Sins

He had told her that on Monday he intended to shampoo it and go over it again.

‘I’d like to put a colour rinse on it as well, something to bring out the shine. A dark plum would look fantastic.’

Rose blenched a little now at the memory, and yet a smile was tugging at her lips as well. She felt so free and so…so different, tossing her hair in hesitant pride instead of ducking it down when she saw people turning their heads to look at her.

‘Hey, cool chick, I dig the hair,’ one of a pair of young Teddy boy rockers called out to her as they walked past her in the opposite direction.

She ‘dug the hair’ herself, Rose admitted, although it had been a huge shock at first to see what Josh had done.

He had cut her hair so short at the back that the whole length of her slender neck was exposed right from the nape. He had also fashioned it somehow so that it possessed an unfamiliar volume and movement, the sides longer than the back, caressing her jaw line in delicate little flicks. He had cut her a fringe too, and yet her new hairstyle had produced unexpected high cheekbones, now delicately flushed with happy colour.

She was on her way home, having left Josh and Ollie together, Ollie so eager to get back to his studio to develop the photographs he had taken of Josh in action that he had almost been ready to ignore the commission he had for the afternoon until Josh had reminded him that he owed him ‘ten quid’.

Janey would adore her new hairstyle, Rose knew, but she wasn’t so sure what Ella would think.

A wolf whistle from a grocer’s boy cycling past from the shop further down the road made Rose laugh at his cheek, as she enjoyed the unexpected light-heartedness her new image gave her.

Well, he had done it now, Dougie acknowledged, unable to concentrate on what he should be doing, which was checking through Lew’s diary for the forthcoming week. He’d telephoned the lawyer bloke and on Monday he had an appointment to see him so that Mr Melrose could go through things with him and check him out.

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.