Some people were intimidated by her, she knew, some were dazzled, but most others tended to respond to her quick intelligence and humour. Not Edward Merrick, apparently. It wasn’t that he was openly rude or even ignoring her, but she couldn’t shake the sense that he thought that she was a bit silly and superficial somehow.

Perdita couldn’t put her finger on why she felt that. It might have been something to do with the arid edge to his voice when he spoke to her, or that disquieting gleam in the grey eyes that seemed to see much more than she really wanted them to. Whatever it was, Perdita didn’t like it one little bit.

Naturally, she responded by ignoring him and sparkling even harder, and if that made Ed decide she was even sillier than he had thought, that was tough. She couldn’t care less.

It didn’t stop her keeping a surreptitious eye on him as she held court, but for once it felt like hard work. When she saw him leave at last, Perdita should have been able to relax and be herself, but instead the evening seemed suddenly flat.

It was time she rang her mother anyway. Laughingly refusing the offers of a last drink that were pressed on her, Perdita made her escape from the bar. It was a relief to stop smiling when she got outside and she frowned slightly as she walked along the long corridor to her room.

What was the matter with her? She wasn’t usually like this. So Edward Merrick wasn’t that taken with her? It didn’t matter whether he liked her or not as long as they could have a good professional relationship. OK, that hadn’t got off to the best of starts when she had called him pretentious, but she had apologised, and he hadn’t seemed that bothered. There was no reason why they shouldn’t work together perfectly well, and if Ed didn’t want to be friends…well, she had plenty of friends already. She didn’t care.