cards on display. The one he eventually chose was surprisingly sentimental.
‘She places a lot of importance on the words,’ he said somewhat defensively as they walked out of the shop. ‘She always maintains the best ones were the cards we made ourselves when we were children. She’s kept them all.’
Cory smiled and said something appropriate but his words had hurt her. She would have given anything for a mother like that.
She hadn’t let Nick call his mother and ask her what she wanted that morning before they had left the house. ‘She would love a surprise,’ she’d told him firmly. ‘All women do. And not anything practical. OK?’
And so here they were after just an hour, with Nick having bought an elegant Louis XVI-style chair and matching footstool made from kiln-cured beech, the fabric being cream linen with velvet leaf appliqué. Nick had assured her his mother would go ape for the chair and had paid a hefty charge for it to be immediately delivered. ‘She’s been looking for something like this for her bedroom for years,’ he said with a great deal of satisfaction. ‘She’ll love it. Trust me.’
Cory’s comfort was rooted in the fact that the chair and footstool would at least be a surprise.
She had opted for a pair of exquisitely fashioned silver earrings from a small jeweller’s in the heart of Barnstaple. The tear-shaped drops were inset with onyx, the semiprecious agate used to dramatic effect against the precious metal.
Nick had approved of her choice with reservations, as she had with his.
Later that afternoon he dropped the bombshell that they were in fact expected to attend a family party in honour of his mother’s sixtieth birthday. They were sitting enjoying a relaxing cup of coffee in an enchanting little patisserie at the time. ‘Nothing formal,’ he assured her when her countenance changed dramatically. ‘Just a casual get-together this evening.’
‘How casual?’ she demanded, her brain immediately doing an inventory of the clothes she had brought with her.
‘Nibbles, drinks, dancing.’
‘Where?’
‘At a local hotel.’
She wondered if the owners of the little patisserie had ever had a man strangled in their establishment.
The next hour was spent in a frantic search which yielded a black and silver asymmetric dress in silk linen, which went perfectly with the black ankle-strap sandals she had thrown into her case at the last moment.
They arrived back at the house at six-thirty and were due at the hotel for drinks with the immediate family before the other guests started arriving at seven-forty-five.
Cory tore up to her room like a mad thing, clutching the bag with the dress in it. She had less than an hour to transform herself into an elegant creature of the kind usually seen on Nick’s arm.
She was back downstairs at seven-fifteen; made-up, coiffured and feeling a lot more confident in the black and silver silk linen than she would have done in the smartcasual dress she had brought with her for evenings.
She found she had to take a deep breath at the sight of Nick. He had dressed up in black dinner jacket and tie. He had been sitting waiting for her in the hall, one leg crossed over the other knee, and now he stood up at her approach. The blue eyes stroked over her in a way that made her hot.
‘You look good enough to eat,’ he said softly. ‘But the taxi’s arrived so I’ll have to restrain myself.’
‘Pity.’ She smiled brightly. ‘But we don’t want to keep your family waiting, do we?’
She’d decided she would emulate his other women tonight. She was going to be sophisticated and vivacious, carefree. The dress had cost more than she would have ideally liked, but when she’d slipped it on earlier a certain devil-may-care attitude had come with it. She was tired of being herself; she wanted to be someone else for a change. Nick had accused her of being childish and it had rankled. Tonight she’d show him she was very much a woman.
‘Remembered the present?’ he asked her as he opened the front door.
‘It’s in my handbag.’ The jeweller’s had wrapped the earrings beautifully.
‘Then we’re set.’ He smiled at her, taking her arm as they walked to the waiting taxi. Just for a moment she saw them as an outsider would see them. A wealthy and handsome man with a well-dressed woman on his arm. Elegant, glittering, the sort of couple who had everything. Funny how different things could be from what they appeared on the surface.