Scandals. PENNY JORDAN

his mother what was in his mind – yet.

      

      It was only later, when Robert had returned to his own home – the penthouse apartment in a stylish new block for which he had been the lead architect – that Emerald showed Drogo how anxious she really was about her son’s future.

      ‘Is it selfish of me to hope that Robert will turn down Alessandro’s mother, and refuse the Crown?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Drogo replied carefully, ‘but I do know that it won’t help if you keep running her down to him, because ultimately if he does decide to accept that could put him in an awkward position.’

      Strong-willed Emerald might be, but she hated feeling that her husband disapproved of something she’d said or done.

      ‘But she is such a horrendous monster,’ she insisted, turning on the slender heel of her damson-coloured Charles Jourdan court shoes and walking towards the window, the cut of her Chanel tweed suit, flecked with lilac, damson and white against a black background, discreetly outlining her curves.

      Even with the sharp winter light falling on her, to Drogo she still looked as stunning as she had done when he had first seen her.

      When she finally turned and saw the look of love and concern on her husband’s face, she walked back to him and put her head on his shoulder.

      ‘I only want Robert to be happy, Drogo – is that so very wrong?’ She paused and then added in a voice shorn of her normal confidence, ‘Sometimes I wonder if it’s true what they say about being careful what you wish for.’

      ‘Meaning?’ Drogo invited.

      ‘When Robert was born I felt triumphant because no matter what Alessandro’s mother might choose to think, Robert would always be Alessandro’s first-born son and his rightful heir. Since then I’ve wished so often that you had been his father. That way he’d always be here, with us, part of us and our way of life.’

      It was so unlike Emerald to show any hint of vulnerability or regret, that Drogo took her in his arms, wanting to comfort her.

      ‘If he accepts what Alessandro’s mother offers him,’ Emerald went on, ‘then he won’t be part of us any longer. I worry for him, Drogo. We’ve brought him up to be comfortable in the life he has here in England; Alessandro’s mother will want him to be Alessandro’s son, charming but weak, royal but malleable, a handsome puppet prince.’

      ‘You’re underestimating Robert,’ Drogo tried to comfort her. ‘He is his own man, Emerald.’

      ‘It would all have been so much better if he had been your son – not that I’d want James disinherited, of course – but, Drogo, how on earth am I going to face owning up to a son who is the Crown Prince of somewhere as ridiculous as Lauranto? Everyone who’s anyone knows that a European title is merely a joke compared with a British title.’ Emerald gave a small shudder, reassuming her normal mantle of assured superiority. ‘We can’t let him make even more of a Ruritanian comedy of himself by marrying some girl with the trumped-up title of “Princess” just because it suits Alessandro’s mother.’

      ‘No, better by far that he marries someone we have chosen for him,’ Drogo agreed straight-faced.

      Emerald leaned back within the circle of his arms and looked up at him. It’s all very well you laughing, but these things are important, Drogo.’

      ‘I’m prepared to agree that if Robert does step into Alessandro’s shoes then it will be important that he marries someone he loves, someone who understands the demands of his role and her own, and who can deal with the problems those demands may cause them both, but as for us choosing that someone – just think how you would have felt if your mother had chosen your husband for you.’

      Still looking up at him, Emerald told him derisively, ‘She did – she chose you, even if she has never said so.’

      ‘Mmm. Well, there are exceptions to every rule,’ Drogo allowed, with a grin, before bending his head to kiss her.

       Chapter Three

      ‘It’s definite then, Nick? This separation, I mean. There’s no chance of the two of you…?’ Rose Simons asked her stepson sadly.

      ‘No, none. Sarah has made that more than clear. She’s even had the locks changed. Her father’s idea, no doubt.’

      Nick’s voice might be as crisp as the shirt he was wearing – laundered, no doubt, professionally rather than by his wife – Rose thought wryly, but she knew her stepson, and she knew the vulnerabilities and insecurities Nick was so adept at hiding. Too adept? Was that part of the reason why he and his wife had separated? Because the experiences of the first twelve years of Nick’s life had made him wary of trusting others?

      To the outside world Nick might be an aggressive and very successful corporate raider, whose photograph appeared regularly in the financial press, accompanied by articles praising his economic acumen, but to her he was still, in part, the troubled orphaned child she had taken to her heart.

      Nick pulled out one of the matt chrome bar stools from the kitchen island unit where his stepmother had been chopping vegetables for the curry she planned to make for supper. The kitchen of the Chelsea town house Josh and Rose had bought together after their marriage, with its streamlined and highly individual chrome and glass décor, might not look as cosy and domesticated as the hand-painted, extortionately expensive Smallbone kitchen Sarah had insisted on having fitted in the overpriced house in The Boltons she had fallen in love with, but Nick knew which kitchen he felt most at home in and where he felt most valued.

      His stepmother had her own unique style, which owed much to the fact that she was a very successful designer of both commercial and private house interiors, working from the family-run Walton Street shop, first opened by her aunt Amber, and something to the oriental genes inherited from her Chinese mother. To those who didn’t know her, from the top of her polished still-black pixiecut hair, to the hem of her strikingly simple black dress, Rose Simons breathed a style that appeared intimidating, but Nick knew the loving heart Rose concealed beneath her couture clothes and her businesslike manner.

      He couldn’t think of any other woman he knew and he knew plenty – who, on opening her front door to a scruffy, dirty, snotty-nosed unknown boy of twelve, who was announcing that her husband was his father, would have reached out, as Rose had done to him, to say calmly, ‘Well, I am pleased to hear that because if there’s one thing this house lacks, it’s a boy living here.’

      ‘Nick…’

      ‘It’s all right,’ he told her now. ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid, like going round there and kicking up a fuss. I’ve already tried that, after all.’ He rubbed his hand against his jaw, the contact making a faint rasping sound. He was the image of his father, Rose thought, as she put the sliced vegetables into a bowl, and covered it, her movements practised, calm and minimal, in harmony with the pared-down elegance of the kitchen. Rose liked things to be easy to understand and assess instead of complicated; she liked things to be out in the open instead of hidden away, and all that was reflected in her designs. Just as a cluttered, overfilled mind could conceal forgotten secrets and thoughts that ultimately could grow and fester, so, she felt, could cluttered ‘space’ lead to the same potential hazards.

      Nick wasn’t like that, though. Nick was a child damaged by the misery of the early years of his life, and Rose’s heart ached for him.

      Although he was trying to conceal them, she could see his bitterness and his anger over the draining, long-drawn-out misery that had been the ending of his marriage, even if those emotions were now banked down under a thin seal of acceptance.

      ‘What…what’s going to happen about the children?’ Rose had dreaded asking. She and Josh adored their grandchildren, and Rose considered herself fortunate to see as much of them as she did, thanks to the fact that