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‘Whilst yours?’ Josh prodded when she fell silent.
‘Whilst mine was a drunk and a thief–my great-grandmother’s words, not mine. Look, I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind, Josh.’
Josh gave a small shrug. ‘I don’t mind. I don’t want to pry.’
Had she offended him? Rose shot him a quick look. Sometimes Josh could be so open that y
ou could see his thoughts written on his face, and then at others, it was hard to tell just what he was feeling. She didn’t want to offend him. He was a good friend, he made her laugh, and being with him helped her to forget all those things she could not bear to think about. Like John and the awful unthinkable horror that could have happened. She still had nightmares about the look of almost gloating cruelty on Lady Fitton Legh’s face when she had warned her of the great sin they would have been committing.
Rose hadn’t been to Denham–she couldn’t think of it as ‘home’ any more–since Easter. She was afraid of what she might say and do if she did. Not to John–John wasn’t the one who had hurt and betrayed her. No, it was Amber she was afraid to see, in case all the pain and horror trapped inside her came spilling out. Better by far that nothing was said. What good could it do, after all? None. But the terrible hurt and anger would always be there in her heart. Hadn’t her aunt thought of what might happen? Hadn’t she sensed, guessed, that Rose might be drawn to John and, not knowing of their possible blood connection, do something that was forbidden? Or was it as Lady Fitton Legh had implied: that her aunt had simply not cared enough to protect her from that sin? The facts spoke for themselves. Amber could have told her; she could have trusted her, she could have protected her; even if she could not love her as she had pretended to do.
‘Listen, do you fancy coming out with me tonight? There’s this new jazz club I’ve heard about.’
Josh’s question brought Rose back to reality. She gave him a smile, grateful to be back on their normal footing.
‘What’s wrong? Has your latest girl refused to play ball?’
Josh affected a look of injured innocence. ‘I was thinking of you.’
‘I was planning to stay in.’
‘Stay in on a Saturday night? Don’t be daft, that’s for squares. Come on, it will do you good.’
He was right, Rose acknowledged. There was no point staying in and brooding.
‘All right,’ she agreed, ‘but no going off and leaving me because you’ve seen a girl you fancy, like you did the last time I agreed to go out with you.’
‘As if I would,’ Josh protested. ‘I’ll call round for you about eight, OK?’
Two girls who had just come into the salon looked at Rose and then one of them whispered something to the other. The photographs of Josh cutting Rose’s hair that Ollie had taken now adorned the stair wall and had brought in a rush of girls wanting the same haircut after they had appeared in Vogue. Word was still spreading.
Almost overnight, much to her astonishment and, if she were honest, her discomfort, Rose had turned into something of a minor celebrity. She’d even been offered modelling work, which she’d turned down, and had had umpteen young men asking her out, as well as Janey begging her to model the clothes she planned to design for St Martins’ end-of-year fashion show.
Her employer had teased her about her new-found fame, and another unwanted result of that fame was the attention she was now getting from the husband of one of their most important clients.
Initially when Mr Russell had come into the drawing room of his and his wife’s fashionable apartment whilst Rose was there carefully taking measurements for a pair of bergère chairs their client wanted recovering, she hadn’t thought anything of it. But then he had come over to her, pressing up against her from behind as he made to go past her in the confined space between the chairs and the window, his hand on her shoulder to prevent her from moving. With his free hand he had stroked her hair and then her neck, commenting on the silkiness of her hair and the softness of her skin.
At first Rose had been too shocked to say or do anything, hardly able to comprehend what was happening. Their client’s husband was in his late forties–it was surely impossible that he could be doing what he had done.
To her relief the telephone had rung, and she had been able to make her escape.
She hadn’t intended to say anything to anyone about what had happened but somehow she had found herself telling Josh when she had bumped into him in a pub on the King’s Road, where Janey had persuaded her and Ella to go for a drink.
Josh had laughed and told her that what she needed was a long sharp hatpin. Then the very next time she had seen him he had handed her a long slim box inside which she had found a dangerous-looking hatpin with a pretty pearl and diamanté head.
‘I saw it in a junk shop,’ he had told her, laughing. ‘And now that you’ve got it, you make sure you use it if old man Russell tries it on again.’
Josh could always make her laugh, no matter how down she was feeling.
And she was feeling down, Rose admitted. The John and Amber situation wasn’t all that was on her mind. Her desire was growing to turn away from the traditional kind of interior design she was being trained for, the kind of interior design service provided by her aunt’s Walton Street shop, and to focus instead on the creative opportunities she could see so clearly in the commercial sector. Once, Amber would have been the first person she’d want to discuss this with because Rose would have believed that her aunt understood and knew how she was feeling, and would have put Rose’s own best interests first in any advice she might have given her. But now Rose felt reluctant to share her dreams with Amber. It was a horrid feeling to know that the person you loved and trusted the most had deceived you. Amber had been like a mother to her, but now Rose felt betrayed, cheated, and very alone.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Well, of course I am delighted that you are both so happy, but I must say I am disappointed that you didn’t see fit to confide in me, Alessandro.’
They were ‘taking afternoon tea’ at the Savoy, Emerald’s strategic choice of venue, which ensured that she and Alessandro were just late enough for his mother to have arrived first and have to wait for them–a small accident with the heel on Emerald’s shoe coming loose and entailing a return to the house.
The princess was every bit as formidable as Emerald had known she would be, and more. Tall and elegant, with a look of Queen Mary about her, she sat stiff-backed in her chair, affecting to smile benevolently on them whilst her eyes were cold, at least whenever her glance moved to Emerald.
