Sins

Without giving her mother the chance to say anything, Emerald picked up the long skirt of her gown and stormed off, her head so full of angry thoughts that she didn’t see Alessandro until she had almost bumped into him.

‘You are upset. What is it? What is wrong?’

On the point of pushing past him, Emerald stopped and looked at him. Alessandro was a year younger than she, and immature in many ways, for all his good looks and royal status, thanks, Emerald suspected, to his mother’s overprotective concern for him. Normally she would have dismissed him without a thought, but now an idea had come to her, a way of revenging herself on all those who thought they could humiliate her.

‘Nothing is wrong,’ she answered softly, giving him a deliberately sensual look as she added, ‘Not now that you are here.’

She could see the effect she was having on him. His face was flushed, and he moved towards her, reaching for her hand and clasping it in his own when she allowed him to take it.

The band were tuning up for the first dance–the dance she had planned to take

with the Duke of Kent, and which her mother expected her to dance with Dougie. Well, she wasn’t going to.

‘Would you like to dance with me?’ she asked Alessandro, moving closer to him as she did so and giving him a provocative smile as she ran her fingertip down his arm. It amused her to see him tremble visibly.

‘You want me to partner you for the first dance?’ His voice was thick with excitement.

‘Yes, I want you to partner me,’ Emerald agreed with deliberate emphasis on the word ‘partner’, before, right on cue, the band struck up and she slid into his arms.

She was the daughter of a duke, she was the most beautiful girl here tonight, she deserved to be fêted and praised and adored, and she would be. Her mother had told her that she must start the dancing with Dougie as her partner because he was the new duke–well, she certainly wasn’t going to do that now, Emerald thought triumphantly as she danced past Dougie and her mother, in Alessandro’s arms.

The dance floor was filling up, allowing Emerald to press deliberately closer to Alessandro. It gave her another thrill of triumph to feel the way his body trembled against her own. She might still be a virgin but she would never have allowed a man to know that she was so vulnerable to him, no matter how much she desired him. Poor Alessandro, though, couldn’t control himself or conceal what he was feeling. She could feel his hot breath against her forehead, and was glad that he was wearing gloves because she guessed that his hands would be sticky with excitement. His obvious desire for her gave her back her confidence. She leaned into him, her breasts pressed against his chest, as she lifted her hand to caress the back of his neck.

His shuddered, ‘Adorata’, would have made her laugh out aloud at any other time, he was so ridiculously foreign. But he was also a prince, a proper prince with his own country to rule, a prince who could make her a princess.

‘You must not say such things to me.’ She pretended to chide him, adopting a soft, almost nervous voice.

‘I cannot help myself,’ Alessandro told her, holding her tightly. ‘You are my adored one. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you, but never until tonight did I dare to dream that I might hold you like this.’

How modest his dreams were, Emerald thought cynically as she gave him a calculating look from beneath her lowered eyelashes. Her plans were far more ambitious.

Dougie stood watching Emerald. What was she up to now? The duchess had been mortified by Emerald’s behaviour and the fact that she had opened her ball with someone else, Dougie knew, but for himself he wasn’t particularly bothered. In fact, he was rather relieved that he hadn’t had to dance with her. She’d have been bound to find something in his dancing to complain about.

Watching her now as she danced past him, held tight in Alessandro’s arms, Dougie looked at the obviously besotted young man and muttered under his breath, ‘Good luck to you, cobber. You’re going to need it.’

Chapter Seventeen

‘What’s wrong? And don’t tell me nothing, because it’s as plain as the nose on my face that something’s up.’

Rose gave Josh a wan smile. They were sitting opposite one another in the Kardomah coffee bar near the Peter Jones department store, in one of the small dark polished-wood booths that always reminded her of church pews. The scent of the freshly roasted coffee beans filled the air, mingling with the smell of cigarettes.

‘I can’t tell you,’ Rose answered him. ‘Someone else is involved and—’

‘You’re not up the duff, are you?’ Josh interrupted her, explaining when she gave him a blank look, ‘You’re not pregnant?’

‘No,’ she told him truthfully, but the irony of his question touched a nerve, and before she could stop them, tears had filled her eyes.

Immediately Josh looked both concerned and uncomfortable. At any other time his look of acute embarrassment would have made her smile.

‘Here…’

The handerchief he passed her under the table was snowy white and immaculately ironed. Josh might live in his own flat but he still took his laundry home to his mother.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rose apologised when she had dried her eyes. ‘It’s just…Well, when you find out something really important that you didn’t know, and then you find out that someone you thought you really mattered to and who you trusted had known and hadn’t told you…it hurts.’

‘Life hurts, Rosie, but you’ve got to be strong.’

‘I hate looking like I do, being “different”. If I’d looked like my father and not my mother…’ Fresh tears filled her eyes.