A Season of Secrets (14 page)

‘Kiss me, Hal!’ Her voice was hoarse, desperate with need. ‘Kiss me now! Please!’

Instead of moving towards her, he clenched his fists, his arm and shoulder muscles bulging. ‘In a gown covered with diamonds and wearing a tiara? You might as well be carrying a placard
saying, “Prohibited. Trespassers will be prosecuted.”’

‘They aren’t diamonds. They’re crystals.’ There was a sob in her throat. ‘As for this . . .’ She ripped the tiara from her hair and tossed it on the bed on
top of his jacket.

Her action unleashed a raging desire, which until now in their romance he had struggled to keep tightly checked. Moving so swiftly that she had no time to catch her breath, he pulled her into
his arms, his mouth coming down violently on hers.

They had kissed passionately before, but never like this, with all restraint gone.

With a low moan she dug her fingers deep into the coarseness of his still-damp curls, her tongue sliding past his, her entire body ablaze with the need to be made love to.

And it was going to happen.

As she felt the urgent hardness of his body against hers, she knew it was going to happen – and she wanted it to happen. She wanted to lose her virginity there and then, more than she had
ever wanted anything else, ever. The bed was a bare two feet away. The door was closed. No one would walk in on them. The occupants of the other rooms in the part of the house they were in were all
on duty, anticipating the imminent arrival of 300 distinguished guests.

As Hal swung her up in his arms and turned with her towards the bed, she had a cataclysmic vision of her father standing without her at the head of the grand staircase. How would he explain her
absence to her mother’s family and his political friends? Even worse, what if she wasn’t beside him when her royal guests arrived? She would be the talk of the Season, and her
father’s bewilderment would be total, his humiliation and bitter disappointment all-consuming.

Though she was aching with longing, desperate with every fibre of her being to take advantage of the little room and its neatly made bed, she knew she couldn’t do so. Never in her life had
her father embarrassed her, and he didn’t deserve that she should embarrass him.

‘Put me down, Hal!’

He sucked in his breath, took one look at the urgency in her eyes and abruptly did as she’d demanded.

For a brief, delicious second the flat of her palms pressed hard against his naked chest and then she spun away from him. How long had she been away from the dining room? Had the family dinner
already ended, and were the ball guests already beginning to arrive?

As she snatched her tiara from the bed he said tautly, ‘What the heck’s the matter, Thea?’

‘My guests!’ She ran to the door. ‘They’ll be here any minute and I have to greet them. For me not to do so would be just too shaming for Papa. I simply can’t do
that to him.’

‘Then why did you run the risk of it? Why did you have to find me?’

She tugged the door open, saying in swift haste, ‘I came to tell you not to go down to the ballroom. There’s no need. I can tell you everything you need to know about the ball. Papa
wasn’t thinking of how uncomfortable you’ll feel . . .’

He frowned, tilting his head questioningly to one side. ‘Uncomfortable?’

‘Not having the right clothes. Not knowing the correct etiquette. Oh God, I must go, Hal! If I’m not there when Prince Edward arrives, the world will cave in!’ And she fled
down the corridor as if the hounds of hell were at her heels.

He didn’t move.

He heard her reach the end of the corridor; heard her begin to run down the stairs. A few seconds later there came the faint sound of a door opening and then rocking shut. And then nothing.

Still he didn’t move. He couldn’t move.

In just a few words she had ended everything there had ever been between them. Because Thea had said that she would – and could – move from her world into his, he had allowed himself
to believe her. Where her politics were concerned she was, he knew, sincere. But it wasn’t enough. When the chips were down, she cared too much for things he didn’t care about at all.
Things like having the right clothes and knowing the correct etiquette. And instead of being uncaring at the thought of him standing out like a sore thumb among her high-and-mighty guests, she had
been horrified by it. So horrified that she had ordered him not to make his scheduled appearance in the ballroom.

He breathed in hard, knowing that both of them had been fools ever to think the class gulf between them could be bridged. Seeing her in her family’s London town house – a house so
palatial it possessed a full-sized ballroom – had slammed the realization home, even before she had burst in on him looking like a vision from a royal fairy tale.

In all their years of being first childhood friends and then secret sweethearts, he had never seen her dressed up – as common sense told him she would be dressed – for high society.
He had only ever seen her in and around Outhwaite, where the clothes she wore were country clothes, barely distinguishable from those Carrie wore. The sight of her in a sumptuous ballgown and
wearing a tiara as if it were a crown had robbed him of breath, first because she had looked so jaw-droppingly beautiful, and second because it had shown him that left-wing politics alone could
never remove her from the class into which she had been born.

Whatever had been between them was over. Pain sliced into his heart as deeply as a knife wound. He gritted his teeth; he would get over her. There would be other girls. No doubt there would be
lots of other girls.

And he was going to take no notice of her demand that he steer clear of the ballroom. He hadn’t wanted the assignment he had been given, but by God, now that he was here, he was going to
carry it out.

He stepped grim-faced towards the door and lifted down the formal evening clothes that had been left for him to change into.

Thirty minutes later, wearing a black tailcoat, black trousers, a stiffly starched dress-shirt and collar, a low-cut white waistcoat, a white bow-tie that he’d had a difficult battle with,
black patent shoes and white kid gloves, he strolled into the flower-filled ballroom looking every inch a member of the class he so despised.

With spiralling excitement, Rozalind looked around the crowded ballroom. Her dance card was almost full. The hired swing orchestra was playing a foxtrot. The Duke and Duchess
of York had arrived. Soon the Prince of Wales would be making his entrance. He would be duty-bound to dance with Thea, but might he also dance with her? She remembered Violet’s remark about
her height and for the first time in her life found herself wishing she was a petite five foot two, instead of a willowy five foot eight.

‘The next dance is mine, I believe,’ a chinless young man said affably, breaking into her thoughts.

He was Barty Luddesdon, eldest son of the 2nd Marquess of Colesby, and someone with whom she had been partnered in a jolly treasure hunt at a party she had attended with Thea only a few days
ago. He was not someone she would ever wish to be romantically involved with, but he was nice and knew enough about her passion – photography – to be able to talk intelligently about
it.

‘Why, so it is,’ she said with a wide smile. She looked down at her dance card. ‘And it’s a quickstep, Barty. What fun!’

As the orchestra struck up with a fast-paced, upbeat melody, she said teasingly, ‘I hope you’re going to be up to all the syncopations, Barty. The quickstep has been a craze in New
York far longer than it’s been a craze here, and I’m pretty much an expert at it.’

‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head,’ Barty said comfortably. ‘They don’t call me fast-as-greased-lightning-Luddesdon for nothing.’ And he proved it by
leading her off into a whole series of hops and runs that had her giggling in delight.

The next dance was a waltz and this time her partner wasn’t so congenial. Rozalind made up for it by letting her attention drift, looking over his shoulder as they circled the room, trying
to see if she could spot Thea.

She couldn’t, but she did see a dreamy-eyed Olivia dancing with a blond-haired, blond-moustached Nordic-looking young man. As Olivia’s seventeenth birthday wasn’t for another
few weeks, Rozalind was amused by how much Olivia was being allowed to get away with. Violet, of course, wasn’t being allowed to dance with anyone other than close family members – and
as she had no brothers or male cousins, this meant she was restricted to dancing only with her father and a handful of middle-aged and distantly related uncles.

As the waltz came to an end Rozalind wondered whether, if her stepbrother had been with her in London, he would have counted as close enough family for Violet to have danced with him. Kyle was
twenty-two, head-turningly handsome and had just been accepted as a junior Foreign Service officer in the US Department of State in Washington. As children, even though Kyle had lived with his
mother (her stepfather’s first wife) in Illinois, they had still seen each other pretty regularly, for every school vacation he had visited his father in New York for at least a couple of
days. He had never, though, been to England with her, and the Fentons, who were no blood relation to him, had never been of any interest to him, or he to them.

Lately, though, Rozalind had noticed Kyle begin asking questions about her uncle’s political life in the House of Lords. ‘It’s a strange set-up, don’t you think?’
he had said the last time they had met. ‘Members sitting in a second chamber by virtue of hereditary right?’

‘It isn’t something I’ve ever thought about,’ she’d said. ‘Come with me next time I visit England and talk it over with my uncle. I’d like you to meet
my English family. They mean a lot to me.’

So far he hadn’t made the trip, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t one day do so. As she continued trying to avoid her partner’s feet, she became aware of a frisson of
excitement running through the ballroom.

‘I think Prince Edward may have arrived,’ she said, fascinated at the effect the prince had on even the most blue-blooded of the aristocracy.

‘Does he have the adorable Mrs Dudley Ward with him?’ her dancing partner asked, showing a rare spark of animation.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t caught sight of him yet.’ She turned her head as far to the left as their dance-hold would permit and, though she caught sight of someone who,
from the back, looked remarkably like Hal (though as he was wearing a tailcoat it obviously wasn’t Hal), she couldn’t see the Prince.

‘Freda’s rather a corker. I’m not surprised HRH is smitten with her.’

Rozalind would have liked to have heard some more about Prince Edward’s mistress, but the waltz came to an end and they dutifully parted company.

‘There you are!’ Olivia rushed up to her. ‘Prince Edward has arrived! Do come and be presented.’

As Olivia seized hold of her hand, Rozalind went with her willingly, determined to make an impression on the future King of England and to dazzle as she had never dazzled before.

He was standing with his equerry in the centre of a small group of people and there was no diminutive ‘corker’ anywhere in sight. Her uncle was to one side of him, Thea to the
other.

‘Remember your curtsey,’ Olivia said as they approached. ‘Left leg well back behind the right, back straight. No wobbling.’

Seconds later, praying for balance, Rozalind sank into a deep curtsey. Her first impression of the Prince was that although he was slightly built, he was handsome in the way that fairytale
princes in storybooks were handsome. His pale-blond hair was slickly straight and glassily shiny. His eyes were a stunning azure-blue. Although he was thirty, he radiated boyish charm – a
charm that won her over immediately.

As he asked which part of America she was from, Rozalind’s uppermost thought was of how much she longed to photograph him.

‘New York, sir,’ she said, wondering if her Uncle Gilbert would make such a request for her; wondering what the protocol would be.

‘That’s splendid!’ He looked genuinely delighted. ‘I shall be in Canada in a couple of months’ time, visiting a ranch I own in Alberta. I intend making a holiday of
things and going from there to New York, staying with friends on Long Island in order to play polo and watch some of the international matches between Britain and America.’

He didn’t turn away from her or give any indication that their conversation was now at an end, and Rozalind was unsure what was expected of her. Uncle Gilbert had primed her on how she was
to act when presented. ‘Never, ever initiate any conversation,’ he had said. ‘It simply isn’t done.’

‘Not even for an American?’ she’d asked mischievously.

‘
Especially
for an American,’ he’d said firmly.

Prince Edward, however, was obviously waiting for some kind of chatty response from her – and responding in a conversation wasn’t the same as initiating a conversation. Remembering
the almost hysterical welcome New York had given him when he had visited it four years before, she said in her naturally friendly manner, ‘New Yorkers love you, sir. When you make your visit
you will be given a wonderful welcome.’