The Mistress Assignment. Penny Jordan

had originally been her grandmother’s and which her parents had given her on her twenty-first birthday would be perfect.

      It was a dream of a dress, she acknowledged ten minutes later as she carefully hung it on a padded hanger. A dream of a dress for what could well turn out to be a nightmare of an evening.

      There was no way that Julian Cox wasn’t going to notice her wearing it. Although it was far too elegant and well designed ever to be described as sexy, Kelly knew even before she put it on that those soft layers of chiffon would have instant male appeal and be about as irresistible as home-made apple pie—although to a very different male appetite.

      She glanced at her watch. If Dee’s cousin was going to pick her up at seven-thirty she ought to think about starting to get ready. Her hair would need washing and styling if she was going to do full justice to that dress. Fortunately its length meant that it was very adaptable and easy to put up. Equally fortunately it possessed enough curl to mean that she could attempt a very similar if somewhat simpler style to that adopted by Jane Austen’s heroines.

      On the other side of town, someone else was also getting ready for the ball. Like Kelly, Brough Frobisher was attending it under protest. His sister had persuaded him to go, reluctantly wringing his agreement from him.

      ‘Julian especially wants you to be there,’ she had pleaded with him anxiously when he had started to refuse, adding slightly breathlessly, ‘I think...that is, he’s said...there’s something he wants to ask you...’

      Brough’s heart had sunk as he’d listened to her. Initially when she had begged him to go with them to the ball he had assumed it was because her new boyfriend was looking for a backer for the new business venture he had already insisted on discussing with Brough; that had been bad enough, but now that Eve was dropping hints about Julian Cox proposing to her Brough was beginning to feel seriously alarmed.

      At twenty-one Eve certainly didn’t need either his approval or his authorization to get married, and at thirty-four he was mature enough to recognise that any man who married the sister whom he had been so close to since the death of their parents nearly fifteen years ago was bound, in the initial stage of their relationship, to arouse in him a certain amount of suspicion and resentment. Since their parents’ death he had virtually been a surrogate father to Eve, and fathers were notoriously bad at giving up their claims to their little girls’ affection in favour of another man; but, given all of that, there was still something about Julian Cox that Brough just didn’t like.

      The man was too sure of himself, too adroit... too...too smooth and slippery.

      Eve had, after all, only known the man a matter of weeks, having initially met him quite soon after they had moved into the town.

      Brough had decided that he had had enough of city life, and had sold out of the pensions management partnership he had founded, downsizing both his business and his equally hectic city social life by setting up a much smaller version of the partnership here in Rye-on-Averton.

      Being a workaholic, city me—these were both fine at a certain stage in one’s life. But lately Brough had begun to reflect almost enviously on the differences between his lifestyle and that enjoyed by those of his peers who had married in their late twenties and who now had wives and families.

      ‘It’s a woman who’s supposed to feel her biological clock ticking away, not a man,’ Eve had teased him, adding more seriously, ‘I suppose it’s because you virtually brought me up with Nan’s help that you miss having someone to take care of.’

      Perhaps she was right. Brough couldn’t say; all he could say was that the prospect of living in a pretty market town which had its roots firmly secured in history had suddenly been an extremely comforting and alluring one.

      As for wanting a wife and family, well, over the years he had certainly had more than his fair share of opportunities to acquire those. He was a formidably attractive man, taller than average, with a physique to match—he had played rugby for his school throughout his time at university and it showed. His close-cropped, thick, dark hair was just beginning to show a sexy hint of grey at his temples, and his almost stern expression was enlivened by the dimple indented into his chin and the laughter that illuminated the direct gaze of his dark blue eyes.

      ‘It’s not fair,’ Eve had once protested. ‘You got all our inherited share of charisma... Look at the way women are always running after you.’

      ‘That isn’t charisma,’ Brough had corrected her dryly. ‘That’s money...’

      In addition to the money both Brough and Eve had inherited from their parents, Brough’s own business acumen and foresight now meant that if he had chosen to do so he could quite easily have retired and lived extremely well off his existing financial assets.

      Perhaps it was his fault that Eve was as naive and unworldly as she was, he reflected a little grimly. As her brother, stand-in father and protector, he had perhaps shielded her too much from life’s realities. Every instinct he possessed told him that Julian Cox simply wasn’t to be trusted, but Eve wouldn’t hear a word against the man.

      “You don’t know him like I do,’ she had declared passionately when Brough had tried gently to enlighten her. ‘Julian is so kind, even when people don’t deserve it. When I first met him he was being stalked by this awful woman. It had gone on for months. She kept telling everyone that she was going out with him, calling round at his flat, ringing him up, following him everywhere. She even tried to arrange a fake engagement party, claiming that he’d asked her to marry him...

      ‘But despite all the problems she’d caused him Julian told me that he just couldn’t bring himself to report her to the police and that he’d tried to talk to her himself...to reason with her... He’d even taken her out to dinner a couple of times because he felt so sorry for her. But he said that he simply couldn’t get through to her or make her understand that he just wasn’t interested in her. In the end he said the only way to get her to accept the truth was for her to see him with me. Luckily that seems to have worked.’

      When he’d heard the passionate intensity in his sister’s voice Brough had known that it wouldn’t be a good idea to give her his own opinion of Julian Cox. Certainly the man seemed to be very attractive to the female sex, if the number of women’s names he peppered his con- . versation with were anything to go by.

      No, he wasn’t looking forward to this evening one little bit, Brough acknowledged grimly—and he owed Nan a visit as well.

      Nan, their maternal grandmother, was coming up for eighty but was still fit and active and very much a part of the small Cotswold community where she lived, and thinking of her reminded Brough of something he had to do.

      His grandmother had in her glass-fronted corner cabinet a delicate hand painted porcelain teapot, together with all that was left of the original service which went with it. It had been a wedding present passed on to her and Gramps by her own grandparents, and Brough knew that it was one of her long-held wishes that somehow the teaset might be completed. Brough had tried his best over the years, but it was not one of the famous or well-known makes and it had proved impossible to track down any of the missing pieces. The only avenue left to him, according to the famous china manufacturers Hartwell, whom he had visited in Staffordshire, was for him to buy new pieces of a similar style and have them hand-painted to match the antique set.

      ‘The original manufacturers we amalgamated with produce a small range of antique china in the same style, but unfortunately we do not produce either that colour nor the intricate detail of the landscapes painted into the borders,’ the sympathetic Hartwell director had told him. ‘And whilst we could supply you with the correct shape of china I’m afraid that you would have to find someone else to paint it for you. Our people here have the skill but not, I’m afraid, the time, and I have to tell you that your grandmother’s set would be extremely time consuming to reproduce. From what you’ve shown me I suspect that each of the tea plates probably carried a different allegorical figure from Greek mythology in its borders, so your painter would have to be extremely innovative as well as extremely skilled. Your best bet might be someone who already works on commission—paints