Читать книгу The Marriage Miracle - Liz Fielding - Страница 7

FUNERALS and weddings. Sebastian Wolseley hated them both. At least the first had absolved him from attending the more tedious part of the second. And gave him a cast-iron excuse to leave the celebrations once he’d done his duty by one of his oldest friends.

The last thing he felt like doing was celebrating.

‘You look as if you could do with something stronger.’

He turned from his depressed contemplation of the glass in his hand to acknowledge the woman who’d broken into his thoughts. She was the sole occupant of a table littered with the remains of the lavish buffet. The only one who had not decamped to the marquee and the dance floor. From the cool, steady way she was looking at him he had the unsettling notion that she’d been watching him, unnoticed, for some time. But then she wasn’t the kind of woman you’d notice.

Her colouring was non-descript, mousy. She was too thin for anything approaching beauty, and her pick-up line was too corny to hook his interest. But her features were strong, her eyes glittered with intelligence and it was more than just good manners that stopped him from putting down the glass and walking away.

‘Do you tap dance for an encore?’ he asked.

She lifted her eyebrows, but she didn’t smile. ‘Tap dance?’

‘You’re not the cabaret? A mind-reading act, perhaps?’ He heard the biting sarcasm coming from his mouth and wished he’d walked. He had no business inflicting his black mood on innocent bystanders. Or sitters.

‘It doesn’t take a mind-reader to see that you’re not exactly focussed on this whole “til-death-us-do-part” thing,’ she countered, still not smiling, but not storming off, offended, either. ‘You’ve been holding your glass for so long that the contents must be warm. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that you’d look more at home at a wake than at a reception to celebrate the blessing of a marriage.’

‘Definitely a mind-reader,’ he said, finally abandoning the barely touched glass on her table. ‘Although I have a feeling that the wake I’ve just left will by now be making this party look sedate.’

And then he felt really guilty.

First he’d been rude to the woman, and when that hadn’t driven her away he’d tried to embarrass her. Apparently without success. She merely tilted her head slightly to the side, reminding him of an inquisitive bird.

‘Was it someone close?’ she enquired, rejecting the usual hushed, reverential tone more usually adopted when speaking to the recently bereaved. She might just as easily have been asking him if he’d like a cup of tea.

Such matter-of-factness was an oddly welcome respite from the madness that had overtaken his life in the last week and for the first time in days he felt a little of the tension slip away.

‘Close enough. It was my mad, bad Uncle George.’ Then, ‘Well, he was a distant cousin, actually, but he was so much older…’

She propped her elbows on the table, framing her chin with her hands. ‘In what way was he mad and bad?’

‘In much the same way as his namesake, Byron.’

Even in the dusky twilight of a long summer evening, with only candles and the fairy lights strung from the trees for illumination, her face had no softness, nothing of conventional prettiness, but her fine skin was stretched over good bones. The strength, it occurred to him, came from within. She wasn’t flirting with him. She was interested.

‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Such a temptation for foolish women. So, was the riotous wake an expression of relief?’ she continued earnestly. ‘Or a celebration of a life lived to the full?’

Too late now to walk away, even if he’d wanted to, and, pulling out the chair opposite her, he sat down.

‘That rather depends on your point of view. The family tended to the former, his friends to the latter.’

‘And you?’

He sat back. ‘I’m still struggling to come to terms with it,’ he said. ‘But how many people, knowing that they have weeks left, would take the trouble to arrange the kind of theatrical exit that would bring joy to their friends and scandalise their family? The kind of extravagant wake that people will be talking about for years?’

‘Theatrical?’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Are we talking black horses? Ostrich plumes?’

‘The works. Queen Victoria would have been proud,’ he said. ‘Although whether she would have been amused by a wake at which nothing but smoked salmon, caviar and vintage champagne is served, I’m not so sure.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Yes, well, he wanted everyone to have a damn good time; an instruction which his many friends are, even now, taking to their hearts.’

‘That doesn’t sound mad or bad to me, but rather wonderful. So why aren’t you?’

‘Having a damn good time?’ Good question. ‘Perhaps because I’m in mourning for my own life.’ She waited, apparently the perfect listener, recognising that he needed someone to talk to, knowing that sometimes only a stranger would do. ‘I’m the one he nominated to clear up the empties—metaphorically speaking—when the partying is done.’

‘Really?’ She didn’t miss the oddity that he’d choose a much younger, apparently distant relative. ‘You’re a lawyer?’

‘A banker.’

‘Oh, well, that’s a good choice.’

‘Not if you’re the banker in question.’

She pulled a face. Not exactly a smile, but oddly cheering nonetheless. ‘Obviously the reckoning is about more than a few crates of champagne.’

‘I’m afraid so. But you’re right—it’s terribly bad manners to bring my troubles to a wedding. I really hadn’t intended doing more than putting in an appearance to toast the happy couple, and I’ve done that. I should call a taxi.’

He didn’t move.

‘Would a decent single-malt whisky help lay your ghosts?’

There was nothing of the mouse about her eyes, he decided. They were an unusual colour, more amber than brown, with a fringe of thick lashes, and her mouth was wide and full. He had a sudden notion to see it smile, really smile.

‘It might,’ he conceded. ‘I’m prepared to give it a try if you’ll join me.’ Then he looked towards the heaving marquee and wished he’d kept his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted to do was push his way through the joyful throng to the bar.

‘No need to battle through the dancing hordes,’ she assured him. ‘Just go through those French windows and you’ll find a decanter on the sofa table.’

He glanced towards the house, then at her, this time rather more closely.

‘Making rather free with our host’s hospitality, aren’t you?’ he suggested, vaguely surprised to discover that he was the one grinning.

‘He wouldn’t object. But in this instance the hospitality is mine. I live in the garden flat,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Matty Lang. Best woman and cousin to the bride.’

‘Sebastian Wolseley,’ he replied, taking it. Her hand was small, but there was nothing soft about it and her grip was firm.

‘The big-shot New York banker? I wondered what you’d look like when I was writing the invitations.’

‘You did?’ He recalled the exquisite copperplate script that had adorned the gilt-edged invitation card to the blessing of the marriage of Francesca and Guy Dymoke and the reception they were holding in their garden to celebrate the fact. ‘Isn’t it the bride’s job to write the invitations?’

‘I’ve no idea, but in the event the bride had other things on her mind at the time.’

‘Oh, well, so long as she has time to concentrate on her marriage I don’t suppose it matters who writes them. She runs her own company, I understand.’

‘She didn’t have much choice,’ Matty replied, rather less cordially, and it occurred to him that he must have sounded unnecessarily critical.

‘No?’ he asked, not especially interested in who’d written the invitations or why. But he’d been rude—wedding celebrations tended to bring out the worst in him; good manners demanded that he allow his victim to put him right.

‘No,’ she repeated. ‘But on this occasion she wasn’t upstairs, busily drumming up some brilliant new PR stunt, she was in the throes of childbirth.’

‘That would certainly count as a legitimate excuse,’ he agreed.

Perhaps deciding that she’d overreacted slightly, Matty Lang lifted her shoulders in a minimal shrug. ‘To be honest, I did feel a bit guilty afterwards. She really wanted to write them herself. But I had to do something to keep my mind occupied and I’d have only been in the way upstairs.’

‘You did them quite beautifully,’ he assured her. ‘I hope she was properly grateful.’

‘Gratitude doesn’t come into it.’ Then, ‘Are you and Guy close friends?’ she asked, not that easily appeased. ‘Or is this duty visit simply the gloss on a thoroughly bloody day?’

‘I didn’t say it was a duty visit. Merely that I hadn’t intended to stay for long. As for friendship, well, Guy and I bonded at university over our mutual interest in beer and women…’ Realising that was perhaps not the most tactful thing to say at the man’s wedding celebrations, he took a verbal sidestep and went on, ‘But you’re right; we haven’t seen nearly enough of one another in the last few years. I live…’ lived, he mentally corrected himself, lived ‘…in New York. And Guy never stayed put in one place long enough for me to catch up with him.’

‘He’s a regular stay-at-home these days, I promise you,’ she assured him.

‘Good for him.’ Then, ‘Why?’

‘Why is he a regular stay-at-home?’

‘One look at his wife answers that question,’ he replied. ‘Why did you want to know what I look like?’

‘Oh, I see. Well, as best woman I get the pick of the unattached males.’ At which point he was amused to see the faintest touch of a blush colour the cheeks of the very cool Miss Lang. ‘Guy, I have to tell you, was no help,’ she went on quickly. ‘The best he could come up with for you was “tallish and darkish”. Friends you might be, but my enquiry regarding the colour of your eyes met with a total blank.’

‘No? Well, to be honest I couldn’t say what colour his are, either, but it’s been a while since we’ve been in the same country.’

‘His excuse was that he’d left gazing into your eyes to the countless females who trailed after you. But even if he had been that observant, I can well understand his difficulty.’

‘Okay, I’m hooked. In what way are my eyes difficult?’

‘They’re not difficult, just changeable. At first sight I would have said they were grey, but now I’m not so sure.’ Then, ‘Drink?’ she prompted. ‘Add a little water to mine. Not too much.’

‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be doing your best woman duty and strutting your stuff with the best man?’

There was just the tiniest hesitation before she said, ‘Would you believe he’s married? To the most gorgeous redhead you’ve ever seen. I ask you, what’s the point of a best man who isn’t available for the best woman to have her wicked way with? I can’t believe someone as smart as Guy could get it so wrong.’

‘Shocking,’ he said, almost but not totally certain that she was kidding. Women usually smiled at him. This one didn’t. He’d changed his mind about her flirting, she was flirting, quite outrageously, but she didn’t smile, or bat her eyelashes, or do anything that women usually did. He wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, but she’d got his full attention. ‘Definitely time for that drink.’ Then, since flirting under any circumstances should not be a one-way transaction, ‘Unless I can offer myself as a substitute?’

‘For the best man?’

‘Since you’ve been so badly let down,’ he confirmed.

Guy had asked him, but he hadn’t anticipated being in London at the time…

‘Are you suggesting that we disappear into the shrubbery and fool around, Mr Wolseley?’

Her gaze was steady as a rock, and that wide mouth hadn’t so much as twitched. For a moment he found himself floundering, as if he’d stepped unexpectedly out of his depth.

He took a slow breath to steady himself and said, ‘Well, to be honest, that’s a little fast for me, Miss Lang. I like to get to know a girl before I take her clothes off. And I prefer to do it in comfort.’

‘That’s no fun. Not entering into the spirit of the thing at all.’

‘I don’t have to know her that well,’ he said seriously. ‘A dance or two—dinner, maybe? Once that hurdle is passed and we get to first-name terms I’m perfectly willing to be led astray.’

‘But only in comfort.’

‘I like to take my time.’

Without warning her face lit up in the kind of smile that took the sting out of his day, so that dancing with her seemed like the best idea he’d had for a long time.

‘You like to dance?’ she asked.

He had the oddest feeling that he was being tested in some way. ‘Yes, but we can pass if you’re hungry. Go straight to dinner.’

‘And are you good?’

Definitely being tested.

‘At dancing?’

‘That’s what we were talking about,’ she reminded him.

‘Was it?’ He didn’t think so, but he played along. ‘I decline to answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate me.’

‘Come, come. No false modesty, please.’ She lifted her head, listening to the music coming from the marquee, then shook her head. ‘No, that’s a waltz. Everyone can waltz. Can you foxtrot?’

‘Hasn’t that been banned?’ he enquired.

‘Too advanced for you, hmm? How about a tango, then?’

‘Without treading on your toes? That I couldn’t guarantee. But give me a rose to clutch beneath my teeth and I’m willing to give it a try.’

Her laugh was wholehearted and her mouth didn’t disappoint. ‘Well, that’s certainly the best offer I’ve had for quite a while, but don’t panic. Nothing is getting me out of this chair for the rest of the evening.’

He frowned. He’d escaped the marquee once he’d done his duty, fully intent on leaving, but what was she doing out here on her own?

‘Is it such hard work being a best woman?’ he asked.

‘You wouldn’t believe how tough. The hen party was an epic of organisation, and a bride doesn’t get to look that perfect without someone to ensure she gets the attention she deserves on her big day.’

He followed her gaze to where the bride stood arm-in-arm at the entrance to the marquee with her groom, getting some air, chatting to friends. ‘You did a great job. Guy’s a lucky man,’ he said.

‘He deserves his luck. And Fran deserves him.’

That had been said with feeling, and he glanced back at her. ‘You’re close?’

‘More like sisters than cousins,’ she agreed. ‘We’re both only children from the kind of dysfunctional families that give marriage a bad name.’

‘Believe me, if you had a family like mine you’d realise that’s not all bad news,’ he assured her. Then, because he didn’t want to go there, he said, ‘I’ll go and fetch that Scotch.’

Matty didn’t take her eyes off Sebastian Wolseley as he walked away from her. Tall, wide-shouldered, with beautifully cut dark hair that lifted in tiny ruffles in the light breeze, he might have stepped from any woman’s fantasy. And his eyes changed from a dull slate to deep blue-green when he smiled—like the sea when the sun shone.

He was a pleasure to look at, and she’d been watching him ever since he’d slipped late into the reception. Seen the warmth with which he’d been greeted by Guy. But, although he was present in body, he’d clearly been somewhere else in spirit.

‘Matty…’ Toby, her cousin’s three-year-old son, pushed between her and the circular table, dragging at the floor-length cloth and causing mayhem amongst the glasses as he leaned against her knees, laying his head on her lap. ‘Hide me.’

‘From what?’

‘Connie. She says I have to go to bed.’

She rescued Sebastian’s glass as it rolled towards the edge of the table, spilling champagne in a wide semicircle as it went. The stem was still warm from his hand…

‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked, setting it upright, giving her full attention to Toby.

He yawned. ‘Mmm.’

He was already half asleep and she looked around, hoping to see Fran’s housekeeper, Connie. He wouldn’t have given her the slip so easily before the arrival of his baby sister, but he was no longer the dead centre of his small world. Maybe, overwhelmed by an occasion when his mother was the focus of attention, he needed a little one-to-one reassurance.

Ignoring the smears of chocolate decorating his cheek, she lifted him up onto her lap, nestling him against her shoulder.

‘You know, you did a great job today, taking care of the rings. I was so proud of you.’

He snuggled closer. ‘I didn’t drop them, did I?’

‘No.’ She gave him a hug. ‘You were a star.’

Sebastian walked up a shallow ramp into an inviting room softly lit by a single lamp. On the left was a drawing board, a computer workstation—a mini studio lit by a floor-to-ceiling window.

Matty Lang was an artist? He looked around, half expecting to see her work on the walls, but she favoured woven fabric hangings rather than conventional pictures. Or maybe that was her medium. There was nothing on the drawing board to give him a clue.

There was something about the set-up that didn’t look quite right, but what with jet lag, an excess of family disapproval at the funeral and the realisation that while it was possible to dispense with the ‘noblesse’, the ‘oblige’ was inescapable, his wits were not at their sharpest.

Whisky, on top of the single glass of champagne he’d drunk to toast the memory of George, was probably not his wisest move, but he wasn’t driving and, since wisdom was not going to change anything, he might as well behave like a fool. It wouldn’t be the first time.

On his right there was a large sofa, angled to look into the garden. It was flanked with end tables—one loaded with books, the other with the remotes for a small television set and hi-fi unit.

It looked desperately inviting, and he would have given a lot just to surrender to its comfort and stretch out for five minutes, eyes closed. He resisted the temptation and instead poured a small amount of Scotch into two glasses. He walked into the kitchen, took mineral water from the fridge and added a splash to both glasses before carrying them back outside.

And immediately he saw what, if he hadn’t been so involved in his own problems, he should have noticed from the beginning. What the ramp—instead of a step—should have alerted him to.

Realised what had been missing from her workstation. But then why would she need a conventional chair? Because the reason Matty Lang wasn’t dancing had nothing to do with exhaustion from her best woman duties.

It was because she was in a lightweight, state-of-the art wheelchair.

The tablecloth, which had hidden the wheels from the casual observer, had been pulled askew, and for a moment he hesitated, lost in a confusion of embarrassment, as he remembered asking her if she tap-danced, and sheer admiration for her completely unfazed response.

He’d enjoyed her sense of humour, but now he could appreciate it for what it truly was. Not just dry, but wicked, as she’d teased him about his invitation to dance. Precious little self-pity there.

She glanced up and caught him staring. Made a tiny moue with her lips, acknowledging the truth.

‘I’m not sure I should be giving you this,’ he said, handing her a glass. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get a ticket for being drunk-in-charge. Especially since you’ve got a passenger on board.’

She took a sip, rewarded him with a smile for not losing his head and bolting and, hampered by the child she was holding, gave him back the glass. ‘Can you put that on the table for me?’ Then, ‘Have you met Toby?’

‘No, I haven’t had that pleasure…’ He put down the glasses and folded himself up so that he was on the boy’s level. ‘Although I’ve heard all about you.’ He offered his hand. ‘I’m Sebastian. How d’you do?’

The child took his hand and shook it formally. ‘I’m Toby Dymoke,’ he said. ‘Twice.’

‘Twice?’

‘It was my daddy’s name, and it’s my new daddy’s name, too.’

‘Well, that’s handy. Not having to remember a new one.’

‘They were brothers. I’m a brother, too. I’ve got a baby sister.’

‘Really? Me too. At least, I’ve got three of them, although they’re not babies any more. Great, isn’t it?’

‘Great,’ Toby said, and with an expert wriggle slid down. ‘I’m going to find her now.’ And he ran off.

There was a momentary silence. Then Matty said, ‘You have three sisters?’

‘Three older sisters, actually. Bossy, Pushy and Lippy.’

‘Not that great, then?’

‘Hardly the hero-worshipping kind who trailed after me, the way they do in the storybooks,’ he admitted.

‘They gave you a hard time?’

‘Gave? You should have been at George’s funeral. Just because I’m his executor they blame me for the “entire tasteless performance”. I’m quoting, you understand.’

‘I understand.’

She had a way of not smiling, but making you feel as if she was. Inside.

‘And for the fact that there was no dry sherry.’

She pulled her lips back in an attempt to stop herself from laughing out loud, then apologised. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not at all funny.’

‘It should have been.’ He thought, actually, that if she’d been there to share the joke it would have been bearable.

‘What about your parents?’ she asked, distracting him.

‘What? Oh, my mother looked tragic and drank the champagne; my father harrumphed and said that it was a bit of a rum do.’

‘And your sisters were a complete embarrassment?’

‘Nothing new there.’

‘While you, of course, were always the perfect brother. No frogspawn in their face cream, no spiders in their slippers, no itching powder in their beds.’

‘Frogspawn in their face cream?’

‘Forget I said that. That one is reserved for wicked stepmothers.’

‘You did that to your stepmother?’

‘Oh, I did all of them. But then I’m not nice.’

‘That rather depends on what prompted it.’

‘My father married her, poor woman. That was enough.’ Then, when he didn’t respond, ‘I told you. I’m not nice.’

He shook his head and, taking his cue from her about being direct, unemotional, he said, ‘It wasn’t your character I was thinking about. It just occurred to me that if you managed to fish for frogspawn you can’t always have been in a wheelchair.’

‘You think a wheelchair would have stopped me? If I couldn’t have managed it myself, I would have persuaded someone else to get it for me.’

‘Fran?’ he asked, glancing in the direction of the bride, who smiled at him before leaning close to Guy to whisper something in his ear.

‘I wouldn’t have told her why I wanted it,’ she assured him. ‘She is much nicer than me. But it wasn’t necessary. The wheelchair has only been part of my life since a combination of speed, black ice and an absence of due care and attention led to a close encounter with a brick wall.’

There was no self-pity in her words. It was a throwaway line with a matching smile—a practised defence against unwanted sympathy, he guessed—and she did it so well that he knew most people would grab at the opportunity to smile with her and move on.

Having seen what she could really do with a smile when she meant it, he wanted to know what had really happened—what she really felt.

‘How long?’ he asked.

‘Three years.’ And for a moment he glimpsed something the smile was supposed to hide. Not the three years that had passed, but the lifetime to come. Then, filling the silence while he thought about that, she said, ‘Don’t look so tragic. It could have been a lot worse.’

Forcing himself to match her matter-of-factness, he replied, ‘Of course it could. You could be dead.’ And then, remembering that momentary glimpse of something darker between the smiles, he wondered.

But Matty laughed, provoked out from behind the lurking shadows. ‘Cheery soul, aren’t you? Actually, I was being rather more down-to-earth about my condition.’ Seeing his confusion, she grinned. ‘It’s an incomplete lower spine injury, which means I can at least use the bathroom just like anyone else.’

‘Oh, well, I can see how that’s a bonus. Although you’d have been in trouble if you’d been a man.’

She laughed out loud. ‘I like you, big-shot banker. Most of the people here would have taken to their heels by now.’

‘Is that why you do it?’

‘Do what?’ she enquired innocently.

‘Test people?’

‘I only test the patronising ones who talk over my head. The ones who ask Fran if it’s okay for me to have a drink—as if, because I can’t stand up, I’m incapable of carrying on a normal conversation. The ones who speak to me as if I’m hard of hearing.’

He glanced around at the empty terrace and then back at her. ‘You seem to have got it down to a fine art.’

‘Lots of practice. But once we get this far I do like to get the bathroom thing out of the way, since sooner or later people start to worry about it. I find being open and direct makes for a more relaxing conversation.’

‘Liar. You just want to make them squirm.’

‘Are you squirming?’

‘What do you think?’ Then, ‘How about sex?’

‘Now?’ she asked, as if he’d just propositioned her. ‘I thought you were a man who liked to get to know a woman first.’

‘I’m open to persuasion. So, is it a problem?’

‘Nothing is a problem if you want it badly enough, Sebastian. For instance, I’m assured that, if I was prepared to strap myself into braces and put myself through several circles of hell, I could get up off my backside and stand on my own two feet. Even walk, after a fashion, although no one is promising it would be much fun, or even a remotely practical way to get about. Nothing as simple, or graceful, as my chair.’ Again there was that wry little smile. ‘And if you can’t tango, what’s the point?’

He didn’t buy that, not for a minute, but she’d changed the subject and he didn’t press it. Instead, picking up the lead she’d trailed to draw him away from the dark side of her life and back into the light, he asked, ‘What would you have done if I’d been up for the foxtrot?’

‘Oh, please! Most men’s eyes glaze over at the first mention of a simple waltz.’

‘You didn’t give me a chance to glaze,’ he objected.

‘No, but then I was certain a man like you would know that you can smooch to a waltz. No one under sixty has the first idea how to foxtrot,’ she went on, ‘so I knew I was safe with that one.’

‘So, we delay the dance until you’ve decided that I’m worth the effort. I’ll just call a cab and we’ll go somewhere quiet for dinner.’

Even as he took out his cellphone it occurred to him that he had no idea if she could manage a cab. Or whether any of the restaurants he knew were wheelchair accessible. And while he hesitated, confronted by a reality that was quite new to him, Guy came to his rescue.

‘Matty, Fran wants you in the marquee. Apparently she’s got some journalist slavering to look at that alphabet book you made for Toby.’

‘She’s what? It’s her wedding reception, for heaven’s sake!’

‘Hey, don’t blame me. I’m just the messenger. Since she’s discovered how good she is at business I get the feeling that nothing is going to stop her from taking over the world.’

‘I know,’ she said, backing away from the table. ‘To be honest I find it just a little bit scary.’

As Sebastian moved to accompany her, Guy, hand on his shoulder, detained him. ‘Oh, no. My lovely wife has plans for you, too.’ Then, as if suddenly aware that he’d interrupted something, ‘You don’t mind if I borrow him for a moment, do you, Matty?’

‘You can keep him, darling. I’ve been neglecting my duties for long enough.’ She extended her hand in a gesture that clearly said goodbye. ‘Lovely to meet you, Sebastian.’

He held it rather than shook it. ‘I thought we were going to have dinner?’

‘Thanks, but it’s been a long day. Next time you’re in London, perhaps.’ As if to emphasise her dismissal, she disentangled her fingers and, with a little wave, said, ‘Try and be kinder to your sisters; I’m sure you needed bossing. And give my love to New York.’

She didn’t wait for a response, but executed a neat ninety-degree turn and moved swiftly along the path. He watched her until she had been swallowed up in the crowd of people milling around the entrance, then he turned back to Guy.

‘She’s some woman.’

‘Yes, she is. I’m sorry if I broke up something…’

‘No. You heard her. We’ll have dinner next time I’m in London.’

Guy grinned. ‘She doesn’t know you’re staying?’

‘I don’t believe I mentioned it.’

Most people had deserted the gathering dusk of the garden for the flower-scented warmth of the marquee, and Matty paused for a moment in the entrance, assailed by a sudden ache in her throat as she watched couples wrapped in each other’s arms swaying to the music.

She had so loved to dance. Loved the intimacy of being close to a man, her arms about his neck, while he whispered hot desire in her ear.

She shivered a little, looked back to where she’d been sitting. But as the crowd shifted she could see that the terrace was empty and, as she remembered the whispered exchange between Guy and Francesca, it took all her will-power to resist the feeling that Sebastian had sent out some kind of ‘rescue me’ signal.

She’d liked him. Wanted to believe he was better than that. And dinner, once, would have been special. But then he’d have gone away. And even if he hadn’t—

‘There you are,’ Fran said, appearing at her side, saving her from her thoughts. ‘Susie Palmer, the reporter who wrote that first piece about my business, wants to meet you—talk about Toby’s alphabet book.’

‘You gave her a copy?’

‘Forgive me for being a smug mother, but I wanted her to know that you’d made the original for Toby.’

‘If I was Toby’s mother I’d be smug. Has Connie found him, by the way? He was running around in his pyjamas a little while ago.’

‘Forget Toby for a moment. This woman has it in her power to give you the kind of publicity money can’t buy.’

She wanted to tell Fran that she didn’t want any kind of publicity. She wanted to say, Don’t do this to me. I’m not you…

But her cousin was glowing with happiness, wanting so much to include her in her joy, so instead she smiled and said, ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Lead the way.’