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escape, but knowing that did not lessen her overwhelming fury at the man who had accidently brought it about.
    How would she have been feeling right now had she been deeply in love with Henry and he with her? Instead of stalking angrily around the Hanfords’ drawing room like an angry tigress, she would probably have been upstairs in her bedroom sobbing her heart out.
    Some Christmas this was going to be.
    She had been so looking forward to being here, to being part of the family, to sharing the simple, traditional pleasures of Christmas with the man she intended to marry, and now it was all spoiled, ruined… And why? Why? Because Oliver Davenport was too arrogant, too proud…too…too devious and hateful to allow someone whom he obviously saw as way, way beneath him to get the better of him.
    Well, she didn’t care. She didn’t care what he did or what he said. He could tell the whole room, the whole house, the whole world that she had bought her clothes second-hand and that they had belonged to his cousin’s girlfriend for all shecared now. In fact, she almost wished he would. That way at least she would be vindicated. That way she could walk away from here…from Henry and his precious mother…with her head held high.
    â€˜An outfit bought by a man for his lover…’ How dared he…? Oh, how dared he…? She was, she suddenly realised, almost audibly grinding her teeth. Hastily she stopped. Dental fees were notoriously, hideously expensive.
    She couldn’t leave matters as they were, she decided fiercely. She would have to say something to Oliver Davenport—even if it was to challenge him over the implications he had made.
    She got her chance ten minutes later, when she saw Oliver leaving the drawing room alone.
    Quickly, before she could change her mind, she followed him. As he heard her footsteps crossing the hallway, he stopped and turned round.
    â€˜Ah, the blushing bride-to-be and her borrowed raiment,’ he commented sardonically.
    â€˜I bought in good faith my second-hand raiment,’ Lisa corrected him bitingly, adding, ‘You do realise what impression you gave Henry and his mother back there, don’t you?’ she challenged him, adding scornfully before he could answer, ‘Of course you knew. You knew perfectly well what you were doing, what you were implying…’
    â€˜Did I?’ he responded calmly.
    â€˜Yes, you did,’ Lisa responded, her anger intensifying. ‘You knew they would assume that you meant that you and I had been lovers…that you had bought my clothes—’
    â€˜Surely Henry knows you far better than that?’ Oliver interrupted her smoothly. ‘After all, according to the local grapevine, the pair of you are intending to marry—’
    â€˜Of course Henry knows me…’ Lisa began, and thenstopped, her face flushing in angry mortification. But it was too late.
    Swift as a hawk to the lure, her tormentor responded softly, ‘Ah, I see. It’s because he knows you so well that he made the unfortunate and mistaken assumption that—’
    â€˜No… He doesn’t… I don’t…’ Lisa tried to fight back gamely, but it was still too late, and infuriatingly she knew it and, even worse, so did Oliver.
    He wasn’t smirking precisely—he was far too arrogant for that, Lisa decided bitterly—but there was certainly mockery in his eyes, and if she hadn’t known better she could almost have sworn that his mouth was about to curl into a smile. But how could it? She was sure that he was incapable of doing anything so human. He was the kind of man who just didn’t know what human emotions were, she decided savagely—who had no idea what it meant to suffer insecurity or…or any of the things that made people like herself feel so vulnerable.
    â€˜Have you any idea what you’ve done?’ she challenged him, changing tack, her