you think everything looks all right?’ Beatrice asked her, anxiously coming into the room and mistaking her frowning introspection for a critical study of her table.
‘It looks lovely,’ Francesca told her truthfully. ‘What time do your guests arrive?’
‘Any minute now. Elliott will serve them drinks in the drawing-room, while I help Henry in the kitchen. I wonder, Chessie, would you be very kind and help Elliott to entertain them? I’ve invited two other couples: the local doctor and her husband, who’s a lecturer at Oxford; a business colleague of Elliott’s who lives a few miles away and his wife; and another neighbour of ours, Oliver Newton. He’s a writer. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He writes under the name of Dominic Lacey.’
‘I’ve seen his books. He writes thrillers, doesn’t he?’
‘Sort of. He’s an expert on Elizabethan England, and he sets his books in that period. They’re very popular. He’s having problems with his latest one, though. His main character, a spy working for Francis Walsingham, is sent to Italy to find out as much as he can about a supposed Borgia plot against Elizabeth, and it seems that Oliver is having problems with the research into the Italian part of the book. He was saying only the other day that he can’t spare the time to go to Italy himself and that he may well have to employ a research assistant. I thought…’
She broke off as the doorbell rang.
‘Oh, heavens, they’re arriving already.’
There were no nuances of the fine art of entertaining that were not known to Francesca. She mingled with Beatrice’s guests with the quiet grace she had inherited from her mother, adding to it the sophisticated polish she had learned from her aunts, keeping the conversational ball rolling, parrying questions that threatened to become too curious and deftly making each person she spoke to feel that she was genuinely interested in what they had to say.
‘Who is she?’ Oliver Newton asked Elliott, as they stood together by the fire. He had been watching her for the last five minutes, studying the elegant grace of her body, acknowledging that she was an extremely beautiful and skilled woman.
‘The god-daughter of some friends of ours. Let me introduce you.’
Oliver had arrived while Francesca was talking to Helen and John Carter, the doctor and university lecturer, and although she had seen him arrive, good manners had dictated that she did no more than give him a brief glance.
Now he was coming towards her with Elliott, and the tiny shock she had experienced on seeing him redoubled. He was not a handsome man, his features were too hard for that, but no woman could ever overlook him. His eyes were the colour of the sea-spray on the wildest parts of the Italian coast, his hair dark enough to belong to one of her cousins.
The thought sprang into her mind that here was a man who would defy God himself to achieve what he wanted; a man who owned no master… no higher authority… no barriers.
‘Francesca, allow me to introduce you to a friend of ours, Oliver Newton.’
‘Oliver, meet Francesca, C…’
‘Valera,’ Francesca supplied quickly for him, deliberately omitting her title, and introducing herself as she had done to the other guests by extending her hand and saying firmly, ‘Please call me Chessie.’
His flesh felt hard and dry, its contact with her own sending a shocking pulse of sensation through her skin that made her pull away from the handshake.
The silver-ice eyes registered her reaction and mocked her for it.
‘Chessie?’ he questioned, smiling cruelly at her. ‘I think not. Francesca suits you much more. Besides, I abhor nicknames.’
His arrogance took her breath away; that and his blatantly obvious desire to hurt her, and, thus challenged, she reacted in a way she herself would never have expected, looking him full in the eyes and saying coolly, ‘Since we are hardly likely to meet frequently, I don’t think it can really matter how you choose to address me, Mr Newton.’ And then she turned her back on him and walked calmly over to the Carters, neither of whom had seen the small by-play, and both of whom welcomed her back enthusiastically.
‘Who did you say she was?’ Oliver questioned Elliott again, apparently unaffected by her rebuke.
‘The god-daughter of some Italian friends of ours.’
‘Mm… with no husband or lover in tow, and some very expensive tastes, to judge from her clothes. What’s she doing here, Elliott?’
‘If you really want to know, why don’t you ask her?’
Oliver’s eyebrows rose, but Elliott wasn’t a man to be challenged or disconcerted by the cool stare of those hypnotic eyes.
‘Dinner, everyone,’ Beatrice announced, opening the drawing-room door.
She had deliberately not placed Francesca next to Oliver, thus making her his partner, but opposite him, and next to John Carter, knowing that the dinner-table conversation which she fully intended to monitor would include the revelation that Francesca was an expert on her country’s history, thus giving her a chance to shine as Beatrice fully believed she deserved to do. It would also give Oliver an opportunity to see that she was not only beautiful but intelligent as well.
Oliver had a theory about women, as unfounded as it was unfair, but Beatrice made allowances for him, understanding that much of his bitter cynicism must spring from the cruelty inflicted on him by his ex-wife.
She had learned from friends in the area that Oliver had adored the little girl he had thought was his child, and local opinion was that he could probably have fought a custody case for her and won, but he had refused to adopt such a course of action because, as he had once harshly told Beatrice, not long after her own daughter was born, he had judged it preferable for the child to be with her mother and the man who was truly her natural father than to be with him, no matter how much he might love her.
This was the first time Francesca had attended such an informal dinner party, where the conversation didn’t so much flow politely as eddy and swirl in fascinating and challenging torrents that refused to allow her to remain aloof.
In a very short space of time she was explaining to John Carter her intention of embarking on a new career, and at first she was so carried away by her own enthusiasm that she didn’t hear the brief sound of derision Oliver Newton made.
He interrupted her enthusiastic flow of plans to challenge directly, ‘Forgive me if I seem cynical, Francesca, but surely if your enthusiasm for a career were as great as you are giving us to understand, you would already have forged the beginnings of this career. You are, after all, no newly qualified graduate, on your own admission.’
Francesca sensed the waiting tension of the other dinner guests. The men looked slightly uncomfortable, with the exception of Elliott, whose expression it was difficult to read, but Francesca had the oddest belief that he was silently encouraging her to go on and not give in to what amounted to little more than bad-mannered bullying.
The women on the other hand looked expectant, as though long used to Oliver Newton’s challenging statements and looking to her to defend their sex.
It was a challenge she dared not resist… the kind of challenge she would doubtless often have to face in her new life.
‘You are quite right,’ she agreed in the cool, beautifully modulated voice she had inherited from her father, her English accentless and perfect. ‘Unfortunately, until recently, my life was planned to take a different direction.’
‘Really? You intrigue me. What kind of direction?’
The rudeness of the man was intolerable. Francesca looked at him coldly, the haughty, dismissing look of her grandfather, but on this man it had no effect. The silver-ice eyes defied the dismissal of hers, demanding that she answer his question.
‘I was to have been married,’ she told him briefly, ‘and, to save you the inconvenience of questioning