The Dollar Prince's Wife by Paula Marshall Page A

White Queen. She drawled mockingly, ‘What a hole you are in, darling,’ and, throwing out a careless hand to wave at Dinah’s pieces, she knocked them all flying.
    â€˜Oh, sorry,’ she exclaimed, still mocking, ‘but really, Dinah, no need for you to carry on with that . Now, why don’t you go upstairs and find something suitable to wear—that thing you have on looks more fitting for the nursery than the dining room. Oh, and thank Mr Grant prettily for taking the trouble to entertain you.’
    She spoke as though Dinah were a fractious three-year-old, and Cobie was her elderly uncle.
    Cobie, caught between red rage at Violet’s casual cruelty, and wry amusement at the way in which she was expressing it, was unhappily aware that anything he might say to comfort the poor child would only give Violet the opportunity to cut her up even more savagely, said nothing.
    Dinah, her face flaming scarlet, rose and prepared to retreat upstairs to change—although into what she did not know. She was well aware that she possessed nothing of which Violet would approve. Violet had always had thepower to make her feel ugly, clumsy and stupid—particularly stupid.
    The happiness which she had been experiencing over the last hour had flown away quite. She now felt that Mr Grant must have been concealing his boredom skilfully, whereas until Violet had arrived she had thought him to be enjoying their impromptu tête-à-tête as much as she had been doing.
    â€˜Y…y…yes,’ she began to stammer miserably. She bent down to rescue the White Queen which had rolled under the table and, when she rose with it, found that Mr Grant was gently taking it from her to replace it on the board.
    â€˜We must resume our game another day,’ he told her gravely, his amazing blue eyes hard on her. For her sake, he dare not say any more than that. He would offer Violet no ammunition to use against her.
    Violet’s eyes were boring holes in her for some reason which Dinah couldn’t understand.
    She said disjointedly, ‘No need, thank you…Mr Grant… I’m not really a very good player…mustn’t bore you.’
    Cobie was quite still: a danger sign with him if either of the two women had known it. ‘Oh, you didn’t bore me, Lady Dinah. I enjoyed my hour with you.’
    Violet tapped her foot on the ground peremptorily until Dinah, blushing furiously and unable to answer Mr Grant coherently, left them.
    The door had barely had time to shut behind her before Violet said nastily, ‘ I enjoyed my hour with you! Really, Cobie, there was no need for you to go quite so far to keep the child in countenance—a quiet “thank you” would have been more than enough.’
    Could she conceivably be jealous of Dinah? And why? Until Violet had walked in, Dinah had been a happy and interesting companion, but it had become immediately apparent by Dinah’s subsequent behaviour that this was not the first time Violet had treated her with such cold cruelty. All her charming composure had been destroyed in an instant.
    Cobie’s dislike of Violet was growing at the same speed. He made an immediate resolution to try to protect the unloved child. She reminded him strongly of another whom, long ago, he had also tried to protect but had failed to do so through no fault of his own. The memory of her death would haunt him all his life. Pray God he could do more for Dinah, if only while he was at Moorings.
    Nothing of this showed. He was charm itself to Violet, but she was shrewd enough to notice that he never mentioned Dinah to her. She could not have said why seeing Dinah laughing with Cobie had flicked her on the raw. Perhaps it was because, at nearly forty, she was approaching the time when no one would think of her as ‘that great beauty, Violet Kenilworth’ but instead she would be spoken of as ‘Violet Kenilworth—who had once been a great