could hear the sounds of work in progress, drifting on the air towards her from the front of the house, but rather than head in that direction she climbed off her bike and left it lying on the grass. She began to stroll along the rear façade, peering into windows. Things were definitely happening inside. The carpets had all been ripped up and through some of the open doors she could see more signs of things happening.

As they would be, she thought to herself, when the man in question was rich, powerful and involved in the construction business. He probably, she thought as she peered into a room but found it difficult to make out anything because timber boards were leaning against the windows, just had to snap his fingers and an entire design team would appear in front of him. Willing, able and, of course, committed to putting his little pet project ahead of whatever else they had on their calendar. Because, frankly, he owned them.

He might come across as Mr Charm personified, but she knew enough about his type to know that any such charm was just a façade for the single-minded ruthlessness of the born opportunist. He would laugh and be warmly humorous to the outside world, but when he closed his doors and the mask slipped he would simply be another man whose only goal in life was to trample over those closest to him in order to remain at the top of his personal pecking order.

She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the breeze cut through her clothes to settle its teeth on her flesh, and peered into another room, where three men were working with impressive efficiency. Walls were being plastered and there were rolls of wallpaper in one corner of the room. She squinted and tried to decipher the pattern, but failed.

Katherine had not been lying when she’d said that the place was undergoing a major overhaul.

She stretched forward, avoiding the shrubbery underneath the window, and was leaning against the windowsill, with her body supported by her hands, when a voice said from behind her, ‘Enjoying yourself?’

The shock of being addressed when she’d believed herself to be unobserved almost made her fall forward into the shrubbery. Instead, she propelled herself backwards and spun around to be confronted by Gregory who was standing, looking at her, with his arms folded and an aggravating look of amusement on his face.

‘What are you doing here?’ Sophie said, highly flustered at being caught red-handed doing something she would not have dreamt of doing under normal circumstances. Namely, snooping.

‘What am I doing here?’ He appeared to give the question a great deal of thought, then his brow cleared and he said, as though bowled over by a sudden revelation. ‘Oh, yes, I remember. I live here!’

A sudden gust of wind blew Sophie’s hair across her face, and she pushed it aside, tucking it irritatedly behind her ear. ‘I was told that you were going to be in London.’

‘Aren’t gossips unreliable?’ He stared at her as her face became redder, then rescued her from complete humiliation by saying lazily, ‘Actually, I was supposed to be in London until tomorrow, but I rescheduled my meeting so that I could come up here and see what was happening to the work on the house.’ He was, she saw, still dressed in a suit of charcoal grey, visible beneath his coat, which seemed to add height and width to him so that he appeared even more daunting than she remembered.

‘I apologise if I was trespassing on your land,’ Sophie said stiffly, glancing around and making sure that her bike was where she had left it.

‘But you happened to be in the general vicinity…?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, in that case, you must mean that you made a special trip out here just to see what was going on.’

‘That’s right.’ Now that she wasn’t moving it was much colder than she had thought. Bitterly cold, in fact.

‘I didn’t see a car out front.’

‘I came on my bike.’ She nodded briefly in the direction of the abandoned bicycle and fought down the urge to sprint over to it, jump on and cycle away from the house as fast as she could pedal.

‘Cold out here.’ He looked around him, enjoying, she thought sourly, every moment of her discomfort. The breeze obligingly picked up, gusting through the empty branches of the trees and making the shrubbery rattle against the side of the house. ‘Why don’t you come inside? Then you can see exactly what I’m doing to the place and you can put your curiosity to rest.’

‘I’m not that curious, thank you.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. What is your problem?’

‘I don’t have a problem, and it’s too cold to stand around here, arguing the point. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just hop on—’

‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ he cut in impatiently. ‘Everyone’s curious about what I’m doing to the place. It’s only natural, and if you can’t admit that you are as well then you’re a damned hypocrite.’

Sophie’s mouth fell open. ‘Just who do you think you are?’ she finally demanded, in a high voice.

‘The owner of this property and someone who is fairly intolerant of stupidly stubborn women who are afraid of saying what they’re thinking.’

Sophie looked at him, speechless. ‘You may see fit, Mr Wallace, to address the women in your life like that, but let me tell you—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. This is the second time I’ve ever met you and I’m fast beginning to think that you are the most infuriating woman on the face of the earth. Now why don’t you just climb down off your high horse, escape the wind out here for a minute and come inside. You’re quite safe with me. There are dozens of workmen in the house.’ He glanced at her and his look was enough to tell her that even if his house had been completely empty of all signs of life she would still have been eminently safe with him.

She had no reason to even remotely doubt his word. She knew what she looked like. More than that, she revelled in what she looked like. Her face was bare of all make-up, her hair a mass of curls and knots, her curves well shielded in a long skirt, woollen tights, ankle-length, lace-up boots and two baggy jumpers under which nestled, even less erotically, a thermal vest and a T-shirt. The fingerless gloves were the final touch.

‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ Sophie said, because refusing now seemed childish.

‘If it was too much trouble,’ he said, leaning slightly towards her, ‘I wouldn’t have asked, would I?’

Sophie shrugged and looked away towards the gardens, wondering whether he had any plans for those as well. Perhaps a few fountains here and there, the odd statue sticking out from behind some plants. Who knew what the man’s tastes were?

She would be interested in seeing what he was doing to the house, though. She had been inside several times and had always been vaguely depressed at the gradual decline.

Wouldn’t Kat give her eye teeth for this? she thought with a sudden smile. Personal escort by the Big Man himself.

‘You’re smiling,’ Gregory said from next to her, and she suddenly realised that he had been observing her, which made her feel like a bug under a microscope. ‘I wondered whether you could.’

‘What exactly is that supposed to mean, Mr Wallace?’

‘Do you think we might dispense with the formalities?’ They began to walk around the side of the house, where builders were working in a manner never before seen by Sophie. Quite a few were local men, and she recognised them and nodded. One she stopped and spoke to.

‘James, can I ask how come you never seemed to work this hard for me when you were doing my kitchen?’ She smiled broadly and secured her hair with her hand. He was her age, married with four children and had gone to school with her a lifetime ago.

‘You would keep offering me cups of tea. Earl Grey is a killer on my concentration.’ They laughed.

‘How’s Claire and the children?’

‘Have four kids and you won’t need to ask that question.’ That made them laugh again.

‘You were lying about that gene pool,’ Gregory said, as they moved into the house.

‘What are you talking about now?’

‘You can relax. Which means it must just be me.’ He stood in the doorway and looked around him, his sharp eyes missing nothing.

Sophie ignored his remark. Ignored him, in fact, and began to walk around the hall, amazed at how much had been accomplished in a short space of time. The dingy carpets had all been ripped up, and black and white tiles had been laid, which opened up the hall. A new banister of oak was in the process of being constructed, and the walls were being primed for wallpaper.

‘I’ll show you around,’ he said, taking her by her elbow. She politely but pointedly removed his hand.

‘I’m not going to molest you,’ he grated, with an ill-humoured frown.

‘I never implied that you were,’ Sophie said coolly, looking at him and not blinking, ‘but I would still rather that you kept your hands to your sides.’

He muttered something under his breath, which she pretended not to hear, and began to show her around the bits of the house which had already been done.

It was a sprawling Victorian mansion. Her own cottage could have fitted several times into the downstairs alone. Everything was tasteful and immaculately done. Three of the rooms were already complete and the rest were fast on their way to getting there.

‘It’s rather a large house for one person, wouldn’t you say?’ she asked, as they strolled into the sitting room, which was now virtually unrecognisable from the fairly dilapidated affair it had been previously. She recognised several pieces of furniture, which he had clearly bought from Mrs Franks because, doubtless, they would have been too cumbersome to find a home for in her new premises.

‘Unless,’ she continued, walking around the room and reluctantly liking what she saw, ‘you’re very ambitious about having hordes of children.’

‘Oh, I think a dozen or so should do the trick.’ He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. ‘Does that come under the category of being ambitious about having children?’

‘No, it comes under the category of outright lie.’

He laughed and continued to watch her, which didn’t disturb her in the slightest. Let him watch as much as he liked, just as long as he didn’t touch. She didn’t feel threatened anyway because she knew that he was watching her with frank curiosity, and she suspected that that was because she so snugly fitted his idea of what a country girl would look like. He probably thought that things like make-up and fashionable clothes were difficult to get hold of so far out of London. No doubt he would change his mind when he met Ashdown’s semi-resident in-crowd. Much more his cup of tea.

‘Well,’ she said, when they were back in the tiled hall, ‘thank you very much for the tour of your house. It’s very nicely done.’

‘Why don’t you have a cup of tea before you leave?’ he said by way of an answer. ‘The kitchen is fully operational, as you’d expect with builders in the house.’

‘They do generally like their cups of tea, don’t they?’ Sophie said politely. She looked at her watch, shook her head and said that she had to go.

‘Where?’

‘What do you mean—where?’ The nerve of the man was beyond compare, she thought. Was it any of his business where she was going?’

‘To the library?’

‘No, as a matter of fact.’ Not that it’s any of your concern, her voice implied. When he remained, with his head slightly cocked, as though awaiting more on the subject, she said, clicking her tongue, ‘I have a lot of housework to do.’

‘Housework that can’t wait for half an hour?’ He began to stroll in the direction of the kitchen and, much to her annoyance, she found herself following. By the time she got there it seemed pointless to spend ten minutes pursuing the argument so she reluctantly took a seat at the kitchen table and waited while he made them a mug of tea.

‘Where do you live?’ he asked, sitting opposite her. He had removed his coat, but he still looked incongruous in the half-finished kitchen with his expensive suit. The units had been ripped out, as yet to be replaced, but there was a new Aga where the old one had been and, of course, the counter on which the kettle sat was littered with the evidence of builders in residence—mugs, sugar, a jumbo-sized bottle of instant coffee, an even more jumbo-sized box of teabags and two bottles of milk, both of which appeared to be on the go.

‘Within cycling distance of here,’ Sophie answered. ‘As does nearly everyone in the village.’

‘How long have you lived here?’

‘A long time.’ She sipped from the mug, cradling it in her hands, and hoped that he didn’t intend to pursue a personal line of conversation because she would soon have to steer him off firmly. He might not be interested in her as a woman, but any interest was unwelcome. She wasn’t in the business of dispensing confidences about her private life.

‘That tells me a lot.’

She didn’t answer. ‘You don’t intend to live here full time, do you?’ she asked, making no attempt to apologise for her abruptness.

‘It’s an idea,’ he said casually, ‘Why? Don’t you consider it a good one?’

Sophie shrugged. ‘Well, you can do as you please but, frankly, I don’t think this village is suited to a person like you.’ Which, she thought immediately, had come out sounding far ruder than she’d intended. She could see from the expression on his face that he was less than impressed with the remark.

Why beat around the bush, though? Men like Gregory Wallace—men like Alan—lived in the fast lane. She had brought Alan to Ashdown precisely three times and he had hated it.

‘Like living in a morgue,’ he had said. Lying in bed next to him, still invigorated with the newness of London, the newness of her job there, the newness of the man about whom she had initially been wary but who had eventually swept her off her feet, she had pushed aside the uneasiness she had felt, hearing him say that.

Apart from three years at university and six months in London, she had lived in Ashdown all her life and she had loved it. It was small but, then, so was she. If he hated Ashdown what did he think of her? Really? It had only been later she had discovered that, and by then she was already Mrs Breakwell.

‘A person like me?’ he asked coldly.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, finishing her tea and standing up. ‘I didn’t mean to sound rude.’

‘But…?’ He didn’t stand up and when their eyes met she could see that all traces of amusement had vanished. She caught a glimpse of the man who had built an empire, who was worth millions. She wondered, fleetingly, how many women he had bowled over, how many women had responded to that air of ruthlessness which lay so close to that charming exterior. Even though she was immune to that combination, she wasn’t an idiot. She could see the attraction there, as glaringly obvious as a beacon on a foggy night.

‘But,’ she said, slinging her bag temporarily on the kitchen counter so that she could give him the benefit of a reply, ‘you strike me as the sort of man who lives hard and plays hard. Ashdown isn’t the sort of place where either gets done. Life here is conducted at an easy pace, Mr Wallace—Gregory. No clubs, no fancy restaurants, no theatres.’

‘In which case, why do you live here? You’re a young woman, unmarried. Surely the bright lights have beckoned?’

Sophie afforded him a long, even stare.

‘That is my business. Thanks for showing me around your house and thanks for the tea. I’ll be on my way now.’

Before he could respond she turned her back on him and headed out of the door, out of the house, back to the safety of her bicycle which was lying where she had left it.

As she cycled back to her cottage, she tried hard to capture her wayward thoughts and lock them into a compartment in her head. She thought about Christmas, lurking around the corner, about whether she should take advantage of Kat’s offer for Jade and her to come to her parents’ for lunch, about whether she should do more days at the library now that Jade was at school full time.

But Gregory Wallace kept getting in the way. Admit it, she thought irritably to herself, the man has got under your skin and you resent it because it’s something that hasn’t happened since Alan. Even with Alan it had been different. Gregory Wallace, she decided, got on her nerves as well as under her skin. Her own in-built suspicion of men, born of bitter experience, managed to deflect some of the forcefulness of his personality, but she was uncomfortably aware of it lying there, waiting to spring out at her.

She spent the next week keeping her head well down and her thoughts on other matters. She had started to accumulate presents for Jade and some of her friends. Jade’s she concealed in the attic, and every time she went there to deposit another small something she was startled at quite how much she had managed to collect over a period of weeks. Thank goodness Christmas Day is only a matter of a few weeks away, she thought. Much longer and she would be able to open a small toy shop with the amount of stuff she had bought over time.

She had realised a long time ago that she overcompensated for Jade’s lack of a father, but somehow she never managed to deal with the knowledge by cutting back on presents. Christmas was always a time of excess.

She was on her way out of the house two days later when she picked up the mail and opened the one letter to find an invitation inside.

You’d think they would have given up on me by now, Sophie thought, tucking the invitation into her skirt pocket and cycling to the library. It was so cold that she had been forced to wear a jacket over her jumpers. She wished that she had driven her car, which was probably in the process of seizing up due to lack of use.

By the time she got to the library the invitation in her skirt pocket had been completely forgotten, and it remained forgotten until later that evening when Kat came around to dinner and asked in passing whether she had been invited.

‘Oh, yes,’ Sophie said, tucking into a concoction of rice, vegetables and seafood, which tasted good but had the unfortunate look of something slung together randomly by a child.

‘And…?’ Kat looked at her expectantly. ‘You are going to come, aren’t you?’

‘No.’

Kat rested her head in the palms of her hands and groaned theatrically. ‘Have you ever considered that a social life might be quite a good thing for you to have?’

‘I had a social life, Kat. In London. I found that it disagreed with my system.’ Alan had loved nothing better than socialising. He had adored it, and he had been in great demand. Sophie had found herself catapulted out of her natural reticence into a whirl of activity which she had initially found invigorating, then boring and finally horrendously intrusive.

She had hated the false gaiety of everyone she met, the constant surreptitious competition with the other women, the lack of personal time it afforded her with her husband. It had been a subject of incessant, corrosive argument. Now the thought of dipping her toes into that again filled her with dread.

‘Besides,’ she said defensively, when her friend continued to stare at her in silence, ‘I have a social life. Of sorts.’

‘You occasionally see a mum from Jade’s school for lunch.’

‘Sometimes for supper,’ Sophie protested, knowing that she was on weak ground because to escalate her social life into anything resembling what a woman of her age should be doing would have necessitated more than simply an exaggeration of the truth.

‘Oh, well, I’m surprised you can contain your excitement at it all.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘You never go to London. When was the last time you met your group of friends from there?’

‘A few months ago,’ Sophie admitted, stabbing the remainder of her rice with her fork.

‘You used to invite them down for weekends now and again. Well, that certainly went out the window.’

‘It’s hard, doing stuff like that. I’m a mother. What am I supposed to do with Jade?’

‘Get someone to babysit?’

‘Who? Oh, all right. I know there are people willing to babysit, but—’

‘But nothing. Are you busy on the night of the thirtieth of November?’

‘I don’t believe I am,’ Sophie said.

‘Then I’ll expect you to come. I mean, have a heart, Soph. Who am I supposed to chat to for an entire evening at Annabel Simpson’s house? You know the place will be heaving with all her smart London set and her parents’ smart country set. I’ll be like a fish out of water.’

‘Oh, please!’ Sophie said, laughing. ‘You are never like a fish out of water. You can talk to anyone about anything, even if you know absolutely nothing about the subject in question. Why do you think you’re so good at selling houses? You can persuade someone with five homes that they’re in dire need of another.’

‘So, you’re coming, then?’

‘What exactly is it in aid of?’ Sophie asked, as they rose to clear the table, deciding as she eyed the counter buckling under the weight of unwashed dishes that she would do the lot in the morning.

‘Usual pre-Christmas bash,’ Kat said airily. ‘An opportunity for Annabel and her friends to bedeck themselves in splendid designer clothes and show the rest of us country bumpkins just how drab we all are.’

‘Oh, well, that really sounds like the sort of fun social occasion I should be cutting my teeth on.’

‘The one last year wasn’t too bad,’ Kat conceded, making them both a cup of coffee then searching through the cupboard until she located a bar of chocolate. ‘There was limitless champagne. I drank enough to see me through the next twelve months.’ She bit into her chocolate and looked at her friend thoughtfully. ‘Also, I think it’s a sort of party to welcome the new boy in town.’

‘New boy?’

‘The divine Gregory Wallace. You remember him. He was the one who showed you around his house.’

Sophie blushed and wished that Kat would stop staring at her in a suggestive, raised-eyebrows, there’s-a-story-here kind of way.

‘Which is one reason for me to avoid any party at all costs.’

‘Oh, yes? Mind explaining to me?’

Actually, Sophie found that she did mind as she couldn’t quite explain it to herself. ‘I just don’t like him,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘He rubs me up the wrong way. He’s too much like Alan.’

‘He’s nothing like Alan. OK, I’ll admit that they have the money thing in common, but that’s where the similarity ends. Alan, if you don’t mind me speaking ill of your ex, was in love with himself. He thought that he was the sun and everyone else just revolved around him. He also had no time for anyone who didn’t pander to his ego, make him look good or could do something for him.’

‘And Gregory Wallace is different?’ Sophie asked, bitterly aware that the criticism, uncannily accurate, still managed to reflect badly on her.

‘You could come and find out. Besides…’ Katherine afforded her friend a long, speculative look ‘…he might just get the wrong impression, you know.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Well, you know the saying that the lady doth protest too much. He might just think that he has the opposite effect on you if you’re anything but indifferent.’

Which, Sophie thought later as she got ready for bed, had been below the belt. How could she argue when Kat might have a point? The last thing she needed to complicate her life was to have Gregory Wallace thinking that he had any effect on her, and he was too good-looking to think otherwise.

Which was why, on the evening of the thirtieth of November, she found herself in her bedroom, staring disconsolately at the few dresses in her possession which she had kept from Alan’s days. Most she had got rid of soon after they’d parted company when she’d still been fired with bitterness and rage. Then motherhood had taken over and what remained she had simply stuck in a box in the attic, meaning to send them to a similar fate, only to forget them over the course of the years.

Jade was lying on her bed, fetchingly dressed in a long, cream antique nightie which Sophie had rescued from one of her charity sales months previously, and eyeing each creation her mother tried on with a jaundiced eye.

She pointed to a black affair with a plunging neckline, which was small enough to fit into a powder compact, and Sophie shook her head and mouthed, ‘Too tiny.’ She made a face and laughed with her daughter.

‘What about this one?’ she said slowly and clearly, holding up a long, green dress which she remembered as being one of the least provocative ones she had been coerced into buying years ago.

‘Yuck. Dull,’ Jade wrote on a piece of paper. ‘Put on the green one,’ she wrote, signing the message, ‘I love you, Mummy.’ This was followed by a series of kisses and hearts, at which point she appeared to get carried away with the symbols and began to draw lots of smiley hearts floating across the A4 paper.

If Jade thinks it’s dull, Sophie decided, that’s good enough to me. At least, she thought, it doesn’t smell of hibernation in a box. She had had the lot dry-cleaned. Annabel and the rest of her cronies thought she was weird as it was, without adding an odour problem to the list.

She slipped on the dress, without looking at herself in the full-length mirror, and sat at the dressing-table, wondering what to do with her hair. Jade sidled up to her and Sophie recognised that glint in her eye. It was called Operation Hairdresser, one of her least favourite games, but she obediently sat still while her daughter combed her hair with a wide-toothed comb and tried not to grimace too much when tiny fingers intervened to get rid of knots. She should have had the lot chopped off a long time ago, but somehow she had never been able to bring herself to do it.

After fifteen minutes she gave her daughter the thumbs-up sign, even though there was virtually no difference between how her hair looked now and how it had looked previously—still a mass of unruly, undisciplined curls.

Then she applied make-up, something she wore so rarely that she was amazed that her small collection had not gone past its sell-by date.

She brushed on a little powder, dusted with blusher, reluctantly applied mascara and then lipstick. When she sat back and inspected herself she had to admit that she looked good, even though she felt like the Mrs Sophie Breakwell of a few years ago, hanging on the arm of the man who had been the catch of his social circle—someone whose looks had been prized far more highly than her intelligence had been.

The babysitter and Katherine arrived on the doorstep at precisely the same time.

‘Wow,’ Katherine said in an awe-struck voice, and Sophie sighed in an elaborate way.

‘Blame Jade,’ she said, letting them in and fetching her ridiculously small clutch bag from the sofa. ‘She chose the dress and did the hair. And…’ Sophie turned to Ann Warner, who lived a few houses down, ‘…she shows no signs of being sleepy.’ Jade, standing next to her, grinned obligingly even though she hadn’t heard the remark.

She knelt, kissed her daughter, informed her that she had better be on best behaviour what with you-know-who arriving down certain chimneys in the not too distant future and then she straightened.

‘I’ll be back by eleven-thirty,’ she said.

‘Take your time. I shall enjoy myself with Jade.’

‘Yes,’ Katherine said, as they walked towards the car, wrapping their coats tightly around them because the cold was numbing, ‘you will take your time and you will enjoy yourself because you will be the knock-out of the entire party.’

‘And that’s an order, is it?’ Sophie laughed as she slipped into the passenger seat.

‘Absolutely.’

‘In which case, I may just as well tell you that I hate taking orders.’

CHAPTER THREE

SOPHIE saw the long line of cars and knew that she wasn’t going to enjoy herself.

‘I really don’t want to be here, Kat,’ she said, nurturing the flimsy hope that her friend might suddenly become sympathetic and offer to drive her back home. She felt awkward and uncomfortable in her dress, her shoes were already beginning to make themselves felt and, whatever Kat had said about her appearance, she couldn’t help feeling like a clown with all this make-up on.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Kat said briskly, stretching into the back seat of her car and locating her bag. ‘I’ve told you a million times you can’t bury yourself in your cottage and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist.’

She was right, of course. Sophie knew that, but it didn’t help. She could see a group of people entering the stately house, their figures silhouetted against the outside lights—black coats, lots of jewellery, upswept hair. Lots of kisses as they entered, laughing and talking among themselves. More were bringing up the rear, similarly clad, and, from the looks of it, in similar high humour. There was the distant sound of music, a live band, drifting out on the cold air. The trees were all bedecked with hundreds of white lights.

It was all very festive, but Sophie didn’t feel festive. She wished that she was back in her own home, curled up on the sofa with Jade half-asleep next to her, reading a book, listening to her daughter and vaguely watching television all at the same time.

‘Well?’ Kat asked, with her hand on the doorknob. ‘Ready?’

‘I suppose so,’ Sophie said glumly, getting out of the car and dragging her feet as they approached the house.

Annabel’s mother was waiting by the door, a short, plump woman who was incongruously and expensively attired in a long, sequinned, vivid blue evening dress. She hugged Katherine, whom she had known since the year dot, and then turned to Sophie with a smile.

‘I’m so glad you could come, Sophie,’ she said warmly. ‘We don’t see enough of you.’

Actually, Sophie saw Sheila Simpson quite a bit in and around the village and frequently at the charity events that Sophie organised. Not quite the same, though, she admitted to herself.

‘Thank you, Mrs Simpson,’ Sophie said, bending so that the older woman could brush her cheek with a kiss. ‘How is your husband?’

‘Recovering nicely, my dear.’ She ushered them in and chatted about Charles, who had recently had a heart attack. ‘Of course, he simply loathes taking it easy.’

The older woman’s eyes flitted across the massive hall and the moving mass of people, going from one room to another with drinks in their hands. Sophie recognised some of the younger faces as belonging to Annabel’s London set. She occasionally saw them around in the village and knew some from years back when Annabel used to bring them to Ashdown during the school holidays when she was back from boarding school.

‘Darlings, I must leave you.’ She patted Sophie’s hand in the manner of someone being kind to an invalid. ‘You know your way around, both of you, don’t you?’

‘Sure, Mrs Simpson,’ Kat said, her eyes gleaming. ‘We’ll just get stuck in.’

‘Annabel’s somewhere around…’ Mrs Simpson’s arms waved about in a vague gesture, but her attention was already on another group of people who were entering.

Kat pulled Sophie away out of the hall. A cloakroom was in operation in one of the downstairs bathrooms, an ornate Victorian affair which was large enough to accommodate three temporary coat rails.

‘OK, let’s see who’s here.’

Sophie nodded. Now that she was here it was ridiculous to droop, and as soon as she saw someone with a tray of champagne she helped herself to a glass and drank it very quickly, which relaxed her slightly—enough so that she could circulate with Kat with at least some semblance of brightness. By the time they stumbled upon Annabel, Caroline and half a dozen of their smart friends she was feeling merry enough to indulge in light-hearted conversation, without her nerves getting too much in her way.

She towered over the other women in the group, as she’d known she would in her heels, but after three glasses of champagne she didn’t feel gauche about it. One of the men, a tall, blond man with spectacles and hair that didn’t appear to have much of an acquaintance with a comb, was, she acknowledged with a surprising flush of pleasure, more than a little impressed with whatever she was saying.

‘Why on earth hasn’t Annabel produced you before?’ he was asking her, drinking his champagne but with his eyes glued to her face.

‘Because, John, darling…’ Annabel broke off from what she was saying to Kat and the rest of her entourage ‘…Sophie hides herself away like a little mole.’

‘What an adorable trait,’ John said in his cultured voice. ‘I’ve always been rather fond of moles.’ That somehow led to a raucous conversation about men and their predilection for ridiculous hobbies, and after a while Kat and Sophie drifted off. They bumped into several other familiar faces, all of whom seemed to be having a roaringly good time.

Supper was served very late. There was a massive table laid with a buffet, the pinnacle of which were six poached salmon, exquisitely adorned with cherry tomatoes and mange-tout.

By this time many people were somewhat under the influence of drink. Conversations were being conducted in voices that were over-hearty and punctuated with very loud bursts of laughter. Kat had managed to disappear in the direction of the music and, after helping herself to a plate of food, Sophie made her way in that general direction.

She was standing at the back of the room, idly watching the frolics on the dance floor and awkwardly trying to manoeuvre food to her mouth with a drink clasped in one hand, when a familiar voice said from next to her, ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’

Sophie felt a shiver of excited apprehension race through her like a sudden electric shock, and she turned to look at Gregory. Thank goodness she had stopped drinking after her third glass of champagne.

‘Oh, it’s you.’

He was dressed like all the other men in the room in black suit, bow tie and white shirt, but somehow he managed to make a statement in his. He was holding a glass of champagne in his hand and looking at her very carefully and minutely, half smiling.

‘Please,’ he said with a low laugh, ‘do try and keep the delight out of your voice at seeing me.’

Sophie didn’t join him in his amusement. She had flirted lightly with some of the men she had run into in the course of the evening but her instincts warned her against flirting with this man, and her instincts were fortunately in good working order at the moment. She refocused her attention on her food.

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