by Penny Jordan
She couldn’t. She wasn’t going to try. She had been a fool even to think of agreeing to Dee’s outrageous plan, but she had agreed and something warned her that it wasn’t going to be easy to convince Dee that she wanted to change her mind.
And if she backed out and Anna didn’t, how was it going to look? She was, after all, Beth’s best friend and, indeed, perhaps the best way of convincing Dee that her plan wouldn’t work would be for her, Kelly, to show her how impossible it was going to be, by going to tonight’s ball. She would be safe enough. There was no way that Julian Cox was going to repeat his attempt to come on to her, not after the way she had put him down the first time. And once she had failed to re-attract his notice Dee would surely accept that she had done her best and allow the subject to drop.
Yes, far better to do things that way than to risk offending Dee, who was, after all, only acting out of kindness and affection for Beth.
Where on earth were those wretched headache tablets? She had pulled everything out of their small medicine cabinet without finding them, and she knew she had bought some. And then she remembered she had given them to Beth, after the terrible crying jags she had had after her break-up with Julian had left her with a splitting headache. Glumly Kelly made her way to their small kitchen and filled the kettle.
The flat above the shop was on two floors; on the upper storey were hers and Beth’s bedrooms and their shared bathroom, and on the lower floor was their comfortably sized living room, a small dining room and an equally small kitchen.
Outside at the rear of the property was a pretty little garden, and at the bottom of it was the workshop which Kelly had made her own territory. That was where she worked on her new designs and painted the china she had accepted as private commissions. Painting pretty porcelain pieces and enamel boxes was her speciality.
Before joining forces with Beth, Kelly had worked as a freelance from her parents’ home in Scotland, supplying her pretty hand-decorated enamel boxes to an exclusive London store.
At three o’clock, with the shop still busy with both browsers and buyers, Kelly acknowledged that she was not going to be able to make time to snatch so much as a quick sandwich lunch, never mind drive over to Dee’s.
Ironically this Sunday had been one of their busiest since they had opened the shop, and she had not only sold several of her more expensive pieces, she had also taken orders for seven special commissions from a Japanese visitor who had particularly liked her enamel-ware boxes.
At four o’clock, when she was gently showing the last browser out of the shop so that she could lock up, she was beginning to panic, not just about the fact that it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was going to have to go through with Dee’s plans for the evening but, femalely, because she knew that she simply did not have in her wardrobe a dress suitable for such an occasion. She and Beth had ploughed every spare bit of cash they had into their business—both of them had been helped with additional loans from their bank, their parents and Beth’s grandfather. Anna, too, had insisted on making them a cash gift, to, as she’d put it, ‘cover any extras’. They were beginning to show a small profit, but they certainly weren’t making anything like enough to warrant the purchase of expensive evening dresses.
Ordinarily, knowing she was attending such an occasion, Kelly would have done as she had done for her graduation ball and trawled the antiques shops and markets to find something she could adapt, but on this occasion there simply wasn’t time, and the smartest thing she had in her wardrobe right now was the elegant dress and coat she had originally bought for her brother’s wedding and which, though smart, was hardly the kind of outfit she could wear to a charity ball.
After she’d checked that she had securely locked the shop and that the alarm was switched on she made her way up to the flat. She was still finding it hard to understand what on earth had possessed her to agree to Dee’s outrageous scheme last night. She was normally so careful and cautious, so in control of her life. Beth was the gentle, easily manipulated one of the two of them; she was far more stubborn and self-assured. Too stubborn, her brother often affectionately told her.
Certainly she knew her own mind; she was, after all, a woman of twenty-four, adult, mature, educated and motivated, a woman who, whilst she would ultimately want to have a loving partner and children, was certainly in no rush to commit herself to a relationship. The man with whom she eventually settled down would have to accept and understand that she would expect to be treated as an equal partner in their relationship, that she would expect in him the same qualities she looked for in a best friend: loyalty, honesty, a good sense of fun, someone who would share her interests and her enthusiasms, someone who would enhance her life and not, as she had seen so often happen in so many other relationships, make the kind of demands on her that would prevent her from living her life as she really wanted to live it.
‘But what happens if you fall in love with someone who isn’t like that?’ Beth had once questioned when they had been discussing men and relationships.
‘I won’t,’ Kelly had responded promptly.
Poor Beth. What was she doing right now? How was she feeling...? Kelly had never seen her looking so wretched or unhappy... Beth had really believed that Julian Cox loved her.
Since their break-up Kelly had heard rumours that Beth wasn’t the first woman he had treated badly. No, Beth was better off without him, Kelly decided as she went into their kitchen and filled the kettle. She gave a small shudder as she remembered the night she had returned early from a weekend visit to her parents to discover Beth almost unconscious on her bed. Taking too many sleeping tablets had been an accident, an oversight, Beth had assured her, and had pleaded with her not to tell anyone else what she had done as Kelly sat beside her hospital bed. Unwillingly, Kelly had agreed. Luckily she had found Beth in time...luckily...
Remembering that incident, Kelly slowly sipped her hot coffee. Was Dee really asking so much of her? No. She didn’t relish the role she was being called upon to play—what modern woman would?—but it was only a means to an entirely justifiable and worthwhile end.
But that still didn’t solve the problem of what she was going to wear. She and Beth were approximately the same size although Beth was fair-skinned and blonde, with soft, pretty grey eyes, whereas she was brunette, her skin tone much warmer, her eyes a dark purplish brown, damson—the colour of lilac wine, one besotted admirer had once called them.
The ball had been the subject of a great deal of excitement and speculation in town. It was to be the highlight of the town’s social year. The de Varsey family, who owned the elegant Georgian mansion where the event was to be held, had been local landowners for the last three hundred years and, despite their cost, tickets had been snapped up and the event sold out within a week of them going on sale, which made it even more extraordinary that Dee should have been able to produce a pair at such short notice.
Kelly could remember how thrilled and excited Beth had been when Julian had told her that he had bought tickets for the event.
‘I’ll have to hire something really special. This isn’t just a social event for Julian, it’s a very important business opportunity as well,’ she had told Kelly breathlessly.
Kelly had never properly discovered just exactly what line of business it was that Julian was in. He had talked very grandly about his own financial acumen and the hugely profitable deals he had pulled off, and he certainly had spent a lot of time talking into the mobile phone he took everywhere with him. He drove a very large and very fast BMW, but lived in a surprisingly small service flat in a new and not particularly attractive apartment block on the outskirts of town.
Kelly hadn’t been at all pleased when she had learned that he had suggested to Beth that she allow him to have some of his business mail addressed to their flat, but she had refrained from making too much fuss, not wanting to upset her friend.
Beth ha
d been thrilled at the prospect of attending such a prestigious social event with him—as his fiancée; now another woman would be going there with him in Beth’s place.
‘Remember she could be just as much a victim of his ruthlessness as Beth was,’ Dee had reminded her and Anna last night when Kelly had commented that she didn’t know how any woman could date a man who she knew was supposedly committed to someone else.
If that was the case, Julian Cox deserved to be revealed as the unpleasant and untrustworthy creep that he was, for her sake as much as Beth’s, Kelly acknowledged, frowning as she heard her doorbell ring.
She wasn’t expecting any visitors. Although she and Beth had made several new acquaintances since moving to the town, as yet they hadn’t progressed to the stage of many close friendships. Getting up, she went downstairs to open the door that faced onto the main street.
A man was standing outside, a large box at his feet, a delivery van parked on the roadside behind him.
‘Kelly Harris?’ he asked her, producing a form for her to sign. ‘Just sign here, please...’
‘What is it?’ Kelly asked him uncertainly, automatically signing the form, but he was already picking up the box and handing it over to her.
Fortunately, despite its awkward shape, the box was very light. Mystified, Kelly carried it up to the flat and then, placing it on the sitting-room floor, sat down beside it to open it.
The outer layer of strong brown paper, once removed, revealed an elegant, glossy white box. There was a letter attached to it. Opening it, Kelly quickly read it.
Dear Kelly, you’ll need this to wear this evening. Good hunting! Dee.
Intrigued, Kelly opened the box and then folded back the tissue paper inside it to reveal a dress that made her catch her breath in delight.
Two layers of material, one in conker-brown, the other a toning deep, dark damson, in the sheerest silk chiffon, floated through her fingers. Picking up the dress, she hurried into the bedroom and held it against herself, studying her reflection in the full-length mirror.
In both colour and design it might have been made with her in mind, the toning shades of chiffon so perfect with her colouring that they immediately drew attention to her eyes and made them look even more dramatically pansy-dark than usual. And as for the style—the current vogue for Jane Austen-
type high-waisted, floating, revealing evening dresses was one that could, in the wrong hands, look insipid and totally unflattering to anyone over the age of seventeen, but Kelly knew instinctively that this dress was far from insipid, and that its deceptively sensuous cut could never be worn by a woman who was anything less than totally at ease with herself and her sexuality. In other words, Dee couldn’t have chosen a dress which would suit her more, and Kelly had no need to look at the immediately recognisable designer label attached to it to know that it must have been horrendously expensive.
Wonderingly she touched the fine chiffon. Although the dress was fully lined, the flesh colour of the lining meant that in a dimly lit room it could easily look as though she was wearing a dress that was virtually transparent.
Dee had even managed to get the size exactly right, Kelly acknowledged ruefully. Placing the dress reverently on her bed, she went back to the sitting room.
Inside the box beneath another layer of tissue paper lay a pretty matching chiffon stole and a pair of high-heeled satin sandals with a matching satin evening bag.
Dee had thought of everything, she admitted as she sat back on her heels.
Fortunately she already had some flesh-coloured underwear she could wear underneath the dress—a birthday present from her sister-in-law—and the pearls which had originally been her grandmother’s and which her parents had given her on her twenty-first birthday would be perfect.
It was a dream of a dress, she acknowledged ten minutes later as she carefully hung it on a padded hanger. A dream of a dress for what could well turn out to be a nightmare of an evening.
There was no way that Julian Cox wasn’t going to notice her wearing it. Although it was far too elegant and well designed ever to be described as sexy, Kelly knew even before she put it on that those soft layers of chiffon would have instant male appeal and be about as irresistible as home-made apple pie—although to a very different male appetite.
She glanced at her watch. If Dee’s cousin was going to pick her up at seven-thirty she ought to think about starting to get ready. Her hair would need washing and styling if she was going to do full justice to that dress. Fortunately its length meant that it was very adaptable and easy to put up. Equally fortunately it possessed enough curl to mean that she could attempt a very similar if somewhat simpler style to that adopted by Jane Austen’s heroines.
* * *
ON THE OTHER side of town, someone else was also getting ready for the ball. Like Kelly, Brough Frobisher was attending it under protest. His sister had persuaded him to go, reluctantly wringing his agreement from him.
‘Julian especially wants you to be there,’ she had pleaded with him anxiously when he had started to refuse, adding slightly breathlessly, ‘I think...that is, he’s said...there’s something he wants to ask you...’
Brough’s heart had sunk as he’d listened to her. Initially when she had begged him to go with them to the ball he had assumed it was because her new boyfriend was looking for a backer for the new business venture he had already insisted on discussing with Brough; that had been bad enough, but now that Eve was dropping hints about Julian Cox proposing to her Brough was beginning to feel seriously alarmed.
At twenty-one Eve certainly didn’t need either his approval or his authorization to get married, and at thirty-four he was mature enough to recognise that any man who married the sister whom he had been so close to since the deaths of their parents nearly fifteen years ago was bound, in the initial stage of their relationship, to arouse in him a certain amount of suspicion and resentment. Since their parents’ deaths he had virtually been a surrogate father to Eve, and fathers were notoriously bad at giving up their claims to their little girls’ affection in favour of another man; but, given all of that, there was still something about Julian Cox that Brough just didn’t like.
The man was too sure of himself, too adroit...too...too smooth and slippery.
Eve had, after all, only known the man a matter of weeks, having initially met him quite soon after they had moved into the town.
Brough had decided that he had had enough of city life, and had sold out of the pensions management partnership he had founded, downsizing both his business and his equally hectic city social life by setting up a much smaller version of the partnership here in Rye-on-Averton.
Being a workaholic, city life—these were both fine at a certain stage in one’s life. But lately Brough had begun to reflect almost enviously on the differences between his lifestyle and that enjoyed by those of his peers who had married in their late twenties and who now had wives and families.
‘It’s a woman who’s supposed to feel her biological clock ticking away, not a man,’ Eve had teased him, adding more seriously, ‘I suppose it’s because you virtually brought me up with Nan’s help that you miss having someone to take care of.’
Perhaps she was right. Brough couldn’t say; all he could say was that the prospect of living in a pretty market town which had its roots firmly secured in history had suddenly been an extremely comforting and alluring one.
As for wanting a wife and family, well, over the years he had certainly had more than his fair share of opportunities to acquire those. He was a formidably attractive man, taller than average, with a physique to match—he had played rugby for his school throughout his time at university and it showed. His close-cropped, thick, dark hair was just beginning to show a sexy hint of grey at his temples, and his almost stern expression was enlivened by the dimple indented into his chin and the laughter that illumina
ted the direct gaze of his dark blue eyes.
‘It’s not fair,’ Eve had once protested. ‘You got all our inherited share of charisma... Look at the way women are always running after you.’
‘That isn’t charisma,’ Brough had corrected her dryly. ‘That’s money...’
In addition to the money both Brough and Eve had inherited from their parents, Brough’s own business acumen and foresight now meant that if he had chosen to do so he could quite easily have retired and lived extremely well off his existing financial assets.
Perhaps it was his fault that Eve was as naive and unworldly as she was, he reflected a little grimly. As her brother, stand-in father and protector, he had perhaps shielded her too much from life’s realities. Every instinct he possessed told him that Julian Cox simply wasn’t to be trusted, but Eve wouldn’t hear a word against the man.
‘You don’t know him like I do,’ she had declared passionately when Brough had tried gently to enlighten her. ‘Julian is so kind, even when people don’t deserve it. When I first met him he was being stalked by this awful woman. It had gone on for months. She kept telling everyone that she was going out with him, calling round at his flat, ringing him up, following him everywhere. She even tried to arrange a fake engagement party, claiming that he’d asked her to marry him...
‘But despite all the problems she’d caused him Julian told me that he just couldn’t bring himself to report her to the police and that he’d tried to talk to her himself...to reason with her... He’d even taken her out to dinner a couple of times because he felt so sorry for her. But he said that he simply couldn’t get through to her or make her understand that he just wasn’t interested in her. In the end he said the only way to get her to accept the truth was for her to see him with me. Luckily that seems to have worked.’
When he’d heard the passionate intensity in his sister’s voice Brough had known that it wouldn’t be a good idea to give her his own opinion of Julian Cox. Certainly the man seemed to be very attractive to the female sex, if the number of women’s names he peppered his conversation with were anything to go by.