Vengeful Bride. Rosalie Ash

lipstick advancing on them. ‘Dominick, sweetheart! What a lovely surprise!’

      ‘Vanessa.’ Dominick had risen easily to his feet, but his dark face was blandly expressionless as the girl stretched up to kiss his cheek. ‘What are you doing in Warwickshire?’

      ‘Hoping to bump into you, darling, what else?’ the girl teased huskily, switching an emerald-green gaze on to Emma and lifting an eyebrow enquiringly. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’

      ‘This is Emma Stuart,’ Dominick said smoothly. ‘She’s working for me at the manor, sorting through Fleetwood’s records. Emma, this is Vanessa Buckingham. An old friend and neighbour, and a fellow lawyer.’

      Emma shook hands, noting the girl’s elegantly slim figure in a clinging black crêpe skirt and halter-neck top.

      Vanessa had laughed at Dominick’s introduction.

      ‘Mmm. While Dominick makes the headlines with his evil cross-examination techniques in the High Court, I have to content myself with being in-house lawyer for a department store…’

      Since the department store she named was famous world-wide, the self-deprecation carried little weight, Emma decided. Vanessa Buckingham was obviously a very high-powered lawyer indeed…

      ‘I’m here with Hugo and Jan,’ Vanessa was saying to Dominick. The girl’s green eyes were caressing him with blatant hunger. Emma hooked her foot round the leg of her stool, and fiddled with her glass. A strange feeling seemed to be gripping her, making her feel slightly sick.

      Here, she reminded herself firmly, was an example of the kind of woman Dominick normally spent his time with. Glamorous, clearly upper-class, from his own background, someone who moved in the same circles, socially and professionally. Mentally retreating from the situation, she tried to concentrate on the work she’d been doing today, to focus her mind on the real reason for being here.

      ‘Why don’t you join us?’ Dominick was suggesting smoothly to Vanessa Buckingham. ‘I’ll tell Giuseppe we’d like a table for six.’

      Emma felt her stomach clench. What was the matter with her? She should welcome this diversion with relief, shouldn’t she? All she had to do was sit out the meal, making the minimum of contributions to the conversation. The heat was off…

      But relief wasn’t what she felt at all. Now, watching Dominick’s dark face, laughing at something the blonde girl had said, and listening to their conversation about the rarefied legal world in London, she suddenly felt gauche, boring, provincial.

      Worst of all, the sick sensation growing in her solar plexus was definitely an unexpected and wholly inappropriate thrust of jealousy…

       CHAPTER THREE

      EMMA sat in silence in the car on the way back to the manor. The powerful headlights swept past dark hedgerows and inky black woods. She stared at the arcs of light, and tried to make her mind go blank. Anything to avoid thinking about the evening she’d just spent at the country club. In fact, anything to avoid thinking at all…

      The evening had not been a success. At least, not for Emma. She’d held her own reasonably well, she thought. Given a passably witty explanation of her job as an archivist, when graciously invited to explain her presence. But when she’d calmly stated that her father had been gamekeeper at Fleetwood Manor when she was a child, there’d been a wry exchange of glances between Dominick’s three friends. Vanessa, Hugo and Jan had exuded that exclusive, cliquey rapport that came with shared childhoods, shared schooling, shared backgrounds.

      And her own confidence, shaky at best, had dissolved in the knowledge that Dominick had jumped at the chance to liven up his evening by inviting them to his table.

      But Dominick had seemed preoccupied throughout the meal. The seafood with its delicate sauce had been superb. And the pheasant, rich and aromatic, served with fine-cut sautéd potatoes, and perfectly cooked broccoli, mange-tout and carrots, had been mouthwatering. But she’d felt rather too on edge to relax fully and enjoy the country club’s excellent cuisine. Infuriatingly, she’d found she was drawn, constantly, to look at Dominick as he leaned back in his chair, long brown fingers idly twisting the stem of his wine glass, shuttered gaze surveying the gathered company with cool disinterest. He’d kept his contributions to the conversation brief and sparingly to the point. His dark blue eyes, shadowed in the candlelight at their table, had been unreadable.