Excerpt of Ordinary Girl, Society Groom by Natasha Oakley

IT WAS true what people said — you were more alone in a crowd than any other place on earth. Eloise Lawton felt as lonely tonight as she ever had.

All she wanted to do was go home, run a bath and soak away her troubles. Instead she was here, making social small talk and avoiding the barbs of people who were fearful of what she might say about their dress sense. As well they might; she'd become more vitriolic of late. She couldn't seem to help it.

Eloise shifted her weight from one leg to the other, acutely aware of the way her Eduardo Munno sandals cut into the sides of her feet. Stunning to look at, but desperately uncomfortable when they were a size too small. Borrowed plumes for a woman who didn't fit in. Not with these people.

Everyone was vying for position, all judging the others on what they owned and who they were connected to. It was pitiful. Except it wasn't pity she felt. It was a deep, sickening sort of loathing. The kind that made her feel she needed to stand under the shower for half an hour to rid herself of the contamination.

But it was work. It paid the mortgage — and she didn't have the luxury of a handsome trust fund or an inherited ancestral pile. Unlike every second person here.

Eloise gave her wrist-watch a surreptitious glance and calculated how long she'd have to stick it out before she could make her excuses to Cassie. Not so long ago this kind of event would have filled her with excitement, but now...

Well, now things were different. A spontaneous decision to take her mother's belongings out of storage had changed everything.

It had seemed such a sensible thing to do. After six years it was certainly past time. She'd completed all the release paperwork without the slightest presentiment that she was opening a Pandora's box of emotions.

She'd known it was a mistake almost instantly. So many memories had rushed to crowd around her. Barely healed wounds had been ripped open and they felt as fresh and raw as when a lorry driver falling asleep at the wheel had altered everything.

She'd re-read the letter her mum had so carefully tucked inside her will and, six years on, she'd read it with a slightly different perspective.

Eloise let her eyes wander around the galleried grand hall. Enormous chandeliers hung down from the cavernous ceiling and huge displays of arum lilies, white orchids and tiny rosebuds had been tortured into works of art. No expense had been spared. Everything was perfectly beautiful.

A magical setting — but it felt like purgatory. How could it not? An ostentatious display of wealth for no apparent purpose. And her role in all this?

She no longer cared what colour anyone should be wearing or whether silk was the fabric of the season. When she sat at her keyboard tomorrow she'd summon up enough enthusiasm to get the article done but tonight it left her cold.

There was too much on her mind. Too much anger. Too much resentment. "Mutton dressed as lamb," Cassie hissed above the top of her champagne flute. "Over there. At three o'clock."

Eloise jerked to attention and swivelled round to look at the woman her boss was referring to in such disparaging terms.

"No, darling." The editor of Image magazine tapped her arm. "That's nine o'clock. I said three. Bernadette Ryland. By the alabaster pillar. Under that portrait of the hideously obese general."

Obligingly, Eloise twisted the other way. "In the yellow. Well, almost in the yellow. What was her stylist thinking of? The woman looks like some kind of strangulated chicken."

Cassie wasn't kidding. It was a shame because the actress had been a strikingly beautiful woman before she'd succumbed to the lure of the surgeon's knife. It gave her face a perpetually surprised look. And that dress... It almost defied description. Certainly defied gravity.

Cassie took another sip of champagne. "And Lady Amelia Monroe ought to rethink that haircut, don't you think? It makes her face look very jowly. Oh —" she broke off ' — oh, my goodness... There's Jeremy Norland. And with Sophia Westbrooke. Now...that's the first interesting thing that's happened this evening. I wonder..."

"Jeremy Norland?" Eloise asked quickly, even as her eyes effortlessly fixed themselves on his tall, dark figure.

She'd seen a couple of photographs of him, one taken when he'd been playing polo and the other at a society wedding, but he was smoother-looking than she'd expected. Chocolate box handsome.

"By the door. Know him?" 'No." Eloise's fingers closed convulsively round her glass. "I don't know him. I heard his name mentioned, that's all," she managed, her voice a little flat.

"Haven't we all, darling?" Cassie Sinclair lifted one manicured hand and waved it at a lady in grey chiffon who'd been trying to attract her attention. "That's the sister of the Duke of Odell," she explained in a quiet undertone Eloise scarcely heard. "Married a mere mister. Kept the title of Lady, of course, and makes sure everyone knows it." She swung round to exchange her empty glass for a full one.

Eloise stood transfixed. Jeremy Norland. Here. Her mind didn't seem capable of processing any other thought.

Viscount Pulborough's stepson was here. In London. He was standing by the heavy oak door, his face alight with laughter. Not a care in the world.

But then why should he have? He was living a charmed life.

Cassie followed the line of her gaze. "Gorgeous, isn't he? All that muscle's been honed by hours on horseback. And that suit is fabulous. Look at his bum in those trousers. The man's sexy...very sexy."

"And doesn't he just know it?" Eloise returned dryly, watching the way he glinted down at Sophia Westbrooke.

"Can't blame the man for knowing the effect he has on women, darling. Looks. Money. Connections. Pretty lethal combination, I'd say."

Eloise forced a smile. "I thought he didn't like London."

"He doesn't. He stays down in Sussex on his stepfather's estate. Makes tables, chairs, that kind of thing."

"Fine cabinetry. Yes, I know." Eloise sipped her own champagne. "I read something about that."

"You need a second mortgage to buy the leg of a foot- stool," Cassie agreed. "Sophia's dress too, I imagine. Do you know who made it?"

"Yusef Atta. Up-and-coming designer. Specialising in embroidery on chiffon," Eloise answered automatically. "Very romantic silhouettes. That kind of thing."

"Worth a feature?" 'Perhaps," Eloise agreed, watching the way the teenager gazed up adoringly. Sophia Westbrooke couldn't be older than nineteen. Could she? Whereas Jeremy was thirty-four. Thirty-five, perhaps — she couldn't quite remember from the Internet article she'd read two nights ago.

Cassie seemed in tune with her thoughts. "Just back from Switzerland. Not a day over nineteen. And with a man like Jem Norland. Lucky cow."

"There's no luck about it. It's all part of the in- breeding programme. Like marries like, don't you know?" she said in her best parody of an up-market accent.

Cassie gave a delighted chuckle, her acrylic-tipped nails clinking against her champagne flute. "Wicked child. Now circulate, darling. Get me the gossip and no more ogling the natives. They bite."

How true. It was a pity no one had mentioned that to her mother twenty-eight years ago when she'd first started work at Coldwaltham Abbey, not much older than Sophia Westbrooke — but Eloise would lay money on their fates being completely different.

Eloise watched her boss network her way back through the crowded room. Cassie didn't fit in any more than she did, but you'd never know it from her demeanour. She just owned the space, dared anyone to reject her.

Eloise had used to be like that, ambitious to the core — but things had changed in the past fourteen weeks. Fourteen weeks and three days, to be precise. The day she'd brought home those two crates. Who would ever have thought such a short space of time could make such an incalculable difference? Her eyes flicked back to Jeremy Norland, universally known as Jem.

He was the epitome of upper class living. His suit was fabulous. Hand-stitched, no doubt. Criminally expensive.

Money and opportunity had been poured on him from the hour of his birth. He'd the bone-deep confidence of a man who'd been to the best schools and who knew the old boy network would support him in comfort till the day he died.

And she resented him with a vehemence that surprised even her.

He reached across to kiss the cheek of the effervescent Sophia, who giggled appreciatively. He was so arrogant — it shone from the top of his dark expensively cut hair right down to his handmade Italian leather shoes. He knew exactly what he was doing — and the effect he was having on his youthful companion. Eloise just longed for her to rear up and tell him to get lost.

It didn't happen, though. Sophia smiled coquettishly and rested a hand on his shoulder. Eloise couldn't honestly blame her. She wasn't to know. It was years of sitting in a ringside seat seeing someone else's unhappiness that meant she would never be so stupid as to fall for a man like Jem Norland.

Anger and hatred had been building up inside her ever since she'd re-read her mother's letter and now she couldn't bear to be near these self-absorbed people who'd destroyed her mother's life so completely.

Her life.

With their grand houses, their horses and their public school accents. She hated them all.

A few short weeks ago she'd been fascinated by them. A detached and slightly amused observer. But now...

Now she had nothing but contempt for them. For Jem Norland. The privileged stepson of the man she really loathed — Laurence Alexander Milton, Viscount Pulborough.

Her father.

Father!

That was a joke. He'd been no more than the sperm donor.

Six years ago, when she'd first read that letter, she'd been too numbed by shock to really take it all in. The sudden loss of her mum had been trauma enough and she almost hadn't had the emotional space to register what she now knew to be the identity of the man whose gene pool she shared.

Viscount Pulborough wasn't part of her life. He'd meant less than nothing to her. It was her mum missing her graduation ceremony that had filled her mind and twisted the screw of pain a little tighter.

So she'd packed all her mum's things away and scarcely thought about it...for six years.

Six years. Time had passed so fast. Life had been busy. There'd been so much to do — building her career, saving for her deposit, trying to pretend she didn't feel so incredibly alone in a big, frightening world.

There'd always been plenty of excuses as to why her mum's belongings should stay safely locked away. She'd had a small bedsit... She'd be moving on soon, so what was the point...?

The excuses stopped when she'd bought her flat. Her own home. It was time to finally sort out the last of her mum's possessions. All those things she'd put in box files and refused to think about.

The letter.

It had always been there. A time bomb ticking away — only she hadn't realised it.

Re-reading her mum's words six years later, she had found her emotions were different. She had a new, fresh perspective and, as she read, her antipathy had turned to anger.