Master of Her Virtue - By Miranda Lee Page 0,15

to his, she hoped he wouldn’t be able to see the heat in them. And the hunger.

‘There’s no need to apologise,’ she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. Thank God for the champagne. Joy was right about it giving her Dutch courage. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend because of something which happened to me in the past.’

Leo nodded knowingly. ‘As soon as I saw you tonight, I wondered if such was the case. It’s not as though you would be short of admirers. Do you want to tell me about it? Or is it too painful a memory?’

Violet realised then just what Leo was thinking—that she’d had some nasty sexual experience or she’d had her heart broken at some stage. A week ago she might have let him keep on believing that, because it was better than revealing the ugly truth. But a lot of water had gone under the bridge during the past few days. She didn’t want to lie to him. Lying was what she used to do, to herself and to others.

The fact that she was wildly attracted to the man might have changed her mind about telling him the truth if he’d been Australian. But he wasn’t. Leo was going home to England in a few days. In reality, he was the ideal person to practise opening up to. On top of that, he was, as she’d already discovered, surprisingly easy to talk to.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking. It’s nothing to do with any bad experience I’ve had with the opposite sex.’

‘What, then?’

Violet pulled a face. Where to start? ‘It’s a long story.’ She sighed a frustrated sigh. As she’d discovered earlier tonight on the way here, deciding to turn over a new leaf was very different from doing it.

‘We have all night,’ Leo pointed out kindly.

Not quite, Violet thought, knowing that any minute Henry would surely come looking for his son.

But it wasn’t Henry who brought an abrupt end to their private conversation. It was the nine o’clock fireworks, shattering their relatively quiet surrounds with loud bursts of noise whilst setting the night sky alight with a kaleidoscope of sparkling colour.

Immediately, all the guests who’d arrived by then rushed out onto the balcony, oohing and aahing as the spectacular display went on and on. Violet knew it was a small event compared to what would happen at midnight, but it was still pretty impressive. Impossible to talk during the ten-minute display, however. Impossible to do anything but watch. Then, once it was over, the inevitable happened. Henry found Leo and insisted he come with him to meet everyone.

Violet’s heart sank when Leo stood up, but lifted again when he reached down to take her hand. ‘Come along, Snow White. I need you by my side to protect me from the pack.’

Violet soon saw what he meant. Practically every woman there—even the married ones—flirted outrageously with Leo. It was an education just being by his side and watching them in action. No compliment was too over the top as Henry the Eighth’s wife and Josephine fought for his attention, followed by Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.

Even the men were doing their fair share of none-too-subtle brown-nosing, possibly because quite a lot of the guests were from the Australian movie industry: producers, directors, screen writers and actors. Henry had gone to a lot of trouble to invite people whose company he thought Leo would enjoy.

Now that she’d met Henry’s son, Violet suspected he would have preferred to be anonymous, but he remained polite, at the same time not staying with one group for too long. His social skills were obvious as he mingled, spending just the right amount of time with each group before returning to the balcony and the people gathered there. Henry joined them occasionally, but not often, seemingly content to let his guests enjoy Leo’s company without his interference, which was probably wise of him. Henry had a tendency to dominate conversations, in Violet’s opinion.

Fortunately, very little of the chit-chat was directed her way, though when it was she thought she acquitted herself rather well. She didn’t stammer, or become tongue-tied. She offered an intelligent opinion, usually to do with a particular movie. Of course, she’d been a movie watcher from way back, so she had a wide range of knowledge on that subject.

A continuous stream of champagne helped her confidence as well, as did Leo’s hand in hers. She loved the feel of his fingers wrapped tightly around