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“Yes, I am,” Katie admitted, somewhat overwhelmed. “I only arrived yesterday, and it was very good of you to invite me here, it’s rather strange at first in a new place.”

“Of course it is. You are to stay permanently, I hope?” There was a trace of Jamie’s admiring impudence in the question, and Katie smiled.

“I think so, Sir Janus,” she said, “if my aunt will put up with me.”

“If your aunt won’t we
will,”
Jamie interrupted, and even his grandfather’s frown failed to quell his high spirits. “Come and meet the rest of the family.” He guided her across the terrace to where the other man and a middle-aged woman watched them, strangely similar smiles on their faces, the man standing, the woman sitting in one of the numerous white garden chairs. It was the same warm, friendly smile that all the members of the family seemed to have, except John Miller, and she wondered fleetingly what made him so different from the rest of them.

They stopped before the man first. “Jacko,” Jamie said, “this is Miss Roberts; my uncle, John Dennison.” The man was a younger, slightly less impressive version of the old man, except that his hair had not yet achieved the pure whiteness of the older man’s, but only the indistinction of what Katie dubbed ‘pepper and salt’.

“Miss Roberts,” his hand as he greeted her was unpleasantly moist and he extended his limp hold for longer than was necessary.

“Dodo!” Jamie almost shouted at the woman, who bore a striking resemblance to John Dennison. “I want you to meet Miss Roberts.” He pulled a rueful face at Katie. “My aunt, Miss Dorothy Dennison.” His hand encompassed them both in a gesture. “We call them the heavenly twins,” he said, and as neither of them seemed to resent the nickname, Katie smiled as she shook hands with Dorothy Dennison.

“Really twins?” she asked.

“Really twins, Miss Roberts,” his aunt hastened to answer before Jamie could. She had a remarkably sweet voice that compensated in part for her somewhat masculine features. She smiled up at Katie. “You have excellent diction, my dear,” she said. “I have no difficulty in understanding you at all.”

“Dodo isn’t really very hard of hearing,” Fran spoke from beside a table near them, a coffee pot in her hand poised ready to pour. “It’s just that Jamie exaggerates so.”

“Please sit down, Miss Roberts,” Sir Janus moved a chair nearer to the table. “It will be good for Fran to have someone of her own age to talk to other than Jamie, she spends altogether too much time with us old folk.”

Fran frowned shyly at having the conversation turned on her and looked at Katie, her freckled face smiling broadly. “I hope you stay in Mare Green, Miss Roberts, it would be fun if you did. There are so few young people here to make friends with.”

Katie accepted a cup of excellent coffee, white as she had requested, and smiled at the other girl’s friendliness. “It’s always good to make friends,” she agreed. “And please call me Katie as the first step in the right direction, won’t you ?” .

“May I call you Katie, too?” Jamie Miller’s deep voice spoke softly in her ear as he leaned over the table to sugar his coffee. “I’d like
us
to be friends,” he flicked his impudent blue gaze over her face, “to start with, anyway.”

Aunt Cora seemed delighted that Katie should spend so much time at the Dennison house, and certainly did nothing to discourage her from going, which Katie had rather expected, for she spent little time with her aunt; indeed when Katie told her that Sir Janus had invited her to a small party he was giving to celebrate Fran’s twenty-second birthday, she seemed inordinately pleased.

“You must have a new dress, of course,” she said, her eyes gleaming as she eyed Katie speculatively. “I shall arrange for you to see Mrs. Paget, my dressmaker, and we will go into Sea Bar and find some really good material.”

“But, Aunt Cora,” Katie protested, “there won’t be time to have one made, it’s only a week until I need it, and dressmakers take simply ages.”

Aunt Cora prissed her thin mouth and would brook no argument. “Not if she knows you will be wearing it to the Dennisons’,” she said tartly. “Emmy Paget is a good business woman, she’ll realise what an excellent advertisement you will be for her.”

So without delay, Aunt Cora and Katie had embarked on a trip to Sea Bar, the nearest town of any size, and looked at material until Katie felt dizzy trying to choose, while her aunt, with no doubt in her mind as to just what it was that she wanted, shook her grey head repeatedly at the fabrics offered to them. At last she found what she wanted and nodded shortly, to Katie’s relief; it was some beautiful but fabulously expensive jersey silk that Katie sighed over as the assistant measured and cut the required length.

White, Aunt Cora had insisted, was the colour, or lack of it, that would suit the pattern she had in mind, and she supervised every fitting as Mrs. Paget worked, moulding and fitting the material to Katie’s exquisite figure with surprising skill and speed.

Ready at last, and standing before the full-length mirror in her wardrobe door, Katie stroked the soft, silky folds that flattered her creamy skin and black hair, and had one of her rare moments of self-appreciation. Emmy Paget had been right, her aunt had got good taste, and she thought of the old lady’s obvious enjoyment as the dress took shape exactly as she had visualised it. Katie thought she looked as well in it as she had ever looked in anything. She looked not only beautiful but almost exotic with only a dull gold antique necklace of her aunt’s to complement the sheer simplicity of the dress.

Aunt Cora was waiting for her as she came down the stairs and she eyed her with satisfaction, and a smile of unaccustomed softness. “You’re very beautiful, Katherine,” she said softly as she smoothed a drape so that it fell more to her liking. “Mrs. Paget has, perhaps been a little generous in cutting the neckline, but then,” she stepped back satisfied, “the dress has a certain exotic air about it that requires that type of neckline.”

“It’s beautiful, Aunt Cora.” Katie hugged the old lady impulsively. “I can never thank you enough for it, I feel—oh—” she stretched her arms above her head so that the folds of the silk fell about her, flattering her figure gently and excitingly, “I feel wonderful!”

Her aunt smiled indulgently at her happiness. “Then I hope that you have an enjoyable time,” she said. “It is almost time you were going, I think.”

The door bell rang as Katie picked up her wrap from the back of a chair and walked into the hall. “That will be my taxi,” she said, and turned to the wall mirror for a final glimpse at her hair. Behind her, framed in the reflection of the open front door, she saw John Miller, his handsome fair head bent slightly to speak to her aunt.

“Good evening, Miss Manson,” Katie heard him say. “My cousin, Fran Dennison, asked me to call for Miss Roberts and bring her with me in the car.”

“Oh, I see.” Aunt Cora stepped back into the hall, somewhat at a loss. “But I believe my niece has asked for a taxi to call, Mr. Miller, so I don’t know—”

“My cousin also took the liberty of cancelling the taxi, I think,” the clipped voice was, as usual, edged with impatience. “She is inclined to be autocratic, I’m afraid.”

Katie turned from the mirror, her creamy fresh cheeks flushed at the remark aimed at her friend. “Fran is the
least
autocratic of the Dennisons,” she said hotly, and although she did not name the one most eligible for the honour, her stormy grey eyes left her opinion in no doubt.

He inclined his head as if he knew her thoughts, the vivid and usually cold blue eyes glinting with something that might have been admiration, and swept her with a gaze that was remarkably like Jamie’s. “If you’re ready, Miss Roberts,” he said, and turned on his heel after a brief salute to her aunt.

Aunt Cora watched from the doorway as the low, powerful-sounding car slid away from the kerb and roared along Webber Road towards the quay.

Beside John Miller in the unavoidably close contact of the small car, Katie sat as straight as was possible, trying to avoid contact with his arm as he drove and uncomfortably conscious of the arrogant profile presented to her.

“I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for you to bring me,” she ventured. “It’s very good of you to trouble ” She felt she would have made more progress with an iceberg, for not one glance did he give her nor make any attempt to smile, but looked straight ahead, as he should, of course, she told herself, when driving at night, but she could not imagine Jamie being so reticent.

“It was scarcely out of my way,” he said in the same cold, impatient voice, “and since Fran had already organised it, it was out of my hands.”

“In that case, I’m sorry,” she sounded cross and felt it. “Fran shouldn’t have bothered, I would just as soon be independent.”

For the first time he turned his head briefly and looked at her, his mouth quirked into a caricature of a smile. “I’m sure you would,” he said, "but the Dennisons like playing things their way, you’ll soon learn.”

As his brother’s car pulled up in front of the house, Jamie came out and hastened to open the car door for Katie, watched frowningly by his brother. “I had no idea,” he said earnestly, “that big brother was bringing you—I’d have been only too glad to have fetched you myself.” He held her at arm’s length, his gaze enraptured as he looked her up and down. “You look absolutely delectable,” he told her solemnly. “I could eat you here and now! ”

“There would be more sense if you took Miss Roberts inside and introduced her to people,” his brother said shortly. He flicked a brief glance at them as they stood on the drive before going into the house and Katie saw Fran come towards him.

“He doesn’t improve with age,” Jamie said sadly, “He’s a real crusty old bachelor, is my big brother.”

Katie laughed as he put an arm round her shoulders and led her towards the door. “Oh really, Jamie, he hardly qualifies as a crusty
old
bachelor, surely?” she said. “Just because he’s a few years older than you it scarcely puts him in the Methuselah class.”

“He’s ten years older than I am,” Jamie said, as if it was a century, “and I’m older than I look.”

“Oh, you do exaggerate!” she laughed at his solemn face as they came into the brightly lit hall, and she saw Fran start towards them. “You’re twenty-five, only two years older than I am. Fran told me so.”

“She had no business to give away my secrets,” he protested as his cousin approached them, looking coltishly pretty in a yellow dress that suited her colouring perfectly, and showed off her slim figure to its best advantage. Her usually freckled face was only lightly made up and her long, straight fair hair swept into a flattering style on top of her head that complemented her fine bone structure. She was, Katie realised, a very attractive girl.

The blue eyes openly admired Katie’s dress as she came up to them. “Oh, Katie,” she said, “you look absolutely gorgeous! That dress is a dream!”

“My aunt’s dressmaker made it,” Katie told her, realising that Aunt Cora had been right about Emmy Paget knowing a good chance to advertise when she saw one.

Fran looked at Jamie and frowned. “I thought I
told
you that John would be bringing Katie,” she said. “I wondered where you’d got to.” Ignoring her cousin further, she took Katie’s arm and steered her away towards the lounge, which somehow contrived to look twice its usual size, even though it was seemingly full of people. “Come and say hello to Janus,” she said.

Katie would have preferred to have delayed her meeting with Sir Janus, for she could see him, in the doorway of the lounge, talking to his elder grandson and she had no desire to be drawn into conversation with her erstwhile escort. Her host was in company too, with a tall, slender, blonde girl who looked so elegantly expensive that Katie felt sure she must be someone very important. There was something familiar about the girl, too, but Katie could not think where she had seen her before.

Sir Janus turned his handsome head as Fran and Katie approached and held out both hands in greeting. “Katie, my dear, how delightful to see you!” His steady eyes, almost as vividly blue as his grandson’s, complimented her. “You look lovely, quite lovely, doesn’t she, John?”

The appeal was answered by a brief nod of approval and Katie felt her face colour under the cold appraisal. The elegant blonde smiled at her rather condescendingly. “Oh, I do beg your pardon,” Sir Janus apologised hastily. “You haven’t met, of course, have you?” He put a friendly hand on Katie’s shoulder, as if he suspected her nervousness. “Eleanor, this is Katie Roberts, a friend of Fran’s and a new arrival in Mare Green; a very welcome one, too.” He smiled at Katie. “Katie, my dear, this is Miss Barlow, Eleanor Barlow.”

Hearing the name Katie remembered immediately where she had seen that thin elegant figure before, and why the self-confident, rather superior face was so familiar. Eleanor Barlow was just about the most famous fashion model in the country. The slightly tilted amber eyes that surveyed her slowly and with more than a trace of malice, she thought, had looked at her often from the pages of glossy fashion magazines and advertisements.

“Miss Roberts,” she acknowledged the introduction with a brief nod, and in a cool, brittle voice that so exactly matched her appearance. “I hope you won’t find it too horribly dull, Miss Roberts. There’s so little for young people to do in Mare Green, don’t you think?” She might almost have added, Katie thought furiously, that it would be nice for the child to have someone to play with.

As if she required no answer to her question, she turned and passed an empty glass to die man beside her. “Do get me another drink, John darling, will you? Or I shall
never
stay the course.”

“You poor old thing!” Jamie’s bantering voice behind her gave Katie a strong inclination to smile, especially when she saw Eleanor Barlow’s cheeks flush at the jibe. His arm slid across Katie’s shoulders and he smiled artlessly at the object of his sympathy, -his blue eyes glittering mischief.