my old digestive problems have been playing up again. Life is never quite simple, is it?”
What is more, Wallis explained, she was not going to invite any of those London hostesses who came so regularly to dine at Bryanston Court. This was not an occasion for Sybil, Emerald or Margot or even Diana, entertaining as all those society lionesses all could be. They were all coming with Chips next week anyway. No, this was to be more of a family party, even though they would be a little cramped around the dining-room table.
“I usually limit my dinners to six people as that is what my most regular guests like best, but tomorrow a table of twelve will make a happy exception.” And would they have some fun, she promised! Wallis was looking forward to meeting Lady Joan and her husband once again and was delighted to include not only their daughter, Bettina, and son, Rupert, in the invitation, but also his friend Julian from university and Julian’s girlfriend, Charlotte.
“Don’t you just love the younger generation?” Wallis had twinkled at her old school friend. “Especially the male part of it!”
Evangeline had agreed with her wholeheartedly.
Despite the insistence on the casualness of the evening ahead, Evangeline had taken particular trouble with her choice of clothes. Wallis had just returned from a shopping trip to Paris where she had ordered a complete spring wardrobe from Mainbocher, the most fashionable of all Parisian dressmakers.
“The king insists on indulging me with so many lovely new clothes!” she had said with a smug look at Evangeline, who privately vowed to herself she would not be outdone in the fashion stakes, particularly when that charming young man Julian was going to be present. Of course there were a few years in age between herself and the young undergraduate, she was the first to acknowledge, but people cared so much less about that sort of thing these days, didn’t they? And after all people often remarked on the youthful quality of Evangeline’s complexion.
The Blunts assembled in the Hamilton Terrace drawing room and drank a glass of champagne while waiting for May to bring the Rolls to the front door.
Charlotte was sitting on the leather arm of the semicircular fire fender, crossing and uncrossing her legs, and occasionally reaching down to smooth her silk stockings from ankle to knee in a gesture that Evangeline felt to be inappropriately provocative. Bettina was wearing a floor-length silver sheath dress and she was telling her parents about the ball she had been to the night before. Evangeline, ever up to the minute with the fashion pages, noticed that dangling from Bettina’s arm was the very latest thing in chic: a velvet evening bag with a working watch for a clasp. Goodness knows which eligible young man had been persuaded to make this silly girl such an extravagant gift. The young woman’s habit of using French words and phrases within perfectly good English sentences seemed to Evangeline both affected and irritating. She knew from the roll of Philip’s eyes that he shared her opinion.
“Oh honestly, Mummy, every joke told by the spotty specimen I got stuck with was such old chapeau. But then things looked up when le grand fromage himself arrived hot foot from Nombre ten! Quel excitement!”
The silver sheath shimmered as Bettina darted around the room, swinging her velvet bag and doing little pirouettes as she spoke. But no one was really listening.
Evangeline sat in the corner, hoping that the experimental and girlish “natural curl” that she had agreed to wear—finished off with a large, dressy feather—would be an improvement on the habitually static appearance of her wig.
She tried to adjust the shoulder straps of her cutaway black silk evening gown without Philip, Rupert, Joan, Bettina or Charlotte noticing. The notion that she would be dressed in something beyond the limitations that her body could tolerate had been worrying her since breakfast. Even before she had removed the dressmaker’s cotton sleeve that protected the gown from attracting dust, she suspected her choice had been a mistake. And she had been correct. Despite the efforts of Wallis’s own seamstress the straps were struggling to hold up the bodice and already cutting into her exposed shoulders, forming ugly raised welts. She remembered all over again why she was usually so careful not to expose too much flesh and became resigned to wearing the matching and concealing shawl, even though Wallis had assured her that her apartment would be warmly heated.