Emily cried, sitting straight up. For an instant she was sure the cobwebs had trapped her, holding her limbs immobile. Then she realised it was only the blanket, tangled around her. She was on her bedroom chaise, where she had gone for an afternoon rest, safe in her own chamber.
It was only that nightmare again.
With a cry of frustration, Emily pulled the blanket free and tossed it on the green-and-white-flowered carpet. She lay back on the tufted velvet cushions and closed her eyes.
For a time, after the event, the dream had plagued her almost every night when she tried to sleep. It had got so bad, she would just stay up every night and go over all the business ledgers in her father’s library. Her hard work, and begging pleas, had finally convinced her father to let her stop with her social Season and go into business full-time with him. With work, lots of work, the nightmare stopped and she almost forgot that one stupid event.
But it seemed it didn’t want to be forgotten. Not entirely.
She had been a foolish girl, thinking a man like Gregory Hamilton—handsome, highly connected, known for being something of a rake—would be truly interested in her. Yet it had been her first Season, fresh out of school, and she had wanted to dance and flirt, to laugh. Then he’d got her out on the terrace at that ball and she’d realised how foolish she really had been.
She had got away then and Gregory had gone away to Ceylon. Work had made her forget that cold fear, but still the dream came sometimes.
It was the last time she would ever be foolish over a man, Emily had always vowed, and she kept that promise to herself now. She’d had lots of suitors, some of them just as handsome and rich as Gregory had been, all of them quite dull. None of them could tempt her. She threw herself into her work, into making her father’s business even more successful than before.
Except whenever she saw Chris Blakely. When he came near, her vows to be sensible seemed to just fly out the window. They quarrelled every time they met, the last time at Alex’s wedding to Malcolm Gordston, and then Lady Rippon’s garden party. Chris was quite hopeless, given up as a wastrel by everyone. But when he kissed her...
‘No more,’ she cried, kicking at the blanket.
‘Miss Emily,’ she heard her maid Mary call out, as Mary knocked at the door. ‘Are you quite all right? Edna thought she heard you cry out while she was dusting down the corridor.’
‘Oh, yes, Mary, I’m fine,’ she answered, reaching for the dropped blanket. ‘It was just a bad dream. I must have fallen asleep.’
Mary hurried in, Emily’s dinner gown of blue silk and chiffon draped over her arm. Emily glanced at the half-curtained window and saw that the light was dark amber now, almost evening. Her father would be expecting her soon for their shared meal.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sleep so long,’ Emily said, trying to smooth her rumpled hair.
Mary laid out the dress on Emily’s green-brocade-draped four-poster bed and searched the wardrobe for the matching shoes. ‘It’s no wonder, Miss Emily. You were gone before breakfast this morning.’
‘I had to check that the Gordston’s shipment was ready to go,’ Emily said. Alex’s husband, the owner of two, soon to be three, very successful department stores, was one of their best business partners.
She sat down at her dressing table and reached for her silver-backed hairbrush. She tried to pull out the knots in her thick, chestnut hair, but it was hopeless.
‘Here, let me do that, Miss Emily,’ Mary said, taking the brush with a tsk. ‘You’ll have no hair left if you keep on like that. And then what would we pin your hats to?’
Emily laughed, some of the tension of her dream dissipating. She thought of the rows and rows of hats that sat on their own shelf in the dressing room, feathers and bows and fruit on straw and velvet and silk. It was part of her job now to be always super-stylish, to advertise the latest fashions, and she had to admit it was a part of her job she rather enjoyed. ‘True. I leave myself in your capable hands, Mary, as usual. Is my father already downstairs?’
‘He’s in his library, I think, Miss Emily.’
Where he always was when he was at home in Cadogan Square. ‘Working, no doubt.’
Mary tsked again as she swirled Emily’s hair into an elaborate coil at the nape of her neck and secured it with tortoiseshell combs. She handed Emily a pair of aquamarine earrings. ‘You both work much too hard.’
‘What else is there to do?’ Emily murmured as she slid the jewels on to her earlobes. She thought of what her friends did: Alex with her charity work in Paris as she helped Malcolm run his stores, and Diana writing her magazine articles in Vienna, where she hosted diplomatic receptions for her husband Will. They were busy all the time, too, doing useful things. Emily had to do the same. One day, her work would no longer be hers to do and she would have to find something new. She rather longed for what Diana and Alex had, but such longings did no good. Work was what she had.
Mary frowned disapprovingly, making Emily laugh. Mary had been with the Fortescue household for years, starting as a tweeny when Emily’s mother was still alive, and Emily knew she had opinions about how they should run their lives. Mary always thought Emily should follow her friends’ examples and marry. Emily knew her father felt the same way, though he rarely said so. He would love to see her settled with a good husband, a son-in-law to help carry on his work.
But Emily knew that was impossible. After Gregory Hamilton and his cold hands on that terrace, she couldn’t face intimacy with another man—except for Chris Blakely, who was impossible for entirely different reasons. And she could never give up her work.
‘For now, I suppose, Miss Emily,’ Mary said. She helped Emily out of her brocade dressing gown and into her dinner dress. ‘Is there anything else you need?’
Emily reached for her gloves. ‘Not now, Mary, thank you. After dinner, I’ll need to change into a tweed suit, though, something sturdy. I’ll be off to the meeting of the Women’s Franchise League.’
* * *
By the time Emily hurried downstairs, her father was waiting in the drawing room, a pre-dinner sherry in hand, reading through the day’s newspapers. The financial pages, no doubt, Emily thought as she crossed the room to kiss his cheek. After a day visiting suppliers, checking accounts and lunching with clients, Albert Fortescue liked to know what his rivals were doing.
Emily glanced over her father’s shoulder as the butler handed her a cut-crystal glass of the ruby-red liquor. She saw an advertisement, a full half-page, for Gordston’s Department Stores of Paris, London and now Brighton.
‘I’m very glad to see Gordston’s is doing so well,’ she said. ‘I see he is carrying the latest hats from Madame Fronde’s! Anything about the expansion of the Paris store?’
‘Not here, but I was looking over the café accounts; we are at beyond capacity there every day. It was an excellent idea of yours to go into such a venture with Mr Gordston, Emily. We will be opening one in the London store any time now, I am sure.’
Emily gave a satisfied smile, remembering the hard work of setting up the elegant café in the Paris store. ‘I am certainly glad to hear it. It was a stroke of genius on our parts, I must say, for both us and
