sure if I come into the barred category or not, but I can warn you that Polly’s boys have asked her why they can’t play billiards, so if I were you…’ She could smell the telltale sweet scent of the dope and she turned to exchange a knowing smile with Robert, who was standing behind her. She’d finally crossed the bridge now that had previously divided them, leaving her on the side of the ‘young ones’, whilst Robert had been firmly on the side of the adults, and it felt good, Olivia acknowledged, it felt very good indeed. She watched in amusement as Emma and Katie started frantically flapping their arms in an attempt to move the sweet-scented air out of the window.
‘Here…’ she delved into her handbag and removed a small atomiser of scent to spray into the air around the door, ‘…this might help to provide a distraction.’
‘Softie,’ Robert teased her later as they walked out into the garden together, the only place they could really be sure of any proper privacy. ‘I dare say that the parents will do the same for them as they did for us, and pretend not to notice, knowing that in a very short space of time they’ll have grown out of it.’
‘Our parents maybe, but I am not so sure about Uncle John.’
‘Mmm…I see what you mean. He’s a good sort but more suited to the Victorian age in some ways, stiff upper lip, doing the right thing and behaving in the right way, and very conscious of being Lord Fitton Legh.’
‘That’s a bit unkind,’ Olivia objected.
‘But true?’
A little reluctantly, Olivia nodded.
Although as yet they’d done no more than exchange kisses, Olivia knew that Robert was serious about her, and about them.
‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to wait until February to see you again,’ he told her now.
‘I think you’ve been reading my mind,’ she admitted.
‘Delaying your return to New York and coming back to London with me would probably be a bit more obvious than either of us wants right now, but if I were to be able to snatch a couple of days in New York in, say, a couple of weeks’ time…?’
‘You’d be very welcome.’
‘I normally stay at the Pierre.’
‘My apartment has a spare room.’
They looked at one another, Olivia both smiling and blushing a little at what she could see in Robert’s eyes.
‘You’re quiet.’
Rose smiled at Josh. ‘I was thinking about Nick,’ she admitted. They were in the car on their way home from Denham. ‘I do wish there was something we could do to help him with Sarah.’
‘He’s a grown man and not a boy. He knows enough about the world to have sussed out why her parents wouldn’t exactly welcome him as their son-in-law.’
When Rose looked at him, he reached out and covered her folded hands with one of his own. She was so neat and compact and precise somehow, his Rose. And so vulnerable still, even after these years, still so sensitive to her own mixed-race heritage and the revulsion her great-grandmother had felt at the fact that Rose had a Chinese mother.
‘Rose, he’s working class, and Sarah’s father’s a titled, upper-class snob.’
‘Sarah chose to marry him.’ ‘Did she? Or did Nick choose for her? Look, I’m not knocking him – he’s my son – but he had a hard upbringing before he came to us. It’s bound to have affected him. He isn’t like me, we both know that. Nick’s got an edge to him, a need to win, simply for the sake of winning. To someone like Nick, brought up the way he was, marrying an upper-class girl like Sarah would seem like winning, and would be a goal he would set himself simply for the sake of that win.’
Rose shot Josh an unhappy look. ‘That’s not fair,’ she protested. ‘Look how hard Nick worked to buy Sarah that house. She and the boys have the best of everything.’
‘Of course they do. That’s part of the buzz for him, being able to give her more than the upper-class husbands of her friends can give them. It’s all about proving himself, Rose, about proving that he’s the best, but now he can’t, can he, because Sarah’s father is standing in his way, determined to prove that he’s the best.’
Rose gave him a troubled look.
‘Nick’s my son and I love him, Rose, of course I do, but that doesn’t mean that I’m blind to his flaws and faults any more than I am to my own. The trouble is that Sarah’s father is obviously intent on using those faults against him.’
‘Sometimes I think I shall never understand our children. Katie’s going round with a face like a wet weekend, insisting that she should still go skiing, with that broken arm.’
Folding clothes and putting them in the open case in their bedroom at Lenchester House, Emerald continued, ‘And then of course there’s Robert. Not a single word has he said to me about Olivia, and yet it’s obvious that something is going on between them. It’s only because Ella told me that Robert’s invited Olivia to go to Lauranto with him in February that I even knew he was going back, never mind taking Olivia with him. I really don’t like the idea of him getting involved over there, Drogo. I don’t trust Alessandro’s mother one little bit.’
Emerald paused and looked at her husband. ‘Do you think Alessandro’s mother will tell Robert about you know what?’
Drogo walked over to take her in his arms. He knew the real Emerald, the vulnerable Emerald she hid from the rest of the world. ‘About your father, you mean?’
Emerald nodded. ‘The Princess hates me and she always has done.’
Drogo knew how much it would hurt his wife’s fierce pride if the truth were ever to come out, although typically, rather than admit this, Emerald told him, ‘It would be dreadful for the children if they were suddenly to learn that their grandfather was a painter and not a duke, as they have always thought.’
‘I doubt very much that Alessandro’s mother will say anything. It’s in her own interests not to, apart from anything else. She wants Robert to take Alessandro’s place. Alienating him by revealing the truth to him isn’t something she would want to risk.’
‘You’re right.’
Drogo squeezed her arm gently. He knew how much, even now, she still hated the thought that her father had not been his predecessor, the late duke, but instead Jean-Philippe du Breveonet, painter of the picture of Amber, The Silk Merchant’s Daughter, now hanging in the National Gallery.
Outside, January snow might be falling on the New York avenues, children might be begging to be allowed to skate on Central Park’s frozen ponds, but here inside the Limelight disco on Sixth Avenue, in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, the air was heated to almost tropical warmth, as the élite of the fashion and
