the peal of Chloe’s derisive laughter mocking her...mocking the pathetic attempt to make Elephant Ellen look glamorous.
Well, she didn’t care—wouldn’t care. She only wanted the cheque that Max Vasilikos had promised her, then she was getting out of this ridiculous get-up—zillion hooks or not—and hightailing it to the station and home.
Max smiled his urbane, social smile and reached inside his breast pocket. ‘Here you go,’ he said, and held the cheque he’d promised out to her.
Awkwardly, Ellen walked over and took it. Then her expression altered and her gaze snapped back to him. ‘This is for fifteen thousand,’ she objected.
‘Of course it is,’ he agreed affably. ‘Because of course you’re coming to the ball with me. We’re both kitted up—let’s have a look at ourselves. See if we look the part.’
He helped himself to her arm with a white-gloved hand—he was wearing evening dress of the same Edwardian era, she realised, but on a man it was a lot less immediately obvious—and turned her towards a huge framed mirror hung above a sideboard.
‘Take a look, Ellen,’ he instructed softly.
Ellen looked.
And made no response. Could have made no response even if someone had shouted Fire! Could only do what she was doing—which was staring. Staring, frozen, at the couple reflected in the mirror. At the tall, superbly elegant and dashing figure of Max Vasilikos—and the tall, superbly elegant and stunning woman at his side.
The dark ruby-red silk gown was wasp-waisted and moulded over her hips to flow in a waterfall of colour the full length of her legs and out into a sweeping train, the body-hugging boned bodice revealed a generous décolletage, and the spray of feathers at each sculpted shoulder matched the similar spray in the aigrette curving around the huge swirled pompadour of her hair.
Curling tendrils played around her face—a face whose eyes were huge beneath winged, arched brows...rich tawny eyes that were thickly lashed and fathoms deep—a face whose cheeks were sculpted as if from marble, whose mouth was as lush and richly hued as damsons.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Max said softly to her, because he could see from the expression on her face that something profoundly important and significant was happening to her. She was seeing, for the first time in her life, someone she had never seen before—the strikingly, dramatically beautiful woman that was looking back at her from the glass. ‘A goddess,’ he murmured. ‘Didn’t I tell you? In figure and in face...like Artemis the huntress goddess...strong and lithe and so, so beautiful.’
He let his gaze work over her reflection, drinking in face and figure, her beauty fully and finally revealed to him. A frown flickered in his eyes. ‘Have you put in contact lenses?’ he heard himself ask. What had happened to those wretched unflattering spectacles of hers?
She gave a slight shake of her head, feeling the soft tendrils curling down from her extravagant hairdo wafting softly and sensuously at her jaw.
‘I only really need glasses for driving,’ she answered. ‘But I wear them because—’ She stopped, swallowed.
Max said nothing—but he knew. Oh, he knew now why she wore them.
Ellen’s eyes slid away. Her voice was heavy, and halting. ‘I wear them to tell the world that I know perfectly well how awful I look, and that I accept it and I’m not going to make a pathetic fool of myself trying to look better, not going to try to—’
She broke off. Max finished the painful, self-condemning sentence for her.
‘Not going to try to compete with your stepsister,’ he said, his voice low.
Ellen nodded. ‘Pathetic, I know. But—’
He caught her other arm, turning her to face him. ‘No! Don’t think like that!’ His expression was vehement, even fierce, as she stared at him. ‘Ellen, whatever you’ve come to think in your head about yourself it’s wrong!’ He took a breath. ‘Don’t you realise you don’t have to compete with Chloe? Leave her to enjoy her fashionable thinness! You...’ His voice changed. ‘Ah, you have a quite, quite different beauty.’ He lifted a hand to gesture to her reflection. ‘How can you possibly deny that now?’
Ellen gazed, her mind still trying to keep on denying what Max was saying to her—what the reflection in the mirror was telling her. That a stunningly beautiful woman was gazing back at her. A woman who was...her...
But that was impossible! It had to be impossible. It was Chloe who was lovely—Chloe who possessed the looks that defined beauty.
And if it was Chloe who was lovely, then she, Ellen, who was everything that Chloe was not—not petite, not blonde, not thin, not with a heart-shaped face, not blue-eyed, not Chloe—could only be the opposite. If it were Chloe who was lovely—then she, Ellen, could only be unlovely.
That was the logic that had been forced on her—forced on her with every sneering barb from Chloe, every derisive glance, every mocking jibe from her stepsister—for years... Those vulnerable teenage years when Chloe had arrived to poison her life, poison her mind against herself, destroying all her confidence so that she’d never even tried to make something of herself, instead condemning herself as harshly as her stepsister condemned her. Believing in Chloe’s contempt of her. Seeing herself only through Chloe’s cruel eyes.
But how could the woman gazing out at her from the mirror with such dramatic beauty possibly be described as unlovely? How could a woman like that be sneered at by Chloe, mocked by her, treated with contempt by her?
Impossible—just impossible. Impossible for Chloe to sneer at a woman such as the one who was gazing back at her now.
Emotion swept through Ellen. She couldn’t give a name to it—didn’t need to. Needed only to feel it rush through her like a tide, sweeping away everything that had been inside her head for so many years. And now Max was speaking again, adding to the tide sweeping through her.
‘You can’t deny it, can you?’ Max repeated. His eyes were fixed on her reflection still. ‘You can’t deny your beauty—your own beauty, Ellen. Yours. As different from Chloe’s as the sun is from the moon.’
He gave a laugh suddenly, of triumph and deep satisfaction.
‘We shall drink a toast,’ he announced. ‘A toast to the goddess revealed.’ He drew her away, towards the tray of champagne, opening the bottle with skilled long practice and filling the flutes to hand one to her.
Ellen took it numbly, her eyes wide, as if she was in a dream. A dream she still could not quite believe was reality after all.
Her eyes flickered back to her reflection in the mirror.
Is it really, truly me? Can it be—?
Then Max’s gloved hand was touching her wrist, lifting his own foaming glass, and she looked back at him, still with that bemused expression in her eyes, as if she dared not believe the truth of her own reflection. He held her gaze, not letting go for an instant.
‘To you,’ he said. ‘To beautiful Ellen. Beautiful, stunning Ellen!’
He took a mouthful of champagne
