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other people in the wrong.’ There was a note in his voice that told her he was not pleased, and there was a hard glint in his eyes. She had never noticed it before, but they darkened most attractively when he was angry, becoming almost black.
    ‘I am adept at putting other people in the wrong when they are in the wrong,’ she returned.
    His brows drew together and he looked as though he would like to say something rude, but was restraining himself.
    ‘Please don’t refrain,’ she said, nettled at his expression.
    ‘From what?’ he demanded, pushing himself out of his chair and striding across to the marble fireplace, where he turned and looked down at her from beneath beetling brows.
    ‘From saying what you are thinking. Something along the lines of "If there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s a managing female" if your expression is anything to go by,’ she said with asperity.
    To her surprise, instead of replying angrily, he laughed.
    ‘Miss Haringay, sometimes it doesn’t pay to be so perceptive,’ he said with a wicked gleam of humour in his eye.
    She smiled, and then laughed in her turn. The atmosphere had lightened, and for the first time since she had entered the house she felt she could perhaps relax a little.
    ‘Come now, Mr Evington. Won’t you host the picnic?’ she asked him.
    He sat down opposite her, this time on a beautiful chaise longue , and Cicely could tell by his casual attitude that he had relented. He stretched one arm along the back of the chaise longue , and said, ‘I may be persuaded to do so.’
    Cicely smiled. It had not been so bad, then. In fact, it had been easy. ‘Good. Then I will tell Mrs Murgatroyd -’
    ‘On one condition.’
    Cicely stiffened. ‘Condition?’
    ‘Yes.’ He smiled provocatively. ‘Condition. I told you that I was a stubborn man, Miss Haringay, and I am about to prove my point. I will let the Sunday school use the Manor lawns for their picnic - if you agree to attend my ball.’
    Cicely paled. Attend the ball? Laugh and chatter in her beautiful home, knowing it no longer belonged to her family? Dance? Be gay? Whilst her feelings were quite the reverse? ‘No. I don’t think I could do that.’
    ‘Why not?’ he enquired, leaning forward. ‘Can you not put your own feelings aside for one evening?’
    There was a teasing note in his voice. After all, she had told him to put his own feelings aside so that the picnic could go ahead.
    ‘I don’t see why my presence is necessary,’ she prevaricated.
    ‘Don’t you?’ He stood up and walked over to the mantelpiece again. He took a sheaf of cards from behind the clock, then handed them to her. ‘Fifteen replies to my invitations - and, I may say, very prompt replies: it seems in a village news travels fast,’ he said as she looked through them. ‘Fifteen replies and fifteen refusals.’
    She pursed her lips. ‘And what does that have to do with me?’ she asked.
    ‘Everyone for miles around is following your lead. You refused my invitation, and so the local dignitaries have done the same.’
    ‘And you think if I change my mind they will then accept?’
    ‘I’m certain of it.’
    Cicely was certain of it, too. The local area was a close-knit community, and knowing that she did not feel she could attend the ball, all her friends had refused their invitations likewise.
    ‘Come now, Miss Haringay, will it really be so bad?’ he asked, his eyes lighting with a surprising warmth. ‘An evening of good food, good conversation, good music and - I hope! - good company? If you snub me, no one will come to my ball and I will be dancing on my own.’
    The humour was back in his face and his voice, making him look unsettlingly attractive. And it made her wish - foolishly, for one unguarded moment - that they had met under other circumstances, so that she might have been able to like him.
    ‘Not on your own, surely,’ she protested. ‘You will have friends coming down from London .’
    ‘Yes. I have.