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He meant it; he wanted to break the cycle and give Dora and Archie a different kind of life—a life that wouldn’t require the forfeiture of their own hopes and needs.
But the truth was that once he married Dora she and Archie—like him and his sisters and his mother and his stepmothers—would disappear beneath the faultless façade of his family.
CHAPTER TEN
NOTHING—NO NUMBER of Rolls-Royces, designer dresses and private yachts—could have prepared her for this, Dora thought, looking over at the glittering guests filling the vast reception room at the Black Tiger. Charlie had been right. Parties really were his sisters’ thing.
Back in London she had been to a handful of engagement parties and most had been modest affairs, with friends and family toasting the happy couple with a glass of supermarket Prosecco.
This, though, was grander and more opulent by far.
Smoky grey chesterfields and wicker furniture flanked the dance floor, and the original nineteen-twenties café-style tables were heaving with pale apricot-coloured roses.
One thousand guests had dined on toro tartare with caviar, dim sum, and peach granita dusted with silver leaf.
Now uniformed waiters wove between them with trays of vintage champagne and bellinis while they listened and danced to the jazz band playing Cole Porter and Gershwin.
Dora gazed over at the band, a smile pulling at her mouth. They were excellent, their harmonies taking you irresistibly back to a different, more glamorous age, but without tipping over into the kind of lazy nostalgia she loathed.
‘What’s the verdict?’
Charlie. Breathing in, she braced herself against the wave of emotions both painful and pleasurable that accompanied looking at him.
‘They’re amazing.’ She smiled up at him, then glanced across the room. ‘It’s all amazing.’
‘You’re amazing,’ he said quietly. His dark eyes roamed appreciatively over her smoky-grey georgette dress. ‘You look like a movie star.’
‘Your sisters have impeccable taste,’ she said lightly.
‘Their brother does too.’
The corners of his mouth pulled into the kind of smile that made heat burrow down through her body.
‘You look like a movie star,’ she echoed, reaching out to touch the lapel of his dark suit.
Actually, he looked like danger and power and beauty. No wonder everyone was falling over themselves to talk to him.
Or that she had fallen head over heels in love with him.
Her smile slipped a little and, blanking her mind, she pasted it back on her face.
It felt odd, pushing her love for him away at their engagement party, but she had done this so many times before—let hope and possibilities flood her head—and she knew the more she let it build the more it would hurt to watch it drain away.
‘Dora—Archie grabbed my drink and he’s got all wet.’
Lei was standing beside them, holding Archie. She was wearing a black rose-smothered silk dress and she looked flawlessly beautiful, and perhaps it was because of that flawlessness that Dora noticed the slight tension in her voice.
‘I’ll change him,’ she said.
‘I’ll get Shengyi.’ Charlie glanced over his shoulder to where the nanny was hovering discreetly.
But Archie had seen Dora and was already reaching out to her.
‘It’s fine, I can do—’
She came to a stop, silenced by the flicker of longing in the other woman’s eyes.
‘Actually, Lei...could you help me?’
