Her Christmas Fantasy. PENNY JORDAN

all too aware of Henry’s and his mother’s silently suspicious watchfulness at her side.

      ‘Yes,’ Oliver continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘You can always tell when a woman’s wearing an outfit bought by a man for his lover.’ As he spoke he reached out and touched her jacket-clad arm—a brief touch, nothing more, but it made the hot colour burn in Lisa’s face, and she was not at all surprised to hear Henry’s mother’s outraged indrawn breath or to see the fury in Henry’s eyes.

      This was retribution with a vengeance. This wasn’t just victory, she acknowledged helplessly; it was total annihilation.

      ‘Have you worn any of the other things yet?’ he added casually.

      ‘Lisa…’ she heard Henry demanding ominously at her side, but she couldn’t answer him. She was too mortified, too furiously angry to dare to risk saying anything whilst Oliver Davenport was still standing there listening.

      To her relief, he didn’t linger long. Aunt Elspeth’s god-daughter, the same one who had so determinedly flirted with Henry half an hour earlier, came up and very professionally broke up their quartet, insisting that Oliver had promised to get her a fresh drink.

      He was barely out of earshot before Henry was insisting, ‘I want to know what’s going on, Lisa… What was all that about your clothes…?’

      ‘I think we know exactly what’s going on, Henry,’ Lisa heard his mother answering coolly for him as she gave Lisa a look of virulent hostility edged with triumph. So much for pretending to welcome her into the family, Lisa thought tiredly.

      ‘I can see what you’re both thinking,’ she announced. ‘But you are wrong.’

      ‘Wrong? How can we be wrong when Oliver more or less announced openly that the pair of you have been lovers?’ Mary intoned.

      ‘He did not announce that we had been lovers,’ Lisa defended herself. ‘And if you would just let me explain—’

      ‘Henry, it’s almost time for supper. You know how hopeless your father is at getting people organised. I’m going to need you to help me…’

      ‘Henry, we need to talk.’ Lisa tried to override his mother, but Henry was already turning away from her and going obediently to his mother’s side.

      If they married it would always be like this, Lisa suddenly recognised on a wave of helpless anger. He would always place his mother’s needs and wants above her own, and presumably above those of their children. They would always come a very poor second best to his loyalty to his mother. Was that really what she wanted for herself…for her children?

      Lisa knew it wasn’t.

      It was as though the scales had suddenly fallen from her eyes, as though she were looking at a picture of exactly how and what her life with Henry would be—and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one little bit.

      In the handful of seconds it took her to recognise the fact, she knew irrevocably that she couldn’t marry him, but she still owed him an explanation of what had happened, and from her own point of view. For the sake of her pride and self-respect she wanted to make sure that he and his precious mother knew exactly how she had come to meet Oliver and exactly how he had manipulated them into believing his deliberately skewed view of the situation.

      Still seething with anger against Oliver, she refused Henry’s father’s offer of another drink and some supper. She would choke rather than eat any of Mary Hanford’s food, she decided angrily.

      Just the thought of the kind of life she would have had as Henry’s wife made her shudder and acknowledge that she had had a lucky escape, but knowing that did not lessen her overwhelming fury at the man who had accidently brought it about.

      How would she have been feeling right now had she been deeply in love with Henry and he with her? Instead of stalking angrily around the Hanfords’ drawing room like an angry tigress, she would probably have been upstairs in her bedroom sobbing her heart out.

      Some Christmas this was going to be.

      She had been so looking forward to being here, to being part of the family, to sharing the simple, traditional pleasures of Christmas with the man she intended to marry, and now it was all spoiled, ruined… And why? Why? Because Oliver Davenport was too arrogant, too proud…too…too devious and hateful to allow someone whom he obviously saw as way, way beneath him to get the better of him.

      Well, she didn’t care. She didn’t care what he did or what he said. He could tell the whole room, the whole house, the whole world that she had bought her clothes second-hand and that they had belonged to his cousin’s girlfriend for all she cared now. In fact, she almost wished he would. That way at least she would be vindicated. That way she could walk away from here…from Henry and his precious mother…with her head held high.

      ‘An outfit bought by a man for his lover…’ How dared he…? Oh, how dared he…? She was, she suddenly realised, almost audibly grinding her teeth. Hastily she stopped. Dental fees were notoriously, hideously expensive.

      She couldn’t leave matters as they were, she decided fiercely. She would have to say something to Oliver Davenport—even if it was to challenge him over the implications he had made.

      She got her chance ten minutes later, when she saw Oliver leaving the drawing room alone.

      Quickly, before she could change her mind, she followed him. As he heard her footsteps crossing the hallway, he stopped and turned round.

      ‘Ah, the blushing bride-to-be and her borrowed raiment,’ he commented sardonically.

      ‘I bought in good faith my second-hand raiment,’ Lisa corrected him bitingly, adding, ‘You do realise what impression you gave Henry and his mother back there, don’t you?’ she challenged him, adding scornfully before he could answer, ‘Of course you knew. You knew perfectly well what you were doing, what you were implying…’

      ‘Did I?’ he responded calmly.

      ‘Yes, you did,’ Lisa responded, her anger intensifying. ‘You knew they would assume that you meant that you and I had been lovers…that you had bought my clothes—’

      ‘Surely Henry knows you far better than that?’ Oliver interrupted her smoothly. ‘After all, according to the local grapevine, the pair of you are intending to marry—’

      ‘Of course Henry knows me…’ Lisa began, and then stopped, her face flushing in angry mortification. But it was too late.

      Swift as a hawk to the lure, her tormentor responded softly, ‘Ah, I see. It’s because he knows you so well that he made the unfortunate and mistaken assumption that—’

      ‘No… He doesn’t… I don’t…’ Lisa tried to fight back gamely, but it was still too late, and infuriatingly she knew it and, even worse, so did Oliver.

      He wasn’t smirking precisely—he was far too arrogant for that, Lisa decided bitterly—but there was certainly mockery in his eyes, and if she hadn’t known better she could almost have sworn that his mouth was about to curl into a smile. But how could it? She was sure that he was incapable of doing anything so human. He was the kind of man who just didn’t know what human emotions were, she decided savagely—who had no idea what it meant to suffer insecurity or…or any of the things that made people like herself feel so vulnerable.

      ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done?’ she challenged him, changing tack, her voice shaking under the weight of her suppressed emotion. ‘I came here—’

      ‘I know why you came here,’ he interrupted her with unexpected sternness. ‘You came to be looked over as a potential wife for Mary Hanford’s precious son.

      ‘Where’s your pride?’ he demanded scornfully. ‘However, a potential bride is all you will ever be. Mary Hanford knows quite well who she wants Henry to marry, and I’m afraid it isn’t going to be you…’

      ‘Not now,’