for doing that. Never. Both Nanny and Great-grandma had always said that Rose was a mere nobody; a child who should have been left to die, whilst Emerald was the daughter of a duke, one of England’s richest men; an honourable heroic man, whom everyone had admired, not like Rose’s father, a wastrel and a drunk. Great-grandmother had always said that the reason Uncle Greg drank so much was because he was so bitterly ashamed of Rose. By rights Emerald’s mother should have felt the same way instead of treating Rose as though she was someone special–more special than Emerald herself. That, of course, was impossible. Emerald believed that the reason her mother made such a fuss of Rose was because she was jealous of Emerald, jealous of the fact that Emerald had been born a duke’s daughter and had been so much loved by her father that he had left her virtually all his money. A fortune…
If she could have done so, during her childhood Emerald would have demanded that she be allowed to live in one of her father’s houses, as befitted her status, and not at Denham with her mother and Jay and the others.
She had flatly refused to attend the same school as the others, and where they had treated their coming-out parties and presentation at court as old-fashioned rituals to be gone through for form’s sake, Emerald had deliberately held back from having her own until afterwards so that she didn’t have to share with them. Now she was insisting on having the kind of season that her great-grandmother had told her about when she had been younger. Blanche Pickford might not have possessed any blue blood herself but she knew its importance and she had made sure that Emerald knew it as well.
Well, it wasn’t Rose who had a title and a fortune, and it wasn’t Rose who would be the débutante of the season and who would marry a man who would make her even more important. Then Emerald’s mother wouldn’t be able to ignore her in favour of a Hong Kong gutter brat, or insist, as she had tried to do so often, that Emerald and Rose were equals. Emerald had always been determined that she must be the winner in every contest with a member of her own sex.
Always.
The man who had been watching her was standing up and looking as though he was about to come over to her. Emerald eyed him calculatingly. Her admirer wasn’t very tall and his hair was thinning a little. Disdainfully Emerald turned her back on him. Only the very best of the best was good enough for her: the tallest, the most handsome, the richest and the most titled of men. Her step-siblings, with their ridiculous plans to work, like common little shop girls, would have no option other than to end up with dull ordinary husbands, whilst Rose, of course, would be lucky if she found any decent man willing to marry her at all. But it was different for Emerald. She could have and must have the most eligible, the most prized husband there was.
In fact Emerald had already chosen her husband. There was in reality only one man it could be: the elder son of Princess Marina, the Duke of Kent, who was not just a duke like her father had been but, even better, a royal duke. Emerald could see herself now, surrounded by the envious gaggle of bridesmaids, all of them green with envy because she was marrying the season’s most eligible man.
They would be in huge demand, invited everywhere, and other men would look at her and envy her husband, other women would look at her and be filled with jealousy because of her beauty. Emerald intended to cut herself off from her family. She certainly intended to refuse to have anything to do with Rose. As a royal duke her husband couldn’t be expected to socialise with someone like Rose, and since her mother thought so much of her then she wouldn’t mind being excluded from Emerald’s guest lists so that she could keep Rose company, would she? Emerald smiled at the thought.
The young Duke of Kent had celebrated his twenty-first birthday only the previous year, and had already gained a reputation for being very difficult to pin down when it came to accepting invitations, but of course she would have no trouble in attracting him, Emerald knew. He wouldn’t be able to help falling in love with her. No man could.
It was a pity that the Duke of Kent didn’t own a proper stately home, not one of those dreadful ugly places that even the National Trust wouldn’t take on, but rather somewhere like Blenheim or Osterby. She would have to have a word with Mr Melrose, her late father’s solicitor and her own trustee, Emerald decided. It was surely only right and proper that, as a royal duchess, she should have the use of her late father’s property and estate; there was Lenchester House in London, where she was having her coming-out ball, and the family seat as well. Her mother had tried to prevent her from having her coming-out ball at Lenchester by saying that technically they had no right to use the house, which now had been inherited through the rule of primogeniture, along with everything else that was entailed to the dukedom, by the new ‘heir’: the grandson of her late father’s great-uncle, the ‘black sheep’ of the family who had been shipped off to Australia as a young man. Initially, it had been thought that this black sheep had died without marrying, but then it had come to light that there had been a marriage and a son, who in turn had produced a son of his own. Now Mr Melrose was trying to track him down. However, Mr Melrose had agreed with Emerald that there was really no reason why, as her late father’s daughter, she shouldn’t have her ball at Lenchester House. Her father would have wanted her to do so, Emerald was sure. And she was sure that he would much rather have seen her living at Osterby and Lenchester House than some heir he had never met. And who would now inherit Osterby and everything else, simply because he was male.
Lenchester House was magnificent. Until recently it had been let out to a Greek millionaire, and Emerald could see no reason why she and the duke shouldn’t lease it from the estate once they were married.
Mademoiselle Jeanne was still droning on about the Mona Lisa. Emerald gave the portrait a dismissive look. She was far prettier. And anyway, she thought the portrait dull. She preferred the striking strokes of brilliant colour favoured by more modern artists, the kind of paintings her mother would never dream of hanging at Denham. Emerald rather thought that she might become a patroness of modern art once she was married. She could imagine the praise she would receive from the press for her excellent eye and taste, and the entries in the gossip columns that would confirm her status: ‘HRH The Duchess of Kent is London’s premier hostess, as well as being a well-known patroness of modern art.’
Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Kent. Emerald preened, thinking how well the title suited her.
Ella shivered as she stepped out of the building that housed Dr Williamson’s rooms and into Harley Street, not so much from the raw biting wind as from shocked disbelief and excitement that she had actually done what she had done.
She had been weighed and measured by a smartly uniformed nurse, had filled in a long form giving all her medical details, and had then been told by the serious-looking Dr Williamson that for the good of her health she really did need to take the course of medication he was going to prescribe for her in order that she could lose weight.
She was to take two pills per day, one after breakfast and one late afternoon, and then after a month she was to return to him to be weighed and measured and given another prescription.
It wasn’t cheating, Ella had reassured herself. All the diet pills would do was help her to control her appetite. And when she had controlled it and lost some weight, then no one, but especially Oliver Charters, would laugh at her behind her back ever again.
‘Janey, I’m still not sure that we should be going to this party,’ Ella protested, feeling irritated and exasperated when she saw that, instead of listening to her, Janey was concentrating on drawing a thick black line round her eyes, the tip of her tongue protruding slightly between her lips as she did so.
‘We can’t not go,’ Janey announced,
