That Would Be a Fairy Tale - By Amanda Grange Page 0,10

He sat down opposite her, putting his hat on a side table, and the action gave her time to recover her composure.

‘I take it you will accept my invitation?’ he asked.

Cicely pulled herself together. ‘Oh, no, I’m afraid that’s out of the question.’

‘May I ask why?’ he enquired, eyebrows raised.

‘I don’t see that it’s any of your -’ she began, before stopping herself. I don’t see that it’s any of your business, she had been going to say, but realized belatedly that it would be rude. For some reason he seemed to provoke her to rudeness. ‘That is, I’m afraid I have a prior engagement,’ she said.

The one thing she did not want to do was to visit her beloved Manor now that it was no longer her home.

‘But you don’t know when the ball’s to be held,’ he pointed out, and his good humour vanished, to be replaced by something harder and more cynical.

Cicely was caught, but thinking quickly she said, ‘My diary is fully booked.’

‘Is it indeed? Perhaps it would not be so fully booked if I were a gentleman,’ he said.

There was suddenly something hard and predatory about him. His body was tense, and beneath his even tone of voice there was a note of steel.

‘That has nothing to do with it,’ she replied, wondering how he had managed to put her in the wrong.

‘No?’ he asked with the same cynical look in his eyes. ‘Then the landed classes do not look down on those who have made their money through honest work?’

‘You forget, Mr Evington, you are one of the landed classes now,’ she replied. ‘Be careful how you speak of them, lest you blacken your own character along with theirs.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said tightly.

‘I doubt if you have ever begged for anything in your life,’ she returned, nettled by the angry gleam in his eye, and by the rudeness concealed beneath his polite words.

‘Oh, you are mistaken there,’ he said; and for a moment she had a glimpse of something much deeper than a well-dressed man with nothing better to do than knock people off their bicycles.

It reminded her of another similar change of atmosphere the previous day, when he had been about to pull her bicycle out of the mud, and had said, "I’ve been dirtier". She had the strange feeling there was more to Mr Evington than met the eye.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘Well, Mr Evington,’ said Cicely at last, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness. ‘You have made my acquaintance and issued your invitation. If there is nothing further, I have some letters to write.’

She spoke awkwardly, feeling she was being rude to dismiss him in such a hasty manner, but knowing that she was not equal to continuing the conversation. There was something about Mr Alex Evington that she found profoundly disturbing, and she did not trust herself to be in his company another minute. She went over to the mantelpiece and pulled the bell.

He stood up.

‘Very well. But I must warn you, I have not accepted your refusal. I am a stubborn man, Miss Haringay,’ he said, picking up his hat.

‘In that we are alike,’ she retorted, as Gibson entered the room. ‘Mr Evington is just leaving, Gibson,’ she said.

‘Very good, miss.’

Mr Evington made her a bow. ‘Miss Haringay.’

And then, turning, he followed Gibson out of the room.

Cicely sank onto the sofa. She felt as though she had just been involved in a sparring match, instead of a formal visit. Mr Evington was like no one she had ever met. He seemed to resent the landed classes on the one hand, and yet by buying the Manor he had become one of them on the other. It was most strange.

Strange, too, was the effect he had on her. And not only by setting her skin tingling in the most disconcerting way, but by causing her to forget her manners. She had had a lot of training at keeping a civil tongue in her head, whatever the situation. She had been involved in many charitable works around the village, and was an active supporter of the Sunday school, and whilst she did not always see eye to eye with the other ladies and gentlemen who were involved in the schemes, she always managed to be polite. And yet with Mr Evington she found it almost impossible.

She thought inconsequentially of the way his eyes had flashed when she had refused his invitation. It had made them very attractive,