Sins

‘He does look a bit pale,’ Drogo told her.

‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ Emerald snapped. ‘I dare say if I were to give in and tell him he could stay with you, his headache would disappear within seconds.’

To o late Emerald realised that she might have betrayed herself. It came too close to the way she had felt as a child, this feeling she got when she saw Robbie with Drogo and was forced to recognise the closeness they shared, the relationship from which she was excluded, for her to ignore it.

Unwanted tears stung the back of her throat as she turned away from Drogo and Robbie. She scarcely knew herself sometimes. The intensity of her emotions made her feel so vulnerable: the fear that Max had beaten into her–not of his return, but of what the fact that she had ever wanted him in the first place said about her; the panic that came when she told herself that it was surely unthinkable that without her adoptive father she could ever have become one of those women Max had compared her with; the resentment, the jealousy she felt when Robbie aligned himself to Drogo, rejecting her; the fear and rejection she felt whenever she remembered how she had felt in the hospital, holding Rose’s jacket.

She tensed as she felt Drogo’s hand on her arm.

‘Why don’t I take Robbie back to Lenchester House with me? Then you can go to your lunch without having to worry about him.’

‘No. Don’t yo

u think I know that is exactly what he’s hoping for and why he’s claiming to have a headache? No, he’s coming with me.’

The look in Drogo’s eyes, a mixture of anger and pity, whipped up her own temper.

Grabbing hold of Robbie’s arm, Emerald told her son curtly, ‘You can stop all this right now, Robbie, because it won’t work. Come along, it’s time to go home and get changed for lunch.’

‘Oh, you decided not to bring Robbie with you then?’ Jeannie asked Emerald as they embraced.

‘No.’

Emerald was still seething about Robbie, who, when she had told him to go and sit downstairs and wait for her to finished getting ready, had told her that he felt nauseous and then had promptly been sick. Deliberately induced sickness, of course. She could remember doing much the same thing herself as a child. It had always worked with Nanny, but she was made of sterner stuff and she had sent Robbie to get undressed and have a bath, telling him that since he had made it impossible for her to take him out with her he would have to stay at home on his own–in bed. He had, no doubt, been hoping that she would give in and send him round to Lenchester House and Drogo rather than leave him in on his own. In fact she wouldn’t have put it past Drogo to have put him up to the whole thing, just to get the better of her. Well, they would both have to learn that Robbie had to do what she said.

‘It’s probably just as well. Just look how busy this place is. I’d thought that with everyone away for the summer it would be virtually empty. I’d forgotten about the American tourists.’

Emerald had to wait until they were seated at their table, the light salads they’d both ordered in front of them, before she was able to demand, ‘So tell me then, what is this important news?’

‘It’s about Max.’ Jeannie leaned closer to her, her voice dropping to a hushed whisper as she continued, ‘He hasn’t been around for the last few weeks. I thought that was because you and he had split up but now apparently he’s in the most dreadful trouble. He’s been arrested, apparently, something to do with that dreadful East End murder. You know, the one where the victim was battered to death? It was in all the papers.’

‘You mean that gangland—’

Shush…’ Jeannie warned her. ‘Peter says that we shouldn’t talk about him in case the police start asking us questions, but I’ve heard that Max owed someone important from the East End an awful lot of money. He did always like to gamble heavily.’ Jeannie gave a small shiver but Emerald could see that she looked more excited than afraid.

‘You’re not still seeing him, I take it?’

Emerald’s mouth compressed. So Jeannie didn’t just want to impart information; she was hoping she might get some juicy titbits back from her.

‘No, I’m not,’ she answered her truthfully. ‘It was only ever a very casual sort of thing,’ she added, giving a small dismissive shrug for emphasis. ‘And in fact if you hadn’t introduced him to me I would never have given him a second look.’

‘Well, we had no idea that he was still involved with…with the underworld. He always gave the impression that he had put all that kind of thing behind him.’

‘As we should put him behind us,’ Emerald told Jeannie pointedly.

Because of the busyness of the restaurant, it was later than Emerald had expected when she and Jeannie finally said their goodbyes.

As she made her way back to Cadogan Place she told herself that it would have done Robbie good to realise that he couldn’t behave in the way that he had. He was growing up fast. He would be going back to school soon, and that meant taking him to Harrods to replace those items of his uniform he had grown out of.

Robbie was a good scholar and had won the praise of his headmaster. Perhaps she ought to have a professional photograph done of him to send to Alessandro and his mother.

Alessandro and his royal bride had still not produced any children. The thought of how galling it would be to Alessandro’s mother to see Robbie’s photograph lifted Emerald’s spirits and put her in a much better mood.

Drogo stood in the library of Lenchester House and looked up at the portrait of his predecessor, demanding ruefully, ‘Well, Duke Robert, what do you think? Do I find myself a wife and beget myself an heir, or do I keep on hanging around and hope that one day Emerald is going to fall for me?

‘No, you’re right, it doesn’t look very much as though she will do, but at least it looks like that no-good bloke she was running around with is out of the picture.

‘It’s that poor little kid I feel the most sorry for. A boy needs a father, right? And the honest truth is that I love him already like he was my own.’