Scandals

‘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.

Chapter Seven (#ulink_5d22964b-9c5e-5cca-96be-491add20dd46)

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 publishing world gathered to ‘Celebrate the month of January’ at an ‘afternoon’ party hosted by Vogue magazine. Olivia had been invited, she rather suspected, in lieu of her mother, who was visiting friends with her father in Palm Beach.

Loud music, a mix of rock and industrial, pounded her eardrums. Waiters and waitresses, dressed in very little other than what looked like tinfoil and sequins, to reveal their perfectly honed bodies, danced and pouted their way through the guests in time to the music, carrying trays of champagne and tiny morsels of food, which Macey Greenberg, Olivia’s friend, had suggested cynically might contain some extra energy-giving or hallucination-inducing ingredients in view of the number of guests, including models, who were well known to have a drug habit.

‘That wouldn’t be any good for the models,’ Olivia had pointed out, before Macey had left on a mission to snag an interview with a not-as-yet-out gay singer for the music magazine for whom she freelanced.

Glamorous parties were supposed to be exciting, and Olivia was prepared to admit that she might have enjoyed this one if she hadn’t just realised that Tait Cabot Forbes was also one of the guests.

She’d seen him ten minutes or so ago, deep in conversation with the editor of the New York Times, no doubt planning to savage and potentially destroy yet another innocent victim so that he could claim some ego-boosting headlines for himself, Olivia thought bitterly.

Above the music she could just about hear the affected squeals of the group of very thin and very pretty young models, clustered together several yards away, the air around them blue with cigarette fumes as they smoked to keep their hunger pangs at bay. Poor things, Olivia thought sadly. She didn’t envy them at all. Watching them, she found it odd to think that once her own father had made his living photographing girls like them for fashion magazines.

Their extreme thinness emphasised Cindy Crawford’s far more sensual curves, the supermodel very much the centre of attention as the press photographers gathered round her.

One of the current crop of top fashion photographers was talking with an editor from British Vogue, who had flown in for the party. The Fashion Pack, including New York Vogue’s Grace Coddington, were all dressed in black, just as Olivia was herself. Pictures of the party would fill the new copy of Women’s Wear Daily, of course, and be pored over by its dedicated readers.

Her own Ralph Lauren dress was on loan from her mother, who had insisted that she borrow the sophisticated heavy black jersey tube of fabric that somehow magically became a ravishingly elegant dress once it was on, with a slashed neckline and just the hint of a small sleeve. With it Olivia was wearing a pair of diamond cuff bracelets, also her mother’s, and she had put her hair up, the whole effect, so her friend Macey claimed, very Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Olivia was just looking round for Macey when she felt a firm tap on her shoulder. Turning round, she was surprised and annoyed to see Tait Cabot Forbes standing behind her.

‘I’ve got a proposition to put to you,’ he told her without preamble, adding, when she stiffened, ‘No, not that kind of proposition. What I’m proposing is that we bury that hatchet you’re carrying around with you. It must be getting heavy and burying it will save you having to look for an opportunity to bury it in me.’

‘You mean like you tried to stick a knife into my father’s back?’ Olivia challenged him.

Tait spread open his hands. He had big hands with long fingers, Olivia noticed, his skin tanned and his nails clean without looking overmanicured in the way favoured by some New York men. His traditional Brooks Brothers shirt allied to law-school-graduate smartness made him stand out in a room in which most of the other men were attached to the fashion world and dressed flamboyantly.

‘There was nothing personal about my investigation into your parents’ relationship with Maisie Fischerbaum. That’s what I am – an investigative journalist.’

‘Earning your money and making your reputation by trying to destroy my parents.’

‘I got it wrong. I admit that. I’ve apologised to your folks.’

‘In private, but you never apologised publicly.’

His expression said that he was beginning to get annoyed with her. Good, Olivia thought. What had he expected? That she’d roll over and be thrilled because he’d attempted to talk her round? It took more than a too-good-looking face and way too much male confidence to do that.

‘Because your father asked me not to publish the reasons why he and your mother were appointed as trustees. I respected that, just as I respect your loyalty to your folks, but I’m beginning to get a bit tired of feeling that glower of yours burning through my skin every time you set eyes on me. So, how about we call a truce?’

‘You can call whatever you like,’ Olivia told him fiercely. ‘As far as I’m concerned you are still the man who tried to hurt my parents by writing things about them that weren’t true.’

Olivia turned on her heel and walked away from him. She would have walked past Macey as well, she suspected, she was so wound up and angry, if her friend hadn’t stepped in front of her waving a glass of champagne under her nose.

Olivia wasn’t going to turn round and see if Tait Cabot Forbes was even still there, never mind looking in her direction. In fact, what she’d like to do more than anything was leave the party early and go home in case Robert telephoned, which he sometimes did just before he went to bed. He hadn’t been able to come over to New York yet, as he’d hoped, but he’d promised he’d be over as soon as he could, and he’d told her that he’d informed his grandmother that Olivia would be accompanying him on his February visit to Lauranto.

Robert. Thinking of him, hugging the thought of him to herself was so much better than thinking about Tait Cabot Forbes. So very much better.

‘Katie.’