He hadn’t said anything about having met Emerald, though, not even when Mr Melrose had told him that he proposed to invite the late duke’s wife to attend their meeting, as he felt that Dougie would need a ‘sponsor’ to help him adapt to society and his new role within it if it did turn out to be that he was indeed the heir. He’d cross that bridge as and when he came to it.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Emerald gasped, feigning an embarrassed self-consciousness she wasn’t feeling at all as her deliberately planned ‘accidental’ bumping into the Duke of Kent had him turning towards her, allowing her to continue with her plan by uttering a mortified, ‘Oh, Your Royal Highness.’
‘It’s all right. Don’t worry.’ The duke’s smile was polite rather than warm, and he was already turning away from her but Emerald wasn’t so easily put off. Ever since she had been formally and very briefly presented to him and to his mother, Princess Marina, earlier in the evening, she had been watching him and waiting for her chance to bring herself properly to his attention. A débutante party featuring an evening of chamber music would not normally have been something she would have wanted to attend, but that had been before she had learned that the duke was going to be one of the guests.
Emerald had had to be patient to make her move, waiting until the music was over, and the duke had moved to a quieter corner of the large formal reception room by one of the balconies. She certainly wasn’t going to let her prey escape her.
Speedily moving so that she was standing in front of him, she affected to breathe in the evening air coming through the open balcony doors, whilst telling him, ‘I seem to be dreadfully clumsy whenever I’m at one of these events. I suppose that’s because I’d rather be in the country.’ She gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Do you like the country, Sir?’
‘Yes, I do.’ The duke’s voice was slightly warmer now, and he was looking properly at her. Emerald felt a fierce surge of triumph. He couldn’t possibly be anything other than entranced by her. She had taken extra special care over her appearance. She was wearing her hair up in a deliberately semi-regal style (so perfect for a family tiara, she had thought happily to herself earlier). Her dress of pale lilac silk emphasised her small waist, whilst its matching bolero provided just the right note of modesty. The upturned style of its collar showed off the slender length of her neck and drew the eye down to the discreetly concealed curves of her breasts. Her nails were varnished pale pink to match her lipstick. Emerald knew that she outshone every other girl in the room.
‘It’s very generous of people to invite me to so many lovely parties,’ Emerald continued with fake modesty. ‘But I lost my father when I was very young and it makes me feel sad when I see other girls with their fathers.’
‘Yes, I can understand that,’ the duke agreed. Now she had touched his emotions, Emerald knew, because he too had lost his father at a young age.
‘I’m dreading my ball,’ Emerald confided. ‘It will be held at home at Lenchester House in Eaton Square, of course, just as my father would have wanted, but I won’t be able to enjoy it properly without him there.’
There, she had told him now where he could find her. There was only one more thing she needed to do.
‘I’ve always admired Her Royal Highness Princess Marina. She’s so elegant and gracious. I remember my father saying that. I’d love to meet her properly.’
Emerald managed to make her voice sound wistful and almost childlike. How could the duke refuse her? He couldn’t, of course.
‘Then please do allow me to introduce you.’
Already he was crooking his arm and politely waiting for her to place her hand on it.
‘Oh, would you?’ Emerald was the epitome of sparkling delight. Out of the corner of her eye she registered the resentment in Gwendolyn’s expression, along with the astonishment and envy on the faces of her fellow debs as the duke led her across the floor to where his mother was standing talking with some of the chaperones. But of course her attention wasn’t on her rivals but on the duke. The look in her own eyes was carefully designed to show him her pleasure in his company, just as her manner was planned to reveal her as sweetly innocent and slightly helpless, whilst at the same time extremely well born; things Emerald was sure he was bound to find attractive in a prospective wife. In forcing a one-to-one conversation on him she had achieved for herself something that even the most determined of débutante mothers had failed to do, and she had every reason to feel very pleased with herself indeed, Emerald decided as they reached the duke’s mother and her small entourage.
Princess Marina was elegant, Emerald admitted, elegant and regal, and quite definitely coolly distant with Emerald as she was presented to her. Without a single word being said or a look given, Emerald knew that the duke’s mother was well aware that Emerald had manipulated the duke into presenting Emerald to her, and that her behaviour had not gone down well. Princess Marina would, though, be forced to change her tune once Emerald was the new duchess, she thought smugly.
Afterwards when she had rejoined Gwendolyn and Lydia and her godmother, Emerald entertained herself by mentally rehearsing her married name: Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Kent.
Edward and Emerald. How fortunate that they shared the same initial, almost as though it had always been meant to be, she sighed happily as Gwendolyn prattled on about tennis.
The duke was in the Royal Scots Greys, and now Emerald was intent on finding out discreetly who amongst the other debs might have a male relative with the Greys so that she could make a friend of her and suggest that some of the young officers were invited to one of the deb ‘teas’. It was, after all, customary for young officers from the household regiments to attend the season’s social events.
Yes, Emerald decided, all in all it had been a most successful evening.
Ollie straightened up, stretching his back in the cramped confines of his small darkroom as he looked at the prints he had just developed with growing excitement. It had still been light when he had returned from the birthday party he had been summoned to attend and capture with his camera by one of the Kray twins’ stalwarts, not so much an enforcer, this one, as a fixer, although he still knew how to handle himself. Ollie had remembered sparring with him in the gym when he had been in training. Heavily built, with a typical ex-boxer’s broken nose, he had delivered the twins ‘request’ in an affable enough manner but Ollie had known better than to suggest that he had another engagement for that afternoon.
In the event the party had been a chance for him to mix with a crowd of once familiar faces, including that of his younger cousin, Willie, who had ignored his advice and who had been strutting around obviously considering himself very much a part of the twins’ ‘task force’.
It wasn’t the Kray brothers or the photographs he had taken of their distant cousin’s seventieth birthday party that had been responsible for him working in his darkroom until the early hours of the morning, though.
He looked at the images again, a wide grin of delight creasing his face. There was no doubt about it, he was good, and one day–soon–he would be the best. The photographs he had taken of Josh cutting Rose’s hair, snapping frantically as he tried to catch each movement, were a bloody work of art, even though he said so himself. If he had any sense about him he’d charge Josh a fortune for them and no mistake, ’cos they would pull in the chicks wanting their own hair cut like Rose’s like no one’s business. There was no point in thinking of what he could charge Josh, though. His friend was as skint as he was himself, living virtually hand to mouth, hoping to keep going in the precarious world of self-employment in which they were both taking their first faltering steps.
On the other hand, if he could get Vogue interested…Not that the posh commissioning editors who worked there were likely to welcome him acting off his own bat. They had their own ideas about the images they wanted and they were quick to reject his ideas if they conflicted. Still, it was worth