The Duke's Proposal. Sophie Weston

      Madame ignored that. ‘Only now you don’t go out at all.’

      ‘I didn’t fire Basil.’

      Jemima was starting to shiver, she realised. To hide it, she looked around for her shoulder-bag and fussed through it.

      Madame seemed disappointed. ‘That’s not what I heard.’

      The shivers down her spine were turning into a positive cascade. ‘I left his management by mutual agreement.’

      Madame looked sceptical.

      ‘It was.’

      Well, eventually. When she had threatened to expose the things he’d done—the pills to keep her thin, the break from her family to keep her ‘focused’, as he’d called it. Oh, yes, he’d been glad enough to give back her contract when she’d faced him with all of that. Only now he was having second thoughts, and…

      If she wasn’t careful, she was going to start shaking again.

      With another of her abrupt changes of mood Madame lost interest. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have no life. You don’t date. You don’t go out anywhere unless it’s an assignment.’

      Jemima was still shaky. ‘I work. I don’t have time to go out.’

      ‘Make time.’

      ‘What?’

      Madame said with finality, ‘Go back to being a regular person. You don’t have to disappear and come back a duke. You don’t even have to date a designer if you don’t want to. But date someone.’

      ‘I—’

      ‘I’m cancelling the shoot in New York. Take a break. Go meet some guys, like other girls. I want to see you living a life like our customers lead. And I want to see the press stories to prove it.’

      She stood up. The interview was clearly over.

      Jemima stopped shivering. She was not afraid of Madame.

      She tipped her head back. On this dull grey afternoon the penthouse was lit by warm table-lamps. In their light the wonderful red hair rippled like fire, like wine. And Jemima knew it. She knew, too, that the woman who had personally chosen her as the face of Belinda would not want to admit she had been wrong.

      She said, quite gently, ‘Or?’

      Madame recognised a challenge when she saw it. She might like Jemima personally. But she couldn’t afford to let a challenge go unanswered. Her jaw hardened.

      ‘We’re already into planning the Christmas campaign. I won’t pull you off that. But it’s your last unless you—’

      ‘Get a boyfriend,’ supplied Jemima. Her temper went back onto a slow burn. She smiled pleasantly at the shark. ‘I’m almost certain that’s illegal.’

      Madame did not care about piffling legalities. She snorted. ‘Unless you get a life.’

      ‘And if I don’t?’

      The eyes were blank and lizard-like again. ‘You’re off the team.’

      Jemima flipped off the sofa. ‘Cast your mind back,’ she said sweetly. ‘Like I said, I quit.’

      She steamed out before they could answer.

      The commissionaire summoned a taxi for her. She sank into the big seat and called the agency.

      ‘Belinda and I just fired each other,’ she said curtly.

      She rang off to squawks of horror.

      And then she did what she had been putting off all day. She checked her text messages.

      Her fingers shook a little as she pressed the buttons. Basil had stopped leaving messages on her voicemail these days. But he texted a lot. Mostly she managed to zap them unread. But today she saw one she had thought was from her limousine service.

      As soon as she saw it was not, she killed it. But not soon enough.

      The message was the same as always. The words changed. But the theme was constant.

      U R MYN.