Watching her? A slow chill crept down Emma’s back.
“They’ll want to see you’re not a gossip. Try you out.”
“And then?”
“Then? It’s Jasper’s decision; he’s the one that wants you along. But he clearly likes you. And once you’re in on the secret, you’re in.”
“But not in the Society.”
Julia gave a tiny shake of the head. “Men only, I’m afraid. But as guests, we’re invited to the events. The secret ones. They’re the most fun. Come.” She swept Emma across the room with the air of a mother duck. “Guy, I think you remember Emma? My fantastic fellow for natural sciences. I’m sure you’ll love getting to know her.” And with a wink, she slipped into the crowd.
Guy Cavendish, of the Windsor Cavendish clan, took a slow sip of his wine. “Friend of Julia’s, eh? Let me place you. Bedales?Cheltenham Ladies’? Milly Fotherington was a Roedean girl, mentioned an Emma Talbot-Weston there—that you?”
Dizzied under the assault of names, Emma pieced together that Guy was asking about schools. More precisely, the most exclusive and expensive boarding schools in England.
Guy rattled on. “Not a boarder? One of the London day school lot, then. Bloody St. Paul’s, of course. The Univ’s swarming with you Paulinas…”
Trying to convince Guy that she had not gone to boarding school, or any fee-paying school at all, would clearly be like trying to turn around a steamroller with a breadstick. Instead, Emma drew herself up in her best imitation of Julia’s poise and redirected the conversation.
“This wine. Such an interesting choice. I wonder what it is.”
That was one thing she remembered about the academic donor dinners she’d been dragged to with her mother. The richer the donor, the more they yearned to tell you about wine. As a plant scientist’s daughter, Emma had often been presumed to have more interest than she did in cultivars or chalk soils. It served her well now.
Guy’s face lit up. “Yah, yah. Really has the perfume of a Château Margaux, doesn’t it? That gorgeous balance. But it’s actually from a little vineyard at the arse end of the Médoc. Thinking of buying it up, taking this lot out there. You should come. Spend much time in France?”
He wasn’t talking about buying the wine, Emma realized. He was talking about buying thewhole vineyard.With as much nonchalance as though they’d been discussing gravy, or Irish dancing.
“Oh, do let her be, Guy.” Venetia Kent stood at Emma’s shoulder. “The new girl’s bored with you already.”
Before Emma could protest, Venetia was pushing her across the room.
“Delivered her for you, gentlemen. Now, where’s my fee?”
One of the two boys waiting by the window tossed Venetia a bag of powder. Atticus Tremaine and Rory Clarke made languid introductions while Venetia tapped a line of white onto the nearest reading desk and made it disappear up her tiny, perfect nose.
“Always with the good stuff, Tremaine.” Venetia stood and traced a finger along one of Atticus’ famous cheekbones. Emma did not miss the way he flinched. Nor the way that Rory, the supposed future prime minister, hopped out of Venetia’s path as she left. Venetia might look like a china shepherdess, but she wielded fear like a scalpel. Even among this perfect constellation of pedigree, privilege, and private banking.
And before Emma turned back to Atticus and Rory, she wondered what that might be like. If she were the one with the power to make people jump out of her way.
But instead, she followed Julia’s lead: smiling, gracious. She let Atticus and Rory put her through her paces. Then Philip Cranbottom, and Eddie Spencer with his girlfriend Arabella Lennox. After that, she lost track of the names. Always, as she moved around the room, she felt Jasper’s eyes: two points of heat, tracing her back. But he kept his distance, chatting with Richard. Part of the test, perhaps.
The candles were burning low when Jasper finally slid an arm around her waist. He was looking at something over her shoulder.Emma twisted. Nine boys were dotted around the room. One by one, they nodded.
Jasper raised his glass to Emma’s, his eyes glinting in the candlelight. He never dropped her gaze, not as the crystal touched, not as she took the first sip.
The wine spread across Emma’s tongue, rich as a blackbird’s wing. Perfumed, just as Guy had said. The taste of people who did not buy by the bottle but by the vineyard.
Emma tilted her glass and drained it to the last drop.
CHAPTER 10
After that, Emma felt like she was living on fast-forward. Her nights were sprinkled with glitter. Each one brought a new party. Lounging in someone’s rooms, candlelight sparking from crystal glasses and luxury watches. Or out to a club, where every bottle came with a sparkler on top, and every dance with Jasper made her heart shine brighter. Nobody spoke of the Society. Not to her, at least. But she felt the secret hovering just beyond her reach. Every event felt like a step closer to being trusted. She saw it in the way the boys had begun to roar her name when she arrived, just like they did with Julia. Or how they all treated it as a given that wherever Jasper was, she would be invited too. It felt like acceptance. Maybe even liking. Without realizing, she had stopped thinking of the party crowd as Jasper’s friends. They finally felt like her own.
Night after night, she plundered the magic chest of Helena’s clothes. In a vintage Halston jumpsuit, she sat behind the velvet ropes at a nightclub for Antonia Viacelli’s birthday, thigh to thigh with her circle of trust fund socialists and Turner Prize darlings.A leather blazer and shorts saw Emma through a harrowingTatlershoot for “Inspiring Women of the Future.” Helena’s silver chain-mail dress shimmered down the carpet at the private screening of Atticus Tremaine’s new short film.
“You’re getting quite a reputation as a looker,” said Julia, as they sprawled on Emma’s bed with the University newspaper. “Look at those long legs of yours, all over the society pages.”
But Emma always felt best in her own clothes. In bed, hunched into a disgusting old sweater, she pored over her research. The initial data she’d gathered at the river stacked up. She almost had a complete case for how to use the Colefax-Lee funding over the coming two years.
