Petra wondered how to broach the subject of the affair. Since there didn't seem to be an easy way, and as it was in her nature to be direct, she simply took a deep breath and said bluntly, "I wonder if you'd mind me asking a rather odd question about Jerome?"

Her mother ceased what she was doing and turned to face her. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes and Petra realized Delia hadn't exaggerated about her inability to sleep. "If it's about him and Sylvia, honey, I don't think it would be appropriate-"

"It isn't," she said quickly before her mother could finish her sentence, "or at least not directly."

"Well, then ...?" Her mother's forehead puckered into a frown.

"I just wondered if he had a bad reputation where women were concerned. It's just something I overheard."

Her mother stared at her for a long time, not really seeing her, and then said, "He used to have. Years and years ago, before you were born. Perhaps now Sylvia has left him so publicly he's just reverting to type."

"Oh, I see." It wasn't the answer she'd been hoping for, but she tried to look as if it was of no importance.

Her mother showed no desire to continue with the conversation and so Petra forced a bright smile and said, "I must go to bed and get some sleep. I've a garden party to go to this afternoon."

As she opened the door to leave, her mother said, "The something you overheard. Did it include the name of one of your friends?"

Petra half turned, one hand on the gla.s.s doork.n.o.b. "Yes," she said. "It did."

Her mother's face was blank of all emotion. "And was the friend Magda?"

Petra nodded, and then, not wanting her mother to question her any further, closed the door behind her.

She deliberated about whether to tell Jack of his father's liaison with Magda. It was as difficult as deciding whether to tell Magda that she knew. In the end she resolved to keep the knowledge to herself. Magda would soon be returning to Berlin and the affair would no doubt fizzle out; plus, she felt Jack had enough on his plate where his parents' s.e.xual activities were concerned. Surviving the revelation that his mother was h.e.l.l-bent on divorce and marriage to a man twenty years her junior was difficult enough without also having to tackle the knowledge that his father was having an affair with a girl Jack regarded as one of his own chums.

Any doubts she may have had regarding her decision vanished completely when she met Jack at the refreshment kiosk in Hyde Park. He was jubilant, having just received a letter from her father-a letter in which Ivor said he was delighted to hear they wanted to marry.

"He's given us his blessing and, rather than sending Delia a letter, he's leaving it to me to break the news to your mother."

"Oh! Fantastic!." She threw her arms around his neck, kissing him full on the mouth.

An elderly gentleman walking past them, a bulldog at his heels, cleared his throat censoriously. Neither of them paid him an iota of attention.

"When will you do it?" she asked. "Oh, please say you're going to do it straightaway, Jack! I can't wait another minute before telling the whole world that we're in love and going to get married!"

"What are your mother's plans today? Do you know?"

With their arms around each other's waist they began walking across the park in the direction of Knightsbridge.

"She's lunching with Wallis or Baba. I can't remember."

"Baba Metcalfe?"

Petra nodded.

Jack looked bemused. "I wonder what your father is going to say when he learns that your mother is so firmly entrenched with the Prince of Wales's set? They're all at least twenty years his junior, aren't they?"

"Thirty years in the case of Baba. And they all nightclub like mad. I'm sure other debs don't run the risk of running into their mother when they go to the Emba.s.sy or the Kit Kat Club. Haven't you noticed how difficult it makes things?"

As they left the park and crossed the busy main road, she said, "I think it would be best if I made myself scarce for the next hour or so. I don't think the hopeful bride-to-be should be within earshot of the conversation you're about to have with my mother. And please remember to tell her we don't want a long engagement. A wedding at St. Margaret's, Christmas week, would suit perfectly."

"Followed by a honeymoon in Cairo?"

She hugged his arm tightly. "Oh, darling Jack! A honeymoon in Cairo would be bliss."

"I thought it would be proper to ask Ivor's permission first."

Jack smiled broadly at the woman who had been almost a surrogate mother to him ever since he was five. He drew Ivor's letter from his inner jacket pocket.

"Permission?" Delia was in the drawing room, waiting for Harrison to bring the car around. She fumbled in her lizard-skin clutch bag for her cigarette case. "Permission for what, Jack?"

"Permission to ask for Petra's hand in marriage."

The clutch bag slid from Delia's knee to the floor. A gold compact rolled across the carpet toward his feet.

He made no move to retrieve it. Her reaction had left him rigid with shock.

"Marriage?" The blood had drained from Delia's face. "You've written to Ivor asking for Petra's hand in marriage?"

"Under the circ.u.mstances ... his being in Egypt ... I thought that was the proper thing for me to do." His smile had gone. All he felt was fast-escalating concern. "He was very pleased, Delia." He proffered Ivor's letter. She didn't take it.

Realizing he should have taken more notice of Petra's warning that her mother was likely to be highly irrational about their relationship, he said, "He's given us his blessing and asked that I break the news to you ..."

He trailed off lamely, appalled by the obvious depth of her distress.

She was still holding the unopened cigarette case, her knuckles white.

"You can't marry Petra." Her voice was hoa.r.s.e. "You can't, Jack. Trust me. It's impossible."

"But why?" He'd never been more baffled in his life. Delia looked like a woman who had been dealt a deathblow.

"Because ... because ... because you can't."

Against her t.i.tian-red hair, her skin was almost translucent.

He took a deep breath. "That's obviously not the case, Delia," he said reasonably. "Once Petra is twenty-one she can marry with or without parental consent. Ivor has already given us his blessing. We can marry at any time. We wouldn't, however, wish to while you are so opposed to it. I just don't understand why you are so violently opposed to it. Have you heard some gossip about me? Because if you have, let me a.s.sure you it's untrue. I've never done anything dishonorable in my life."

Delia gave a barely suppressed sob. "Oh, Jack! I'm sure you haven't-and I've heard no gossip about you. None at all."

"Then why ...?"

She fumbled to take a Sobranie out of her cigarette case. He reached over and helped her.

"Thank you," she said, her hand trembling violently as he offered her a light.

She inhaled deeply and then, cupping her elbow with her free hand, her arm pressed hard against her body, she said unsteadily, "My objections have nothing to do with you personally, Jack. No woman could hope for a finer young man as a son-in-law. It's just that Petra has known you all her life. When she was a baby you often came with us when I took over from the nanny and walked her in the park. All through the years Petra was growing up, you visited regularly. I think that somehow Petra has grown up expecting to marry you-and that isn't the best basis for a marriage, Jack. Especially when the girl in question is only eighteen years old."

"We're in love, Delia," he said flatly. "I love her. She loves me. What better basis for marriage is there than that?"

She caught her breath. "You're not lovers already, are you?"

"No." His reply was quite unequivocal, though he was deeply shocked by the frankness of her question.

"I want you to break off your relationship. I want you to break it off until she is twenty-one. If, when she has had the opportunity to meet lots of other eligible young men, she is still of the same persuasion ... well, we'll have another conversation about it. Until then I think it best that you don't meet. Not even as friends. Is that understood?"

He nodded, knowing that it was useless to argue with her further. His nod wasn't one of agreement to the terms she had set. It merely signified he understood quite clearly what her terms were.

There was a light knock on the drawing-room door.

Bellingham entered. "Harrison is out front, my lady," he said, mindful of the time she was expected at the Ritz.

"Thank you, Bellingham." Still distraught, she looked around for her clutch bag.

Jack bent down and retrieved it, along with the spilled contents.

As she took them, she said, "Being in the Foreign Office will make it easy for you to arrange for another posting abroad. I think you should do so, Jack. And until then, perhaps it would be best if you spent time abroad. France, maybe? Or maybe even America."

Without kissing him goodbye as she usually did, she walked from the room, leaving him more crushingly disappointed than he had ever been in his life.

Petra was waiting for him in the gardens in the center of Cadogan Square. The instant she saw him leave the house she knew the kind of news he was bringing.

"She can't have objected!" she cried, running toward him. "She can't have! Not when Papa has given us his blessing!"

"She has," he said heavily, holding her close. "And for the craziest reason."

"That you're not yet earning enough money? That your position at the Foreign Office isn't yet one with enough status? That-"

"That I've been a part of your life for too long for you to be able to judge whether or not you are really in love with me. She wants you to meet more young men-and she wants me to go away for at least three years-after which time if you still feel the same way about me, she says the subject can be discussed again."

"Land's sakes! You're not going to take any notice of such silliness, are you?"

"No," he said, holding her even closer and kissing the top of her hair. "She's just stalling for time in the hope that one of us falls in love elsewhere. We know that isn't going to happen, so there isn't any sense in our spending three years apart."

"What are we going to do?"

She stepped away from him a little and looked up into his face.

"I'm going to go to Cairo and speak to your father. I can't put your mother's objections in writing. He won't understand. The only difficulty is that I don't have any leave until the end of August."

"That's only three weeks away. We can manage to see each other, without my mother knowing about it. And then Papa will make her see sense. When Papa really puts his foot down, everyone takes notice. Even King Fuad."

With a decision made she felt a tad better, but only a tad. Her mother's response was so mystifying she didn't know how to begin to understand it. What if her father decided that a three-year separation was actually quite a good idea and rescinded his permission that they could marry? How on earth would they manage to live apart for three years? What if her mother was right, and Jack fell in love elsewhere during that time? He was wildly attractive and girls were always throwing themselves at him. It might be a temptation he couldn't resist.

Her fears only heightened the almost unbearable s.e.xual excitement she felt every time she was with him. She wanted to bind him to her irrevocably.

As the weekend drew near-a weekend she had been invited to Boudicca's country home in Hampshire-Jack said, "Do you think you could get away with chucking Heathlands?"

"Easily. Boo wouldn't mind. Why?"

"We could have a weekend by ourselves in Brighton. It may be the last chance we have of being alone together for a long time."

She hugged his arm, knowing exactly what it was he had in mind and not having even the slightest reservation.

"Where will we stay?" she asked, her face radiant. "A hotel?"

"No. Archie has a small house on the seafront in The Lanes that his grandfather bequeathed to him. He tells me it's full of olde worlde charm and that there's a smashing little French restaurant only a few steps away."

His voice changed, becoming concerned. "If you have the slightest doubt about this, Petra, tell me. Because, if necessary, I'll do the Old Testament Jacob and Rachel thing and wait seven years for you."

She giggled throatily. "G.o.d, really? I'm very impressed, but a wedding at Christmas and a January honeymoon in Cairo is what I'm aiming for-and I don't want our plans put on the back burner for three years, let alone seven."

"Neither do I," he said grimly. "And I'm going to do everything in my power to see that they aren't."

Afterward, when she looked back at that very special weekend, she was amazed at how little shyness she had felt, of how wonderfully right everything had been. He had brought a bottle of vintage champagne and red roses, so many roses that every room in the house was scented with their fragrance.

She had bought a new nightdress in Harrods. It wasn't blatantly erotic. It was a bridal nightdress in oyster-white silk satin; the kind of nightdress she would have packed for her honeymoon.

And a honeymoon was how both of them regarded their stolen hours in Archie's little house.

The evening they arrived they dined in the candlelit French restaurant. Later, in Archie's low, oak-beamed sitting room, Jack put on a recording of Puccini's Madama b.u.t.terfly and the beautiful music drifted after them as he carried her up the stairs.

For the rest of her life, whenever she heard the heart-stopping strains of "Un bel di vedremo," she was transported back to the night they became lovers, the window open to the sound of the sea.

Delia asked no questions when her daughter returned to Cadogan Square on Sunday night, saying merely, "How were the Pytchley clan? Blooming?" in a way that indicated she neither expected nor needed any real answer.

The following weekend-which was Magda and Suzi's last in England-was Annabel and Fedya's wedding day. It was a wonderfully grand and joyous occasion. Annabel's train was so long it stretched almost from the altar to the door of the Mowbray estate's fifteenth-century church.

Delia was there, of course, and so even though Jack was one of the grooms, they scrupulously avoided eye contact.

"Flirt with me," Archie said helpfully. "I've always wanted to have a redhead looking adoringly at me. Jack tells me he's setting off for Cairo next Sat.u.r.day, to enlist your father's help in smoothing some rather troubled water."

"Yes." Petra wasn't sure just how much Jack had told Archie, and she didn't want any of her mother's many friends overhearing their conversation.

"Tell me about the new car you've bought, Archie," she said, changing the subject. "Is it true you're going to start racing professionally?"

Two days later she was walking down Lower Sloane Street on her way to the hairdresser when she saw Theo Girlington walking toward her.

She ducked her head, hoping that he wouldn't recognize her and that, even if he did, he wouldn't stop.

There was no real reason why he should.

She knew him to speak to only because he was part of her parents' social circle. Since Sylvia's announcement that she was divorcing Jerome, she doubted if her mother had spoken two words to him, though as he was a duke her mother wouldn't have cut him completely.

"What ho! It's Petronella Conisborough, isn't it?" He halted in front of her. "I saw your father earlier today." He grinned at her like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. "Not that I'm someone he likes to run into too often these days."

She stared at him, remembering her mother's verdict that he was a screwball.

"You can't have," she said, giving him a dismissive smile. "My father is in Cairo."