Free Dark Summer Dawn by Sara Craven

Celia—you remember my stepdaughter?'
    'Oh, yes.' Celia glanced up with seeming casualness, but actually missing nothing. It was the sort of look that would have made most women instantly check their tights for ladders, but Lisa took it in her smiling stride as she came forward. 'Of course, you're quite a celebrity now.'
    She made it sound faintly disreputable, Lisa thought wryly, but then for Celia it probably was. In Celia's world, you only appeared in magazines, sitting on the stairs at hunt balls, or in newspapers, in the Birthday Honours list.
    'She's more than that,' James put in, surveying her with undisguised admiration. 'Why didn't you warn us, Lisa, that you were going to turn into such a beauty?'
    Lisa laughed, too accustomed to such remarks to be either flattered or embarrassed by them. 'Perhaps I didn't know myself—or better still, I wanted to surprise you all. Hello, James—Tony. It's good to see you again.'
    'It's more than good to see you,' Tony said frankly. 'As a sort of brother-in-law, do I get a kiss?'
    He aimed for her lips, but by turning her head slightly, Lisa offered him her cheek with a smiling grace which robbed the action of any offence.
    Dane said, 'What can I get you to drink?'
    She hadn't looked for him. She hadn't betrayed the least awareness of his presence, but she had known all the same that he was there from the moment she had stood in the doorway. Even when she had been quite young, she had this ability to pick him up on some kind of invisible antennae. Perhaps it was always like this when you hated someone, she thought. Perhaps the force of your emotion made you ultra-sensitive to their presence, and their absences.
    She asked for a dry sherry, her voice light and casual, and he brought it to her. She took the glass by the stem, avoiding the most fleeting contact with him, and saw his mouth twist a little as though he knew her intention. His antennae were presumably working too, she thought as she sipped her sherry and told Celia smilingly that yes, it was incredibly exciting being a model but also very hard work.
    Even though the party was all her own idea, Julie came down late. Her apologies were made with a smile, but perfunctory, as if it was quite usual for the daughter of the house to be the last to arrive. She made an eye-catching picture in a dress the colour of ripe cherries, but she was wearing rather too much make-up, Lisa's expert eye noticed.
    Dinner was excellent in its usual understated way—clear soup, followed by sole in a creamy sauce, and then rare roast beef with golden baked potatoes.
    But no one, with the possible exception of Chas and Celia, did it justice, Lisa thought. Tony, of course, was far too busy, trying to talk to Julie whose attention like some brilliant dragonfly swooped restlessly from one to another at the dining table. James who had been placed next to Lisa only picked at the food on his plate, so perhaps his lean and hungry look was for real, she thought drily. He chatted to her charmingly on a number of topics, but Lisa had the impression that the real James was elsewhere;, hidden perhaps in some secret part of himself and quite inaccessible. She thought she remembered a warmer, more outgoing personality, but perhaps the new James represented what several years of marriage to Celia could do.
    Nothing that Celia had said or done during dinner or earlier in the drawing room had gone anywhere towards reducing the animosity she had always aroused in Lisa, and yet Lisa would have been hard put to it to explain even to herself exactly why Celia made her feel as she did. In her early days in modelling she had encountered more malice and cattiness than Celia had ever displayed at her worst. At school she had met bigger snobs and far more spoiled rich girls. Usually, she could be tolerant, yet Celia had always managed to catch her on the raw.
    Until now, she had always believed Julie had shared her feelings, or even exceeded them. In her younger days she