Penny Jordan - Sins

‘No, that’s not the case at all,’ Ella defended her stepmother vehemently. ‘Quite the opposite. Mama just isn’t like that. She desperately wants there to be an heir, because otherwise the title will die out and the estate will be broken up, and she says that Lord Robert would have hated that. It was so awful what happened, Lord Robert and Luc being killed in a car accident.’

‘You knew them?’

‘Yes. They used to come and visit Mama’s grandmother. My father was her estate manager. I was only young, of course, but I can remember them. Mama says that only when the dukedom has been passed on to a new heir will she be able to feel that Lord Robert is finally at peace.’

‘So you reckon, then, that this heir, whoever he is, would be welcomed by the duchess?’

‘I’m sure of it,’ Ella confirmed, adding, ‘I’m not so sure that Emerald would welcome him, though. She’s planning to have her coming-out ball at the house in Eaton Square, which really belongs to the duke. Mama didn’t want her to but Emerald always manages to get her own way.’

‘I dare say the estate is pretty run down, there not being an heir?’ Dougie probed further.

‘Oh, no,’ Ella assured him firmly. ‘Mama is a trustee, along with Mr Melrose, the family solicitor, and although Osterby–that’s the main house in the country–is shut up and not used, there’s a skeleton staff there to keep everything in order and there’s an estate manager to take care of the land.’

‘Strewth, that must be costing someone a bob or two,’ Dougie commented.

‘Well, the money comes out of the estate itself. The duke was very rich, and Mama says that everything must be kept in order whilst there’s the slightest hope of finding the heir so that it can be handed over to him as Robert would have wanted it to be.’

‘Emerald will feel her nose has been put out of joint then, won’t she, if some heir arrives and then she gets nothing?’

‘Emerald couldn’t have inherited the estate–it’s entailed–and besides, her father set up a very generous trust fund for her.’

‘So she’s a rich heiress then, is she?’

‘I expect she will be one day.’

‘And you don’t mind?’

‘No. Not at all.’

Ella might understand that Australians did not know any better than to ask the kind of questions that were normally taboo but she drew the line at informing Dougie that her stepmother was independently wealthy, and that none of them had any need to feel envious of Emerald, in any way.

Ella knew that she should not have said as much as she already had, but the truth was that talking about Emerald helped to keep her mind off her anxiety over Janey, who was still locked in an embrace in the corner. Now when Ella looked she could see that the dishevelled one’s hand had disappeared up inside Janey’s jumper. She opened her mouth in shock and the small anxious sound she made had Dougie looking in the same direction.

‘Looks like someone is enjoying the party,’ he chuckled, offering Ella another cigarette.

‘I’m sorry. Please excuse me.’

Ella was obviously flustered. Her set expression and pale face indicated how alarmed she was by her sister’s behaviour, and Dougie wasn’t really surprised by her obvious desire to do something about it.

How awful of her to be so rude, but she had to stop what was going on, Ella comforted herself as she hurried over to her sister. She came to a halt, standing determinedly in front of Janey.

‘It’s time for us to go, Janey.’

Janey, who had been struggling to stop Larry’s hands from roving far more intimately over her body than she welcomed, greeted her sister’s arrival with relief–not that she intended to let Ella know that–and extracted herself from his embrace.

‘Where’s Rose?’ she asked Ella.

The honest answer was that Ella didn’t know, but she could hardly say that unless she wanted to risk Janey accusing her of pretending she wanted to leave. The last thing she wanted was a row with Janey, which would result in her impetuous sister going straight back to the man Ella had just prised her away from.

To her relief Janey announced, ‘Oh, there she is, over there.’

‘Look, I meant what I said about wanting you to come and take a look at my salon,’ Josh was saying to Rose.

There was more space around them now and she had been able to step back from him. She started to shake her head, but he stopped her, reaching into his pocket and producing a business card with a theatrical flourish.

‘Here’s my card. Think about it.’

Rose could see Ella beckoning her urgently, Janey beside her, so she took the card and slipped it into her handbag.

‘I must go,’ she stammered hurriedly, before making her way to Ella’s side.

‘Look, leave it out, will you, Ollie? I know what I’m doing.’

The stubborn look on his cousin’s face as he pulled his arm free of Oliver’s restraining hand told Oliver all he needed to know about Willie’s frame of mind.

They were in their local East End pub, the Royal Crown, standing at the bar with their beers.

‘I thought like you meself once, Willie. In fact I was all for making meself a career in the boxing ring, but then I got to thinking—’

‘You mean that your ma got to thinking for you,’ Willie interrupted him. ‘Well, I’m not being told what to do by you, Ollie. Harry Malcolms reckons I’ve got a good future ahead of me, and that there’s bin talk of either the Richardsons or the Krays tekkin’ an interest.’

The mention of two of the East End’s most notorious gangs made Oliver frown.

‘If you go down that route you’ll be expected to throw matches as well as win them, Willie,’ he warned.

His cousin gave a dismissive shrug. ‘It’s only them lads that aren’t good enough that get told to lose, and that ain’t going to happen to me . Reggie came down to watch me sparring the other night, and he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t fink he wanted me on board.’

Willie might think he had what it took to make the big time but Oliver had asked around and the word on the street was that he was more boxing ring fodder than a future champion, and would end up merely as a sparring partner for more skilled boxers, working for a pittance in a boxing club rather than earning big money in prize fights.

The trouble with Willie was that he was easily led and just as easily deceived.

‘You’re a fool, Willie,’ Oliver complained, beginning to lose patience. ‘Throw in your lot with them and my bet is that you’ll end up with your brains turned to jelly, or working as one of their enforcers.’

‘You’re just jealous,’ Willie accused him, his cheeks flushed. ‘You know what your problem is, don’t you? It’s that mother of yours. My dad reckons—’ He broke off suddenly, looking self-conscious and scuffing his shoe on the ground.

Oliver froze. This wasn’t the first time there’d been dark hints thrown out about his mother.

‘Go on, Willie. Your dad reckons what exactly?’ he challenged, his voice hard.

‘Oh, leave it out, will you, Ollie? I didn’t mean nothing. It’s just that your ma always carries on like nothing’s good enough for her. Me ma reckons that it’s rich, her coming on the way she does when she works as a ruddy cleaner, but me dad—’

He broke off again, his face reddening whilst Oliver’s mouth compressed into a thin line of fury.

He should be used to it by now. After all, he’d pretty much grown up shrugging off the whispers and sly looks that people exchanged when they talked about his mother. The gossips whispered that the rich widower for whom she cleaned was responsible for her good figure and her smart appearance.

Oliver scowled. He was no stranger to the pleasure of sex–far from it–but the thought of his mother tarting herself up for her wealthy boss wasn’t one that sat comfortably with him, and all the more so because of the benefits that had come his way over the years, courtesy of Herbert Sawyer.