Sins

The young Duke of Kent had celebrated his twenty-first birthday only the previous year, and had already gained a reputation for being very difficult to pin down when it came to accepting invitations, but of course she would have no trouble in attracting him, Emerald knew. He wouldn’t be able to help falling in love with her. No man could.

It was a pity that the Duke of Kent didn’t own a proper stately home, not one of those dreadful ugly places that even the National Trust wouldn’t take on, but rather somewhere like Blenheim or Osterby. She would have to have a word with Mr Melrose, her late father’s solicitor and her own trustee, Emerald decided. It was surely only right and proper that, as a royal duchess, she should have the use of her late father’s property and estate; there was Lenchester House in London, where she was having her coming-out ball, and the family seat as well. Her mother had tried to prevent her from having her coming-out ball at Lenchester by saying that technically they had no right to use the house, which now had been inherited through the rule of primogeniture, along with everything else that was entailed to the dukedom, by the new ‘heir’: the grandson of her late father’s great-uncle, the ‘black sheep’ of the family who had been shipped off to Australia as a young man. Initially, it had been thought that this black sheep had died without marrying, but then it had come to light that there had been a marriage and a son, who in turn had produced a son of his own. Now Mr Melrose was trying to track him down. However, Mr Melrose had agreed with Emerald that there was really no reason why, as her late father’s daughter, she shouldn’t have her ball at Lenchester House. Her father would have wanted her to do so, Emerald was sure. And she was sure that he would much rather have seen her living at Osterby and Lenchester House than some heir he had never met. And who would now inherit Osterby and everything else, simply because he was male.

Lenchester House was magnificent. Until recently it had been let out to a Greek millionaire, and Emerald could see no reason why she and the duke shouldn’t lease it from the estate once they were married.

Mademoiselle Jeanne was still droning on about the Mona Lisa. Emerald gave the portrait a dismissive look. She was far prettier. And anyway, she thought the portrait dull. She preferred the striking strokes of brilliant colour favoured by more modern artists, the kind of paintings her mother would never dream of hanging at Denham. Emerald rather thought that she might become a patroness of modern art once she was married. She could imagine the praise she would receive from the press for her excellent eye and taste, and the entries in the gossip columns that would confirm her status: ‘HRH The Duchess of Kent is London’s premier hostess, as well as being a well-known patroness of modern art.’

Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Kent. Emerald preened, thinking how well the title suited her.

Ella shivered as she stepped out of the building that housed Dr Williamson’s rooms and into Harley Street, not so much from the raw biting wind as from shocked disbelief and excitement that she had actually done what she had done.

She had been weighed and measured by a smartly uniformed nurse, had filled in a long form giving all her medical details, and had then been told by the serious-looking Dr Williamson that for the good of her health she really did need to take the course of medication he was going to prescribe for her in order that she could lose weight.

She was to take two pills per day, one after breakfast and one late afternoon, and then after a month she was to return to him to be weighed and measured and given another prescription.

It wasn’t cheating, Ella had reassured herself. All the diet pills would do was help her to control her appetite. And when she had controlled it and lost some weight, then no one, but especially Oliver Charters, would laugh at her behind her back ever again.

Chapter Three

‘Janey, I’m still not sure that we should be going to this party,’ Ella protested, feeling irritated and exasperated when she saw that, instead of listening to her, Janey was concentrating on drawing a thick black line round her eyes, the tip of her tongue protruding slightly between her lips as she did so.

‘We can’t not go,’ Janey announced, proving that she had been listening all along. ‘I’ve promised.’

Promised Dan that she’d be there, was what she meant and she didn’t want to disappoint him. Not when things were getting so exciting.

Ella made no response. She knew there was no point. She wished, though, that her sister looked more conventional. Janey considered herself to be bohemian, or at least she had done until she had started frequenting Mary Quant’s shop Bazaar on the King’s Road, and had fallen in love with her signature style. It was Janey’s greatest ambition to have her own designs admired by Mary–designs that Ella thought quite frankly were far too daring. Take the short-skirted, A-line, striped ticking fabric dress Janey had made herself and had insisted on wearing this afternoon when she had bullied and coaxed Ella and Rose into going with her to her favourite coffee bar, the Fantasy.

The Fantasy, the only ‘proper’ coffee bar outside Soho, was owned by Archie McNair, friend and sponsor of Mary Quant, and Janey had told Ella and Rose excitedly that she hoped that her idol might come in and spot her in her new creation. That had not happe

ned, but Janey had attracted a good deal of attention. No wonder people, or rather men, had stared at Janey so much. Much as she loved her younger sister, there were times when Ella couldn’t help wishing that Janey acted with more decorum and wore sensible proper grown-up clothes, not garments that made people stare.

Attracting attention of any kind was something that made Ella feel anxious. As they were growing up, whenever she and Janey had been the focus of their late mother’s attention it had been because they had done something ‘wrong’–something that had made their mother cross and for which Ella, as the elder of the two, always got the blame.

Her stepmother was nothing like her mother. Ella’s father’s marriage to Amber had been a blessed relief. Amber was a proper mother, who understood about things of importance, like not wearing wet socks or going upstairs in the dark without the light on.

At least one thing she would not be attracting attention for soon would be her weight, Ella acknowledged with a small spurt of pleasure. Dr Williamson’s diet pills had done everything both he and Libby had promised her they would, and already she was losing weight. Not that she had told anyone else about them, or about how much the cruel words and laughter she had overheard had hurt her. She would be lost now without her small yellow pills and their magical ability to make her not want to eat.

‘You can always stay here, if you want to,’ Janey told her sister. ‘You don’t have to come.’

The last thing Ella felt like doing on a cold winter night was going out to a party in some grubby smoke-filled cellar packed with people she didn’t know and with whom it was impossible to talk above the noise, but Janey’s words had aroused her suspicions.

‘Of course I’m going to go,’ Ella insisted. ‘It’s up to me to make sure that you don’t get into trouble, after all.’

‘Don’t be silly. Of course I’m not going to get into trouble,’ Janey defended herself indignantly.

Ella, though, wasn’t impressed. ‘There’s no “of course” about it,’ she told Janey. ‘I haven’t forgotten those men you brought back with you from that jazz club the other week, the ones I found sleeping downstairs.’

‘It was a freezing cold night, Ella, and they didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘We could have been murdered in our beds, or worse,’ Ella retaliated, her anger growing as Janey giggled.

‘Don’t be silly, they were far too drunk.’

‘It isn’t funny, Janey,’ Ella remonstrated. ‘The parents wouldn’t have approved at all.’

‘You fuss too much, Ella.’

Janey was beginning to wish that Ella would stay behind if she was going to be so stuffy. Janey had arranged to meet Dan at the party and she didn’t want Ella cramping her style.