Her coming-out ball should have been the best, the most exciting, the most triumphant night of Emerald’s life. She had planned that it would be all those months ago in Paris, imagining how she would be fêted and admired, not just as the most beautiful deb of the season but as the wife-to-be of the Duke of Kent.

But now, according to the card she had just read, HRH The Duke of Kent was unable to be present at her ball ‘owing to a previous engagement’.

Emerald snatched up the copy of The Times, which was on the table close to the desk, quickly turning to the Court Circular, and scanned down it, her throat tight with angry tension when she could not find anything referring to any official duties for the duke or his mother.

This was Princess Marina’s doing, Emerald decided bitterly. It had to be. Left to his own devices the duke would have accepted the invitation.

‘Emerald.’

She closed the paper quickly and hid the card beneath the desk blotter when she heard Lydia calling her name.

They were supposed to be attending a lunch party at the Savoy, accompanied by the loathsome Dougie, who her mother had forced on her and who, to Emerald’s fury, her godmother seemed to be delighted to have accompanying them on their social engagements.

‘Dougie’s such fun, isn’t he?’ Lydia giggled as she came into the room. ‘He’s been telling me about how they shear sheep in Australia. They have to be frightfully quick, you know.’

As Dougie himself strolled into the salon behind Lydia, Emerald glowered at him and said pointedly, ‘How fascinating. I hadn’t realised you were such a scintillating conversationalist, Dougie. I’m sure everyone will be impressed.’

‘Well, I’d much rather listen to Dougie than some of those boring debs’ delights any day,’ Lydia defended him stalwartly.

‘Tell me, Dougie, what do you say when you’re asked what school you went to? Plainly you can’t say Eton.’

‘I tell them that I attended the school of life,’ Dougie told her, deliberately exaggerating his Australian accent, knowing how much it infuriated her, and then adding fuel to the fire by asking her, ‘So what’s this dinner we’re going out for all about?’

‘You have to say “lunch,” Dougie, not “dinner”,’ Lydia told him patiently.

‘He knows that, Lyddy,’ Emerald informed her grimly, standing up abruptly, her hand catching the blotter as she did so and dislodging the card she had hidden, sending it tumbling to the floor.

She bent to retrieve it but Dougie beat her to it. It had fallen face down. Her heart thumped fiercely as Dougie picked it up, and started to turn it over. Imperiously she held out her hand for it, telling him sharply, ‘It’s not done to read other people’s correspondence.’

He was looking at her, and then at the card, as though weighing up whether or not to read it. Quickly she snatched it out of his grasp.

‘What is it, Emerald?’ Lyddy asked curiously.

‘It’s nothing,’ she told her. ‘Nothing at all.’

Rose stared into space. She was alone in the Chelsea house, having turned down an invitation to go out with Janey and Ella. It was over a week since Lady Fitton Legh had told her that John could be her half-brother, and she was still trying to come to terms with the shock.

Now what was tormenting her more than anything else was the fact that Amber hadn’t told her about John. Why hadn’t she said something to her about him, at least warned her, even if she hadn’t felt able to say anything outright? Whilst Rose had been growing up her aunt had been the one person she had always felt she could turn to, the only person whom she had felt had truly loved her, the person she had felt the closest to, and it hurt to think that she had kept something so important from her.

Logically Rose could understand that when she had been a child it would have been impo

ssible for anything to be said but surely once she had grown up Amber could have said something.

Quite plainly her aunt must have felt that she couldn’t trust her. Pain and betrayal, they were both so hard to bear now.

Rose had feared her father. She had wanted him to love her so desperately but he had always rejected her. Had he loved John’s mother? Had he rejected her because secretly he had longed for the son he could never claim? There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but for John’s sake she must never utter them.

Oddly, the pain she felt came not from knowing that she must relinquish and repudiate her love for John–she could, after all, still love him but now it must be as a sister’s love for a brother–but from feeling that the person she had trusted the most had betrayed her. The sense of closeness she had always felt towards Amber had been damaged, and instead of feeling that she had someone in her life that she would always be able to turn to, Rose felt dreadfully alone.

It would have been so wonderful to have grown up with John as her brother; he was everything that a big brother should be. Was it too fanciful of her to think that perhaps instinctively a part of her had always recognised that in him, and perhaps he had even protected her because he too had sensed that there was a special bond between them?

But John wouldn’t really want her as a half-sister. He believed himself to be a Fitton Legh. He was proud of his family’s history and of his name. If he could choose between being Lord Fitton Legh’s son or her father’s, Rose knew which he would choose, and who could blame him? Lady Fitton Legh was right: for John’s sake no doubt must be put on his parentage. Another betrayal; another rejection of her, even though John was unaware of it.

Learning that John could be her half-brother had changed the way she felt about him completely. Her childhood crush, the longing she had believed she had felt for him, had been destroyed by the revulsion she had felt at the thought of having such emotions for someone so closely related to her by blood. Now, instead of looking back and wishing that just once John might have held her and kissed her, she was fiercely glad that he had not. The very thought of anything like that happening between them made her shake with horror. Both of them had been saved from that awfulness, and she was grateful for that.

Rose felt like someone who had somehow escaped from the most dreadful fate, shaken, weak, horrified, but relieved, and determined to swear that they would never ever allow themselves to risk such a circumstance in future.

Chapter Sixteen

Tags: Penny Jordan Billionaire Romance
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