Master of her Virtue. Miranda Lee

exclaimed as he came up to her. ‘I didn’t recognise you there for a moment.’

      Clearly, Violet didn’t usually look as good as she looked tonight. Yet Leo could see that she wasn’t just all clothes, hair and make-up. She had lovely dark eyes, porcelain skin, nice cheekbones, a lush mouth and a good body. At least, the parts Leo could see were good. Very good. He conceded that she might not be so perfect underneath that full skirt. She might very well be pear-shaped with huge thighs and thick ankles. Impossible to tell in that get-up.

      ‘I didn’t recognise you either,’ Violet replied.

      Leo knew exactly what she meant. Henry had totally transformed himself from his usual trim, elegant self into a portly and rather drearily dressed Friar Tuck, even going to the length of covering his thick head of well-groomed silver hair with a brown wig which had the appropriate bald spot.

      ‘Yes, but not for the better, I fear,’ Henry said wryly. ‘Lord knows what possessed me. Whereas you, my dear girl, look absolutely gorgeous.’

      There it was again, that blush, at which point Leo totally abandoned his earlier theory that Violet might be having a secret affair with a married man. Mistresses didn’t blush like that.

      At the same time, he wasn’t willing to believe she was pure as the driven snow. She was too attractive for that to be the case. Real Snow Whites did not exist in this day and age. Despite looking little more than twenty tonight, she had to be … what? Twenty-five, twenty-six, maybe? University degrees took three or four years at least, after which she’d been working for his father for about four years.

      No, his first theory had to be right. She’d had a bad sexual experience at uni which had knocked her for a six and made her retreat into herself. That would certainly explain her lack of social confidence.

      Poor darling, he thought, and resolved to do his best to make sure she enjoyed herself at this party. He suspected it had been a big deal for Violet to come here tonight. Maybe the lure of the fireworks had finally overridden her shyness. Though, ‘shy’ was not quite the word he would use when describing her. A truly shy girl would not have shown that much cleavage …

      The doorbell ringing again stopped Leo from ogling Violet’s exceptional breasts, bringing his eyes back up to Henry’s face.

      ‘Do you want me to answer that?’ he asked his father.

      ‘No, I’ll get it. You can pour Violet a glass of that champagne I bought especially for tonight.’

      ‘Do you like champagne?’ Leo asked her as he led her over to the corner bar. ‘You can have something else, if you like. Henry has a bit of everything behind here.’ Leaving Violet standing next to a bar stool, he made his way behind the black, granite-topped bar which had an assortment of glasses and bottles at the ready.

      ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had real champagne,’ she said, making no attempt to sit on the stool. Understandable, given the width of her skirt.

      ‘Don’t worry. You’ll like it. Henry only ever buys the best.’

      ‘Have you always called your father Henry?’ she asked as he filled two crystal flutes with the chilled champagne from the ice bucket.

      ‘Ever since I went to uni. His idea, not mine. I suspect he didn’t want the women he fancied knowing he had a grown–up son.’ He handed one glass over to Violet before lifting the other to his lips.

      ‘I thought James Bond only drank dry martinis,’ she said with just a hint of a smile curving her ruby red lips.

      Lord, but she was a provocative package when she smiled like that. More so because she wasn’t aware of her attraction.

      ‘I have a confession to make,’ he said.

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘I don’t think I’d make a very good James Bond. I get tired even watching 007 in action. All those car chases, not to mention the fights. After which he has to make love to at least half a dozen different women, most of whom are trying to kill him.’

      She laughed. Not the laughter he’d become used to with women—nothing forced or flirtatious, a natural-sounding laugh.

      Leo realised at that moment just how jaded he’d become with the female company he usually kept. All the up-and-coming young actresses he met at parties and premieres who obviously saw him not as a mere man but as a step up the ladder of their careers. They fluttered their false eyelashes at him and flattered him endlessly, hanging on his every word and laughing coquettishly, even when he hadn’t told a joke.

      He couldn’t imagine Violet acting that way. Nothing false about her, he thought, as his eyes dropped once more to the creamy mounds of flesh which were fighting to be freed from that corset-like bodice. Leo knew that, without a bra, Violet’s breasts would settle into lushly natural curves, not stand up high on her chest like two huge grapefruits the way Helene’s had done.

      The prospect of spending this New Year’s Eve party with a girl like Violet was an unexpectedly pleasant one. He’d already been curious about her, but he hadn’t anticipated being this enchanted by her. Enchanted and intrigued.

      The sounds of loud laughter brought his gaze over Violet’s shoulder to the group of guests who’d just arrived. Leo didn’t know the people beneath the costumes but felt sure their real characters matched the ones they’d chosen for the evening. Henry the Eighth and wife, along with Napoleon and Josephine. The men would be ruthless and their women little more than expensive window dressing. Leo had met their kind before.

      What he hadn’t met before was Violet’s kind. She was like a breath of fresh air in a world filled with pollution.

      ‘Why don’t we take our drinks out into the balcony?’ he suggested, eager to get her alone and find out more about her.