B004D4Y20I EBOK Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Fame, fashion and scandal, the Trevellyan heiresses are the height of success, glamour and style.

  But when it comes to …

  … WEALTH: Jemima’s indulgent lifestyle knows no limits; Tara’s one purpose in life, no matter the sacrifice, is to be financially independent of her family and husband; and Poppy wants to escape its trappings without losing the comfort their family money brings.

  … LUST: Jemima’s obsession relieves the boredom of her marriage; while Tara’s seemingly ‘perfect’ life doesn’t allow for such indulgences; and Poppy, spoiled by attention and love throughout her life, has yet to expose herself to the thrill of really living and loving dangerously.

  … FAMILY: it’s all they’ve ever known, and now the legacy of their parents, a vast and ailing perfume empire, has been left in their trust. But will they be able to turn their passion into profit? And in making a fresh start, can they face their family’s past?

  About the Author

  Lulu Taylor lives in London. She adores perfume and has enjoyed researching her first novel on the subject. She is currently hard at work on her new novel.

  To Helen Robertson

  1

  WHAT A DAY for a bloody funeral, Jemima thought, narrowing her eyes at the sight of the grey drizzle that had been falling all morning from charcoal-coloured clouds. It’s going to bloody well ruin my Philip Treacy hat.

  At the sign for the village, Harry signalled left and drove the Jaguar smoothly down the narrow lane towards the church. They’d driven all the way from Dorset without a word between them. Briefly, after Tara had called to say that Mother was dead, Harry had softened a little towards her. He’d embraced his wife for the first time in months.

  ‘God, Jemmie, I’m so sorry,’ he’d said hoarsely. She knew that he was thinking of his own mother, the darling mama who’d died when he was only twelve. He’d never got over it and, what was more, no woman had ever been able to live up to the icon of perfection that gazed down from the portrait in the drawing room.

  Harry had eased her into an armchair, brought her a stiff drink and then stayed with her while she sat, white-faced and shocked. She hadn’t cried, though. All she could say incredulously was, ‘So she’s finally gone. I can’t believe it …’

  But the next morning, it seemed that things between them were back to the way they always were, cold and distant and she had a sense of foreboding that open hostilities were not far away.

  Jemima glanced over at her husband as he drove. He looked handsome today, and smart in a way she had forgotten he could be when he made an effort. He’d put on his only black suit, the one he always brought out for funerals or when he had to go to London for a business meeting with the family lawyers. It was an ancient suit, made for Harry’s father by a Savile Row tailor some time in the fifties, a little musty now but still obviously excellent quality. It was beautifully cut and the rich dark fabric had a fine, velvety finish.

  Like so much of what we have, she thought. Inherited. That’s all he cares about – the things passed down to him. I want something new, something fresh in my life. That’s the difference between us.

  As they pulled round the small village green, they saw the church. Long black limousines were parked nearby, and the hearse was outside, the coffin laden with flowers. People were milling about in the front, some going into the church, others chatting on the grass verge. It was the great and the good of the county, all of whom had known her mother well, along with some withered old society hostesses who had thrown grand parties in the distant past and knew her mother from their debutante days. Then there were the expensive London cars, sleek and polished, looking like carefully reared pedigrees suddenly let loose in the wild. Jemima knew to whom those belonged: the ones who made their money from her family.

  Harry parked the car and then turned to her. ‘All right?’

  ‘As much as you’d expect,’ Jemima said coolly. ‘It is my mother’s funeral after all.’

  She pulled down the visor and inspected herself in the mirror. Her golden blonde hair, expertly highlighted, was perfectly styled in a demure French twist. Against its shimmering lights, her little black hat and its one curling black feather looked adorable. It went exquisitely with the vintage style, dark grey tweed Vivienne Westwood suit that made the most of her tiny waist and curves. Jemima blinked her large blue-grey eyes at her reflection, making sure her make-up was immaculate and her lashes free of mascara blobs. Then she pulled out her Chanel lipstick and reapplied a slick of bright red while Harry got out and put up the huge black umbrella. He came round to her side and opened the door.

  ‘How thoughtful of you,’ Jemima said.

  He shrugged at her and held the umbrella close to the car to protect her from the rain.

  Nothing will come between Harry and his sodding good manners, she thought. Not even the fact that he hates my guts. I can’t believe he’s sorry that the old witch is dead. It’s because of her that we’re in this mess, after all.

  ‘Mimi!’ Tara came tottering up, looking fabulous in a Dior pencil skirt, pussy-cat bow blouse and black cashmere V-neck, notable for the enormous diamond brooch in the shape of a dragonfly that sparkled on one shoulder. She hugged her sister and then stood back to look at her. ‘Darling, I’m so glad you’re here. My God, this is all so tragic.’

  She blinked moist blue eyes at her sister. Unlike Jemima, she was dark haired with the kind of classic cut and restrained low lights suited to a woman with a high-powered professional career that took her into the most prestigious boardrooms in the City.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ Jemima kissed her older sister on both cheeks. ‘It’s certainly a sad day. I think tragic might be pushing it, though. When old ladies with weak hearts drop dead after a full and active life spent fucking everyone else over, it’s hardly the end of the world.’

  ‘Oh, please, Mimi, not today. Try and think the best of her.’ Tara blinked hard again, holding back tears.

  Harry stepped forward. ‘Hello, Tara, I’m terribly sorry about your mother,’ he said gruffly and
kissed his sister-in-law. ‘I’ll leave you two to it and find a place in the church.’

  ‘How are things?’ whispered Tara as they watched him go.

  Jemima shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual. It’s like being married to a block of stone. Where’s the family?’

  ‘The children are inside with Gerald.’ Tara nodded towards the church.

  ‘I bet they don’t have the first clue what’s going on,’ Jemima said.

  ‘They do seem a bit subdued. I’ve tried to explain to them that their grandma is dead but they’re too young to really understand what it means.’

  ‘Poor little sausages. I’ll go and say hello.’

  Tara gave her a grateful look. ‘Listen, I must rush. I’ve ended up organising this whole thing, of course. I need to talk to the vicar. He’s wheeled the most ancient old canon you’ve ever met out of retirement to perform the service. Apparently he knew Mother and Daddy when they were first married, but he can barely stand up. Have you seen Poppy?’

  Jemima shook her head.

  ‘Well, watch out. You may need to hold her up. She’s almost hysterical, poor love.’

  Tara tip-tapped away on her Louboutin heels up the path towards the vicar.

  Harry had gone. Jemima waved at some relations and made a quick escape into the church. She went over to her nephew and niece, who were sitting with their father.

  ‘Hello, sweeties.’ She kissed Edward and Imogen who looked up at her with timid expressions. They were too young for this sort of thing. She couldn’t help but wonder at Tara’s sense in bringing them, though she suspected Gerald had more to do with it.

  ‘Jemima.’ Gerald nodded at her, his bald head glowing in the light from a ring of ancient light bulbs above. ‘A sad day. A very sad day.’ He had a sonorous voice with a melodic South African accent. ‘We will miss your dear mother.’

  ‘If you say so, Gerald.’ She grinned at him. One of her pleasures in life was pricking the pomposity of her ridiculous brother-in-law. ‘I don’t know if she’ll be missing you over the other side. After all, she couldn’t bear you, as I’m sure you know.’

  ‘A funeral is hardly the time for such remembrances,’ Gerald said in his snuffly, arrogant way. ‘It is fitting that we remember your mother’s good qualities.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. Let me know if you can think of any.’ She heard a muffled sob from the front pew. ‘Do excuse me. I think I’m needed elsewhere.’

  She swung round on a heel and approached the front pew where a green velvet opera coat, dark plum beret and masses of dark hair glittering with chestnut lights were scrunched up together into a small hillock.

  ‘Poppy?’ Jemima ventured.

  Her sister looked up, her face ashen and her eyes swollen and red-rimmed. ‘Mimi!’ She burst into tears again and buried her face in her handkerchief. ‘Oh God, Mimi, isn’t it terrible? Isn’t it awful? I’ve been in pieces since I heard. I can’t believe she’s gone. I can’t believe we’re orphans.’

  ‘Oh, darling.’ Jemima slid into the pew beside her younger sister and put her arms around her. ‘Mother was going to die some time, you know. We all knew about her heart. And we’re hardly orphans in the abandoned little things in rags heading for the orphanage and bowls of gruel way. Tara’s well over thirty, I’m nearly there and you’re almost twenty-six.’

  Poppy sniffed loudly. ‘Oh, I knew you wouldn’t feel the same way. I knew you wouldn’t. You’re always so in charge of yourself. But don’t you see … it’s our mother. She’s dead and gone. It’s only natural to cry, to mourn her.’

  Jemima stared at her sister’s waves of dark hair and stroked her velvet shoulder almost absent-mindedly.

  Christ, she thought. I can’t muster a tear. I must really have hated the old bitch after all.

  The funeral passed off in the style of so many of the Trevellyan family occasions. It was all done perfectly properly and in absolutely the best taste without a trace of gaudiness or ostentation.

  The three sisters stood together in the front pew. Behind them were the dead woman’s sons-in-law and grandchildren and then rows of family and distant relatives, the local gentry and smarter friends from London, the women in discreetly expensive black outfits that glistened with ropes of pearls and diamond brooches. Many of Mrs Trevellyan’s staff had turned out for the service, though they were mostly at the back and behind the pillars. Jemima spotted Alice, the long-serving, hugely loyal housekeeper, dabbing at her eyes with a hanky. She obviously really cared that the old woman was dead. Then there were the lawyers and directors of the family company, all very sober and respectful, pretending they actually gave a damn.

  Jemima glanced back over her shoulder and saw a whole row of crusty old men with white hair or balding heads, wrinkles and rheumy eyes peering through glasses. The directors of Trevellyan, no doubt, not that she could remember ever meeting any of them before. Among them stood a younger man, distinctively dressed in an exquisitely soft-charcoal suit that Jemima recognised as Prada, and a vibrant purple silk tie. She liked that. Purple had a nice imperial touch to it, and it was a colour of mourning after all.

  Who is he? she wondered. He was shorter than Harry but with broad shoulders that promised a lean, muscular physique. He stood out not just because he was significantly younger than the men around him, but because of his dark looks: hair that was almost black, heavy brows over deep brown eyes and an olive skin.

  She turned back to the front. No doubt another of those ghastly men, the ones her mother had employed who grovelled and fawned in front of her like she was God. All right, so she had owned Trevellyan and held all of their destinies in her hands – that certainly made her very important but did Jemima have to be constantly reminded of it? It made the woman bloody unbearable, she thought.

  Jemima could sense a kind of excitement in the church, a nervous anticipation perceptible in everyone from Harry to her mother’s staff. They’re all wondering what’s going to happen now. What’s going to happen to Trevellyan? Well, join the club.

  The order of service was printed on beautiful ivory-cream card tied with a tiny black watered-silk ribbon. Another excellent job by Smythson, noted Jemima. The funeral proceeded exactly as stated: Tara went up to read the lesson in her commanding voice that shook a little only at the end; the vicar gave the address, describing a woman who sounded vaguely like the mother Jemima had known but whose many virtues, ‘great love for human kind’ and many charitable acts were, frankly, fiction. Then the managing director of Trevellyan, a dusty-looking old man with bad spectacles, got up to declaim the prayers and they all obligingly mumbled the responses. There was another hymn – God, what a dirge! thought Jemima, although the people around her seemed to find it very moving, lots of them sniffing loudly into handkerchiefs – and then the service was over and it was time to go to the graveyard for the entombment.

  It was outside, when she saw the open tomb where her mother’s coffin would be placed alongside her father’s, that Jemima felt something for the first time that day. It was horror.

  They can’t put her in there! she thought, appalled. It looked unbearably dark and cold. Her mother had always slept with the little rose-coloured lamp on in the corner of the bedroom because she hated the dark so much. But of course – she’s dead.

  The finality of it hit her with a sudden and unexpected force. She felt a huge tremor somewhere deep in her chest and swayed for a moment. She put out her hand and clutched at Poppy’s coat. The velvet was slippery and treacherous in her grasp and for an instant she was afraid that she would topple forward and fall down. Then Poppy reached out and took her arm and on the other side of her, Tara took the other.

  The sisters held tightly to one another as the plain black coffin containing the last remains of their mother was lowered into the deep pit. The vicar intoned the final words of the interment, reminding them all what they had come from and what they would return to.

  ‘Oh my God,’ whispered Tara. ‘It’s over. She’s really gone.’


  Poppy had stopped crying and was staring downwards with huge green eyes. ‘I can’t believe we’ll never see her again.’

  ‘I know.’ Jemima squeezed their hands. ‘Lucky us.’

  2

  THE WAKE WAS held at Loxton Hall, the family home of the Trevellyans. The long driveway curved downwards to a tree-ringed hollow and sitting cosily in that was the house, a solid and strong Victorian red-brick mansion constructed with the fortune of the first notable Trevellyan. In the mid-nineteenth century, he’d cashed in on the craze for cashmere shawls and the mania for the brand new Paisley pattern, importing shipfuls of exquisite pieces from India. With the fortune he acquired, he built Loxton Hall and founded his company, Trevellyan, a name that became synonymous with luxury.

  The broad sweep in front of the house was full of expensive cars. Mourners were greeted at the door by maids bearing trays of champagne, then directed through to the ballroom, a Gothic creation dominated by vast stone fireplaces at either end and an oak-panelled ceiling.

  While staff patiently circulated the room with trays of canapés, the sisters stood apart, surrounded by people offering their deepest sympathy and their sincerest condolences.

  ‘Your dear mother was a wonderful lady,’ said one elderly lady in a black dress printed with jaunty daisies. She was wearing a navy blue hat, Jemima noticed, that didn’t match her dress. Her irritation at this stranger grew as she listened, or tried to. ‘You must be heartbroken, heartbroken,’

  ‘Oh … yes, yes we are. We’re just devastated.’ Jemima eyed a passing tray of small smoked-salmon sandwiches and remembered that she’d eaten nothing that day and was ravenous. ‘How did you know Mother?’

  ‘She was gracious enough to be a patroness of our society. We are behind the church appeal, you know. The roof badly needs restoration as does the bell and we’re trying to raise several hundred thousand pounds. Your mother donated generously, both of her time and money.’ The old lady looked hopeful. ‘I wondered, Lady Calthorpe, if you were thinking of taking on any of your mother’s duties. We would be most delighted to have someone of your position, of your stature, on our committee …’