Читать книгу Game Of Love - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 5

‘TASHA, I think I’m going to need your help.’

‘What, again?’ Natasha Lacey queried humorously, looking up from her work to smile at her cousin. ‘What is it this time? Another crisis over the bridesmaids’ dresses? If you want my honest opinion, my love, you’re never going to make your Richard’s sister look anything other than the little dumpling she is. Poor girl. I can well remember what it feels like to be fourteen, chubby and detesting every female in the world who isn’t.’

‘When you add to that the fact that she virtually worships Richard, it’s no wonder that she isn’t exactly overjoyed about your marriage.’

‘No, it isn’t Sara…not this time,’ Emma Lacey interrupted hastily. ‘Nothing so simple. I only wish it were.’

Natasha’s frown deepened. Three years her own junior, Emma had always been more like her sister than her cousin. They had lived in the same small cathedral city all their lives, their parents close friends as well as relatives, both of them glad to have a peer with whom to share the burdens of growing up.

Perhaps because she was the elder, she had always been the calmer, the more logical of the two of them, her emotions and moods controlled and predictable where Emma’s were subject to wild variations and swings.

In the family it was tacitly acknowledged that the death of Emma’s father when she was fifteen years old had to have been the cause of the sudden wild streak which had then developed in her behaviour—a wild streak which had led her into scrape after scrape, some of them so serious that they had led to a rift developing between the two cousins. Emma, bored and rebellious, had insisted on leaving school at sixteen, while Natasha had gone on to university, calmly and determinedly working her way towards the qualifications she needed while Emma had played her way around the world.

However, if Emma had been a little wild, that part of her life was behind her now, and no one could be more pleased than she was herself that she had fallen in love with Richard Templecombe.

It was true that the Templecombes were not perhaps as happy with the match as Emma’s family. For one thing, the Laceys were not and never had been part of the ecclesiastical life of the city, and even though both families had lived there for several generations they inhabited two very different worlds. The Laceys represented commerce and worldliness, the business which the first Jasper Lacey had established on the outskirts of the city over seventy years before being, after the church, the largest employer in the area. The Templecombes, on the other hand, prided themselves on being above such materialistic things as commerce. Their connections with the cathedral and the church went back even further than the Laceys’ connection with the city. Richard’s father was dean of the cathedral, he and Richard’s mother acknowledged leaders of local ecclesiastical society, and it was generally accepted that, one day, hopefully Richard would follow in his father’s footsteps.

A thought struck Natasha and her heart sank. The wedding was less than a week away now, but her sudden fear had to be expressed. ‘You haven’t…you’re not having second thoughts, are you?’ she asked.

Emma shook her head and gulped. ‘No, I’m not…but Richard probably will, once Luke tells him what I’ve done.’

‘Luke?’ Natasha questioned her, snapping off a thread with expert care, and frowning over the repair she had just completed. It seemed ironic that, having spent all those years qualifying and then travelling the world as an embryo news reporter, she should suddenly discover when she was twenty-five years old that the place she really wanted to be was here in this quiet cathedral town, and the thing she really wanted to do was to work with the rich fabrics and embroideries of that world.

She was establishing quite a name for herself now. A couple of prestigious magazines mentioning the quality of her stock, and the sudden demand for fabrics more suitable for the refurbishment of the ancient piles now being acquired by the migrant tide escaping from London, had helped—as had the fact that she had been able to bully her father into expanding the range of ecclesiastical fabrics the company produced so that they had a more general appeal.

‘Luke?’ she repeated encouragingly. ‘I don’t think…’

‘He’s Richard’s father’s cousin.You won’t know him, but he’s a typical Templecombe,’Emma told her tearfully. ‘Narrow-minded, bigoted, just waiting for me to do something wrong so that Richard will break our engagement.’

Being used to her cousin’s emotional highs and lows, Natasha merely said calmly, ‘Emma, Richard is twenty-seven years old, and quite plainly besotted with you. I can’t imagine what this Luke—’

‘You don’t understand,’ Emma interrupted, and then told her dramatically, ‘Luke saw me leaving Jake Pendraggon’s house.’

Now Natasha did begin to understand and her heart sank a little, although she didn’t allow Emma to see it.

Jake Pendraggon had arrived in the city just over a year ago, as colourful a figure as his name suggested, Cornish by self-adoption rather than actual birth, or so Natasha suspected. Certainly he had cleverly, if not too subtly played up the effect of tanned skin, wildly curling black hair and eyes so blue that she thought he must wear contact lenses.

Certainly anyone knowing Emma as Natasha knew her must have realised immediately that Emma would be drawn to Jake Pendraggon like a lemming to a cliff. Certainly it came as no surprise to Natasha to learn that the acquaintanceship between the two of them had obviously developed into something far more intimate.

She herself had been travelling to Italy, Portugal and Spain for much of the time Jake Pendraggon had been living in Sutton Minster, looking for samples of the kind of cloth she wanted her father’s factory to reproduce for her, suitably adapted for a non-ecclesiastical market. Her travels had produced some marvellous fabrics, so rich, so mouth-wateringly desirable that her eyes grew dreamy as she remembered the pleasure of discovering them, of—

‘Tasha, you must help me. It was all a mistake—I’d only gone to see Jake to tell him that everything was over between us, that I loved Richard. But he was right in the middle of one of the most important parts of his novel. He begged me to stay and type up his notes for him and we worked all night on them. Nothing else happened. But of course Luke would have to be walking down the close just as I opened Jake’s door to leave, and, of course, I would have to be wearing the evening dress I’d had on for our engagement party.’ She pulled a face. ‘I loved that dress…Richard’s mother hated it, of course.’

Natasha brushed aside this incidental chatter and demanded fatalistically, ‘You don’t mean you went straight from your own engagement party to Jake Pendraggon’s house, and were then seen leaving it first thing in the morning by Richard’s cousin?’

‘He’s Richard’s father’s cousin, but in essence…yes.’

‘And you never said a word to Richard…never explained.’ Natasha frowned. ‘But, Emma, if this Luke didn’t say anything to Richard at the time, what on earth makes you think he’s going to do so now?’

‘I heard Richard’s mother talking to him. I’d gone round there to see Sara, and the sittingroom door was open. Neither of them knew I was there. Richard’s mother was saying how much she wished Richard were marrying someone more suitable.’ Emma pulled a face. ‘Well, I already knew she doesn’t approve of me, and I’m not bothered about that, but then I heard him—Luke—saying in a sort of sinister way, “Well, you don’t know—they aren’t married yet. Maybe Richard will have a change of heart,” and I knew instantly…’

She paused dramatically while Natasha wrinkled her forehead and asked patiently, ‘You knew what?’

‘That Luke had been waiting until the last possible minute to tell Richard what I’d done, and I know when he’s going to do it—tonight at the pre-wedding party. The one your parents are giving for us.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Natasha tried to comfort her. ‘I haven’t met this Luke, but I’m sure if he had wanted to tell Richard he would have done so months ago—as you should have done yourself,’ she added forthrightly. ‘It’s still not too late,’she continued more gently, knowing her cousin’s stubbornness of old. ‘Why don’t you simply explain to Richard what happened? After all, if it was as innocent as you say—’

‘What do you mean “if”?’ Emma demanded belligerently. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

Natasha sighed faintly. ‘Yes, I do,’ she confirmed. ‘But—’

‘Exactly!’ Emma pounced. ‘And it’s that “but” that stops me from telling Richard. Everyone knows that Jake and I went out together a few times that time when Richard and I broke up.’ She ignored the ironic look Natasha gave her at her deceptive description of the ragingly public and passionate affair Emma had had with the writer while he was supposedly researching his latest blockbuster. ‘But I explained to Richard that if he hadn’t got cold feet about loving me I’d never have even looked at Jake.’ She ignored the look Natasha gave her and added miserably, ‘I know he’d want to believe me, but given my reputation and the fact that Luke saw me leaving Jake’s house…’

‘I can see the difficulties,’ Natasha admitted. ‘You know, you should have explained to Richard right away.’

‘I should have but I didn’t,’ Emma said morosely, ‘and now, because of that, Luke is going to tell Richard, and then Richard will break our engagement, and my life will be ruined, unless…you must help me, Tasha. Please…’

‘I think the best person to help you is yourself, by confiding in Richard,’ Natasha told her severely. ‘He is an adult, Emma, and I’m sure this Luke whoever he is won’t be able to stop Richard from loving and marrying you.’

‘You don’t know him,’ Emma told her starkly. ‘He’s a typical Templecombe, only worse.’

‘Worse?’ Natasha questioned. ‘How?’

‘Well, for a start he’s completely anti-women. Oh, not in that way,’ she hastened to assure her cousin, when she saw Natasha’s expression. ‘According to Richard he’s had women virtually coming out of his ears, since his early teens. And for all that he’s even more strait-laced than Mrs T now. According to Richard there was a time when the family almost disowned him, he was so wild.’

‘Well, then, he should sympathise with you,’ Natasha murmured, picking up another piece of embroidery and examining it lovingly, wondering how it would look hanging on the wall in her own small house, perhaps over the fifteenth-century oak coffer she had been lucky enough to buy at a local auction.

‘Not him,’ Emma assured her bitterly. ‘He’s the original reformed rake. He’s already advised Richard that we’d be far better waiting another year to marry, and he’s told him that he’s not sure that I’m the right wife for him, given his calling. Who says that a vicar’s wife has to be like Mrs T?’ Emma began indignantly.

‘Who indeed?’ Natasha agreed sotto voce, knowing that if she let her cousin run on for long enough she would eventually run out of steam.

‘You will help me, won’t you?’ Emma pleaded, her face suddenly crumpling with real emotion as she said shakily, ‘I couldn’t bear to lose Richard now, Tasha. I really couldn’t. Before…before we were engaged and we had that row, and I got involved with Jake…well, I thought I could live without him, that he was just another man, but it isn’t like that. I really do love him. I know he loves me too, but—’

‘But you don’t think he’ll believe you if you tell him what you were doing with Jake Pendraggon.’

‘He’d want to, but he is only human, and if our situations were reversed…Well, I know how I’d feel if I heard that he’d been seen coming out of an ex-lover’s house at that time in the morning.’

‘What is it you want me to do?’ Natasha asked her. ‘Kidnap this Luke and keep him out of sight until after the wedding?’ she suggested facetiously.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Emma said severely, making Natasha reflect that her cousin had changed a little. Time was when she would very probably have suggested just such an outrageous solution to her present problem. ‘No, all I want you to do is to pretend to be me—that is, I want you to pretend that it was you Luke saw leaving Jake’s house. After all,’ she continued, warming to her theme and ignoring the stunned look in Natasha’s eyes, ‘we do look alike. We’re both blonde and we both have grey eyes; we’re both around the same height—’

‘We’re cousins, not twins,’ Natasha interrupted her drily, ‘and we don’t look anything like that similar. I’m taller than you for one thing, and—’

‘Tasha, please listen. Luke doesn’t know me all that well. He only saw me briefly.’

‘He saw you wearing the same dress you had worn for your engagement party,’ Natasha reminded her very firmly. ‘Emma, love, much as I want to help—’

‘No, you don’t,’ Emma interrupted her bitterly. ‘You want to stay nice and safe in your own cosy little world. I bet you think just like Luke really, that I don’t deserve someone like Richard. Everyone knows that, if Richard had to marry into our family, Mrs T would have much preferred to have you as a daughter-in-law. After all, before you went off to university you and Richard dated for a while.’

‘I like Richard as a person, I’m delighted that the two of you are in love, and as for being like this Luke…’ Natasha began, determined to nip any further emotionalism in the bud. ‘What exactly does he do, by the way?’

‘He’s an artist,’ Emma told her truculently, totally stunning her. ‘He paints landscapes. He’s quite well known, apparently.’

‘Luke Templecombe? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.’

‘You won’t have done, he uses another name—Luke Freres.’

‘Luke Freres? The Luke Freres?’

‘Tasha, please help me. My whole life’s happiness could depend on it,’ Emma added theatrically.

‘What do you want me to do? Wear a placard tonight saying, “It was me you saw leaving Jake Pendraggon’s house, and not Emma”?’

‘That’s not funny. I just want your permission, if Luke does say anything, to deny it by saying that it wasn’t me and that it must have been you. After all, what does it matter to you?’ Emma pleaded when she saw her cousin’s face. ‘It isn’t as though there’s anyone in your life at the moment.’

‘And so my reputation doesn’t matter, is that it?’

Emma looked cross. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, must you be so old-fashioned? Honestly, Tasha, you’re archaic. You must be the only twenty-seven-year-old virgin left.’

‘A situation which you want me to claim I tried to rectify via a night in Jake Pendraggon’s arms,’ Natasha derided, ignoring the jibe. ‘Come on, Emma. There might be certain similarities between us, but Luke Freres is an artist. Do you honestly think for one moment he’s going to believe he saw me when he saw you?’

‘It doesn’t matter what he believes, only what Richard believes,’ Emma told her fiercely. ‘But, of course, I should have known you would refuse to help. After all, you don’t want to lose your reputation as Miss Pure-and-goody-goody, do you?’ she added nastily. ‘Oh, no, you’d rather Richard broke our engagement and my heart.’

‘Stop being so dramatic. I don’t think for one moment that Luke Freres will say anything to Richard. Not at this stage, but in the unlikely event that he does—’

‘You’ll do it! Oh, Tasha, thank you. Thank you!’

Natasha grimaced. She hadn’t been about to volunteer to do any such thing, merely to advise her volatile cousin to put her trust in Richard and tell him the truth, but Emma was on her feet, dancing round the attic workroom of the four-storey building which housed Natasha’s home, office and work-place, blowing extravagant kisses at her as she headed for the door.

‘You don’t know what this means to me. I knew you’d help me. I’m so relieved. Let Luke do his worst—he can’t hurt me now. Oh, Tasha, I’m so relieved!’

‘Emma, wait,’ Natasha protested, but it was already too late.

Her cousin had opened the door and was hurrying downstairs, calling back, ‘Can’t, I’m afraid, I’ve got a final fitting for the dress and I’m already late. See you tonight at home.’

‘Tasha, where on earth have you been? You know everyone’s due at eight. It’s half-past seven now.’

Natasha stopped on the threshold of the bedroom which had been hers all the time she was growing up and which she still used whenever she had occasion to stay at Lacey Court overnight.

Emma was standing in the middle of the room, dressed in a fetching confection of satin and lace, delectably designed to show off the prettily tanned curves of her breasts and the slenderness of her thighs in a way that was just barely respectable.

‘If you’re planning to wear that for dinner, then I think you’re making a mistake,’ Natasha told her thoughtfully, eyeing the camisole and its matching French knickers consideringly.

Emma grinned at her. ‘Don’t be silly—as though I would.’

‘No? Am I or am I not talking to the girl who appeared at her own eighteenth birthday party wearing a basque and little more than a G-string?’

‘That was for a dare,’ Emma pouted, ‘and, anyway, it was years ago.’

‘A millennium,’ Natasha agreed drily, adding, ‘But, if you don’t want Richard’s parents to catch you wearing such a fetching but highly inappropriate outfit, I suggest you go back to your own room and finish getting dressed.’

‘Not yet. I wanted to see you first, and besides, my dress is silk and will crease if I sit down in it. Listen, I’ve been thinking—tonight you’d better wear your hair like mine, and if you could wear this as well…’

She reached behind her back and lifted something off the bed, holding it up in front of her.

‘That’s the dress you wore for your engagement party,’ Natasha recognised.

‘Exactly. I thought if you wore it tonight it would help to convince Luke that it was you he saw and not me.’

‘But, Emma, he must know that you were the one wearing it the night you and Richard got engaged. And, besides, it won’t fit me. I’m at least five inches taller than you, and two inches wider round the bust.’

‘Yes, it will—the top was very loose and skirts are being worn shorter this year.’

‘Not that short, and certainly not by me.’

‘But you promised,’ Emma began, and, to Natasha’s exasperation, large tears filled the soft grey eyes so like her own. Even knowing they were crocodile tears and a trick Emma had been able to pull off from her cradle didn’t lessen the effect of them. The trouble was that she was programmed to respond to them, Natasha decided grimly. Well, this time she was not going to. She would look ridiculous in Emma’s dress. Her cousin loved bright colours and modern fashions, but, for some reason, when she and Richard got engaged she had decided that a sober, sensible little dress in black was bound to appeal more to his parents than her usual choice of clothes. No doubt it would have done so if Emma had stuck to her original decision and not been swayed by the appeal of a dress which, while it was black, shared no other virtues in common with the outfit she had gone out to buy.

True, the dress did have long sleeves, but it also had a bodice which was slashed virtually to the waist front and back. True, it was not made of one of the glittering, eye-popping fabrics Emma normally chose. Instead it was made of jersey—not the thick, sensible jersey as worn by Richard’s mother and aunts, but a jersey so fine, so delicate that it was virtually like silk. Worn over Emma’s lissom young body, it had left no one in any doubt as to its wearer’s lack of anything even approaching the respectability of proper underwear between her skin and the dress—a fact which had obviously been appreciated by the less strait-laced of the male guests at the party.

It was the kind of dress it took an Emma to carry off with aplomb and certainly not the kind of dress Natasha herself would ever dream of wearing. She was just about to tell Emma as much when her bedroom door opened and her mother walked in. Like Emma, she adored clothes, and they adored her, Natasha acknowledged as she studied her mother’s appearance admiringly. Tall and still very slim, her mother was wearing pale grey silk, the simplest of styles and one which Natasha suspected had had a far from simple price-tag. Diamonds glinted discreetly in her ears, her hair and makeup were immaculate; she looked the epitome of the elegant and understated wife of a rich and indulgent man.

She frowned when she saw them, exclaiming, ‘Emma, here you are! Darling, you ought to be ready. You’ll want to make an entrance. I’ll keep everyone in the hall when they arrive and then you’ll come downstairs—’ She broke off when she saw that Emma was crying. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s Tasha. I wanted her to wear this dress, but she won’t. She says she’s going to come down to dinner in that awful beige thing she’s had for years. You know how we planned everything so that we’d all be in white, grey and black so that the table would look just right with the Meissen dinner service, and now Tasha’s going to spoil it all.’

‘Really, Tasha,’ her mother disapproved. ‘You are being difficult. You can’t possibly wear that dreadful beige.’

‘Neither can I wear this,’ Natasha told her mother through gritted teeth. Emma was an arch manipulator when she chose. She’d deal with her later, though. ‘Remember it—the discreet little number Emma wore for her own engagement party, the dress that virtually gave the archdeacon apoplexy every time Emma leaned forward.’

‘Oh, that dress—’

‘Tasha’s exaggerating,’ Emma interrupted. ‘It wasn’t that bad. I only want her to wear it because I want her to look her best. She never makes the most of herself—you’ve said so yourself. With her hair done like mine instead of screwed up at the back of her head, and this dress…It’s time people saw how attractive she really is. Do you know, I heard Mrs T actually telling Sara that she needn’t worry about how she looked in her bridesmaid’s dress because Tasha was bound to look worse, and, while Sara is still young enough to improve, Tasha is virtually on the shelf.’

Natasha closed her eyes and mentally cursed her cousin. If her mother had one fault, it was an almost obsessive antipathy towards Mrs Templecombe, coupled with a desire to upstage her on each and every opportunity—a discreet and very ladylike desire, of course, but nevertheless…

‘Oh, did she?’she declared grimly now. ‘Emma is right, darling. That dress would look wonderful on you. You’re tall enough to carry it off.’

‘Am I? And what do you propose I should do about this?’ she demanded grittily, picking up the dress and holding it in front of her by the shoulders so that her mother could see the full effect of its plunging neckline.

‘It’s perfectly decent,’ Emma interposed quickly. ‘It only looks as though—’

‘It’s about to fall off,’ Natasha finished acidly for her. ‘I am not wearing this dress.’

‘Oh, dear, I’m afraid you’re going to have to,’ Emma told her, managing to look both guilty and triumphant at the same time. ‘You see, I went through your wardrobe when I arrived and…’

Natasha rushed past her and threw open her wardrobe doors, staring at the empty space where her clothes should have been. She always kept a few things here—her formal evening clothes, her gardening wear and one or two other outfits.

As she closed the door she was more angry with Emma than she had ever been in her life. ‘I am not wearing that dress, Emma,’ she told her icily. ‘Even it if means staying up here all night,’ she added fiercely.

‘Oh, darling, you can’t do that. Think how it would look. Imagine what Richard’s mother would say. No, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do as Emma says and wear the dress. I’m sure it will look stunning on you.’

‘Yes, it will,’ Emma agreed eagerly. ‘And we’ve just got time to do your hair.’

‘Thank you, Emma, I’m quite capable of doing my own hair,’ Natasha told her grimly.

She was trapped and she knew it, but she could cheerfully have murdered her cousin when Emma paused by her bedroom door to remind her dulcetly, ‘Remember your promise…If Luke…’

Just for a moment, Natasha was tempted to tell her she had changed her mind, but she didn’t. She knew quite well that if Luke Freres did try to make trouble between Emma and her fiancé, she would have to stop him. Emma, for all her flightiness, her giddiness, genuinely did love Richard, and really had toned down her wild behaviour as she tried to conform to the standards expected by Richard’s family.

Privately Natasha thought that, the sooner Richard and Emma were free of the constraint of Richard’s family, the more chance of success their marriage would have. It was fortunate indeed that Richard’s first parish was so very far away in Northumberland, where there would be no risk of criticism and interference from his mother. Given the chance, Natasha suspected, Emma would make a very good, if somewhat unorthodox vicar’s wife. She genuinely cared about people and understood them, which was more than anyone could ever say for Mrs Templecombe, who expected everyone to live up to the same impossibly high standards as herself.

Twenty minutes later, as the first guests arrived, Natasha stood despairingly in front of her bedroom mirror wondering if she was out of her mind.

She had washed her hair, and blown it into the same stylish bob in which Emma wore hers, although minus the raffish spiky fringe which Emma adopted. With her hair worn in this style she acknowledged that there was a fleeting resemblance between Emma and herself, if one discounted the disparity in their heights.

Yes, the hair was all right, but as for the dress…

On, it looked even worse than she had expected. The hem finished at least a couple of inches above her knees, the deep décolleté Vs at the front and back of her bodice somewhere that fell just short of her waist. Cleverly sewn into the front of the dress were two pieces of soft shaping which allowed the observer to entertain himself while imagining that the slightest movement of her torso was likely to expose far more of her obviously naked breasts than merely the cleavage between them, yet ensuring that such a sartorial disaster was simply not possible, so that she could not claim as she had intended that she could not wear the thing for fear of disgracing them all by baring her chest to the entire assembled Templecombe clan—something her mother, whose taste was very sharp-edged, would never have allowed.

‘Oh, you’re ready, then.’

Natasha swung round, her appearance forgotten as she stared at her cousin. Emma was wearing something that looked as though it had been designed for a prim little puritan; grey silk with a huge white collar and cuffs and a delicate bell-shaped skirt that made her look fragile and delicate.

‘I’ve brought you these,’ Emma told her. ‘Black, silk stockings and satin shoes. I know you don’t have any.’

Gritting her teeth, Natasha threatened, ‘I don’t know why I’m letting you get away with this, Emma. You had it all planned, didn’t you? I look like the original scarlet woman, a fitting contrast to my demure little cousin.’

‘No, you don’t. You look stunning,’ Emma told her flatly, and a little wistfully. Her cousin would much rather be wearing the black dress than the grey, Natasha recognised, humour coming to her rescue, while she would have felt much more at home in Emma’s puritan outfit.

‘Your mother chose this for me. She said it was bound to create a good impression.’

‘Oh, it will,’ Natasha agreed humorously. ‘Pity she got her faiths mixed up, though. As I recall there never was much love lost between the aficionados of the high church and the Plymouth brethren.’

She saw that she had lost her cousin and sighed a little. ‘All right, I’ll wear your dress, Emma, but only…only because you haven’t given me any option, and only because I realise how important it is to you that Richard’s family accept you, although you know I suspect that Mrs T would respect you far more readily if you stood out against her and were your own person. Richard loves you for yourself, you know. If he’d wanted a carbon copy of his mother he’d have chosen—’

‘Louise Grey. Yes, I know that, but his mother doesn’t. She’s still convinced that a miracle is going to happen between now and the wedding day, and that Richard is going to open his eyes and realise that it’s Louise he loves and not me. And with that beast Luke to help her…If you’d been at the engagement party and seen the way he looked at me…’

‘In this? Come on, Emma, be your age. Any man—’

‘No, not that kind of way,’ Emma interrupted her irritably. ‘He looked at me…as though…as though I were a bad smell under his nose. Horrid man. You weren’t there…you don’t know.’

Natasha had missed the engagement party because she had been away on business, persuading a very difficult and jealous Italian manufacturer to allow her father to reproduce some of his designs for the English market.

‘Look, I’ll have to go down in a minute. I am grateful to you, Tasha. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t offered to help.’

‘Offered?’ Natasha protested indignantly, but Emma was already closing the door behind her.