Anna gave a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m afraid it will end badly,’ she said. ‘You see, the duchess has five daughters and Sergei is very beautiful!’

‘Lucky Sergei!’ said Rupert, smiling down at her.

And, relieved to have paddled back into the shallows, he led his housemaid from the stables.

7

Fortman and Bittlestone’s reputation as ‘England’s Premier Department Store’ rests on a number of specialities. On the food halls, where bowler-hatted gentlemen’s gentlemen may be seen of a morning prodding their way through a selection of exotic cheeses; on the jewellery department, where maharajahs have not scorned to pick up a trinket to take back to their palaces in Rawalpindi or Lahore; on the restaurant, where, in a décor resembling the bathrooms of the Topkapi Palace, ancient duchesses consume English mutton at prices so astronomical that it stills all possible criticism of the food.

But above all, on its bridal department. For over a hundred years, Fortman and Bittlestone have been making wedding dresses for the élite of Britain. Conveniently situated for bridesmaids’ lunches at the Ritz, there was hardly a morning when a bevy of brides and their attendants did not take possession of the opulent fitting rooms with their oyster-silk booths and draped curtains, their ankle-deep carpets and obsequious sewing girls. For here was the end of the road for those girls who, having safely weathered the storm-tossed agitations of ‘The Season’, came matrimonially to rest.

And here, at twelve noon just four weeks before the wedding, Muriel Hardwicke had arranged to meet her bridesmaids: Miss Cynthia Smythe, The Lady Lavinia Nettleford — and Ollie Byrne.

For Ollie, the proposed expedition to London was a source of desperate excitement. Not only was she to meet Muriel at last and try on The Dress, but she was also to join the two grown-up bridesmaids afterwards at the luncheon that Tom Byrne, as best man, was giving them at the Ritz. And to complete the glory of this day, Tom himself was going to drive her up to town.

Rupert, proposing to escort Muriel by train, was less enthusiastic. He had hoped to spend the day catching up on the business of the estate but, in her quiet way, Muriel had been insistent about the purchase of her sapphires, and sapphires were not to be found in Maidens Over, the local market town.

‘You know the little rhyme, dear,’ she said playfully. ‘“Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” To walk down the aisle wearing your sapphires would make me very happy.’

She was prepared to be generous over land and settlements; indeed she had taken some trouble to have Rupert financially dependent on her even before the marriage. Just in case anything should go wrong, no man of honour could possibly break an engagement to a woman to whom he was beholden in that way. But she wanted people to see that she was admired and courted and the discovery that the dowager had, over the years, quietly sold off the Westerholme jewels, in order to pay Lord George’s gambling debts, had not pleased her in the least. She was sorry, of course, that Rupert had bought a horse which was apparently very valuable, but horse riding was something she had no intention of indulging in. It was a sport which, unless begun in childhood, would inevitably set one off at a disadvantage and there was something displeasing about these prancing, perspiring animals.

One other person was travelling to London that morning. Anna had served a full month at Mersham and was having her whole day off — a day which she proposed to spend with her mother and Pinny at West Paddington.

She was walking down the village street bound for the station and the milk train to town when a loud hoot from behind made her turn round. Done up to the eyes for motoring, the Honourable Olive, in a long muffler, leant out and said: ‘Anna! I’m going to London! I’m going to try on my bridesmaid’s dress and I’m going to lunch in a restaurant and I’m going to see Muriel and—’

Tom, grinning, interrupted this spate. ‘Can I offer you a lift? Are you going to the station?’

Anna nodded. ‘Thank you, you are very kind.’

She climbed into the back, deciding on this wonderful summer morning to give Selina Strickland and protocol a rest. ‘It’s my day off,’ she said, ‘so I’m going to London to see my mother and—’ She broke off, peered at Ollie and said gravely, ‘I find you extremely elegant, Miss Byrne.’

Ollie beamed. ‘It’s my best coat. And my best gloves. And,’ she slewed round to whisper to Anna, ‘there’s real lace on my petticoat. Honestly.’

They passed the turning to the station and Tom, unconcerned, drove on.

‘Oh, please, you must put me down here!’ cried Anna.

‘Nonsense, we’ll take you up to town.’

‘Yes, you must come, Anna, because I have to tell you about the hedgehog and you promised to tell me about when Sergei was naughty and fell through the ice and the poem about the crocodile walking down that street and… Tom, can I go and sit in the back with Anna?’

Anna gave up. As for Tom, he smiled, well pleased with this development. He was the friendliest of men and would have taken Anna up to town in any case. But today Susie was working at the London Library, a place so respectable that her parents allowed her to attend it unchaperoned. If Anna should happen to be willing to take Ollie to Fortman and Bittlestone and leave her there, it would give him half an hour which he might snatch with Susie. A half hour which, in view of the bridesmaids’ lunch he would later have to endure, he felt he deserved.

In the chattery of Fortman and Bittlestone, the two adult bridesmaids were eating ices and waiting for the bride.

Muriel had chosen her bridesmaids with the care and concentration which characterized everything she did. Cynthia Smythe, the only friend Muriel had made at school, had earned the honour of following Muriel down the aisle by a kind of servility and obsequiousness which made Uriah Heap look like the all-in wrestler, Hackenschmidt. She was a pale girl, long-necked and goitrous, with crimped, light hair over a low forehead and an insipid mouth. Untroubled by either intelligence or will, Cynthia had thought it ‘spiffing’ to be asked to be a bridesmaid, ‘super’ to be invited to lunch with Tom Byrne, and could generally be relied upon not to trouble Muriel with a single original remark or independent action.

The Lady Lavinia Nettleford was a different matter. The eldest of five daughters, whose mother’s attempts to marry them off had passed into folklore, she was an equine looking girl with blue eyes set close together, an expression of incorrigible hauteur and that misfortune known as the Nettleford nose. Lady Lavinia scarcely knew Muriel, with whom she’d nursed during the war, and what she did know she thoroughly disliked. Along with the other debutantes at the hospital, she’d felt nothing but chagrin and contempt for Muriel’s campaign to entice the Earl of Westerholme, severely wounded and in a state of shock, into an engagement. She herself was made of sterner stuff than Larissa Ponsonby and Zoe van Meck, who had cried their eyes out when the engagement was announced, but her annoyance was no less. Nor did she have any illusions about why Muriel had asked her to be a bridesmaid. Muriel, whose father was, to all intents and purposes, a grocer, wanted (and Lavinia thought this perfectly natural) to be followed down the aisle by the daughter of a duke.

But though she disliked Muriel and saw through her, it had not occurred to Lavinia to refuse. For attached to every wedding is that font of hope, that potential piece of manna, the best man. She did not personally know Tom Byrne, for the Nettleford seat, Farne Castle, was on a distant, wave-lashed Northumbrian shore but, though heir to a mere viscountancy, he was reputed to be both personable and rich. Lavinia, pursued by the hot breath of her four sisters Hermione, Priscilla, Gwendolyn and Beatrice, had been seventeen times a bridesmaid. This time, the charms of the new chauffeur notwithstanding, she intended to become a bride.

‘Ah, there you are!’ Muriel had left Rupert at the Flying Club and now strode confidently into the chattery. ‘You’ve introduced yourselves, I see.’ Her appraising deep blue eyes raked the bridesmaids and she nodded, well satisfied. The girls were of roughly equal height and similar colouring and would make a well-matched pair to follow her up the aisle. If Ollie was half as sweet and pretty as Rupert made out, the procession ought to be a great success. ‘Come along,’ she continued, ‘we won’t wait for the little girl, she’s coming up by car.’

Followed by her bridesmaids, Muriel charged, unseeing, past the world’s most impressive cheese counter, through ‘handbags’ and ‘haberdashery’ and was wafted in the lift to the sanctity of the bridal department, where Madame Duparc, whose varicose veins were stabbing like gimlets, schooled her face into a welcoming smile and, flanked by Millie and Violet, the underpaid and undernourished sewing girls, gushed her way towards Muriel.

‘Everything is ready, Mees Hardwicke and I think you will be very, very pleased. With one fitting, we should complete. Of course mademoiselle’s measurements are so satisfying… the perfect figure…’

Soothing, flattering, joined now by the chief vend euse, Miss Taylor, Madame Duparc led the entourage towards the three luxurious fitting booths at the far side of the room with their ornate mirrors and plush-lined stools.

Into the centre booth there now vanished Muriel Hardwicke, to be followed by Madame Duparc herself. Into the right-hand booth passed the Lady Lavinia Nettleford, humbly accompanied by Millie. Into the left-hand booth, its curtains held aside by the obsequious Violet, stepped Cynthia Smythe. From a mysterious upper region there now appeared three more girls in the Fortman uniform of pale green carrying, in swathes of tissue, the bridesmaids’ dresses and the wedding gown itself. Directed by the chief vendeuse, they vanished into the appropriate booths, from which came twittering noises of admiration as the little seamstresses pinned and flattered, measured and soothed.