Sins (5 page)

‘Well, your father might have been a duke, Emerald, but you certainly aren’t a duchess.’

Emerald only just managed to stop herself from glaring at Gwendolyn.

The three of them, Emerald herself, the Hon Lydia Munroe, and Lady Gwendolyn, her godmother’s niece, were all going to be coming out together.

Gwendolyn might be as plain as her dull-looking and boring mother, whose sharp gaze had already warned Emerald that she had not found favour with her, but Emerald knew how highly her godmother thought of her. Gwendolyn’s father was Lady Beth’s brother, the Earl of Levington, and she thought the world of him and his family. If Emerald gave in to her longing to put ‘Glum Gwennie’, as she had privately nicknamed her, in her place, she’d risk her going telling tales to her mother and her aunt, and that would mean that Emerald could lose a valuable ally. No, sadly Gwendolyn’s comeuppance would have to wait for a
more propitious occasion. So instead Emerald smiled falsely at the other girl.

Obviously thinking that she got the better of the exchange Gwendolyn seized on her moment of triumph and, determined to prolong it, continued recklessly, ‘And it isn’t as though your mother has any family either. No one knows how
she
managed to marry your father.’

Since it was no secret that her parents’ first child had been born eight months after their hastily arranged marriage, Emerald had a pretty good idea herself. But at least her mother had been clever enough to hold out for marriage.

As much as she resented her mother, Emerald was thankful that she
had
held out for the status of marriage and not remained merely a mistress. She would have hated being illegitimate, people knowing, laughing at her behind her back, looking down on her.

Emerald, Lydia and Gwendolyn were seated on their beds, in the bedroom they shared in their finishing school, which was in fact a villa, close to the Bois de Boulogne, owned by the Comtesse de la Calle. The comtesse’s finishing school had the reputation for being the smartest of such schools. Being finished in Paris had a cachet to it that was not given to those girls who were finished at one of the two ‘acceptable’ London schools, so naturally Emerald had insisted on coming to the Bois de Boulogne villa.

Buoyed up by her triumph Gwendolyn continued happily, ‘Mummy and Auntie Beth both think that your mother was awfully lucky to marry as well as she did and neither of them thinks that you’ll be able to do the same.’

Emerald tensed. Gwendolyn’s words were like a match to the dry tinder of her pride. Springing up off her bed, she stood over the younger girl, her hands on her hips, the full skirts of her silk dress emphasising the narrowness of her waist,

‘Well, that’s all you know.’

‘What? Do you mean that you think that you’ll get to marry a duke like your mother did?’ Lydia demanded excitedly, joining the conversation. Lydia was two years younger than Emerald and inclined to hero-worship her, something that Emerald fostered.

Gwendolyn, though, wasn’t looking anything like as impressed.

‘A duke, yes, but like my mother, no. I shall do better than she did,’ Emerald confirmed fiercely.

There was a small sharp sound–the sucking in of air from Gwendolyn as though it tasted as sour as any lemon, followed by a thrilled gasp from Lydia.

‘Oh, Emerald, you mean the Duke of Kent, don’t you?’

‘He has to marry someone, doesn’t he, and since he can have his pick of the débutantes, he’s bound to want one of the prettiest…’ was all Emerald permitted herself to say.

She didn’t finish her sentence, but then she didn’t need to. Its meaning was plain to both of the girls sitting looking at her. Emerald was a beauty, and quite clearly destined to be
the
beauty of the season. Whilst Lydia had a certain fresh healthy country-girl charm about her, Gwendolyn was very close to the ugly edge of plain.

That was Gwendolyn dealt with, Emerald decided with satisfaction. Emerald wasn’t in any way fond of
her own sex. She had had friends at school, of course–one had to if one wished to be the most popular girl in school–but those friends had been impressionable naïve girls rather like Lydia, easy to manipulate. There was no way that a plain, overweight girl like Gwendolyn could be admitted to that circle; she was the kind of girl that Emerald despised and treated with contempt. By rights Gwendolyn ought to have tried to seek her approval, but instead, to Emerald’s irritation, she was forever making unwanted, even critical comments in that toneless voice of hers. What a joke Glum Gwennie was, daring to think that she could criticise her, looking at her with those small sharp eyes of hers as she asked her equally sharp questions. But she would get her revenge once she was married to the Duke of Kent.

Emerald threw down the copy of the
Queen
magazine she had been reading and got up, pacing the room impatiently. She was bored with Paris now. She’d expected being here to be far more exciting than it was. Thank heavens they and school would soon be ‘finished’ and the fun could start in earnest.

The magazine she had discarded caught her eye. Although the season hadn’t officially started yet, already the
Queen
was carrying studio portraits of some of the débutantes due to come out. Her own photograph had been taken by Cecil Beaton and she had been pleased with it, but now that she had seen the photograph of another deb, taken by Lewis Coulter, an ex-Etonian with no title but excellent connections, and who had recently become
the
society photographer, Emerald had decided that she had to have a fresh
photograph done. Never backward in coming forward when she wanted something, she had already written to him to this effect, giving him the date of her return to London and announcing that she would call on him then. It might say in the magazine that he was in such demand that he was turning away commissions but he was a
photographer
taking people’s photographs for
money
. And money was a commodity that Emerald’s mother possessed in great abundance. As did Emerald herself. Or rather as she would have when she reached the age of twenty-five, and she didn’t have to bother coaxing Mr Melrose into agreeing to pay for things she wanted from her trust fund.

Of course, her mother hated it that she was going to be so very rich…

And as for Rose…Emerald’s mouth hardened. How could her mother even acknowledge her, never mind make such a fuss over her? Didn’t her mother realise how badly having a cousin like Rose could reflect on Emerald? Emerald’s great-grandmother had been right: Rose should have been sent back to Hong Kong to live in the slums where Uncle Greg had found her mother.

It was just as well that she had had the forethought to persuade her godmother to offer to present her, and have her to stay in London with her, ‘so that Mummy can get on with her work, Auntie Beth,’ as she’d put it to her sponsor. She’d have far more licence to arrange things how she wanted under the aegis of her godmother than she would with her own mother.

Emerald was well aware that her godmother had high hopes of a match between her and her own second son.
After all, Rupert had no money to speak of, and one day Emerald would have rather a lot. But she certainly did not intend to waste either herself or her fortune on such a nonentity. Equally, Emerald was also aware of exactly what was meant by the damp forceful squeeze Gwendolyn’s father had given her hand when he had called at the villa ‘to see how my little girl is’. Of course he would find her attractive, because she was.

Emerald was saving the pleasure of telling Gwendolyn exactly how revolting her father was–making up to girls his daughter’s age when he was married–as something to savour when the time was right. For now, she had more important things to think about, like what she wanted to be wearing the first time the Duke of Kent saw her…

Dougie looked round the empty basement beneath the Pimlico Road photographic studio, which would soon be packed with the young and the beautiful, all intent on partying the night away.

He reckoned he’d been lucky to have met Lewis Coulter. Lew–to those he knew well–supposedly employed Dougie as a junior photographer, not a general dogsbody, but when you were an Aussie newly arrived in the old country, no longer sure of your station in life, and you had your own private reasons for being here, you didn’t start protesting to the employer who had taken you on simply because he’d liked the look of you.

Besides, Dougie liked his boss and his work. He’d learned a lot from watching Lew doing his stuff–and not just with his camera. For all his outwardly lazy charm, Lew could move with the speed of lightning when he saw a girl he wanted–so fast, in fact, that the poor thing was as dazzled by him as though she had been a rabbit blinded by the headlights of his Jaguar sports car.

The fact that Lew was a member of the upper class only made the situation even better. Working for him gave Dougie an entrée into a world in which he might otherwise never have been accepted. He could study this exclusive world at first hand, something he needed to do all right, since by all accounts, if this lawyer bloke was right, then he was a member of the aristocracy himself. A duke no less. Strewth, he still hadn’t got his head round that. After all, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a duke. He’d done pretty well for himself without being one, keeping his supposed title a secret from his new friends in London, along with his real reason for being here. He didn’t want to be tracked down and revealed to be a duke, so he had also kept quiet about his background in Australia. He didn’t want anyone putting two and two together.

He’d taken a look at the house in Eaton Square that was supposedly his, although he hadn’t been to see the other place yet, the one in the country. From what he’d heard Lew saying about Britain’s aristocrats, they were all so deep in debt that they couldn’t wait to offload their old houses onto the National Trust, and he certainly didn’t intend to part with any of his inheritance keeping an old ruin going.

Dougie reckoned he’d been lucky in meeting Lew. But then Lew wasn’t your normal upper-class snob. He was a true decent bonzer bloke, who could out-drink anyone, including Dougie himself. Not that Dougie had been doing much serious drinking recently. He was too busy working for Lew.

They’d first met in a pub in Soho and, for some reason
that he couldn’t remember now, Dougie had challenged Lew to a drinking contest. Dougie had fallen in with a lively group of fellow Aussies, and egged on by them, he had been sure he would win. How could he not when he was six foot two, heavily muscled and an ex-sheep shearer, and his opposition was barely five foot ten, had manicured nails, spoke with an irritating drawl and dressed like a tailor’s dummy? No contest, mate, as Dougie had boasted to his new friends.

He had kept on being sure he would win right up until he had collapsed on the pub floor.

When Dougie had finally come round he had been in a strange bed in a strange room, which he had later discovered was the spare bedroom of his now employer.

When he had asked Lew what he was doing there, the other man had shrugged and responded, ‘Couldn’t leave you on the bar floor, old chap. It isn’t the done thing to leave one’s mess behind, don’t y’know, and since your own friends had gone, I had no choice other than to bring you back here, unappealing though that prospect was.’

Still half drunk, Dougie had promptly come over all emotional and had thanked him profusely. ‘You know what, you’re a real mate.’

Lew had responded, ‘I can assure you I am no such thing. I had to remove you from the pub because the landlord was threatening to make me pay for a room for you. The last thing I wanted in my spare room was a sweaty drunken Aussie stinking of beer and sheep.’

Dougie had soon realised that Lew was something of a ladies’ man, bedding them faster than Dougie could
count and then dropping them even faster. It was nothing for him to have three or four girls on the go at the same time. Dougie had never had any trouble attracting girls himself, but he freely admitted that Lew was in another league altogether.

Lew explained to Dougie that he was the only son of a younger son, ‘which means I’m afraid that whilst my veins might be filled with blue blood, my bank account sadly is not filled with anything. D’you see, old chap, the eldest son gets the title and the estate, the second son goes into the army, and the youngest into the Church, unless they can find heiresses to marry. Such a bore having to earn one’s own crust, but I’m afraid needs must.’

From what Dougie had seen, Lew’s life was anything but boring. When Lew wasn’t photographing, he was either out partying or, like tonight, throwing parties of his own. Tonight was to be a ‘bring a bottle’ get-together, to celebrate the birthday of one of Lew’s many friends.

There’d be models, and the more daring society girls and their upper-class escorts, sneaking a look at Lew’s bohemian and louche way of life, actors coming in from the nearby Royal Court Theatre, arty types; writers and musicians.

Pretty soon now people would start arriving. A smooth Ella Fitzgerald number was playing on the gramophone. Dougie always felt nervous on these occasions. He was proud of what he was–an Aussie from the outback–but he knew that the more sophisticated young Londoners liked to make fun of colonials and laugh at
their gaucherie and inadvertent mistakes. Dougie was constantly getting things wrong, putting his size elevens in it and ending up looking like a prize fool. There’d been no call where Dougie had grown up for the fancy manners and customs that Lew’s sort took for granted. His uncle had been too busy running his sheep station to have time to teach his orphaned nephew all that kind of fancy stuff, even if he had known about it himself, which Dougie doubted.

It had been Mrs Mac, his uncle’s housekeeper, who had seen to it that he knew how to use a knife and fork properly and who had taught him his manners.

As a boy, Dougie had worked alongside the station rousabouts, drovers and the skilful shearers, learning the male culture that meant that questions weren’t asked about a person’s past, and that a man earned respect for what he was and what he did in the here and now, and not because he had some fancy title. It might have been a hard life but it had been a fair one.