‘You must forgive us. Very busy day tomorrow, and a babysitter to get back to. Tony, don’t give Joan the third degree. She’s here to enjoy herself.’
Tony grinned.
‘She’s the soul of discretion. In such a pretty package. I tried and tried and she wouldn’t tell me a thing.’
Without warning, Joan suddenly felt the warmth and weight of his hand on her thigh. At first, she thought it was a mistake. She moved her leg, but his hand moved with it. She felt herself go rigid, unable to speak. In theory, she knew what to do – stab him with the nearest fork – but this was the Ritz. Duchesses might be watching. Surely it would be overreacting to make a scene? For a minute, she couldn’t move. Tony smiled at his brother’s retreating back, as if nothing was going on at all.
When she couldn’t bear it any more, Joan reached out and ‘accidentally’ knocked over Tony’s glass of wine, so that several waiting staff hovered around them and both his hands were occupied in the clean-up operation. Soon, he was calling for the bill and making plans.
He addressed the table. ‘The night is young. My little brother may have to scuttle off home, but we have the town to ourselves. Joan and I will be exploring the delights of the 400 Club. Will you join us?’
Joan sat rigidly beside him. He brushed his fingers lightly across the hairs of her arm. He smiled at her, and there was no threat in it, or even a question. It was as if the evening was always going to end this way.
The almost silent French girl stood up.
‘Powder room,’ she explained.
Feeling dizzy, Joan stood up to join her. They wended their way through the tables into the dimly lit lobby, where a pianist was playing to couples at small tables, and down the stairs to the ladies’ cloakroom. When they emerged from their cubicles, the escort sat at one of the mirrors designed for makeup renewal and pulled out a lipstick from a little clutch bag.
‘Ça va?’ she asked Joan in the mirror. ‘You look . . .’ She shrugged, not finding the word.
‘Pale,’ Joan said in French, taking stock of her own face. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘You speak French!’ the girl said delightedly in her own language. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Not really. I think I must go home. Tell Mr Radnor-Milne I felt unwell. Blame it on the oysters. No – don’t do that. Say something disagreed with me.’
‘Of course. If you like.’ She frowned. ‘He made a move?’
‘He did,’ Joan admitted.
‘But you expected it, no?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Joan said.
And from the look the girl gave her, she realised she was the only person at the table who had been so innocent.
The concierge put Joan into one of the taxis queuing up outside the hotel. It took less than twenty minutes for her to get home to Pimlico in the night-time traffic. Joan knew somehow that Hector Ross would be waiting up for her and used the time to shed all the hot, bitter tears she could manage.
It mattered, because she prided herself on being clever and good at reading people. It mattered, because she thought that when she entered the new worlds of the Private Office and Dolphin Square, she had become a different person. One who was taken seriously. One who mattered herself.
She had braced herself for poor treatment by the Radnor-Milnes, but for three hours, she had honestly believed that Tony saw her as a senior member of the Private Office – a girl with the world at her feet, like Fiona Matherton-Smith, in a fairy-tale dress, with a shining future ahead of her. She mopped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. What a fool. All he saw was a cheap little Irish tart who would sleep with him for her dinner and be grateful. No need to ask.
Posh girls like Fiona weren’t exempt from bastards with a sense of entitlement, Joan knew that for a stone-cold fact. During an urgent, whispered conversation in a quiet palace corridor, the last APS had explained that one of her top-drawer boyfriends had assured her after a hunt ball that ‘it didn’t really count’ if they ‘got up close and personal’ standing up. Fiona, who had never been told the facts of life, wasn’t even sure what they had done under the voluminous skirts of her designer dress. Joan had encouraged her to talk to the family doctor. ‘It’ll be all right, won’t it?’ she’d asked, too shocked to even cry. Joan reassured her that it would, but privately thought it depended on what your definition of ‘all right’ was.
Joan had thought of herself as cynical and worldly-wise. Tony saw her as a joke. An available joke. All that talk of riding at the Abbey: of course he knew a girl like her wouldn’t ride. When he asked about her family, he’d been privately amusing himself with how the other half lived. She saw herself now as Hector must have seen her: the bare shoulders, the sheer stockings, the sophisticated hair. Did he think that of her too?
‘Cheer up, love!’ She looked up to see the taxi driver watching her in the rear-view mirror. ‘It might never ’appen.’
‘It won’t, trust me,’ she muttered.
‘Give us a smile, then. Oh, all right. ’Ave it your own way.’
They reached the river and she saw that they were only five minutes away from home.
As hot shame and fury coursed through her, she thought of something else. Had tonight’s introduction been arranged deliberately? Not just to humiliate her, but to use her to get closer to the Queen? She remembered thinking that of the two brothers, if anyone was responsible for the plot it would be Tony. Sir Hugh seemed so upright, and Miles Urquhart so childish, that if she had to guess right now which of the three men in moustaches was trying to sabotage Her Majesty, she would say it was almost certainly Jeremy, in service of his brother. There was nothing she wouldn’t put past either of them. Nothing at all.
The taxi pulled up outside Dolphin Square and she extracted a note from her evening bag to pay the driver. As she got out, the cold air hit her and she realised that shame and fury had been doing a lot of her thinking for her. She loathed Tony Radnor-Milne, loathed his brother for making the introduction, and his brother’s insipid wife for assuming the worst of her. But that didn’t mean to say they were traitors.
Only that they might be.
Chapter 23
Hector Ross was in his dressing gown, waiting for her at the open door to the sitting room.
‘I’m making cocoa,’ he said. ‘Would you like some?’
She didn’t answer, slamming the door behind her and heading for the sanctuary of her bedroom. The last thing she needed was a man fussing over her. But the bedroom walls were closing in on her and it didn’t take long for her to realise she needed distraction.
She craved something sweet, and something strong. She would never be able to sleep like this. She emerged five minutes later, head held high, clad in thick pyjamas under her kimono. There was no hot water at this time of night. She would shower in the morning, as soon as she could.
Hector was still at the stove, stirring. How long did it take to make one cup of cocoa?
‘Shall I add some for you?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Would you like a shot of brandy in it, perhaps? As a digestif?’
There was gentleness in his studied offhandedness. She gritted her teeth and had to wipe away her budding tears with the back of her wrist, when he wasn’t looking.
When it was ready, Hector brought two mugs to the little round dining table and added brandy from a decanter. Joan cupped her mug with both hands.
After a minute, she lifted her head. ‘How did you know?’