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‘It’s what Daddy would have wanted. Dougie won’t mind. After all, he isn’t even like a proper duke really, is he? I mean, he’s Australian.’
Dear Emerald, such a strong-willed girl, Beth thought weakly as she allowed her doubts to be swept aside.
‘We should go and see my mother, Emerald, and we can stay tonight at the hotel with her whilst we wait to see if we have permission to stay here.’
Emerald looked at her husband. No way was she going to see her mother-in-law until she was ready. A husband though, as she was quickly discovering, was really very easy to deal with.
She lifted a hand to her forehead and protested faintly, ‘Oh, Alessandro, darling, I am such a silly little thing, I know, but I’ve got the most horrid headache coming on and I can’t possibly meet your mother until I’ve had a chance to rest. She has such high standards, I know, and I want her to see me looking my best. In fact, I really do think that I should go and lie down for a little while. Alessandro, you’ll have to come with me otherwise I will think that you are cross with me. Besides, I feel so exhausted that I don’t think I could climb the stairs all by myself.’
Once she had satisfied herself that Alessandro was going to do as she wished, Emerald turned her attention back to her godmother, announcing, ‘You will see to it that a notice is sent to The Times, won’t you, Aunt Beth? And don’t worry about telling Mrs Wreakin that we’ll be moving into the master suite. I’ll tell her myself.’
‘How are you feeling now, my beloved, only I do really think that we should go and see Mama.’
It was three hours since they had originally gone upstairs, and now they had moved from Emerald’s old room and into the master suite, where Emerald had been persuaded by an anxious Alessandro to eat a little of the light meal that Cook had prepared for them.
‘Well, yes of course, we must,’ Emerald agreed immediately, adding, ‘Oh, Alessandro, I am so looking forward to meeting your mother, who has known and loved you since the minute of your birth. How overjoyed she must have been to have such a beautiful son. I hope in time, darling, that I may be as lucky. You do want a son and heir, don’t you, Alessandro?’
As she spoke, Emerald sat up gracefully in the large bed with its ornate hangings of Denby silk, and let the silk dressing gown she was wearing slide down to her waist, leaving the top half of her body naked.
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sp; A smile of triumph curled Emerald’s mouth as she saw the way Alessandro’s eager gaze went to her naked breasts.
‘Mama…’ Alessandro tried to remind her.
But Emerald simply smiled again and sighed, ‘Yes, of course. Oh, Alessandro, I can’t wait for our son to call me that.’
There was no real contest, of course. It would be tomorrow now before they saw Alessandro’s mother–tomorrow afternoon. Afternoon tea, perhaps, Emerald mused as she lay looking up at the ceiling whilst Alessandro stroked and squeezed her breasts with growing urgency. They could invite her to join them for afternoon tea–so civilised and ladylike–and by then her mother-in-law was bound to have heard about their marriage. It was all working out perfectly.
Emerald made a soft purr of pleasure when she felt Alessandro’s body tremble against her own as he pressed passionate kisses against her breasts. He was really getting rather good at that.
When Dougie returned to Lenchester House several hours later, Emerald’s appropriation of the master suite was a fait accompli, and Beth’s hand-wringing embarrassment at having to inform him of it told its own story.
‘She’s married Alessandro? I thought she was supposed to be staying with friends on the Côte d’Azur?’
‘Well, yes, and it was very naughty of her to fib to us all like that, but Alessandro is foreign, and everyone knows that foreign men are so very impetuous.’
Alessandro might be, but Emerald wasn’t. Calculating, manipulative, selfish–she was all those things–and wonderfully, dangerously, intoxicatingly able to make him feel as no other girl could. What rubbish! Having a wife like Emerald would be hard work. She would be demanding, capricious, impossible to trust, everything that was the opposite of the kind of safe comfortable reliable wife he would want when he did get married. Alessandro was welcome to her, Dougie told himself firmly, pushing down those feelings about Emerald that had begun to plague him far more than he liked.
‘Presumably she’s told her parents?’ he asked.
Dougie thought a lot of Amber and Jay, and he hated to think of them being shocked and hurt. Besides, it was safer for him to think of them than to think of Emerald.
‘She said she was going to send them a telegram. They’re still away in America,’ Beth defended her goddaughter.
Lady Beth was no match for Emerald, Dougie acknowledged, but then who was?
Needless to say the whole house was agog with the excitement of it all, and it was naturally the sole subject of discussion over the dinner table.
‘Of course, it was very naughty of them to elope.’
‘It’s disgraceful, and typical of Emerald. I think she enjoys shocking and upsetting people,’ was Gwendolyn’s disapproving contribution to the dinner-table conversation, whilst Lydia, all starry-eyed with heroine worship and excitement, breathed giddily, ‘Well, I think it’s just the most romantic thing ever. Gwendolyn, do you really think that Emerald will invite us to go and stay with her?’
‘Well, if she does I know that my parents certainly won’t allow me to go,’ Gwendolyn replied virtuously. ‘Nor would I want to. I’m surprised at you, Lydia. After all, we have our reputations to think of.’
Listening to her niece, Beth felt her heart sink a little. Dear Gwendolyn was right, of course, but sometimes in certain circumstances one had to…well, the truth was that dear Gwendolyn was rather a plain girl and her mother had three other daughters to find husbands for.
‘I do wish that Emerald had come down to dinner. She must have a dreadfully bad headache to have stayed in her room all this time,’ Lydia announced naïvely. ‘Do you think I should go up and see her, Mummy, perhaps take her a cup of tea…?’
