Free One Christmas Morning & One Summer's Afternoon by Tilly Bagshawe Page B

served!’
    * * *
    Dinner was delicious – smoked-salmon rillettes with horseradish sauce, succulent roast beef with all the trimmings, and a Christmas pudding so drenched in brandy it should have come with a health warning – but Laura barely took a bite. Instead, in despair at having so rashly overplayed her hand with Daniel, and feeling fat and uncomfortable in her tight burgundy dress, she drowned her sorrows in Rory Flint-Hamilton’s excellent vintage claret. Daniel was seated at a table so far across the room she’d have to crane her neck just to catch a glimpse of his back. Meanwhile, some sadist had sat her between Gretchen Lewis, St Hilda’s school librarian and officially the most boring woman in the village, and Lord Lomond, a Scottish grandee in his eighties with a gammy leg and foul temper to match. Ignored by both of them, Laura allowed the good wine to work its magic, becoming contentedly glazed as she watched the glamorous guests, admiring the huntsmen’s red frock coats and mentally rating the women’s dresses on a scale of one to ten. She was just thinking that Hugh Grant’s girlfriend looked the prettiest of all of them – in a short red halter-neck dress and spectacular matching boots, like a porn Little Red Riding Hood …
Little Red Riding Hooker
,
Laura thought and laughed, spilling claret down the bodice of her dress – when the most stunning girl she had ever seen in her life swept into the room.
    In a floor-length, nude silk dress, slashed to the thigh and completely backless, and with her perfectly streaked honey-blonde hair piled on top of her head like a crown, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton glided across the room like a goddess. Through her semi-drunken haze, Laura wondered where she’d been until now. Hiding upstairs in her bedroom, just waiting for the right moment to make an entrance? If so, that would make her a raging narcissist. Then again, how could you not be if you looked in the mirror every morning and saw
that
staring back at you? Her photographs didn’t come close to doing her justice.
    To Laura’s horror, she saw that Tatiana was seated at the next table to Daniel. As she approached, he stood up and pulled out her chair for her. Laura watched, frozen, as the two of them kissed on the cheek and exchanged a few words, Tatiana laughing at some comment of Daniel’s before she sat down and was immediately pounced upon by Harry Hotham.
    They know each other.
    It was clear from both of their body language that Daniel and Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had met before.
    Why didn’t he say anything to me?
    Dinner was almost over and the live band were taking their places, ready for the start of the dancing. There were to be reels and some old English country dances – Strip the Willow, the Dashing White Sergeant and the like – followed later by a traditional disco. Carriages were officially at midnight, but in previous years the Furlings Ball had been known to go on until dawn, with the younger generation drinking and partying long after the oldies had gone home to bed. With the play tomorrow, Laura would have to make an early night of it. She longed to get away, to somehow take back what she’d said to Daniel earlier, go back to Briar Cottage and make love until everything was all right again. But, if she tried to drag him home too early, she risked looking even more pathetic and desperate.
I must stay, and dance, and act as if nothing’s happened. Nothing
has
happened. I should never have let Gabe Baxter get to me. So what if Daniel was flirting with that actress? And so what if he’s met Tatiana Flint-Hamilton before? None of that means anything. He came here to spend Christmas with
me
. I have to get a grip.
    Standing up to go to the loo, Laura had to clutch the back of Lord Lomond’s chair to steady herself. The whole room swayed gently, like a boat at anchor. Perhaps she should have eaten some of her pudding. So much wine on an empty stomach had clearly gone to her head.
    Focusing