dress—a fact which had obviously been appreciated by the less strait-laced of the male guests at the party.
It was the kind of dress it took an Emma to carry off with aplomb and certainly not the kind of dress Natasha herself would ever dream of wearing. She was just about to tell Emma as much when her bedroom door opened and her mother walked in. Like Emma, she adored clothes, and they adored her, Natasha acknowledged as she studied her mother’s appearance admiringly. Tall and still very slim, her mother was wearing pale grey silk, the simplest of styles and one which Natasha suspected had had a far from simple price-tag. Diamonds glinted discreetly in her ears, her hair and makeup were immaculate; she looked the epitome of the elegant and understated wife of a rich and indulgent man.
She frowned when she saw them, exclaiming, ‘Emma, here you are! Darling, you ought to be ready. You’ll want to make an entrance. I’ll keep everyone in the hall when they arrive and then you’ll come downstairs—’ She broke off when she saw that Emma was crying. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s Tasha. I wanted her to wear this dress, but she won’t. She says she’s going to come down to dinner in that awful beige thing she’s had for years. You know how we planned everything so that we’d all be in white, grey and black so that the table would look just right with the Meissen dinner service, and now Tasha’s going to spoil it all.’
‘Really, Tasha,’ her mother disapproved. ‘You are being difficult. You can’t possibly wear that dreadful beige.’
‘Neither can I wear this,’ Natasha told her mother through gritted teeth. Emma was an arch manipulator when she chose. She’d deal with her later, though. ‘Remember it—the discreet little number Emma wore for her own engagement party, the dress that virtually gave the archdeacon apoplexy every time Emma leaned forward.’
‘Oh, that dress—’
‘Tasha’s exaggerating,’ Emma interrupted. ‘It wasn’t that bad. I only want her to wear it because I want her to look her best. She never makes the most of herself—you’ve said so yourself. With her hair done like mine instead of screwed up at the back of her head, and this dress…It’s time people saw how attractive she really is. Do you know, I heard Mrs T actually telling Sara that she needn’t worry about how she looked in her bridesmaid’s dress because Tasha was bound to look worse, and, while Sara is still young enough to improve, Tasha is virtually on the shelf.’
Natasha closed her eyes and mentally cursed her cousin. If her mother had one fault, it was an almost obsessive antipathy towards Mrs Templecombe, coupled with a desire to upstage her on each and every opportunity—a discreet and very ladylike desire, of course, but nevertheless…
‘Oh, did she?’she declared grimly now. ‘Emma is right, darling. That dress would look wonderful on you. You’re tall enough to carry it off.’
‘Am I? And what do you propose I should do about this?’ she demanded grittily, picking up the dress and holding it in front of her by the shoulders so that her mother could see the full effect of its plunging neckline.
‘It’s perfectly decent,’ Emma interposed quickly. ‘It only looks as though—’
‘It’s about to fall off,’ Natasha finished acidly for her. ‘I am not wearing this dress.’
‘Oh, dear, I’m afraid you’re going to have to,’ Emma told her, managing to look both guilty and triumphant at the same time. ‘You see, I went through your wardrobe when I arrived and…’
Natasha rushed past her and threw open her wardrobe doors, staring at the empty space where her clothes should have been. She always kept a few things here—her formal evening clothes, her gardening wear and one or two other outfits.
As she closed the door she was more angry with Emma than she had ever been in her life. ‘I am not wearing that dress, Emma,’ she told her icily. ‘Even it if means staying up here all night,’ she added fiercely.
‘Oh, darling, you can’t do that. Think how it would look. Imagine what Richard’s mother would say. No, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do as Emma says and wear the dress. I’m sure it will look stunning on you.’
‘Yes, it will,’ Emma agreed eagerly. ‘And we’ve just got time to do your hair.’
‘Thank you, Emma, I’m quite capable of doing my own hair,’ Natasha told her grimly.
She was trapped and she knew it, but she could cheerfully have murdered her cousin when Emma paused by her bedroom door to remind her dulcetly, ‘Remember your promise…If Luke…’
Just for a moment, Natasha was tempted to tell her she had changed her mind, but she didn’t. She knew quite well that if Luke Freres did try to make trouble between Emma and her fiancé, she would have to stop him. Emma, for all her flightiness, her giddiness, genuinely did love Richard, and really had toned down her wild behaviour as she tried to conform to the standards expected by Richard’s family.
Privately Natasha thought that, the sooner Richard and Emma were free of the constraint of Richard’s family, the more chance of success their marriage would have. It was fortunate indeed that Richard’s first parish was so very far away in Northumberland, where there would be no risk of criticism and interference from his mother. Given the chance, Natasha suspected, Emma would make a very good, if somewhat unorthodox vicar’s wife. She genuinely cared about people and understood them, which was more than anyone could ever say for Mrs Templecombe, who expected everyone to live up to the same impossibly high standards as herself.
Twenty minutes later, as the first guests arrived, Natasha stood despairingly in front of her bedroom mirror wondering if she was out of her mind.
She had washed her hair, and blown it into the same stylish bob in which Emma wore hers, although minus the raffish spiky fringe which Emma adopted. With her hair worn in this style she acknowledged that there was a fleeting resemblance between Emma and herself, if one discounted the disparity in their heights.
Yes, the hair was all right, but as for the dress…
On, it looked even worse than she had expected. The hem finished at least a couple of inches above her knees, the deep décolleté Vs at the front and back of her bodice somewhere that fell just short of her waist. Cleverly sewn into the front of the dress were two pieces of soft shaping which allowed the observer to entertain himself while imagining that the slightest movement of her torso was likely to expose far more of her obviously naked breasts than merely the cleavage between them, yet ensuring that such a sartorial disaster was simply not possible, so that she could not claim as she had intended that she could not wear the thing for fear of disgracing them all by baring her chest to the entire assembled Templecombe clan—something her mother, whose taste was very sharp-edged, would never have allowed.
‘Oh, you’re ready, then.’
Natasha swung round, her appearance forgotten as she stared at her cousin. Emma was wearing something that looked as though it had been designed for a prim little puritan; grey silk with a huge white collar and cuffs and a delicate bell-shaped skirt that made her look fragile and delicate.
‘I’ve brought you these,’ Emma told her. ‘Black, silk stockings and satin shoes. I know you don’t have any.’
Gritting her teeth, Natasha threatened, ‘I don’t know why I’m letting you get away with this, Emma. You had it all planned, didn’t you? I look like the original scarlet woman, a fitting contrast to my demure little
