Sins

‘I can’t write about that. It looks dreadful,’ Ella’s boss was complaining. ‘I’m supposed to be covering exciting new young fashion; that looks more like something a county farmer’s wife, or a girl like Ella would wear. Where’s that dress we got from Mary Quant? Go and find it, will you, Ella?’ she demanded.

Oliver, who was standing in the open doorway, propping himself up as he talked to the model, was blocking her exit. The leather jacket he was wearing, combined with a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, gave him a raffish air that matched his overlong dark hair and the cigarette dangling from his mouth. Janey would have thoroughly approved of him but Ella most certainly did not.

‘Excuse me.’

He was so engrossed in the model that he hadn’t even heard her apology, never mind realised that she couldn’t get through the door.

Ella cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Excuse me, please.’

The model tugged on his leather-clad arm. ‘Ella wants to get past you, Oliver.’

‘Squeeze through then, love. I don’t mind if you rub up against me bum.’

He was being deliberately vulgar, Ella knew, hoping no doubt to embarrass her, so she gave his back a freezing look. The model giggled as Oliver arched his back to create a space large enough, perhaps, for her to wriggle through, but nowhere near wide enough for Ella.

‘Ella can’t get through there. Ollie, you’ll have to move,’ the model told him.

Now he was looking Ella up and down and then up again, his inspection coming to an end when his gaze rested on her now flushed face.

‘Going to make the tea, are you, love?’ he asked her, giving her a wicked grin. ‘Two lumps in mine,’ he added, before deliberately letting his gaze rest on her breasts.

As she left the office Ella could hear the model saying bitchily, ‘Poor Ella, being so huge. I’d hate to be like that. She’s the size of an elephant. I’m surprised she doesn’t try to lose some weight.’

This was followed by Oliver Charters’ laughter as he announced, ‘There’s no point in her trying. She’d never succeed.’

Her face on fire, Ella was rooted to the spot, forced to listen to them discussing her until she was finally able to make herself walk away. She hated them both but she hated him, Oliver Charters, the most, she thought bitterly. Horrible wicked man! She could hear their laughter following her down the corridor.

So, Oliver Charters thought that she didn’t have the willpower to lose weight, did he? Well, she’d show him. She’d show them all.

The Duchess.

Dougie Smith stared hard at the faded name on the prow of the ship berthed in the dry dock.

‘Laid her up because she ain’t wanted any more. Bin pushed out of her place by summat new,’ an old tar standing on the dockside, lighting up a Capstan Full Strength cigarette, told Dougie, before breaking into a fit of coughing.

Dougie wondered if the vessel’s silent, almost ominous presence in its enforced retirement was some kind of message for him. He nodded in acknowledgement of the sailor’s comment and then turned away, careful to avoid the busy activity on the dockside, with its smell of stagnant water, cargoes from the ships, and the familiar mingling of tar, oil, rope and myriad other aromas.

Ducking under hawsers and ropes, he huddled deeper into the reefer jacket he’d been warned to buy in the balmy warmth of Jamaica, where he’d changed ships.

The cargo ship he’d worked his passage on from there to London loomed up out of the cold January fog like a grey ghost. Dougie shivered. He’d been warned about London’s cold, foggy weather by the crew of merchant seamen he’d sailed with. Toughened old tars, most of them, they’d been suspicious of him at first, a young Australian wanting a cheap passage to the ‘old country’, but once he’d proved he could pull his weight they’d taken him under their wing.

He felt bad about the lies he’d told them and the truth he’d had to keep from them, but he doubted they would have believed him if he had told them. What would he have said? ‘Oh, by the way, lads, I just thought I’d better tell you that some solicitor in London reckons that I’m a duke.’ Dougie could just imagine how they would have reacted. After all, he remembered how he had reacted when he’d first heard the news.

He picked up his kitbag, turning his back on the grey hull of what had been his home for the last few months, and headed in what he hoped would be the right direction for the Seamen’s Mission he’d been told about, where he could get a clean bed for the night.

At least they drove on the same side of the road here, he acknowledged, as a truck came towards him out of the fog, its driver blasting his horn as a warning to get out of the way.

The docks were busy, no one paying Dougie any attention. Seamen didn’t ask questions of one another; like outback drovers they shared a common code that meant that they respected one another’s right not to talk about the past.

Dougie had been grateful for that on his long voyage to England. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that he might be a duke. His uncle, who had despised the British upper class for reasons he had never properly explained, would have told him in no uncertain terms to ignore the solicitor’s letters.

But what about his parents–what would they have thought? Dougie didn’t know. They had been drowned in a flash flood shortly after his birth, and if it hadn’t been for his uncle, he would have ended up in an orphanage. His uncle had never said much to him about his parents. All Dougie had known growing up was that his uncle was his mother’s brother, and that he hadn’t really approved of her marrying Dougie’s father.

‘A softie, with an English accent and fancy ways, who couldn’t shear a sheep to save his life,’ had been how his uncle had described Dougie’s father.

It had been a hard life growing up in the Australian outback on a large sheep station miles from the nearest town, but no harder than the lives of plenty of other youngsters like himself. Like them, he had done his schoolwork sitting in the station kitchen, taught by teachers who educated their pupils over the airwaves, and like them too he had had to do his bit around the station.

When he had finished his schooling and passed his exams he had been sent by his uncle to work on a neighbouring station as a ‘jackeroo’, as the young men, the next generation who would one day inherit their own family stations, were known.

Times had been hard after the war, and had continued to be hard. When his uncle had fallen sick and had been told by the flying doctor that he had a weak heart and should give up work, he had flatly refused, dying just as he had wished, one evening at sundown on the veranda of the old dilapidated bungalow, with its tin roof on which the rain rattled like bullets in the ‘wet’.

As his only relative, Dougie had inherited the station, with its debts, and his uncle’s responsibilities towards the people who worked for him: Mrs Mac, the housekeeper; Tom, Hugh, Bert and Ralph, the drovers; and their wives and families.

It hadn’t taken Dougie long to work out that the only thing he could do was accept the offer of partnership from a wealthy neighbour, who bought a half-share in the station.

That had been five years ago. Since then the station had prospered and Dougie had taken time out to finish his education in Sydney. He had been there when the solicitor’s first letter had caught up with him and he’d been disinclined to pay it any attention.

Half a dozen letters down the line, and with a growing awareness of just how little he knew about his father or his father’s family, he had decided that maybe he ought to find out just who he was–and who he wasn’t.

The solicitor had offered to advance his airfare. Not that Dougie needed such an advance–he had money of his own now, thanks to the success of the station–but he had been reluctant to get involved in a situation that might not suit him without knowing more about it. And more about himself.

Working his passage to England might not have been the swiftest way to get here, but it sure as hell had been the most instructive, Dougie acknowledged as he walked out of the dock gate and into a fog-enshrouded street.

He was Dougie Smith, Smith being his late uncle’s surname and the name by which he had always been known, but according to his birth certificate he was Drogo Montpelier. Maybe, just maybe, he was also the Duke of Lenchester, but right now he was a merchant seaman in need of a decent meal, a bath and a bed, in that order. The solicitor had explained in his letters the family setup that existed here in England, and how the deaths of the last duke and his son and heir had meant that he, the grandson of the late duke’s great-uncle–if that was who he was–was now the next in line.

But what about the last duke’s widow, who was now remarried? What about his daughter, Lady Emerald? Dougie couldn’t imagine them welcoming him, muscling in on what he guessed they must think of as their territory. He might not know much about the British upper classes, but he knew one thing and that was that like any other tight-knit group of people, they would recognise an outsider when they saw one and close ranks. That was the way of the world, and nature’s way too.

A young woman with tired eyes and shabby clothes, her hair dyed bright yellow, her skin sallow, pushed herself off the wall on which she had been leaning and called out to him, ‘Welcome ’ome, sailor. ’Ow about buying a pretty girl a drink, and letting ’er show you a good time?’

Shaking his head, Dougie walked past her. Welcome home. Would he be welcome? Did he want to be?

Hefting his heavy kitbag further up on his shoulder, Dougie straightened his back. There was only one way he was going to find out.

Chapter Two (#u5bb3405b-deb1-5343-9fd2-7ea4f47f6a12)

Janey felt wonderfully happy. She should, she knew, have been feeling guilty, because she should be at St Martins right now, listening to a lecture on the history of the button. Mind you, she was in one sense concentrating on the importance of the button. She had unfastened the buttons on Dan’s shirt very carefully indeed.

An excited giggle bubbled up in her throat. What she was doing was dreadfully bad, of course. Not only had she skipped a lecture, she had come back to Dan’s basement flat with him and they were now cuddled up against the January icy damp in Dan’s single bed with its lumpy mattress. Whilst Dan’s shirt now lay on the floor, Janey was still wearing her sweater, although the bra she was wearing underneath had been unfastened and pushed out of the way so that Dan could squeeze and knead her breasts, causing delicious quivers of pleasure to run right through her.

Yes, she was very bad. Her sister Ella would certainly think so. Ella would never have missed a lecture, never mind let a boy fondle her naked breasts. But she, Janey, wasn’t Ella, thank goodness, and Dan, an actor whose sister was also at St Martins, was such a gorgeous boy. Janey had been attracted to him the minute she had laid eyes on him. And Dan was so very happy that she was here with him. Janey adored making people feel happy. She could remember the first time she had realised that she could stop herself from feeling frightened and unhappy simply by doing things that other people had wanted her to do. It had been when her mother had been in one of her frightening, erratic moods, and Aunt Cassandra had come to visit.

‘I’m glad you’re here, Auntie Cass,’ Janey had told her aunt, ‘because you make Mummy happy.’

To Janey’s relief, immediately the atmosphere had changed. Her mother had started to laugh and had actually hugged her, whilst her aunt had been so pleased by her comment that she had given her a penny. Janey had been very young when her mother had died but she could still remember very clearly how frightened and miserable she had felt when her mother had been angry. From then on she had gone out of her way to say and do things that would make people feel happy…

She had continued ‘being thoughtful’, as her teachers approvingly described her behaviour, all through school. Janey had always been eager to share her sweets and her pocket money with her schoolfriends, especially if she thought it would stop them from being cross about something. And now she somehow needed those around her to be happy before she could be happy herself. If one of her friends was unhappy then it was Janey who went out of her way to coax a smile from her. She hated quarrels and angry, raised voices. They reminded her too uncomfortably of her childhood.

She was so glad that she wasn’t like Ella–poor Ella, who always took things so seriously, who could be so snippy and unfriendly at times, especially with boys, and who thought that having fun was a sin.