very much more provocative the dress was than anything she would personally have chosen to wear that made her feel as though she were the cynosure of all eyes, or was it just because she was taller than Emma that she felt that the dress, startling enough when Emma had worn it, on her was not so much teasingly sensual as a direct and flamboyant statement of availability?
She had never in the space of one short half-hour collected so many admiring male glances nor so many disapproving female ones, nor was it an experience she would want to repeat, she decided irritably after she had fended off the fourth attempt of one of Richard’s ancient uncles to detach her from the rest of the guests.
‘I see Uncle Rufus has been making a play for you,’ Emma commented teasingly as she came up to her.
‘At his age, he ought to know better,’ Natasha retaliated acidly, and then added, ‘And don’t think I haven’t realised exactly why you blackmailed me into wearing this…this garment, Emma. With you dressed as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth and me looking like the original scarlet harlot—’
‘In black,’ Emma interposed dulcetly and then giggled. ‘I can’t wait to see Richard’s face when he arrives and sees us. He’s been delayed and he won’t be here until after dinner. He’ll be bringing Luke with him.’ She twisted her engagement ring nervously with her fingers. ‘You won’t let me down, will you, Tasha? I couldn’t bear to lose Ricky—not now. I never thought I’d ever feel like this. I never imagined I could ever become so emotionally dependent on anyone. It frightens me a little bit.’
Natasha’s stern expression softened. ‘I’m sure Luke Freres doesn’t have any intention of trying to come between you, but I won’t go back on my word, Emma. Even though I positively hate you for making me wear this appalling outfit. Stockings as well, and you know how much I loathe them.’
‘Really?’ Emma giggled again, giving her a coy look. ‘Men adore them. Richard said—’ She broke off and groaned. ‘Oh, no, here’s Mrs T bearing down on us, I’m off.’
‘Coward,’ Natasha whispered after her, as Emma adroitly whisked herself out of the way, leaving Natasha to face Richard’s mother alone.
‘Well, Natasha, this is a surprise,’ Mrs Templecombe said critically as she frowned at her. ‘We don’t expect to see you wearing that kind of outfit.’
Natasha had never particularly cared for the dean’s wife, although she had never attracted her criticism in the same way as Emma. That was the trouble about living in a small place where you had spent all your life. You knew everyone, and everyone knew you and felt free to air their opinions and views of your behaviour—even when you were long past the age when such views were welcome or necessary.
‘Anyway, isn’t that the dress Emma wore when she and Richard became engaged? I told her then it was most unsuitable.’
‘Which is why she passed it on to me,’ Natasha told her evenly. Much as she herself might sometimes disapprove of Emma’s behaviour, she was not going to aid and abet Mrs Templecombe in criticising her cousin.
‘Well, I must say I’m surprised to see you wearing it.’
‘I’m a career woman, Mrs Templecombe, and setting up my own business doesn’t allow me either the time or the money to waste on clothes shopping. To tell the truth I was grateful to Emma for offering to lend it to me.’
A lie if ever there was one, but Richard’s mother seemed to accept it at face-value.
‘Yes. I must say it was rather adventurous of you to open your own shop, and selling ecclesiastical fabrics to the general public.’
Her face suggested that what Natasha was doing was somehow or other in rather poor taste, making Natasha itch to say rebelliously that the cloth wasn’t sanctified, but instead she contented herself with murmuring, ‘Well, they’re very much in vogue at the moment, and are being snapped up by people with a taste for traditional fabrics who can’t afford to buy the original antiques.’
‘Ah, there you are, Lucille. Such a pity there isn’t time to show you round the gardens before dinner. I particularly wanted to show off the new section of the double border. We’ve planted up part of it with a mixture of old-fashioned shrub roses, underplanted with campanula and a very pretty mallow.’
Smiling gratefully at her aunt, Natasha adroitly excused herself, marvelling on the unsuitability of some people’s names as she walked away. Surely only the most doting of parents could have chosen to name Richard’s mother Lucille. Her second name was Elsie, which she much preferred and which everyone apart from Emma’s mother was wise enough to use.
If her aunt and mother were nothing else, they were certainly marvellous and inspired cooks, Natasha admitted when the main courses had been removed from the table and the sweet course brought in.
Another bone of contention between the ecclesiastical fraternity and her own family was the large pool of temporary domestic assistance her mother and aunt could call upon from the wives and daughters of some of the factory’s employees, who would cheerfully and happily help out on the domestic scene when necessary. This willingness to do such work stemmed as much from her aunt’s and mother’s treatment of those who supplied such help as from the generous wages paid by her father, both women being keen believers in the motto ‘Do unto others…’
It was a constant source of friction at the deanery and elsewhere in the cathedral close that they, who were frequently called upon to involve themselves in all manner of entertaining, were hard put to it to get so much as a regular cleaner, but then, with Mrs Templecombe to set the tone for the whole of the cathedral close, it was not perhaps surprising that they would find it difficult to hold on to their domestic help.
His mother, as Richard cheerfully admitted, had been born into the wrong century and adhered to an out-of-date and sometimes offensive policy of ‘us and them’.
As it was a warm evening, once the meal was over the guests were free to wander through the drawing-room’s french windows, on to the terrace overlooking the gardens. Natasha escaped there, avoiding the fulsome compliments of her coterie of elderly admirers, and the fierce glares of their wives.
Really, she reflected, as she stood breathing in the scented night air, she had had no idea that being a siren involved such hard work. It was just as well she had no ambitions in that direction.
In the distance, the cathedral bells tolled the hour. The bells were one of the first things she missed when she was away from home. Her little house inside the city was almost in the shadow of the bell tower, and she had grown used to timing her telephone calls to avoid clashing with their sonorous reminder of the passing hour.
However, much as she loved the cathedral, much as she enjoyed the pomp and ceremony of its religious feast days, much as she adored the richness of its fabrics and embroideries, if she ever got married she would want a simple ceremony: a simple, plain church, flowers from her aunt’s garden, a few special friends and only her very closest family.
She didn’t envy Emma her big wedding in the least, and she certainly did not envy her all the palaver that went with it. What she did envy her in a small corner of her mind was having found someone she loved and who loved her in return. Sighing to herself, Natasha wondered if she was ever going to totally grow out of what she now considered to be a silly, immature yearning for that kind of oneness with another human being.
She had lived long enough now to recognise that marriage was a far from idyllic state, one that should only be entered into after a long, cool period of appraisal and consideration, and preferably only if one had developed nerves of steel and was devoid of all imagination; and yet, even though she knew all this, there were still nights like tonight when the soft, perfumed air of the garden led her into all manner of impossible yearnings…
She slipped off her shoes and walked to the edge of the terrace away from the haunting scent of the roses climbing on the wall, and it was while she was standing there, looking out across the shadowed garden, that she heard a familiar voice exclaiming, ‘Emma, darling, there you are!’ and felt