CHAPTER ONE

      LISA PAUSED HESITANTLY outside the shop, studying the very obviously designer-label and expensive outfits in the window doubtfully.

      She had been given the address by a friend who had told her that the shop was one of the most exclusive ‘nearly new’ designer-clothes outlets in the city, where outfits could be picked up for less than a third of their original price.

      Lisa was no fashion victim—normally she was quite happy with her small wardrobe of good-quality chain-store clothes—but Henry had seemed so anxious that she create a good impression on his family and their friends, and most particularly his mother, during their Christmas visit to his parents’ home in the north that Lisa had felt obliged to take the hints he had been dropping and add something rather more up-market to her wardrobe. Especially since Henry had already indicated that he wanted to put their relationship on a more formal basis, with an official announcement to his family of their plans to marry.

      Lisa knew that many of her friends found Henry slightly stuffy and old-fashioned, but she liked those aspects of his personality. They indicated a reliability, a dependability in him which, so far as she was concerned, outweighed his admitted tendency to fuss and find fault over minor details.

      When the more outspoken of her closest friends had asked her what she saw in him she’d told them quietly that she saw a dependable husband and a good father.

      ‘But what about romance?’ they had asked her. ‘What about falling desperately and passionately in love?’

      Lisa had laughed, genuinely amused.

      ‘I’m not the type of woman who falls desperately or passionately in love,’ she had responded, ‘and nor do I want to be!’

      ‘But doesn’t it annoy you that Henry’s so chauvinistically old-fashioned?’ Her friends had persisted. ‘Look at the way he’s fussing over you meeting his parents and family—telling you how he wants you to dress.’

      ‘He’s just anxious for me to make a good impression,’ Lisa had argued back on Henry’s behalf. ‘He obviously values his parents’ opinion and—’

      ‘And he’s still tied to his mother’s apron strings,’ one of her friends had scoffed. ‘I know the type.’ She had paused a little before adding more seriously, ‘You know, don’t you, that he was on the point of becoming engaged to someone else shortly before he met you and that he broke off the relationship because he wasn’t sure that his family would approve of her? Apparently they’re very old-fashioned and strait-laced, and Janey had been living with someone else when she’d first met Henry—’

      ‘Yes, I do know,’ Lisa had retorted firmly. ‘But the reason that they broke up was not Janey’s past history but that Henry realised that they didn’t, simply didn’t have enough in common.’

      ‘And you and he do?’ her friend had asked drily.

      ‘We both want the same things out of life, yes,’ Lisa had asserted defensively.

      And it was, after all, true. She might not have fallen deeply in love with Henry the night they were introduced by a mutual friend, but she had certainly liked him enough to accept his invitation to dinner, and their relationship had grown steadily from that date to the point where they both felt that their future lay together.

      She might not be entirely comfortable with Henry’s insistence that she buy herself a new wardrobe in order to impress his wealthy parents and their circle of friends, but she could sympathise with the emotion which had led to him making such a suggestion.

      Her own parents would, she knew, be slightly bemused by her choice of a husband; her mother was a gifted and acclaimed potter whose work was internationally praised, whilst her father’s stylish, modern furniture designs meant that he was constantly in demand, not just as a designer but as a lecturer as well.

      Both her parents were currently in Japan, and were not due to return for another two months.

      It would have been a lonely Christmas for her this year if Henry had not invited her to go north with him to the Yorkshire Dales to visit