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very much mistaken. Perhaps when dinner was over and she had given him his coffee, she would make herself a mug of cocoa. Mugs of cocoa were earthy things, there was nothing even vaguely romantic or seductive about them. A man would find it hard to indulge in a passionate interlude with a woman who was clutching a mug of cocoa!
    They ate the meal in silence, and for Kate it seemed to go on for ever. Jerome didn’t seem to consider it necessary to indulge in light conversation, she supposed that he wasn’t used to it. He probably worked on the presumption that women were necessary to satisfy certain of his appetites, and for that, they didn’t have to talk! When it was at last over, she rose swiftly and began to roll up the sleeves of her shirt. As she did so, she moved purposefully towards the sink. If luck was with her, she would take at least an hour to wash up and then she would get her mug of cocoa and go straight to bed, thereby postponing any discussion until the morning at the earliest. Her hand was just reaching towards the hot tap when Jerome’s voice cut across her self-congratulatory mood.
    ‘Our discussion, Kate,’ she was reminded.
    ‘I’ll clear up first and get everything tidy.’ She turned an artificially bright smile on him as she put the plug in the sink and squirted in far too much washing up liquid. ‘I couldn’t sit talking with all this clutter to be cleared,’ she waved at the table, draining board and counter where used crockery, cutlery, glasses and pans were stacked. ‘Even if I was in another room and couldn’t see the mess, I’d not be able to concentrate on a word you said, not until it was all cleared away and the place tidied up. It’s one of the unpleasant things about schoolteachers, we generally turn into fusspots. We can’t help it, I’ve seen it happen to so many of us. I think it must be an occupational hazard.’
    She was still babbling brightly and inanely when she heard a faint sound of exasperation behind her and firm hands shifted her bodily to one side as he passed her and started to load the dishwasher.
    ‘There!’ She continued her chattering in a cheerful vein. ‘That’s what living in a cottage on Bodmin Moor does for you, that and being a member of the lower orders, of course. When there’s work to be done, we automatically use our hands. We’re not used to gadgets or servants, you see, and it’s very hard for us to adjust. Some of us never....’
    There was no more time for her to explain further what some of the lower orders would never be able to adjust to, because a firm hand, a relentless hand, came about her arm.
    ‘Now we’ll go into the sitting room,’ he said urbanely as he dragged her through the door.
    Kate sat primly, her ankles neatly crossed and her hands lying loosely in her lap while she turned an uninterested face to him.
    ‘Noelle?’ He made it a question. ‘How much of her reputation was deserved? She was seen about with a great many escorts, some of them were a trifle, shall we say, unsavoury. At one time it was impossible to find a paper or magazine which didn’t picture her dining with some man and apparently on quite intimate terms with him.’
    ‘It was a con.’ She was terse. ‘They wanted to launch products using my face and they explained to me that for the campaigns to be a success, my face had to be better known, brought out of the ivory tower of the studio and shown to be human.’ She made a moue of distaste. ‘You’d be surprised at the number of wealthy and quite eligible men who are willing to act as an escort when there’s a bit of publicity about. Of course,’ her mouth grew bitter, ‘even though the meals were paid for and the drinks and theatre tickets were free, it was surprising to me how high a value they put on their time. Most of them thought that an evening with Noelle didn’t end until nine the next morning, or that it shouldn’t! A lot of them were very hard to convince.’ She smiled a bitter