Savage Courtship

Dane Judson was quite another kettle of fish, however, and Vanessa became resigned to the casual irreverence with which he insisted on discussing Benedict with her. Dane was a cynic about life in general and love in particular, but he made Vanessa laugh and she was not unaware that he had deliberately set himself up to be an entertaining buffer. Benedict noticed, too, which didn’t improve his mood, and his retaliation was to invent some entertainment of his own.

‘Celebration? What kind of celebration?’ Vanessa asked remotely as she faced the animated trio in the drawing-room on the third afternoon following Lacey Taylor’s arrival.

Benedict’s mouth twisted at her rigid lack of expression. ‘What kind do you think it might be, Vanessa?’ he taunted cruelly.

‘It’s a birthday party—for this creaking old inn that Ben seems to have fallen in love with.’ Dane’s swift reply rescued Vanessa from her vocal paralysis. A birthday, not an engagement! ‘He says it opened a hundred and twenty years ago next Saturday so he’s decided to have a party to mark the occasion.’

‘A costume party,’ Lacey announced gleefully. ‘I’m going to get mine sent from the States. I know a fantastic little place in the Village...’

‘Don’t go overboard, Lacey; I’m throwing a casual party, not the social event of the season,’ said Benedict drily. ‘This is strictly for the locals who’ve been involved with the inn over the years so I want the atmosphere to be very relaxed and informal. Mrs Riley has said she’ll arrange the catering with a community organisation that needs the funds and members of the historical society are going to rent theatrical costumes—’

‘You’ve spoken to someone from the historical society already?’ Vanessa asked, suddenly feeling a creeping sense of paranoia. Why all this sudden sociability? She didn’t think he was just pandering to Lacey’s boredom with the bucolic joys of small-town living.

Blue eyes gleamed, as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘Mmm. Miss Fisher, actually. Such a charming, enthusiastic old lady!’

This of the twittering spinster he had driven for hours to avoid on the day that he arrived! Now she knew he was up to something. Gone was the moody, sullen stranger of the last couple of days and in his place a man who looked dangerously back in control.

‘But—next week?’ Vanessa stuttered. ‘You’ll hardly have time to organise invitations, let alone extra staff—’

She might have known that he’d have all the exits covered. ‘The invitations can be verbal and we won’t need staff. I told you, it’s going to be casual, a BYO affair where everyone can feel comfortable, like a block party—except the whole community’ll be involved. Most people will be happy to pitch in and help where they can. So, you’ll be here, Vanessa, but in costume like the rest of us.’ He leaned back in his chair and inspected her from neat crown to sensible toe. ‘And I think I have the perfect costume for you...’

Right. Perfectly dreadful, no doubt! Vanessa didn’t trust that crocodile smile. Before she was sucked completely into the whirlwind of activity that Benedict’s brilliant idea generated, she made sure that she obtained a suitably sedate costume from Miss Fisher and had tucked it safely away in her room well in advance.

By the time seven o’clock the following Saturday evening rolled around Vanessa felt so distracted by the million and one calls on her attention that she had actually half wriggled into her chosen dress before she discovered that it refused to fit.

That was because it wasn’t the dress she had originally hung carefully in her wardrobe. That one was plain and decorous, as befitted an authentic Victorian lady. This one was all crimson satin flounces with black piping, with a neckline that made Vanessa’s eyes widen and a waist that made them water.

The other dress was nowhere to be found and when Vanessa found a box in the bottom of her wardrobe containing a stiffened black basque she knew why.

The crisp, precise writing on the lid of the box needed no signature.

I’m sure you recognise the dress. It’s from the daguerreotype of Meg on the copy of the Playbill in the judge’s files. I had to guess the colour, but the dressmaker assures me that the rest of it is copied faithfully from the original—hence the need for this...

And then, as if written merely as a careless afterthought, ‘Do you dare?’

As if she could be manipulated by a childish challenge! Even as a child Vanessa had never been one to accept a dare without carefully weighing the risk against the all too likely consequences.

But sometimes the choice wasn’t so simple, she thought, nervously remembering that Benedict had ruled that anyone not attending the party in costume would be required to pay a public forfeit. She had a feeling any forfeit he demanded of her would be considerably more trouble than taking up his stupid challenge. Maybe he expected her to choose the forfeit. After the difficult week she had just had, the last thing she wanted to do was to face another fraught decision.

She almost chickened out when she saw the results of her eye-watering battle with the hooks down the front of the rigidly boned corselet. Hourglass wasn’t the word. From the generous flare of her hips her waist was nipped in to breathless smallness, her pushed-up breasts almost brimming over the satin demi-cups of the bodice. Against the black satin her skin looked starkly pale, the erotic contrast even more intense when she had donned the black stockings that were supported by crimson garters at mid-thigh.

‘You have no idea what turns a man on.’

She certainly did now. The thought of Benedict personally choosing this time-honoured instrument of feminine torture and male titillation made her go hot all over. Practical application apart, the undergarment was frankly indecent.

Perhaps Meg wasn’t a totally innocent victim of unsolicited male aggression after all, thought Vanessa as she donned the dress which now fastened easily over her compressed flesh. Thank goodness the dressmaker had included a very unauthent

ic zip under the arm!

Even with the dress on Vanessa found she couldn’t forget what was underneath; it was physically impossible. Every breath she took was sharply curtailed by the curved bones pressing against her abdomen and the lush over-abundance crowding the low neckline kept catching her eye when she looked down. She couldn’t even see her black buttoned half-boots unless she craned her neck past the wanton obstruction, she realised with a little frisson of wicked amusement as she brushed her loose hair and applied her make-up with a heavier than usual hand.

She was startled by the numbers already present when she had finally psyched herself up sufficiently to emerge shyly from her room a few minutes before the party was officially due to begin. It appeared that no one intended to miss a single minute of fun, and consequently masses of people had arrived early ‘to help’, and then decided that the best help they could provide would be to create an atmosphere of raucous conviviality!

After she had briefly checked that the women from the local school’s parents’ association had everything under control in the kitchen and their husbands had the bars up and running, Vanessa allowed herself to be quickly swept up in the noisy ebb and flow of friends and acquaintances and strangers, the mutual hilarity over costumes providing just the ice-breaker that Benedict had planned.

The night was fine and summery, and it wasn’t long before people began abandoning the crammed house and the garage where a small stage had been set up for the band, to spread out over torch-lit grounds. The sprawling chaos provided the perfect camouflage as far as Vanessa was concerned and for the first hour, until dusk turned to velvety darkness, she flitted in wary circles, only once stumbling across Dane pouring punch behind a potted orange tree for a giggling shepherdess. His green breeches and flowing white shirt were in studied disarray—he was Don Juan, he informed her with a wink and an amused leer at her plunging neckline.

A little while later she saw Lacey at a distance, holding glittering court as an extravagant Queen Elizabeth I under the spreading elms by the lakeside bar. Benedict was one of her courtiers, unexpectedly dressed in the starkly plain black and white garb of a Puritan, and Vanessa was maliciously pleased to see how jarringly out of place he looked beside his flamboyant, red-headed Queen.