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“I suspected as much,” Cressida sighed heavily. “Never fear. I have a wardrobe of Couture upstairs. You’re a little gangly, but I’m sure something will fit. I’ll put something in your room.”
Maggie grimaced at the woman’s knack for being offensive without meaning to. “Thank you,” she muttered without a hint of gratitude.
“We’ve got this covered, love,” Annie, the cook, promised with a wink.
“Oh, I know. I’m just trying to annoy her as best I can.”
“I gathered,” Annie remarked with a nod. “I’m sure she means well though.”
“Yes.” The fourth of her father’s wives, or the woman who was destined to be, at least, was kind-hearted. It wasn’t Cressida’s fault that she drove Maggie crazy.
Maggie took a perverse pleasure in shaping by hand the stars that topped the mince pies, before finally making her way to her room to get ready. By the time she pushed into the bedroom, she had barely ten minutes left in which to make herself ready.
Fortunately, Lady Cressida had gone to great lengths to ease her preparations. She eyed the dress that had been selected with a dubious expression.
She lifted it up and held it against her body. Despite being nothing like her usual style, it was a garment of great beauty. A deep, jade green in color, it was a perfect foil to her Irish complexion. It was strapless, designed to sit straight across the bust and tight to the hips, it then fell in a swathe of gauzy chiffon, to the floor. If she wore heels, it would be too short, leaving her with no choice but to stick to a pair of glittery gold ballet slippers she’d brought with her.
Cressida had also left out a fur shawl. Maggie ignored it. She’d been vegan for over a decade. Her step-mother would accept it one day.
As she descended the central staircase, she could hear the party was in full swing. Perhaps thirty or forty guests – intimate and cozy, Cressida had called it – would be swilling the finest champagne, enjoying Maggie’s canapés, and swaying their hips to the jazz band Clint had organised for the affair. He and Cressida always argued when it came to music. She adored classical and opera. Clint preferred rock and roll, and jazz.
He’d won, on this occasion, for two reasons. The party was being held in his home, and Cressida was nothing if not well mannered. And because he’d told her more people would sing along to jazz style carols than classical, with all those poncy violins to confuse things. Besides, he’d added a third point, though it had been unnecessary. “The classical band will take up half the drawing room, meaning we’d need to spill into the ball room, and you’ve made it clear that you want it to feel ‘intimate’.”
Maggie paused, halfway down the stairs and cursed. Her phone was in her room, and she needed to keep it with her. She began to retrace her steps, smiling distractedly as she thought of her little May. A weekend with Rosie, Luca and their daughter Marianna would be enormous fun for the one year old, but Maggie was missing her already.
Phone in hand, she moved back down the stairs, and turned towards the party.
In the two years, since that wild, impassioned night with Dante Velasco, she had imagined that she’d seen him everywhere she went. That night was no exception. A dark head in the corner of the room had her freezing, her whole body going into overdrive as her eyes hungrily, hopefully devoured the man.
It was not Dante. And nor would it be. This was a small party in the middle of the English countryside. Hardly the place she was most likely to run into Spanish wine-making royalty. Besides, if she’d wanted to see him again, she could have. But his words had taunted her since that night: I am my own person. I do not want to compromise that with commitments – to a family. That is not my way. How furious he would be to think she’d fallen pregnant! That she’d had his baby! No, it was better that the past stayed in the past, even if it meant her body would always long for his.
“Hello, darling,” Clint crossed to her, his mischievous eyes twinkling in his face. “You look like Cressida has waved her magic wand over you.”
Maggie pulled a wry face. “Not the kind of thing I usually dress in, that’s for sure.”
Clint rubbed a hand across his chin. It had been, once. A long time ago. Maggie had been the quintessential socialite. So much so that he’d been worried she’d end up married to some stuffed-shirt banker at twenty one. He’d certainly not expected her to be a vegan, part-time caterer with a secret love-child by God only knew who at twenty six.
“You look lovely, anyway.”
“Thanks, dad.” She kissed his cheek. “It looks like more people than expected.”
He shook his head drolly. “No. Just several of Cressida’s family are the size of two or three.”
She laughed at his unkind observation, though it was accurate. As she looked around the room, she saw many portly, overweight family members, who had nonetheless valiantly squeezed themselves into the latest fashion week dresses.
“Except that one, who looks like she hasn’t eaten in a month,” he said with more irreverent humour, nodding to a waif-thin woman against the far wall. Painfully slender, with a face Maggie recognised from a billboard in the West End, and dressed in a barely there sheath of a dress. The woman was stunning, in that heroin addict way.
Maggie hooked an arm through her father’s and leaned closer, so that no one would overhear their conversation. After all, gossiping was bad enough, but being caught out was worse. “Who is she?”
“The God-daughter.” He lifted his brows heavenward. “A terrible bore, if you ask me.”
Maggie laughed, though she felt badly for it. “Oh, daddy, models are never boring,” she remarked sarcastically, watching as the tiny thing flicked her white blonde hair over her shoulder. “Does she always look, so…”
“Like she’s got a stick up her arse? Yes. I suspect there was a bad wind change when she was younger, and her face just got caught like that.”
Now Maggie did laugh, a beautiful sound, like bells in the wind. She looked up at her dad, with every intention of scolding him, but a movement caught her attention instead. A swift, searching turn of a dark head. A response, perhaps, to her laughter.
She shifted her focus, and felt like she’d fallen through a crack in the earth’s surface. The molten lava was licking at her heels.
