mouth twisted wryly. Or am I just too cynical? he wondered.
‘You’re not serious, Sholto!’ the girl was saying.
‘Of course I am!’ Sholto retorted, sounding impatient, then dived at her and began trying to kiss her.
‘Oh, don’t!’ She wriggled away, shaking her head. ‘Sholto, I can’t…I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I really can’t…I do like you, you know I do, but marriage…No, I’m not ready to get married yet.’
‘We don’t have to get married for ages! We could just get engaged.’
‘If we get engaged they’ll all start planning the wedding, and before we know where we are they’ll fix a date and…Oh, I can’t, Sholto!’
‘I thought you loved me!’
Sholto sounded as if he might start crying, and the girl heard it, looking up at him, her lower lip caught between two rows of small white teeth.
‘I’m sorry…Oh, poor Sholto,’ she said unhappily.
The man eavesdropping couldn’t help smiling again, but Sholto was not amused. She had hurt him—and now she was making it worse by sounding sorry for him!
He went red and grabbed her by the shoulders, pushed her backwards until she met the wall, held her there with his strong, slim body and began to kiss her angrily, bruising her mouth.
She tried to fight him off, but Sholto was stronger; his hands tightened on her, his fingers digging into her soft skin.
‘Don’t, Sholto! You’re hurting me…’ she cried in a smothered voice, a sob in her throat.
The man in the armchair hadn’t meant to intervene. In fact, he was surprised to find himself on his feet, but he didn’t stop to think about what he was doing. He was across the room before they heard him coming. A tall, hard man, he took Sholto by the neck as easily as if he were a puppy and flung him aside.
Sholto fell against the door with a loud crash. ‘What the hell…?’ he spluttered, recovering almost at once and leaping back towards the other man.
At that instant the older man flicked down a switch on the wall and the chandelier in the centre of the room flooded them all with blinding light.
Sholto stopped dead, his indrawn breath very audible. ‘Sir!’ He turned white.
The other man ignored him; he was looking at the girl, who was silently crying, tears rolling down her face.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked her gently.
She didn’t answer, just put her hands over her face, trembling so much she had to lean on the wall to stay upright.
Sholto stammered, ‘I h-had no idea you were in here, sir. I’m s-sorry if we intruded, we thought the room was empty.’
‘Clearly.’ The voice was clipped, curt, the man’s lips barely parted to let the word out. ‘Go back to the party, Cory,’ he added.
Sholto looked relieved and gabbled, ‘Yes, sir, of course. Come on, Em!’
The other man’s voice cracked like a whip. ‘Leave her here—she can’t go back to the party in that state!’
Sholto hesitated, reddening, met the hard stare of grey eyes and almost ran out of the room, the heavy mahogany door closing behind him with a solid sound.
Pulling a clean white handkerchief out of a pocket, the other man put it into the girl’s hand.
She whispered, ‘Thank you,’ and dried her face, blew her nose, gave him a fleeting glance through those long, long damp lashes, her eyes dark blue with distress and embarrassment.
‘I’m sorry we disturbed you.’ She began to move sideways towards the door. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’
He put a hand out to stop her, not touching her but barring her way. ‘I shouldn’t go back just yet. Give yourself a minute to calm down before you have to face the others.’
‘I am really perfectly well now, but thank you for being so thoughtful.’ The grave courtesy was touching; a child playing at being grown-up. How old was she? he wondered. And who was she?
‘We ought to introduce ourselves,’ he said. ‘My name is Kerr.’ He watched her, wondering how she would react when she realised who he was. ‘Ambrose Kerr.’
The girl’s head jerked up, the blue eyes wider than ever, and he noticed how clear the whites were around the sky-colour of the iris; he was reminded of the blue and white sheen of early Chinese porcelain. She stared at him and this time really took in what he looked like, her gaze searching his face. ‘Oh,’ she said huskily, then, thinking aloud, ‘This is your house, then!’ Her fine dark brows met. ‘It’s your party,’ she worked out, looking shocked. ‘Oh. That’s why Sholto looked so horrified.’
Ambrose Kerr’s mouth twisted in sardonic amusement, remembering Sholto’s face. ‘Yes, I don’t imagine he was pleased to see me.’
She looked up at him, frowning. ‘You should have let us know you were in here as soon as we came in!’ she reproached, and he gave her a wry look.
‘I apologise, but it all happened so quickly—you came in without warning, and before I could announce my presence Sholto proposed, and I didn’t like to interrupt and ruin what could have been a magic moment.’
The dry tone made her turn bright pink. ‘Oh…you heard that?’
His grey eyes were amused. ‘I’m afraid so. Very reluctantly, I assure you.’
She gave a long groan. ‘Sholto will want to die when he realises! Oh, poor Sholto. And he was so thrilled to get the invitation to your Christmas party; he said it was a tremendous compliment to get one.’
He held a party for his staff every Christmas, at his impressive, Nash-designed home in Regent’s Park, within a mile of the city headquarters of the bank he ran. He didn’t draw up the list of guests himself—the invitations went out on the advice of the senior staff, so that the chairman could meet promising newcomers and assess them in a social situation, and meet again older members of the staff he did not normally come in contact with. Ambrose Kerr knew that they all hoped the party would give them a chance to catch his eye and impress him, and he could imagine how Sholto Cory’s heart must have sunk when he recognised him a few moments ago.
‘Oh, dear,’ the girl said, frowning at nothing, talking in a low, worried voice, as if to herself more than him. ‘I feel worse now, but how was I to guess he would propose? Out of the blue, like that?’
Ambrose Kerr watched her, fascinated by the changing expressions on that oval face. She showed everything, didn’t she? Colour swept over her face all the time—now pearly white, now carnation-pink…and those big eyes were revealing too, giving away all her thoughts and feelings. He had never met anyone so transparent, so unprotected, so vulnerable. She shouldn’t be let out on her own, he thought; this was not a safe world for innocents, she could get hurt, and he felt a strange pang at that idea. He wasn’t usually so protective in his reactions; it startled him to feel that way about this
