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Mini to get to and from work, had realised Mark was drinking too much and offered to drive them home, but he had scorned her caution.

      ‘I’m not drunk!’ he had protested mockingly. ‘What’s the matter? Chicken?’

      Miranda had shaken her head and climbed into her seat obediently. Perhaps she was being over-cautious, she thought. Perhaps she was thinking too much about what her mother had said. Whatever her private feelings, she had maintained a composed façade, and this seemed to infuriate Mark. Instead of driving with extra care, he seemed to delight in taking unnecessary risks, and Miranda’s palms were moist with sweat when they breasted a hill on the wrong side of the road and saw the headlights of an approaching car directly ahead of them.

      She scarcely remembered the details of what happened afterwards. She knew Mark screamed and took his hands off the wheel, and somehow she threw herself across him and wrenched the wheel towards her. The sports car slewed dangerously across the road, but it missed the oncoming vehicle and ploughed half through the bushes on the lefthand side of the road.

      Miranda was trembling violently when she brought the car to a halt, but Mark was shattered. Shaking, he had buried his head in his hands, and not until the irate driver of the other car came to ask what the hell was going on did he lift his face to reveal he had been crying. It was left to Miranda to explain how the steering had apparently gone out of control and she let the man assume that Mark had saved them. As it happened, he did know who Mark was, and in consequence was prepared to accept her explanation.

      After he had left them and they were alone, Mark pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said, over and over again, and although she was still shocked, Miranda had comforted him like a child.

      It was only when his lips strayed across her face to her mouth and his hands fumbled grotesquely at her clothes that she drew back from him, feeling curiously repelled. Suddenly their positions were reversed, and she was no longer in awe of him. It was another turning point in Miranda’s relationship with the Sanders family.

      Several days passed before she saw Mark again. She knew the girls at the library imagined that the young earl had walked out on her, but somehow she didn’t really mind. To find that your idol had feet of clay was always a chastening experience, and Miranda was glad of the breathing space to gather her thoughts.

      Then, just when she had come to the conclusion that it was all over between them, she found him waiting for her one evening, outside the library. Ignoring the raised eyebrows that greeted his appearance, she got into the car and gave him a long speculative look.

      ‘I know,’ he said, without turning on the ignition. ‘I needed time to think. I guess you did, too.’

      Miranda bent her head. ‘What was there to think about?’

      ‘You. Me. Us!’ He regarded her intently. ‘Miranda—will you marry me?’

      Miranda was staggered. She had expected anything but this! ‘Me?’ she whispered. ‘Marry you? Are you serious?’

      ‘Never more so in my life,’ he replied gravely. ‘I care about you, Miranda. Enough to want to look after you for the rest of your life.’

      ‘But—your mother—’ she stammered helplessly.

      ‘Leave my mother to me,’ he said, and strangely enough she thought she could.

      But was this really what she wanted? she wondered dazedly, as Mark set the car in motion. For days now she had been battling with the realisation that she did not really love him at all, that his wealth and social position had blinded her to the weaknesses in the man himself. Now, suddenly he was asking her to marry him, giving her the chance to get out of the rat-race once and for all, and she was hesitating. His mother would be furious, she knew, and her own … How could she go on being housekeeper to her own daughter’s mother-in-law?

      But she needn’t. Miranda could see to it that she never had to work again. She could do that; if she married Mark.

      It was a tempting proposition, made the more so by the thought of what everyone in the village would say. Miranda Gresham, the new Lady Sanders! Mistress of the Hall!

      Her breathing quickened. What was happening to her? she thought disgustedly. How could she consider Mark’s proposal seriously when only hours before she had felt almost a sense of relief to know herself free of him? What had changed? He was still the same man, and she was still the same woman. Except that now she had something concrete to contend with …

      Yet it was what came after the wedding that she would have to live with. Could she do that? Did she care for him enough to contemplate the intimacies of marriage without any qualms? There was no one else, and there were times when she believed there never would be. She had never been madly attracted to any man, and she had come to the conclusion that she simply did not have it in her to feel deeply about anyone, except her mother. How could she be sure she would ever feel any differently than she did today? And how could she throw this opportunity away on the fleeting chance she might? She was not mercenary, she consoled herself, just practical; but how practical might she have to be?

      As expected, Lady Sanders disapproved of their engagement, although perhaps disapproval was too mild a term to use to describe the words she said to her son when he apprised her of the situation. The row they had could be heard in the kitchen, and Miranda had tightened her lips and closed the doors, and tried to ignore that she was the cause of the quarrel.

      Her own mother had taken the news rather differently. She had said little beyond repeating that Miranda was a fool and that a man like Mark Sanders didn’t have it in him to make her happy.

      The wedding was arranged for a week before Christmas, and the young couple were to fly out to Barbados afterwards for two weeks in the sun. Miranda got used to the other girls envying her her good fortune, and to having her picture in the paper alongside Mark’s, and to parrying the reporters’ questions about her rags-to-riches story. She found it harder to quieten her own conscience when it came to justifying her reasons for accepting his proposal.

      Defeated, Lady Sanders gave in gracefully, outwardly at least. She was seen to accompany Miranda to her own dressmaker in London, pictures were taken of them shopping together, and just occasionally all three of them appeared together at some official function or other. Miranda was an apt pupil, and while she didn’t like Lady Sanders, she could respect her, and they adopted a kind of armed truce with one another. Lady Sanders recognised that Miranda was not some impressionable debutante she could mould to her own design, but a girl with definite ideas of her own. Nevertheless, she was experienced enough at dealing with people to know exactly how to approach her future daughter-in-law to get the required result. She never gave up hoping that Mark might come to his senses, but in the event that he didn’t, she was determined to hold on to her position in the household.

      Surprisingly Miranda grew less apprehensive as the wedding neared. Mark was behaving particularly well, never demanding too much of her, never drinking excessively, never driving too fast; reassuring her that her first opinion of him had not been misplaced. Until the Rotary Club Ball in December …

      The Ball was an annual event, and as Lady Sanders was a prominent member, naturally she was expected to attend. Her son and his fiancée were invited, too, and Miranda spent hours in her room beforehand, preparing for the last official gathering before their wedding. The wedding itself was only two weeks away, and a sumptuous function it was going to be. Lady Sanders had taken over all the organisation because, as she explained, no one could expect Mrs Gresham to pay for the kind of reception their friends would expect.

      But before that, there was this evening, and Miranda was determined that Mark should feel proud of her. Her gown was made of velvet, rich cream velvet, that brushed against her skin with a kiss of silk. Her hair was about her shoulders as usual, but she had threaded it with seed pearls, which matched the pearl necklace and ear-rings Mark had given her as an engagement present. Excitement had heightened the colour in her cheeks, and her lips were parted in anticipation. She had never looked more attractive, and she knew it.

      Her

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