“What?” Asks Haz, yelling too.
“That you’re damn right!”
“Lance! Bring more brandy!” Harring rejoices.
*
The night I spent with Harring racking my brain to decide what to do for Jemma’s birthday was completely unproductive. At 2 a.m., we went to the cellars and played bowls with empty Château Latour bottles, at 3 a.m. we ordered take-away pizza and watchedTop Gearreruns, and at 5 a.m. we played darts on the portrait of my great-great-granduncle Walter – nobody will cry about this as he wasn’t exactly loved and he died in 1902, anyway.
Result: on the sheet of paper which reads ‘Jemma’s birthday’, there’s nothing but an illegible line we scribbled while drunk, and Haz is sleeping awkwardly on the chaise longue.
I’m on the sofa, sleeping fitfully, until the ringing of my mobile suddenly wakes me up.
It’s my mother. “This is Ashford Parker’s answering machine, I can’t answer at the moment…” I mumble in a drowsy voice.
“Ashford, I’m coming back,” she says briefly.
Without checking the time, I go back to sleep, and I wake up again just in time to make myself presentable and reassemble the corpse of Harring before my diabolical parent arrives home.
“Where is that savage of your wife?” Is my mother’s warm greeting, as soon as she crosses the threshold.
“She is visiting Cécile Loxley. She will be back later today.”
“Very well, because we need her.”
I look at her curiously.
“I met Lord Neville in Bath. He spent a few days there to recover from an annoying cough. We didn’t talk to each other much, but he asked me for an invitation to Jemma’s birthday party, as he’s very keen to come. He adores her and I’ve never seen him so enthusiastic about attending anything here at Denby. Ashford, we’re almost there. We’re getting closer and closer to the Royal Family and, if we manage this very well, we might receive a visit from the Queen before the end of the year.” My mother rejoices.
“You hate Jemma,” I stress. “You left offending both her and her family.”
“Let’s forgive and forget, shall we? If I have to accept Jemma for the sake of the royal visit, I will,” she says, waving her hand as if she wanted to erase the past. “I didn’t even know it was her birthday. In any case, I have thought of something magnificent, elegant, very refined…”
There. If I wanted to arrange something special, I can just forget it. It will be the usual Delphina style party, and Jemma will accept the situation reluctantly, gritting her teeth.
55
Jemma’s Version
I look at myself in the mirror, satisfied. My hair is up, with some strands falling softly on my shoulders. The dress is a perfect fusion between the my true self and what I’m supposed to be according to good taste and elegance: it was designed by Oscar de la Renta and it costs a year’s salary as a make-up artist; it’s an evening dress with a long voluminous fandango purple silk taffeta skirt and a black strapless sweetheart corset. The shoes are hidden under the hem, but knowing that I’m wearing those glittery Caovilla stiletto sandals makes me feel sexier than ever. I put particular effort into doing a light but impeccable make-up job. Okay, perhaps I would never have dressed like this a few months ago, but the more I look at myself, the more I like it.
I shoot myself flirty looks through the mirror, because I know that I didn’t just work hard on my dress and make-up, but also on my underwear. I’m wearing a La Perla lingerie set with a beautifully embroidered, strapless push up bra.
I know that no one will see what I’m wearing underneath my dress, but for the whole time I was getting ready, I couldn’t help thinking about Ashford. And when I looked at myself in the mirror in that lingerie set I thought: ‘If he saw me right now, I would blow his mind’; perhaps that’s also why I walked up and down the room aimlessly in my underwear for half an hour, hoping to hear him knock on the connecting door. Do I want Ashford? No, I don’t! But the idea of teasing him is so tempting.
Delphina came back to Denby just to arrange the reception for my birthday, would you believe it?
The whole mansion was turned upside down for the evening. I don’t know, this probably isn’t the way I would have celebrated my birthday, but this is my event, and all the guests will be here for me, tonight. Everything will be done properly and, even if Delphina is an all-Botox-and-bones pain in the arse, she knows what she’s doing. Besides, the fact that she’s bothering so much for me makes me think that, despite everything, maybe she’s starting to appreciate me.
When the clock strikes, I rush out of my room, bang on time. I haven’t seen Ashford all day, and this makes me feel as if my blood were burning under my skin.
As I descend the staircase and make my way to the ballroom, Lance and the servants give me admiring looks.
I open the doors and what I see is simply spectacular: long drapes of white organza flutter from the balconies, the lighting is suffused and the dim lights of the candelabra are reflected in the polished marble floors.
At the centre of the room, there’s Ashford, who’s observing the finishing touches. He’s impeccable in his perfectly cut velvet lapel dinner jacket. He’s walking towards me and I can’t help but notice that his intense green eyes are looking straight into mine; his cheekbones and jawline seem carved in marble, his nose is perfectly straight and his lips are… oh, enough!
He stops right in front of me and pulls out one of his rare deadly smiles. “So? What do you think?”
