The Mistress Assignment

‘It’s all right,’ she responded coolly, her face obscured by her long honey-blonde hair.

Seven years his senior, Dee had always been someone Harry was just a little bit in awe of.

Dee’s father and his had been brothers, and Dee had been a regular visitor to the family farm when Harry had been growing up. It had surprised him a little that she had chosen to continue her career in such a small, sleepy place as Rye-on-Averton after her father’s death. But then Dee had never been predictable or particularly easy to understand. She was a woman who kept her own counsel and was strong-willed and highly intelligent, with the kind of business brain and aptitude for making money that Harry often wished he shared.

There had only been one occasion that Harry could recall when Dee had found herself in a situation over which she did not have full control, a situation where her emotions had overruled her brain, but any kind of reference—no matter how slight—to that particular subject was completely taboo, and Harry would certainly not have dared to refer to it. As well as being in awe of his older cousin, it had to be said that there were times when he was almost, if not afraid of her, then certainly extremely unwilling to arouse her ire.

‘Kelly will be expecting you. You’ll like her,’ Dee informed him, adding almost inconsequentially, ‘She’d fit in very well here, and your mother...’

‘My mother wants me to marry and produce a clutch of grandchildren—yes, I know,’ Harry agreed wryly, before daring to point out, ‘You’re older than me, Dee, and you still haven’t married. Perhaps we’re a family who don’t...’

‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ Dee reproved him. ‘You have the farm to think of. It’s been passed down in the family for over four hundred years. Of course you’ll many.’

Of course he would, but when he was ready and, please God, to someone he chose for himself. Although he tried desperately to hide it, considering that such idealism was not proper for a modern farmer, Harry was a romantic, a man who wanted desperately to fall deeply and completely in love. So far, though, he had not met anyone who stirred such deep and intense emotions within him.

CHAPTER THREE

VERY gently Kelly fingered the soft silk of her gown. Once on it suited her even more perfectly than she had expected, the colour of the chiffon doing impossibly glamorous things for her colouring.

As she looked up she saw that Dee’s cousin Harry was watching her rather anxiously. She smiled reassuringly at him as they waited in the receiving line to be greeted by their host and hostess. She had known from the moment he arrived to pick her up that she was going to like Harry. He was that kind of man—solid, dependable, reassuring, as comfortable as a familiar solid armchair, with the kind of down-to-earth, healthy good looks that typified a certain type of very English male. Just having him standing there beside her made her feel not merely remarkably better about the scheme which Dee had dreamt up but somehow extraordinarily feminine and protected. It was rather a novel sensation for Kelly, who had never been the type of woman to feel that she needed a man to lean on in any shape or form.

‘That colour really suits you,’ Harry told her earnestly as he arched his neck a little uncomfortably, as though he longed to be free of the restriction of his formal dinner suit.

‘Dee chose it,’ Kelly informed him, adding truthfully, ‘I feel rather like Cinderella being equipped for the ball by her fairy godmother... Although...’ She paused and then stopped. There was no point in discussing with Harry her doubts about what she was doing.

They had reached the line-up of dignitaries now. Kelly smiled mischievously as she caught the discreetly admiring second look the Lord Lieutenant of the county gave her before he shook her hand.

It’s all right, it’s not me, it’s the dress, she wanted to reassure his rather austere-looking wife, but then, remembering her new role as a femme fatale, instead she gave him a demure little smile plus a wickedly sultry look from beneath lowered lashes. It worked... His Lordship might be close on sixty, but there was no doubt that he was still a very virile man—at least if the look he was giving her was anything to go by.

Perhaps the evening wasn’t going to be so much of a challenge to her thespian talents as she had originally believed, Kelly mused as they passed down the line and then turned to accept a glass of champagne from one of the hovering waiters.

As Kelly already knew, the tickets for the ball had been unbelievably expensive, with only a relatively small number available, but, as she glanced appreciatively at her surroundings, she could well understand why.

Instead of more conventionally attaching a large marquee to the house to accommodate the event, guests were allowed to wander at will through the elegant antiquefurnished reception rooms. Her own Regency-inspired dress couldn’t have been more felicitously in keeping with the decor, Kelly recognised, her attention caught by a pretty inlaid Chinese lacquered cabinet in one corner of the room, its shelves filled with what she suspected were Sèvres figurines.

Touching Harry’s arm, she pointed it out to him.

‘I’d like to go over and have a closer look,’ she told him. Nodding, Harry gallantly forged ahead to make a pathway through the throng of people now filling the hallway.

Kelly had almost reached her destination when abruptly she stopped dead. There, not a dozen feet away from her, stood Julian Cox. He hadn’t seen her as yet. He was busy talking with a pretty fair-haired young woman standing with him. In looks she was very similar to Beth, Kelly recognised, and she looked somehow as though she too possessed the same gentleness of nature that so characterised her best friend.

She doubted very much that that same description could be applied to the man standing on the opposite side of her. Tall, with incredibly powerful shoulders and frowning heavily, he looked extremely formidable and extremely masculine, Kelly recognised as her heart gave a sudden unsteady lurch against her ribs and her breathing quickened idiotically.

As though—impossibly, surely—he was somehow aware of her attention, he turned his head, seemingly focusing fiercely on her.

Kelly’s heart gave another and even sharper lurch. He had the most intensely dark blue eyes, and such a penetrating gaze that she felt almost as though he could see right into her soul.

Now she was being ridiculous, she told herself stoutly, firmly assuring herself that there was no way that either he or anyone else could have guessed what was going through her mind as she looked at him. And anyway, she reminded herself as she determinedly looked away from him, she was not here to start fantasising about the admittedly very interesting sensual allure of an unknown man; she was here for a very specific purpose, and that did not include allowing herself to be side-tracked by anyone or anything—not even her own still very disturbed heartbeat.

Even so, she managed to sneak a second brief glance at him, and she wished she had not done so as she saw the tender and protective way in which he was bending towards the soft-featured blonde girl who was standing close to Julian. Was she, as Kelly had first assumed, the new woman in Julian’s life, or was the other man her partner? Had those magnetic blue eyes that had focused on her so directly and so immediately been giving a stern warning that he was not available to any other woman, rather than conveying a virile, masculine awareness of her female curiosity?

Well, no doubt before the evening was over she was going to find out, she reminded herself. Julian had not seen her yet, but... She took a deep breath and started to move discreetly into his line of vision.

‘Are you okay?’ she heard Harry asking her in concern. ‘You look a bit flushed. It’s pretty crowded in here and hot...’

Rather guiltily Kelly gave him a reassuring smile. Any heat flushing her face had rather more to do with her emotional and physical reaction to the sexily masculine good looks of the man standing with Julian Cox than with the heat of the room.

Irritatingly, Julian had now turned away to talk to someone so that she was out of his line of vision. Boldly she deliberately changed direction, plunging through the crowd in order to bring herself back into it and, in the process, losing Harry, who became separated from her by the busy throng.

Julian might not be aware of her presence, she recognised after a discreet glance in the trio’s direction, but he, whoever he was, most certainly was. Slightly breathlessly she instinctively curled her toes, and a delicious thrill of feminine reaction ran through her as she realised just how intently she was being studied. Sternly she reminded herself of just why she was here and the role she had to play. The temptation to abandon it and to revert to her normal self beckoned treacherously. She had never been a flirt, never been the kind of woman to go all out deliberately to attract a man’s attention—she had never needed to and she had certainly never wanted to!

But, almost as though it was fate, just as she was wavering, a direct pathway opened up between her and Julian. Sternly she made herself take it.

‘Julian... How lovely to see you...’

Had she got the note of flirtatious invitation in her voice pitched correctly? Anxiously she held her breath as Julian turned his head to look at her, wariness giving way to a look of lustful male appreciation as she continued to smile at him.

‘Kelly! What a surprise...’

‘A pleasant one, I hope.’ Kelly pouted, deliberately stepping closer to him, angling her body so that she was placing herself with her back to the blonde girl standing silently at Julian’s side and thereby excluding her from their conversation.

‘I thought for a moment that you’d forgotten me...’

‘Impossible,’ Julian assured her with heavy flirtatiousness, his glance deliberately and meaningfully lingering on her body.