humour coming to her rescue, while she would have felt much more at home in Emma’s puritan outfit.
‘Your mother chose this for me. She said it was bound to create a good impression.’
‘Oh, it will,’ Natasha agreed humorously. ‘Pity she got her faiths mixed up, though. As I recall there never was much love lost between the aficionados of the high church and the Plymouth brethren.’
She saw that she had lost her cousin and sighed a little. ‘All right, I’ll wear your dress, Emma, but only…only because you haven’t given me any option, and only because I realise how important it is to you that Richard’s family accept you, although you know I suspect that Mrs T would respect you far more readily if you stood out against her and were your own person. Richard loves you for yourself, you know. If he’d wanted a carbon copy of his mother he’d have chosen—’
‘Louise Grey. Yes, I know that, but his mother doesn’t. She’s still convinced that a miracle is going to happen between now and the wedding day, and that Richard is going to open his eyes and realise that it’s Louise he loves and not me. And with that beast Luke to help her…If you’d been at the engagement party and seen the way he looked at me…’
‘In this? Come on, Emma, be your age. Any man—’
‘No, not that kind of way,’ Emma interrupted her irritably. ‘He looked at me…as though…as though I were a bad smell under his nose. Horrid man. You weren’t there…you don’t know.’
Natasha had missed the engagement party because she had been away on business, persuading a very difficult and jealous Italian manufacturer to allow her father to reproduce some of his designs for the English market.
‘Look, I’ll have to go down in a minute. I am grateful to you, Tasha. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t offered to help.’
‘Offered?’ Natasha protested indignantly, but Emma was already closing the door behind her.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE had never liked wearing stockings, Natasha reflected crossly—a fact which Emma had obviously remembered, since she had supplied her with a suspender belt as well as the impossibly fine black silk hosiery she was now wearing. And as for the height of these heels…She felt as though she were perched on stilts, towering above all the other women present.
Was it just her own self-conscious awareness of how very much more provocative the dress was than anything she would personally have chosen to wear that made her feel as though she were the cynosure of all eyes, or was it just because she was taller than Emma that she felt that the dress, startling enough when Emma had worn it, on her was not so much teasingly sensual as a direct and flamboyant statement of availability?
She had never in the space of one short half-hour collected so many admiring male glances nor so many disapproving female ones, nor was it an experience she would want to repeat, she decided irritably after she had fended off the fourth attempt of one of Richard’s ancient uncles to detach her from the rest of the guests.
‘I see Uncle Rufus has been making a play for you,’ Emma commented teasingly as she came up to her.
‘At his age, he ought to know better,’ Natasha retaliated acidly, and then added, ‘And don’t think I haven’t realised exactly why you blackmailed me into wearing this…this garment, Emma. With you dressed as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth and me looking like the original scarlet harlot—’
‘In black,’ Emma interposed dulcetly and then giggled. ‘I can’t wait to see Richard’s face when he arrives and sees us. He’s been delayed and he won’t be here until after dinner. He’ll be bringing Luke with him.’ She twisted her engagement ring nervously with her fingers. ‘You won’t let me down, will you, Tasha? I couldn’t bear to lose Ricky—not now. I never thought I’d ever feel like this. I never imagined I could ever become so emotionally dependent on anyone. It frightens me a little bit.’
Natasha’s stern expression softened. ‘I’m sure Luke Freres doesn’t have any intention of trying to come between you, but I won’t go back on my word, Emma. Even though I positively hate you for making me wear this appalling outfit. Stockings as well, and you know how much I loathe them.’
‘Really?’ Emma giggled again, giving her a coy look. ‘Men adore them. Richard said—’ She broke off and groaned. ‘Oh, no, here’s Mrs T bearing down on us, I’m off.’
‘Coward,’ Natasha whispered after her, as Emma adroitly whisked herself out of the way, leaving Natasha to face Richard’s mother alone.
‘Well, Natasha, this is a surprise,’ Mrs Templecombe said critically as she frowned at her. ‘We don’t expect to see you wearing that kind of outfit.’
Natasha had never particularly cared for the dean’s wife, although she had never attracted her criticism in the same way as Emma. That was the trouble about living in a small place where you had spent all your life. You knew everyone, and everyone knew you and felt free to air their opinions and views of your behaviour—even when you were long past the age when such views were welcome or necessary.
‘Anyway, isn’t that the dress Emma wore when she and Richard became engaged? I told her then it was most unsuitable.’
‘Which is why she passed it on to me,’ Natasha told her evenly. Much as she herself might sometimes disapprove of Emma’s behaviour, she was not going to aid and abet Mrs Templecombe in criticising her cousin.
‘Well, I must say I’m surprised to see you wearing it.’
‘I’m a career woman, Mrs Templecombe, and setting up my own business doesn’t allow me either the time or the money to waste on clothes shopping. To tell the truth I was grateful to Emma for offering to lend it to me.’
A lie if ever there was one, but Richard’s mother seemed to accept it at face-value.
‘Yes. I must say it was rather adventurous of you to open your own shop, and selling ecclesiastical fabrics to the general public.’
Her face suggested that what Natasha was doing was somehow or other in rather poor taste, making Natasha itch to say rebelliously that the cloth wasn’t sanctified, but instead she contented herself with murmuring, ‘Well, they’re very much in vogue at the moment, and are being snapped up by people with a taste for traditional fabrics who can’t afford to buy the original antiques.’
‘Ah, there you are, Lucille. Such a pity there isn’t time to show you round the gardens before dinner. I particularly wanted to show off the new section of the double border. We’ve planted up part of it with a mixture of old-fashioned shrub roses, underplanted with campanula and a very pretty mallow.’
Smiling gratefully at her aunt, Natasha adroitly excused herself, marvelling on the unsuitability of some people’s names as she walked away. Surely only the most doting of parents could have chosen to name Richard’s mother Lucille. Her second name was Elsie, which she much preferred and which everyone apart from Emma’s mother was wise enough to use.
If her aunt and mother were nothing else, they were certainly marvellous and inspired cooks, Natasha admitted when the main courses had been removed from the table and the sweet course brought in.
Another bone of contention between the ecclesiastical fraternity and her own family
