Mistress for a Night. Diana Hamilton

the room that had been the scene of her humiliation and anguish for a couple of nights at most. Thankfully again, a quick inspection revealed that all of the things she’d left behind on that terrible evening had been turfed out of the drawers and hanging cupboards. Mrs Moody would have binned them on her mother’s instructions.

      She tossed her overnight bag on the frilly pink bedcover and stood in front of the mirror, running her fingers through her untidy mane of hair.

      ‘Mouse’ was a thing of the past. After the trauma of losing everything—Jason, their baby, the right to show her face at Lytham, to have anything more to do with her mother—her hair had grown because she simply hadn’t bothered to have it cut, and the puppy fat had dropped off her because she had only been able to pick at her food.

      A final fleeting glance told her she’d do. Jason would have to take her as she was. Vivienne had always insisted they dress for dinner. How well she remembered having to climb out of her uniform of baggy tops that hid a multitude of sins and deck herself in the frilly frocks her mother deemed suitable for a young girl.

      Or perhaps Vivienne had deliberately picked out those awful fussy dresses because she’d known they made her daughter look a fright, the contrast with her own elegant perfection all the more pointed.

      She wouldn’t let it hurt her. Why should she? Vivienne was dead, the past was dead, and Jason—despite appearing as handsome and virile as ever; even more so if she were to be painfully honest—might just as well be.

      Being at Lytham again brought back far too many uncomfortable memories, and if what Jason had said about her inheritance was true then she’d get rid of the place faster than it took her gorgeous, powerful new car to get from nought to sixty!

      She found him in the breakfast room, and he hadn’t changed what he was wearing, either. So the old order had altered. Which, she thought, raking her eyes over the lean, powerful frame enhanced by his casual jeans and sweater, was a pity. She would have taken perverse pleasure from annoying him, underlining her confident independence.

      ‘Ready to eat?’ Did she have to look at him as if they were squaring up for the fight of the century? He lifted the lid of the steaming casserole Mrs Moody had brought through five minutes ago, along with a clutch of jacket potatoes, and found the enticing aroma repelled him.