Penny Jordan - Sins

But that hadn’t prevented her from having her daydreams.

Later on, when she had been at college and she had seen the way that men looked at her, knowing that she loved John had made her feel safe. Because if she loved John then there was no need for her to worry about falling in love with anyone else–with someone who might pretend to love her but who would really only want to treat her as her father had treated her mother.

No other man could hurt her or reject her whilst she loved John. And she always would. Always. Even though she knew that nothing could ever come of it. Instead she hid her private love for him in her heart and concentrated on her work and on making sure that she repaid her aunt Amber’s faith in her.

‘When I said head-and-shoulder portraits of girls, that was exactly what I meant,’ she told Josh severely now, as she focused firmly on the present, ‘not poses more suitable for a certain type of magazine.’

Josh burst out laughing. ‘Ollie would be mortified if he heard you say that. He photographs models for Vogue , not Men Only .’

Rose could feel her face starting to burn. Quickly she turned round and headed to the top of the stairs where the first door in front of her had an unsteady ‘WC’ painted on it.

‘You’ll have to make sure that there are proper cloakroom facilities,’ she announced. ‘At least you will if you want to attract girls.’

She hadn’t realised that there was a double entendre to her words until she heard Josh laugh again.

‘So that’s where I’ve been going wrong when I’ve taken girls back to my place,’ he joked. ‘And there I’ve been, changing my toothpaste, thinking I might have bad breath. You reckon I’d be better getting one of those fancy crocheted covers for the toilet roll, do you?’

Rose laughed in spite of herself. She wasn’t fooled for a minute; she doubted that any girl who agreed to go home with this man cared two hoots about his bathroom. She wasn’t going to boost his ego by telling him so, though, not when she was pretty sure that he already knew it himself.

Instead she said loftily, ‘Of course I don’t know what kind of clientele you want to attract.’

‘But posh girls like you wouldn’t come and get their hair done in a salon run by a working-class Jewish hairdresser whose salon that hasn’t got the right kind of “cloakroom,” is that it?’

He sounded more curt than amused now. His obvious contempt made Rose flinch, but she stood her ground.

‘That wasn’t what I meant at all. It isn’t a matter of being “posh”. In fact, some of the grandest houses in the country have the most antiquated bathrooms you can imagine. It’s just a matter of making your clientele feel that you appreciate and value them, especially when that clientele is going to be female. Making them feel comfortable, but at the same time making them feel that they deserve something that’s special, and…and the best. That is after all why you want them to come to you, isn’t it?’ she challenged him. ‘Not just so that you can do their hair but because you think you can do their hair better than anyone else?’

Josh was taken aback and impressed by her astuteness. He looked at her as though he hadn’t really seen her before and in one sense he realised he hadn’t. Previously he’d seen her as a stunning-looking girl whose Eurasian beauty would make her an excellent model for the avant-garde hairstyles he and Vidal talked about so passionately into the early hours. They were both in their different ways determined to do away with the old-established hairdressing model of rigidly arranged and lacquered ‘set’ styles, and to replace them with precision cutting that focused on the natural movement of a woman’s hair.

Whilst he and Vidal understood one another’s drive, Rose had astonished Josh with the speed at which she had tapped into his ambitions. She was, he decided ruefully, bang on the money, though, and that was exactly what he wanted.

In that moment Josh made up his mind that Rose and no one else was going to be responsible for the décor of his salon, no matter how much cajoling he had to do to get her to do it–and somehow he knew he would have to cajole her. He was no fool, though. There was no point in scaring her off by telling her what he had decided. Instead he stepped past her and pushed open the door into the long dilapidated room that he planned to turn into his salon.

‘Come and have a look at this…’

The sound of someone knocking on the door, when Lew was out at lunch with his latest girl, distracted Dougie’s attention from the small portable typewriter on which he was typing up a list of potential clients Lew had left him. There were no sittings booked for the afternoon and, knowing Lew as he now did, Dougie suspected that when he returned it would be with the young woman he had been pursuing and that he himself would be told to shoot off for the day. Cursing under his breath as the knocking continued and he hit two wrong keys in succession, Dougie pushed back his chair and stood up.

Emerald waited impatiently at the door. She hadn’t been put off when the new top society photographer, lauded in Tatler and the Queen , hadn’t replied to her letter to him from Paris insisting that she wanted him to take her new official débutante photograph, and nor had she changed her mind about the importance of having him do just that.

She had quickly discovered on her return to London that she was far from the only contender for the position of HRH The Duchess of Kent, and that invitations offering an opportunity for débutantes to meet the duke were very carefully monitored by those who managed to secure his presence at any event. Naturally, she was not going to be readily invited to parties the duke was attending by the mothers of other débutantes, for instance. Emerald quite understood that, and she understood too that she was going to have to use subtle, even underhand, means to ensure that she brought herself to the duke’s attention. Getting herself photographed by Lewis Coulter, and then being described as the season’s prettiest débutante would do her campaign no harm. His mother was bound to have copies of all the top magazines, and Emerald could easily imagine her pointing her photograph out to her son and saying what an impeccable lineage. At least on her father’s side. It was a pity that her mother wasn’t better born. Emerald’s mouth thinned. Had she been, then Emerald wouldn’t have to think about strategies for bringing herself to the duke’s attention because her mother would naturally have numbered Princess Marina amongst her social circle.

Irritatingly, the young duke, instead of establishing himself in London and taking part in its social scene, seemed to spend most of his time in the country. Emerald made a small grimace of distaste. Once they were married that would have to change. She didn’t like the country at all. Of course, once she had given birth to their first child–a son, of course–it would be quite permissible for her husband to go to the country if he wished, whilst she spent time with her friends in London, but initially, as a newly engaged and then a newly married couple, they would appear together, he looking very much in love with her–which of course he would be.

She knocked again. Once Emerald had made up her mind about something she didn’t like any delay in putting it into action, and she was impatient to get the duke’s courtship of her started.

The cold wet February weather had brought almost the entire household down with heavy colds, with the exception of Emerald, enabling her to escape from her godmother’s chaperonage to visit the photographer.