The Duke's Proposal. Sophie Weston

her thin, the break from her family to keep her ‘focused’, as he’d called it. Oh, yes, he’d been glad enough to give back her contract when she’d faced him with all of that. Only now he was having second thoughts, and…

      If she wasn’t careful, she was going to start shaking again.

      With another of her abrupt changes of mood Madame lost interest. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have no life. You don’t date. You don’t go out anywhere unless it’s an assignment.’

      Jemima was still shaky. ‘I work. I don’t have time to go out.’

      ‘Make time.’

      ‘What?’

      Madame said with finality, ‘Go back to being a regular person. You don’t have to disappear and come back a duke. You don’t even have to date a designer if you don’t want to. But date someone.’

      ‘I—’

      ‘I’m cancelling the shoot in New York. Take a break. Go meet some guys, like other girls. I want to see you living a life like our customers lead. And I want to see the press stories to prove it.’

      She stood up. The interview was clearly over.

      Jemima stopped shivering. She was not afraid of Madame.

      She tipped her head back. On this dull grey afternoon the penthouse was lit by warm table-lamps. In their light the wonderful red hair rippled like fire, like wine. And Jemima knew it. She knew, too, that the woman who had personally chosen her as the face of Belinda would not want to admit she had been wrong.

      She said, quite gently, ‘Or?’

      Madame recognised a challenge when she saw it. She might like Jemima personally. But she couldn’t afford to let a challenge go unanswered. Her jaw hardened.

      ‘We’re already into planning the Christmas campaign. I won’t pull you off that. But it’s your last unless you—’

      ‘Get a boyfriend,’ supplied Jemima. Her temper went back onto a slow burn. She smiled pleasantly at the shark. ‘I’m almost certain that’s illegal.’

      Madame did not care about piffling legalities. She snorted. ‘Unless you get a life.’

      ‘And if I don’t?’

      The eyes were blank and lizard-like again. ‘You’re off the team.’

      Jemima flipped off the sofa. ‘Cast your mind back,’ she said sweetly. ‘Like I said, I quit.’

      She steamed out before they could answer.

      The commissionaire summoned a taxi for her. She sank into the big seat and called the agency.

      ‘Belinda and I just fired each other,’ she said curtly.

      She rang off to squawks of horror.

      And then she did what she had been putting off all day. She checked her text messages.

      Her fingers shook a little as she pressed the buttons. Basil had stopped leaving messages on her voicemail these days. But he texted a lot. Mostly she managed to zap them unread. But today she saw one she had thought was from her limousine service.

      As soon as she saw it was not, she killed it. But not soon enough.

      The message was the same as always. The words changed. But the theme was constant.

      U R MYN.

      CHAPTER TWO

      JEMIMA let herself into the apartment. It was dark and silent. She dropped her overnight bag and closed the door.

      ‘Pepper?’ she called, without much hope.

      But there was no answer. Well, it was only what she had expected. Izzy was away in the ice fields, helping her love with his training. She had hoped that her cousin might be here, though.

      Jemima hefted the bag over her shoulder. Switching on lights, she made her way to the kitchen.

      It was the heart of their shared home. Here they sat at the table and laughed and argued and made plans. Now it was unnaturally tidy. No flowers on the table. No scribbled messages on the memory board. All the work surfaces were clear and gleaming. Even the answering machine was neatly aligned in the corner, with what looked like a week’s post in front of it. The last person in here had clearly been the cleaning lady.

      Jemima shivered and dropped her trim flight bag. She flicked on the radio and bopped gently to the music as she opened the fridge.

      Lots of water. A couple of bottles of wine. Some elderly cheese. It didn’t look as if Pepper had been here for days.

      ‘With her Steven in Oxford,’ said Jemima aloud.

      Just like Izzy, with her Dominic.

      ‘And I could be out on the town with Francis Hale-Smith,’ she mocked herself. ‘Holding hands whenever we spotted a camera.’

      It was even more chilling than the empty flat.

      She started to make coffee, although she didn’t really want it, and hacked off a small corner of the dying cheese. Not because she wanted that either, but because Izzy always made her some food when she came in late. Or she’d always used to.

      ‘Hi, Jay Jay. How was Paris? And how have you been?’ she said to the empty chair.

      She walked round to the other side of the table and answered herself. ‘Oh, you know—busy, busy. And my ex-manager won’t leave me alone. Hounding me seems to be his new career choice. He’s really putting his back into it, twenty-four-seven.’

      In the silence she did not sound anything like as ironic as she’d meant to.

      ‘Damn!’ Her voice broke at last.

      She sank down on a kitchen chair and dropped her head in her hands.

      The phone started to ring. She ignored it. She had not cried, not once, since Basil started his campaign. And now it didn’t seem as if she could stop. She didn’t even try to answer the phone.

      The answering programme clicked onto Izzy’s voice. She sounded as if she were laughing.

      ‘We can’t take your call at the moment. But talk nicely and we might get back to you. Here come the beeps.’

      Jemima gave an audible hiccup. They had laughed so much when Izzy recorded that. It had been airlessly hot. All the windows open. They’d been drinking white wine spritzers and they had juggled ice cubes to decide who got to record the message. Izzy had been wearing a tee shirt and nothing else, and she said you could hear it in her voice on the recording.

      Now Jemima reached across and pressed the outgoing message button, just to remind herself of that night. Now Izzy had Dom, and Pepper was getting married. And Jemima?

      Jemima had her very own stalker, she thought with savage irony.

      She gave herself a mental shake. This was stupid. Besides, she hated being so sorry for herself. It made her feel a wimp.

      She stood up, looking for kitchen roll to blot her streaming eyes.

      And again the phone burst into shrill life.

      She jumped so hard that she knocked over the kitchen roll. While she was retrieving it the answering programme kicked in. Izzy’s lovely laughing voice, and then…

      ‘Welcome home, Jemima,’ said a voice she knew.

      She stopped dead. Her hand stilled on the paper roll. Suddenly the self-pitying eyes were dry. Dry as her mouth.

      ‘Pick up. I know you’re there.’

      Slowly she straightened and put the kitchen roll back on the fitment very precisely. Her throat hurt. She swallowed, looking at the telephone. She did not move.

      The voice