Sins (23 page)

‘Well, if she does I know that my parents certainly won’t allow me to go,’ Gwendolyn replied virtuously. ‘Nor would I want to. I’m surprised at you, Lydia. After all, we have our reputations to think of.’

Listening to her niece, Beth felt her heart sink a little. Dear Gwendolyn was right, of course, but sometimes in certain circumstances one had to…well, the truth was
that dear Gwendolyn was rather a plain girl and her mother had three other daughters to find husbands for.

‘I do wish that Emerald had come down to dinner. She must have a dreadfully bad headache to have stayed in her room all this time,’ Lydia announced naïvely. ‘Do you think I should go up and see her, Mummy, perhaps take her a cup of tea…?’

‘Er, no, dear, I don’t think that would be a good idea.’ The soft pendulous flesh of Lady Beth’s full cheeks quivered with the agitation in her voice.

‘She won’t have a headache.’ Gwendolyn’s voice was disapproving and sharp. ‘Emerald never gets headaches. She’s just attention-seeking, if you ask me.’

And he knew exactly what kind of attention she would be seeking and getting, Dougie thought enviously, even if Lydia was too naïve to think in such terms. What was it about the British upper class that made them feel it was necessary for their daughters to remain so ignorant when it came to ‘the facts of life’?

If he knew his own sex, Dougie thought, then it wouldn’t be a headache that was keeping Emerald and Alessandro in isolation in their bedroom–his bedroom, if you wanted to be pedantic about it. Dougie scowled. Not that it mattered a single damn to him who Emerald married or what she did with him. He’d be a fool to be anything other than glad to have her out of his hair, and not constantly mocking him and taunting, nor constantly reminding him that he could never be the man or the duke that her father had been.

The trouble was that no matter how hard he tried not to let it happen, Emerald had a way of getting under a
chap’s skin. It didn’t matter what kind of guy she had married, he would still have felt like he did right now, Dougie admitted, as though…as though…The truth was that Dougie just did not want to consider what the thought of Emerald being married to someone else made him feel.

‘Mmm, that was so nice, darling. Now hold me tight and don’t leave me, will you? Yes, I know I said we’d telephone your mother, but it’s far too late now. She’s probably in bed asleep, and I wouldn’t want to wake her.’

She really hated the décor in these rooms, Emerald decided, waiting until Alessandro’s deep breathing signalled that he had fallen asleep, before moving away from him. It was so much her mother’s taste, all that dowdy old-fashioned embroidered silk.

When she and Alessandro got their own house she’d have it decorated in a much more modern style, perhaps get David Hicks in.

Amber and Jay were just about to go down to dinner when Emerald’s telegram arrived. They had been chatting happily about the pleasure they’d had spending a week with the twins, who were both planning to spend the summer working at camps in the United States, but Amber’s relaxed happiness evaporated as she read Emerald’s telegram. Having read it once she read it again, her heart sinking.

‘Oh no!’ she said in a strained voice, passing the telegram over to Jay so that he too could read it. ‘Why would she do such a thing? Why didn’t she simply tell us that she and Alessandro wanted to marry, instead of
running off to Gretna Green? Surely she knows that all we want is her happiness? I do worry so about her, and this…this absence of the kind of relationship a mother and daughter should share. It’s my fault, of course,’ she added miserably.

‘Of course it isn’t,’ Jay tried to reassure her.

‘It is,’ Amber insisted. ‘I didn’t want her, after all, not when I first realised I was carrying her, and somehow I’m sure she knows that, even though afterwards, and long before she was born, I did want her.’

Jay reached for her hands and held them tightly. ‘You have been and are a wonderful mother, Amber.’

‘Emerald doesn’t think that. She never has. It must have been so awful for her, Jay, a new-born baby whose mother wasn’t there for her.’

‘You weren’t there for her because you were very ill, and fighting for your life. Please stop torturing yourself with this foolishness, my love. Emerald is a very selfish and strong-willed young woman.’

‘She’s so young, Jay, and I can’t help thinking that she may have married Alessandro because…because she wants someone to love her, because she feels vulnerable.’

Jay shook his head. ‘Emerald, vulnerable? It’s natural that you should be concerned for her, but I won’t let you blame yourself for Emerald’s determination to do what she wants, regardless of other people’s feelings.’

‘I can’t help worrying about her, Jay. I just wish she’d said something; talked to us about it first, confided in me. I’m really not sure how I’ll be able to hide my disappointment.’

The salon was busy, buzzing with clients and music and stylists, whilst juniors scurried round washing hair, producing cups of coffee, and sweeping up, when Rose called in just before lunch one Saturday morning in early summer.

‘Business looks good,’ she told Josh, as she handed him the sandwich she had brought him. ‘Don’t worry, it’s kosher,’ she scolded, as he opened it to look inside.

‘Kosher I do not worry about; making sure I get my money’s worth I do,’ he teased her, adopting a heavy Jewish accent.

‘Saw the announcement about your cousin getting hitched.’

Rose responded with a forced smile. She was never comfortable talking about Emerald, always conscious of Emerald’s contempt and hostility.

‘Well, it’s certainly a surprise. Knowing Emerald, I’d expected her to insist on having a huge society wedding.’

‘If she had to choose between the huge society prize husband and the huge society wedding, maybe she decided it was better to get the husband,’ Josh suggested,
showing a sharper awareness of the situation than Rose had been prepared for.

‘Emerald would have wanted to marry well,’ she was obliged to agree.

‘I’d certainly say she’d done that, nabbing herself a prince,’ Josh grinned. ‘Does that mean you’ll have to curtsy to her now?’

‘Never!’ The speed and bitterness of Rose’s reply took them both off guard. Josh frowned, and Rose flushed and looked away.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised in a stilted voice. ‘It’s just that Emerald and I have never got on. Even when we were children she loved telling everyone that her father was a duke whilst mine…’

‘Whilst yours?’ Josh prodded when she fell silent.

‘Whilst mine was a drunk and a thief–my great-grandmother’s words, not mine. Look, I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind, Josh.’

Josh gave a small shrug. ‘I don’t mind. I don’t want to pry.’

Had she offended him? Rose shot him a quick look. Sometimes Josh could be so open that you could see his thoughts written on his face, and then at others, it was hard to tell just what he was feeling. She didn’t want to offend him. He was a good friend, he made her laugh, and being with him helped her to forget all those things she could not bear to think about. Like John and the awful unthinkable horror that could have happened. She still had nightmares about the look of almost gloating cruelty on Lady Fitton Legh’s face when she had warned her of the great sin they would have been committing.

Rose hadn’t been to Denham–she couldn’t think of it as ‘home’ any more–since Easter. She was afraid of what she might say and do if she did. Not to John–John wasn’t the one who had hurt and betrayed her. No, it was Amber she was afraid to see, in case all the pain and horror trapped inside her came spilling out. Better by far that nothing was said. What good could it do, after all? None. But the terrible hurt and anger would always be there in her heart. Hadn’t her aunt thought of what might happen? Hadn’t she sensed, guessed, that Rose might be drawn to John and, not knowing of their possible blood connection, do something that was forbidden? Or was it as Lady Fitton Legh had implied: that her aunt had simply not cared enough to protect her from that sin? The facts spoke for themselves. Amber could have told her; she could have trusted her, she could have protected her; even if she could not love her as she had pretended to do.

‘Listen, do you fancy coming out with me tonight? There’s this new jazz club I’ve heard about.’

Josh’s question brought Rose back to reality. She gave him a smile, grateful to be back on their normal footing.

‘What’s wrong? Has your latest girl refused to play ball?’

Josh affected a look of injured innocence. ‘I was thinking of you.’

‘I was planning to stay in.’

‘Stay in on a Saturday night? Don’t be daft, that’s for squares. Come on, it will do you good.’

He was right, Rose acknowledged. There was no point staying in and brooding.

‘All right,’ she agreed, ‘but no going off and leaving me because you’ve seen a girl you fancy, like you did the last time I agreed to go out with you.’

‘As if I would,’ Josh protested. ‘I’ll call round for you about eight, OK?’

Two girls who had just come into the salon looked at Rose and then one of them whispered something to the other. The photographs of Josh cutting Rose’s hair that Ollie had taken now adorned the stair wall and had brought in a rush of girls wanting the same haircut after they had appeared in
Vogue
. Word was still spreading.

Almost overnight, much to her astonishment and, if she were honest, her discomfort, Rose had turned into something of a minor celebrity. She’d even been offered modelling work, which she’d turned down, and had had umpteen young men asking her out, as well as Janey begging her to model the clothes she planned to design for St Martins’ end-of-year fashion show.

Her employer had teased her about her new-found fame, and another unwanted result of that fame was the attention she was now getting from the husband of one of their most important clients.

Initially when Mr Russell had come into the drawing room of his and his wife’s fashionable apartment whilst Rose was there carefully taking measurements for a pair of bergère chairs their client wanted recovering, she hadn’t thought anything of it. But then he had come over to her, pressing up against her from behind as he made to go past her in the confined space between the chairs and the window, his hand on her shoulder to prevent her from moving. With his free hand he had stroked her hair and
then her neck, commenting on the silkiness of her hair and the softness of her skin.

At first Rose had been too shocked to say or do anything, hardly able to comprehend what was happening. Their client’s husband was in his late forties–it was surely impossible that he could be doing what he had done.

To her relief the telephone had rung, and she had been able to make her escape.

She hadn’t intended to say anything to anyone about what had happened but somehow she had found herself telling Josh when she had bumped into him in a pub on the King’s Road, where Janey had persuaded her and Ella to go for a drink.

Josh had laughed and told her that what she needed was a long sharp hatpin. Then the very next time she had seen him he had handed her a long slim box inside which she had found a dangerous-looking hatpin with a pretty pearl and diamanté head.

‘I saw it in a junk shop,’ he had told her, laughing. ‘And now that you’ve got it, you make sure you use it if old man Russell tries it on again.’

Josh could always make her laugh, no matter how down she was feeling.

And she was feeling down, Rose admitted. The John and Amber situation wasn’t all that was on her mind. Her desire was growing to turn away from the traditional kind of interior design she was being trained for, the kind of interior design service provided by her aunt’s Walton Street shop, and to focus instead on the creative opportunities she could see so clearly in the commercial sector. Once,
Amber would have been the first person she’d want to discuss this with because Rose would have believed that her aunt understood and knew how she was feeling, and would have put Rose’s own best interests first in any advice she might have given her. But now Rose felt reluctant to share her dreams with Amber. It was a horrid feeling to know that the person you loved and trusted the most had deceived you. Amber had been like a mother to her, but now Rose felt betrayed, cheated, and very alone.

‘Well, of course I am delighted that you are both so happy, but I must say I am disappointed that you didn’t see fit to confide in me, Alessandro.’

They were ‘taking afternoon tea’ at the Savoy, Emerald’s strategic choice of venue, which ensured that she and Alessandro were just late enough for his mother to have arrived first and have to wait for them–a small accident with the heel on Emerald’s shoe coming loose and entailing a return to the house.

The princess was every bit as formidable as Emerald had known she would be, and more. Tall and elegant, with a look of Queen Mary about her, she sat stiff-backed in her chair, affecting to smile benevolently on them whilst her eyes were cold, at least whenever her glance moved to Emerald.

Not that Emerald was at all disturbed at the thought of Alessandro’s mother disliking her. There could, after all, be only one woman in control of Alessandro’s life from now on, and that woman was going to be Emerald.

‘Alessandro didn’t want to be selfish and tell you about our happiness whilst you were having to nurse your
cousin, Mama-in-law, did you, Alessandro, darling?’ Emerald answered sweetly for her husband, earning herself an icy look from his mother.

‘Alessandro knows that for
me
, his happiness comes first, and before anything and anyone else. And besides, what mother would not want to share in her son’s happiness?’

Emerald knew that a challenge accompanied the words, the message within them hidden from Alessandro himself. His mother turned away from Emerald and towards her son, managing to block Emerald’s view of Alessandro and thus effectively coming between them as she did so, to ask, ‘You surely do not think your mother so inhuman, do you, Alessandro?’