It might not have worked for my mother, she thought bitterly, but I’ll damned well make it work for me.
She took judicious sips of champagne during the chilled cucumber soup and the poached fillets of sole, accepting half a glass of claret to accompany the beautifully roasted ribs of beef.
She’d been seated between Greg and Chris, the bridesmaids’ fiancés, well away from Adam who occupied the head of the table, but perfectly placed to hear the chunterings of Miss Latimer, stationed at its foot.
‘Such a shame dear Robina can’t be with us,’ she declared fretfully during a lull in the general conversation, adding, to Adam’s obvious displeasure, ‘I know lateness can be trying, but I understand even the dear Queen Mother was habitually unpunctual in her younger days.’
Dana felt a bubble of laughter welling up inside her. At the same moment, she realised that Zac was looking at her from the other side of the table, his dark eyes brilliant, alight with shared and quite unholy amusement and found her gaze locked with his.
Like being mesmerised, she thought, and a shiver ran through her.
Shocked, she bit her lip hard to break the spell, forcing herself to look down at her plate, knowing as she did so that her remaining appetite had deserted her.
Knowing too that she couldn’t permit any kind of connection between them however trivial, however fleeting. Could not afford the slightest threat to her plans.
Chris was speaking to her and she turned to him in relief. ‘This is the most amazing house. It’s actually got a billiard room. When I went in, I expected to find Professor Plum with the candlestick.’ He paused. ‘I understand you and Nic grew up here together?’
‘Hardly,’ Miss Latimer put in tartly. ‘Dana’s aunt was the housekeeper here.’
‘She certainly was.’ Dana made herself speak lightly. ‘And I believe this is her version of lemon syllabub that we’re eating now. She must have left the recipe for her successor.’
‘There’ve been several of those.’ Mimi Latimer again. ‘It’s almost impossible to get reliable help these days. People simply don’t know their place any more.’
‘I think they do,’ Dana returned quietly. ‘Only these days they tend to choose their own.’
‘Adam was saying there used to be an Orangery,’ Greg put in quickly as Mimi bridled. ‘Only he’s turned it into a swimming pool.’
The Orangery gone, Dana thought, startled. But it had been Serafina’s pride and joy. Did she know what Adam intended when she handed over the house? If so, how could she have let it happen?
If I hadn’t been sent away—if I’d stayed here with Adam, I wouldn’t have let him do it, she thought. I’d have talked him out of it somehow.
‘Some Orangery,’ Adam said, taking another helping of syllabub. ‘I never remember a single orange, so I decided a pool would be more useful—and more fun.’
Practical, thought Dana. But depressing. And if something had to go, I wish you’d chosen the summer house.
She shivered again and Chris noticed.
‘Feeling cold?’ he asked, surprised.
‘No, just a slight headache,’ she improvised hastily. ‘Maybe there’s a summer storm on the way.’
And saw in a flash, like the lightning she’d just invented, the sardonic twist of Zac’s lips. Telling her the storm was already here—and waiting for her.
AFTER DINNER, THE PARTY split up, the men going off to the billiard room for a knock-out snooker tournament, and the women congregating in the drawing room for coffee and wedding chat.
Dana had already resigned herself to the knowledge that there’d be no opportunity for a private conversation with Adam. Certainly not while Zac was hovering at his shoulder.
But she was annoyed to discover that her fib about a headache was coming true. That will teach me a lesson, she thought, as she made her excuses and took herself off to bed.
Even with the window open, the small room was stifling, and even lying naked under a single sheet, she felt as if she was suffocating. And her headache was getting worse.
Stress, she thought, searching vainly for a cool spot on the pillow. Tension. That’s all it is. And I know exactly who to blame for it.
She swallowed a couple of the ibuprofen she’d found in the bathroom cupboard, and eventually fell into a restless doze only to be woken again by a fierce rumble of thunder directly overhead, accompanied by a waft of cold, damp air and the splash of rain.
I don’t believe this, she groaned as she stumbled out of bed, closed the window and put on her cotton nightshirt. What else can I wish upon myself?
And now she’d be awake while the storm lasted, or even for the rest of the night. Just when she needed all her wits about her for the day ahead.
She hadn’t brought a book with her, but downstairs in the room which had once been Serafina’s study, there’d be the daily paper and a selection of magazines, to provide her with temporary distraction until the night became quiet again.
She put on her robe, tying the sash tightly round her waist and trod quietly along the passage to the stairs.
The house was still, as if she was the only one to be disturbed by the weather. She opened the study door, went across to the desk and switched on the lamp.
‘Buongiorno,’ Zac said courteously.
Dana spun round with a startled cry, her heart thumping.
He was sitting in the high-backed armchair beside the empty fireplace, fully dressed apart from his coat and tie, which were on the floor beside him.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded unevenly.
He got to his feet, raking back his hair with a lazy hand. ‘I needed some private time to think, after which I seem to have slept. Until, of course, you whistled up this storm, my little witch, when I stayed to watch nature’s light show. It has been quite spectacular. And you? Have you come down to dance between the raindrops?’
‘Very amusing.’ She picked up the nearest magazine—a county glossy—from the desk. ‘Please resume your viewing. I won’t disturb you any longer.’
He said quite gently, ‘If only that were true. But we both know it is not. Nor that simple.’
‘I know nothing of the kind,’ she said curtly, aware of his scrutiny and wishing her robe was infinitely thicker. And that she did not have to walk past him to reach the door.
And, more importantly, that she’d stayed safely in her room in the first place.
‘Then consider it now.’
As he spoke, another flash of lightning blazed into the room through the uncurtained windows and the lamp on the desk went out, leaving them first dazzled, then in total darkness.
Dana gasped. ‘What’s happened?’
‘A local power cut.’ His tone was laconic. ‘The storm playing havoc with the electrics. It often happens, as I am sure you remember.’
Yes, she thought, but she hadn’t bargained for it to happen here and now.
She said quickly, ‘I’d better go back to my room.’
‘Why the haste?’ He paused. ‘After all, we have been alone in the dark before, you and I.’
As if she could have forgotten, she thought shakily. And it was not a situation she could afford to