style="font-size:15px;"> ‘All the same…’ Rupert, Lord Weaver, cleared his throat. ‘I’m quite sure we won’t have to r-resort to a r-registry office. He would never do that to you, Vannie,’ he added reproachfully.
‘However, he can,’ Harriet said at large, ‘make things awkward, as we all know. Therefore this way, with Chas here to help—at his suggestion—we can keep the rest of his involvement to a minimum.’
‘Agreed.’ Vanessa pushed away her dessert plate and reached for a plum. ‘So whatever you do, Chas, take a stern line with Thomas!’
A womaniser, obviously, Chas thought as she considered Thomas Hocking in the privacy of her bedroom, but who was he and what other bizarre qualities did he possess?
He obviously held the purse strings but he didn’t sound like Vanessa’s father or Harriet’s husband. An uncle perhaps, who was now the head of the family? Who was resented, even, not only for his grip on those purse strings but also for his reprehensible taste in peachy young blondes?
She shook her head. Time would tell. In the meantime, the couple of hours after dinner she’d spent with Vanessa, Harriet and Clare had been tricky to say the least.
She’d listened to Vanessa’s ideas for her wedding and her dress, she’d listened to both Harriet and Clare’s ideas, and had formed the opinion that never would the trio meet.
That was when she’d quietly produced her folder of wedding dresses and pointed to the one she felt would suit Vanessa best.
There’d been a startled silence, then Vanessa had jumped up and thrown her arms around Chas. ‘It’s perfect! So different but so beautiful.’
‘It is lovely,’ Harriet agreed.
‘My, my!’ Clare enthused.
Then they discussed venues, and Chas gave her opinion that Cresswell Lodge was the perfect spot for a wedding reception. And, thinking rapidly, she outlined some ideas for decorating the house and garden for a wedding, including a silk-lined marquee on the lawn, because, as she told them, she never took chances with the weather.
‘Ah,’ Harriet said thoughtfully, ‘not just a pretty face, Chas Bartlett.’
‘I hope not, Mrs Hocking,’ Chas replied. ‘I did also wonder if it mightn’t be appropriate for the bride and groom to arrive at the reception in a horse-drawn carriage. Naturally they’d have to drive from the church in Warwick by car, but we could do a discreet changeover somehow or other. And horses do seem to feature prominently in your lives.’
Harriet sat up and Vanessa drew an excited breath. ‘Awesome!’ she said.
‘Wonderful,’ Harriet agreed. ‘You can leave that bit to me, Chas. Of course, we’d need matching carriage horses but that shouldn’t be too hard.’
Chas came back to the present and bit her lip. Matching horses?
She really needed to know what her budget would be before she made any more expensive suggestions. Not—she gazed around the impressive guest bedroom—that the Hockings appeared to be short of a dime, but there was the mysterious Thomas and his ‘registry office’ notions to take into account.
She yawned and was startled to see it was close to midnight so she changed into her night gear. Then she remembered that, impressive though the room was, with a king-size bed invitingly turned down, lovely drapes and a matching carpet, and warm as it was from central heating, there was no en suite bathroom.
The guest bathroom was several doors down a passage. She picked up her sponge bag and walked to the door, and the lights flickered, went out and stayed out.
Damn, she thought. I hate going to bed without cleaning my teeth! I’ll just have to manage in the dark.
She stepped out into the passage and waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. The house was quite silent.
She found the bathroom and, after a bit of fumbling around, managed to clean her teeth, wash her face and attend to all else that was necessary.
As she came out of the bathroom she hesitated and felt for her watch. It wasn’t there, for the simple reason that she’d taken it off when she was changing.
Not that it matters, she assured herself. I know that I have to turn this way, count two doors down and the third is my bedroom.
It all worked to plan and with a sigh of relief she shut herself into the room. There was nothing for it but to go to bed, since the lights were still out—she’d flicked the switch she’d groped for beside the door then flicked it off when nothing had happened. She pulled off her robe, felt around for the bed, and slipped into it.
The next few moments were electrifying. An arm descended on her waist, a sleepy exclamation issued forth, a pair of hands started to run down her body and a man’s deep voice said, ‘Holy mackerel! Not again!’
CHAPTER TWO
CHAS gasped, twisted and reared up. To her mortification, the sounds she uttered, which were meant to be serious screams, came out instead as a series of squeaks.
‘Whoa!’ She was determinedly wrestled back to the bed. ‘Look here, sweetheart, you came into my bed, not the other way around, so your objections are a bit bogus, surely?’
‘Stop!’ Chas hissed.
‘Why? Do I know you?’
‘No! There’s been a terrible mistake.’
To her fury, he moved his hands on her again, from her breasts down to her waist, and left them there. ‘Mistake?’ he mused as his hands almost spanned her waist. ‘I would have thought you were rather divinely put together, Aphrodite. Definitely an ornament to any man’s bed.’
‘Will you stop doing that!’ Chas commanded as she wriggled beneath the feel of his hands on her body. Not that he was hurting her. It was the opposite if anything…
‘I can explain. I must have lost—’ she stopped as the bedside lamp flickered on ‘—my way,’ she finished as her eyes widened.
She was in another vast bed but this one had a magnificent carved headboard. The pillows were plump and exotic, the colours ranging from pomegranate to slate-blue, and there were at least six of them. The sheets were slate and the quilt, now pushed aside, was patterned in pomegranate on a slate background.
Two bedside tables carved to match the bedhead bore lamps with silver foil shades. The walls were mushroom-pink, the ceiling was café au lait and a vast expanse of pale-toffee carpet fled into the shadows.
It was a stunning bedroom but not only that. Talk about Aphrodite—she was in the hands of a stranger who could have been Adonis.
The silence stretched as they stared at each other.
He had longish brown hair and a broad forehead tapering to a determined chin. He had smoky grey eyes, highly quizzical but all the same quite magnetic, beneath darker brows. He was naked, to the waist at least, and just about male perfection personified.
The skin of his
