Game Of Love

‘You don’t know him,’ Emma told her starkly. ‘He’s a typical Templecombe, only worse.’

‘Worse?’ Natasha questioned. ‘How?’

‘Well, for a start he’s completely anti-women. Oh, not in that way,’ she hastened to assure her cousin, when she saw Natasha’s expression. ‘According to Richard he’s had women virtually coming out of his ears, since his early teens. And for all that he’s even more strait-laced than Mrs T now. According to Richard there was a time when the family almost disowned him, he was so wild.’

‘Well, then, he should sympathise with you,’ Natasha murmured, picking up another piece of embroidery and examining it lovingly, wondering how it would look hanging on the wall in her own small house, perhaps over the fifteenth-century oak coffer she had been lucky enough to buy at a local auction.

‘Not him,’ Emma assured her bitterly. ‘He’s the original reformed rake. He’s already advised Richard that we’d be far better waiting another year to marry, and he’s told him that he’s not sure that I’m the right wife for him, given his calling. Who says that a vicar’s wife has to be like Mrs T?’ Emma began indignantly.

‘Who indeed?’ Natasha agreed sotto voce, knowing that if she let her cousin run on for long enough she would eventually run out of steam.

‘You will help me, won’t you?’ Emma pleaded, her face suddenly crumpling with real emotion as she said shakily, ‘I couldn’t bear to lose Richard now, Tasha. I really couldn’t. Before…before we were engaged and we had that row, and I got involved with Jake…well, I thought I could live without him, that he was just another man, but it isn’t like that. I really do love him. I know he loves me too, but—’

‘But you don’t think he’ll believe you if you tell him what you were doing with Jake Pendraggon.’

‘He’d want to, but he is only human, and if our situations were reversed…Well, I know how I’d feel if I heard that he’d been seen coming out of an ex-lover’s house at that time in the morning.’

‘What is it you want me to do?’ Natasha asked her. ‘Kidnap this Luke and keep him out of sight until after the wedding?’ she suggested facetiously.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Emma said severely, making Natasha reflect that her cousin had changed a little. Time was when she would very probably have suggested just such an outrageous solution to her present problem. ‘No, all I want you to do is to pretend to be me—that is, I want you to pretend that it was you Luke saw leaving Jake’s house. After all,’ she continued, warming to her theme and ignoring the stunned look in Natasha’s eyes, ‘we do look alike. We’re both blonde and we both have grey eyes; we’re both around the same height—’

‘We’re cousins, not twins,’ Natasha interrupted her drily, ‘and we don’t look anything like that similar. I’m taller than you for one thing, and—’

‘Tasha, please listen. Luke doesn’t know me all that well. He only saw me briefly.’

‘He saw you wearing the same dress you had worn for your engagement party,’ Natasha reminded her very firmly. ‘Emma, love, much as I want to help—’

‘No, you don’t,’ Emma interrupted her bitterly. ‘You want to stay nice and safe in your own cosy little world. I bet you think just like Luke really, that I don’t deserve someone like Richard. Everyone knows that, if Richard had to marry into our family, Mrs T would have much preferred to have you as a daughter-in-law. After all, before you went off to university you and Richard dated for a while.’

‘I like Richard as a person, I’m delighted that the two of you are in love, and as for being like this Luke…’ Natasha began, determined to nip any further emotionalism in the bud. ‘What exactly does he do, by the way?’

‘He’s an artist,’ Emma told her truculently, totally stunning her. ‘He paints landscapes. He’s quite well known, apparently.’

‘Luke Templecombe? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.’

‘You won’t have done, he uses another name—Luke Freres.’

‘Luke Freres? The Luke Freres?’

‘Tasha, please help me. My whole life’s happiness could depend on it,’ Emma added theatrically.

‘What do you want me to do? Wear a placard tonight saying, “It was me you saw leaving Jake Pendraggon’s house, and not Emma”?’

‘That’s not funny. I just want your permission, if Luke does say anything, to deny it by saying that it wasn’t me and that it must have been you. After all, what does it matter to you?’ Emma pleaded when she saw her cousin’s face. ‘It isn’t as though there’s anyone in your life at the moment.’

‘And so my reputation doesn’t matter, is that it?’

Emma looked cross. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, must you be so old-fashioned? Honestly, Tasha, you’re archaic. You must be the only twenty-seven-year-old virgin left.’

‘A situation which you want me to claim I tried to rectify via a night in Jake Pendraggon’s arms,’ Natasha derided, ignoring the jibe. ‘Come on, Emma. There might be certain similarities between us, but Luke Freres is an artist. Do you honestly think for one moment he’s going to believe he saw me when he saw you?’

‘It doesn’t matter what he believes, only what Richard believes,’ Emma told her fiercely. ‘But, of course, I should have known you would refuse to help. After all, you don’t want to lose your reputation as Miss Pure-and-goody-goody, do you?’ she added nastily. ‘Oh, no, you’d rather Richard broke our engagement and my heart.’

‘Stop being so dramatic. I don’t think for one moment that Luke Freres will say anything to Richard. Not at this stage, but in the unlikely event that he does—’

‘You’ll do it! Oh, Tasha, thank you. Thank you!’

Natasha grimaced. She hadn’t been about to volunteer to do any such thing, merely to advise her volatile cousin to put her trust in Richard and tell him the truth, but Emma was on her feet, dancing round the attic workroom of the four-storey building which housed Natasha’s home, office and work-place, blowing extravagant kisses at her as she headed for the door.

‘You don’t know what this means to me. I knew you’d help me. I’m so relieved. Let Luke do his worst—he can’t hurt me now. Oh, Tasha, I’m so relieved!’

‘Emma, wait,’ Natasha protested, but it was already too late.

Her cousin had opened the door and was hurrying downstairs, calling back, ‘Can’t, I’m afraid, I’ve got a final fitting for the dress and I’m already late. See you tonight at home.’

‘Tasha, where on earth have you been? You know everyone’s due at eight. It’s half-past seven now.’

Natasha stopped on the threshold of the bedroom which had been hers all the time she was growing up and which she still used whenever she had occasion to stay at Lacey Court overnight.

Emma was standing in the middle of the room, dressed in a fetching confection of satin and lace, delectably designed to show off the prettily tanned curves of her breasts and the slenderness of her thighs in a way that was just barely respectable.

‘If you’re planning to wear that for dinner, then I think you’re making a mistake,’ Natasha told her thoughtfully, eyeing the camisole and its matching French knickers consideringly.

Emma grinned at her. ‘Don’t be silly—as though I would.’

‘No? Am I or am I not talking to the girl who appeared at her own eighteenth birthday party wearing a basque and little more than a G-string?’

‘That was for a dare,’ Emma pouted, ‘and, anyway, it was years ago.’

‘A millennium,’ Natasha agreed drily, adding, ‘But, if you don’t want Richard’s parents to catch you wearing such a fetching but highly inappropriate outfit, I suggest you go back to your own room and finish getting dressed.’

‘Not yet. I wanted to see you first, and besides, my dress is silk and will crease if I sit down in it. Listen, I’ve been thinking—tonight you’d better wear your hair like mine, and if you could wear this as well…’

She reached behind her back and lifted something off the bed, holding it up in front of her.

‘That’s the dress you wore for your engagement party,’ Natasha recognised.

‘Exactly. I thought if you wore it tonight it would help to convince Luke that it was you he saw and not me.’

‘But, Emma, he must know that you were the one wearing it the night you and Richard got engaged. And, besides, it won’t fit me. I’m at least five inches taller than you, and two inches wider round the bust.’

‘Yes, it will—the top was very loose and skirts are being worn shorter this year.’

‘Not that short, and certainly not by me.’

‘But you promised,’ Emma began, and, to Natasha’s exasperation, large tears filled the soft grey eyes so like her own. Even knowing they were crocodile tears and a trick Emma had been able to pull off from her cradle didn’t lessen the effect of them. The trouble was that she was programmed to respond to them, Natasha decided grimly. Well, this time she was not going to. She would look ridiculous in Emma’s dress. Her cousin loved bright colours and modern fashions, but, for some reason, when she and Richard got engaged she had decided that a sober, sensible little dress in black was bound to appeal more to his parents than her usual choice of clothes. No doubt it would have done so if Emma had stuck to her original decision and not been swayed by the appeal of a dress which, while it was black, shared no other virtues in common with the outfit she had gone out to buy.

True, the dress did have long sleeves, but it also had a bodice which was slashed virtually to the waist front and back. True, it was not made of one of the glittering, eye-popping fabrics Emma normally chose. Instead it was made of jersey—not the thick, sensible jersey as worn by Richard’s mother and aunts, but a jersey so fine, so delicate that it was virtually like silk. Worn over Emma’s lissom young body, it had left no one in any doubt as to its wearer’s lack of anything even approaching the respectability of proper underwear between her skin and the dress—a fact which had obviously been appreciated by the less strait-laced of the male guests at the party.