‘Peggy Dickens has been on my conscience for years,’ Charles confided grudgingly. ‘I could have done something to help but I was too wary of causing offence so... I did nothing. All of this mess is on me and I don’t want that poor woman suffering any more because I failed to act.’
‘So, send her a cheque,’ Vitale suggested, reeling from the display of guilt his father was revealing while he himself was struggling to see any connection or indeed any debt owed.
‘Read the letter,’ his father advised. ‘Jazmine is asking for a job, somewhere to live and a loan, not a cheque. She’s proud. She’s not asking for a free handout but she’s willing to do anything she can to help her mother.’
Vitale studied the envelope of what was obviously a begging letter with unconcealed distaste. More than ever he wanted to argue with his father’s attitude. In Vitale’s opinion, Charles owed his former employee and her daughter absolutely nothing. By the sound of it, Peggy Dickens had screwed up her life; however that was scarcely his father’s fault.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Vitale asked finally, recognising that how he felt about the situation meant nothing in the face of his father’s feelings.
Yet it amazed Vitale that his father could still be so incredibly emotional and sentimental and he often marvelled that two people as ridiculously dissimilar in character as his parents could ever have married.
‘I want you to be compassionate and kind, not judgemental, not cynical, not cold,’ Charles framed with anxious warning emphasis. ‘And I know that will be a huge challenge for you but I also know that acknowledging that side of your nature will make you a better and stronger man in the process. Don’t let your mother remake you in her image—never forget that you are my son too.’
Vitale almost flinched from the idea of being compassionate and kind. He didn’t do stuff like that. He supported leading charities and always contributed to good causes but he had never done anything hands-on in that area, nor had he ever felt the need to do so. He was what he was: a bred-in-the-bone royal, cocooned from the real world by incredible privilege, an exclusive education and great wealth.
‘I don’t care what it costs to buy Peggy and her daughter out of trouble either,’ his father added expansively. ‘With you in charge of my investments, I can well afford the gesture. You don’t need to save me money.’
‘I’m a banker. Saving money and making a profit comes naturally,’ Vitale said drily. ‘And by the way, my mother is not remaking me in her image.’
Charles vented a roughened laugh. ‘It may be graveyard humour but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you find yourself engaged by the end of that ball next month! Sofia is a hell of a wheeler dealer. You should’ve refused to attend.’
‘I may still do that. I’m no pushover,’ his son stated coldly. ‘So you want me to stage a rescue mission in your name?’
‘With tact and generosity,’ the older man added.
Exasperation leapt through Vitale, who used tact every day of his life because he could never be less than courteous in the face of the royal demands made of him. But no matter how onerous the demand Charles had made struck him, there was, nevertheless, a certain pride and satisfaction to the awareness that his father was trusting him to deal with a sensitive situation. He realised that he was also surprisingly eager to read Jazz’s letter.
Jazz, a skinny-as-a-rail redhead, who had developed a massive crush on him when she was fourteen and he was eighteen. He had been wildly disconcerted that he rather than the friendlier, flirtier Angel had become the object of her admiration and he had screwed up badly, he acknowledged reluctantly, cracking a wounding joke about her that she had sadly overheard. But then Vitale had never been the sensitive sort and back then he had also essentially known very little about women because he had stayed a virgin for many years longer than Angel. But, not surprisingly, Jazz had hated him after that episode and in many ways it had been a relief to no longer be the centre of her attention and the awful tongue-tied silences that had afflicted her in his presence. In the space of one awkward summer, the three of them had travelled from casual pseudo friendship to stroppy, strained discomfiture and then she and her mother had mercifully disappeared out of their lives.
Compassionate... Kind, Vitale reminded himself as he stood outside his father’s office reading Jazz’s letter, automatically rating it for use of English, spelling and conciseness. Of course it had been written on the computer because Jazz was severely dyslexic. Dyslexic and clumsy, he recalled helplessly, always tripping and bumping into things. The letter told a tale of woe that could have featured as a Greek tragedy and his sculpted mouth tightened, his momentary amusement dying away. She wanted help for her mother but only on her own terms. She wanted a job but only had experience of working as a checkout operator and a cleaner.
Per carita...for pity’s sake, what did she think his father was going to find for her to do on the back of such slender talents? Even so, the letter was pure Jazz, feisty and gauche and crackling with brick-wall obstinacy. An ordinary woman, he thought abstractedly, an ordinary woman with extraordinarily beautiful green eyes. Her eyes wouldn’t have changed, he reasoned. And you couldn’t get more ordinary than Jazz, who thought a soup spoon or a fish fork or a napkin was pure unnecessary aristocratic affectation. And she was, evidently, badly in need of money...
A faint smile tilted Vitale’s often grim mouth. He didn’t need a stunning beauty to act as his partner at the palace ball and he was quite sure that if he hired the right experts Jazz could be transformed into something reasonably presentable. Having a partner for the ball to fend off other women would make sense, he acknowledged reluctantly. But shooting Zac down in flames would undeniably be the most satisfying aspect of the whole affair. Jazz might be ordinary and dyslexic but she was also clever and a quick study.
Vitale strolled back to his younger brother’s side with a rare smile on his wide sensual mouth. ‘You’re up next but before you go...the bet,’ he specified in an undertone. ‘Remember that blonde waitress who wanted nothing to do with you last week and accused you of harassment?’
Zac frowned, disconcerted colour highlighting his high cheekbones at that reminder of his rare failure to impress a woman.
‘Bring her to the ball acting all lovelorn and clingy and suitably polished up and you have a deal on the bet,’ Vitale completed, throwing down the gauntlet of challenge with pleasure while recalling the very real hatred he had seen in that woman’s eyes. For once, Zac, the smooth-talking seducer, would have his work cut out for him...
* * *
Jazz straightened her aching back at the checkout because she had worked a very long day. Her schedule had kicked off at dawn with a cleaning shift at a nearby hotel and then she had got a call to step in for a sick workmate at the till in the supermarket where she earned extra cash on a casual basis. Both her jobs were casual, poorly paid and unreliable. But some work was better than no work, she reminded herself doggedly, better than living on welfare, which would have distressed her mother more even though that choice would have left mother and daughter somewhat better off.
But while Peggy Dickens had raised her daughter to be a worker rather than a whinger or a freeloader, Jazz still occasionally let her thoughts drift into a dream world where she had got to complete the education that would have equipped her with a degree that enabled her to chase better-paid jobs and climb an actual career ladder. Unfortunately, the chaos of her private life had prevented her from, what was that phrase...achieving her full potential? Her full pink mouth curled at the corners with easy amusement for who was to say that she was worth any more than the work she was currently doing? No point getting too big for her boots and imagining she might have been more, not when she came from such humble roots.
Her mother had been a housekeeper, who married a gardener and lived in accommodation provided by their employer. Nobody in Jazz’s family tree had ever owned a house or earned a university degree and Peggy had been bemused when her daughter had chosen to continue her education and aim