Sins (51 page)

‘Well, we had no idea that he was still involved with…with the underworld. He always gave the impression that he had put all that kind of thing behind him.’

‘As we should put him behind us,’ Emerald told Jeannie pointedly.

Because of the busyness of the restaurant, it was later than Emerald had expected when she and Jeannie finally said their goodbyes.

As she made her way back to Cadogan Place she told herself that it would have done Robbie good to realise that he couldn’t behave in the way that he had. He was growing up fast. He would be going back to school soon, and that meant taking him to Harrods to replace those items of his uniform he had grown out of.

Robbie was a good scholar and had won the praise of his headmaster. Perhaps she ought to have a professional photograph done of him to send to Alessandro and his mother.

Alessandro and his royal bride had still not produced any children. The thought of how galling it would be to Alessandro’s mother to see Robbie’s photograph lifted Emerald’s spirits and put her in a much better mood.

Drogo stood in the library of Lenchester House and looked up at the portrait of his predecessor, demanding ruefully, ‘Well, Duke Robert, what do you think? Do I find myself a wife and beget myself an heir, or do I keep on hanging around and hope that one day Emerald is going to fall for me?

‘No, you’re right, it doesn’t look very much as though she will do, but at least it looks like that no-good bloke she was running around with is out of the picture.

‘It’s that poor little kid I feel the most sorry for. A boy needs a father, right? And the honest truth is that I love him already like he was my own.’

He looked away and then back up at the portrait.

‘So what do you say we give it another few months–just until Christmas? You agree? That’s good, because I appreciate your advice, man to man, duke to duke, you having been there before me, so to speak.’

Emerald felt sick and faint with panic. She was in Robbie’s bedroom and her son, far from being ready to apologise for his earlier transgressions and admit that he had been pretending to be unwell, was patently very unwell indeed.

She sat down on the edge of Robbie’s bed. He was barely conscious, his face flushed and his skin burning.

Emerald called his name, reaching for his hand, willing him to respond rationally, but instead he simply shivered and moaned, patently oblivious to her presence.

He really was ill, and needed a doctor quickly.

Her heart pounding, Emerald hurried into her own bedroom, picked up the receiver of the white telephone
beside the bed and dialled the number of her private doctor in Harley Street.

It was several minutes before the ringing telephone was answered at the other end.

‘I want Dr Ruthers to come round immediately. My son isn’t at all well,’ Emerald told the receptionist.

‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid.’ The receptionist’s voice was crisp. ‘Dr Ruthers is in Scotland, shooting, at the moment.

‘But there must be someone,’ Emerald protested.

‘Dr Ruthers’ locum has had to go to a family funeral. He’ll be back tomorrow. If you’re really worried you could take your son to Great Ormond Street, the children’s hospital, you know.’

Emerald replaced the receiver and hurried back to Robbie’s room. She was probably worrying unnecessarily. Children did seem dreadfully poorly when they were sick. Now she would probably find him sitting up in bed and demanding orange juice and biscuits.

Only she didn’t. If anything he looked even worse. Was it her imagination or had he someone shrunk and become smaller, frailer in the few minutes she had gone? Fresh panic seized her, a different panic this time. She wanted to pick him up and hold him, anything to stop him getting worse, to keep him with her, to…

The hospital, the receptionist had said. Emerald hesitated. She needed help, someone…

She went back to her bedroom and looked at the telephone and then taking a deep breath she picked up the receiver.

Drogo was attempting to finish
The Times
crossword when the phone rang, and he was glad of the excuse to stop. The butler hadn’t been too pleased initially when Drogo had announced that he was going to have his calls put straight through to him rather than having the butler answer them, but Drogo had insisted.

‘Drogo, it’s me, Emerald. Drogo–it’s Robbie. He’s sick and our doctor is away. The girl said to take him to Great Ormond Street, but…’

He could hear the fear and panic in her voice, and his stomach muscles clenched against what she was telling him as he answered, ‘I’m coming round. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

‘It’s all right, darling, Mummy’s here,’ Emerald whispered to her son, holding the small hot hand tightly in her own, and when he made no response, adding almost pleadingly, ‘Uncle Drogo’s coming.’ But there was still no response, as Robbie lay huddled on his side, facing away from the window with his eyes closed and his breathing strained and ragged.

Where was Drogo? He should have been here by now. She got up and went to stand in front of the bedroom window, looking anxiously down into the square.

He’d said ten minutes and that had been over fifteen minutes ago.

A Rolls-Royce, stately and shiny, turned into Cadogan Place, momentarily obscuring her view of the pavement. As Emerald waited impatiently for it to pass she realised that it was slowing as it approached her house, and then she saw Drogo striding swiftly down the street towards
them, and everything bar her relief vanished as she almost flew down the stairs to let him in.

Only when she opened the door, he was standing on the pavement in deep discussion with a much older man who had got out of the Rolls-Royce.

Frantic with anxiety, Emerald was just about to demand his attention when he turned towards her and told her, ‘I took the liberty of telephoning Dr Salthouse and asking him if he could come straight here, Emerald.’

A doctor! Emerald could almost have cried with gratitude.

‘He’s upstairs,’ she told them both.

It seemed to take an age for the doctor to complete his examination of Robbie. Emerald answered his questions as best she could.

‘I thought he was just pretending when he said he had a headache and felt sick. It was something I used to do myself at his age when I didn’t want to do something.’

It was her fault that Robbie was so ill. Her fault. Her heart felt as though it was being gripped by giant pincers and torn apart. How, why had she not known until now how very precious to her her son was, how infinitely more important than anything else in her life?

‘It’s my fault that he’s so poorly. I should never have left him.’

The words were torn from her as she gazed helplessly at her sick son.

‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’ Drogo’s voice was calm
and firm, his clasp of her hand unexpectedly comforting. She wanted to cling to it, Emerald realised.

The doctor had folded back the bedclothes and unfastened Robbie’s pyjama jacket. On her son’s torso Emerald could see a rash of spots.

‘What is it?’ she asked the doctor anxiously. ‘He’s had chicken pox and measles and—’

‘I think the best thing for your son right now, Lady Emerald, would be for us to get him into hospital,’ Dr Salthouse told her, without answering her question.

‘Hospital?’ Her worried gaze lifted to Drogo’s face not the doctor’s. ‘Then it’s…it’s serious?’

Dr Salthouse looked at them both and then said slowly, ‘I can’t say for certain just yet but I think that Robbie may have meningitis. There’s been a small outbreak in the city over the summer, and of course it is contagious.’

Emerald stared at him.

‘Meningitis? But that’s…that’s very dangerous, isn’t it? Children die from it. I…’ One look at Drogo’s face told her that she was right and that he shared her fear.

‘We mustn’t look on the black side, Lady Emerald. We don’t know yet that Robbie does have meningitis and if he does, then we have penicillin.’

‘But I read in the newspapers last week that three children have already died recently.’

‘If I may use your telephone, Lady Emerald, I will arrange for Robbie to be admitted to Ormond Street. They’ll send an ambulance.’

‘I want to go with him.’

The doctor frowned.

‘Lady Emerald and I will follow the ambulance in my car, Doctor,’ Drogo suggested, taking charge.

The unthinkable, and unbearable, was true. Robbie had meningitis, and he was a very sick little boy.

He had been given aspirin to help break the fever, and penicillin to fight against the infection.

‘And if it doesn’t work?’ Emerald had asked the paediatrician at the hospital.

The look he had given her had confirmed what she already knew.

‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’ she had demanded hysterically. ‘My baby is going to die and it’s my fault.’

‘We don’t know that,’ the paediatrician had told her. ‘Meningitis is a very serious disease, yes, but in some children it can disappear almost overnight, leaving them untouched. Others survive the infection but go on to have problems later in life. Yes, there are those who sadly do die, but it is too early to say yet what will happen with Robbie. All I can say is that he is in the very best place now to be helped, and the penicillin gives us a fighting chance of overcoming the infection.’

Emerald had been close to collapse when the doctor had left them. Only the fact that Drogo was there to witness both the effect of her neglect of Robbie and her own weakness as she realised what she had done, kept her from doing so. This was a thousand times worse than the fear she had experienced when she had been the one in hospital.

Sister came bustling into Robbie’s private room in a rustle of starched cotton, her shoes squeaking on the
shiny clean linoleum, bringing into the room with her a fresh wave of disinfectant-laden air.

‘Now, Lady Emerald, why don’t you go home and try to rest? We will telephone you in the morning. Visiting hours are—’

‘No. I’m not going anywhere. I want to stay here with Robbie,’ Emerald stopped her immediately.

Sister’s expression firmed. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible.’

‘I can’t leave him. What if he…?’ Emerald blinked away agonised tears, unable to stop herself looking desperately at Drogo.

‘Sister, you won’t be aware of this, of course, but several weeks ago Lady Emerald approached me to ask if I would co-chair with her a committee she is planning to set up to raise money for this hospital in the name of her late father, my predecessor. Lady Emerald has a particular interest in sick children. Sadly her own brother lost his life at a very young age. I’m sure in the circumstances, as a particular friend to the hospital, it might be possible to allow Lady Emerald to stay here in Robbie’s room with him?’

Emerald had to admit that Drogo’s appeal had been masterly.

Whilst she held her breath in desperate hope, Sister gave Drogo a look of cool irony, before saying, ‘I believe the premature baby unit is desperately in need of incubators, which will cost around a hundred thousand pounds. Do you suppose that Lady Emerald’s committee will be able to raise that amount, Your Grace?’

‘I can guarantee it,’ Drogo answered her promptly.

Sister looked at Emerald and then turned back to Drogo.
‘Well, well, then but I must stipulate that Lady Emerald can only stay provided she does not disrupt or add to the work of my nurses.’

‘I won’t,’ Emerald assured her fervently.

Sister had gone, leaving the room in a swish of starch that somehow or other she managed to make sound very disapproving. And Emerald and Drogo were alone in the room with Robbie.

She had to thank him, she couldn’t not do, but just like all those other times when she had desperately wanted to deny and defy the Emerald that so seemed to delight in being unpleasant and difficult, Emerald was for some reason afraid to do so.

‘I’ve got to go now,’ Drogo was saying to her. ‘You’ll want me to let your mother know—’

‘No. No, there’s no point in worrying her. She can’t do anything.’

‘She could be with you.’

Emerald shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want her here.’

It was a lie. She desperately wanted not to be alone with her fear that Robbie might die. But it wasn’t her mother she wanted with her, she realised with a small stab of surprise, it was Drogo.

Unable to bear looking at it, Ella stuffed the doctor’s appointment card into her handbag, her fingers stiff and clumsy. The smell of anaesthetic and other darker things was still in her nostrils. Was it clinging betrayingly to her; to her skin and her hair and her clothes?

She felt as though, if she wasn’t careful, she was going to burst into tears and she mustn’t do that. Ella took a deep breath as she approached the entrance to
Vogue’s
offices.

She had hardly recognised herself these last seven weeks. She was normally so calm, and on those occasions when she wasn’t, she was extremely good at concealing it, but just lately, it had been as though her emotions had gone totally out of control and quite spectacularly so. She wasn’t sleeping properly, she had a breakout of spots on her face for the first time in her life, and most telling of all, she was being sick in the morning and she had missed her period–twice.

As she had wept in the office of the gynaecologist whose name she had managed to obtain only under the
promise of shared secrecy from one of the other girls at work, it should have been impossible for her to get pregnant. She was on the pill, after all, and the pill stopped you getting pregnant, but the combination of the lack of her period and the all-too-evident morning sickness couldn’t be ignored.

The knowledge that she was pregnant had filled her with horror and fear.

She still felt that way now, even though this morning she had been to see the gynaecologist to get the results of the pregnancy test he had done for her a week ago, and which had confirmed that she was indeed carrying Oliver’s child.

She was relieved, of course, that the doctor had agreed to terminate her pregnancy for her, but she was still sick with shock and fear, still unable to understand why the pill had failed, and unable to allow herself to relax until it was all over.