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Piers looked at the woman again, this time with a different mindset. He’d assumed Saez was simply thinking of the night ahead, who he would warm his sheets with, but perhaps he was still running on his daytime agenda.
Loring Lanchester. Was that the name on one of the cards Saez was thinking of playing during his visit to the UK?
He decided to see if he could draw Saez out.
‘Not in the best of health these days,’ he observed. ‘Old man Loring lost his marbles years ago, but won’t give up the chairmanship. And young Tom Lanchester, the nephew, is even more useless.’ He paused a moment. ‘Took some reckless decisions recently, so I heard. Wouldn’t like their asset book myself.’
He glanced at his dinner companion, to see whether his fishing line would twitch, but Diego Saez was merely looking bored, waiting for him to stop speaking.
‘So…’ mused Diego, flexing his legs slightly under the table—his chair was quite inadequate for his tall frame. ‘Why the ironclad underwear?’
Piers’s face relaxed. His initial assumption had been right after all. Saez was simply after sex. Not that he’d
get any from Tom Lanchester’s cold bitch of a sister. No one did. Certainly not that poor sod Simon Masters, who was sitting next to her and just about panting. Piers didn’t know anyone who’d got their leg over Portia Lanchester.
His brow furrowed momentarily. Hadn’t she been engaged once? A few years back? Who the hell had volunteered to get his tackle frozen in that glacier? He’d bolted, anyway, whoever he was, and married someone else, and since then her name never came up when the brandy came out—well, not unless the subject was ice maidens.
Not even Diego Saez could heat her up, thought Piers dismissively. Not that he didn’t roll an enviable number of women, but none of the ones he’d ever been seen with could have been described as cold. Hot ones, yes, like that Latino singer—Diana Someone—and the Italian opera diva, Cristina Something. Plus a French countess, a Moroccan model and a Hungarian tennis ace. And that had just been this year. A sour look, of male envy, lit his eye. Women fell over themselves to drool—and drop their knickers.
The sour look vanished. Malice gleamed briefly. No way would Portia Lanchester go for Saez.
He leant towards Diego and said confidingly, ‘Frigid, that’s why. Listen—’ he slid his hand inside his tuxedo and drew out a card that looked like an ordinary business card ‘—don’t waste your time on her. Phone this number and you’ll have someone waiting for you in your hotel suite. Tell them your spec and they’ll deliver whatever you want—and your choice of equipment.’ He proffered the card to Diego. ‘They’re all clean—I use them myself. And they take credit cards, of course.’
Diego drew his arm away and suppressed an instinct to slam his fist into Haddenham’s corrupt, narrow face. Instead, he drained the last of his wine and reached for the port bottle, which had stopped its circulation conveniently to hand. He decanted a generous measure into the appropriate glass.
‘I believe we are about to suffer for our supper,’ he remarked, looking towards the top table, where the scarlet-coated Master of Ceremonies was stepping forward, gavel at the ready, to call for silence—and then the dreaded speeches.
Diego lifted his port glass and prepared to be bored, instead of revolted.
Then, as the politician was introduced and stood up to give his prepared speech on the state of the UK economy, his eyes drifted back to where Portia Lanchester was sitting. Ramrod-straight, her well-bred chin lifted, she displayed no emotion on her fine-boned, aristocratic face.
Diego sat back again and wondered what she looked like naked.
He had every intention of finding out.
Portia sat motionless, hands in her lap, her face blank to conceal her acute boredom, as the speaker droned on, immensely pleased with the sound of his own voice.
But then the whole evening had been exquisitely tedious. God alone knew why she had given in to Simon’s endless cajolings to come along as his partner. She’d done it out of a combination of exasperation and pity. Simon kept thinking that if only he didn’t give in she would take him seriously. His dogged determination to woo her both irritated and softened her. Though she would never be stupid enough to go out with him on a real date, lest he get hopeless hopes up, tonight’s stuffy City do, with wall-to-wall bankers, had seemed innocuous enough.
She hadn’t realised just how incredibly dreadful it would be. Money and politics dominated the conversation, and she was interested in neither. She was also the only woman on her table—one of little more than a few dozen women in the whole room—and as the wine had gone down so the awareness of the several hundred men in the room to the presence of any females at all had increased accordingly. She had begun to be on the receiving end of some very open assessment—something she had always loathed.
She had reacted by adopting her usual defence—total and deliberate freezing. By refusing to acknowledge how they were looking her over she could pretend they were not. Simon’s presence did not seem to deter them sufficiently—but then he was not particularly put out by the attention she was getting. Irritatedly she knew that he was actually enjoying having his escort lusted after—it made him feel envied, and he presumably liked the idea of that.
Suppressing a sigh, half of annoyance, half of boredom, she reached out and took a sip of mineral water from her glass, then idly nibbled at a petit-four from the plate in front of her. The politician droned on, talking about interest rates and invisible earnings and fiscal instruments, none of which she had the slightest interest in.
Poor Tom. She thought instinctively of her brother. He has to know all this stuff. Not that he liked it either. But the wretched bank needed him, so he had to put up with all this boring finance-speak. At least he was escaping this shindig tonight—from the looks of him he was coming down with flu, and he was keeping indoors. She didn’t blame him.
She stared into the distance and let her mind drift away to something she was interested in—producing a definitive catalogue of the Regency portraitist Benjamin Teller. She still needed to trace several missing paintings—plus Mr Orde with Gun Dog, 1816 was proving tricky to attribute conclusively. And she still needed to identify the woman portrayed in the Young Lady with Harp, 1809. She was pretty sure she was Miss Maria Colding, of Harthwaite, Yorkshire, but needed proof. She would have to visit Harthwaite, she suspected, and check out what other family portraits were still hanging there, then sift through the county archives to see if there was a commissioning letter or bill of payment still in existence.
Finally the speech concluded and the politician resumed his seat to polite applause.
Talk broke out again at her table, and Simon leant across, patting her hand.
‘Phew, what a number! Were you completely bored?’
He sounded so anxious she hadn’t the heart to agree too acidly.
‘Does anyone actually listen to these things?’ she asked, putting a slight smile on her mouth.
