Sins

Emerald waited impatiently at the door. She hadn’t been put off when the new top society photographer, lauded in Tatler and the Queen, hadn’t replied to her letter to him from Paris insisting that she wanted him to take her new official débutante photograph, and nor had she changed her mind about the importance of having him do just that.

She had quickly discovered on her return to London that she was far from the only contender for the position of HRH The Duchess of Kent, and that invitations offering an opportunity for débutantes to meet the duke were very carefully monitored by those who managed to secure his presence at any event. Naturally, she was not going to be readily invited to parties the duke was attending by the mothers of other débutantes, for instance. Emerald quite understood that, and she understood too that she was going to have to use subtle, even underhand, means to ensure that she brought herself to the duke’s attention. Getting herself photographed by Lewis Coulter, and then being described as the season’s prettiest débutante would do her campaign no harm. His mother was bound to have copies of all the top magazines, and Emerald could easily imagine her pointing her photograph out to her son and saying what an impeccable lineage. At least on her father’s side. It was a pity that her mother wasn’t better born. Emerald’s mouth thinned. Had she been, then Emerald wouldn’t have to think about strategies for bringing herself to the duke’s attention because her mother would naturally have numbered Princess Marina amongst her social circle.

Irritatingly, the young duke, instead of establishing himself in London and taking part in its social scene, seemed to spend most of his time in the country. Emerald made a small grimace of distaste. Once they were married that would have to change. She didn’t like the country at all. Of course, once she had given birth to their first child–a son, of course–it would be quite permissible for her husband to go to the country if he wished, whilst she spent time with her friends in London, but initially, as a newly engaged and then a newly married couple, they would appear together, he looking very much in love with her–which of course he would be.

She knocked again. Once Emerald had made up her mind about something she didn’t like any delay in putting it into action, and she was impatient to get the duke’s courtship of her started.

The cold wet February weather had brought almost the entire household down with heavy colds, with the exception of Emerald, enabling her to escape from her godmother’s chaperonage to visit the photographer.

Emerald was enjoying living at Lenchester House. It was, after all, by rights more her house than anyone else’s. It was all very well for her mother to point out that Mr Melrose doggedly believed that there was an heir. Mr Melrose was an old man, after all, and if there was such an heir then why hadn’t he made himself known and claimed his inheritance?

Emerald raised her hand to bang on the door again, only to find that it was being opened by a tall broad-shouldered young man with thick untidy dark brown hair, which was fairer at the ends, and a cross expression.

Emerald, who had seen photographs of Lewis Coulter in the society columns, gave Dougie a haughty look and declared, ‘I’m here to see Lew.’ Then she swept past him, leaving him no option other than to close the door behind her.

‘He won’t see you without an appointment,’ Dougie warned, but Emerald simply shrugged.

‘I wrote to him to tell him that I’d be coming to see him and he will see me. My mother particularly wants him to take my coming-out photograph.’ She delivered the lie without a blink.

‘Lew’s out at the moment and he won’t be back until, well, much later, but you can leave your details, if you like, and I’ll tell him that you called. What’s your name?’

‘Lady Emerald Devenish,’ Emerald told Dougie haughtily, his Australian accent causing her to view him with open contempt.

Lady Emerald Devenish. That was the family name of the Lenchesters. This then was…Dougie let go of the door he was still holding open, hurrying after Emerald as she stalked into the room, and then bumped into his own desk.

Emerald gave him a withering look. She certainly wasn’t going to waste her charm on a boring colonial with a dreadful Australian accent. How very odd that a photographer with Lew’s reputation, who surely ought to have known better, was actually employing this uncouth Australian.

Dougie watched Emerald warily. She was everything he had assumed the upper classes would be. And she was also the nearest thing he had to ‘family’, someone who shared his blood–a true blood relative if this Melrose bloke had got his facts right. Perhaps he should go and see him, after all. Right now it would have given him a great deal of pleasure to tell her exactly who he was. From what he’d observed of high-society life, it wasn’t so very long ago that, when the head of a titled family spoke, that family jumped to attention. The thought of this arrogant little beauty being forced to kowtow to him was an appealing one, he had to admit. On the other hand, didn’t this head of the family stuff also carry a lot of responsibility? There was all that business of keeping the family name unsullied–at least that was what he’d gathered from some of the tales Lew had told him. The Lenchester family name wasn’t likely to remain unsullied for long once Lew got his hands on this minx.

Dougie’s sudden surge of protective responsibility was an unfamiliar and unwanted feeling, and one he determinedly pushed out of the way. After all, it wasn’t even proved yet that he was this ruddy duke, and so long as he didn’t go and see Mr Melrose, it wasn’t ever going to be proved. What did he want with a title, and the responsibility for a girl like this one who had already got his back up?

‘Look, why don’t I make you an appointment and then you can come back when Lew is here?’ he offered, having decided that for now it made sense to get her out of the way, for his own sake, if nothing else. If he ran true to form, any minute now Lew was likely to return with his latest conquest.

Did this…this Australian nobody think she was going to fall for that, Emerald wondered. She looked round the small sitting room and then made her way to one of the sofas, seating herself carefully on it to ensure that her legs were displayed to their best advantage.

‘I’ll wait,’ she announced, before picking up one of the magazines on the coffee table and starting to flick through it.

She certainly was a little madam, Dougie decided. Someone should have put her across their knee years ago and paddled her backside until she learned a few manners. It was too late now, of course. She was certainly nothing like the three girls he remembered from the party; they had all been really decent sorts, not arrogant little snobs like her. Well, she’d certainly get her comeuppance when Lew did show up. His favourite mantra was that no day was worth living unless it contained both sex and work, and when he returned it would be with sex on his mind. Lew could deliver caustically cruel put-downs when he was so minded. Dougie had seen Lew reduce girls to tears with his unkindness when he was irritated or bored with them.

But so what if he did hurt this little madam’s feelings? Why should he care? He returned to his typing, breathing heavily over the unwanted task made all the more difficult by the small keyboard and the size of his hands.

Really, the man was disgustingly boorish, Emerald decided contemptuously. All that heavy breathing interspersed with the odd swear word. He looked as though he’d be more at home on a farm than working here, although no doubt the nature of his work was equally menial. He wasn’t even properly dressed. Instead of a business suit he was wearing a pair of those silly narrow black trousers that a certain type of bohemian young man wore teamed with a black polo-neck jumper, its sleeves pushed back to display muscular tanned forearms. A lock of his thick dark brown hair had fallen down almost over his eyes, adding to his uncouth appearance. Emerald was more used to men with the traditional short back and sides, favoured by the establishment and the services.

The sound of the front door suddenly opening had them both looking towards it, Emerald’s quickly prepared smile faltering for a moment as she saw the man coming in and immediately recognised him as the society photographer. What she hadn’t expected, though, was that he would be dressed in the same bohemian fashion as his dogsbody, only his polo-neck jumper was enlivened by a red and white spotted handkerchief knotted round his neck.

Lew was back and on his own. Dougie immediately recognised that his employer was not in a good mood. He had that air of suppressed tension and irritation about him that Dougie had learned to recognise. Predictably, though, the instant he saw Emerald that tension was broken, replaced by one of his deliberately caressing looks accompanied by a warm smile.

Now the fat was really in the fire, Dougie recognised. Deprived of his afternoon of sex with his girl, Lew would be like a cat on hot bricks until he had relieved his sexual tension, and who better to do so with than the snobby little madam sitting there looking at him with such confident expectation. Well, it would serve her right if he simply left her to her fate and she became yet another of the girls Lew picked up, seduced and then very publicly dropped, ruining her reputation as he did so.

Lew, predictably, was all charm, going over to Emerald to offer his hand and an apology.

‘I’m sorry. I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.’

‘She hasn’t got an appointment,’ Dougie felt obliged to point out, but neither of them was listening. Instead they were gazing deeply into one another’s eyes.

‘I did write to you, about you taking my coming-out photograph,’ Emerald was saying, her cut-glass accent suddenly accentuated and grating on Dougie’s already frayed nerves. ‘Once I’d seen the photograph you took of Amelia Longhurst I told Mummy that I couldn’t possibly have my photographs done by anyone else.’ She smoothed her hand over her skirt as she spoke. She had dressed very carefully for this meeting in the palest of pink cashmere twinsets, its plainness relieved by a string of startlingly lustrous pearls, and a deep rose-pink full mohair skirt that showed off her narrow waist, cinched in with a wide black patent belt. On her feet were a pair of high heels, and her handbag was from Hermès. Her hair, newly done that morning in a beehive, looked as delicate as spun glass, and she had outlined her lips in a soft pink lipstick. She looked, she had decided before leaving her bedroom, totally delectable and she had already visualised the photograph of her that would appear in Tatler and the words that would accompany it.

‘Lady Emerald Devenish is tipped to be the débutante of the season. Her ball will be held in her late father’s London house in Eaton Square, and HRH The Duke of Kent will be attending along with his mother, Princess Marina.’

The invitations had already gone out, and Emerald knew exactly what kind of speculation that wording beneath her photograph would give rise to. In the language of gossip columns it was tantamount to a pre-engagement declaration, but of course if anyone were to accuse her of exaggerating the situation she would simply pretend not to know what they meant.

The photographer was disappointingly short for a man who featured so often in the gossip columns as a man about town and a flirt, but Emerald had no more interest in him as a man than she did in the uncouth Australian. He was simply a means to an end.

‘Indeed not.’

Lew had been furious when his lunch date–a pretty young wife whose husband hated town and preferred to remain on their estate in the country–had refused to play ball, pretending that she hadn’t realised why he had suggested they had lunch together or what he had had in mind for the rest of the afternoon. But now the clouds that had darkened his temper had lifted. This girl was, if anything, even prettier than Louise, and unless he was wrong, far more sensual. One could always tell. They had a certain look about them that had nothing to do with experience. It shone from them like a special luminosity on the skin or like a definite scent on the air that surrounded them. This girl, a typical virginal deb on the outside, would on the inside be a positive volcano of passion. Teaching her to enjoy her sexuality would be like eating hot chocolate sauce on cold ice cream.

‘You’d better come up to my studio,’ he told Emerald. Without taking his gaze from her face, he added to Dougie, ‘Please see to it that I’m not disturbed for the rest of the afternoon.’

Dougie’s heart sank.

Well, why should he want to stop him? If she wanted to make a fool of herself and lose her reputation with a man who was known to be lethal, then why should he care?

Because if he was this duke, then she was family, that was why, and it was his duty to do what he could to keep his family and its name safe. Girls like this one married men to whom the virginity of their bride was almost as important as their lineage and their wealth, and all because of that important first-born son–and it had to be a son. Once the line was secured they didn’t seem to mind who their wives slept with, or so it seemed to him. He was not saying that he agreed with such practice; he didn’t really agree with hereditary titles either, if he were honest, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t exist. He was proof of that. One day an ordinary farmer back in Oz, the next a duke!

But perhaps he should go and see this Mr Melrose before he went round acting like some kind of saviour of the family name and reputation.

Lew loved his work every bit as much as he loved sex, and so taking photographs of Emerald before he seduced her was no hardship. In fact, photographing girls was the best part of his seduction technique, one that excited and aroused him as he watched them becoming excited and aroused at the thought of the lens of his camera capturing their beauty and freezing it for eternity. And then, of course, there were all those little touches as he showed them how he wanted them to pose for him, directing them, rearranging their limbs, caressing them with theatrical compliments and teasing little kisses. No wonder by the time he eventually took them to bed they were so eager for him.

He put on a smoochy Frank Sinatra record to help set the mood, whilst Emerald looked round the studio incuriously. She was well aware now just how Lew expected the photography session to end, but he was going to be disappointed. She was certainly not going to throw away her virginity on him, but since she wanted him to take her photograph she knew that she would have to string him along. Telling him that she had got her period should keep him at bay for today and when she called round to see the proofs she’d make sure that she had Lyddy with her. A call to Tatler pretending to be her mother should ensure that the magazine got on to Lew for the photographs and she could make sure that they added the wording she wanted at the same time.

A quick check through his camera lens assured Lew that Emerald was as photogenic as he had guessed she would be.

He removed his leather jacket and threw it over a chair, then pushed back the sleeves of his black jumper, telling her easily, ‘The twinset will have to go. There’s a screen there you can pop behind to change. There should be a robe there as well.’

Since the photograph that had brought her here had shown the bare shoulders of the deb he had photographed, Emerald wasn’t too alarmed by this suggestion. Once she was behind the screen and removing her twinset, though, his casual, ‘Oh, and you’d better take off your bra as well,’ caused her to tense for a moment. The robe he’d mentioned was a flimsy piece of silk through which it would be perfectly easy to see her bare breasts, but Emerald suspected that if she objected he would simply refuse to take her photograph. It wasn’t that she was particularly bothered about him seeing her breasts–in different circumstances she acknowledged that she might have enjoyed teasing him–but she had her reputation to consider and her planned future as HRH The Duchess of Kent. It would not do at all for her to have allowed any man, never mind a mere photographer, to have seen her naked to her waist. ‘What’s wrong? Do you need some help?’ Lew’s sudden appearance round the back of the screen, holding a glass and a bottle of whisky just as she was about to unfasten her bra, had Emerald whisking the wrap around herself and saying coquettishly, ‘No peeking.’ His response was to laugh and then say, ‘I dare say you are far too young and innocent for me to offer you a glass of whisky?’

Emerald made a small moue of distaste. ‘I’d have preferred a Martini.’

She had the most wonderful figure, Lew decided, firm pert breasts, and a tiny waist that together made her look almost voluptuous. He glanced at the pearls she had put with her twinset. Compared with the modest single or double row of pearls worn by most débutantes these were almost rococo in appearance, and glowing with colour.

‘Nice pearls,’ he commented,

‘They belonged to my great-grandmother.’

An idea had suddenly come to him. Reaching for them he told Emerald, ‘What I want you to do is to take off the wrap, put these on and then I want you to pose like so…’ Putting down his glass, he went over to the corner of the studio and picked up a dark green length of silk from his collection of ‘props’, which he threw on the floor and then lay down on it on his stomach, lifting his torso and propping his chin up with his hands.

Emerald frowned. The pose was an enticing one, a very promising one, in fact, for a girl who wanted to make her mark and stand out from the crowd, and it was one that appealed to her ego. Normally she would have jumped at the chance to show off, but the pose was also a very provocative one–far too provocative for the future wife of the Duke of Kent.