Venetia tossed back her hair, straight into Imogen Baldock’s face. “God, you’re all dull. I already said: Jasper’s back, and he’s president. Move on.”
Imogen fished several blond strands from her drink, glowering. Hostilities between Venetia and Imogen, always on the verge of breaking out, had been especially vicious of late. Imogen had already endured a full evening of unavenged barbs. Which is perhaps why she risked life and limb—and the likelihood of ever receiving another invite to the Kents’ famous summer parties at their villa in Tuscany, which was far more important—by turning on Venetia Kent in public.
“You know, I don’t think any of this is true.”
“Really, Imogen darling, keep up. After I said so?”
“No,” Imogen leaned back with a belligerent smile. “Becauseyou said so. Maybe I think you’re a liar,Venetia darling.”
One of the boys actually laughed.
Venetia turned in his direction. He fell instantly silent. There was dead stillness as Venetia inspected her nails. “Well then,” she said, in the softest of voices. “If we’re calling names… No, perhaps not. We are at a party, after all.” She stood in one flowing motion. “If you’ll excuse me.”
With that, she stalked off into the crowd, and the courtiers on the sofa dispersed.
Hugo lingered, offering a hand to help Julia up. “That was a relief. For a minute there, I expected Venetia’d—well, do theusual. Blood and brimstone and all the rest. But she took it rather well, don’t you think?”
“A little too well,” Julia murmured.
Hugo tugged her arm. “Come on, Julia. They’ve set up a keg stand in the kitchen. Oh, I knew you’d look at me like that. The great Julia Colefax-Lee couldneverbe seen drinkingbeerthrough afunnel,” he teased.
“Oh, all right,” she said. “But just for a bit.”
So she didn’t see Venetia stroll up to the bar and hand something to a girl there with a whispered laugh. Something that, when Imogen Baldock approached the bar a few minutes later, made its way into her drink without anyone noticing.
Emma, meanwhile, was not quite ready to admit defeat. She should, perhaps, have anticipated that the mating habits of the silkworm—as fascinating as they were—might not be a winning topic of conversation. But she suspected that the crowd in the room that night were just not in the mood to be befriended.
Worse, standing alone was attracting notice. She felt someone staring at the girl without friends, clutching her drink in an empty corridor. So Emma groped for the nearest door and slipped inside, away from the stranger’s gaze.
She knew immediately that she was in Jasper’s bedroom. It was just as she’d expected: Eton memorabilia on the walls, a gold-buttoned blazer slung over a trunk. A decorative saber hung above the bed. A persistent smell in the room nagged at the back of her throat: likely a mix of the unwashed rugby gear in one corner and the cologne that hung over everything.
She wrinkled her nose and sighed. There was no point being out for the night if she was hiding in a bedroom she didn’t even like.She put an eye to the crack in the door. The corridor was clear. She stepped out.
Someone had turned up the music in the main room. She could hear the cheers and feel the bass buzzing through the floor. But she hesitated, her eyes drawn to a second door. The one that would belong to Jasper’s roommate. The quiet one. With a darting glance for any watching eyes, she twisted the second knob and slipped inside.
The room was a treasure trove. It was lined with framed photographs. Deserts. Rivers. Waves boiling on rock, waves crashing on sand, waves limpid in the flat calm of a bay. Some places she recognized. Like the cove in Tasman National Park, where eight-year-old Emma and her mother had run down to the tide pools. There, beside the famous organ pipe rock formation this boy’s photograph had captured, she had watched the seal colony for hours. The eye behind the camera had caught the feel of the places. Had felt something for them, just as she had. She could see it.
There was nothing else in the room, she realized. No school memorabilia. No sports gear strewn in a corner. The whole was thoughtfully and peacefully tidy, as though to focus the eye only on the photography.
Quieter. Yes, she could imagine that the mind who had created these images knew about quiet. They had felt the peace that filled her mind in a silent crouch before a riverbank. They knew the wonders that nature would reveal only to the patient.
She had begun to feel conscious of her own intrusion in this boy’s sanctuary. As silently as she could, she backed out of the room. And stepped neatly into the embrace of the person waiting behind her.
CHAPTER 5
Emma spun to find a young man with a smile so greased, it slipped from her face to her cleavage almost instantly. It was the one who’d been staring at her earlier.
“What’s this pretty little piece, eh?”
He very nearly would have been handsome, if he hadn’t looked so much like a weasel. Emma tried to edge past him, but the boy was blocking the corridor.
“Emma. I—I’m here with Julia,” she said, unpleasantly conscious of the low back of her dress, the cold air pricking her exposed skin.
“Fresh meat? Oh, lovely stuff. Can’t believe Julia’s been keeping you hidden away. We’re gasping for fresh talent around here. You don’t fancy slipping off together and—No? Ha ha! Reckon the old GF wouldn’t be such a fan of that either. She’s lurking about somewhere. Not a word, eh? Got lost, did you? Don’t blame you. We’ve nothing like this at Fenchurch College, it’s all bloody Queen Anne architecture. Ups-a-daisy—the drinks are through here. Mind you don’t let anyone lure you away to a shady corner—unless it’sme, ha! Ha! Piers Popwell, by the way—one of Jasper’s mates from school. Eton, that is. Everyone calls me Peeper—”
He ushered her along. She peeled her lower back away from his hand.
“Now, you park your bottom here a minute; I’ll get us some—” He turned back. “Where’s she—? Bloody females.”
