‘Yes, and the hats are enormous compared to last year. Father is quite worried the costs will be ridiculous, with all these feathers and flowers. Alex, you must tell the Princess to start wearing small, plain bonnets immediately.’
Alex laughed. ‘I’ll write to her tomorrow.’ She scanned one of the papers, caught by a sketch of a grand building. All of five storeys, with classical statues of goddesses at every corner and as many windows as Hardwicke Hall gleaming. ‘Gordston’s Department Store is opening a new branch in Paris?’
Emily made a face. ‘Yes, and Father is furious! Mr Gordston seems to beat him at every post lately. The man seems unstoppable.’
‘Even my mother loves Gordston’s hat counter and she always said she would never buy ready-made,’ Alex said. She tried not to sigh when she recalled she had once known a Gordston, too, in those golden days in Scotland. Memories were always so sad now.
She read over the breathless descriptions of the new Paris store, its marble floors from Italy, its gilded lifts operated by young ladies in red-velvet suits, its shocking new cosmetics counter. It was just as giddy in writing about the store’s owner and his ‘godlike face’ and ‘intoxicating laugh’, hinting about his romances with actresses and countesses and American heiresses.
‘Is he really as handsome as all that, Em?’ Diana asked. Emily was the only girl at school who had ever met the notorious Mr Gordston.
Emily’s head tilted as if she contemplated this question carefully. ‘He is—interesting.’
‘I think he sounds like a character in a novel,’ Diana said. ‘So dashing! So rich. Maybe I’ll meet him in London and marry him instead of some dull diplomat or clergyman or army officer like my parents hope.’
‘You would be much happier with the officer,’ Emily said firmly. ‘Now, here, girls! Eat up before we have to sneak out again.’
Alex turned the page on the paper and froze in shock. There, staring up at her in a grainy black-and-white image, was Malcolm. Her Malcolm, from Scotland, the one young man she could never quite forget, despite the terrible way they’d parted. Gordston’s was not owned by some unknown Scotsman after all. He was at a racetrack, standing near the railing with a lady in trailing lace and one of those enormous feathered hats. She gazed up at him adoringly, while he gave a half-smile into the distance. So tall, so gorgeous, so utterly unapproachable.
She read the headline.
The delight of every lady’s eye!
She read on.
But is the handsome millionaire ready to take the plunge with Lady Deanston? She looks ready, but our sources say he never will be. Although a titled lady at his side could only improve his standing in society…
Malcolm was the owner of Gordston’s? The famous man about town, with all the most beautiful ladies in love with him? Alex was surprised, but not really shocked. He had always been special indeed. The wonder was he had ever looked at her at all, with such sophisticated ladies just waiting for him out in the world.
Afraid she might start to cry, Alex carefully folded the paper and set it aside. She had never told even Emily and Diana about Malcolm. He was her own little secret, to be taken out and looked at like a precious jewel when everything got too overwhelming. And now he was the Malcolm Gordston, further away from her than ever. Maybe one day she would talk about him, but not soon. She didn’t even have the words.
Alex lay back on their picnic blanket and listened to her friends’ laughter, their chatter about new French fashions and the relative merits of different chocolates. There, with the night gathered close beyond the curtains and silence in the schools’ halls, they were tucked away in their own warm, safe little world. How she loved it here at Miss Grantley’s, where she was only another young lady among her friends, only Alex! If only they could stay right there. If only she could be just Alex for ever. Alex who remembered her very own Malcolm.
‘I wish this would never end,’ she said. ‘That we could go on this way always.’
Emily and Diana lay down beside her. ‘We can’t stay at Miss Grantley’s for ever,’ Em said, touching her hand. ‘But we will always, always be friends.’
‘Are you sure?’ Alex whispered, all too aware of how fast things changed in the world beyond the school gates.
‘Oh, yes,’ Diana declared. ‘No matter where we go, or what happens to us, we will always have each other.’
London—spring 1889
Alex glanced over her shoulder as she tiptoed down the stairs of Waverton House. She held her hat and gloves, hoping she could stuff them behind a potted palm or one of the statues glaring down from their niches, if someone should see her. The enormous house was quiet—for the moment.
Her mother, the Duchess, was napping, her father was locked with his business managers in the library and her brother, Charles, was who knew where. He always left right after breakfast and returned in the dead of night, the lucky boy. Even the maids were quiet, their morning duties in the drawing room and music room finished and their evening tasks not yet begun.
Charlie could escape, but Alex was always there, practising at the piano, waiting for callers, having fittings, listening to her mother list eligible suitors. None of them was department-store owners, no matter how rich, of course. She was being slowly smothered by it all, by the velvet curtains puddling on the Aubusson rugs, the silk walls, the portraits of all the Wavertons alive and dead staring down at her.
Having a Season was even more exhausting than she had feared—and more lonely. She was surrounded by people almost all the time, but she hardly ever saw her old friends from Miss Grantley’s. That was why she was creeping down the stairs now.
Luckily, just as she was sure she would start screaming with it all, Emily’s note had arrived, asking her to meet them for a Blues and Royals concert in Hyde Park. She hadn’t seen Diana and Em except for balls and dinners, where they could only snatch a few whispers, in weeks. Surely a day with them, laughing in the fresh air, with no one around who knew or cared she was the Duke of Waverton’s daughter, was just the respite she needed.
Unfortunately, just as she was almost to the bottom of the stairs and nearly free, the library door opened and her father and his business managers emerged. It was far too late to flee back up the stairs. She followed her original plan of shoving her hat behind a vase of ivy and ostrich feathers and tried to look casual.
She peeked down over the carved and gilded balustrade at her father. The Duke was as tall and grandly moustachioed as always, a formidable presence she had always been frightened of, especially after Scotland. But in that moment, when he thought himself alone, he seemed rather grey-faced and distracted. As the businessmen shuffled out, a blur of black suits, silvery pomaded hair and leather valises, the Duke glanced up and saw Alex there. He smiled wearily, no curiosity or scolding glint in his eyes, and she was glad it was him and not Mama who had seen her. He wouldn’t notice she was wearing her new blue walking suit for a supposed afternoon at home.
‘Hullo, my Flower,’ he said. He used her old nickname, one he hadn’t said much since she came back from school, but still he looked tired. Distant.
