Visconti's Forgotten Heir by Elizabeth Power

Author:Elizabeth Power [Power, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin Presents
Published: 2013-10-01T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE DINNER THAT evening, attended by some of the biggest names in the UK hotel business, was held in the ballroom of an impressive nineteenth-century stately home, somewhere deep in the heart of the Surrey countryside.

Andreas had informed Magenta that he’d been in two minds about going, which explained why it hadn’t been entered into his diary, but then he had heard that among those attending there would be two of his acquaintances from the States whom he was very keen to see. They were over here, he had explained, to sell their shares in some of the country house hotel properties they owned in the UK, and as it was a section of the market he was keen to move into he felt it would be beneficial for him to be there with his PA.

It was the first formal event Magenta could remember attending, although she knew from photographs she’d seen of herself that she’d attended one or two with Marcus Rushford during the early days of her short-lived modelling career. It was with a little shiver of nerves, therefore, that she viewed the long, beautifully laid tables, taking in with some trepidation the spectacle of sparkling crystal and gleaming silverware beneath the luminescence of two glittering chandeliers. Then she felt Andreas’s supporting hand at her elbow, followed by a few, soft encouraging words, and she wondered if he’d guessed how she was feeling as he led her into the breathtaking room.

A few hours later, sipping her second cup of coffee, with the speeches and most of the business of the evening well out of the way, Magenta couldn’t understand why she had been so nervous. The Ottermans were lovely, as it turned out.

PJ, as Andreas had introduced him, was a short, greying-haired man, with a ginger moustache and a warm, infectious laugh. His wife, Mary-Louise, was an elegant, quietly-spoken lady who, from her clear skin and slender figure, had clearly taken care of herself. She was, however, temporarily confined to a wheelchair, with her leg in plaster, as a result of a fall over an unattended suitcase at the airport on her arrival in the UK the previous week.

‘That’s such an unfortunate thing to happen,’ Magenta sympathised when Mary-Louise made reference to her ill-timed accident. ‘Especially with the weather being so beautiful here at the moment and you having to forgo all the organised walks you and your husband were planning for this trip.’

‘Yes, I suppose it has been a bit careless of me,’ the woman admitted with a self-effacing grimace. ‘But secretly, my dear...’ Her slim shoulders hunched, she leaned towards Magenta with a conspiratorial lowering of her voice ‘...I’m rather enjoying having PJ fussing over me in a way that he hasn’t done in forty years.’

Magenta laughed, enjoying the American woman’s company while Andreas was talking business to the woman’s husband. Both men were on their feet, as they had been for some time now, and Magenta was very conscious of Andreas standing behind her chair.

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