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‘Are you all right, honey?’ asked her grandmother.
‘Uh—yeah...excuse me, I just have to go to the—uh—I’ll be back in a moment.’ She rushed out of the room, all flying elbows and knees.
‘Probably all that smoking playing havoc with her digestive system,’ commented Tania sarcastically. ‘You really should let me enrol her in a grooming course, Adam. It would give her so much more confidence. Then she wouldn’t have to do stupid things to make herself popular with the other girls.’
‘Is that why you think she did it?’ Adam asked mildly.
Tania shrugged. ‘Isn’t peer pressure the usual reason for these things? Maybe if she could lose some of that pudge and acquire some clothes-sense she’d feel better about herself.’
‘It’s only puppy-fat, Tania,’ Joy interceded. ‘Remember, Mary was tall and slim so I’m sure Sara’s body will mature into a very nice figure...’ Her brow wrinkled anxiously. ‘You don’t really think she worries about it, do you, Adam? She’s never said anything to me.’
‘No offence, Joy, but Sara probably feels you’re a bit out of touch with modern trends,’ Tania said. ‘It’s been five years since her mother died; maybe she needs to unburden herself to a woman who is around the age Mary would have been... Perhaps I could have a word with her, Adam, coax her to talk...’
‘Or perhaps Honor could,’ said Joy flatly.
Tania’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well, yes,’ she said sweetly. ‘I suppose it might help to talk with someone who has the same problems. But don’t you think that Honor would be the wrong person to talk about shedding puppy-fat as one gets older? I mean, no offence, Honor, but you’re not exactly role-model material in that respect.’
No offence? Distracted from her pondering on the subject of Adam’s newly revealed widowhood, Honor boiled at the hypocrisy of the glib catch-phrase that Tania had used twice in as many minutes. She now went on to hammer her point home. ‘You’re also a living contradiction that likenesses necessarily run in families. Your sister would be a far better role-model for Sara to emulate. Have you met Honor’s family, Adam? Do you know Helen?’
The hunt for information was back on. Honor turned her head to watch Adam take a sip of the white wine that he had opened with the meal. He had been behaving with strange passivity for such a dominating man, she suddenly realised. And it wasn’t abstraction—his attention had been very much focused on the conversation across the dinner table. It was more likely he had been playing some kind of waiting game...watching, brooding, planning...
Honor took a nervous gulp from her own glass. She
should never have provoked him earlier. What was he going to say now? Something provocative and clever like, I thought I did...? Yes, he’d probably love to make Honor squirm by saying something like that.
‘We’ve met.’
Honor choked in mid-swallow at his succinct, unrevealing reply. Adam leaned over and gave her a sharp slap between the shoulderblades, taking the glass from her hand and setting it down on the table.
‘All right, sweetheart?’ he asked, his tender tone an unnerving contrast to the firmness of the blow.
‘Yes, fine,’ Honor coughed, wondering what he was up to now.
He leaned closer, cupping her chin and turning her head so that he could look deep into her watering eyes. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Y-yes, yes, of course I’m sure. It just went down the wrong way,’ she stammered, feeling vulnerable to the invisible daggers she was sure were thudding into her back. It didn’t take much brain-power to work out that Tania had very possessive feelings about her brother-in-law.
A big hand tucked an errant curl behind her ear. ‘Maybe you should go easy on the wine; it seems to have a very deleterious effect on your co-ordination,’ he teased softly, in a voice that rasped Honor’s nerves like a sandpaper caress. ‘Remember the last party we attended together? You fell asleep and I had to carry you out to the car...’
His sensual innuendo was so disconcerting that it took a moment for her to recognise how cleverly he had mixed fact with fiction. He was talking about the night of the Valentine’s Ball. The last party they had both attended? It was the only one! But he made the bare facts sound so intimate...
‘That wasn’t the wine, that was the medication I was taking,’ she said, trying not to quiver at the stroke of his thumb along her captured jaw. Maybe if she could get in a little further explanation here, it would take the edge off whatever devil was driving him to play this alarming new game. ‘I was sick that night, but I had to go to the ball because I was one of the organisers—’
His thumb shifted to press over her mouth, stopping her words. His hypnotic golden-brown eyes moved even closer, blocking out her awareness of anyone else at the table.
‘Poor little Cinders. How lucky you had a prince to come to your rescue. Though I must admit, after what your sister told me, I half expected some jealous swain to swoop down on me and snatch you away...’
There was a faintly ironic undertone to his words that only Honor recognised. She flushed, remembering the lie that Helen had told him to avoid having to identify her sister.
‘I...there wasn’t one; Helen only said that because...’ Her whisper staggered to a halt, her lips dragging against the pad of his thumb with every syllable in a way that was infinitely disturbing. She could actually taste him on her tongue.
‘I did notice you weren’t wearing a wedding-ring,’ he informed her, staring at her mouth as if he knew how his thumb was making her feel. ‘Is there anyone now who might feel impelled to take serious issue with your being here with me?’
‘No, I—’ Too late she realised the trap he had enticed her into. She took hold of his wrist and pulled his hand away from her face as she came back to the realisation of where they were. With a deft flick he twisted his hand in her grasp and firmly interlaced their fingers, grinning with an infuriating smugness as he pressed their joined hands to the snowy white tablecloth.
‘Oh, yes, you’re a real prince, Adam,’ she said sarcastically. She wouldn’t fall for that cunning seduction of her reason twice!
‘Thank you, Honor.’ He dipped his head and lifted their entwined hands to plant a kiss on her knuckles as he accepted her insulting play on words with gravely mocking sincerity. ‘You flatter me with your kind homage. I’m glad to know that you consider me noble. It makes me feel worthy of a lady of gentle blood.’
