Christmas Child

‘And full marks for playing your cards right! I told you to, remember?’ Dawn grinned back at her. ‘But your transformation will be the icing on the cake as far as he’s concerned. Haven’t I always told you you could be really gorgeous if you put your mind to it and stopped dressing like your own grandmother? Now I’m going to prove myself right.’

A vivid flash of memory. Her mother buttoning her into yet another frilly dress, tying ribbons in her hair. Sitting back on her heels surveying the unpromising result with an exasperated frown. ‘I don’t know why I bother—stand up straight, child, and stop scowling! Why can’t you be more like your little friend, Dawn? I don’t know where you got your plain looks from—certainly not from my side of the family!’

For the very first time a stab of defiance had gone through her. What if she were to prove her mother’s opinion of her irredeemable plainness wrong? Could she? Maybe with her best friend’s advice on clothes that might actually suit her instead of merely keeping her decently covered she could look a little more interesting?

But the three days they’d spent in London had left her with very mixed emotions. Arriving home late yesterday evening with what seemed like a trailer-load of exclusive carrierbags, a bucketful of cosmetics, seventy-five per cent less hair and a severe hole in her current account, she’d begun to have serious doubts.

Without her friend’s enthusiasm, energy and sheer pushing power she was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the exercise.

True, her hair felt better for being styled into a sleek, jaw-length bob. It looked better, too. Shinier, the colour a richer shade of chestnut. But the clothes she’d been dragooned into buying—she wasn’t too sure about them; not sure at all, if she was honest.

She didn’t feel like herself any more. James wanted a quiet, unobtrusive wife to cope with the business entertaining he had to do, to stop other women making a play for him because after the Fiona fiasco he was off the lot of them. Would he call the whole thing off when he saw her like this because a tarty-looking wife was not what he wanted?

She glanced down at the narrow, butter-soft, cream-coloured leather trousers, the high-heeled ankle boots that admittedly made her legs look longer and more elegant than they really were, and shivered.

And if he did call the wedding off, would that be such a bad thing? The thought edged its way into her brain and stuck there.

She’d probably overreacted to the way her father had neglected to give her even a tiny hint of his far-reaching future plans, she thought with a miserable flash of insight. She’d put her whole future happiness on the line when she’d agreed to such a sterile relationship with a man who could never love her.

It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if she couldn’t love him, either. But she could. And did.

When the train finally arrived she scanned the alighting passengers, chewing on the corner of her lower lip, saw her father and straightened her shoulders. He would have walked straight past her until she touched his arm and said with unprecedented sharpness, ‘You could have used your mobile and warned me your train was running an hour late. And unless you want to end up as an accident statistic you can drive home.’

She’d been brooding over his insulting secrecy, the way he hadn’t bothered to so much as mention his future plans to her, not even when she and James had told him of their marriage, and her annoyance spiked her voice. But Edward Trent didn’t comment on her less than welcoming greeting.

His eyes widened. ‘Mattie? Good Lord, I d

idn’t recognise you—what have you done to yourself?’

Which didn’t augur well. What if James’ reaction was the same? Incredulous shock!

He scrutinised her under the platform lights. ‘It’s not like you to wear bright colours—you look like a stranger! And you didn’t get that fancy outfit in one of the local shops.’

‘Dawn and I went up to London for a day or so,’ she responded stiffly. He was grinning now. Actually grinning. Did she look that funny? She must do. He never commented on what she was wearing and he certainly didn’t burst into laughter at her appearance.

‘I might have known she’d be behind it.’ He chuckled. ‘She’s always been a flashy dresser. Pretty with it, mind. By the way, like the way you’ve done your hair. Cut some of it off, have you?’ He started to walk. ‘Let’s get a move on. Damned cold, standing here.’

‘Tell me about it!’ Mattie muttered, following. So it was all right to wear bright clothes, but only if you were pretty! And she most certainly wasn’t!

The fragile confidence in her new appearance, brought to tenuous life by Dawn’s insistence on her visiting a top hair stylist, learning how to apply make-up properly, choosing the designer labels that her friend vowed suited her so well, had never been strong and was rapidly ebbing away completely.

Thankfully, her father was only too happy to take her ignition keys. He didn’t rate her driving skills any more than James did. She settled herself into the passenger seat and sank into her dreary thoughts.

The jaunt to London had been an expensive waste. She should never have let Dawn talk her into trying to turn herself into something she wasn’t. The only sensible thing to do was push the new clothes she’d splurged out on into the very back of her wardrobe and go back to wearing the plain, serviceable things she was used to and felt comfortable in.

And the second sensible thing to do was phone James. Tonight. Explain that she’d reconsidered, call the wedding off.

It was the only course of action to take, she told herself sternly when the car finally swept up the driveway to Berrington House. She couldn’t imagine what had made her accept his cold-blooded proposal in the first place.

But she could. Of course she could, she reminded herself as she stood in the hallway waiting for her father to garage her car. When her father had taken James into his confidence, told him he was thinking of taking full retirement, of selling the family home and moving into an apartment with Mrs Flax to look after him, he had overlooked her entirely, just as if she didn’t even exist.

It had felt like abandonment. Brought back the feelings of betrayal and inadequacy she’d experienced when her mother had walked out all those years ago, never to get in touch again, or remember her birthdays, or even ask how she was.

It had made marriage to James, even a marriage that would be no marriage at all, seem like a haven of security.

She was going to have no part of it.

She could stand on her own, make a life for herself. She could travel, take up private tutoring. With her qualifications she could easily find employment teaching English to Spanish children—or French, German or Italian. She wasn’t the hopelessly vague and impractical creature everyone seemed to think she was.