Sins

‘Well, it looks like you’ve made a conquest,’ one of the other girls murmured in Emerald’s ear, indicating who she meant. Lavinia Halstead was already as good as engaged to her second cousin in a match that had been encouraged by their parents almost from the moment of their births, and because of that she had the air of someone who was above all the anxiety of finding a suitable beau before the end of the season.

The young man in question was indeed staring at Emerald in a very admiring way. He was also, she recognised, extremely good-looking, with a head of thick black curls and intense dark eyes. She hadn’t seen him before. She would certainly have remembered him if she had. He was wearing a well-cut lounge suit, and the light from the chandeliers glinted on the heavy gold ring he was wearing on his right hand. She made a small moue of distaste. It was very off for men to wear jewellery, unless, of course, that jewellery was a symbol of status–a ducal ring, for instance, bearing a family crest. Still, he was awfully good-looking. And he was making no attempt to conceal his interest in her, watching her with almost feverish intensity.

‘Who is he, do you know?’ she asked Lavinia casually.

‘Oh, yes, he was at school with my brother.’

The Halsteads were a devout Catholic family, whose sons were always schooled at a Jesuit-run Catholic boarding school in Cumbria.

‘He doesn’t look English,’ Emerald stated, giving him another assessing glance. That olive-toned skin combined with those thick dark curls could never belong to anyone English, nor could that hotly demanding and passionate look he was giving. It was rather delicious to have such a good-looking boy gazing at her with such obvious out-of-control longing, rather like being bathed in the heat of Mediterranean sunshine.

‘No, Alessandro is Laurantese.’

‘Laurantese? What on earth does that mean?’ Emerald demanded suspiciously, half suspecting that Lavinia was deliberately teasing her.

‘It means that Alessandro is from Lauranto,’ Lavinia informed her in a reproving, almost schoolmistress-like voice. ‘Lauranto is a small principality, like Monaco or Liechtenstein, on the coast between Italy and France, the Côte d’Azur. In fact, Alessandro isn’t merely from Lauranto, his family actually rule it–Alessandro is the Crown Prince.’

Emerald looked again at her admirer. A crown prince!

Whilst Lavinia had been talking, Gwendolyn, in that typically sneaky way of hers, had managed to detach herself from the girl she had been with to come over and listen in on their conversation.

‘Foreign princes aren’t proper princes,’ she announced disparagingly. ‘Not like our own royal family.’

‘Of course they are proper princes,’ Emerald told her sharply. ‘How can they not be? A prince is a prince, after all.’

‘Now that he’s seen me talking to you, he’s bound to expect me to introduce him to you,’ Lavinia told Emerald. ‘I should warn you that he is fearfully, well, foreign, if you know what I mean, and very intense. He only joined Michael’s school in their last year. He’d been educated privately at home before that. His mother is terrified that something might happen to him, he being her only child. His father was killed in a hunting accident just after he was born and, according to what Alessandro has told Michael, his mother thinks that his father’s death might not have been an accident and that it could have been part of a plot by Mussolini to annex Lauranto. His mother can’t wait for him to get married and start producing lots of heirs and spares to fill the royal nurseries.’

Lyddy Munroe had joined then now, and after Lavinia had excused herself to go and rejoin her mother, who was signalling to her, Lyddy turned to Emerald and said excitedly, ‘Imagine marrying a prince, and having your very own country, just like Grace Kelly marrying Prince Rainier.’

‘You’d never catch me marrying a foreigner,’ Gwendolyn told them sniffily.

‘No, I dare say you wouldn’t,’ Emerald agreed unkindly. ‘After all, you’d have to find one willing to marry you first.’

Gwendolyn’s face went beetroot red whilst Lyddy looked uncomfortable and confused.

Gwendolyn had had it coming to her, Emerald thought with satisfaction. She never lost a chance to needle her about her boast that she would marry a title better than her mother’s, and she was just waiting for her to fail so that she could crow over her. But she wasn’t going to fail, Emerald assured herself, darting a teasing look in the prince’s direction before turning her back on him. Gwendolyn was right about one thing: marrying a foreign prince did not have the same cachet as marrying a member of one’s own royal family. However, there was no harm in her holding her new admirer in reserve, and using him to make the Duke of Kent jealous.