‘She’s given me a new lease of life. I’ve started giving dinner parties again, filling the house with young people.’
Ambrose smiled back at him, faintly touched by the old man’s fond gaze at the girl.
He was very well-preserved for a man of seventy; upright, active, with a healthy colour in his face. Ambrose knew he went to work each weekday morning at eight, as he always had, and was at his desk until after six. He still had plenty of energy, obviously, but perhaps he no longer cared whether or not the mills were working at maximum efficiency? Perhaps all his attention now was given to this girl?
‘We have a town house in Chelsea,’ George Rendell said. ‘Your secretary will give you the address, I’m sure. You must have it on file. I know how efficient your office is! Off the Embankment, not far from Carlyle’s house. Easy to find…Shall we say seven-thirty?’
Ambrose nodded. ‘Seven-thirty.’
‘Goodnight, then.’
George shepherded the girl in front of him; she gave Ambrose a fleeting smile and he watched them disappear into the winter night, his face pale and his eyes grim.
I shouldn’t have accepted that invitation, he thought. This time next week that old man is going to hate my guts; the girl will too. I have no business eating their food, sitting at their table, when I am about to pull the roof down on top of them both.
An hour later Ambrose was in bed, the lights off, the room dark and quiet, the only noises the wind rattling the bare branches of trees in Regent’s Park, which he could see from his bedroom, and the unearthly sounds of animals in the zoo on the further side of the park. He normally went to sleep the minute his head hit the pillow. Tonight, though, sleep evaded him until the early hours of the morning. He couldn’t remember the last time his conscience had given him that much trouble.
EMILIE woke up early on Tuesday to a calm, quiet winter morning, the sun hidden behind cloud, a pale lavender light drifting over the walls of her bedroom.
She yawned, thought drowsily, Something special is happening today, and then she remembered. Ambrose Kerr was coming to dinner.
Somewhere there was a rapid noise, a drumming beat. For a second she couldn’t think what it was, then she realised that it was her heart, beating faster than the speed of light.
She jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom to have a shower. In the mirror on the wall she saw her reflection: over-bright eyes, flushed face, a pink, parted mouth breathing fast.
What’s the matter with you? she accused herself, then looked away, hurriedly pulled her nightie over her head, the movement tightening her slender body, making her breasts lift, their pink nipples harden and darken against the creamy flesh surrounding them. My breasts are too small! she thought, staring at them. I wish I had a better figure. I wish I had blonde hair—or jet-black? Anything but brown. I wish my hair was naturally curly, too, instead of straight. And oh! I wish I had bigger breasts…
She stepped under the warm jets of water, closing her eyes, and began washing, smoothly lathering her body. Her truant mind kept conjuring up disturbing images. How would it feel to have a man touching her like this? Male hands stroking her shoulders, her throat, her breasts. No, not just any man…Ambrose Kerr. Ever since Saturday night she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. Her nipples ached, her mouth was dry.
Are you crazy? she asked herself, even pinker now, and breathing twice as fast. He’s almost twice your age, sophisticated, very experienced…he wouldn’t even look at you!
‘How old is he?’ she had asked her grandfather as they drove back from Ambrose’s home on Saturday, and Grandpa had shrugged indifferently.
‘Must be getting on for forty now, I suppose.’
She had realised he must be much older than she was, but…forty? She had sighed. Her father wasn’t much older than that!
‘Late thirties, anyway,’ Grandpa had said, and that sounded much better. Her spirits had lifted.
She had let a minute pass before asking, in what she hoped was an idle, offhand way, ‘Has he got children? I suppose there is a Mrs Kerr?’
‘I’ve never heard of one. Plenty of women in his life, though, if you believe the gossips. Sophie was one of them, I gather.’
Emilie had felt a stab of shock. ‘Sophie?’
Sophie? Sophie and him? she had thought, shaken and dismayed. She had had no idea. Sophie had never said a word to her about him, but then Sophie never said much about her private life to Emilie.
‘They were seen around together for a few months,’ George Rendell had said. ‘Then it fizzled out, and I would put money on it that it wasn’t Sophie who backed off.’
Emilie had stared out of the window, biting her lip. ‘Do you think she’s in love with him?’
Grandpa’s voice had been dry. ‘I think she fancied being Mrs Kerr.’ He could be quite cynical at times, and Emilie had frowned. Grandpa had continued, ‘Sophie takes after her mother, my cousin Rosa. They use their heads, not their hearts, those two women. So sharp they could cut themselves, both of them.’
‘I like them both,’ Emilie had said quietly, and her grandfather had given her a very different look, his face softening. She’d smiled at him and said, ‘Sophie and her mother have been very kind to me.’
She would always be grateful to them for their friendliness when she had first arrived in England.
Her father’s family had never been very interested in her and, now that he had sons, neither was her father. A hardbitten journalist, he had never spent much time at home even before her mother died. He had remarried shockingly soon after that.
Emilie suspected that he had been having an affair with Marie-Claude while her mother was alive. Had her mother known about it? She flinched at the thought.
Maman had never said a word to her, if she had known—but when she hadn’t known you were looking, the sadness in her face could have wrung your heart. Her mother had had so much to bear: a long, painful illness, which she knew would end in death, made harder by loneliness because her husband was never at home. Emilie hated to think that she might have been hiding the anguish of knowing that her husband was betraying her too.
Maman had wanted to send Emilie away to England in those last months, when she could no longer hide what was happening to her, but Emilie had clung to her, refusing to leave. They had been close; in those last two years even closer than mother and daughter usually were, just because they had both known their time together was going to be short. Emilie still missed her.
Her father’s remarriage had been a shock of a different sort. Marie-Claude had worked on his newspaper; they had known each other for years, Emilie realised. Marie-Claude was in her early thirties, very French, sophisticated, elegant in that French way, understated and witty. Marie-Claude’s clothes reflected Marie-Claude’s mind. It would have been easier if she had been openly hostile—but Marie-Claude was far too clever for that.
She was very polite and gracious
