Sins (15 page)

The young man in question was indeed staring at Emerald in a very admiring way. He was also, she recognised, extremely good-looking, with a head of thick black curls and intense dark eyes. She hadn’t seen him before. She would certainly have remembered him if she had. He was wearing a well-cut lounge suit, and the light from the chandeliers glinted on the heavy gold ring he was wearing on his right hand. She made a small
moue
of distaste. It was very off for men to wear jewellery, unless, of course, that jewellery was a symbol of status–a ducal ring, for instance, bearing a family crest. Still, he was awfully good-looking. And he was making no attempt to conceal his interest in her, watching her with almost feverish intensity.

‘Who is he, do you know?’ she asked Lavinia casually.

‘Oh, yes, he was at school with my brother.’

The Halsteads were a devout Catholic family, whose sons were always schooled at a Jesuit-run Catholic boarding school in Cumbria.

‘He doesn’t look English,’ Emerald stated, giving him another assessing glance. That olive-toned skin combined with those thick dark curls could never belong to anyone English, nor could that hotly demanding and passionate look he was giving. It was rather delicious to have such a good-looking boy gazing at her with such obvious out-of-control longing, rather like being bathed in the heat of Mediterranean sunshine.

‘No, Alessandro is Laurantese.’

‘Laurantese? What on earth does that mean?’ Emerald demanded suspiciously, half suspecting that Lavinia was deliberately teasing her.

‘It means that Alessandro is from Lauranto,’ Lavinia informed her in a reproving, almost schoolmistress-like voice. ‘Lauranto is a small principality, like Monaco or Liechtenstein, on the coast between Italy and France, the Côte d’Azur. In fact, Alessandro isn’t merely from Lauranto, his family actually rule it–Alessandro is the Crown Prince.’

Emerald looked again at her admirer. A crown prince!

Whilst Lavinia had been talking, Gwendolyn, in that typically sneaky way of hers, had managed to detach herself from the girl she had been with to come over and listen in on their conversation.

‘Foreign princes aren’t proper princes,’ she announced disparagingly. ‘Not like our own royal family.’

‘Of course they are proper princes,’ Emerald told her sharply. ‘How can they not be? A prince is a prince, after all.’

‘Now that he’s seen me talking to you, he’s bound to expect me to introduce him to you,’ Lavinia told Emerald.
‘I should warn you that he is fearfully, well, foreign, if you know what I mean, and very intense. He only joined Michael’s school in their last year. He’d been educated privately at home before that. His mother is terrified that something might happen to him, he being her only child. His father was killed in a hunting accident just after he was born and, according to what Alessandro has told Michael, his mother thinks that his father’s death might not have been an accident and that it could have been part of a plot by Mussolini to annex Lauranto. His mother can’t wait for him to get married and start producing lots of heirs and spares to fill the royal nurseries.’

Lyddy Munroe had joined then now, and after Lavinia had excused herself to go and rejoin her mother, who was signalling to her, Lyddy turned to Emerald and said excitedly, ‘Imagine marrying a prince, and having your very own country, just like Grace Kelly marrying Prince Rainier.’

‘You’d never catch me marrying a foreigner,’ Gwendolyn told them sniffily.

‘No, I dare say you wouldn’t,’ Emerald agreed unkindly. ‘After all, you’d have to find one willing to marry you first.’

Gwendolyn’s face went beetroot red whilst Lyddy looked uncomfortable and confused.

Gwendolyn had had it coming to her, Emerald thought with satisfaction. She never lost a chance to needle her about her boast that she would marry a title better than her mother’s, and she was just waiting for her to fail so that she could crow over her. But she wasn’t going to fail, Emerald assured herself, darting a teasing look in
the prince’s direction before turning her back on him. Gwendolyn was right about one thing: marrying a foreign prince did not have the same cachet as marrying a member of one’s own royal family. However, there was no harm in her holding her new admirer in reserve, and using him to make the Duke of Kent jealous.

‘The Duke of Kent isn’t here then?’

The gloating note in Gwendolyn’s voice made Emerald wonder angrily if the other girl had somehow read her mind.

‘Are you really going to marry him, Emerald?’ Lyddy asked in awe.

‘I never said that I was going to marry the Duke of Kent.
Yo u
were the one who mentioned his name,’ Emerald answered sharply.

‘She’s saying that because she’s afraid now that he won’t want to marry her,’ Gwendolyn told Lyddy with a smirk.

‘No I am not,’ Emerald snapped, temper flashing in her eyes.

‘But you haven’t seen him since we went to that party, have you?’

‘No one’s seen him. He hasn’t been in London,’ Emerald pointed out curtly.

It was true that she had expected to have seen the duke again by now, although she would die rather than admit that to Gwendolyn and Lydia. He had her address, after all, and he knew that she was doing the season. But then he was a royal duke, and no doubt had all manner of formal appearances to make at various events, which had obviously kept him out of London. When he did
return she would undoubtedly discover that he had been desperate to get in touch with her, and he would probably bombard her with invitations as well as declarations of love.

She shook her head, refusing the offer from a passing waiter of another cup of coffee. It wasn’t so very long ago that Britain had still been living with food rationing and, despite her narrow waist and slender size, Emerald loved her food. She thought longingly of the rare occasions when she’d eaten at the Ritz and the Savoy, and of the delicious pastries she’d enjoyed in Paris. It provided her with a great deal of amusement that Gwendolyn, who was chubby, with thick ankles, had been forced to endure the humiliation of thin soup and no bread whilst they had been at finishing school in an unsuccessful attempt to get her weight down.

Laughing at Gwendolyn’s expense lifted Emerald’s spirits no end.

The Kents were bound to accept their invitation to her ball. After all, her late father had been held in high regard, and he and her mother had been very prominent socially, being invited everywhere and knowing everyone there was to know, according to Aunt Beth. And once they were there, the duke was bound to ask her to dance, and once he had…

People were starting to leave, mothers and chaperones anxiously shepherding débutantes towards the exit, whilst doing swift and complicated mental arithmetic as to the likelihood of their managing to fit in the day’s quota of events. Lunches were followed by afternoon teas, which were followed by cocktails, and formal dinners,
evening parties, shows and, if a girl was lucky enough to have a male escort, perhaps even an outing to a nightclub.

Aunt Beth had broken away from her table of fellow chaperones and was summoning her now.

Emerald finished her glass of too sweet rosé wine and stood up to leave.

‘No, please, you can’t go until I have made myself known to you, and told you how much I admire you. And how very beautiful you are. The most beautiful girl in the world. A vision…an angel of loveliness.’

Emerald thought about looking indifferent and even haughty, but the look of shocked disapproval on Gwendolyn’s face caused her instead to smile graciously at her admirer knowing it would only add to Gwendolyn’s disapproval.

‘A man cannot introduce himself to an unattached girl. It is not correct protocol,’ she teased him, but with a warning in her voice that told him that she was the kind of girl who expected his sex–even members of it who were crown princes–to treat her with full respect.

But the Crown Prince shook his head, giving her a look of burning intensity, as he told her passionately, ‘Please do not send me away. I shall be desolate if you do. My heart and my life are yours to command. Between us there can be no need for protocol. We are, I think, twin souls, and destined to meet. I feel it here, deep inside me.’ Alessandro thumped his chest with his fist, his gaze pleading for her to listen to him.

Emerald was amused. His behaviour was dreadfully theatrical and foreign, it was true, but it was also true that
he was extraordinarily good-looking, and a crown prince. Being royal allowed a person to behave differently.

He was certainly far better-looking than the Duke of Kent: tall and broad-shouldered, with that smouldering gaze that made her want to laugh and yet, at the same time, sent a delicious little sensation of excitement tingling down her spine. Somehow it was much easier to imagine Alessandro clasping her to his chest and covering her face with passionate kisses, just like the hero out of a film, than it was to imagine the Duke of Kent doing the same thing. His passion, whilst quite ridiculous, was deliciously flattering, and all the more enjoyable because Gwendolyn so obviously disapproved of it–jealous, of course. After all, no handsome crown prince was ever going to fall at her feet declaring undying passion for her, was he?

‘We are strangers. You don’t even know my name.’

‘I know your heart. It is pure and good and it has captured my own heart. You are so very beautiful,’ he breathed ardently.

‘Do come along, you two.’

Aunt Beth was hovering now, whilst Gwendolyn’s thin pursed lips showed her increasing irritation.

On the point of turning away, Emerald saw a new opportunity to get at Gwendolyn.

Touching her aunt’s arm, she told her with faked innocence and naïvety, ‘Aunt Beth, His Highness, Crown Prince Alessandro says that he is desolate that there is no one to introduce us. I am sure you must have met his mother at some time since she is related to one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting.’

As Emerald had known they would be, the magically potent words, ‘His Highness’ and ‘the Queen’ were enough to have her godmother looking approvingly at Alessandro.

‘It is true,’ he agreed, proving to be rather more savvy than Emerald had expected. ‘I am desolate that my mama is not here to make the necessary introductions, but sadly my mother’s cousin is not well and Mama wishes to keep her company, so I have to come here without her.’

‘Alessandro is the Crown Prince of the Principality of Lauranto, on the Côte d’Azur,’ Emerald further explained. ‘I dare say that you must have visited there, Aunt Beth.’

‘Well, yes. I am sure that we must.’

‘I too am sure that this must be so,’ Alessandro was agreeing. He was proving to be an able henchman, Emerald decided approvingly.

‘So you see,’ he told Emerald, turning back to her, ‘we are as good as known to one another already, and I beg that you will allow me to call on you.’

‘Not until my godmother has given her permission,’ Emerald stopped him demurely.

Her godmother bestowed an approving smile on her and, in no time at all, Alessandro had been given permission to call at Eaton Square whilst in turn he had given Aunt Beth his temporary address at the Savoy Hotel, where he was staying with his mother.

They had, Alessandro told them, come to London not only to see his mother’s cousin but so that he could attend the coming-out ball of the sister of one of his school friends.

He meant Lavinia, Emerald guessed, making a mental
note to ensure that Lavinia’s was one of the balls she attended. It would do no harm for a certain Duke of Kent to see her being admired by the dashing Alessandro.

‘How could you encourage that…that foreigner like that?’ Gwendolyn hissed once they were outside. ‘My mother is right about you: you might have a title but you do not have any real breeding.’

Emerald stopped dead in the street, swinging round to confront the other girl, her face tight with anger.

‘Don’t you ever, ever say that to me again! I am the daughter of a duke,’ she reminded Gwendolyn, adding cruelly, ‘and you are the one who lacks breeding. You are the daughter of a nobody, a man who can’t even father an heir on his wife; just as I told you in Paris, a man who cannot keep his hands to himself or his prick in his pants–and if you don’t believe me, ask your mother. Everyone knows that your father has fucked more tarts than any other man in society.’

Gwendolyn had begun to whimper in shock, trying to cover her ears to protect herself from the coarseness of Emerald’s language as much as the truths she didn’t want to hear.

‘A girl of my rank and wealth can be neither vulgar nor common; she can only be delightfully eccentric and perhaps a little outrageous. Compared with me you are nothing. When I am married you will still be nothing. You will be nothing all your life, poor, fat, dull Gwennie, and you know it, and that is why you are so jealous of me. I will marry well and live the kind of life you can only dream of whilst you’ll end up at home darning socks
and being downtrodden. You’re jealous because men admire me and want me, you’re jealous because Alessandro has fallen in love with me. Well, you are right to envy me because no man will ever fall in love with
you
.’

Suddenly realising that her niece and her goddaughter had fallen behind, Beth turned round to urge them to catch up.

Whilst Gwendolyn struggled to control her shocked distress, Emerald pushed past her to catch up with her godmother, a triumphant smile playing on her lips.

The Channel had been rough, and the fashion editor’s assistant, with whom Ella had shared a cramped cabin, had been up all night being sick, and was still looking green when they all boarded the train in Calais.

The models were changing into the outfits in which they would be photographed standing outside the Orient-Express before it left Paris. The stop was only a brief one and, because of the fashion editor’s assistant’s sickness, Ella had been pressed into service as her stand-in, and sent scrurrying on various errands at the fashion editor’s behest.

Normally Ella wouldn’t have minded, but it stung her pride to have to carry messages between the fashion editor and her personal
bête noire
, especially when Oliver Charters laced his messages with so many ripe expletives–deliberately, so Ella suspected. She was determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing her look shocked.