The Proposal (13 page)

She wasn’t sure if he was teasing her. Certainly he had the innate confidence of the rich, that self-belief that made her feel slightly uncomfortable, as much as his suggestions appealed to her. They were on the King’s Road now and the neon lights from a row of coffee shops spilt on to the puddles in the street. Part of her wanted to go inside one. She wanted to drink espresso and learn all about jazz in New York, suspecting that Edward Carlyle was the sort of person who knew a lot about all sorts of things.

She was going to suggest it but he was already indicating right to turn on to her street, and she felt a faint pang of disappointment.

‘Which number?’ he asked, slowing the car.

She could see the upstairs light on in their little flat. Estella would be waiting up for her.

He pulled in to the kerb, and for a second the two of them sat in a silence that made her feel uncomfortable.

‘Are you heading back to Richmond?’

‘I think I’ll give it a miss,’ he replied, glancing at his watch.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for making you miss the party.’

‘I should be thanking you. I really need to be getting back to Oxford.’

‘No, thank you,’ she said quietly. She got out of the car and looked back at him. ‘Thank you for rescuing me.’

‘Have a good season, Georgia Hamilton. You know, sometimes things in life are a little easier, a little more enjoyable when you don’t resist them quite so much.’

‘Georgia. The taxi is here.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ she called back from the comfort of her single bed, trying her best to disguise the sleepiness in her voice. The piping-hot bath she’d taken after returning home from the Swiss Chalet coffee shop behind Peter Jones had made Georgia very drowsy indeed. She loved her waitressing job at Chelsea’s grooviest café – she was allowed to take home free cake, could sit and write during the quiet periods and had even had the odd patisserie lesson from André, the pastry chef. But when she got home, she was dead beat, which was fine when she could just go home and sleep, but quite dreadful when she had a party to attend.

She heard her bedroom door creak open, and when a dramatic gasp followed it, she knew that her slumber was about to be short-lived.

‘You’re not even dressed,’ said Estella in panic.

Georgia pulled the blanket further up her face and groaned.

‘Five more minutes,’ she said, feeling all warm and cosy.

‘But the taxi’s here. The meter will be running . . .’ Her mother strode over and tore the blanket back.

‘I’m sorry, I was just tired . . .’

‘It’s that damn job, isn’t it? We’re going to have to put a stop to it if all you want to do is come home and sleep. Serving cream horns all day long isn’t going to—’

‘Isn’t going to what?’ asked Georgia, sitting up, the suggestion of giving up the café angering her.

Secretly she admitted that it was proving difficult juggling the job with the demands of the Season, which now seemed to have moved up a gear. But she earned almost ten pounds a week and already had forty pounds stuffed in her knicker drawer. Her French friend Grace said she knew of a room in a house in the Bastille that could be had for only sixty francs a month, and at this rate she would have enough money to move to Paris by the autumn.

‘Isn’t going to what?’ she repeated. ‘Find me a husband?’

Estella took the white dress that Georgia was due to wear that evening and flung it on the bed. It landed on the blanket like a swan shot down from the sky. Georgia looked at Estella and shook her head. She knew that it was unfashionable to have a good relationship with your mother, but she and Estella were genuinely close. Lately, though, she hardly recognised her mother, and couldn’t believe she was choosing the silly demands of the Season over her own daughter’s happiness.

‘I’ll meet you downstairs,’ she said sulkily, swinging her legs out of bed and holding up the dress.

‘No, I’ll wait for you,’ said Estella more softly.

Georgia went into the tiny bathroom to change, slipping on the white gown. It was not one of Clarissa’s. It had been a gift from Topaz, and although Georgia had no idea where the money to buy it had come from, it was quite lovely – long, with layers of net and tulle that shot out from the waist like a tutu. She tucked her hair behind her ears, securing it with two small jewelled clips, pulled on her white gloves, and glanced in the mirror. For one second it was like looking at a Degas picture.

‘I should probably mention that we’re being collected . . .’ said Estella through the door.

Georgia stepped into the hallway.

‘Are Uncle Peter and Aunt Sybil in the taxi?’

‘No, we’re meeting them there.’ Estella’s eyes darted away from her daughter.

Georgia went to the window and looked on to the street, where a taxi was parked outside the house. Even from this distance she could tell that there was someone in the back seat, that he was male, in his twenties and wearing white tie.

‘Mum, tell me what’s going on,’ she said, twisting back and glaring at Estella.

‘Aunt Sybil thought you should have a dinner date. Apparently it’s the done thing,’ Estella said in a low, urgent voice.

‘And that’s him? In the taxi?’

Estella grabbed her arm and led her firmly to the door.

‘He’s a nice boy, a good family.’

‘I’m not going,’ said Georgia, trying to twist away from her.

‘You are,’ instructed Estella, shutting the front door behind them and herding Georgia down the steps and out on to the street.

He had already got out of the taxi and was holding the door open for her. He was a couple of inches shorter than she was, with sandy blond hair and a pinkie ring on his little finger.

‘Frederick McDonald. How do you do,’ he said with an obviously anxious smile. ‘It’s wonderful to finally meet. I’ve been hearing all about you.’

Georgia couldn’t bring herself to lie that the feeling was mutual.

Queen Charlotte’s Ball, one of the highlights of the entire Season, was being held in the Great Room of the Grosvenor House hotel. Cocktails were to precede dinner, which was to be served at 8.30. It was supposed to be a magnificent night and tickets for the event cost four pounds and four shillings each, not that Georgia’s family had had to pay for them – Donald Daly, Sally’s father, had announced that he had bought an entire table of ten and insisted that the Hamiltons should join them.

‘George, here you are,’ squealed Sally as soon as she had deposited her wrap in the cloakroom.

Georgia was glad to see her best friend in London. The two girls had become close ever since they had met at Emily Nightingale’s cocktail party. Although they hadn’t traded contact details then, they had started to see one another everywhere and soon had made plans to meet up away from the Season events. Although Sally was taking the Season very seriously indeed, she was an easy-going girl with a sense of fun and generosity of spirit that Georgia had warmed to immediately.

Georgia was still in a bad mood from her confrontation with her mother but gasped in delight when she saw her friend’s gown – a floor-length confection in the palest vanilla made of duchess silk and tulle.

‘So, what’s your date like?’ asked Sally, hooking her arm through her friend’s conspiratorially.

‘Even
you
know I had Frederick McDonald lined up for me this evening?’

‘Well, my mother was doing a table plan and needed to call Sybil, so we got all the gossip.’

‘Thanks again for the tickets. It was so kind of you.’

‘I could lie and tell you that Dad’s splashed the cash because you’re the nicest, most fun deb on the circuit,’ Sally whispered dramatically. ‘But it was when I told Mum that your aunt was an aristocrat’s daughter that my parents insisted we should share a table tonight. Such are their frightening levels of social climbing, they’ve even brought my brother Keith along, and I think Mum has seated him next to Clarissa. I hope she’s not frightfully cross. Look, there they are being introduced now.’

Georgia glanced across the room and saw her cousin chatting to a rotund young gentlemen with a ruddy complexion and an ill-fitting dinner suit. Sally had taken after her attractive mother in the looks department; Keith was a dead ringer for their more aesthetically challenged father. Clarissa wasn’t going to be cross. She was going to be furious.

‘Frederick’s cute,’ observed Sally as they weaved through the tables, stopping every few feet to say hello to a fellow deb. Georgia surprised herself with how many people she knew here, having served lots of them in the Swiss Chalet coffee shop, which had proved to be quite a popular place for debutantes to meet their latest paramours. Fledgling romances developed over apple strudel and hot chocolate before her very eyes, and she had even heard whispers that a couple of her acquaintances hoped to be engaged before the end of the summer. Others she knew from her own cocktail party a couple of weeks earlier, an event that had gone surprisingly well. Uncle Peter had secured a room at the Chelsea Arts Club, which they had decorated with fairy lights. It had been a meagre finger buffet – Estella’s attempts at aspic had been disastrous, her hoped-for gelatinous centrepiece little more than a bowlful of cold meats floating in a pond of thin pale pink fluid after the thing had failed to set. However, their provision of cocktails had been excellent. Georgia had been in sporadic communication with Edward Carlyle – a handful of letters had bounced between them following that night in Putney, after which she had sent him an invitation to her party. He hadn’t been able to attend – apparently revision for Finals was getting a little bit hairy – but instead had sent a recipe book of cocktails, which she had plundered for ideas.

She glanced around the room to see if Edward was here tonight. He hadn’t mentioned in their last correspondence that he was coming, but she was hoping to see a friendly face in this sea of stiff, white-gloved formality.

They took their seats at the round table. Georgia had been placed between Frederick and Keith – clearly Mrs Daly was hedging her bets, a thought Georgia didn’t like to dwell on too long.

‘Save me,’ whispered Clarissa into her ear, before taking her place on Keith’s other side. Georgia grinned back at her supportively.

The menus were written in French, but her command of the language was good enough to translate it. Soup. Fillet of sole. Chicken and potatoes. All of which she felt sounded much more exotic and delicious left in the original French.

‘I love your crown. Where did you buy it?’ asked Sally’s mother Shirley, eyeing Sybil’s tiara with desire.

‘I was given it by my uncle when I married Peter,’ replied Sybil politely.

‘Don, maybe we can get one next time we go to Bond Street.’

Georgia hoped her aunt wouldn’t point out that it had been in the family for generations, but Sybil maintained a discreet silence.

‘So tell me about business, Mr Daly,’ she asked instead.

‘Doing well,’ he smiled, tucking his napkin into the front of his shirt and summoning the wine waiter to bring over three bottles of champagne. ‘It’s going through the roof, in fact. Not bad considering I started off with a couple of old bicycles on the back of a horse and cart.’

‘You were a rag-and-bone man?’ said Clarissa, her eyes wide.

‘Not too far off, love,’ grinned Don Daly. ‘But there’s a big future in metal recycling. You seen those aluminium cans for soda pop? The lot will be recyclable.’

‘Money for old rubbish.’ Sybil laughed at her own joke.

‘Sally says you work for
Vogue
, Clarissa,’ put in Shirley, her eyes twinkling.

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you go on fashion shoots?’

‘Not yet. I’m only in the secretary pool.’

‘She plans to move out of it any time now,’ said Sybil with barely disguised disapproval. ‘I must phone Audrey Withers and talk about your prospects, now you’ve decided to become a career woman.’

Georgia glanced over towards Clarissa, who was looking down in quiet shame. It was no secret in the Hamilton family that they just wanted to get her married off.

‘And Sally tells me you work in a coffee shop, Georgia,’ smiled Shirley, who had perhaps picked up on the tense atmosphere at the table.

‘It’s great.’ Georgia grinned back. ‘All the cake I can eat. And I even get paid for my break time, which is brilliant because that’s when I work on my book, so it feels like I’m finally getting paid for writing.’

‘That reminds me,’ said Peter, taking a long sip of champagne. ‘I was out for dinner with an interesting chap the other day. Quite a successful author, apparently. I should introduce you. I’m sure he can give you some tips on getting published.’

Peter’s offer lifted Georgia’s mood, so much so that the meal passed uneventfully and was even quite pleasant. The biggest surprise of the evening was Frederick McDonald, who was exceedingly good company. Georgia hoped that, while she didn’t fancy him in the slightest, they could be friends.

The ritual of the ball occurred after dinner, when over a hundred of the attendant debutantes assembled upstairs before descending the sweeping staircase to the cavernous ballroom, where a giant twinkling white cake was to be cut in front of the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland. Georgia thought it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever seen, and it was not because of any sour grapes.