Scandals

‘I don’t see that I have any option.’ That much was true, although Robert knew that Drogo would interpret his statement as meaning that he felt he had a duty to step into his father’s shoes for the sake of the people, rather than because he had a driving need to take up the challenge for himself.

‘Oh, Robert, no. I can’t believe you are giving in to that old harridan and letting her persuade you into accepting the Crown, after the way she’s behaved,’ Emerald announced coming into the library in time to hear Robert’s comment.

She went over to kiss the top of Drogo’s head. ‘And I can’t believe how difficult it is to get this family organised. I’ve had to take Jamie out this morning and buy him new Wellingtons, he’s grown so much whilst he’s been at Eton. Emma is still fussing about what she’s going to take to Italy with her when she goes back there with Polly after the Christmas holiday, Katie isn’t even home from Oxford yet, and we’re supposed to be leaving for Macclesfield tomorrow morning.’ Whilst Drogo smiled indulgently at his wife, Emerald warned her elder son, ‘It’s your decision – I know that, darling – but once she’s got her claws into you Alessandro’s mother won’t rest until she’s taken over every aspect of your life, including finding you a wife. All she wants you for is to produce future heirs.’

Robert smiled, looking unfazed by his mother’s comment. Emerald sighed inwardly: why was it that her eldest child, conceived in the wild passion of her youth, should be so lacking in that wild passion himself? Like any mother she wanted to protect her children from emotional pain, but sometimes she found herself almost wishing that Robert would fall passionately and even hopelessly in love, if only so that he would know what passion was. Emerald couldn’t imagine how anyone’s life could be fulfilling without having tasted that emotion, even though as a mother that wasn’t something she would ever say to her children, especially not to Robert, who sometimes looked at her as though he was the older and wiser of the two.

‘The country has a population of three million, most of whom are scratching a living under the burden of a feudal system,’ Robert told his parents. ‘It’s practically bankrupt financially and the governing élite are certainly bankrupt morally.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you have to become Saint Robert and go riding to its rescue,’ Emerald pointed out.

Robert laughed. He knew his mother, and he knew all about the old enmity that existed between her and his paternal grandmother. They were both very strongminded and determined women who liked getting their own way.

‘I’ve agreed to go back and talk with my grandmother again in the New Year, once I’ve had a chance to think things through. The country does have potential, its people could be so much better off if things were handled differently. All the royal and government buildings in the old city are early eighteenth century and desperately in need of renovation. As an architect I’d love to get my teeth into that challenge.’

That was true, but Robert was deliberately promoting that project as a means of concealing from his mother how he really felt.

‘Think of it,’ he teased her. ‘All that scope for using Denby Mill silks. Surely that would be a form of revenge worth having? The mill could do with the business, after all, from what you’ve been saying.’

Emerald sighed, distracted, as Robert had intended that she would be.

‘That’s true. This current fashion for glazed chintz swagged everywhere has affected our sales, although we have had some success with the new Sweetpea design. I envy Angelli Silk, and their historical connections with Italy’s opera houses, which mean that they get the commissions when they need refurbishment.’

‘Denby Silk has its contracts with the National Trust,’ Robert pointed out.

‘We do have some contracts with them, yes, but they don’t use us exclusively. The American market is where the future lies and where we need to succeed. I’m going to have a word with Ella whilst she’s over about seeing if we can get some of the top-rank New York interior designers to start using our silks…and it’s all very well you sidetracking me, Robert,’ she continued, returning to their earlier topic of conversation, ‘but if you go ahead and become Crown Prince you will have to marry, because it will be your duty to produce an heir.’

Robert had dated any number of young women over the years but hadn’t as yet shown any inclination to settle down, and for a very good reason, but it was not one he could communicate to his mother. The early years of Robert’s life, before his mother had married Drogo, had been very turbulent. Emerald had partied hard and lived life to the full, as the saying went. One of her lovers had been a notorious East End gangster, Max Preston. Robert had been seven then.

Memories he preferred to keep safely locked away would surface abruptly against his will: his mother’s frightening changes of mood; the sound of slammed doors and screaming arguments; the sounds from her bedroom one night when he had woken up in the dark feeling afraid and alone, and had gone there seeking comfort. He had been afraid for her when he had heard the noise, the man’s voice thick and harsh, his mother’s begging over and over again, ‘Please…please…please…’

He had opened the door and seen…

Perhaps every child inadvertently witnessing a parent having sex retained the same feeling of revulsion that he felt. Perhaps, like him, they put those memories in a box and buried that box very deeply with a stone slab on top of it. Perhaps they also grew to adulthood too sharply aware of the danger of out-of-control passion, fearful of it and determined, like him, never to let it take control of them. Perhaps. But Robert didn’t know, because it wasn’t the kind of thing that anyone discussed.

Now, whilst sexually his taste ran to intelligent, feisty, exciting, passionate and even challenging women, his experiences as a child meant that he had decided that he would never want to commit permanently to such a woman. They were too intense, too adversarial, too demanding and high maintenance emotionally and mentally for the men who loved them, and to their families. Life with them was a roller coaster that mowed down everything and everyone in its path. Robert had no intention of allowing himself to ride such a roller coaster. Better to enjoy the passion and the excitement, but to keep the woman who provided it at a safe distance, to make sure she was dispensable. For that reason he had decided that he would not marry. There had been, after all, no need. But the death of his father and his grandmother’s approach to him had changed all of that. If he was to satisfy his now driving ambition to become Crown Prince of Lauranto then he would have to marry, as his mother had just pointed out.

His mother and his paternal grandmother would fight – virtually to the death, he suspected – to be the one to select his bride for him, so it was far better that he selected his own bride. He had, in fact, already done so. The right wife for him, as Crown Prince of Lauranto, would be a wife whose whole loyalty was to him, who supported him unquestioningly, and whose temperament was such that she would accept that her role must be a supportive rather than a leading one. She must love him and only him, but at the same time she must not be passionately possessive or openly sexual in her attitude or behaviour. She must have the intelligence, the education, the confidence and the right kind of nature to be his consort, and she must, of course, look good. It was a long list of requirements but Robert knew someone who filled them all.

Olivia, the cousin he knew already loved him. Olivia, who was elegant, well groomed, well educated, calm, and whose loyalty to him would be absolute.

However, he had no intention of telling his mother what was in his mind – yet.

It was only later, when Robert had returned to his own home – the penthouse apartment in a stylish new block for which he had been the lead architect – that Emerald showed Drogo how anxious she really was about her son’s future.

‘Is it selfish of me to hope that Robert will turn down Alessandro’s mother, and refuse the Crown?’

‘I don’t know,’ Drogo replied carefully, ‘but I do know that it won’t help if you keep running her down to him, because ultimately if he does decide to accept that could put him in an awkward position.’

Strong-willed Emerald might be, but she hated feeling that her husband disapproved of something she’d said or done.

‘But she is such a horrendous monster,’ she insisted, turning on the slender heel of her damson-coloured Charles Jourdan court shoes and walking towards the window, the cut of her Chanel tweed suit, flecked with lilac, damson and white against a black background, discreetly outlining her curves.

Even with the sharp winter light falling on her, to Drogo she still looked as stunning as she had done when he had first seen her.

When she finally turned and saw the look of love and concern on her husband’s face, she walked back to him and put her head on his shoulder.

‘I only want Robert to be happy, Drogo – is that so very wrong?’ She paused and then added in a voice shorn of her normal confidence, ‘Sometimes I wonder if it’s true what they say about being careful what you wish for.’

‘Meaning?’ Drogo invited.

‘When Robert was born I felt triumphant because no matter what Alessandro’s mother might choose to think, Robert would always be Alessandro’s first-born son and his rightful heir. Since then I’ve wished so often that you had been his father. That way he’d always be here, with us, part of us and our way of life.’

It was so unlike Emerald to show any hint of vulnerability or regret, that Drogo took her in his arms, wanting to comfort her.

‘If he accepts what Alessandro’s mother offers him,’ Emerald went on, ‘then he won’t be part of us any longer. I worry for him, Drogo. We’ve brought him up to be comfortable in the life he has here in England; Alessandro’s mother will want him to be Alessandro’s son, charming but weak, royal but malleable, a handsome puppet prince.’

‘You’re underestimating Robert,’ Drogo tried to comfort her. ‘He is his own man, Emerald.’

‘It would all have been so much better if he had been your son – not that I’d want James disinherited, of course – but, Drogo, how on earth am I going to face owning up to a son who is the Crown Prince of somewhere as ridiculous as Lauranto? Everyone who’s anyone knows that a European title is merely a joke compared with a British title.’ Emerald gave a small shudder, reassuming her normal mantle of assured superiority. ‘We can’t let him make even more of a Ruritanian comedy of himself by marrying some girl with the trumped-up title of “Princess” just because it suits Alessandro’s mother.’

‘No, better by far that he marries someone we have chosen for him,’ Drogo agreed straight-faced.

Emerald leaned back within the circle of his arms and looked up at him. It’s all very well you laughing, but these things are important, Drogo.’

‘I’m prepared to agree that if Robert does step into Alessandro’s shoes then it will be important that he marries someone he loves, someone who understands the demands of his role and her own, and who can deal with the problems those demands may cause them both, but as for us choosing that someone – just think how you would have felt if your mother had chosen your husband for you.’

Still looking up at him, Emerald told him derisively, ‘She did – she chose you, even if she has never said so.’

‘Mmm. Well, there are exceptions to every rule,’ Drogo allowed, with a grin, before bending his head to kiss her.

Chapter Three (#ulink_d4175e01-b17e-54bd-9154-021219ba4ea1)

‘It’s definite then, Nick? This separation, I mean. There’s no chance of the two of you…?’ Rose Simons asked her stepson sadly.

‘No, none. Sarah has made that more than clear. She’s even had the locks changed. Her father’s idea, no doubt.’

Nick’s voice might be as crisp as the shirt he was wearing – laundered, no doubt, professionally rather than by his wife – Rose thought wryly, but she knew her stepson, and she knew the vulnerabilities and insecurities Nick was so adept at hiding. Too adept? Was that part of the reason why he and his wife had separated? Because the experiences of the first twelve years of Nick’s life had made him wary of trusting others?

To the outside world Nick might be an aggressive and very successful corporate raider, whose photograph appeared regularly in the financial press, accompanied by articles praising his economic acumen, but to her he was still, in part, the troubled orphaned child she had taken to her heart.

Nick pulled out one of the matt chrome bar stools from the kitchen island unit where his stepmother had been chopping vegetables for the curry she planned to make for supper. The kitchen of the Chelsea town house Josh and Rose had bought together after their marriage, with its streamlined and highly individual chrome and glass décor, might not look as cosy and domesticated as the hand-painted, extortionately expensive Smallbone kitchen Sarah had insisted on having fitted in the overpriced house in The Boltons she had fallen in love with, but Nick knew which kitchen he felt most at home in and where he felt most valued.

His stepmother had her own unique style, which owed much to the fact that she was a very successful designer of both commercial and private house interiors, working from the family-run Walton Street shop, first opened by her aunt Amber, and something to the oriental genes inherited from her Chinese mother. To those who didn’t know her, from the top of her polished still-black pixiecut hair, to the hem of her strikingly simple black dress, Rose Simons breathed a style that appeared intimidating, but Nick knew the loving heart Rose concealed beneath her couture clothes and her businesslike manner.

He couldn’t think of any other woman he knew and he knew plenty – who, on opening her front door to a scruffy, dirty, snotty-nosed unknown boy of twelve, who was announcing that her husband was his father, would have reached out, as Rose had done to him, to say calmly, ‘Well, I am pleased to hear that because if there’s one thing this house lacks, it’s a boy living here.’

‘Nick…’