occasion. One foot gracefully behind the other, and dip into a small, controlled bob.
‘Good evening, Sir.’
‘Adeline’s daughter?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
They were sitting in their red velvet seats again around the intimate little table. Just wait, Amy thought irreverently, until I tell Moira O’Hara. And then she thought how much Helen Pearce would have enjoyed the reflected glory. She had sustained an odd, admiring awe of the Royal Family, and the Prince especially.
He drank whisky, and smoked incessantly, cocking an eyebrow through the wreaths of smoke. As soon as he had stubbed one out he lit another, tapping a staccato rhythm with the butt on his cigarette case. Amy found herself leaning forward, straining her ears. His light, clipped voice was difficult to hear and the Prince kept turning sideways to Lady Furness for confirmation of what he was saying. Only Jack seemed perfectly at ease now that the moment of waiting for the royal arrival was safely past.
After a few minutes’ conversation, the Prince turned to Amy. ‘Miss Lovell, would you like to dance?’
‘Thank you, Sir.’ They were on the dance floor, and Amy was conscious of the covert stares of every woman in the room. How odd it is, she thought. Her partner was just a small-framed, dandyish man with a sad, almost monkey-like face. He was exactly like everyone else, and yet could never be because people were never quite themselves with him. Amy felt that her own face was stiff, and a ripple of sympathy disconcerted her.
The Prince said very little, and then only pleasant trivialities, but he danced like a professional. Amy frowned, concentrating on keeping up with him. At last, her partner said, ‘Shall we rejoin our host?’ and she felt quite giddy with relief. The band finished the number with a triumphant flourish, and she was restored to Jack. He grinned at her over the rim of his glass. The Prince was leaning forward attentively to Lady Furness, his duty clearly done.
‘Would you like to dance again?’ Jack asked.
‘Yes, please.’
It was quite different. No one was looking at them and pretending not to. They were alone, with Jack’s height a bulwark between them and the world. All Amy’s physical being seemed focused in her fingers, laced with his. The rest of her felt as light as if she could float up off the sprung floor.
She looked up and saw the amusement in Jack’s blue eyes.
‘Silenced?’ he asked.
She laughed, and let her head rest against his shoulder. ‘Not quite. Deeply impressed. Are you a close friend of his?’
‘No. He doesn’t have many of those. We just like the same things. Adeline, for example. And Thelma and I have known each other for years. We Yankees have to stick together, after all. Tomorrow,’ he promised her, ‘we’ll do something quite different.’
Amy nodded, her head still against his shoulder, content with that.
His Royal Highness was disposed to enjoy himself. Amy’s impression of the evening began to run together into a blur of smoke and dimming lights, of the Prince’s monkey-sad face and the shimmer of Thelma Furness’s topaz dress. Jack’s arm around her and the insistent music seemed the only reality.
It was very late when the Prince stood up to leave. Madame Ondine came forward to escort the royal party to the entrance of the club. In the dark the Prince’s car slid up to the steps at once.
He bowed over Amy’s hand. ‘Perhaps Jack will bring you out to the Fort, one of these days.’
On my afternoon off from the Lambeth? she thought hilariously.
The Lagonda nosed forward and the leather seat swallowed her up. The street lights swung overhead again, and Amy saw as they reached Bruton Street that the sky was grey with dawn.
Jack leaned forward and just touched her mouth with his.
‘Is tomorrow evening much too soon for you to see me again?’
‘No. It seems a long time off.’
This time his mouth was harder. Amy reached up and touched his cheek.
‘Until tomorrow, then.’
He came at the stroke of eight, but Amy had been waiting for an hour. On her breakfast tray that morning she had found a little note from Adeline.
Darling, I do hope you will enjoy yourself. I know that Jack will take care of you. But, somehow, I don’t feel quite brave enough to stay and watch. Am I too silly? I have gone with Mickie Dunn to Venice for the d’Abres ball. To Paris first for a frock fitting.
I love you.
I love you too, she thought.
Amy had always considered Lord and Lady Carlisle to be her mother’s friends. When she had thought about them at all, it was to regard them as rather intimidating and exclusively fashionable. They were legendary party-givers and party-goers. But with Jack beside her, she discovered, it was different. There was a dinner for twenty-four people at the house in Green Street before the party began, where the talk licked wittily around the table. As Adeline’s daughter and Jack Roper’s partner a place seemed to open quite naturally for Amy. She had, she discovered to her pleasure, a talent for making her fellow guests laugh. It was nothing like Richard’s ability, but it made her feel happy and comfortable. She liked these clever, agreeable people who were devoted to nothing more complicated than enjoying themselves, Amy decided.
It was time she enjoyed herself, too.
Across the table she caught Jack’s blue gaze, and smiled at him so that the diamonds swung and sparkled in her ears.
She was also the focus of envy, she discovered.
The women withdrew briefly to Caroline Carlisle’s drawing room.
‘God, isn’t Jack Roper divine?’ breathed a girl of her own age with round, saucer eyes. ‘I’d give my best pearls for a single evening, truly I would. How d’you manage it?’
‘He’s a very old friend of my mother’s,’ Amy answered demurely.
The house was already flooding with people. The party began like any other, with a band playing and a river of guests flowing up the stairs to where the long windows of the first-floor drawing room stood open to the hot, velvety summer night. But at midnight, Caroline Carlisle came into the drawing room waving a thick sheaf of papers. She jumped on to a low table and clapped her hands.
‘Scavenger hunt! Scavenger hunt!’
At once there was a roar of approval and a forest of hands stretching for the pieces of paper.
‘Wait till I say. Cheats will be disqualified. Ready, steady, go.’ Lady Carlisle flung the papers up in a white whirl and at once the room was a boiling mass of people snatching and running. Amy felt one of her wrists clasped in Jack’s iron fingers. In his other hand he brandished the paper.
‘Run.’
They pounded down the stairs amongst the eddying crowd and out into the street where the Lagonda crouched at the kerb. As they vaulted over the gleaming red sides another couple pressed in with them.
‘Do be an angel, Jack. Let us come too.’
‘Hold tight, all of you. Amy, what’s top of the list?’
She read it breathlessly. At least a dozen items.
One diamond butterfly
One bicycle lamp
One evening slipper of Madame Ondine’s
One sandwich from the porters’ bar at Covent Garden …
‘Adeline’s got a diamond butterfly,’ she gasped. ‘She had it made up for a charity ball. And I think one of the footmen rides a bicycle.’
Jack was already racing, with their passengers clinging on behind and waving to the less