Naughty In Nice (2 page)

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Authors: Rhys Bowen

BOOK: Naughty In Nice
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“Not all of us are going to inherit a title and an estate, old chap,” the first man said.
“We might still have the title and the estate but we’re stony broke like everyone else these days,” the other replied. “Can’t even afford to stay at the Negresco this year. If I didn’t have an aunt with a villa, I don’t know what I’d do. Still, a couple of visits to the casinos should make up for the meager allowance the old man gives me. With a little bit of luck, what?” And he laughed, an exaggerated haw, haw, haw sound.
They moved away, their voices lost in the puffing of a steam engine and the shouts of porters. As I watched them go, another voice rose clearly over the station hubbub. “Do watch out with my luggage, porter, or the whole lot will come crashing down.”
I turned to see a veritable Matterhorn of trunks, valises and hatboxes heading my way on a trolley, pushed by a red-faced and struggling porter, while behind it, carrying a small crocodile train case in one hand, a cigarette holder in the other, came my dearest friend, Belinda Warburton-Stoke.
“Belinda!” I called, dropping the ladle and wiping my hands on my apron as I ran toward her.
She looked up, confused for a moment; then a big smile spread across her face as she recognized me. “Georgie! Good God. What on earth are you doing here?”
“Obviously not on my way to the Continent like you, you lucky old thing,” I said. “I would hug you, but I’m rather carrot encrusted at the moment.”
“Er—yes, I can see.” She took a step backward, moving her gorgeous fox fur coat out of danger. “So you’re still doing your Girl Guide good deeds at the soup kitchen. Positively destined for sainthood, darling.”
I grimaced. “Anything’s better than spending all day at Rannoch House, with Fig telling me what a burden I am to them and how sad it is that I’m not married yet.” I studied her, wrapped in her long fox fur, with her neat little pillbox hat perched jauntily to one side. She was the height of glamour, while I was conscious of my soup-stained apron and windblown hair. “I had no idea you were home or I would have come to visit you to cheer myself up.”
“I haven’t been in London at all, darling,” Belinda said. She turned to the porter, who was hovering impatiently. “Take my luggage to my compartment. I’ll be along in a minute,” she commanded.
“As you say, miss,” he grunted and pushed the trolley into motion again. The mountain of luggage teetered dangerously as he picked up speed.
“He’ll probably tip the lot onto the rails,” Belinda commented. “I always seem to get the one clueless porter. You’d think with all this unemployment that those who got jobs would be top-notch, wouldn’t you?”
“So where have you been?” I asked. “Why haven’t I seen anything of you?”
She gave a resigned shrug. “Home in the bosom of my family, darling. I came home for Christmas, because family togetherness is expected of one, isn’t it, and because Father usually gives me a generous check in my Christmas stocking, but now I’m rushing back to the Riviera as fast as my legs can carry me. Too bleak and dreary in London and nobody fun is still here. Between you and me, I’m positively sex starved. I haven’t had a good roll in the hay in weeks.”
“Belinda!” I exclaimed. After having known her all this time she still managed to shock me.
She looked surprised. “One does so enjoy it.”
I tried to imagine if it was as good as she claimed. Darcy’s kisses had certainly been blissful, but I couldn’t quite believe that the next part could be as great as Belinda claimed. Obviously my mother thought so. She had done it with a great many men on every continent except Antarctica.
“I don’t think I could live without sex,” Belinda added. “I could never be a nun.”
I laughed. “They’d never have you!”
“Which is more than any man of my acquaintance could say.” She gave a wicked smile, then the smile faded. “Crockford’s was like a morgue when I popped in for a quick flutter last night. Only a few dreary businessmen. Not a wealthy playboy in sight.”
“Did you win anything?”
Belinda made a face. “I didn’t stay long. I try not to play with my own money, you know, and I couldn’t find anyone
sympathique
enough to fund me. The casino at Monte Carlo will be friendlier.”
“So you’re going to Monte, are you?” I tried to hide my look of envy.
Belinda hesitated. “Ah. That part’s not quite settled yet. I don’t exactly have a firm invitation from anyone.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I was planning to camp out at the Negresco in Nice and do a little scouting around, but frankly Father’s check is less generous this year. I blame it on the wicked stepmother. Like your sister-in-law, she objects to family money being spent on the unmarried daughter. So I’ve got about enough cash to get me there, and then, who knows? I may have to have my car conveniently break down outside someone’s villa, like I did in Romania.”
“Belinda. You’re terrible.”
“It worked perfectly at the royal castle there, didn’t it?” Belinda gave me her cat-with-the-cream smile. Suddenly she grabbed my arm. “I’ve got a brilliant idea. Come with me, Georgie. We’ll stage that convenient breakdown together. It would be such a lark, wouldn’t it? And someone would be more likely to take us into their bosom if you were with me. Royalty does carry clout, and I gather your cousin the Prince of Wales is wintering on the Med at the moment, so you’d have a perfect excuse to be visiting him.”
“I can’t,” I said, while my less sensible half whispered that it would indeed be a tremendous lark. “Apart from the fact that I’m hardly dressed for the boat train, it’s a small matter of not being able to afford the ticket for the journey. And certainly not the Negresco until we secure our invitation.”
“I’d volunteer to share a room with you,” Belinda said, “but it might rather cramp my style.” She leaned closer to me. “Actually, I have a particular chap in mind.”
“Another one?”
“Of course.”
“So who is this new beau? Why haven’t I heard about him?”
“Not my beau yet; in fact, we only exchanged a few words and some very smoldering looks. He sat next to me at the roulette wheel at the casino before Christmas and when I was about to bet he put his hand over mine and said, ‘Allow me,’ and put a stake on for me. And it won too. He’s absolutely dreamy. What’s more, he’s a French aristocrat of incredibly long pedigree, I gather, and frightfully rich. But we never had a chance to get to know one another properly. He regretted that he had to leave for Paris the next morning, but hoped we’d meet again in more agreeable circumstances. So I’m planning to pick up where we left off.”
“Good luck,” I said. “Now, if you marry him, you’ll have to behave yourself. The French expect their wives to be terribly chaste and demure.”
“Not their mistresses, however,” Belinda said, smiling wickedly.
“Belinda. I worry that you’ll end up like my mother,” I said.
“I don’t think your mother has had a bad life at all,” Belinda said thoughtfully, staring out across the smoky bleakness of the station. “Rather fun, actually.”
“But what about when she gets old and loses her beauty and sex appeal?”
“She can make a fortune writing her memoirs. ‘My life—from actress to duchess to bolter.’ They will make Lady Chatterley look like a
Girl’s Own
comic.”
“It wouldn’t be the kind of life I’d want,” I said.
“Of course not. You’ve too much of Queen Victoria in you. You want the family seat with an adoring husband and a pack of children around you. We’ll just have to find you another Prince Albert.”
“I met enough of those at the wedding in Romania,” I said. “They were terribly stodgy and boring.”
“That’s because you were comparing them to Darcy. So where is he now?”
“I’ve no idea. I saw him once at Christmas, then he went home to Ireland and I’ve heard no more. I can’t blame him. Fig is so rude to him if he dares to show his face at Rannoch House. She still hasn’t forgotten arriving in the middle of the night and finding us alone together, and me in my night attire.”
Belinda’s face lit up. “Georgie, you sly old thing. So you have finally done it after all.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I wanted to but I fell asleep.”
“You fell asleep? I don’t believe it. I’m sure Darcy’s lovemaking is not at all ho-hum.”
“No, he was wonderful. I’d drunk too much champagne, I suppose. It always goes to my head. Anyway, Fig and Binky arrived and found us and she’s not allowed Darcy in the house ever since.”
“How simply maddening, darling. We’ll have to whisk you away somehow. I’ll try to wangle an invitation for you once I’m settled in Nice, and you try to find a way to come up with the train ticket. Perhaps someone we know is motoring down and has room in the motorcar for an extra person.”
“I hardly know anybody in London,” I said.
“You know the king and queen, which is more than most of us. Wouldn’t they like to send you on a small royal tour to bring their goodwill to expatriate English people?”
“You are silly. Besides, you said the Prince of Wales is already there.”
“I don’t suppose he’s spreading much royal goodwill. Too interested in one particular party.”
“Oh, Lord, is she with him?”
“So one hears.”
“I bet Her Majesty’s livid about that.”
From down the platform came a loud whistle and shouts of “all aboard.”
“You’d better be off, or you’ll miss your train,” I said. My face must have mirrored my own gloom.
Belinda gave me a commiserating smile. “I wish I could spirit you with me, darling. I don’t suppose you’d fit in one of my trunks?”
I laughed. The station clock began to chime ten. “Go, Belinda, or your luggage will be on its way to France without you.”
She leaned across my dirty apron to kiss me on the cheek. “I’ll miss you, old bean. And I will try to find a way to release you from your bondage.”
“Cinderella’s fairy godmother?” I asked.
“Absolutely. Glass slippers and all.”
She blew me a kiss, then hurried toward her platform. I didn’t say it, but I thought that once Belinda was safely on the Riviera, surrounded by gorgeous tanned and rich men, she would forget that I even existed.
 
Chapter 2
 
Rannoch House
Belgrave Square
London W.1.
Still January 15, 1933
 
It was raining as I left Victoria Station—a sleety, freezing, almost horizontal rain that stung like needles on my cold skin. By the time I reached Belgrave Square and went up the steps of Rannoch House I was feeling thoroughly dispirited. I arrived at the same time as the afternoon post and retrieved two letters for Fig from the mat. One bore a Derbyshire postmark and her mother’s perfect penmanship, the other a foreign stamp. I was naturally curious about the latter. I didn’t think that Fig had ever been abroad. She didn’t even like abroad. She mistrusted anything foreign, to the extent that she once refused to eat chicken cordon bleu, even though we assured her the chicken had been English through and through.
But at the moment I put the letters on the salver, Fig’s voice floated down from somewhere on the first floor. “Why can’t we go to the Riviera like everyone else? This climate is too depressing and it’s not good for me to be depressed in my current condition.”
I couldn’t hear the reply, presumably Binky’s, but could hardly miss Fig’s shrilly annoyed, “But everyone else is there. London is practically empty.”
Obviously Fig’s governess had not drilled into her, the way mine had, that a lady never raises her voice. Or perhaps all the rules could be broken if one was in the family way. But in any case it was a slight exaggeration that London was practically empty. Fig had obviously never traveled on the tube during the rush hour.
I fumbled with my scarf, trying to make my frozen fingers obey me. The front hall felt delightfully warm for once. Since Fig and Binky had returned to London there had been fires in all the grates and good food at every meal. A far cry from when I was trying to survive alone last year with no servants, no heating and no money to buy food. I suppose one could learn to put up with Fig for the sake of such conveniences. . . .

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