Rival Attractions & Innocent Secretary(5)

Uncomfortably she felt heat flood her skin-the heat of embarrassment and  confusion. It crawled painfully along her throat and burned her  cheekbones. She could almost feel Vanessa's gloating malice, as the  blonde woman placed one dainty hand on the man's arm and smiled  invitingly up at him.

'Never mind, Oliver,' Vanessa said softly. 'We aren't all as unfriendly  as Charlotte. You mustn't mind her. She has a bit of a thing against men  in general, I'm afraid. She's our local feminist.'

Charlotte was bitterly, achingly furious, but there was nothing she  could do. She met the speculative glance he gave her full on.

She could imagine all too well what he was thinking: that her supposed  feminist views were because she was not physically attractive enough to  appeal to the majority of men. A man like him, so arrogantly  self-assured of his masculinity, could never comprehend that there were  women whose lives were perfectly happy without being built around some  man.

As he extended his hand towards her, he said shockingly, 'I've been wanting to meet you.'

His words stunned her, holding her immobile. Wanting to meet her … ? Why?  Guiltily her mind sped back to the afternoon, to her sneaky acquisition  of his parking spot.

'I'm afraid Charlie doesn't approve of you at all,' Vanessa was saying  bitchily. 'She seems to think that just because you're successful you  must be guilty of sharp business practice.'

The blue eyes studied Charlotte rather too shrewdly for her comfort for a  moment, and then he said smoothly, 'Well, naturally I'd deny such an  allegation, although speaking of sharp practice-'

He was going to mention this afternoon, to amuse himself at her expense  by recounting what she had done. Suddenly preternaturally sensitive, she  felt the stinging colour in her face deepen. He was laughing at her,  she knew. More amused than angered by her supposed antipathy towards  him, enjoying her embarrassment.

Quite what would have happened if Adam had not suddenly come up to tell  Vanessa that the hired staff were ready to serve dinner, Charlotte  didn't know.

As Vanessa, ignoring both Charlotte and Adam, turned away, taking Oliver  Tennant with her, Charlotte discovered that she was trembling inwardly  with a mixture of anger and impotence. Her anger was caused as much by  Oliver Tennant's patronising amusement at her expense as by Vanessa's  malice, and her frustrated impotence was the result of her own inability  to escape from the role Vanessa had deliberately cast her into.

Vanessa had taken good care to paint her in colours to Oliver Tennant  which, while having a basis in truth, were greatly exaggerated.  Charlotte made no apology for her own belief that Oliver Tennant was  cashing in on the property boom without any thought of how it would  eventually affect their small community, but, given free choice, she  would not have voiced those opinions so volubly or tactlessly in his  presence. It was also true that there were certain aspects of the male  sex which she personally found unappealing, but she was by no means the  almost vigilante-like anti-men campaigner Vanessa had portrayed.

Unwittingly worrying at her bottom lip, as Adam escorted her through to  the dining-room, Charlotte fumed over Vanessa's deliberately derogatory  description of her as a feminist. Vanessa had used the word as a  malicious insult. Charlotte resented being classified as a specific  'type' under any name; she was an individual, and, if her upbringing and  physical attributes made it impossible for her to mimic Vanessa's  cloying, clinging, supposedly 'feminine' manner with men, she preferred  to think that it was because she had too much pride … too much  self-awareness … too much self-respect to sink to Vanessa's level.                       
       
           



       

If the male sex couldn't see that beneath that sugary sweetness Vanessa  was as corrosive as any acid, then they deserved everything they got.

Adam was saying something to her, clumsily trying to apologise, she  recognised, her mood softening. Poor Adam. He most definitely did not  deserve his atrocious wife. Sensing that he was genuinely concerned that  she might be upset, she started to reassure him, and admitted, 'I did  rather over-react. I didn't realise that the new estate agent was one of  your guests.'

'Vanessa invited him. She met him when she approached him to ask him to  value this place.' His face went dark red and he muttered uncomfortably,  'I don't know why she wants to move. I like this house … '

'It's all right, Adam,' Charlotte told him, wanting to comfort him.  'I've already recognised that most of the larger properties locally will  probably go to the new agency. There's enough business here for both of  us,' she added lightly, 'and by opening up I suspect that Oliver  Tennant has saved me the necessity of taking on a partner.'

'He's got a very good reputation,' Adam told her earnestly, seizing her  olive-branch. 'He started up originally in London and then expanded-'

'To take advantage of the current fashion for living in the country-' Charlotte finished for him a little grimly.

'Adam, where are you? I want you to sit here next to Felicity.'  Vanessa's sharp voice broke into their conversation, as she gave  Charlotte a false sweet smile and said nastily, 'Heavens, Charlie,  you're not still boring on about poor Oliver, are you?'

Holding on to her temper, Charlotte forced herself to smile. She was  bitterly regretting having ever accepted Vanessa's invitation.

Most of the other guests were people she knew, but not very well. They  were incomers to the area in the main, like Vanessa and Adam, most of  them pleasant professional couples in their mid-to-late thirties. All of  them had bought their properties via her, and, although she believed  that she had given them as professional and skilled service as they  would get anywhere, she had no illusions. Were they to put their  properties on the market tomorrow, it would be Oliver Tennant they  instructed and not her.

Dinner was a long drawn-out affair of several minute courses. Toying  with hers, Charlotte suddenly thought longingly of a bowl of home-made  soup, the kind that Mrs Noakes from Little Dean Farm made, along with  some of her home-made rolls, eaten across the well-scrubbed farm kitchen  table, while a couple of early lambs bleated noisily in front of the  Aga, and Holly, the Noakeses' now retired sheepdog, lay across her feet.

She was not cut out for the sophisticated pleasures of life, Charlotte  recognised broodingly. She had nothing in common with any of these  people here, who all seemed to live frantically busy lives. The women's  conversations were interspersed with references to the hopelessness of  au pairs and the traumas of the pony club, the men's with mysterious  references to 'insider dealing' and the horrors of London's traffic.

Moodily, Charlotte sipped spartanly at her wine. It was very rich and no doubt very expensive, but she wasn't enjoying it.

Smiling automatically at the man on her right at the circular table  Vanessa favoured, as he described his battle with the local council to  get planning permission for a conservatory large enough to house his new  swimming-pool complex, for no reason she could analyse Charlotte was  suddenly impelled to turn her head and look across the table.

To discover Oliver Tennant looking right back at her was so unnervingly  disconcerting that she took a deep gulp of her wine and promptly choked  on it, causing Vanessa to frown at her and her embarrassment to  increase.

Why had he been looking at her like that? she wondered, when her  embarrassment had eased. As though he had been studying her for quite  some time; as though he knew every thought passing through her head; as  though he almost felt sorry for her … sorry …  Anger lashed at her, making  her stiffen her spine and bare her teeth in a smile that made the man  sitting next to her watch her nervously and wonder what on earth he had  said. He was forty years old, and found modern women very confusing-this  one more than most.

The meal seemed to drag on forever. Charlotte ached to be able to leave,  but good manners forced her to stay, listening politely to the  conversations going on around her, as they left the dining-room to  finish the evening with coffee in the drawing-room.

Vanessa was discussing the summer fête, an annual late summer event of the village.

Deep in her own thoughts, Charlotte was stunned when Oliver Tennant got  up and walked over to sit down beside her. The amused smile that briefly  lightened his expression as he sat down puzzled her. She had no idea  that it was the look of shock-cum-apprehension on her own face that had  caused it. Stiffly she made room for him beside her on the small pastel  sofa.                       
       
           



       

'Vanessa tells me that you've only recently taken over your late father's agency,' he began questioningly.