Free Sins by Penny Jordan

all,’ Ella defended her stepmother vehemently. ‘Quite the opposite. Mama just isn’t like that. She desperately wants there to be an heir, because otherwise the title will die out and the estate will be broken up, and she says that Lord Robert would have hated that. It was so awful what happened, Lord Robert and Luc being killed in a car accident.’
    ‘You knew them?’
    ‘Yes. They used to come and visit Mama’s grandmother. My father was her estate manager. I was only young, of course, but I can remember them. Mama says that only when the dukedom has been passed on to a new heir will she be able to feel that Lord Robert is finally at peace.’
    ‘So you reckon, then, that this heir, whoever he is, would be welcomed by the duchess?’
    ‘I’m sure of it,’ Ella confirmed, adding, ‘I’m not so sure that Emerald would welcome him, though. She’s planning to have her coming-out ball at the house in Eaton Square, which really belongs to the duke. Mama didn’t want her to but Emerald always manages to get her own way.’
    ‘I dare say the estate is pretty run down, there not being an heir?’ Dougie probed further.
    ‘Oh, no,’ Ella assured him firmly. ‘Mama is a trustee,along with Mr Melrose, the family solicitor, and although Osterby–that’s the main house in the country–is shut up and not used, there’s a skeleton staff there to keep everything in order and there’s an estate manager to take care of the land.’
    ‘Strewth, that must be costing someone a bob or two,’ Dougie commented.
    ‘Well, the money comes out of the estate itself. The duke was very rich, and Mama says that everything must be kept in order whilst there’s the slightest hope of finding the heir so that it can be handed over to him as Robert would have wanted it to be.’
    ‘Emerald will feel her nose has been put out of joint then, won’t she, if some heir arrives and then she gets nothing?’
    ‘Emerald couldn’t have inherited the estate–it’s entailed–and besides, her father set up a very generous trust fund for her.’
    ‘So she’s a rich heiress then, is she?’
    ‘I expect she will be one day.’
    ‘And you don’t mind?’
    ‘No. Not at all.’
    Ella might understand that Australians did not know any better than to ask the kind of questions that were normally taboo but she drew the line at informing Dougie that her stepmother was independently wealthy, and that none of them had any need to feel envious of Emerald, in any way.
    Ella knew that she should not have said as much as she already had, but the truth was that talking about Emerald helped to keep her mind off her anxiety overJaney, who was still locked in an embrace in the corner. Now when Ella looked she could see that the dishevelled one’s hand had disappeared up inside Janey’s jumper. She opened her mouth in shock and the small anxious sound she made had Dougie looking in the same direction.
    ‘Looks like someone is enjoying the party,’ he chuckled, offering Ella another cigarette.
    ‘I’m sorry. Please excuse me.’
    Ella was obviously flustered. Her set expression and pale face indicated how alarmed she was by her sister’s behaviour, and Dougie wasn’t really surprised by her obvious desire to do something about it.
    How awful of her to be so rude, but she had to stop what was going on, Ella comforted herself as she hurried over to her sister. She came to a halt, standing determinedly in front of Janey.
    ‘It’s time for us to go, Janey.’
    Janey, who had been struggling to stop Larry’s hands from roving far more intimately over her body than she welcomed, greeted her sister’s arrival with relief–not that she intended to let Ella know that–and extracted herself from his embrace.
    ‘Where’s Rose?’ she asked Ella.
    The honest answer was that Ella didn’t know, but she could hardly say that unless she wanted to risk Janey accusing her of pretending she wanted to leave. The last thing she wanted was a row with Janey,