I can’t. I’ve got to be back by half-past one so that Piers can go out and measure up for a new commission.’
Piers Jeffries was Ivor’s senior assistant, a good-looking young man, who affected to like Rose and want to help her, but who at the same time seemed to have the knack of somehow working things so that whenever anything went wrong, she ended up being blamed. Piers might publicly sympathise with her and even take her side with their impatient and quick-tempered employer, but Rose suspected that privately he enjoyed her falls from grace.
‘I need to check the provenance of one of my great-uncle’s designs,’ Rose explained. ‘Ivor has a client who wants to use it and he’s enquired about its origins. The trouble is that he doesn’t know the name, he can only describe it.’
Anna gave a derisory snort. ‘And he thinks you’ll be able to find it in half an hour! Didn’t you remind him that we have over two hundred different designs available here from your great-uncle’s drawings?’
‘There’s a bit of a panic on. The client is impatient to get things moving, and Ivor has promised him the information this afternoon. Ivor doesn’t like it if we make things seem other than effortless. I think it’s one of the Greek frieze designs, so I’ll start with that book.’
‘You run upstairs then, and I’ll send Belinda up with a cup of tea for you.’
Whilst the ground floor of the Walton Street premises were used as a showroom, the pattern books were kept upstairs in the workroom, which was also used as an office.
Since her aunt kept meticulous record and pattern books, it didn’t take Rose very long to find the fabric for which she was searching. Decorated with an imposing Greek frieze border, the fabric came in four different colourways: a warm red, royal blue, dark green and a rich golden yellow. The border pattern came from an original frieze held in a London museum, which her great-uncle had sketched, the piece of stone frieze itself having been brought back from his Continental grand tour by the Earl of Carsworth in the 1780s, according to the notes with the samples.
After writing down this information Rose swallowed her now cold tea before making for the stairs.
Outside it was even colder than it had been earlier, with an east wind that knifed through her, despite the thick warmth of her navy-blue cashmere coat–a present from her aunt when she had started her job–a coat that created ‘the right impression’, Amber had said.
The right impression. Sadness shadowed Rose’s eyes as she flagged down a taxi. She would have to pay the fare herself, of course, but that would be better than risking being late back. What her aunt had not said, but what they both knew, was that with her physical inheritance from her mother, it would be all too easy for people to place her not as the niece of one of Cheshire’s richest women, a woman whose first husband had been the Duke of Lenchester and whose second was the local gentry, but instead as the daughter of a poor Chinese immigrant.
The truth was, of course, that her mother had not been anything as respectable as that.
‘Your mother was a whore, a prostitute who sold her body to men for money,’ her cousin Emerald had once taunted Rose.
Rose knew that Emerald had hoped to shock and hurt her but how could she when Rose had heard her late father saying the same thing so often in his drink-and drug-induced outbursts.
She was the reason he had had to turn to drink, to drown out the despair and misery of the life her existence had forced on him, her father had often told her. Her, the child he loathed and detested, and who looked just like her Chinese whore of a mother.
After his death, Rose had been terrified that she would be sent away–back to China, where Emerald had told her that their great-grandmother wanted her to be sent, but thanks to her aunt she had been given a home beyond her wildest dreams.
Her aunt Amber and her husband, Jay, had been wonderfully kind and generous to her. She had been brought up at Denham Place, alongside her cousin Emerald, the product of Amber’s first marriage, Jay’s two daughters from his first marriage, Ella and Janey, and Amber and Jay’s twin girls. She had been sent to the same exclusive boarding school as Ella and Janey, and, like them, had gone to St Martins, the famous art and design college in London. She was made to feel just like one of the family–a blessed relief after her wretched early childhood, when her taking one step out of place had provoked her father into a rage–by everyone, that was, except Emerald. For some reason, she loathed Rose and even now, her barbed remarks were frequent and just as poisonous as ever.
Now Rose lived with Ella and Janey in a four-storey Chelsea house, Amber’s pied-à-terre during her bimonthly visits to London to oversee her interior design business.
Rose thought the world of her aunt. There was nothing she wouldn’t have done for her. Amber had protected her and supported her and, more than that, she had loved her too. So when Rose had realised how much it pleased her aunt that she enjoyed talking about interior design, Rose had determined to learn as much about that world as she could. That in turn had led to her aunt encouraging Rose to train as an interior designer so that one day she could take over the running of the business from Amber.
The knowledge that her aunt placed so much trust and had so much belief in her had filled Rose with renewed determination to do everything she could to repay her love and kindness. And that was why she was determined not to let anyone see how much she disliked working for Ivor Hammond.
Her aunt had been so pleased when her old friend Cecil Beaton had announced that he had recommended that Ivor Hammond take Rose on as a trainee.
‘You’ll learn so much more than I could ever teach you, darling, working with him, and I know that one day you will be London’s most sought-after interior designer.’
The taxi was coming to a halt outside the Bond Street showroom of her employer.
The window of the showroom was decorated with an impressive pair of Regency carver chairs, and a mahogany bureau on which stood a heavy Georgian silver candlestick.
Ivor specialised in the kind of furniture and décor that was already familiar to the upper classes, and which appealed to those who aspired to it. Rose’s own taste ran to a look that was less fussy and more modern, but she knew that she would never say so. If her aunt believed that Ivor was the right person to teach her about interior design then Rose was going to believe it as well, and she was going to crush down those rebellious ideas of her own that had her longing for something more exciting and innovative.
‘Oh, there you are, Chinky.’
Even though Piers’ words made her flinch inwardly, Rose did not voice any objection. She had been called worse, after all. Her great-grandmother had made no secret of the fact that she abhorred having ‘an ugly yellow brat’ for a great-granddaughter.
‘Got the info the boss wants, have you? Only I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if you haven’t ’cos he isn’t in a very good mood. The pools winner came in whilst you were out and cancelled her order.’
‘I thought he’d said that he didn’t want to take her on as a client anyway,’ Rose responded.
Their employer had been, Rose thought, unnecessarily cruel about the peroxide blonde, who had tripped into the shop wearing a leopardskin coat and too much scent, to announce that she and her hubby had had a win on the football pools and that they were buying a ‘posh mansion flat’ that they wanted redecorated for them.
‘He
