Round and around they went, in perfect rhythm with the music. There was something magical about it. Alethea felt as if she were in another era, dressed not in some violet slip of a dress, but in some magnificent ball gown and bejewelled.
What Trent de Havilland was thinking or feeling she had not the smallest clue, because while other couples circling the floor were in occasional conversation, he didn’t say a word.
Someone almost cannoned into them. Trent pulled her closer. She caught her breath again, indeed, felt the oddest difficulty in breathing at all as he held her against him for long seconds after he had drawn her out of harm’s way.
She looked up into his dark eyes. It was as if no one else existed, as if it were just the two of them. His eyes, those warm, dark eyes, seemed to search down into her very soul.
Some small sound escaped her—she didn’t know what to say. Her lips parted and he transferred his gaze down from her eyes. She felt his hand on her back pulling her close to him, and her whole body tingled.
Then the music stopped. Alethea had been aware of it, but abruptly snapped out of her trance-like state.
She realised too that her partner was no longer holding her. He had taken a step away. She searched for something to say—a murmured ‘thank you’ would have done. But she felt too tongue-tied to say anything. A moment later she discovered that comments from her were not required. Because, without saying one word himself, Trent de Havilland once more touched a hand to her elbow and escorted her off the floor. And—still silent—went striding from her view.
‘I didn’t know you could Viennese waltz!’ Carol exclaimed, appearing from nowhere, while Alethea was still striving to come back to earth.
‘Your Charleston beat everything into a cocked hat!’ Alethea somehow found the wit to respond.
Alethea did not see Trent de Havilland again that evening. Not that she consciously looked for him—it was just that he wasn’t around. Perhaps he’d just looked in out of courtesy, stayed for one dance, and then legged it out of there to follow his more normal Saturday night pursuits. Not that she was in the least interested, anyhow!
At midnight Carol asked her how she felt about leaving. ‘Fine by me,’ Alethea replied, and, after exchanging a few pleasantries with their hosts, they said their goodbyes. Alethea dropped Carol off on the way to her own home.
‘Nice party?’ Maxine enquired the next morning. Thinking about it, Alethea realised that, yes, it had been. ‘Very nice,’ she replied.
‘Anyone special there?’ Maxine wanted to know.
Why Alethea should have a sudden picture in her mind’s eye of tall, dark, sophisticated Trent de Havilland, she couldn’t have said. But she did not have time to wonder for long, because her mother, acid in every syllable, butted in to chide, ‘If by “special” you mean some man, then I hope to Heaven that Alethea has more sense!’
‘There wasn’t anyone special there,’ Alethea denied mildly. But, ridiculously, she found she wanted to smile as a voice in her ear reproached, How could you lie...?
The rest of the day passed off noisily—with only a short period of quiet when, exhausted, Polly had a nap. Alethea’s two older nieces were quite interesting when they weren’t squabbling. But she was glad to see Monday. Somehow, for all that life in the office was most often hectic, it seemed more tranquil than home.
She drove to work musing, at first not very seriously, that perhaps she should consider moving out. Maybe find a flat somewhere. Then, staying with the notion, she realised that there seemed to be a lot going for it. Maxine had seen neither hide nor hair of her husband since she had left him. They were in telephone communication; she knew that. Maxine shed floods of tears when she rang Keith, often about the non-appearance of the maintenance money he kept promising but which never materialised.
But it was all of a month now since Maxine had left him and had she had any thoughts of going back to him, then Alethea felt she would have seen some sign of them by now.
Life at home went from her mind the moment she arrived at the office she shared with Carol. There was the usual buzz about the place and, as ever, they were busy.
Carol was closeted with Mr Chapman around mid-afternoon when Alethea looked at the ‘Celebrations’ file she had opened to check what accounts might be outstanding. She came across the guest list.
Without fully realising what she was doing, she skimmed her gaze over the names. She halted at de Havilland. Halted, and paused for some moments, for while almost every other invitation had been sent to couples, the invitation to the man who had so elegantly waltzed her around the dance floor had been sent to Trent alone. ‘Mr Trenton de Havilland,’ she read—and was back in his arms, back on the dance floor, the music was playing, the...
‘Have you time to do this for me?’ Carol, who clearly had more than enough to do, if the paperwork in her hands was anything to go by, brought Alethea quickly back to earth.
‘Of course,’ she smiled obligingly, and went home that evening a little later than normal, but satisfied with her day.
She let herself in; the house was noisy. It seemed that the children were as boundlessly energetic and as vocal as ever. She earned herself another bruise as she knocked into a chest of drawers that stood in the hall simply because there was no other place to put it—and found she was again thinking, a little more seriously this time, that perhaps it might not be such a bad idea after all to find somewhere else to live.
Despite Polly being such a bad-tempered child, there was something quite loveable about her. She had such a beam of a smile, that it had them all forgiving her every misdeed. But there was no sign of that smile about her later in the evening when, around eight-thirty, she was brought downstairs so as not to disturb Sadie and Georgia who were already asleep. Polly had decided that she wasn’t going to go to sleep. She yelled and screamed, and held her breath, and quite terrified Alethea lest she never breathed again. So that when, at last, she finally exhausted herself and did fall asleep, the adults were feeling very much frazzled.
‘You must be hating like crazy the fact that we moved in and shattered the peace and calm of your life,’ Maxine opined as she flopped in a chair and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee Alethea handed her.
‘Nonsense!’ her mother decried stoutly. Alethea knew she never had wanted Maxine to leave home in the first place and was delighted to have her back again. Her mother was impervious, it seemed, to the chaos about her.
The phone rang and Maxine went to get up. ‘I’ll get it,’ Alethea volunteered, instructing herself to be polite if it was her uncaring brother-in-law calling to tell his wife why he wasn’t able to pay her any maintenance this week either.
But the call wasn’t for Maxine, nor was it for her mother. ‘Hello,’ Alethea said, into the receiver.
She went hot all over when, after a moment’s pause, a firm voice answered pleasantly, ‘Hello, Alethea, Trent de Havilland.’
She’d known that—even though she could not believe it. She had just known that it was his voice. ‘Oh, hello,’ she said lightly, and, feeling confused and jumbled up again and totally unlike her real self, asked, ‘What can I do for you?’
Perhaps he needed Mr Chapman’s home number to ring and thank him for Saturday, or something of that sort.
That, it transpired, was not the reason for Trent’s call. Her unflappable self disappeared when he came straight to the point of his call: ‘I’d like you to have dinner with me tomorrow. Are you free?’ he asked.
Alethea opened her mouth. ‘I...’ she began. Half of her head still believed this was a business call and she almost asked, In what connection? Rapidly she got herself together. Only he jumped in before she could formulate the words she wanted—in truth