Sins

‘You see, Gwendolyn,’ Emerald said mock sweetly. ‘Now, do you want me to tell the comtesse about your father, or—’

‘All right, I won’t say anything to her about those boys,’ Gwendolyn gave in.

Emerald inclined her head in regal acceptance of Gwendolyn’s submission. It had been truly clever of her to make up that story about seeing Gwendolyn’s father with a showgirl. What a fool Gwendolyn was. Everyone knew that her family had no money, so how on earth did she think her father could afford to keep a mistress?

Chapter Seven

London

Head down and umbrella up against the driving February rain, Rose hurried up King’s Road on her way home from work. The wind was icy and she couldn’t wait to get inside. In her haste, Rose didn’t see the two men standing on the pavement in front of her until she had virtually collided with them. In her attempt to sidestep them she almost lost her footing and a strong hand reached out to steady her. As she looked up to thank him, Rose recognised the hairdresser from the party, Josh Simons.

‘Well, I never, it’s the interior designer,’ he joked.

‘Training to be an interior designer,’ Rose corrected him.

‘Where am I going wrong, Vidal?’ he asked his companion sadly. ‘I’ve offered her a free haircut in exchange for some decorating advice for my new salon, but she still hasn’t taken me up on my offer.’

‘Wise girl,’ the other man responded with a grin. ‘Look, love, if you really want a decent haircut come and see me, Vidal Sassoon.’

‘He gave me a job when we left Raymond, then helped me to set up on my own,’ Josh put in.

‘He means in the end I had to pay him to go.’

They were both laughing, and obviously such good friends that Rose found herself relaxing.

Josh smiled warmly at her, shaking his head in warning as he told Vidal, ‘I know what you’re up to, and no way are you getting your scissors on that hair, Vidal. I saw it first. Look,’ he said to Rose, whose arm he was still holding, ‘since you’re here anyway why don’t you come up and have a look at my salon?’

‘You may as well go with him,’ Vidal said. ‘I can tell you that there’s no point in trying to argue with him–he never gives up when he’s set his mind on something. Besides, you’d be doing the rest of the world and me a favour if you did help him out. From what I’ve seen of his salon, no girl worthy of the name is going to want to get her hair cut there. And since I’ve only loaned him this money I’d like to see him earning something so that he can pay me back.’

What could she say? It would be churlish to refuse now, after such an appeal.

‘Very well,’ Rose agreed, ‘but I’m only in training and I don’t know the first thing about designing hairdressing salons.’

‘You don’t need to,’ Josh told her promptly. ‘Come on, it’s up here.’

Still holding on to her arm, he started to guide her towards the door behind them, and it was only Josh’s farewell to Vidal that alerted Rose to the fact that there was now only the two of them. But by then it was too late: Josh was already reaching for the shabby door and opening it for her.

The door opened straight onto a long narrow staircase, its walls painted a sludgy dark brown, the paint chipped in places to show an even more repellent shade of green underneath.

‘You need something light and bright in here,’ Rose announced, immediately inspired, ‘something with a finish that can be wiped clean as people are bound to put their hands on the walls on their way up because the stairs are so narrow.’ She eyed the wall thoughtfully. ‘A sort of off-white shiny paint would be best, and then you could break up the wall with some black-and-white photographs, in plain black frames–head-and-shoulder shots showing off various hairstyles, perhaps.’

Rose was thinking aloud, her imagination taking off and quashing her reluctance to get involved. The shabbiness of her surroundings and the challenge of transforming them was affecting her like an itch she had to scratch.

‘That’s a terrific idea. I’ve got a mate who’s a photographer; always photographing pretty girls, he is. I might be able to do a bit of a deal with him.’

Rose, who was already halfway up the stairs, turned back to look at him. Standing below her brought him to the same eye level. He had extraordinary long eyelashes for a man, and those deep-set dark brown eyes were even more mesmerising close up. He definitely wasn’t her type, though. She liked quiet studious young men, like the young Chinese medical student she had recently got to know whose family owned a Chinese restaurant patronised by Janey’s arty crowd. Lee worked in the restaurant when he wasn’t studying, and one evening, when they had been the last customers to leave, he had sat down with them at Janey’s insistence and told them about his dreams and plans.

Not that Rose had any romantic interest in Lee, or was likely to develop one. Her heart was already given to John, Lord Fitton Legh. John’s stepmother was Ella and Janey’s aunt Cassandra, who his father had married after the death of John’s mother, and the girls had known John all their lives. He was quiet and kind, and Rose loved him for that and for treating her as though she were no different to the others…She had developed a crush on him when she was twelve years old and he had saved her when Emerald had tricked her into getting up on a far too mettlesome horse, knowing that she was a nervous rider. John had come into the yard just as Rose was clinging in terror to the rearing horse’s reins. Within seconds he had calmed it down and had scooped Rose up off its back. In that moment he had become for her the most wonderful person in the whole world. Not that she would ever allow either John himself, or anyone else, to know how she felt. Emerald would have had a field day taunting her if she had guessed, because it was, of course, impossible that John would return her feelings. She had heard her aunt and uncle talking about John’s future, saying that he would probably marry a girl from one of the local aristocratic families, someone who would share his deep commitment to the land and his inheritance, and she had known, young as she had been, that someone in John’s position would never want to marry a girl like her. The Fittons were, after all, a very old and proud Cheshire family.

But that hadn’t prevented her from having her daydreams.

Later on, when she had been at college and she had seen the way that men looked at her, knowing that she loved John had made her feel safe. Because if she loved John then there was no need for her to worry about falling in love with anyone else–with someone who might pretend to love her but who would really only want to treat her as her father had treated her mother.

No other man could hurt her or reject her whilst she loved John. And she always would. Always. Even though she knew that nothing could ever come of it. Instead she hid her private love for him in her heart and concentrated on her work and on making sure that she repaid her aunt Amber’s faith in her.

‘When I said head-and-shoulder portraits of girls, that was exactly what I meant,’ she told Josh severely now, as she focused firmly on the present, ‘not poses more suitable for a certain type of magazine.’

Josh burst out laughing. ‘Ollie would be mortified if he heard you say that. He photographs models for Vogue, not Men Only.’

Rose could feel her face starting to burn. Quickly she turned round and headed to the top of the stairs where the first door in front of her had an unsteady ‘WC’ painted on it.

‘You’ll have to make sure that there are proper cloakroom facilities,’ she announced. ‘At least you will if you want to attract girls.’

She hadn’t realised that there was a double entendre to her words until she heard Josh laugh again.

‘So that’s where I’ve been going wrong when I’ve taken girls back to my place,’ he joked. ‘And there I’ve been, changing my toothpaste, thinking I might have bad breath. You reckon I’d be better getting one of those fancy crocheted covers for the toilet roll, do you?’

Rose laughed in spite of herself. She wasn’t fooled for a minute; she doubted that any girl who agreed to go home with this man cared two hoots about his bathroom. She wasn’t going to boost his ego by telling him so, though, not when she was pretty sure that he already knew it himself.

Instead she said loftily, ‘Of course I don’t know what kind of clientele you want to attract.’

‘But posh girls like you wouldn’t come and get their hair done in a salon run by a working-class Jewish hairdresser whose salon that hasn’t got the right kind of “cloakroom,” is that it?’

He sounded more curt than amused now. His obvious contempt made Rose flinch, but she stood her ground.

‘That wasn’t what I meant at all. It isn’t a matter of being “posh”. In fact, some of the grandest houses in the country have the most antiquated bathrooms you can imagine. It’s just a matter of making your clientele feel that you appreciate and value them, especially when that clientele is going to be female. Making them feel comfortable, but at the same time making them feel that they deserve something that’s special, and…and the best. That is after all why you want them to come to you, isn’t it?’ she challenged him. ‘Not just so that you can do their hair but because you think you can do their hair better than anyone else?’

Josh was taken aback and impressed by her astuteness. He looked at her as though he hadn’t really seen her before and in one sense he realised he hadn’t. Previously he’d seen her as a stunning-looking girl whose Eurasian beauty would make her an excellent model for the avant-garde hairstyles he and Vidal talked about so passionately into the early hours. They were both in their different ways determined to do away with the old-established hairdressing model of rigidly arranged and lacquered ‘set’ styles, and to replace them with precision cutting that focused on the natural movement of a woman’s hair.

Whilst he and Vidal understood one another’s drive, Rose had astonished Josh with the speed at which she had tapped into his ambitions. She was, he decided ruefully, bang on the money, though, and that was exactly what he wanted.

In that moment Josh made up his mind that Rose and no one else was going to be responsible for the décor of his salon, no matter how much cajoling he had to do to get her to do it–and somehow he knew he would have to cajole her. He was no fool, though. There was no point in scaring her off by telling her what he had decided. Instead he stepped past her and pushed open the door into the long dilapidated room that he planned to turn into his salon.

‘Come and have a look at this…’

Chapter Eight

The sound of someone knocking on the door, when Lew was out at lunch with his latest girl, distracted Dougie’s attention from the small portable typewriter on which he was typing up a list of potential clients Lew had left him. There were no sittings booked for the afternoon and, knowing Lew as he now did, Dougie suspected that when he returned it would be with the young woman he had been pursuing and that he himself would be told to shoot off for the day. Cursing under his breath as the knocking continued and he hit two wrong keys in succession, Dougie pushed back his chair and stood up.

Emerald waited impatiently at the door. She hadn’t been put off when the new top society photographer, lauded in Tatler and the Queen, hadn’t replied to her letter to him from Paris insisting that she wanted him to take her new official débutante photograph, and nor had she changed her mind about the importance of having him do just that.

She had quickly discovered on her return to London that she was far from the only contender for the position of HRH The Duchess of Kent, and that invitations offering an opportunity for débutantes to meet the duke were very carefully monitored by those who managed to secure his presence at any event. Naturally, she was not going to be readily invited to parties the duke was attending by the mothers of other débutantes, for instance. Emerald quite understood that, and she understood too that she was going to have to use subtle, even underhand, means to ensure that she brought herself to the duke’s attention. Getting herself photographed by Lewis Coulter, and then being described as the season’s prettiest débutante would do her campaign no harm. His mother was bound to have copies of all the top magazines, and Emerald could easily imagine her pointing her photograph out to her son and saying what an impeccable lineage. At least on her father’s side. It was a pity that her mother wasn’t better born. Emerald’s mouth thinned. Had she been, then Emerald wouldn’t have to think about strategies for bringing herself to the duke’s attention because her mother would naturally have numbered Princess Marina amongst her social circle.

Irritatingly, the young duke, instead of establishing himself in London and taking part in its social scene, seemed to spend most of his time in the country. Emerald made a small grimace of distaste. Once they were married that would have to change. She didn’t like the country at all. Of course, once she had given birth to their first child–a son, of course–it would be quite permissible for her husband to go to the country if he wished, whilst she spent time with her friends in London, but initially, as a newly engaged and then a newly married couple, they would appear together, he looking very much in love with her–which of course he would be.

She knocked again. Once Emerald had made up her mind about something she didn’t like any delay in putting it into action, and she was impatient to get the duke’s courtship of her started.

The cold wet February weather had brought almost the entire household down with heavy colds, with the exception of Emerald, enabling her to escape from her godmother’s chaperonage to visit the photographer.

Emerald was enjoying living at Lenchester House. It was, after all, by rights more her house than anyone else’s. It was all very well for her mother to point out that Mr Melrose doggedly believed that there was an heir. Mr Melrose was an old man, after all, and if there was such an heir then why hadn’t he made himself known and claimed his inheritance?

Emerald raised her hand to bang on the door again, only to find that it was being opened by a tall broad-shouldered young man with thick untidy dark brown hair, which was fairer at the ends, and a cross expression.

Emerald, who had seen photographs of Lewis Coulter in the society columns, gave Dougie a haughty look and declared, ‘I’m here to see Lew.’ Then she swept past him, leaving him no option other than to close the door behind her.

‘He won’t see you without an appointment,’ Dougie warned, but Emerald simply shrugged.

‘I wrote to him to tell him that I’d be coming to see him and he will see me. My mother particularly wants him to take my coming-out photograph.’ She delivered the lie without a blink.

‘Lew’s out at the moment and he won’t be back until, well, much later, but you can leave your details, if you like, and I’ll tell him that you called. What’s your name?’

‘Lady Emerald Devenish,’ Emerald told Dougie haughtily, his Australian accent causing her to view him with open contempt.

Lady Emerald Devenish. That was the family name of the Lenchesters. This then was…Dougie let go of the door he was still holding open, hurrying after Emerald as she stalked into the room, and then bumped into his own desk.

Emerald gave him a withering look. She certainly wasn’t going to waste her charm on a boring colonial with a dreadful Australian accent. How very odd that a photographer with Lew’s reputation, who surely ought to have known better, was actually employing this uncouth Australian.

Dougie watched Emerald warily. She was everything he had assumed the upper classes would be. And she was also the nearest thing he had to ‘family’, someone who shared his blood–a true blood relative if this Melrose bloke had got his facts right. Perhaps he should go and see him, after all. Right now it would have given him a great deal of pleasure to tell her exactly who he was. From what he’d observed of high-society life, it wasn’t so very long ago that, when the head of a titled family spoke, that family jumped to attention. The thought of this arrogant little beauty being forced to kowtow to him was an appealing one, he had to admit. On the other hand, didn’t this head of the family stuff also carry a lot of responsibility? There was all that business of keeping the family name unsullied–at least that was what he’d gathered from some of the tales Lew had told him. The Lenchester family name wasn’t likely to remain unsullied for long once Lew got his hands on this minx.

Dougie’s sudden surge of protective responsibility was an unfamiliar and unwanted feeling, and one he determinedly pushed out of the way. After all, it wasn’t even proved yet that he was this ruddy duke, and so long as he didn’t go and see Mr Melrose, it wasn’t ever going to be proved. What did he want with a title, and the responsibility for a girl like this one who had already got his back up?

‘Look, why don’t I make you an appointment and then you can come back when Lew is here?’ he offered, having decided that for now it made sense to get her out of the way, for his own sake, if nothing else. If he ran true to form, any minute now Lew was likely to return with his latest conquest.

Did this…this Australian nobody think she was going to fall for that, Emerald wondered. She looked round the small sitting room and then made her way to one of the sofas, seating herself carefully on it to ensure that her legs were displayed to their best advantage.

‘I’ll wait,’ she announced, before picking up one of the magazines on the coffee table and starting to flick through it.

She certainly was a little madam, Dougie decided. Someone should have put her across their knee years ago and paddled her backside until she learned a few manners. It was too late now, of course. She was certainly nothing like the three girls he remembered from the party; they had all been really decent sorts, not arrogant little snobs like her. Well, she’d certainly get her comeuppance when Lew did show up. His favourite mantra was that no day was worth living unless it contained both sex and work, and when he returned it would be with sex on his mind. Lew could deliver caustically cruel put-downs when he was so minded. Dougie had seen Lew reduce girls to tears with his unkindness when he was irritated or bored with them.

But so what if he did hurt this little madam’s feelings? Why should he care? He returned to his typing, breathing heavily over the unwanted task made all the more difficult by the small keyboard and the size of his hands.

Really, the man was disgustingly boorish, Emerald decided contemptuously. All that heavy breathing interspersed with the odd swear word. He looked as though he’d be more at home on a farm than working here, although no doubt the nature of his work was equally menial. He wasn’t even properly dressed. Instead of a business suit he was wearing a pair of those silly narrow black trousers that a certain type of bohemian young man wore teamed with a black polo-neck jumper, its sleeves pushed back to display muscular tanned forearms. A lock of his thick dark brown hair had fallen down almost over his eyes, adding to his uncouth appearance. Emerald was more used to men with the traditional short back and sides, favoured by the establishment and the services.

The sound of the front door suddenly opening had them both looking towards it, Emerald’s quickly prepared smile faltering for a moment as she saw the man coming in and immediately recognised him as the society photographer. What she hadn’t expected, though, was that he would be dressed in the same bohemian fashion as his dogsbody, only his polo-neck jumper was enlivened by a red and white spotted handkerchief knotted round his neck.

Lew was back and on his own. Dougie immediately recognised that his employer was not in a good mood. He had that air of suppressed tension and irritation about him that Dougie had learned to recognise. Predictably, though, the instant he saw Emerald that tension was broken, replaced by one of his deliberately caressing looks accompanied by a warm smile.

Now the fat was really in the fire, Dougie recognised. Deprived of his afternoon of sex with his girl, Lew would be like a cat on hot bricks until he had relieved his sexual tension, and who better to do so with than the snobby little madam sitting there looking at him with such confident expectation. Well, it would serve her right if he simply left her to her fate and she became yet another of the girls Lew picked up, seduced and then very publicly dropped, ruining her reputation as he did so.

Lew, predictably, was all charm, going over to Emerald to offer his hand and an apology.

‘I’m sorry. I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.’

‘She hasn’t got an appointment,’ Dougie felt obliged to point out, but neither of them was listening. Instead they were gazing deeply into one another’s eyes.

‘I did write to you, about you taking my coming-out photograph,’ Emerald was saying, her cut-glass accent suddenly accentuated and grating on Dougie’s already frayed nerves. ‘Once I’d seen the photograph you took of Amelia Longhurst I told Mummy that I couldn’t possibly have my photographs done by anyone else.’ She smoothed her hand over her skirt as she spoke. She had dressed very carefully for this meeting in the palest of pink cashmere twinsets, its plainness relieved by a string of startlingly lustrous pearls, and a deep rose-pink full mohair skirt that showed off her narrow waist, cinched in with a wide black patent belt. On her feet were a pair of high heels, and her handbag was from Hermès. Her hair, newly done that morning in a beehive, looked as delicate as spun glass, and she had outlined her lips in a soft pink lipstick. She looked, she had decided before leaving her bedroom, totally delectable and she had already visualised the photograph of her that would appear in Tatler and the words that would accompany it.

‘Lady Emerald Devenish is tipped to be the débutante of the season. Her ball will be held in her late father’s London house in Eaton Square, and HRH The Duke of Kent will be attending along with his mother, Princess Marina.’

The invitations had already gone out, and Emerald knew exactly what kind of speculation that wording beneath her photograph would give rise to. In the language of gossip columns it was tantamount to a pre-engagement declaration, but of course if anyone were to accuse her of exaggerating the situation she would simply pretend not to know what they meant.

The photographer was disappointingly short for a man who featured so often in the gossip columns as a man about town and a flirt, but Emerald had no more interest in him as a man than she did in the uncouth Australian. He was simply a means to an end.

‘Indeed not.’

Lew had been furious when his lunch date–a pretty young wife whose husband hated town and preferred to remain on their estate in the country–had refused to play ball, pretending that she hadn’t realised why he had suggested they had lunch together or what he had had in mind for the rest of the afternoon. But now the clouds that had darkened his temper had lifted. This girl was, if anything, even prettier than Louise, and unless he was wrong, far more sensual. One could always tell. They had a certain look about them that had nothing to do with experience. It shone from them like a special luminosity on the skin or like a definite scent on the air that surrounded them. This girl, a typical virginal deb on the outside, would on the inside be a positive volcano of passion. Teaching her to enjoy her sexuality would be like eating hot chocolate sauce on cold ice cream.

‘You’d better come up to my studio,’ he told Emerald. Without taking his gaze from her face, he added to Dougie, ‘Please see to it that I’m not disturbed for the rest of the afternoon.’