When they had gone, Lucinda, quite tearful herself, suddenly said, “Has anyone seen Catherine? I hope she’s all right.”
“Oh yes, sorry,” said Caroline, “we were meant to tell you. She’s gone off with Nigel to have dinner, she hopes you won’t mind. She’ll be back later.”
“Nigel!” said Lucinda. “My goodness, how wonderful.”
And, “Blimey,” said Blue, “any more dramas at this wedding and I’m going to the office, get a bit of peace and quiet.”
In their mother’s room at the hospital, Annabel and Toby and Tilly stood by her bed, smiling down at her as she said sleepily, “Didn’t we do well?”
“You did, Mummy,” said Annabel, and, “Darling Mummy,” said Tilly, and, “It’s great,” said Toby, “I’m really pleased.” And then the nurse brought the baby in, still yelling. “I’m afraid he’s going to be a rather noisy addition to the household,” Elizabeth said, taking him in her arms—and they all gazed at him, in absolute awe, and Tilly spoke for them all when she said, quietly but quite happily, “How pleased Daddy would be.”
“He would indeed,” said Elizabeth, and she said it quite happily too.
They left not long after that—for she was very tired, and the baby wouldn’t settle—promising to come back in the morning.
“You know what?” said Annabel, as they sat in the kitchen, toasting the baby with tea. “I just had a rather good thought.”
“What’s that then?” said Toby.
“Those beastly people didn’t beat us, did they, not any of us. They didn’t win. We did.”
ALSO BY PENNY VINCENZI
Sheer Abandon
No Angel
Something Dangerous
Into Temptation
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
Copyright © 2007 by Penny Vincenzi
All Rights Reserved
Originally published in a somewhat different form in the United Kingdom as An Absolute Scandal by Headline Publishing Group, London, in 2007. This edition published by arrangement with Headline Publishing Group.
Published in the United States by Doubleday, an imprint of The Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark and the DD colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vincenzi, Penny.
An absolute scandal: a novel / by Penny Vincenzi.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
1. Financial crises—Great Britain—Fiction. 2. Lloyd’s (Firm)—Fiction. 3. Nineteen eighties—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6072.I525A64 2008
823'.914—dc22
2007034495
eISBN: 978-0-385-52696-8
v3.0
An Absolute Scandal Page 66