Sins (18 page)

Ella gave a small surreptitious tug at the waistband of her navy-blue linen skirt. She was sure that it was just that tiny bit less tight than it had been. There were no scales here at Denham, and it had been awfully difficult at mealtimes insisting that she wasn’t hungry. In the end she’d had to pretend that she’d had a stomach upset.

‘Finding out that Dougie is the new duke,’ Janey answered her sister’s question.

Ella gave the young Australian, who was standing talking to her father and stepmother, a quick look. No wonder he had been so keen to question her at that party.

‘It’s really put Emerald’s nose out of joint,’ Janey continued unsympathetically. ‘She’s refused to come down for dinner, you know. I heard Mama telling Daddy that Emerald says she’s got a a bad headache. A case of green jealousy ache is more like it.’

Emerald glowered moodily at her magazine. How dare her mother make such a silly fuss over that stupid Australian? Emerald was determined that she would never, ever refer to him as ‘the new duke’, even in the privacy of her own thoughts. Well, she wasn’t going to join in the fussing. How could such an oaf possibly be
her father’s heir? Emerald shuddered at the thought of how humiliating it would be to be obliged to have him at her ball. People would laugh and talk about him behind his back, and that would reflect on her. Why had he had to turn up now, just when it was so important that she created the right impression on the Duke of Kent? Any other mother would have been doing everything she could to help her daughter to impress the royal duke instead of trying to humiliate her by inviting Dougie to her ball. She hated him and she hated her mother as well.

All through dinner Rose snatched brief glimpses of John, who was sitting further up the table. As the rules of precedence demanded, the highest ranking guests sat closest to the host and hostess, which meant naturally that Dougie was seated at her aunt’s right hand, at one end of the table, and John to her left, whilst Jay sat at the other end.

Had she been there Emerald would have been seated next to the duke, but because she wasn’t that honour went to Lady Fitton Legh.

Darling John, he was such a good, kind person, even if he hadn’t noticed her new hairstyle.

Rose was still reflecting on John’s virtues later in the evening as she sat alone in the library, where she had gone to check in one of her aunt’s reference books on the provenance of a sofa table pair that her employer was insisting was a Regency original, but which she thought was a copy.

The door opened and John’s stepmother came in. Rose’s heart sank, but she gave her a polite smile, which
Lady Fitton Legh did not return. For no logical reason Rose suddenly felt very apprehensive.

‘I’ve come to have a word with you about my stepson.’

‘John?’ Rose half stammered, her apprehension increasing.

Lady Fitton Legh inclined her head. ‘I do hope that it isn’t necessary for me to point out to you that it would be most unwise of you to indulge in any foolish romantic notions about my stepson, Rose.’

Rose’s heart skipped a beat. She desperately wanted to escape from the humiliation she knew was coming but of course it was impossible for her to do anything other than remain where she was.

‘John has always been kind to me,’ she said shakily. ‘I think of him as a good friend, not…not someone I might marry.’

‘Marry? Someone of your sort? I should think not indeed. If that was what you were hoping for then you are truly a fool. I was aware that you were mooning over him, but it never occurred to me that you were actually so lost to the reality of your own situation and the circumstances of your birth that you would dare to think of marriage.’ Her angry contempt was plain.

Rose wanted to defend herself but the awfulness of the situation was such that she couldn’t gather her thoughts.

‘Let me be plain with you, Rose,’ Lady Fitton Legh continued coldly. ‘My stepson is a young man and, like all young men, he has, shall we say, certain needs. It is my concern that given your background and your parentage you might be unwisely tempted into satisfying
those needs. To follow in the footsteps of your mother, in fact, as one hears your sort does tend to do. That would not be a good idea.’

‘You have no right to talk to me like this,’ Rose protested, fighting back the hollow sick feeling of shocked misery that had invaded her stomach. ‘I have not done anything wrong.’

‘Not yet, perhaps, but you would be doing something very wrong indeed, Rose, if you encouraged John to have any kind of physically intimate relationship with you. Yo u see, it is not just a matter of you having a woman of the very worst sort as your mother, there is every chance that you and John could share the same father.’

If Rose had been shocked before, that shock was nothing compared with what she was feeling now.

‘No. That isn’t possible.’

‘I’m afraid that sadly it is. There must be something in the Pickford blood that drives those who possess it to behave immorally. Before she died, John’s mother confessed to me that Greg Pickford could be John’s father.’

‘You’re just saying that; it isn’t true–it can’t be true. If it was then someone would have said something.’ Rose felt bewildered and confused, unable to accept what Lady Fitton Legh was saying and yet at the same time sharply aware that the other woman meant every word. How could it be possible, though, for her and John to have the same father and them not know?

‘Would they? Your aunt certainly knows, and so too does my brother,’ Lady Fitton Legh informed her coolly. ‘If you don’t believe me why don’t you ask them? But, of course, I must warn you that if you do you will be
risking John’s future. Once it becomes public knowledge that he might not be my late husband’s son, then of course John, being the man that he is, would feel obliged to forfeit the title and the estate as a matter of honour.’

What Lady Fitton was saying was true, Rose knew. Now she felt nauseous.

‘You are no doubt wondering why I have kept silent on this matter all these years. The truth is that it suits me to do so, since John is a very good stepson. Were he to lose the estate then I would lose my own position. But what does not suit me is for you to become involved in any way with him. There will be no more Pickford bastards foisted off on the house of Fitton Legh. You do realise what it would mean if John were your half-brother, don’t you, Rose? Yo u do know what incest is, don’t you, and how disgusting and sickening a sin it is to have carnal knowledge of a person who shares your own blood? To even want that knowledge is a dreadful sin, a deviation from all that is decent and normal, although of course we cannot know with your heritage, your
parentage
, if words such as decency and normality can truly apply. No wonder poor Amber has felt obliged to keep you close to her, and keep an eye on you. At least John had someone respectable and acceptable as his mother. Your mother, of course, was little more than a whore. Have you inherited her nature, Rose? Under that seemingly innocent face you show to the world are you secretly as corrupt and vile as the woman who gave you life?

‘Poor Amber, I remember how horrified she was when her brother arrived home with you. No wonder she left you here at Denham rather than take you into her own
home. I dare say that secretly, like her grandmother, she hoped that you wouldn’t survive. And it would have been so much better for everyone else if you hadn’t, Rose, especially John. Dear John, such a conservative, respectable young man. He would be horrified if he suspected that you and he might share the same father. He is kind to you now because that is his nature, but imagine how he would feel if he were to think that you could be half-brother and-sister. He would hate you for the shame that would bring him.’

‘Stop it,’ Rose begged her, white-faced. ‘Please stop it.’

Lady Fitton Legh’s smile was cruel and contemptuous.

‘Poor Rose, your very existence is a source of shame and fear to those who are closest to you, the truth a secret they are forced to keep, whilst pretending to care for you. Dear Amber always was good at appearing to be charitable. So clever of her to find a way of keeping you close to her whilst gaining everyone’s approval.’

What Cassandra Fitton Legh was saying wasn’t true. Amber loved her,
really
loved her, Rose wanted to say, but somehow the words stuck in her throat, whilst the barbs John’s stepmother had cast into her heart were fast tearing at it.

‘What I have told you is for your own good, Rose, and of course for John. If you truly love him, as I believe you do, then it must remain our secret.’

Their secret and a burden she would have to carry for the rest of her life, Rose recognised, but somehow far worse than the pain of knowing she could only love John as a brother, was that of knowing that the bond, the love, the everything she had thought she and Amber shared
was a fiction, a folly, a deceit deliberately created to conceal the truth.

Lady Fitton Legh had been right to say that it would have been better if she had not survived, Rose thought bitterly.

‘John himself knows nothing of it, or of his mother’s dreadful behaviour, of course,’ Lady Fitton Legh was continuing, ‘and you must never tell anyone else, do you understand? Because if you do it will be John’s future you are destroying. After all, his mother, poor fool, may have been mistaken, and John could be her husband’s child after all. For John’s sake we must just believe that that is so, mustn’t we?’

Numbly Rose nodded. She felt sick with shock and grief. Her life as she knew it was in tatters around her feet.

Emerald stared at the card in front of her in disbelief.

‘HRH The Princess Marina and HRH The Duke of Kent regret that they are unable to accept…’

No! She had planned everything so carefully, right down to rehearsing the way she would deliberately lean into the duke when he danced with her so that he couldn’t help but be aware of her body. She looked at the ‘with regret’ card again. Surely it was a mistake, an error made by some stupid social secretary. Surely even now the duke was insisting to his mother that they must attend. He
couldn’t
not be there. It was impossible, unthinkable, unbearable…

Her coming-out ball should have been the best, the most exciting, the most triumphant night of Emerald’s life. She had planned that it would be all those months ago in Paris, imagining how she would be fêted and admired, not just as the most beautiful deb of the season but as the wife-to-be of the Duke of Kent.

But now, according to the card she had just read, HRH The Duke of Kent was unable to be present at her ball ‘owing to a previous engagement’.

Emerald snatched up the copy of
The Times
, which was on the table close to the desk, quickly turning to the Court Circular, and scanned down it, her throat tight with angry tension when she could not find anything referring to any official duties for the duke or his mother.

This was Princess Marina’s doing, Emerald decided bitterly. It had to be. Left to his own devices the duke would have accepted the invitation.

‘Emerald.’

She closed the paper quickly and hid the card beneath the desk blotter when she heard Lydia calling her name.

They were supposed to be attending a lunch party at the Savoy, accompanied by the loathsome Dougie, who her mother had forced on her and who, to Emerald’s fury, her godmother seemed to be delighted to have accompanying them on their social engagements.

‘Dougie’s such fun, isn’t he?’ Lydia giggled as she came into the room. ‘He’s been telling me about how they shear sheep in Australia. They have to be frightfully quick, you know.’

As Dougie himself strolled into the salon behind Lydia, Emerald glowered at him and said pointedly, ‘How fascinating. I hadn’t realised you were such a scintillating conversationalist, Dougie. I’m sure everyone
will
be impressed.’

‘Well, I’d much rather listen to Dougie than some of those boring debs’ delights any day,’ Lydia defended him stalwartly.

‘Tell me, Dougie, what do you say when you’re asked what school you went to? Plainly you can’t say Eton.’

‘I tell them that I attended the school of life,’ Dougie
told her, deliberately exaggerating his Australian accent, knowing how much it infuriated her, and then adding fuel to the fire by asking her, ‘So what’s this dinner we’re going out for all about?’

‘You have to say “lunch,” Dougie, not “dinner”,’ Lydia told him patiently.

‘He knows that, Lyddy,’ Emerald informed her grimly, standing up abruptly, her hand catching the blotter as she did so and dislodging the card she had hidden, sending it tumbling to the floor.

She bent to retrieve it but Dougie beat her to it. It had fallen face down. Her heart thumped fiercely as Dougie picked it up, and started to turn it over. Imperiously she held out her hand for it, telling him sharply, ‘It’s not done to read other people’s correspondence.’

He was looking at her, and then at the card, as though weighing up whether or not to read it. Quickly she snatched it out of his grasp.

‘What is it, Emerald?’ Lyddy asked curiously.

‘It’s nothing,’ she told her. ‘Nothing at all.’

Rose stared into space. She was alone in the Chelsea house, having turned down an invitation to go out with Janey and Ella. It was over a week since Lady Fitton Legh had told her that John could be her half-brother, and she was still trying to come to terms with the shock.

Now what was tormenting her more than anything else was the fact that Amber hadn’t told her about John. Why hadn’t she said something to her about him, at least warned her, even if she hadn’t felt able to say anything outright? Whilst Rose had been growing up her aunt
had been the one person she had always felt she could turn to, the only person whom she had felt had truly loved her, the person she had felt the closest to, and it hurt to think that she had kept something so important from her.

Logically Rose could understand that when she had been a child it would have been impossible for anything to be said but surely once she had grown up Amber could have said something.