my own introduction. I suspect Kirsty will try to stick to his side like glue, so we’ll have to find some means of detaching her for long enough for me to introduce myself. I only hope I haven’t forgotten all my old drama training, although playing femmes fatales wasn’t high on the list of our studies.’
‘Perhaps not, but you’re an excellent mimic,’ Ann reminded her sister, ‘and travelling as you do, you must have had ample opportunity to study the breed in its natural habitat.’
Chelsea grinned. If it wasn’t for her concern for poor Kirsty, she might almost enjoy cutting Slade Ashford down to size. He and men like him had preyed on her sex for too long. Picturing Slade Ashford’s expression when she had seen him with Kirsty, Chelsea doubted that a woman had ever said ‘no’ to him in his life. All the bitterness she had experienced over Darren welled up inside her. Now, she realised, she had a chance to even the score.
Like any good actress she laid her plans carefully, including a visit to London to find a suitable outfit. Something definitely provocative and sexy, she decided, as she sat in the train; something to appeal to the experienced male predator; not too blatant though …
She found it after several hours’ search in a small boutique tucked away off Bond Street. It was part of their new Christmas stock, the salesgirl told Chelsea as she admired it. It was also criminally expensive, but nevertheless she agreed to try it on.
Normally the rich blue taffeta dress with its tight moulded bodice wouldn’t have appealed to her at all, but as she emerged from the changing cubicle to study herself full-length in the pier glass she had to admit that it suited her. The tight bodice clung seductively to her breasts, her shoulders and throat glowing softly pale against the rich fabric. The rustling skirts billowed gently from the narrow waist in piquant contrast to the sophistication of the bodice, and the salesgirl produced a matching band of velvet ribbon adorned with silk roses sewn with pearls and diamante which she fastened round Chelsea’s throat.
‘If you wore your hair up very simply and just decorated with the same flowers, you’d look absolutely stunning,’ she told Chelsea, scooping up her long hair to reveal the pure length of her slim throat.
The effect was a bewitching one, Chelsea admitted, and although the dress was outrageously expensive, she found herself weakly agreeing with the girl that it might have been made for her.
As indeed it might, she admitted a little later as she stepped out of the boutique, clutching a black and gold embossed box and a piece of paper on which the girl had scribbled an address where Chelsea could have a pair of shoes made up to match the dress. The boutique had also been able to provide the silk flowers to decorate her hair, and on a sudden impulse, as she was walking past the store, Chelsea hurried into Harrods and headed for the cosmetics department.
Two hours later she emerged exhausted but delighted with the new make-up she had bought in colours far stronger than those she had normally used. The salesgirls had been more than willing to show her the latest winter styles, and Chelsea had been pleased and a little startled to discover her stage training came flooding back as she memorised and elaborated in her mind, adapting what they had shown her to suit not her own personality but the image she intended to project in order to lure Slade Ashford.
The weekend before the party, Chelsea was surprised to hear someone knocking on her door and to discover Kirsty standing shivering outside in the cold east wind which was blowing.
‘Come on in,’ she invited her niece. ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’
She had already noticed the storm signals flashing in Kirsty’s blue eyes, and the stubborn set of her mouth, and her heart sank as Kirsty shook her head and flung herself into a chair.
‘It’s impossible at home,’ she announced bitterly. ‘Anyone would think I was seven, not seventeen!’
‘Do you know,’ Chelsea remarked conversationally, ‘I’ve often noticed that people have a tendency to treat us the way we behave.
There was a pregnant pause. She looked up and smiled guilelessly at Kirsty, adding sympathetically, ‘What’s wrong? Arguments over the curfew?’
‘You mean Mum hasn’t told you?’ Kirsty asked suspiciously.
‘Told me what?’ Chelsea frowned. ‘The last time I saw her she was full of preparations for the party.’
‘I want to go to drama school,’ Kirsty told her aggressively, ‘but they won’t let me.’
‘You’ve still got a year to do at school,’ Chelsea reminded her, her heart sinking a little. She and Kirsty had always been able to talk to one another, but here was her niece masking her involvement with Slade Ashford by pretending her quarrel with her parents was about her desire to go to drama school.
‘Yes, and then I’ll be eighteen; able to do exactly what I want.’
Fear shafted through Chelsea.
‘The acting profession is a very gruelling and often heartbreaking one,’ she warned her niece. ‘You know I went to drama school?’
‘Yes, but you left.’
‘Not just because I realised that the stage wasn’t for me,’ Chelsea admitted. ‘I got involved with someone I met there—an older man.’ Beneath her lashes she studied Kirsty’s set face. ‘He was married, of course,’ she continued carelessly, ‘but I was far too naïve to realise that he was just using me—until it was too late. I’d hate that to happen to you, Kirsty.’
‘Things are different nowadays.’ Kirsty tossed her head and eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I never knew you were involved with a married man.’
Chelsea winced at her choice of words.
‘He was very attractive—sophisticated and extremely worldly. I thought he genuinely cared about me, but of course he didn’t. How could he? We were worlds apart. I was a girl of seventeen who knew next to nothing about life, he was a man in his thirties who’d already experienced nearly everything it had to offer.’
There was a small silence and then Kirsty got to her feet.
‘Mum’s told you about Slade, hasn’t she?’ she demanded scornfully, making Chelsea wince for her own clumsiness. ‘You just don’t understand—any of you!’
She was gone before Chelsea could protest, black curls bouncing on her shoulders, her coltish jean-clad legs padded with scarlet striped leg-warmers a bright splash of colour as she ran quickly down the street.
Cursing herself for mishandling the situation, Chelsea paced her small living room. There had been disappointment and wariness in Kirsty’s expression—and a barrier that had not been there before.
As she watched her niece disappearing Chelsea resolved that no matter what it cost she would somehow rescue Kirsty from Slade Ashford.
ALTHOUGH not a dedicated partygoer, Chelsea was not normally averse to accepting the many invitations that came her way; mainly as a means of in-depth study of the human race at play. Ann often protested that she spent far too much time watching from the sidelines when she could have been joining in the fun, but her experiences with Darren had left her wary and cynical and more especially reluctant
