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Christy and Louise exchanged surprised looks.
‘Had he and your father had a quarrel, then, Lady Anthony?’ Christy asked gently, not sure whether or not she would be rebuffed.
‘In a way… However, you haven’t come here to talk about the past.’
Taking her hint that the subject was not one she wanted to pursue, Christy stood to one side while Louise studied the room. They were just discussing the mass of banked plants and flowers Louise intended to place in front of the raised stage which would hold the small band when Amanda walked in, her arm tucked proprietorially through Dominic’s.
‘Ah, there you are, my dear. We were just discussing the flowers.’
Amanda managed to look both bored and supercilious at the same time. ‘Mummy always uses Moyses Stevens. She says that no one else can possibly compare with them.’
Christy, who knew the top people’s florist’s quite well through David, who always used them to supply flowers for his parties, flushed a little uncomfortably at Amanda’s lack of tact, but Louise seemed perfectly calm and at ease.
‘Yes, they are good, aren’t they,’ she agreed pleasantly. ‘I was lucky enough to go on one of their courses a couple of years ago, and I certainly learned a lot.’
Christy nearly cheered at the pleasant way that Louise had put the other woman in her place, especially when Louise didn’t linger over her victory but instead went on quietly to explain to them all just what she had in mind.
‘Fresh flowers are very expensive at this time of year, so I’m hoping to get away with plenty of greenery and only the minimal amount of flowers. Pink and white, of course, to tone in with everything else.’
There were several rather tarnished mirrors hanging on the wall, and Louise explained how she hoped to provide floral frames for them. Even Amanda looked reluctantly impressed.
It was going dark before Louise was finished. Christy glanced at her watch and asked Lady Anthony if she could possibly use her phone to ring for a taxi.
‘There’s no need for that,’ Dominic told her in a clipped, almost strained voice. ‘I’ll run you back.’
‘Oh, but darling, I wanted you to stay for supper. It’s your first evening off this week…and…’
‘I’m sorry, Amanda, but I’ve promised to have dinner with the Major. He gets rather lonely, you know.’
Dominic seemed to be looking at Lady Anthony as he spoke, and an incredibly farfetched and surely impossible suspicion suddenly crossed Christy’s mind. Could the Major and Lady Anthony possibly have been romantically involved at one time?
It seemed impossible, and yet… Telling herself that she was letting her imagination get the better of her, Christy tried to refuse Dominic’s offer of a lift, but he wouldn’t let her.
A cold east wind was blowing when they got outside. Christy huddled deeper into her padded jacket. She hadn’t worn her fur since that last occasion, but now she wished that she had put it on. It made no difference her knowing that Meryl had chosen it for her; Dominic’s remarks still hurt.
‘Get in.’
Dominic unlocked the door and opened it for her. The inside of his car smelled of leather and some indefinable masculine odour that her body recognised as being part of Dominic himself.
It was shaming how readily her body responded to such minimal stimulation, and if she hadn’t known herself better she might almost have described her reaction as wanton. It was hard not to give in to the temptation to remember what it had felt like to be held in his arms, to be kissed…
She tensed as Dominic settled himself beside her and started the engine. As he backed the car round skilfully she looked through the side window.
They were half-way down the lane before he spoke, his terse, ‘I haven’t thanked you yet for all the hard work you’ve put in for this ball, Christy,’ making her say equally curtly,
‘There’s nothing to thank me for; after all, I’m not doing it for you personally, am I?’
After that he made no further attempts to engage her in conversation, and she told herself that she was glad.
As he stopped the car for her to get out, she made one more attempt to dissuade him from driving her to the ball, but to her consternation, instead of agreeing with her that his giving her a lift wasn’t necessary, he said savagely, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Christy! What are you trying to do? Make everyone else as aware as I am how much you loathe me? You know quite well that your parents will worry about you if…’
‘Oh, all right.’ She slammed his car door childishly as she walked away from him, giving vent to her temper. He was right, of course: her parents would worry, and her father wouldn’t understand her insistence on getting a taxi when Dominic had volunteered to take her.
* * *
‘Come and let me have a look at you when you’re ready.’
If she ever managed to get ready, Christy thought fatalistically. It seemed as though the phone hadn’t stopped ringing all day long with one query or another. She wasn’t even sure that she could summon the energy to go to the ball. No, it wasn’t that that was making her so reluctant to get ready, she acknowledged. It was the knowledge that she would have to watch Dominic with Amanda…watch them dancing together…watch them…
Stop it…stop it…she urged herself, clenching her hands into fists. She was deliberately tormenting herself.
No more snow had fallen, and she had managed to get in to Setondale at lunchtime to have her hair done. Privately she wasn’t sure what she thought of the wild mane of curls that the stylist had teased from her locks.
The stylist, a pretty young girl, had assured her that she looked absolutely fantastic, and the torrent of wild curls was certainly in keeping with her gown.
She daren’t risk a shower in case it flattened her hair, but fortunately she had had the forethought to have one before going out, and as she stripped off her clothes she caught the faint, lingering traces of her scented body lotion. As she smoothed more of it into her skin she wondered why on earth she was bothering. Women scented their bodies for the enjoyment of their lovers. Her hands stilled, her nails digging into the smooth firmness of her thigh as she tried not to imagine what it would be like to have Dominic as her lover.
That last summer she had gone swimming with him one day and had been both shocked and fascinated by the male structure of his body. In her mind’s eye she could recapture the memory of the dark shadowing of hair covering his chest and disappearing beneath the top of his swimming shorts. That had been just before she had realised the true nature of her feelings for him, and she could still recall the squirming embarrassment-cum-excitement curling through her body as he stripped off.
‘What’s the matter?’ he had teased her, tugging her hair with gentle fingers.
The smell of the summer grass and the scent of his skin were impressed on her senses for all time, and she could still recall the heart-thumping, dizzying realisation of how she felt about him.
‘Dominic.’
She wasn’t even aware of saying his name. Tears filled her eyes and she shook them away, despising herself for being so vulnerable.
She put on clean underwear: brief satin panties and a matching suspender belt in a pretty soft cream that had been a Christmas present from her parents. She couldn’t wear a br
a under her dress. She avoided her reflection in the mirror as she slid on silk stockings, and then pulled on her old dressing-gown before starting on her make-up.
The gauche, uncertain girl she had been when she first went to London no longer existed, and she applied skilled touches of colour to her eyes and skin with the expertise she had learned during her years as David’s assistant.
Downstairs the grandfather clock sounded the hour. Soon Dominic would be here. Christy shivered slightly as she stood up and checked her evening bag. She was ready. All she had to do was put on her dress.
She stepped into it, swearing mildly under her breath as she fought with the mass of petticoats. It zipped up more easily than she remembered, but then her mother had already commented that she seemed to have lost weight.
The dress had been designed for a play where every historical detail had to be exact, but it still came as a shock to realise how much of the upper curves of her breasts the lace-trimmed neckline revealed. And surely her curves had never been quite as provocative and luscious as they appeared to be now? The fabric moulded and held her breasts into a rounded fullness that made her frown and chew a little on her bottom lip.
Ridiculously, when she tried on her mask and looked at herself in the mirror she felt slightly better about the neckline of the dress, as though somehow hiding behind her mask gave her some sort or protection from her own awareness of her body.
She held her breath slightly when she went in to show her mother, but she needn’t have worried. She made no comment at all about her neckline, instead marvelling at the beauty of her gown. When Christy drew her attention to her exposed breasts, her mother laughed and said robustly, ‘I suppose it is rather provocative, but only in the nicest possible way.’
Even so, Christy was glad of the velvet cloak that Meryl had suggested that she hire, and she was very careful to keep it carefully closed when she heard the sound of Dominic’s car, and her father opening the door to him.
‘I’d better go,’ she told her mother. ‘Dominic will want to be there early.’
