Free The Stallion by Georgina Brown Page B

coupled with an odd satisfaction. Her eyes narrowed through the halo of blue smoke.
    Content that she had received admiration, Penny unfolded the crisp white napkin that smelt of fresh citrus and was stiff with starch.
    Nadine was directly across from her. It is easy to study looks when the subject you are studying is facing you.
    It was hard not to stare at Alistair’s sister. Penny tried to look away, to concentrate on the meal, sip less slowly at the wine, but Nadine surprised her. It seemed quite amazing that someone with such white hair and angular features could possibly be related to Alistair.
    Nadine caught her looking and raised her blonde eyebrows towards the cropped hair that shone like silver beneath the lights.
    From a distance, Penny guessed, the short glossy spikes could almost be mistaken for her bare skull. Jet earrings jiggled gently in her ears when she laughed as she did now.
    Sir Reggie had cracked a joke. Penny hadn’t heard it, her mind too full of analysing these people, of surmising how they might fit into the overall picture of things.
    So far since coming here, she’d learned little of timetable and other more sociable interactions; except for Gregory of course. But Gregory didn’t talk much – not that such a minor problem as that detracted from his magnetism one little bit.
    ‘I hope I haven’t offended you,’ said Sir Reggie suddenly, shattering the beauty and sheer sexuality of her thoughts as his hand landed on hers. ‘I hope you don’t mind being the butt of my little joke. I didn’t really mean it, you know.’
    ‘Not at all,’ she said, smiling brightly and wondering if the wine she had been drinking had affected her hearing. ‘I can take a joke any time.’ Then she laughed. What he’d said about her in any joke was of no interest to her; besides, she hadn’t heard him.
    Her attention was drawn to Nadine whose hand reached over the table. Her palm rattled the glass and silverware as she brought it down heavily on the pure whiteness of the tablecloth.
    ‘That’s it, Penny darling. Take no notice of him. I’m sure you’ll be an asset round here, darling girl. My brother appreciates perfection – in everything.’
    ‘I won’t,’ she replied, her eyes catlike; her lips, glistening with the dark rich colour, slowly sipped her wine.
    Their eyes met as Nadine straightened in her chair. For the first time Penny could evaluate just how tall Nadine was; six foot two at least, and clad from head to toe in black, its denseness only relieved with base metal bangles and a collar that looked to be made of dull marcasite and leather and a good two inches in depth – perhaps made for a bull mastiff rather than a woman.
    ‘No harm in that, my dears,’ chirped up Sir Reginald who Alistair had explained was a fellow director and business associate in the wide and varied group first founded by Alistair’s father before the Second World War. ‘Perfection is to be admired, my dears . . . cosseted,’ he added as his broad hand circled Penny’s back. She leant forward away from the harp-shaped back of the chair. His fingers spread downwards and slid over the roundness of her buttocks. ‘All perfection,’ he added with a low chuckle.
    He smelt of expensive aftershave and his body appeared well-looked-after beneath the expensive smoothness of his black evening suit. Being of mature age, and born with privilege and rank rather than achieving it, he was the only one truly dressed for dinner.
    Alistair was not casually dressed, but not formally either. His shirt was made of grey silk that matched his eyes. He wore a tie which must have cost as much as some people would pay for a whole outfit. He looked smooth, well-groomed and as expensive as the neat gold-and-diamond cufflinks that flashed at his wrists. Smooth, she thought, sure of himself, yet strangely ill at ease; and the more he looked at her, the more ill at ease he appeared to become.
    Not that he was the only one who studied her.