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Silk
PENNY JORDAN
The first in a multi-generational trilogy by mega-seller Penny Jordan is set in the decadent world of the silk industry.Dangerous liaisons…Skeletons in closets…A scandalous web of lies and deceit…The Pickfords are just your average family.1920s Cheshire. A time of great glamour and decadence, high living and loose morality. A time where anything goes - and does.Amber Vrontsky is the heiress to the wealthy Pickford dynasty, presided over by the formidable Blanche.Obsessed with social climbing, Blanche wants nothing more for her granddaughter than a titled husband - a prize which she herself failed to secure, despite her immense wealth.But free spirited Amber is intent on forging her own artistic career with the silk she loves so much. Unable to disobey Blanche, however, she moves to society London to become a debutante - and enters a world of illicit affairs, drug-taking, gambling, lavender marriages…From the lavish decadence of society London to the opium dens of the Far East, the chic boutiques of Paris to the Nazi-controlled streets of Berlin, Silk spans the depravity and the glamour of this tumultuous time.Spoil yourself with this dazzling, decadent treat by international multi-million-copy selling Penny Jordan - the ultimate read for fans of Danielle Steel and Penny Vincenzi.


PENNY JORDAN

Silk



Copyright (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
Copyright © Penny Jordan 2008
Penny Jordan asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847560735
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007281480
Version: 2018-05-22
Teresa Chris, my agent who gave me hope.
Maxine Hitchcock, my editor for this book.
Yvonne Holland, for her ‘beyond excellent’ copy editing.
Everyone at Avon and HarperCollins who made the
publication of this book – which is so very special to me
– possible.
My editors at Richmond, for their long years of support
for Penny Jordan.
Tony who has always ‘been there’, to listen and research
and drive me all those places I have needed to go in
order to make this book possible.

For my readers – those who have read me as Penny Jordan for so many years and those who I hope will read this book and become as entranced by the fabric that is silk as I am.

Contents
Title Page (#u7f403961-8ea7-57de-be0f-2e20caa9fc9d)Copyright (#uc981b4b6-3660-5654-9330-64d058e28398)Prologue (#u2b6ef1b8-c3c6-58af-89cb-c032d66437c4)Part One (#ue8fdb4ef-2ba6-545c-a1bc-2d425b9cbeb5)Chapter One (#u17fbd089-10bb-5560-9581-408ef79bb516)Chapter Two (#u39b1a539-160d-5c98-810a-573376b596d9)Chapter Three (#u188bd42e-cd96-5e92-b0f3-8d84c95e86e5)Chapter Four (#ua2c39525-e7c4-5a6c-a27d-f33bd7407f71)Chapter Five (#u78fbf810-b960-53ac-9e57-ded8b71efe0e)Chapter Six (#u2d340a75-cd0b-5a61-af6e-057ac13a147c)Chapter Seven (#ud19791fb-d208-5ae0-b3e9-499bb7df18f0)Chapter Eight (#ua7ca749b-96d5-5ec5-b9d4-7d8fb532d942)Chapter Nine (#ud7f712c2-3196-55ca-a877-5099e3f3f7cb)Chapter Ten (#ud9a80509-f01e-56d4-a6b7-b7f15b44b3f1)Chapter Eleven (#uafb379cd-d56d-5036-8175-fecae0d24c82)Chapter Twelve (#u75ffbba4-1382-52f0-a947-dec246d48e9e)Chapter Thirteen (#uae23b1af-badb-571b-a85a-1676966b59b9)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)Part Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Forty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifty-One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)An Interview With Penny Jordan (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
21 November 2002
Late November always had such a haunting melancholic feel about it; the best of the autumn gone, the glory of the leaves only a memory when the wind rattled the skeletal branches of the trees. Did trees have memories, Amber wondered as she looked through the window and out into the parkland of Denham Place. Did they, like her, remember the urgent joy of spring with all its budding promise? Did they still feel in the dreary grey an echo of the heavy, heady, sensual warmth that had been summer? A reminiscent smile touched her lips, thinner now than they had been when she had been in her own summer, but her smile still lifted her high cheekbones and shone in the faded beauty of her eyes. Spring and summer; they had been so long ago for her, and autumn too, patterned with its rich colours as vibrant as her beloved silk.
Winter held her now, bare and sometimes bleak but still beautiful.
There had been frost during the night, riming the grass, showing the tracks of the muntjac deer her own grandmother had installed at Denham. She had been dreaming of Blanche recently, and all those others whom she knew would be waiting for her. Time passed so slowly now and she grew impatient to be with them.
But not today.
‘Are you really ninety years old today?’
The solemn question, from her youngest-but-two great-great-grandchild, made her smile and place her hand on his dark head.
‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘I really am.’
‘Harry! I’m sorry, Great-grandmother. He didn’t wake you, did he?’
‘No, dear. Don’t worry.’
The young woman – the wife of one of Amber’s great-grandsons – looked harassed and tense. Amber felt sorry for her. They didn’t have an easy time of it, the young women of this modern age.
She had lived almost a whole century, a time during which there had been so many changes. Did her great-granddaughter-in-law, who complained about the demands made on her by her husband’s political career, realise that when she, Amber, had been born women had not even had the vote? Did she care? Would Amber have cared in her place?
Ninety years. An eternity. Amber suspected that many of her relatives who had come here today to celebrate the event with her would think so, anyway.
Yet to her in some ways it was no longer than the length of a small sigh, a single breath in the heartbeat of time.
Life was no more than a clever game of smoke and mirrors, which now, at this stage of her life, had become so transparent for her that the past, and those with whom she had shared it, had become as accessible as a series of open doors through which she could walk freely. No longer did her memories come only as shadows in her dreams. They were as real as she was herself, sharing her joy now in what they had played a part in creating. She could hear her father’s great shout of laughter and feel the bear hug of joy with which he would hold his great-great-great-grandchild.
Amber had asked for her chair to be placed where she could both see the room and look out of the window so that she could view both the past and the present.
She had always loved Denham, and the house in turn loved her. They shared secrets that were theirs alone.
As though she were there in the room, Amber could almost feel the icy disapproval of her grandmother, whose pearls were now ornamenting the slender neck of her eldest great-grandchild, Natasha, to whom Amber had given them, in part because her looks reminded her so much of Blanche. Natasha’s looks might be Blanche’s, but her nature was not, and with a shudder Amber prayed that her life would not turn out like Blanche’s either.
So many memories: some of them of things that had brought her great joy and others that had brought her unbearable pain, but all of them precious in their own way.
The November day was bright, with that sharp sunshine that late autumn sometimes brings. The cake had been brought in and so had the champagne.
The house was older than she by two hundred years, and the room settled easily into the expectant silence – it had witnessed many celebrations, after all, some public and some very private. A small smile touched her mouth; a very private memory revived. She could almost feel the warmth of the gust of laughter of the man who had made that memory with her.
Her gaze went to the painting newly hung for the occasion.
The Silk Merchant’s Daughter had been on loan to one high-profile gallery after another for so many decades now that seeing it again was like welcoming home an old friend. But silk merchant’s daughter that she was, the girl in the painting didn’t look at her; she was too absorbed in the roll of silk she was coveting.
Silk. As a young woman she had thought she had known all there was to know, both about the fabric and life itself, but all she had understood had been what was on the surface. She had been ignorant then of what was beneath; of the weft and warp of the tightly woven pattern that was the fabric of human life.
In the shadows those she had loved pressed closer, their presence felt only by her.
The honour of giving the toast fell to the great-grandchild whose birthday fell on the same day as her own and who today would be seventeen.
Seventeen.
The room shimmered with the painful jolt to her heart. Some years remained burned in the memory for ever by the acid sharpness of their pain. The year that had begun with her own seventeenth birthday had been one of them. The arthritic hands she had folded in her lap beneath one of the special handmade padded silk throws that accompanied her everywhere trembled. She looked towards the window, her gaze bright with the sharp clarity of her memories.
Part One (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
Chapter One (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
Cheshire, Late November 1929
In less than an hour’s time Amber was to go downstairs to her grandmother’s study to receive the very special birthday gift her grandmother had promised her. Seventeen! She was almost a woman now. Grown up at last.
The fever of her anticipation had Amber dancing rather than walking across her bedroom. She knew what the ‘very special gift’ was, of course. How could she not?
Art school – where she would begin the training that would ultimately enable her to follow in her father’s footsteps. It was all she had wanted for as long as she could remember, and now at last her dreams could start to come true. And not just her dreams.
There had been cards at breakfast from her grandmother and her cousin, Greg; from Jay, her grandmother’s estate manager; from the household servants; from the manager of the family-owned silk mill in Macclesfield, and from Beth, her best friend at school. But, as had been the case for the past four years, there was no card from those she loved the most. Her parents.
Her emotions, mercurial today and unfamiliarly intense, turned her mood from excitement to sorrow as swiftly as the wind turned the November sky beyond the windows of her bedroom from clear autumn blue to grey.
On the desk that had been her mother’s, and in which she kept her sketchbooks, there was a photograph of Amber with her parents, taken on her twelfth birthday, just three weeks before their deaths. In it, they were all smiling, her father’s arm around her mother. Her mother was looking at her father with sheer adoration and he was looking back at her. Amber was standing in front of them, her mother’s arm sheltering her, her father’s free hand holding hers.
They had been so happy, the three of them – not wanting or needing others, their lives filled with their love for one another and for silk. Its delicate yarn had spun a web around them, like a special kind of magic that had bound them securely together, and made everything in their lives special. Amber missed them dreadfully. She could still remember how happy her parents had been on the day they died when they set out for the political rally. Her mother had kissed her lovingly and her father had seized her in one of his bear hugs, swinging her round until she was giddy with delight.
They had both been so full of life that even now there were times when she found it almost impossible to accept that they were dead.
It had been her grandmother who had coldly delivered the news of their deaths; and her cousin, Greg, who had later smuggled to her a newspaper article describing how the wooden floor of the building they were in, packed tight with those who, like them, had rallied to champion the cause of the working man and to demand better wages and conditions, had collapsed, plunging Amber’s parents and twenty-six other people to their deaths.
Amber moved away from the window and back to her desk, looking down at the design on which she had been working: an interweaving of mauve and silver in the form of a Celtic knot, which would ultimately form part of a border.
Her father had been a gifted designer, a Russian émigré who had been working for a small silk manufacturer in London when he and her mother had first met and fallen in love, defying her mother’s mother to be together.
Amber had always loved hearing the story of her parents’ romance. She remembered sitting in bed, her mother brushing Amber’s long golden hair with her antique silver brush and telling her about the day they had met.
They had both been attending a fabric fair in London, her father as a designer, and her mother as a representative of Denby Mill, the famous Macclesfield silk mill that belonged to Amber’s grandmother Blanche.
Silk had been the thread that had bound them together, her mother had often said to Amber, and silk was the strongest and best of all threads, as pure and strong as love itself.
Amber’s father had been in the first rank of a new wave of forward-thinking designers, and her mother had loved to tell her of the praise that had been given to his work.
It was their hope that Amber would follow in his footsteps, they had both always told her. They had passed to their daughter their passionate desire to combine silk and design to produce fabrics that were in their own right works of art. That had been their gift to her, and she was determined that hers to them would be her fulfilment of their dreams.
From the first moment she could hold a pencil, from the first moment she had been able to understand the concept of beauty and design, Amber’s father had guided and taught her, just as her mother had shown her how to recognise the unique splendour that was silk.
Whilst other young children learned their dull lessons, Amber’s parents taught her the history of silk, and with it the history of life, and how it bound together so many cultures and civilisations; how it stretched in the longest of journeys across deserts and seas, and how it inspired in humankind the greatest of passions, from love to greed.
The story Amber had loved best was of how the manufacture of silk had been brought out of China, firstly to Khotan, so it was said, via the silkworm eggs concealed in the headdress of a Chinese princess who had married a prince of Khotan, and then to the Byzantine Empire when the Emperor Justinian had persuaded two monks to journey to Khotan to steal the secret of sericulture. The monks had returned first with mulberry seeds and then with silkworm eggs concealed inside hollow bamboo sticks.
‘See how it mirrors life,’ Amber’s mother had told her, the child on her knee as she let the fabric slip richly through Amber’s tiny hand. ‘It runs through the fingers like water, yet stretched tight it has such strength, and yet that strength is so supple that it escapes capture. The human spirit is like silk, Amber,’ she had declared. ‘It too cannot be captured; it too has great strength, and great beauty for those with the gift to see it. Always remember that, my darling …’
‘Amber? Are you in there?’
The sound of her cousin Greg’s voice brought her back to the present.
Greg was twenty-three years old, and a year down from Oxford, a handsome young man with broad shoulders and thick wavy fair year, confident in that way that a certain type of indulged young man from a wealthy background often was. He was his grandmother’s favourite just as his father, Marcus, had been her favourite child.
Greg’s father had died when Greg had been a child, killed in action in the trenches during the Great War, and his mother had died giving birth to her stillborn much-longed-for second child when the news had reached them of her husband’s death, leaving Greg to be brought up by their grandmother.
Athletic and extrovert, always ready to have a joke and eager to have fun, Greg had got over the initial boredom he had felt leaving Oxford and his friends behind to return home to Macclesfield, by becoming friends with a group of young men, like himself from moneyed backgrounds, who spent their time indulging in the pleasures of racing cars, learning to fly, playing tennis and attending house parties to flirt with pretty girls. Financed by family wealth, and not required to work for a living, Greg and his set were determined not to look back over their shoulders to the terrible war that had taken so many of those born a generation before them, young men dead before they had properly lived. That was never going to happen to them, and the hectic pace of their lives was proof of their determination to make sure that it didn’t. If they were haunted by the horror of what they had been spared it was never spoken of. Life was for living and that was exactly what they intended to do. The only thing they took seriously was ‘having fun’.
Amber looked on Greg more as an older brother than a cousin. He was good company, and he had always been kind to her.
In addition to inheriting Denby Mill, Greg would also inherit Denham Place, its lands and the bulk of the vast fortune their grandmother had inherited, first from her father and then later from her maternal uncle, a Liverpool ship owner. Amber, meanwhile, had her own dreams. She’d make her own way.
‘Happy birthday,’ Greg grinned, handing her a small, prettily wrapped box, before walking over to the fireplace with a confident swagger.
Amber had seen him drive off earlier in his new roadster and, knowing Greg as she did, she suspected that her birthday gift had probably been a spur-of-the-moment purchase, bought in Macclesfield that morning whilst he had been in the town attending a Conservative Party meeting. Greg was to become a Member of Parliament when the existing Member stepped down in six months’ time, or at least that was what their grandmother said.
‘Oh, Greg,’ she thanked him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. ‘But I can’t open it yet. I’ve got to go and see Grandmother about my birthday surprise.’
Amber couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. She had longed so much for this moment, talking about it, and dreaming about it even before she had left her select boarding school in the summer.
‘I can hardly believe that in a few weeks’ time I’ll be going to London to study art. Which art school do you think Grandmother will have chosen? I do hope it’s the Slade, although I’m not sure I’d be good enough. She never asked me for any of my art work to show them, but I suppose she will have asked Monsieur Lafitte at school to vouch for me. He always said that he would. Greg, I’m so excited, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, and my parents—’
‘Steady on, old girl. I don’t want to spoil your fun, but I don’t think you should get your hopes up too high.’
Amber frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Greg cursed himself under his breath. He wished now that he hadn’t said anything. The trouble with Amber was that she just wasn’t the smart sort of girl who knew what was what. If she had been then she’d have known what he was trying to hint. But then, of course, if she had known he wouldn’t have needed to do any hinting – or any warning.
‘Dash it all, Amber,’ he protested uncomfortably, ‘you can’t really think that Grandmother would let you go to art school. You know what she’s like.’
‘But she said she had a special surprise for me. Something that will change my whole life and that I’m very lucky to have.’
‘I dare say she did, but it ain’t art school she’s talking about, Amber. I know that for a fact.’
‘Then what is it?’
Greg shook his head and turned towards the door, but Amber moved faster, getting there first, closing it, leaning on it and looking determinedly at him.
‘You’re not leaving this room until you tell me, Greg.’
‘You won’t like it,’ he prophesied. ‘I know I wasn’t keen when she told me that I’ve got to be an MP, but you know Grandmother, and she holds the purse strings.’
Their grandmother made no secret of her preference for her grandson, and Amber had always assumed that Greg got everything he wanted. It was a new idea to her to realise that that might not be the case, and a disturbing one, like suddenly finding that the calm waters of the estate’s pretty lake concealed dangerous currents.
‘But if you don’t want to be a Member of Parliament then why—’
‘It isn’t as simple as that, Amber – nothing ever is.’
Greg sighed and sat down on one of the elegant Sheraton chairs set either side of the fireplace, the sharp sunlight cruelly picking out the faded chintz cushions.
‘Come and sit down,’ he told her, leaning forward to pat the seat of the chair opposite, then stretching his long legs out in front of him. ‘We’ve got a few minutes yet before you have to go down and see Grandmother.’
Obediently Amber did as he asked.
‘Grandmother isn’t sending you to London to go to art school. She’s sending you there to be finished.’
‘Finished?’
‘Yes, as in prepared to make your social entrance as a débutante, and find yourself a titled husband.’
It took several seconds for Amber to absorb the meaning of his words, but once she had, she shook her head in denial.
‘No. She can’t do that. It’s impossible. I don’t want … I won’t …’ She had left her seat without even being aware that she had moved, and was standing in front of Greg, her hands bunched into small fists. ‘You’re wrong, Greg. She can’t mean to do that. She couldn’t, anyway, since there is no one in the family who could present me.’
Amber had learned all about the arcane process of becoming a débutante, and the rules attached to it, at boarding school, where it had been impressed on her that the granddaughter of a mere mill owner, no matter how wealthy, did not have the right kind of pedigree to be accepted as a member of the exclusive club that was the aristocracy. That was fine by her. She couldn’t think of a worse fate than being forced into the kind of dynastic marriage she knew would be the fate of most of the girls with whom she had been at school.
‘Grandmother will always find a way to do whatever she wants to do, Amber.’
‘But why would she want to?’
Greg shrugged. He felt sorry for Amber, but he had not intended to get involved in this kind of discussion. Now, though, it was too late to wish he had left well alone.
‘Barrant de Vries,’ he told her succinctly. ‘That’s why.’
‘Jay’s grandfather? I don’t understand.’
‘It’s a long story, and one I’ve only heard pretty recently myself, but from an impeccable source.’ Greg paused, wondering how much he should say. Amber was naïve and trusting, and he didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. Amber did not need to know the source of his information.
‘When she was a young girl Grandmother set her sights on marrying Barrant de Vries and she didn’t make any secret of it either.’
Amber gasped, but Greg ignored her reaction and continued hurriedly, ‘Of course, the fact that the whole county knew that Barrant and his father thought she wasn’t good enough or rich enough to marry into the de Vries family would be a bitter blow to Grandmother’s pride. I dare say there were plenty to laugh at her behind her back for her ambitions.’
‘But she must have known? I mean, everyone knows that Barrant de Vries is obscenely proud.’
‘Well, yes, I don’t doubt she did, but she was a great beauty, of course, and Great-grandfather was pretty well-to-do. I’d wager she convinced herself that she would land him. She was accepted socially by the county set, from what I’ve been told, and that must have made her think that she stood a good chance of becoming Barrant’s wife.’
‘The county set?’ Amber queried. ‘Like the Fitton Leghs and the Bromley Davenports?’
‘Well, the Bromley Davenports, certainly; I’m not so sure about the Fitton Leghs, seeing as Barrant de Vries eventually married a Fitton Legh.’
‘But Grandmother socialises with the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley now. They are on the same charitable committees, and—’
‘There is a vast difference, my dear Amber, between socialising with a person and allowing them to marry into one’s family,’ Greg told Amber in such a good imitation of their grandmother’s voice and manner that Amber couldn’t help but smile.
‘One day Grandmother will hear you doing that and then you’ll be in trouble.’
‘You’ll be the one in trouble if you go downstairs talking about art school.’
‘But I still can’t see what Barrant de Vries not wanting to marry Grandmother has to do with her wanting me to be presented, Greg.’
‘Well, you should. She’s not the kind to forget a slight or an insult, is she?’
Amber shook her head. What Greg was saying was true. Their grandmother could be ruthless when it suited her. She had certainly never forgiven Amber’s own mother for marrying Amber’s father against her wishes.
Amber gave a small shiver.
‘Knowing what I do now, it’s my belief that Grandmother only bought this estate because it’s right next to the de Vrieses’ lands, and to let Barrant de Vries know that she owns more land and a bigger house than he does,’ Greg went on. ‘She’s even employing his grandson as her estate manager. It’s her way of humiliating Barrant for humiliating her. Everyone knows that Barrant de Vries lost virtually everything after the war, including his only son – who died without producing an heir. But that’s not enough for Grandmother, Amber. She wants us to get for her what she could not get for herself. Especially you. I cannot, after all, marry a title, but you can. The war has beggared any number of aristocratic families. You only have to think of how many of them are marrying off their sons to the daughters of American millionaires to know that.’
Amber did know it. After all, their neighbour, Lord Fitton Legh, had married an American heiress the previous year, and it was widely accepted that the marriage had been brokered to provide him with money and the bride with a title.
As though he had read her mind Greg teased her, ‘You should think yourself lucky that Grandmother obviously didn’t think the Fitton Legh title good enough. But then, of course she’ll want one that outranks the de Vries title, you can bet on that, and that’s why she’ll want you to be presented at court.’
Before Amber could say anything Greg went on, ‘Grandmother may have the money to buy a title for you, but it ain’t that easy. What I mean is, you’ll need to be mixing with the right people, and you can’t do that unless you’ve got the right credentials, and for a girl that means a court presentation. What Grandmother wants is a granddaughter who will have a title far, far better than the one that Barrant de Vries denied her, and that she can flaunt in front of everyone who laughed at her behind her back when Barrant rejected her.’
It was almost too much for Amber to take in.
‘Greg, please don’t say things like that. It isn’t nice,’ she begged her cousin. ‘I know you like to play jokes on me but—’
‘Amber, I’m not joking.’
‘Has Grandmother told you that this is the case?’
‘No.’
‘So you’re just guessing, Greg. I’m sure you’re wrong. For one thing—’
‘I’m not wrong, Amber. If you must have the truth I happened to be outside her study when she was talking to Jay Fulshawe about it. Something to do with making a payment to some Lady somebody or other to bring you out.’
‘Jay knows?’ It seemed like a double betrayal. She liked Jay, and had even felt sorry for him, obliged to work so very hard for her grandmother, whilst Greg, who had been at Eton with him, enjoyed a life of leisure.
Amber had to sit down, she was trembling so much. It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be true.
‘I don’t want a titled husband. I don’t want to get married yet and when I do—’
‘It’s what Grandmother wants that counts. Not what we want.’
Greg wasn’t joking now. In fact he looked more serious than Amber could ever remember seeing him before.
‘There’s no doubt about that,’ he warned her. ‘She always gets what she wants.’ He looked at her and smiled wryly. ‘Remember the way she got this house and the estate. Lord Talbot’s trustees didn’t really want to sell Denham Place to her, but in the end they had no choice, not with the death duties the estate had to pay after Lord Talbot died without an heir.’
Greg’s mention of Denham Place momentarily diverted Amber. She loved the beautiful Vanbrugh-designed house, with its classical lines and its famously elegant row of rooms on the first floor. Not that Denham would ever be hers.
‘Denham is beautiful, Greg,’ she told her cousin dreamily. ‘It’s supposed to be among Vanbrugh’s own favourites, even though it’s one of the smallest houses he designed.’
Greg shrugged. He wasn’t in the least bit interested in architecture or design.
The clock struck three. ‘Grandmother will be waiting for you.’
And Greg had an appointment to keep, although the truth of the matter was that he was not so sure that he really wanted to keep it. What had begun as exciting had recently started to become burdensome. Greg didn’t particularly care for intense emotions, and he certainly did not like tearful scenes, but the devil of it was that he was now in a situation from which he was finding it damnably difficult to extricate himself.
Given half a chance he would have leaped at the opportunity to go to London, with its private supper clubs and the louche living available to those of privilege. Drinking, gambling, flirting with pretty women who knew the rules of the game – these were far more to his taste than dull meetings with members of the local Conservative Party committee.
Maybe his grandmother could be persuaded that, as a loving older cousin, he would dutifully pay the occasional visit to London to keep a protective eye on Amber.
Chapter Two (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
Blanche Pickford surveyed her granddaughter critically. At seventeen Amber was showing the promise of great beauty. She was only of medium height, but she was slender and fine-boned, with an elegant neck and porcelain skin. Her face, once it lost the last roundness of girlhood, would be perfectly heart-shaped, with her eyes widely spaced and thickly lashed.
Blanche had not been pleased when her daughter – no doubt influenced by her husband – had announced that her child was to be named Amber, which Blanche had thought far too exotic. It was a tradition of the family that its daughters were given names that reflected the colours of silks. But there was no denying the fact that the girl’s eyes were indeed the honey-gold colour of that precious resin.
Amber’s straight nose and the curve of her lips, like her blonde curls, almost exactly mirrored Blanche’s own looks at Amber’s age, but as yet there was no sign in her granddaughter of the smouldering sensuality that she herself had possessed at seventeen – nor any sense of the power of such a gift. By temperament Amber was kind and gentle; weak, where she had always been so very strong, thought Blanche critically. There was no fire to her, no passion, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t passion or sensuality on which the kind of marriage she wanted for her granddaughter was brokered. Quite the opposite.
And at least the girl had looks, unlike her mother. Blanche had been furiously angry when she had realised how plain her daughter was going to be, so very much Henry Pickford’s daughter, with her attachment to the mill, and her leanings towards the labour movement and equality for the workers. However, that anger had been nothing to the fury she had felt when the plain twenty-five-year-old Blanche had assumed would remain a spinster had defied her to marry a Russian émigré, using her small inheritance from her father to do so. Not that that had lasted very long. And, of course, ultimately, just as she had known she would, her daughter had had to come begging to her.
Yes, all in all she was not entirely displeased with the raw material she had to work with. The girl’s looks would certainly count in her favour, but it was Blanche’s money that would bring into the family the title that Blanche craved.
‘Sit down, Amber,’ Blanche instructed her granddaughter. ‘We’ve got something important to discuss.’
Amber could never remember seeing her grandmother wearing anything made from silk. Instead she favoured clothes from the French designer Chanel, and today she was wearing one of her signature jersey gowns, the bodice cleverly draped to fasten on the hip with a large brooch studded with crystals, which caught the light with every movement of her body.
Slender, and with an upright bearing, her grandmother had the figure for such clothes. Amber had inherited her slenderness, although her shape was concealed by the schoolgirlish lines of her own woollen pinafore worn over a plain cotton blouse. Beneath that blouse Amber’s heart was beating anxiously. Surely what Greg had told her couldn’t possibly be true?
She looked at her grandmother, waiting apprehensively. As always Blanche was wearing her pearls, three long strands of them, their lustre possessing far more warmth than the woman herself.
‘I promised you that since this is your seventeenth birthday you are to have a very special gift. This gift concerns your future, Amber. You are a most fortunate young woman, and I hope you realise that. As my grandchild you will have opportunities and benefits beyond the reach of many young women of your age and station, and whilst you are enjoying them I want you to remember just why you have been given them and what your responsibility is to them and to me. Now,’ Blanche permitted herself a slight smile, ‘in January you will be travelling to London to prepare for your presentation at court. I have made arrangements—’
So it was true. Greg had been right. Amber felt sick with despair.
‘No,’ she protested frantically. ‘No, I don’t want to be presented. I want to go to art school.’
Blanche looked aghast. The girl’s parents had done more damage with their irritating and worthless talk of art and design than she had realised. The Russian was to blame for that. He may have filled his daughter’s head with his own folly, but Blanche had no intention of allowing such ridiculousness to remain there.
Amber was seventeen, crying for a life she knew nothing whatsoever about – at thirty-seven she would be thanking her for saving her from it. It was ludicrous even to think of comparing the drudgery of making her own way with the status and comfort that would be Amber’s if she did as she was told.
Not that it mattered what Amber thought or how much she protested. Blanche would do what she had decided she would do.
‘Art school?’
Amber could feel her grandmother’s steely gaze virtually pinning her into the uncomfortable chair in which she was struggling to sit bolt upright.
Amber hated the décor of this room. Everything about its Edwardian heaviness was overpowering and intimidating, from the puce-coloured wallpaper and matching velvet soft furnishings to the polished mahogany furniture.
‘Formidable’ was how most people described her grandmother, but Amber could think of other words: formal; forbidding; frightening. Her mother and father wouldn’t have been frightened, she reminded herself. She took a deep breath.
‘It’s what I’ve always wanted.’
Her words, more anguished than defiant, seemed to fall through the cold silence that chilled the room, despite the good fire burning in the marble fireplace: Carrara marble from the famous quarries in Italy, chosen for its perfection, just like everything else in her grandmother’s life. Not that she seemed to gain pleasure from the craftsmanship. It was just the status that owning it conferred on her that mattered.
‘You are seventeen years old, Amber, far too young to know what is right for you.’
Her grandmother’s words spiked fear into Amber’s heart, panicking her into bursting out, ‘It is what my parents wanted for me. My father talked about it often, and when I do marry, I shall marry someone whom I love and who loves me as much as my father loved my mother.’
Too late she realised her mistake. Her grandmother’s face had set into an icy cold mask.
‘Your father? Your father, Amber, was a penniless immigrant who married your mother for her money – or rather, for my money.’
As always when she was angry, her grandmother’s voice had quietened to a barely audible whisper that still somehow hurt the ears.
For her father, though, Amber was determined to overcome her fear of her grandmother’s anger, and defend him.
‘That’s not true. My father loved my mother.’
Ignoring her, Blanche continued remorselessly, ‘I warned her what would happen when she defied me to marry him, and I was right. When he lost his job she had to come begging to me, pleading with me to give him work. Your father didn’t love my daughter. Your father loved my money and my mill.’
‘He did love her. They were so happy together. My mother said so. She said my father was gifted, a true artist.’
‘He was nothing but a third-rate failure, who would have ruined the mill with his ridiculous ideas, if I had allowed him.’
Amber felt as though she was choking, all too conscious of her own overheated emotions whilst her grandmother remained calm and cold. Her parents had loved one another, she knew that. Before the factory where he had worked in London had closed down, their small house had been filled with the sound of her parents’ laughter. Amber could remember how her father would bring home his friends, fellow artists who would sit around her mother’s kitchen table, drinking her soup and talking. Those had been such happy times and Amber treasured their memory.
There had been less laughter when her parents had been forced to move back to Macclesfield, but there had still been warmth and love in the house her parents had insisted on renting rather than live in Denham Place with her grandmother. Her father had loved reading, and on winter evenings they would gather round the fire and he would read aloud, very often from one of Charles Dickens’s wonderful books set against a background of the dreadful circumstances in which the poor lived. How could her grandmother try to destroy the memory of their love by denying its existence?
Her grandmother was wrong too when she said that Amber’s father would have ruined the business. He was the one who had saved it. Amber knew that. It was because of his designs that Denby Mill’s agents in London were able to report that their new silk had sold out within days of being available, with repeat orders for more. There had been fierce arguments about his designs and his desire to follow the direction of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and her grandmother’s dislike of change and innovation. It was through her father that the mill had secured its valuable contracts with that movement and with the Church of England to supply it with the rich ecclesiastical silks that were especially woven.
Amber struggled desperately to hold back her angry tears. ‘If my parents were alive they wouldn’t let you do this.’
‘That is quite enough.’ Her grandmother stood up. ‘I don’t want to hear another word about your father or this nonsense about art school. I am the one who will decide your future, Amber. No one else.’
‘You’re a snob! You’re only doing it because of Barrant de Vries, because people laughed at you because he wouldn’t marry you …’
Amber recoiled as Blanche stepped forward, striking her across the face, the shock of the blow silencing her into horrified awareness of what she had done. Her cheek stung and her heart was racing.
Two red coins of angry colour burned on her grandmother’s face and her breathing was rapid and shallow.
‘How dare you speak to me like that? In my day you would have been whipped for your insolence. You will go to your room and you will stay there until I give you permission to leave it.’
Half blinded with tears, Amber fled, leaving Blanche alone in the room.
For several minutes after Amber had gone Blanche didn’t move. Anger, seared with pride, burned inside her that her granddaughter, a child she believed to be so much less than she herself had been at her age, should have dared to speak to her in such a way and of something so intimately connected with her own past.
Blanche stiffened. For forty-four years she had lived with the memory of Barrant’s humiliation and rejection of her and not once in that time had anyone ever dared to refer to that humiliation to her face.
She walked over to the window and stood looking out. She was sixty-one years old and not a day had gone by since Barrant had laughed at her and told her that he would never ever marry a mill owner’s daughter when she hadn’t weighed out on the scales of her life that insult and sworn she would make sure that one day those scales would weigh in her favour, even if she had to fill them grain by grain, retribution by retribution, to make sure they did so, and that Barrant would die sick to his heart with the knowledge of what his arrogance had cost him.
She hated him and she couldn’t wait for the day when her grandson and her granddaughter took social precedence over his – as she was determined they would do.
Jay Fulshawe saw Amber come running from her grandmother’s study in such obvious distress that he immediately guessed what had happened. His heart ached for her. So her grandmother had broken the news to her. Poor child, she would take it very hard.
She was still at the age where her feelings were open for all to see, mirrored in the dark golden eyes that were now so shadowed with her despair. Quick-witted and warm-natured, she was a great favourite with her grandmother’s household staff. Since she had come home from boarding school, Jay had found himself listening for the sound of her laughter, and smiling when he heard it. Unlike some, Amber’s mischievous sense of humour bore no malice or unkindness. She was so passionate about everything she believed in, and so very vulnerable because of that passion. Jay hoped that life would not punish her for it. She was still so very young.
‘Amber …’ He spoke her name gently, reaching out to her where she stood in tears in the hall, but she shook her head.
‘You knew, Jay,’ she accused him bitterly. ‘You knew what my grandmother was planning and yet you said nothing.’
How could Jay not have told her? Amber had known him virtually all her life, and thought of him more as a friend than her grandmother’s employee. He had been at Eton with Greg and he had spent many of his holidays in Cheshire. His parents lived in Dorset where his father, the third son of a ‘gentleman farmer’, was a clergyman. It was rumoured that once his wife had given birth to his son and heir, Barrant de Vries had lost all interest in his two daughters, and that he hadn’t cared who they had married, although some said that the reason they had not done better for themselves was because there had been no money. In the aristocratic circles in which the de Vrieses and their kind moved and married, a bride’s dowry was almost as important as her breeding.
Jay was more serious-natured than Greg; dark-haired, tall and leanly athletic, with a calm, measured way of speaking and a slightly quizzical smile that often made Amber itch for her sketchpad and her charcoal to try to capture it.
Jay wasn’t smiling now, though. ‘It wasn’t my place,’ he answered her quietly. ‘I’m so very sorry, but it may not be as bad as you fear.’
‘You mean that no one with a title will want to marry me and that I’ll be rejected like your grandfather rejected my grandmother?’ Amber retorted bitterly.
So she had finally heard that old story. Jay had wondered when she would. It was fairly common knowledge locally, after all. His cousin Cassandra had enjoyed regaling him with it when she had heard it from the Fitton Leghs, not realising he had already heard it, but then Cassandra had inherited that flawed de Vries pride, which he personally found so warped and destructive.
Jay put his hand on Amber’s arm, but she shook him off.
Amber ran up the stairs and along the landing until she had reached the welcome security of her bedroom. Her grandmother might consider it a form of punishment to say that she had to remain here, but she preferred to be here and on her own with her despair.
She tensed as she heard a brief knock on the door, but relaxed when Mary, the parlour maid, came in. Mary was twenty-five and courting a grocery assistant in Macclesfield. She had a bubbly personality and a warm smile, but now she was avoiding looking at her, Amber saw, as she went towards the desk and said apologetically, ‘The mistress says as how I was to come up and remove your drawing things, Miss Amber.’
Amber’s face burned hot with humiliation and grief. Her grandmother must have guessed that she would want to find solace in her drawing. Well, if she thought that she would apologise in order to get them back, she was wrong!
It was growing dark by the time Jay negotiated the rutted carriageway to Felton Priory in the shooting brake with which Blanche Pickford had provided him as her estate manager. She had informed him he may use the motor car ‘for a certain amount of private motoring, since I dare say you will want to see your grandfather, and he is not obviously able to visit you.’
Had those words been a kind gesture on Blanche’s part or an unkind underlining of the fact that Barrant was confined to a wheelchair? Jay knew which his grandfather would have chosen to believe.
Dusk cloaked the shabbiness of the house and its surrounding parkland. Unlike Denham Place, Felton Priory could never be described as an architectural gem, being a haphazard mixture of differing periods and personal styles, refronted by the fifth Viscount in a pseudo-Gothic style of outstanding ugliness.
With typical arrogance, or perhaps artistic blindness, Jay’s grandfather insisted on considering Felton the premier aristocratic residence in Macclesfield, if not Cheshire, and Jay was good-humoured enough to indulge him, although in truth Jay much preferred the handsome Dorset rectory where he himself had grown up.
Jay considered himself fortunate that the de Vries inheritance of pride and arrogance had passed him by.
He parked the shooting brake on the gravel forecourt, taking the steps to the heavy portico with lithe strides.
His grandfather’s butler opened the door to him. Jay had telephoned ahead to warn him of his visit, knowing that Bates, older than his grandfather by a good ten years, and rheumatic, found it increasingly painful to walk the long distance from the warmth of the butler’s pantry to the main entrance.
‘Good evening, Master Jay,’ Bates welcomed him, taking Jay’s driving coat, cap and scarf.
‘Good evening, Bates,’ Jay returned. ‘How is the rheumatism?’
‘Not too bad at all, thank you. Your grandfather has had a bad couple of days, though, I’m afraid.’
‘Thank you for warning me. His legs are playing up again, are they?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
Despite the fact that both his legs had had to be amputated, Barrant suffered acute pain in what his doctor had described to Jay as ‘phantom limbs’. When the pain was at its worst the only thing that could relieve it was morphine, which had to be prescribed by Dr Brookes.
Jay’s grandfather vehemently objected to the fact that a law had been passed that meant that contrary to what had been common practice beforehand, morphine and all its derivatives could now only be obtained by doctor’s prescription. As Jay knew, his grandfather wasn’t the only one to feel that the government’s Dangerous Drugs Act had interfered in something over which they had no right. For many of the Bright Young Things of the twenties, as the newspapers had labelled a certain fast set of rich young men and women, the law had come too late. They were already, like poor Elizabeth Ponsonby, the young socialite whose wild ways had been referred to in the gossip columns, addicted to both drink and drugs, and as with prohibition in America, all the law had done was drive the supply and purchase of intoxicants and narcotics underground.
‘Your grandfather’s waiting for you in the library, Master Jay.’
Felton Priory’s library was a large rectangular room, which Jay’s grandfather had made his personal domain after his accident. A Chinese lacquered screen discreetly concealed the bed, which Jay had had brought downstairs so that his grandfather could ‘rest’ when he felt like doing so, instead of having to use the cumbersome dumb waiter to transport him and his wheelchair up to the second landing that gave access to his bedroom.
‘Ha, here at last, are you?’ Barrant greeted Jay. ‘I dare say that Blanche works you hard and wants her pound of flesh from you. Bates,’ he roared at the butler, ‘bring me a brandy – and make it a large one.’
Jay looked at his grandfather with concern. ‘I thought that Dr Brookes had forbidden you to drink brandy?’
Barrant gave his grandson a saturnine look. ‘No doctor tells me what to do. If I want a brandy I’ll damn well have one. Anyway, what does he know? Young fool. His father was bad enough. Thought he’d end up killing me before he retired, but the son’s even worse.’
The old man was obviously having a bad day.
His hair, once as thick and dark as Jay’s own, was white now. Pain had carved deep grooves in the flesh at either side of his mouth, and hollowed out the features beneath the high cheekbones. Fierce passions still glittered in the dark blue eyes, though driven, Jay suspected, by frustration and arrogance.
Barrant took the brandy Bates had brought him without any acknowledgement, waiting until the butler had left before saying sharply, ‘So the Pickford boy is putting himself up as a candidate to take over Barclay Whiston’s seat, is he? That will be Blanche’s idea, of course. He won’t get it. Too much of a lightweight, and no amount of money is going to alter that. He’s not the man his father was.’
A look Jay couldn’t interpret crossed his grandfather’s face. ‘Get on well with him, do you?’
‘Everyone gets on with Greg,’ Jay answered calmly.
‘Cassandra don’t think much of him.’
Though Jay didn’t say anything, Barrant still grunted and said, ‘You’re right, it’s time Cassandra found herself a husband. No looks to speak of, but she’s got de Vries blood in her veins. Too sharp in her manner by half, though. No man wants a wife with a tongue like vinegar. Don’t know where she gets it from. Certainly not from your grandmother. She was as meek as milk.
‘Cassandra was telling me that Blanche is sending the girl to London with some fool idea of thinking she can buy a title for her.’
‘Amber is to be presented at court, yes.’
‘Good-looker, is she?’
‘Yes.’
Barrant grunted again. ‘She’s still trade, though. Your grandmother was a Fitton Legh. Her ancestors came over with the Conquest, just like the de Vrieses. It’s good blood that counts in a marriage, not good looks. Like to like. You remember that when your time comes. Not that you’re a true de Vries, since it’s its father’s name a child carries and not its mother’s.’
The bitterness in his grandfather’s voice was as familiar to Jay as the reasons for it. Barrant de Vries had never got over losing his son and he never would. His grandfather would have valued him far more, Jay knew, if he had been born to Barrant’s son and not one of his daughters.
‘You’re getting bored with me, I know you are.’ Her voice was fretful, rising dangerously towards hysteria.
Greg wished he had not come. He had turned down an invitation to drive into Manchester to a new nightclub that had just been opened.
‘Of course I’m not.’
‘Yes you are. You didn’t even call me your dearest darling like you used.’ She was pouting now, tears swimming in her large blue eyes.
Greg could feel his heart sinking as fast as his irritation was rising.
The bedroom smelled of scent and sex, both of them somehow equally cloying. The feeling of being trapped in a situation he no longer wanted, which had been growing on him for several weeks, now intensified. He hadn’t realised in the first thrill of his lust for her that her extraordinary beauty cloaked such a clinging and possessive nature. His desire for her had blinded him to the dangers.
An affair with a married woman was something that a young man in his position did, so far as Greg was concerned. He had been momentarily obsessed by his lust for her, it was true, and in that moment he had perhaps made rash promises to her, but now Greg was bored and ready to move on. She, though, was making it clear that she was not ready to let him go.
Somehow their, to him, casual affair had in her eyes – and words – become something very different. Something that Greg had never intended and most certainly did not want.
‘You said you loved me, but you were lying,’ she accused him. ‘How can you be so cruel? Isn’t what I already have to bear enough? Must I be punished even more by having my heart stolen with false promises of love?’
She was pacing the floor of the bedroom now, her behaviour becoming wilder by the minute, the white marabou-trimmed silk peignoir she had pulled on when they had left her bed, swirling round her. The silk clung to her naked body beneath, but that knowledge no longer excited him as it had once done.
Her behaviour was making Greg feel on edge. He had never imagined at the start when she had been so cool with him, teasing and tantalising him, that she would become like this, practically begging him.
She stopped in front of him, reaching for the martini she had insisted he make for her earlier, even sending for her maid, whilst he had had to conceal himself in her bathroom so that she could bring up the ingredients and a cocktail shaker.
Greg had warned her then that she was taking too many risks but she had flown into a wild outburst of tears, accusing him of no longer loving her and reminding him that once he would have risked anything for her.
Now she drank greedily from the glass she was holding. Her face was flushed, her gaze unfocused.
‘I know,’ she told him brightly, ‘I’ll ring Nurse and she can bring Baby in.’
‘No!’ Greg couldn’t conceal his horror. ‘No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Why not? After all, he’s—’ She broke off and flung herself down on the bed, its covers crumpled from their earlier lovemaking, remembering the first time he had made love to her here in this room, their passion for one another so intense that they hadn’t even made it to the bed. She had known that he would call and she had been so wildly excited. She had worn a softly draped dress by Chanel, over a silk satin chemise and matching French knickers, her stockings held up by silk garters, every item of clothing chosen for the speed with which it could be removed, although she had not told Greg that.
He had taken her in his arms the minute they were inside the room, leaning back against the door to close it and holding her against him, his hands stroking and kneading, exploring her with an avid hunger that had matched her own need. He had groaned out loud when she had teased his erection through the fabric of his trousers, shaping it and then running her fingertip along its length as though to measure it, pouting up at him, wanting to excite and torment him.
He had retaliated by nibbling the flesh just below her ear and stroking the soft curves of her breasts hidden from his view by the Chanel dress. When he had found the edge of her chemise bodice he had teased the flesh above it and then slowly eased it lower until her bare breasts were pressed against the fabric of her dress, her nipples swelling tightly when he pinched and toyed with them.
She hadn’t stopped him when he had pulled up her dress, and then lifted her in his arms, bracing her against the bedroom door, her arms and legs wrapped around him.
He had taken her quickly and fiercely, not even bothering to remove her knickers, simply pushing the loose legs to one side after he had unbuttoned himself.
She had screamed with excitement and pleasure, urging him deeper, panting and clinging to him as he thrust into her.
He had come too quickly for her, but she had pretended that she had had her own orgasm, putting him first – as she had done so many times since, she thought now, giving in to self-pity, before begging him, ‘Tell me you love me, Greg.’
‘You know that I do,’ he lied uncomfortably.
‘Say it. I want to hear the words.’
‘I love you.’
‘No, I want you to say it properly and mean it, like you used to.’
Her voice had begun to rise again. If she kept on like this someone would hear her. Greg began to sweat, the room felt like a prison and she his gaoler.
‘It’s late. I must go.’
‘No.’ She turned and ran to him, gripping the lapels of his jacket, clinging to him, pushing her body into his, grinding herself against him. ‘I want you to stay.’
‘You know that I can’t.’
‘Because of her: your grandmother. I suppose she has already picked out a wife for you.’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘But you wouldn’t mind if she had.’
‘This is silly talk …’
‘You think I’m silly? You didn’t think that when we first met. You loved me then. Remember? Tell me again what you thought the first time you saw me?’
It was a ritual he had enjoyed in the early days of their affair, but one that no longer held any appeal for him: a series of hoops through which he now had to jump before he could escape.
‘I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen,’ Greg told her obediently.
‘And what did you say to me?’
‘I said that I idolised and adored you, that I wanted you and loved you …’
‘And that you would love me for ever,’ she finished triumphantly. ‘You couldn’t get enough of me …’
It was true, Greg knew. There’d been times when he’d been so consumed by his own desire for her that he’d come almost the minute he was inside her. Hurried illicit couplings in dark corners and shadowy corridors, which their mutual lust had turned into fevered erotic encounters, like the time they’d been in the music room, whilst her husband attended to some business with his steward and she had gone to sit on the piano stool and told him to come and turn her music for her, waiting until he was standing next to her to lean over and unfasten his trousers, one hand expertly stroking his cock, the other picking out notes on the piano keys, whilst her tongue flicked busily against the tumescent shiny head.
‘I’ve always wanted to play on an organ,’ she had told him mock innocently.
He had taken her quickly and urgently, pushing up her skirts when she had arched over provocatively, presenting him with the rounded shape of her behind, plunging himself deep into the warm wetness of her waiting cleft, driving them both into a swift fierce orgasm whilst they heard the voices of her husband and his steward growing louder as they approached the music-room door.
Yes, there had been good times, but Greg did not want to be reminded of those now.
‘You said that, Greg,’ he could hear her insisting. ‘You said you would love me for ever and that you would never leave me.’
‘Well, I’m afraid I must leave you now, my sweet,’ he told her, taking refuge in a rueful smile and making the words teasingly light. ‘Because I certainly cannot stay all night.’
‘But I shall see you tomorrow?’
When he hesitated she burst out, ‘I must. I must see you, Greg. If you don’t come and see me I can’t be responsible for what I might do.’
It wasn’t the first time she had threatened him, but now her threats merely irritated rather than alarmed him. After all, she had even more to lose from their affair being exposed than he did.
Later, as he drove home, he reflected enviously on Amber’s imminent departure for London. What he wouldn’t give for the opportunity to spend several months there, especially now.
Chapter Three (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
Amber was in disgrace, of course. It was over two weeks since her birthday and her grandmother was still treating her coldly, speaking to her only when she had to.
‘Do you think that Grandmother loved Barrant de Vries, Greg?’ Amber asked her cousin.
It was after luncheon and they were in the billiard room, Amber sitting cross-legged in the window seat whilst Greg chalked a cue before leaning over the table and carefully aiming it at one of the balls.
‘How the devil should I know?’ he responded.
If her grandmother had loved Barrant de Vries, why did she hate him so much now, Amber wondered. If she had loved him then it was a very different kind of love from the love her parents had had for one another.
‘Grandmother still isn’t talking to me. Oh, Greg, I wish I didn’t have to be presented.’ Amber shivered.
‘Come on.’ Greg tried to jolly her out of her misery. ‘It might not be as bad as you imagine. I thought you girls liked wearing pretty frocks and going to balls. You wouldn’t catch me turning down the chance to have some fun in London, I can tell you that.’ His eyes lit up. ‘There’s the Kit-Cat Club, and the Embassy and the Slipper. Places where a chap can really enjoy himself. Perhaps I should have a word with Grandmother, see if she’ll let me go with you, then I can scare off all your unwanted admirers.’ He put on a mock ferocious face.
Amber giggled.
‘Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ve got to drive over to Fitton Hall later; you can come with me, if you’d like. It will cheer you up a bit.’
Greg was so very kind. She was lucky to have such a thoughtful cousin.
‘I thought Grandmother said at breakfast that Lord Fitton Legh was in London on business,’ Amber reminded him.
‘Did she? I don’t remember, but anyway, it doesn’t matter if he isn’t there. I’m only returning some books to Lady Fitton Legh on Grandmother’s behalf.’
Amber nodded. She looked forward to seeing Caroline Fitton Legh again. It had caused quite a stir locally when Lord Fitton Legh had married an American heiress twenty years his junior, and not much older than Amber herself was now.
Blanche was on the same charity committee as Caroline Fitton Legh and the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley.
The Dowager Marchioness had invited Amber to a children’s party the previous Christmas. Amber remembered that there had been a good deal of gossip at the party amongst the adults, accompanied by arched eyebrows and the words ‘pas devant les enfants’ used about the fact that the Duke of Westminster had invited Gabrielle Chanel, whose clothes her grandmother loved so much, to stay at Eaton Hall. Amber had innocently asked Greg later why the adults hadn’t thought it appropriate for them to know about Mademoiselle Chanel’s visit to Eaton Hall, to which Greg had laughed and then shocked Amber by telling her, ‘Because she’s the duke’s mistress, silly.’
It wasn’t the scandalous behaviour of the Duke of Westminster that occupied Amber’s thoughts now though, so much as the Fitton Legh marriage. Had Caroline’s parents wanted her to marry someone with a title? Was that why she had married Lord Fitton Legh, who was so much older than she? Amber gave a small shiver. Was that what was going to happen to her?
Amber hurried downstairs. Under her cream silk jacket she was wearing her ‘best’ chocolate-brown afternoon frock. The December sunshine picked out the pattern of small cream diamonds on the fabric. Although her dress was new it was still very schoolgirlish in design, with its high square neckline banded in cream silk, its skirt short and pleated. Her brown patent shoes matched her handbag, and had low heels and a Mary Jane strap across the front. Her cream cloche hat was decorated with a brown petersham ribbon and a single chocolate-brown silk flower. Amber had pulled it low down over her curls and slightly to one side, copying the way the models sketched in Vogue wore theirs. Cream leather gloves completed her outfit.
When Amber reached the hallway she found that Greg was already there, striding up and down impatiently as he waited for her.
Like her he had changed his clothes, and was now wearing a tweed suit with the Oxford bag-style trousers, so wide that only the toes of his brown leather brogues were visible. He was carrying his hat and his thick fair hair was firmly slicked back instead of flopping in his eyes in its normal manner. He looked very handsome.
‘Ready, old thing?’
Amber nodded, placing her hand on the crooked arm he extended for her with a teasing grin, whilst Wilson, her grandmother’s butler, gestured to one of the maids to open the door for them. It made her feel so grown up and proud to be going out with Greg to pay an afternoon call.
Greg’s bright red roadster, the Bugatti he had coaxed their grandmother into buying for him when he had come down from Oxford, was parked on the gravel outside.
While Fitton Hall lay to the east of Macclesfield, in the lee of the Derbyshire hills, Denham Place lay to the west. The two fine houses were separated not just by the town of Macclesfield itself but also by the pretty village of Alderley Edge, where the railway had originally ended and where all the wealthy railway barons lived. There was a short cut that would have taken them down a narrow winding country lane often busy with farm vehicles, but Greg was driving them the longer way round, along the better roads, and as they drove past Stanley Hall and then up the hill from Alderley to the Edge itself, Amber held her breath a little. There were so many stories about the Edge and its magical properties. It was said that no bird was ever heard to sing there, and by some that the wizard Merlin had lived deep in the caves beneath and that he slept there still, guarding King Arthur’s sword.
As they approached Macclesfield, Amber touched Greg’s arm.
‘Can we go past the mill, Greg, please?’
‘I don’t know what you see in that dull place,’ he complained.
Denby Mill had been built in the neo-Palladian style, which had been very popular amongst mill owners of the time. Several mills in the town were built in the same style but Denby Mill was by far the largest, and the most profitable.
Amber’s mother had explained to her that the reason for their family’s success was that their ancestor had married an heiress, whose father had been a wealthy Liverpool ship owner. With his wife’s money he had not only built himself a new mill, he had also invested in the construction of railways and canals.
Blanche Pickford had inherited a second fortune through a bachelor uncle on her mother’s side of the family to add to the fortune she had received on her father’s death.
Amber’s mother had also told her that it was through his wife’s family that their ancestor had become interested in the Far East, explaining that he had copied onto his silk a design from a painting that had come originally from China, and this had become their famous Denby Mill ‘Chinese Silk’ fabric, which was first shown at the Great Exhibition, and which Queen Victoria herself had admired.
Like others in his position Josiah Denby, their ancestor, had used some of his wealth philanthropically to help the poor of the town, setting in place a tradition that had been kept up through each generation.
As a child Amber had loved listening to her mother telling her stories about her family.
There was a statue of Denby in the wrought-iron-rail-enclosed garden to one side of the mill. As they drove past now, Amber smiled to herself, remembering how, when she had been younger, she had wished that he might have done something more exciting like Miss Brocklehurst, who had travelled to Egypt and brought back with her many Egyptian artefacts, including a mummy, all of which were housed in a museum in West Park where the townspeople might go and marvel at them.
Once they had driven through the town and its mills Greg took the road that led towards Fitton Hall, and the Forest of Macclesfield.
It wasn’t long before Greg was driving down the long tree-lined road that led to the Hall, pausing at the lodge by the gates whilst someone came out to open them.
The Elizabethan house and its gardens were renowned for their beauty. It was said by some that Shakespeare’s Dark Lady of the Sonnets had been one of the Fittons, and there were tales too of a past tragic event when a Fitton bride, forced into a marriage she did not want, had drowned herself in one of the pools that lay between the house and the village church, rather than leave her much-loved home to go with her new husband.
‘Oh, Greg, it is so very pretty, isn’t it?’ Amber exclaimed, as she looked towards the timber-framed exterior of the house, with its mullioned windows, whilst Greg brought his motor car to a halt outside the main entrance.
A manservant opened the door to them.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Pickford.’
The obvious recognition of her cousin surprised Amber a little, although she was too interested in their surroundings to dwell on it.
She gazed round the panelled hall in awe. Could that embroidery she could see on the cushions be the original Jacobean crewel work? She longed to go over to examine it more closely, but the servant was waiting for them to follow him.
The hall had a stone floor with a carpet laid over it and in its centre was a highly polished table on which there was a beautiful arrangement of hothouse lilies and roses, their scent filling the air. A flight of stairs led up towards a galleried landing, its balustrade intricately carved with fruits and leaves in the style of Grinling Gibbons. Dark, heavily framed portraits of past Fitton Leghs looked down on the visitors from the walls, whilst the vast fireplace was surely almost tall enough for a person to stand up in.
‘Come on,’ Greg hissed impatiently, tugging on Amber’s arm as she paused to take it all in.
Obediently she followed the manservant down a passageway of linen-fold panelling, which opened out into the house’s original Great Hall. From two storeys high, its windows overlooked the green lawns that sloped away from the house, with the wall decorated with pieces of armour and swords, and the arms of the Fitton Leghs.
Amber studied them intently. Her father had been commissioned by Lord Fitton Legh’s late mother to incorporate the arms into a design for table linen for the four hundredth anniversary of the granting of the manor to the family. Amber remembered watching him working on the commission, tracing the various armorial crests and then working them into a variety of potential designs, his forehead furrowed in concentration, before he broke off to summon her mother to come and give him her opinion.
The heavy curtains that hung at the windows were embroidered with a pineapple design, which, Amber knew from what her father had taught her, meant that they had probably been commissioned by the Fitton Legh whose bride’s fortune had come from the West Indies trade.
An old refectory table ran the length of the room. On the wall opposite where they had entered the hall was an intricately carved screen, above which was a minstrels’ gallery.
‘Come on.’
‘Sorry,’ Amber apologised. ‘It’s just that it is all so wonderful. I could stay here for hours.’
Beyond the Great Hall the corridor widened out into a large rectangular hallway of a much more modern design and Amber realised that they had entered that part of the house that had been designed by Robert Adam. The walls were painted a soft duck-egg blue and the plasterwork picked out in white. Matching niches held busts of what Amber presumed were past Fittons.
Several sets of elegant mahogany doors opened off this hall. The servant pulled open one pair of them and then announced the visitors.
The room was painted a straw colour, its Regency furniture upholstered in satin of the same colour, so that the room seemed to be aglow with a soft warm light.
Lady Fitton Legh was seated on a small sofa with Cassandra. Cassandra, Amber knew, was staying with the Fitton Leghs, to whom the de Vrieses were connected, Barrant’s late wife having been a Fitton Legh. As a child Cassandra had not spent as much time in Cheshire as Jay had done and therefore Amber did not know her very well.
Cassandra was two years older than Amber. Her parents lived near Brighton and, according to Jay, it had been on a visit to her grandfather the previous Christmas that Cassandra had been entertained by the Fitton Leghs and had then been invited to come and stay at Fitton Hall by Lord Fitton Legh as a companion to his wife.
As soon as she saw her visitors, Lady Fitton Legh jumped up from the sofa and then hurried towards them, exclaiming with obvious delight, ‘Greg, what a lovely surprise!’
In contrast, Greg sounded oddly stilted and not one little bit like his normal relaxed self as he acknowledged her welcome, quickly stepping back from her, as he told her, ‘My grandmother charged me with the task of returning some books to you, and I have brought my cousin, Amber, with me.’
Each time she saw Caroline Fitton Legh, Amber marvelled afresh at her beauty. Her eyes, large and darkest violet, dominated the delicacy of her face; her lips were soft and full, and at the moment seemed to be trembling slightly, making her look both sad and vulnerable. Her skin had a lovely light tan like the models in Vogue, which made Amber immediately long to exchange her own peaches-and-cream English complexion for it. Her hair was dark and cut, in the prevailing fashion, close to her head and perfectly waved. The frock she was wearing was the same shade of silk as her eyes. Amber didn’t think she had ever seen anyone so slender or so delicate-looking. The rings on her marriage finger looked huge and heavy on such a delicate hand.
Cassandra, who had remained seated, now stood up and made as though to stand between them and Caroline. Cassandra was, Amber saw, frowning at them. Poor Cassandra, Amber thought sympathetically. Lady Fitton Legh’s beauty only underlined Cassandra’s lack of it. Tall and thin, with a frizz of ginger hair, Cassandra had a reputation for being abrupt and awkward, in both her manner and her movements. Even Jay had admitted to Amber that he found her difficult to get on with, and that they were not very close.
It was obvious that she didn’t welcome their arrival. She was looking resentfully at them, her face flushing with anger.
‘You must both stay for tea,’ Lady Fitton Legh insisted. ‘Cassandra and I were feeling quite dull. You must tell us some of your silly jokes, Greg, and make us laugh.’ She rang for tea as she spoke.
Amber hadn’t realised that her cousin knew Caroline well enough to tell her jokes.
‘I do so love the ceremony of English afternoon tea,’ said Lady Fitton Legh, laughing. ‘Greg, you must come and sit beside me to observe that I keep to all its little rules.’
But instead of accepting her invitation Greg pushed Amber forward, saying cheerily, ‘I think it’s best that Amber sits with you. I am far too clumsy and all too likely to jolt something or other, aren’t I, Amber?’
‘Is it true, Miss Vrontsky? Is your cousin really as clumsy as he says, or is he just teasing us?’
To Amber’s relief, before she was obliged to answer her, the doors opened to admit the butler, two footmen and a maid, who went about the tea-serving duties with well-orchestrated ease, the butler turning to the footman first to remove the spirit lamp for the kettle from the large silver tray he was carrying, and then once he had lighted that and placed the kettle on it, the teapot. All had to be set in exactly the right position and in exactly the right order on the crisply laundered tea table cloth that covered the table next to the sofa, whilst the maid covered another table with a cloth and then set about placing on it the china from the tray carried by the second footman.
The footmen disappeared back into the hall and then returned with the tea trolley itself, laden with tiny crust-less sandwiches, and a large selection of teabreads and cakes. Not that Amber could eat a thing. She felt so nervous and overawed.
Over tea Amber tried politely to engage Cassandra in conversation whilst Lady Fitton Legh entrusted several messages to Greg for their grandmother, but it was hard work when Cassandra would answer her with either a wooden ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Amber was relieved when Lady Fitton Legh finally rang for the tea things to be removed.
However, her hope that they might be about to leave came to nothing when Lady Fitton Legh said sweetly, ‘Greg, Lord Fitton Legh will be very cross indeed with me if he learns that you were here and I cannot give him a full report of your meeting with the Selection Committee. Cassandra, why don’t you take Amber into the music room so that she may hear the piece that you have been practising? Cassandra is a most accomplished pianist, Amber.’
For a moment Amber thought that Cassandra might actually refuse, she looked so furiously angry, but then she stood up abruptly, her face burning a bright hot red as she rushed towards the door, ignoring Amber, who had to run to catch up with her.
Once they were in the music room Cassandra continued to ignore her, much to Amber’s discomfort. Seating herself at the piano she raised the lid and then brought her hands down on the piano keys in a loud clash of jarring discordant notes, that set the crystals on the light fittings trembling.
Whilst Amber was still recovering from her shock, and without a word of explanation for her odd behaviour, Cassandra then started to play the piano very loudly, making it impossible for them to converse. Amber wished Greg would hurry up and rescue her.
While she played, Cassandra’s face remained bright red and her eyes were glittering strangely. Amber had no idea what to do. Such behaviour was completely outside anything she was used to. At school they had been subjected to a very strict regime, which had not allowed for any expression of personal feelings in public. It was, they had been taught, not the done thing for a lady to betray her feelings.
As abruptly as she had started to play, Cassandra stopped.
‘You know that your cousin is in love with Caroline, don’t you? Not that she would ever look at him. She laughs about him. We both do.’
Amber didn’t know what to say. She felt acutely uncomfortable and, if she was honest, just a little bit afraid of Cassandra.
‘You must tell him to stop coming round here and pestering her. He will be in a great deal of trouble if he doesn’t.’
‘I’m sure you are wrong. Greg is merely being polite,’ Amber told her valiantly.
‘No, I am not wrong. I have seen the way he looks at her. I have heard the lies he has told, the excuses he has made to see her when he has no business to be here.’
She slammed the lid down on the piano, stood up and then without saying another word she swept out of the room, leaving Amber to stare after her in bewilderment.
* * *
‘There, are you feeling a bit more cheerful now?’ Greg asked Amber as they drove home.
Amber looked at her cousin. He was watching the road as he drove.
‘Greg, Cassandra said the most peculiar thing to me.’
‘What kind of peculiar thing?’
‘She said that you were in love with Lady Fitton Legh.’
There was a small pause and then Greg laughed rather too loudly.
‘Lord, what rubbish you girls do talk. Of course I’m not. Lady Fitton is a married woman. I dare say the truth is that Cassandra has a terrible schoolgirl crush on Lady Fitton Legh herself. You know what you girls are like,’ he teased. ‘You are always having a pash on someone.’
His words made sense and brought Amber grateful relief.
There had been something about the events of the afternoon that had left her feeling uncomfortable.
Lady Fitton Legh was so beautiful that it would not after all have been extraordinary if Greg had fallen in love with her, but Amber was glad that he had not.
As he had said himself, Caroline Fitton Legh was married, and the last thing Amber wanted was for her cousin to have his heart broken through falling in love with someone who was forbidden to him, and who could never return his feelings.
Chapter Four (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
‘Now, Amber, I trust that you have had time to reflect on your bad behaviour and the apology you owe me?’
Why should she have to apologise for saying that she didn’t want to be presented when she didn’t, Amber thought indignantly, but somehow instead of stating her rebellious feelings she found that she was bowing her head and saying dutifully, ‘Yes, Grandmother.’
‘Very well, we shall say no more of the matter,’ Blanche told her graciously, pausing for a few seconds before continuing, ‘Now, you will be leaving for London early in the New Year. All the arrangements are in place.’
‘But, Grandmother, I don’t see how it can be possible for me to come out. You can only come out if you have someone who has already come out to present you.’ Amber was stumbling over the words in her desperation. This was the hope she had been clinging to: that it would be impossible for her to be presented.
What she had stated was, after all, the truth. And it was a truth that Amber had had reinforced over and over again when she had been at school. Her grandmother might have far more money than the families of most of the other girls at school with her, but they had something far more important. They had ‘breeding’ – connections and titles – and some of them had been very quick to let her know how far beneath them socially they considered her to be. Some, but not all of them. Not Beth – or rather Lady Elizabeth Levington – her best friend, and Amber knew she would always be grateful to her for the kindness she had shown her.
Amber had even laughed about the fact that she would not be coming out with Beth, saying truthfully to her that she was glad that she wouldn’t have to. From what she had heard, the season was little more than a cold-blooded way of marrying girls off to someone suitable as quickly as possible.
‘I am well aware of the rules that apply to a débutante’s presentation at court, Amber.’ Her grandmother’s voice was tart now as well as cold. ‘It has already been arranged that Lady Rutland will be presenting you at one of the season’s formal drawing rooms alongside her own daughter.’
Amber felt sick. The hope she had been clinging to was no barrier at all. Now what was she going to do? There was no point telling herself that she could defy her grandmother; she knew she couldn’t. She would be packed off to London and Lady Rutland, whether she liked it or not.
Lady Rutland? The name was familiar. How … ? And then she realised, and her despair increased. Lady Rutland was Louise’s mother! She was going to be coming out with the Hon. Louise Montford, who disliked her so much and who had been so horrid to her at school.
From the past she could hear Louise’s words echoing inside her head.
‘Vrontsky? What kind of name is that?’ Louise had taunted her on her first day at school.
‘It’s my father’s name. A Russian name,’ Amber had replied proudly.
Louise had loved to mock her at school by referring to her as ‘the Macclesfield mill girl’, drawing attention to her lack of ‘family’ and ‘breeding’, whilst continually boasting of her own.
Amber couldn’t believe that Louise’s mother was going to bring her out. From what Beth had said, Louise’s mother was even more of a snob than Louise herself; both arrogant and proud. Proud but poor.
An ice-cold suspicion lodged itself in Amber’s thoughts. She had learned in these last short weeks since her birthday not to take anything at face value any more. Had her grandmother bought Lady Rutland’s sponsorship of her just as she intended to buy Amber a titled husband?
Her grandmother was still talking but Amber had stopped listening. She had thought when her grandmother had first told her why she was sending her to London that things couldn’t get any worse, but she had been very wrong.
It was a relief to be on her own as she walked along the trellised pathway across the shadowy formal garden of her grandmother’s house. During the summer the trellising was smothered in richly scented roses, but now it was the crisp smells of winter that perfumed the dark evening air.
The sound of someone walking swiftly along a second gravel pathway, bisecting her route, had her stopping apprehensively, only to relax when the other person stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight. Jay.
He was taller than Greg, with grey eyes that lightened when he was amused, but which Amber had on occasions seen darken to the colour of wet slate. Jay was only two years older than Greg, but there was something more mature about him.
The sturdy plainness of Jay’s workmanlike plus fours and tweed jacket suited him, even though Amber knew that Greg would have raised an eyebrow to see such clothes being worn out in the evening. But somehow Jay wasn’t the kind of man she could envisage wearing a fashionably cut dinner jacket. With Jay, Amber was always aware of a sense of quiet purposefulness and dependability that drew her to him in a way she didn’t really understand.
‘I just came out for some fresh air and to … to think,’ she told him, even though he hadn’t asked for an explanation of her presence in the garden.
He inclined his head towards her and as Amber looked up at him she saw that his eyes looked dark.
Her voice trembled. ‘Jay, have you ever wished for something so much that it hurts? I want to learn to be a designer, so that I can work at the mill with our silk. That has always been my dream.’
‘We all have dreams.’ His words, quiet but somehow heavy, checked her.
‘What are your dreams?’ she asked him curiously. ‘I suppose you must wish that you could inherit your grandfather’s title.’
‘No, I do not wish for that.’ His voice was firm and sure. ‘My love is the land, Amber.’ He bent down, scooped up some earth from the flowerbed and let it trickle through his fingers. ‘This is life, Amber, this humble soil. We walk on it and ignore it, and take it for granted, but in reality it is a miracle. When we nourish it with love and care it pays us back tenfold. My great-grandfather on my father’s side was a farmer, and I have, I think, inherited his nature. I am far happier with that inheritance than I could ever be with the de Vries title.’
‘I wish my grandmother could be more like you. To her, having a title is all that matters.’
Jay looked at her. ‘Never fear, Amber, one day you will be able to tread your own path and make your own decisions.’
The smile he gave her illuminated his whole face, turning his eyes the colour of molten silver, and for no reason she could think of, Amber’s heart started to beat far too heavily and fast. She felt as though she was standing on the brink of something very important. Something she wanted to reach out for but at the same time feared. Without quite knowing what she was doing she took a step towards him, and then very quickly two steps back, half stumbling as she did so, so that Jay reached out to steady her, his hand on her arm. His fingers were long, and his nails clean and cared for. A gentleman’s hands. The words slipped through her head. She looked up at him, studying his face. The shadowy semidarkness threw into relief the strength of his bone structure, drawing him in light and shade, planes and hollows. He was looking back at her just as intently, the silence between them intense and compelling.
Amber had an extraordinary yearning to reach out and touch him; to trace the shape of his jaw and the curve of his cheekbone. She was breathing too fast, both shocked and excited by her own feelings.
‘Jay …’
The moment she spoke his name he released her and stepped back.
‘You had better go in. It’s getting cold and your grandmother will be wondering where you are.’
‘Yes.’
He was turning away from her.
‘Jay!’
He stopped and looked at her.
‘I just wanted to say that I hope whatever your dreams are that they will come true for you.’
He hoped that they would – for her sake – but he feared that life might not be that kind.
Chapter Five (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
January 1930
Amber and her grandmother arrived in Cadogan Place late in the afternoon, when the trees were a dull silver grey with a combination of frost and icy fog, their poor skeletal branches reaching upwards like the hands of the children the new arrivals had seen begging as they had driven through the streets from Euston Station.
A butler, bent over with age and with a drip at the end of his nose, let them into a hall that, whilst elegantly proportioned, was so cold that Amber shivered inside her winter coat, although she noticed that her grandmother did no more than discreetly draw her furs closer to her body. Since Amber was too young, in her grandmother’s view, to carry proper furs as they should be worn, her coat collar was merely trimmed with mink.
Lady Rutland received them in her private sitting room on the first floor, which smelled faintly of old furniture and damp. It was not Louise’s mother, tall and thin, with a rigidly straight back and a voice as chilly as the room, who took control of the conversation though, but Amber’s grandmother, with her cut-glass accent and her cool demeanour.
It had been arranged that Blanche would stay in London for one week in order to ensure that everything was properly in place for Amber’s eventual presentation, at one of the late April drawing rooms, and Amber was not really surprised, knowing her grandmother as she did, that when the end of the week arrived and her grandmother was stepping out of the house in Cadogan Place and into the chauffeur-driven Bentley she had hired for the duration of her visit, not only had a lady’s maid been engaged for Amber and Louise to share, but also appointments been made and undertaken at couturiers and a court dressmaker, and every detail of Amber’s new wardrobe meticulously discussed with them. Both girls had been enrolled at the Vacani School of Dancing for deportment and formal presentation curtsy lessons, and with the Comtesse du Brissac for conversational French, etiquette, and ‘the social graces’. Her grandmother had also managed to transform the icy-cold house they had walked into only a matter of days earlier, where unappetising food was served and the bed linen always felt damp, into one in which fires burned in every room, including the girls’ bedrooms, meals appeared on time and were delicate enough to tempt the smallest of appetites, extra servants had been engaged with a proper smartness and briskness about them, and a brand-new furnace had been installed to ensure that in future the ladies of the household could enjoy proper hot baths. A chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce had also been hired for the duration of the season, and accounts opened for Amber at those stores where she might need to purchase small personal necessities during her stay.
Now as her grandmother prepared to leave, she looked sharply at Amber and reminded her, ‘You will remember, I hope, that you are my granddaughter and that I expect you to behave accordingly. You will obey Lady Rutland at all times. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Grandmother,’ Amber replied obediently. What after all was the point of her saying anything else?
When Blanche embraced her she dutifully kissed her grandmother’s cheek. She could sense that her lack of enthusiasm and gratitude irritated her grandmother but she was not going to pretend that she wanted the future her grandmother had planned for her.
Blanche released her and stepped back, warning briskly, ‘Remember what I have told you, Amber. I have no wish to receive any complaints about your behaviour from Lady Rutland.’
‘No, Grandmother.’
Amber could hear the impatience in her grandmother’s exhaled breath, as she indicated that the waiting servant was to open the door.
Amber watched until her grandmother’s car was out of sight. She wasn’t going to miss her – not one bit – but she did feel unexpectedly alone.
Blanche had been gone just minutes when Louise launched her first attack on Amber, following her upstairs to her bedroom, and standing in the doorway, blocking Amber’s exit.
‘You needn’t think that I’m going to pretend that I want you here or that I like you,’ she informed Amber nastily, ‘because I don’t. No one will speak to you or have anything to do with you. You know that, don’t you? I shall tell everyone what you really are.’
‘And shall you tell them also that my grandmother is paying your mother to bring me out?’ Amber asked her quietly.
Louise’s cheeks burned bright red, revealing to Amber that she had scored a hit, and to Amber’s relief Louise turned on her heel without another word.
That exchange was to set the tone for the whole of their relationship.
If Lady Rutland knew of Louise’s hostility towards Amber she gave no sign of it. Lady Rutland was not what Amber would have called a loving mother or partisan in any way on her daughter’s behalf, and it seemed to Amber that she treated Louise every bit as coldly as she treated Amber herself. Not that Louise seemed to care about that, or the fact that her mother was scarcely ever there since she had a busy social life of her own. Louise’s mother certainly didn’t ensure that the two girls were chaperoned as carefully as Amber knew her own grandmother would have done.
Amber longed to be able to go home to Macclesfield. She missed Greg’s teasing and his silly jokes, and she missed Jay too. She had been dreadfully homesick when she had first been sent away to school, but this was different. When she had been at school she had believed she had something to look forward to, a future she could choose for herself. Now she dreaded what lay ahead.
A maid had been hired to escort the girls to their various lessons, but it seemed that Lady Rutland had found her something else to do because within a week of her grandmother leaving, Amber found that she was having to make her own way to the comtesse’s small house down behind Harrods, and without Louise, who had declared that she had no need of any instruction in conversational French or ‘the social graces’.
Since the comtesse was reluctant to exchange the warmth of her fireside, Amber quickly discovered that her lessons in ‘social graces’ involved little more than listening to the comtesse’s friends talk over afternoon tea.
It was a lonely life for a young woman.
Amber was aware that Lady Rutland took Louise to lunch and tea parties from which she was excluded – Louise was only too keen to tell her about them, smirking when she explained that they were ‘family’ invitations and that ‘naturally’ Amber wasn’t invited, and yet at the same time making it obvious that this was just a fiction and that in reality the parties were being given by the mothers of the other débutantes who would be coming out that season, and who didn’t want to invite Amber.
Shrewdly Amber wondered how much of that was because of her background and how much because Lady Rutland herself did not want her included, because her presence was a reminder of her own financial problems.
Her grandmother would feel that Lady Rutland was not keeping to her side of their bargain, Amber knew, but she didn’t care about not being invited to the pre-season parties. In fact, the truth was that she was glad that she didn’t have to go.
Despite the cold winter wind, Amber’s footsteps slowed as she approached the Vacani School of Dancing for her late morning lesson.
She had come to dread the hours she had to spend here. Not because of the teachers – they were kindness itself – but because some of the girls, a group led by Louise, had been quick to see how difficult Amber was finding it to master the curtsy, and delighted in mocking her behind the teachers’ backs.
Now Amber dreaded the lessons and her own humiliation. It seemed the harder she tried, the more impossible it was to place her feet in the correct position alongside the barre, holding it with her right hand, and then sink down and rise up again smoothly, with her back straight, as all the débutantes had to do to their teachers’ satisfaction before being allowed to move on to the next stage.
Louise curtsied as though she had been born doing it, which in a way, of course, she had – or at least she had been born to do it, Amber acknowledged miserably as she removed her coat in the cloakroom and changed into her indoor shoes, before making her way into the classroom.
It didn’t matter how patient and kind Miss Marguerite was, Amber just knew she was not going to be able to perform a proper curtsy, and that she would disgrace herself and, more importantly, her grandmother. She shuddered at the very thought.
Today she seemed to be struggling more than ever. At last, though, the lesson was over, but not Amber’s humiliation.
Louise walked past her arm in arm with one of the other débutantes, pausing within deliberate earshot to announce in a loud voice, ‘Of course the Macclesfield mill girl can’t curtsy properly. She hasn’t got the breeding. Have you seen her dance? She’s like a cart horse.’ Louise mimicked an exaggerated imitation of someone dancing clumsily, before doing a wobbly faked curtsy and then falling over. ‘It’s like Mummy says: you simply can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, or a silk mill girl into a member of the aristocracy.’
One of the other girls tittered and then another giggled openly, whilst even those who were not part of Louise’s set turned away from Amber – as though she had the plague or something, Amber thought wretchedly. Just like Barrant de Vries had rejected her grandmother? It was a strange sensation to feel that she had something in common with that formidable old lady.
Blanche’s letters to her were full of commands to do what she was told, and to remember how very fortunate she was. It was hard to imagine someone as controlled and determined as her grandmother ever allowing anyone to reject her.
In the cloakroom Amber was once again ignored whilst the other girls chattered together. Amber could hear Louise’s voice quite plainly.
‘I’ll see you at Lady Wilson-Byer’s lunch party, Anthea? I think most of us have been invited, haven’t we? Oh, except you, of course, Amber. Sorry. Mummy did say to tell you that you’d have to amuse yourself today. I forgot.’
She would not cry, Amber told herself fiercely, bending her head over her outdoor shoes as she fastened them.
She was supposed to be going to Norman Hartnell for a fitting for one of the new dresses she would wear once the round of pre- and post-presentation parties began properly, but Amber headed instead for Piccadilly and the National Gallery.
In such an alien and unwanted new world, the National Gallery, which she had visited so often with her parents, had become her private refuge, and normally just breathing its air was enough to calm her, but today the humiliation stung too badly for that panacea.
She stood in front of her father’s favourite portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent, trying as she always did to look at it with his eyes and expertise. He had loved it because he could almost feel the weight of the fabric – Florentine silk, dyed in Bruges, its colour set with alum – and she could hear his voice now and see his smile.
‘The Medici never did manage to gain control of the alum trade from the Pope,’ she said out loud, lost in a past that was far happier than her present.
‘And was that God’s will, do you suppose, that the might of the Pope’s prayers should outweigh the Medici’s Machiavellian negotiating powers?’
Amber jumped. She hadn’t even realised that she herself had spoken aloud, never mind that a man standing behind her had overheard and was now replying.
Blushing self-consciously she shook her head.
Laughing, her new companion told her, ‘Personally, I think it a shame that the Medici didn’t succeed, but then I’ve always had a soft spot for them, especially old Lorenzo. He knew to a nicety how to combine self-interest with piety.’
Amber had never seen such a physically beautiful human being. He was almost too perfect, surely far too beautiful for a man: tall and slender, with very dark wavy hair, brilliantly green eyes and very pale skin. His profile made the artist within her catch her breath. He was dressed in a suit that fitted him like no suit she had ever seen any man wear before, the fabric so fluid and yet so perfectly cut that her greedy gaze wanted to absorb every detail of it. What was it? Wool with silk? She ached to reach out and touch it.
‘Do you have a particular interest in the Medici?’
His voice was as rich as the best quality velvet, changing tone and colour, warming and cooling in a way that mesmerised her.
‘Not really. My father loved this painting, although he said that there were others he had seen in Leningrad that were even better. My parents used to bring me here and tell me all about the history of silk.’
‘Silk?’ He was being polite.
‘I’m sorry. I’m keeping you and being very dull.’ She made to move away, but he shook his head and told her firmly, ‘No such thing. I confess I know very little about the history of silk. Look, there’s a bench over there; let’s go and sit down and you can enlighten me.’
Amber opened her mouth to refuse politely, but somehow she found that before she could do so she was seated next to him, answering his questions about her family and her home, and confiding in him in a way she could never have imagined herself doing with a stranger.
‘So your grandmother refused to allow you to go to art school and instead she has sent you to London to learn to curtsy so that you can be presented at a drawing room under the auspices of Lady Rutland, and thus find a titled husband, only you won’t be able to do so because you can’t curtsy?’ It was an admirable précis of her garbled explanations.
‘Yes,’ Amber admitted. ‘Louise – that’s Lady Rutland’s daughter – says it’s because I’m not … because I haven’t got … well, she says one needs breeding in order to be able to curtsy properly.’
‘Ah, breeding. Your friend, it seems, has yet to learn that true breeding is a state of mind and cannot be conferred via a coronet.’
He was making fun of her now, Amber was sure of it, but he looked serious.
‘Should we introduce ourselves?’ he asked her. ‘You are … ?’
‘Amber,’ Amber told him shyly. ‘Amber Vrontsky.’
He reached for Amber’s hand, taking it in his own as he stood up and then made a small half-bow.
‘Pray allow me to present myself to you. I am Herr Aubert,’ he told her, adopting a stilted foreign accent that made Amber giggle, in spite of herself. ‘I have the honour to be the world’s best teacher of ze Austrian Curtsy, if you will allow me to demonstrate.’
And then, before Amber could stop him, he released her hand and sank into a perfect curtsy, complete with a simpering expression on his face that made Amber want to laugh again.
‘Come now, Miss Vrontsky, enough of this unseemly levity. You will pay ze attention and copy me, if you please.’
The gallery was empty and, somehow or other, Amber found that she was on her feet too and joining in the game. She dropped into a deep curtsy and then rose from it as effortlessly and as perfectly as though she had been doing it for ever.
Half an hour later, breathless with laughter as her unusual and unrepentant ‘teacher’ insisted she repeat her curtsy half a dozen or more times, Amber shook her head and protested, ‘I can’t do any more. I’ve got a stitch from laughing so much.’
‘Laughing? What is this laughing? You are here to learn ze curtsy. You do not laugh.’
When she did, he feigned outrage, and told her firmly in his normal voice, ‘And now I think we should celebrate your great victory over the curtsy with tea at the Ritz.’
Amber’s face fell. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t.’
‘Of course you can, and you shall.’
It was very wrong of her to go with him, of course, but somehow or other it was impossible to refuse.
They took a cab to the Ritz, and as they entered, the doorman bowed and said, ‘Good afternoon, Lord Robert. Mr Beaton is waiting for you at your usual table.’
‘Thank you, Mullins,’ he responded, instructing Amber, ‘Come, child.’
Lord Robert, the doorman had called him, Amber noted.
Amber had been to the Ritz before, with her grandmother, but she was still awed by its magnificence.
As they approached the table occupied by another young man, two waiters sprang forward to pull out chairs for them.
‘Cecil, my dearest.’ Lord Robert was speaking in a lazy drawl now, and it seemed to Amber that his whole manner had changed subtly. No longer was it teasing and amused but instead, languid and elegant. ‘I am sorry to be late but you will forgive me when you learn that I have been the saviour of this poor wretched child.’
‘It is not a child, Robert, it is a young woman,’ the other man’s voice was waspish.
‘Ah, yes, but a young woman who studies Lorenzo’s portrait because she wishes to analyse the quality of his silk coat. I suspect she fears that such a vivid shade owes more to the artist’s palette than the dye shops of Bruges.’
‘Indeed.’ This was said with a sharp glance in Amber’s direction.
‘Cecil here is obsessed with colour, princess – the poor models he photographs for Vogue are driven to madness by him.’
Cecil? This was Cecil Beaton! She was actually in the presence of the great photographer whose work she had gazed at with such admiration in Vogue. Amber was tongue-tied with awe.
‘You are talking nonsense, Robert. Now tell me properly, who is this child?’ the photographer demanded.
Amber gave Lord Robert a pleading look but it was no use.
‘She is Amber Vrontsky, her father was Adam Vrontsky, and she is to be one of this season’s débutantes. I found her in tears in the gallery over the ordeal of The Curtsy. However, now all is well, isn’t it?’ There was a look of wicked amusement in the beautiful man’s eyes.
‘A Vrontsky? Indeed?’ Cecil Beaton’s gaze had narrowed. ‘Well, child, was your father the prince or the count, because I recollect that they share the same name.’ He was opening his cigarette case as he spoke to her, offering it to her. Amber shook her head, watching as he turned to Lord Robert, who took one of the Black Russian cigarettes.
‘My father was neither,’ she told the photographer, who was watching her, his eyes narrowed as he blew out a cloud of strongly scented smoke. ‘He was an artist and fabric designer.’
She held her breath, waiting for the familiar disdain, but after the merest indrawn breath, Cecil Beaton said smoothly, ‘A prince amongst men indeed then.’
‘Yes, he was,’ Amber agreed proudly. ‘And I wish more than anything else that my grandmother would have let me go to art school as he wanted.’
‘You wish to become an artist?’
‘No,’ Amber replied. ‘I want to do what my father did and create new designs for our silk – my grandmother owns a silk mill.’
The tea things arrived, and after their tea had been poured the two men began discussing a social event they were both attending, leaving Amber free to study her surroundings, whilst keeping one ear on their conversation. Here and there she managed to grasp a name, only to recognise with awe that it belonged to someone famous, but for Amber, far more exhilarating and exciting than the conversation were the women’s clothes, and her senses fed greedily on them. What had previously been only sketches and photographs she had seen in Vogue had come alive, moving with the bodies they were adorning. She felt a pang to see Chanel’s jersey demanding obeisance to its dominance, as virtually everyone seemed to be wearing it, but then she saw a woman walking in wearing Schiaparelli and she was lost, her breath catching and her gaze bewitched by the fluid movement of the silk dress with the most beautifully cut and elegant matching silk jacket worn over it. Everything and everyone else was forgotten as Amber absorbed every detail, her heart pounding in homage to both the fabric and the creative genius of the designer.
‘You prefer the Schiaparelli to the Chanel?’
Amber was startled. She had been so engrossed in the outfit that she hadn’t seen Cecil Beaton turn towards her.
‘It’s silk,’ she told him simply, ‘and the colour …’ She shook her head, unable to find the words to explain the effect of seeing such stunningly vibrant colour at first hand instead of merely seeing a sketched impression of it in a magazine. It was so strong, so powerful, that it almost had its own physical presence. To get an acid yellow so pure was a work of art in itself.
‘I was wondering what dye they used. I’ve seen the outfit in Vogue but I hadn’t realised how different the reality would be.’ Just in time she realised that the photographer was looking slightly offended and assured him truthfully, ‘Your photographs are wonderful and truly capture the reality in a way that a sketch cannot.’
Lord Robert had summoned a waiter and was ordering cocktails.
‘Dubonnet and gin for Mr Beaton and myself,’ he told the waiter, ‘half and half, and shaken very cold, and, er, a lemonade for the young lady.’
‘That is why photographs are the future of fashion magazines.’ Cecil Beaton was smiling approvingly at Amber now. ‘I keep on telling Vogue this, but do they listen to me? No, they do not, because they cannot move with the times. They are fools, but I shall be proved right. The camera can capture reality so much more sharply and clearly than a workaday draughtsman with his tubes of paint. Schiaparelli’s gowns are a case in point. As you have just said, it is impossible to replicate the true colour of her clothes without a camera. She is, of course, a true artist and a gifted one, but be warned, child, if you are looking to her for the future of your silk, then you are looking in the wrong place. It is my belief that Chanel, with her practical jersey and her clever mock simplicity, holds the key to the future of fashion. If you will take my advice you would be wise to direct your attentions towards silks that can be used to ornament the home rather than the human body.’
He took a sip of his cocktail and then another, putting down his glass to light another cigarette before continuing, ‘We are entering a period of great change, and not just in clothes. Interior design is what you should be watching. It’s there that there will be the greatest demand for new and innovative fabrics. Having one’s home redone by a top designer is already all the rage in New York; people with the money to pay for it want a look for their home that is unique to them, but at the same time recognisable by the cognoscenti as being overseen by an expert, and having “style”. That is where you should be looking in future.
‘You should talk to Lees-Milne about it. He is mad about houses and knows all the best of them. Art school is all very well but it cannot give you the gift of a good eye or the true sense of knowing what is right and what is not if you do not already possess them, but something tells me that you do. Let your passion guide you. Passion should never be underestimated or ignored.’
Amber listened to him, awed and humbled that he was prepared to take the time to give her the benefit of his advice. Suddenly her future, which had seemed so bleak and oppressive, now seemed full of wonderful possibilities.
Shyly she confided to him, ‘My father used to say that we hadn’t moved with the times and that—’ She broke off as a ravishingly pretty woman, wearing a softly flowing loose dress, escorted by a slender foppish-looking young man with faunlike features, came towards them, exclaiming, ‘Robert and Cecil, how fortunate! I need you both to help me, and as you can see, Cecil, I have already commandeered your assistant. I found him in the foyer and rescued him from a pack of young ladies. Bryan and I are planning a party, for after the baby, you understand.’
Amber couldn’t stop looking at her. She was dressed for the evening, in a gown of gold lamé over lace, over crêpe satin, over which she was wearing a brown velvet evening coat with a lining of peach satin fulgurante. On her feet she was wearing shoes of silver tissue flecked with gold. In her prettily waved golden-blonde hair were diamond stars that twinkled in the light of the chandeliers. On her fingers and wrists were more diamonds, and her lips were painted rose-brown to complement the colour of her gown and coat.
‘What, another party?’ Lord Robert was demanding, as he summoned a waiter, instructing him, ‘Mrs Guinness will join us for tea.’
Amber was acutely conscious of how out of her depth she was.
Lord Robert was still talking with Mrs Guinness.
‘It’s just as well you have married the Guinness millions and that Bryan is so adoring a husband, Diana,’ he teased her, before turning to the young man standing with her to tell him, ‘Saville, you must sit here next to Cecil, for if you don’t he will sulk with me.’
Whilst the young man made his way to the seat, far from being offended by Lord Robert’s teasing, Mrs Guinness simply laughed and told him, ‘Well, so he should be, since I hope very soon to give him an heir.’
Amber blushed a little to hear her speak so openly of her condition.
‘Then let us hope that it is a boy and that you deliver him on time and with far less fuss than poor Evelyn Waugh is making over his new book,’ Lord Robert grinned.
Mrs Guinness shook her head. ‘Robert, that is very wicked of you.’
‘Wicked, perhaps, but also true,’ Lord Robert insisted. ‘Harold Acton told me that when he asked Evelyn what this new book of his was about, Eve told him that it is a welter of sex and snobbery.’
Mrs Guinness gave a trill of laughter. ‘Oh, that is too naughty of him. He and Nancy are taking bets on which of them will have their new book denounced as a “sewer” first by Farve.’
How very pretty and gay she was, Amber thought enviously. It was no wonder that the men were gazing at her so admiringly.
‘Now, Robert, I want you to listen to me,’ she was saying firmly.
‘Very well then,’ he agreed, ‘but first, Diana, most beauteous of all the beautiful Mitford sisters, pray allow me to introduce my protégée to you.’
‘Your what?’ she exclaimed merrily.
Amber’s face burned, as much with self-consciousness at finding herself in the company of someone she had read about in the pages of Vogue and the social gossip columns, as with the idea of being Lord Robert’s protégée.
It was Cecil Beaton who answered Diana Guinness, telling her drolly, ‘Miss Amber Vrontsky. Robert found the child in the National Gallery and has been teaching her to curtsy.’
The blue eyes widened their gaze resting on Amber’s flushed face. ‘Oh, the curtsy. Yes, indeed, it is perfectly horrid. Muv threatened to ask my sister Nancy to teach me, but luckily for me Nancy made Muv cross with one of her teases so I went to Miss Vacani instead. You poor child,’ she addressed Amber directly for the first time, ‘and so pretty too. You will be besieged by admirers. You must come to one of my parties. I shall send you an invitation.’
‘What do you think of London so far, Miss Vrontsky?’ Cecil Beaton asked.
‘When I am in the art galleries or looking up at the wonderful architecture, I think London is the most magnificent city there could be, and I feel very proud.’ Amber’s voice faltered slightly as she continued, ‘But then when I look at all the poor people begging on the streets and I read in the newspapers that there is no work for them I feel ashamed.’
There was a small silence and then Cecil Beaton said softly, ‘Out of the mouths of babes …’
She had spoken too frankly, Amber realised guiltily. Greg was always teasing her for doing so, but her parents had instilled in her a respect for honesty and truthfulness.
‘The truth can sometimes hurt,’ her mother had told her, ‘but deceit causes a far more painful wound.’
Cecil Beaton and his young assistant were discussing some sketches the photographer had submitted to Vogue. From his pocket he withdrew a small sketchpad and a pencil, using it to underline the point he was making.
Amber watched, both fascinated and envious, unaware of how clearly her face revealed her feelings. How fortunate Saville was to have such an apprenticeship.
Amber’s head was beginning to spin slightly, from the air around the table, rich as it was with cigarette smoke, and the headiness of the conversation.
The tables around them were filling up, the sound of laughter growing louder, the tea cups replaced by champagne glasses.
‘Robert, I think perhaps it’s time you returned your protégée to Lady Rutland, before both you and she get into trouble,’ Cecil Beaton warned, tearing a page from his notebook as he spoke.
‘Yes, I must go,’ Amber agreed, suddenly realising the time with an icy feeling of dread. ‘Thank you for my tea and for being so very kind …’ She was scrambling to her feet as she spoke, all too aware of the shortcomings of her appearance amongst so many beautifully dressed and sophisticated people, and the fact that she was going to be horribly late getting back to Lady Rutland’s. Her heart gave a small flurry of anxious beats. What on earth was she going to say to Lady Rutland? She shouldn’t have stayed out so long, she acknowledged guiltily. In fact she shouldn’t have come here at all. But she was glad that she had.
‘Here, child, this is for you – a small memento.’
Her dread disappeared, to be replaced with a mixture of delight and awe as she stared down at the small sketch Cecil had given her. There in front of her they all were – small but oh so accurate caricatures of themselves on paper, seated around the table. Underneath the sketch he had written, ‘Miss Vrontsky takes tea.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ Amber choked, unable to say any more. It seemed impossible that she who had pored over Cecil’s witty society sketches should now possess one that included herself.
The head waiter was summoned and requested to ensure that she was put safely in a hansom cab. The gentlemen stood up and bowed formally over her hand, and then she was being escorted away from the table.
She had just reached the main entrance when Lord Robert came hurrying after her.
‘If there should be any repercussions from Lady Rutland, make sure you refer her to me,’ he told her.
His thoughtfulness after the misery she had felt was almost too much for her. ‘You’re all so kind,’ she told him emotionally,
Lord Robert watched her leave. She had so much to learn. She didn’t even know yet that society was divided into those who did accept and mingle with classes other than their own and those who did not and would not ever.
He, of course, belonged to the former group; his world embraced all those who had wit, and style, and most of all beauty. It was a world that was sophisticated, amusing and moneyed. It was also a world that had its dark underside, since it was the world of the louche, the raffish, the brazen and the fallen – the world of those who preyed on beauty and those who bought and sold it. It was into that world that Amber, with her beauty tethered by her grandmother’s wealth and desire for a title, would be welcomed. Could she survive it or would it destroy her? Poor child, he felt for her. After all, he knew what it was like to have a powerful cruel grandparent. His own grandfather had … but no, he must not allow himself to think of that.
Amber knew she would never forget today. She was filled with a new sense of hope and happiness. Oh, but she still couldn’t help envying Cecil Beaton’s young assistant. How very lucky he was.
Inside the cab, as it carried her back to Cadogan Place, Amber fluctuated between anxious fear of what Lady Rutland was likely to say to her, and a stubborn refusal to wish that she had not gone with Lord Robert.
The happiness the afternoon had brought was worth braving Lady Rutland’s wrath ten times over. She would never forget what a lovely time she had had and how kind everyone had been, but most especially Lord Robert. A pink glow warmed Amber’s face and her heart started to beat a little bit faster. Lord Robert was such fun, and so handsome. She was hardly likely to see him again, of course, but if she did …
Chapter Six (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
It was gone six o’clock by the time Amber got back to Cadogan Place, the lunch Lady Rutland and Louise had attended long over.
A sympathetic-looking maid informed Amber that she was to present herself immediately to Lady Rutland, but before Amber could do so, Louise came into her room without bothering to knock, and looking very smug.
‘Mummy is absolutely furious with you,’ she informed Amber gleefully. ‘She is going to write to your grandmother and tell her that because of your behaviour she can’t possibly present you.’
Amber’s first guilty thought was that someone must have seen her at the Ritz and somehow or other managed to inform Lady Rutland. However, Amber’s fear was put to rest when Louise continued, ‘Mummy says she couldn’t possibly endure the shame of presenting a débutante who can’t curtsy.’
Amber exhaled shakily in relief. Innocent though she was, she was well aware that accepting an invitation from a strange man was a far more damaging social crime than not being able to curtsy. Not that she cared. She wouldn’t have missed her wonderful afternoon for anything.
Lady Rutland was seated in front of the small campaign writing desk, which she had informed Amber and Blanche she had inherited from an ancestor who had fought at Waterloo.
Amber still blushed to remember how her grandmother had responded coolly, ‘Really, it looks more Victorian than Georgian to me.’
Although the footman had announced Amber, Lady Rutland continued to study the letter on the desk in front of her as though Amber simply wasn’t there, so that it was a good five minutes before she finally turned round and announced coldly, ‘One of the things that separates the upper classes from those lower down the social scale, Amber, is an awareness of the importance of certain values. The upper classes do not tell tales. It is simply not done. I have a letter here from your grandmother. In it she expresses concern because, as she puts it, “My granddaughter does not appear to be attending as many pre-presentation social events as I would have expected.”’
Amber was mortified. Jay must have said something to her grandmother. Before she had left Denham she had pleaded with both Greg and Jay to write regularly to her. Greg was an unreliable correspondent, his letters stilted, betraying his desire to be enjoying his life rather than writing about it, but Jay’s letters were informative and interesting, just as though he was actually having a conversation with her, and gradually Amber had found herself writing more and more openly to him about her life here in London.
Even though Jay had written back to her in a very serious manner that since her grandmother was paying Lady Rutland to bring Amber out, she was in effect taking money for something she was not doing, it simply hadn’t occurred to Amber that Jay would say anything to her grandmother.
Now Amber understood why her grandmother’s most recent letter had requested a list of all those social events Amber had attended.
‘You will find that society does not like sneaks, Amber. I had hoped to protect your grandmother from the unpleasant news that her granddaughter has made a laughing stock of herself by not being able to perform a court curtsy, and that several society mothers have declined to invite you to their parties. However, now, thanks to your own foolishness, I have no choice but to inform her of the truth.’
‘I know that Louise is hoping that my grandmother will change her mind and that I shall be sent back home,’ Amber told Lady Rutland bravely, ‘but I shall not mind if she does.’
Lady Rutland didn’t look as pleased to hear this as Amber had expected. In fact she looked extremely displeased.
‘There is no question of your returning home, Amber. I am simply warning you of the consequences of tale telling. In this instance I am prepared to give you a second chance. As it happens I had already been busy on your behalf begging some of my dearest friends to include you on their guest lists as a personal favour to me, and I hope to be able to write to your grandmother within a few days with a list of the pre-presentation invitations I have accepted on your behalf.’
Lady Rutland’s unexpected about-turn confused Amber at first. She had expected to be sent home in disgrace but here she was being told instead that Lady Rutland was planning to take her to the very kind of parties from which she had previously been excluded. It was almost, Amber recognised, as though Lady Rutland were afraid of her grandmother.
‘At last. I have been in a fever of anxiety waiting for you. I telephoned you over an hour ago and told you that I must see you immediately. How cruel you are to me, Greg.’
She had run to him, attempting to fling herself into his arms, but Greg held her off, his fury born of irritation and fear.
‘Caroline, you know we agreed that we would never telephone one another. Fortunately it was only Jay who picked up the receiver, and I managed to spin him some tale about you having a message for me from Lord Fitton Legh.’
She obviously hadn’t liked being pushed away, because now she was pouting in that pseudo-baby way he had once found so adorable but which he now detested. She was twenty-three, for heaven’s sake, not seventeen.
‘Now what the devil was it that was so important you had to take such a risk and drag me over here?’
‘You haven’t said that you love me yet.’ Now she was being coquettish, and he found that equally unappealing.
‘Caroline—’
‘Say it.’
‘Now listen—’
‘Say it, Greg. You must say it otherwise I can’t bear to tell you.’
She was crying now, her voice starting to rise. Greg looked anxiously towards the door to her bedroom.
It was one thing to be in here with her by pre-arrangment when there was little chance of their being disturbed, and their relationship was a secret known only to the two of them, but Cassandra, who had been waiting for him outside on the drive and who had taken him into the house via a side entrance, had plainly known what was going on. And equally plainly did not approve, if the look of angry contempt she had given him had been anything to go by. Well, he wasn’t here by his own wish. In fact, if it was left up to Greg he would be happy never to see Caroline Fitton Legh again. Very happy, in fact.
Dash it all, what exactly did a chap have to do to make it clear that he wasn’t interested any more? Caroline was no ingénue; she knew the rules of the game they had been playing. She had to do, married as she was to a man old enough to be her father, and one who, according to what Caro had told him, wasn’t up to much in the bedroom department.
‘Say it,’ she was insisting.
If there was one thing Greg hated it was having his hand forced. His was an easy-going nature, but with a core of stubbornness. He didn’t love her any more and he was damned if he was going to say he did.
‘I’m not playing games,’ he told her. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ Greg headed for the door.
His hand was on the door knob when Caroline said softly, ‘You were happy enough to play games with me once, Greg, and if those things you are so eager to do include that silly political career, well, you’d better think again. There’s to be a child.’
His hands were clammy now and the door knob slipped in his grasp.
‘I’m honoured that you’ve told me, but surely that’s something between husband and wife,’ he blustered.
‘Or between the mother and the father of the child?’ Caroline suggested.
Greg was panicking now. ‘Look, Caroline, this has gone far enough. What you and I shared together was fun and I shall always remember it, and you, with affection and … and tenderness. But we’ve both always known that all we could ever hope to share was an interlude of mutual pleasure.’
He was sweating profusely now and she wasn’t saying a word, just standing there staring at him in that damnably unnerving way she had.
‘We both knew that it had to end, and all the more reason now that you and Lord Fitton Legh are to have another child.’
‘No! This child is not my husband’s.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Greg protested anxiously, ‘what’s the matter with you, Caroline? You know the child has to be your husband’s. There can’t be any choice. Think of the social disgrace. He would divorce you, and—’
‘And then you’d have to marry me.’ She gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Divorce isn’t so very bad. My father got divorced from my mother so that he could marry his lover.’
‘That may be all very well in America,’ Greg told her, ‘but it’s different here.’ His belly was churning sickly. ‘You don’t really think that my grandmother would countenance me marrying you, do you?’
It was the wrong thing for him to have said, Greg realised too late. She almost flew at him, clawing at his face, her own contorted with rage.
‘Your grandmother! Do you think that I don’t know now that you’re just hiding behind her? Do you think that I haven’t been told about that girl in Macclesfield you’ve been seeing? How could you, Greg? A common little nobody whose father makes his money from pork sausages. But then I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given your own lack of breeding.’
Her insult stung Greg.
‘You can say what you like,’ he told her. ‘Maisie’s a hell of a lot more fun than you are, and as for breeding, the only breeding you can lay claim to is the kind you get from what’s in your belly.’
He heard the crash of the mirror she had picked up off her dressing table hitting the door behind him as he escaped into the corridor.
‘Lady Rutland wants to see you in her sitting room, miss.’
Amber’s heart sank. Not again. What had she done now?
‘Thank you, Alice.’ She dismissed the maid, ignoring the look Louise was giving her.
This time Lady Rutland wasn’t alone. Two other people were with her, one of whom, a young woman wearing a startling large and ornate hat, Amber thought was puzzlingly familiar in some way. The other, an elderly man hunched over a walking stick, was wearing a black donnish-looking gown over a very hairy tweed suit.
‘Ah, Amber,’ Lady Rutland greeted her. ‘You are fortunate in that your grandmother seems tireless in her efforts on your behalf. Professor Roberts here informs me that Mrs Pickford has instructed him to give you lessons on the history of London’s famous buildings. I have to say that I would have thought that Mrs Pickford might have informed me of this decision, but I dare say she has other and more important things on her mind. Personally, I cannot see what advantage it might be to a débutante to study history but then I dare say that is because when one’s ancestors have played such a predominant role in the history of one’s country there is simply no need. History is one’s family.’
There was an odd choking sound from the professor, and as Amber looked at him anxiously he lifted his head and looked straight at her, giving her a big wink unseen by Lady Rutland.
Lord Robert! What on earth were Lord Robert, and yes, she could see it now, Cecil Beaton’s assistant, Saville, doing here, and dressed up in such a way?
‘Quite so, my dear Lady Rutland,’ the professor was agreeing in a quavery voice. ‘Let me see, it was Sebastopol where your grandfather fell, I believe, and his cousin the marquis was with the Light Brigade, as I recollect. A most distinguished military history, although my own expertise lies more in the field of political history. I seem to think that there was a record somewhere of an argument between one of your ancestors and William Pitt the Younger, would you know anything of that?’
When Lady Rutland, lost for words for once, simply shook her head, Lord Robert sighed and said, ‘Pity …’ before turning to Amber and asking, ‘This is the child, then?’
‘Yes,’ Lady Rutland confirmed.
‘Well, I hope she proves to be a good student although my experience is that young girls have a tendency to foolishness and an overfondness of things of little importance. We shall start her lessons with a walking tour, if possible immediately.’
‘Well, yes, of course, Professor.’ Lady Rutland was all compliance.
Amber badly wanted to laugh.
‘Well, child, you heard Lady Rutland. Go and get your outdoor things. You will see, Lady Rutland, that I have taken the liberty of providing Miss Vrontsky with a chaperone? I shall not introduce you. It would not be worth your while. She knows nothing of the history of the great families of our country.’
‘What’s going on?’ Louise demanded when Amber raced upstairs to get her outdoor clothes. ‘What did Mummy want? Why are you putting your coat on, Amber? Amber, answer me,’ she demanded, but Amber merely shook her head and almost danced back down the stairs and into the hallway, where ‘the professor’ and ‘her chaperone’ were waiting.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I realised it was you, Lord Robert,’ Amber laughed once they were outside and out of view of the house.
‘And I can’t believe that I have to wear this beastly hat,’ Saville complained.
‘You said that you had always fancied the stage, Saville,’ Lord Robert told him cheerfully. ‘You should be grateful to me for giving you the opportunity to have an off-stage run. Besides, you would not have had to wear the hat if you were not sporting half a day’s growth of beard.’
Whilst Saville retreated into a sulky silence, Lord Robert told Amber, ‘It is Cecil you have to thank – oh, and Diana, she was party to it as well, when Cecil decided that you should be his protégée. Saville and I are simply the instruments by which his plan is to be conducted. Sadly, I’m afraid that Saville is on loan to us only for today, Cecil has refused to be without an assistant for any longer. But no matter, I am sure we shall do very well just the two of us, unless of course you wish me to find another chaperone for you?’
His smile was still teasing but Amber’s heart had started to flutter with a delicious heady excitement that was both unknown to her and yet at the same time something she immediately recognised. Was Lord Robert actually flirting with her? Amber rather thought that he might be.
‘It was clever of you to remember all about Lady Rutland’s ancestors. She was very impressed.’
Saville gave a snort of derision.
‘Now, Amber, let us get down to business,’ Lord Robert told her, ignoring Saville. ‘Cecil has given me instructions that you are to become knowledgeable in a wide variety of matters of fashion. He has made arrangements for us to visit the offices of Vogue magazine; although I suspect that will be more of a penance than a pleasure, knowing Cecil. I am to take you to shops and educate you as to architecture and design, and Cecil has told me to tell you that he will be setting you tests to ensure that you are studying diligently.’
Amber was overwhelmed. ‘He is too kind. Why should he go to so much trouble on my account?’
Lord Robert looked down at her. There was no point in explaining that Cecil Beaton was part of a world in which the whim of the moment was all – or at least on the surface it was. Cecil worked hard, and if he chose to affect a nonchalance that made it look as though he did not, then that was his affair.
To tell Amber that it had been amusing to drink cocktails and discuss what could be done to help her, and even more amusing to hatch a plan that involved drama and dressing up, would be cruel.
‘Since Cecil has to travel such a lot, the day-to-day management of your education must rest with me, your professor,’ Lord Robert informed Amber, his hands gripping the edges of his gown. ‘So, today we shall explore the modern phenomenon that is Selfridges.’
Selfridges! Amber’s face lit up. She had heard of the famous store – everyone had – although Lady Rutland claimed that it was vulgar and she shopped only in Harrods.
‘They have the most wonderful parties there,’ Amber told Lord Robert excitedly. ‘I read about one in the Express.’
‘Amber, you must not believe everything that Lord Beaverbrook says,’ Robert told her, tongue in cheek.
‘I’m not going to Selfridges looking like this,’ Saville told them petulantly.
‘Very well then, my dear, do not come,’ Robert answered him.
Looks passed between them that Amber did not understand, mocking on Robert’s part and angry on Saville’s.
They spent over two hours in Selfridges, going up to the roof garden to see where the bulbs were poking their heads through the earth, and to sit in the café and drink tea, before going back down to watch one of the famous Self-ridges models displaying a new collection of jewellery.
‘What do you think of it?’ Robert asked Amber.
She hesitated and then admitted, ‘It is very pretty. The diamonds sparkle so much, but …’
‘But?’ Robert encouraged her.
‘It is not to my taste. I should prefer something a little less … shiny.’
Robert nodded approvingly. Cecil had been right: the child had a good eye and good taste, although what exactly she would be able to do with them, given her situation, he wasn’t sure. She certainly wouldn’t be making a career as one of Cecil’s assistants. She lacked a very important qualification for that. She wasn’t male.
Amber’s eyes rounded when she recognised a familiar face.
‘That’s the Prince of Wales,’ she whispered to Lord Robert in awe.
‘Yes, indeed.’ Robert glanced at the Prince and saw that he was with his mistress, Freda Dudley Ward. The Prince had a taste for outspoken American women – outspoken married American women – although he wasn’t going to say anything about that to Amber, who was still in many ways too sweetly naïve.
An hour later, Lord Robert returned an exhausted but very happy Amber to Cadogan Place.
Two nights later, as she lay in bed, Amber decided that she was happier than she had ever thought it was possible to be. Yesterday she had been taken to Selfridges by Lord Robert and today she had performed her curtsy perfectly.
Unexpectedly, and thanks to Lord Robert, London and her new life had become far more exciting and fun than she had ever believed possible. How lucky she was to have met Lord Robert and how kind he was to have befriended her in the way he had. Amber couldn’t wait for their next meeting.
Chapter Seven (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
‘It’s intolerable and if I had my way he’d be thrashed within an inch of his life.’
Blanche Pickford looked at her visitor, schooling her expression not to betray the fury she was feeling.
‘I agree, Lord Fitton Legh; it is indeed intolerable when a married woman lies to her husband in an attempt to conceal an affair. As for your wish to thrash my grandson within an inch of his life, all I can say is that it takes two to commit adultery.’
Her neighbour’s already mottled skin turned almost purple with rage. ‘You have not heard me correctly, obviously, madam. It is your grandson who attempted to force himself on my wife. Dammit all, woman, there was a witness. Cassandra saw everything.’
‘Yes, so you said,’ Blanche agreed, adding pointedly, ‘Your poor wife, she must have felt very beset, having two ardent supplicants for her favours.’
Lord Fitton Legh looked as though he might explode. ‘Allow me to tell you, madam, that your reaction betrays your class, or rather your lack of it,’ he sneered. ‘Any person of breeding would understand—’
‘What? What is there to understand other than that my grandson and your wife have been having an affair under your nose? Is blue blood thinner than red? Do you wish me to understand that persons of breeding do not have affairs? Come, Lord Fitton Legh, let’s be plain with one another. You wish to see my grandson punished.’
‘Punished? I shall see to it that he is ruined. You can make up your mind to that. You won’t be foisting him off on the county as a prospective parliamentary candidate now, Mrs Pickford. When people learn of the way he has insulted my wife— Oh, you may look at me like that, but Cassandra is prepared to swear on the Bible that the crime was all his. My wife had confided to her how upset she was about your grandson’s ungentlemanly manner towards her, and naturally when Cassandra heard my wife cry out she hurried to her aid, only to discover your grandson on the point of assaulting her.’
‘Shocking indeed, and I dare say a total pack of lies. Whilst it is none of my business I would caution you against making your story public, Lord Fitton Legh. There are always those who believe that there is no smoke without a fire and, after all, Lady Fitton Legh is a very beautiful and high-spirited young woman married to a much older husband.’
‘Why, you … I’ll ruin him, I tell you. He won’t be able to show his face in Cheshire for the rest of his life.’
‘I understand your feelings. Greg has behaved badly. I am quite prepared to punish him for that by banishing him from Cheshire – and indeed from England – for a time. However, I am not prepared to stand by and see him ruined.’
‘You can’t prevent it.’
‘Such a pity that you should have to face this additional worry. I hear that your father-in-law has lost a very great deal of money on Wall Street recently.’
Blanche paused and looked down at her hands, as though more intent on studying them than continuing their discussion, before lifting her gaze to Lord Fitton Legh’s face and continuing almost gently, ‘You yourself are currently rather, shall we say, overextended – so much so, in fact, that you have had to mortgage Fitton Hall.’
‘You can’t possibly know that.’
‘Oh, but you see I do. You know, it is always rather foolish, I think, to let young people have their head without checking them, especially a certain type of young person. I am thinking of poor Cassandra here. One does not like to say too much, of course, but there has been talk about her preference for her own sex. I dare say there will be those who will wonder about the true provenance of her story with regard to my grandson. So sordid and unpleasant. But alas, it is too late now to remedy the situation. However, I’m sure that, two older and wiser heads together, between us you and I can come up with something more balanced and closer to the truth. A young man, foolish and impressionable, falls in love with a devoted and beautiful young wife. A regrettable situation but understandable. Of course, neither of them has any intention of giving way to their feelings. They are, after all, very honourable. Sadly, though, events conspire to throw them into one another’s company, a foolish moment of weakness on the part of the young man, allied to loneliness on the part of the devoted wife, lead to an embrace, which is instantly regretted by both parties. Unfortunately, though, this embrace was witnessed by an overexcitable young woman who has yet to learn the ways of the world.
‘Those with wiser heads decide that the young man should be sent away in order to learn the error of his ways; the devoted wife remains exactly that, of course. The young man – naturally and honourably – says nothing of the fact that the lonely wife invited him into the privacy of her private quarters and without a chaperone, knowing that her husband was absent. He, however, did admit this folly on her part to, shall we say, his family. But why torment the poor girl with the threat of even more shame than she must already bear? She has learned her lesson, we must suppose.’
‘That’s blackmail.’
‘No, Lord Fitton Legh,’ Blanche corrected him coldly. ‘It’s self-preservation. I understand that your pride has suffered a severe blow, but I am sure that the application of a comfortable sum of money – enough, shall we say, to pay off your creditors and enable you to keep Fitton Hall – will aid its speedy recovery.’
Blanche waited for half an hour after Lord Fitton Legh had left before removing the photograph frame she always kept in the top drawer of her desk. A young man looked back at her from his photograph. Her son. Greg’s father.
‘You should have lived,’ she told him, her throat dry, like her eyes. ‘If you had lived none of this would have happened.’
When she had replaced the photograph in her desk drawer she rang for Wilson, telling him, ‘When Master Greg comes in, tell him that I wish to see him.’
God, but it felt good to be finally free of Caroline. Three whole days had passed now without her making any attempt to contact him. Greg felt positively light-headed with relief. In fact, he felt so good he wanted to celebrate. With Maisie, he decided with a grin, as he climbed out of his Bugatti and hurried into Denham, too impatient to wait for the butler to take his cap and his coat, and hurling first his cap and then his coat in the direction of the coat-stand with a neat overarm action, and a cheery ‘Howzat?’
His coat missed, but his cap landed neatly on one of the hooks.
‘Good catch, eh, what?’ He congratulated himself as Wilson bent to retrieve his coat.
‘Mrs Pickford said to tell you the minute you came in that she wants to see you,’ the butler informed him.
‘Does she so? Well, I’d better toddle along and see what she wants then, hadn’t I?’ Greg laughed.
‘Well, Gregory, is there anything you feel you might want to tell me?’
Greg moved his weight from one foot to the other. It was always wise to be cautious when his grandmother called him ‘Gregory’.
‘Not really, Grandmother, unless it’s that I wouldn’t mind nipping off to London for a few days. See how little Amber’s getting on, you know.’
‘Well, I’m delighted to hear of your concern for your cousin, Gregory, delighted but somewhat surprised, since by your own behaviour you have placed your family in a situation that threatens all our reputations.’
Greg’s stomach plunged. He was quick-witted enough to know where the conversation was leading.
‘I refer of course to your affair with Caroline Fitton Legh. Lord Fitton Legh came here to see me earlier.’
Fitton Legh knew? Greg grew pale.
‘Apparently Cassandra urged Caroline to confide in him, having found you both in flagrante, although as I understand it, the flagrante was more on your part than Caroline’s, since according to Cassandra you were assaulting her.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘And the affair? Is that also a lie?’
Greg didn’t dare say anything.
‘So then, I take it that you were having an affair with Caroline Fitton Legh.’
‘It was nothing, just a bit of fun.’
‘On the contrary, it was far from nothing. It will be impossible now, of course, for you to hope to be selected to replace the sitting MP when he retires; Lord Fitton Legh will see to that. The Fitton Leghs are too well connected for their influence to be ignored, Gregory, and I am disappointed that you didn’t have the intelligence to think of that before becoming involved with her. Lord Fitton Legh has demanded that you leave Cheshire, and in the circumstances I agree with him that that would be a good idea. Were it not for that wretched girl Cassandra being so quick to spread the tale, it might have been possible to mend matters, but unfortunately things have gone too far for that. Now Lord Fitton Legh’s pride demands retribution in the form of your banishment. I have to say that I am most seriously displeased with you, Gregory.’
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Greg protested. ‘It was Caroline who began it, I swear it, Grandmother, and then when I tried to end it she wouldn’t let me.’
Blanche looked at him and then said calmly, ‘Whilst I was waiting for you to return, I wrote to Henry Jardine in Hong Kong on your behalf, asking him if he could find you a place in his business. It will be good experience for you. Jardine is a first-rate businessman, the raw silk for the mill is shipped via him, and our families have known one another for three generations. Whilst I don’t expect you to involve yourself in trade, Gregory, it is always wise for a person to know how to handle money, as I am sure Lord Fitton Legh would agree.’
Blanche’s loathing of trade had meant that she refused to invest in the stock exchange. Her wealth was all in cash – held in the same bank vaults as that of the royal family.
‘Hong Kong?’ Greg was about to object but then he remembered that he had heard some interesting tales about the fun enjoyed by the ex-pat community living there. Hong Kong couldn’t possibly be as dull as Macclesfield.
Greg found it easy to shrug off anything unpleasant, so long as he wasn’t constantly reminded of it.
‘I take it there isn’t anything else you wish to tell me with regard to your affair with Caroline?’ his grandmother was asking him.
Greg thought fleetingly of Caroline’s claim that she was having his child and then dismissed it. If she was breeding then if she had any sense she would insist that the brat was her husband’s, Greg decided. That being the case, there was no need for him to mention it to his grandmother.
In fact, he congratulated himself a couple of hours later, he had come off pretty well, all things considered. His grandmother was being frosty with him now but she would soon come round. And as for being banished to Hong Kong, he reckoned it would be a piece of cake, and he’d have a fine old time.
‘So, Fitton Legh is forcing Blanche to send her precious grandson to Hong Kong. Bit of luck, eh, Cassandra catching him out like that? Mind you, I’d warned her to keep an eye on him when she said that he’d taken to calling when Fitton Legh wasn’t there. Plain as the nose on Cassandra’s face what was going on.’
As Jay listened to his grandfather he recognised that he was in high glee over Greg’s disgrace. Jay certainly couldn’t remember when he had last seen him in such good spirits.
He’d obviously been drinking quite heavily, as the decanter on the table beside him was nearly empty. Jay frowned to see it, knowing that his grandfather had been warned to moderate his drinking for the sake of his health.
The gossip about the affair had spread fast, of course, but it had come as no surprise to Jay, who had guessed exactly what was going on.
‘It’s a pity you aren’t more of a de Vries, Jay,’ Barrant told him. ‘If you were only half the man your uncle was, you’d have had the Pickford granddaughter falling for you and then we could have brought her down as well.’
Jay had felt many things for his grandfather over the years – compassion, pity, frustration, love – but this was the first time he had felt anger and contempt. He accepted that his grandfather would take pleasure in Greg’s downfall because it was also Blanche’s downfall, but it had not occurred to him until now to suspect that Barrant might actually have deliberately meddled and stoked the fire that had burned Greg, via Cassandra. Now, though, with Barrant’s tongue loosened by triumph and brandy, Jay was unwillingly aware that his grandfather could be more manipulative than he had previously considered.
‘If that’s what you have in mind then you’d be better off suggesting it to Cassandra. She obviously has more of a taste for betrayal than I do,’ Jay told him grimly, adding for good measure, ‘Although whether or not that is a de Vries characteristic I dare say you will know better than I, Grandfather.’
Let his grandfather make what he liked of his comment. If Barrant didn’t know by now that Cassandra preferred her own sex to his then perhaps it was time he found out. After all he had shown no mercy for the vulnerabilities of others so why should any be shown to his? His suggestion with regard to Amber was as unthinkable as it was distasteful. The anger Jay felt at the thought of Amber being harmed or hurt in any way burned in his chest. He was glad that she was in London and out of reach of his grandfather’s malice.
Chapter Eight (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
Spring 1930
Amber was so happy. She felt as though her happiness was bursting out of her in the same unstoppable tide that had all the signs of spring appearing in Hyde Park. She was enjoying herself so much. Her happiness fizzed and bubbled inside her, and all the more so on days like today when she was with Lord Robert.
So far, as ‘the professor’, Lord Robert had taken her to the Vogue offices, where she had glimpsed Mrs Alison Settle, Vogue’s Editor, and been introduced to Madge Garland, the Fashion Editor, who had asked them rather pointedly to ‘remind Cecil, when you see him, that I am still awaiting the sketches he promised me’.
They had gone to the British Museum, where Cecil had given instructions that they were to look at all things Egyptian. But best of all, so far as Amber was concerned, had been their visit to the Royal Society of Arts behind the Strand, where she had gazed in wonder at the architecture and listened to a lecture on its provenance. Lord Robert had promised her that he would take her to West Wycombe, the village recently bought by the society in order that it could be preserved for future generations.
He had set her ‘homework’, which consisted of instructions such as ‘design a south-facing room setting for a blonde socialite who wears only Wedgwood blue’, or ‘Lord R. wishes to have new curtains for his drawing room – the theme is Egyptian Napoleonic – show three different styles.’
Sometimes his instructions were accompanied by little sketches similar to the ones he sketched for Vogue; other times they were just rough notes, but Amber adored receiving them almost as much as she adored being with Lord Robert – especially when they were on their own, without Saville, as they were today.
Amber looked adoringly at Lord Robert, dressed as usual in his academic ‘disguise’.
The days were flying by now, what with the pleasure of her outings with Lord Robert to look forward to, the Comtesse du Brissac’s French conversation, the Constance Spry flower-arranging classes she and Louise were now attending, and of course the deportment classes, which no longer held any fears for Amber now she had mastered the curtsy.
Add to that the social events she was also now attending and there were hardly enough hours in the day, as she had just complained to Lord Robert.
‘Lady Rutland is treating you better now, is she?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Amber confirmed. There was no point in spoiling the day by confessing to him how uncomfortable and out of place she felt at these social events and how conscious she was of the chilly looks she received from the mothers of other débutantes, the stiff silences and awkward pauses, when those débutantes refused to talk to her. Louise didn’t help, of course. She had made it plain that she despised Amber, and of course her close friends had followed suit.
In some ways Amber didn’t blame them. She was, after all, an outsider amongst them. She suspected she would have felt alien even without Louise’s unpleasantness.
‘I had a letter from my cousin Greg this morning. He’s going to Hong Kong. My grandmother thinks it will be good for him, he says,’ she told Lord Robert, deliberately changing the subject. ‘It was a shock because he had been going to be a Member of Parliament. He writes that he thinks that Hong Kong will be much more fun than becoming an MP.’
Since Greg himself had written so enthusiastically about the change of plan, Amber could only be pleased for him. But she’d miss him so much, knowing he was halfway across the world, and somewhere unknown to her, where, unlike at Macclesfield, she would be unable to picture him mentally.
‘I dare say he is quite right,’ Robert agreed. She was so innocent. Frighteningly so at times, he acknowledged. Being with Amber was like drinking a glass of clear pure water: a shock at first to the system when one was accustomed to far more intoxicating substances, but somehow it left a yearning within one to return to its simplicity and goodness.
‘I’m pleased for Greg, but disappointed for myself as I was hoping he would be at the dance Lady Rutland is to give after the presentation,’ Amber admitted. ‘At least then I would have known that I’d have someone to dance with.’
‘You will most definitely have someone to dance with.’
Amber looked at him. ‘You mean you will be there?’ Her eyes sparkled.
‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ Robert told her, realising as he said the words that they were true.
They were in Selfridges, and soon it would be time to leave since Amber had a fitting for her presentation dress. As always, though, she wanted to draw out the precious minutes she spent with Lord Robert and so she begged him, ‘Tell me again about the party when they had a treasure hunt and the clues had everyone running into Selfridges and jumping over the counters.’
Robert shook his head and laughed. ‘Those were foolish times – I should never have told you about them.’
‘I’m glad you did. They must have been such fun.’
‘Come now, it’s time you were back in Cadogan Place,’ Lord Robert told her firmly.
‘Are you ready yet?’ Louise asked Amber aggressively, ‘only I’m not waiting for you if you aren’t, and Mummy said to tell you that you’re to come with us to a tea party later.’
Amber didn’t mind so much about going for her gown fitting, but she would much rather not have been going to the tea party.
The gowns were being made by Reville in Hanover Square, the same court dressmaker who had not only made Lady Rutland’s own gown a generation before, but who had also been one of Queen Mary’s favourite dressmakers. Although Amber’s grandmother had been content to let Lady Rutland choose the dressmaker, she had insisted on selecting the fabric for Amber’s gown herself. It was de rigueur that débutantes wore only white or the palest of pastel-coloured gowns. For Amber’s gown her grandmother had chosen a silk for the underdress that was neither white nor cream but somewhere in between, over which was to go lace sewn with tiny pearls so that it looked as though the entire skirt of the overdress was made from mother-of-pearl. To complement the fabric Blanche had specified that the dress itself was to be made in the simplest of styles, little more than a narrow full-length shift at the front, but at the back from the base of Amber’s spine the overskirt was split to reveal a fan of plain satin pleats that formed a small train.
Louise had laughed mockingly when they had gone for their first fittings, twirling around in her own far more full-skirted and fussy gown, with its daringly peach underskirts showing through the heavy lace overdress, but now as they both watched the undeniable elegance of Amber’s gown emerging from the seamstress’s clever fingers, Louise’s mockery had given way to scowls.
Not that their presentation gowns were the only new clothes the girls had. Amber’s grandmother’s letters were full of detailed instructions about which shops Amber was to visit in order to be fitted for the outfits Blanche had already discussed by telephone with the shop manageresses. Invariably Louise too had a new outfit paid for by Blanche, but Louise’s choice was her own, and Amber was beginning to recognise that whilst her grandmother had ‘good taste’, Louise clearly did not.
Now as she brushed her hair, and thanked her maid for helping her, Amber acknowledged that she didn’t much care whether Louise waited for her or not.
She had had such a wonderful time this morning with Lord Robert. She hugged her pleasure to herself, wrapping it around her. What did Louise’s unkindness matter when she had such a wonderful friend in Lord Robert?
The fitting didn’t take very long, although Louise complained that her dress had been trimmed with the wrong lace. On their way back Amber insisted on calling in at Hatchards to order a copy of Evelyn Waugh’s new book.
It was only after she had completed giving her order that she realised that Louise was now in conversation with a man who must have come into the shop after them. Although she didn’t know why, something about the way Louise was behaving made Amber feel uneasy and uncomfortable. When Louise didn’t make any attempt to introduce Amber to her companion she felt relieved.
Louise was plainly enjoying the encounter, though, and in the end Amber left the shop without her and was several yards down the street when Louise finally caught up with her, out of breath but looking like the cat who’d got the cream.
The tea party was being given by Lady Wyesnaith at her Carlton Terrace home. Louise had chosen to wear a very close-fitting satin sleeveless dress in bright blue – almost the same shade as her eyes – with a deep V neckline, whilst Lady Rutland was wearing her customary rusty black beneath her furs.
Amber, without anyone to guide her, had asked her maid uncertainly, ‘What should I wear, do you think?’ and she had guessed from the pleased look Louise had given the softly draped, very simple pale amber frock, with its toning silk velvet jacket embroidered with amber bugle beads Amber had chosen, that Louise considered her own outfit to be far superior.
Since Lady Wyesnaith was presenting her own daughter at one of the court presentations, the tea party was one of those events, given by the sponsors of débutantes, ostensibly for the girls to get to know one another and the mothers to check diaries to ensure that no important débutante balls clashed, but in reality for the mothers to check out the competition their daughters might face amongst the other girls and to tailor their guest lists accordingly.
Amber, who had listened diligently whilst the Comtesse du Brissac instructed them on the importance of small talk and how one should engage in it, did her best when Lady Rutland abandoned her at a tea table with one spare seat without introducing her, but Amber knew from the silence that her intrusion was exactly that, which made the hand she felt on her arm and the familiar voice of her best friend from school, exclaiming happily, ‘Amber, I can’t believe it’s you. How wonderful!’ all the more welcome.
They had agreed, at Amber’s suggestion, during their final term together at school that they would not write to one another. Amber had believed then that their paths lay in very different directions and, knowing how conservative Beth was, she hadn’t wanted to embarrass her schoolfriend by clinging to their friendship when there was such a wide social divide between them. Now, of course, things were different – at least for the present, and whilst Amber was mixing in the same social circles as her schoolfriend.
Within seconds Amber was being spirited away to be introduced to Beth’s mother, who greeted her with such genuine kindness that Amber felt close to tears.
The Countess of Levington was an older and worldlier version of her daughter. They shared the same features, and good clear English skin, although Beth’s hair was fairer than her mother’s. Looking at Beth’s mother, Amber could see quite plainly what Beth herself would be in years to come. It was plain that the countess was a loving parent.
A brisk nod of her head confirmed that yes, the countess did indeed remember Beth talking about Amber, her friend from school.
‘Your father was, I believe, Russian?’ she questioned Beth, with practised ease.
‘What are you doing here?’ was Beth’s first question once they were on their own. ‘I thought you wanted to go to art school!’
‘I did. But my grandmother wouldn’t let me. She’s paid Louise’s mother to bring me out.’
There, she had said it, and she was holding her head high, even if inside she was dreading what Beth might think.
To her relief Beth’s only comment was a sympathetic, ‘It must be horrid for you, having to live with Louise.’
Amber gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘It is.’
Beth gave her arm a small squeeze. ‘Never mind. I’ll ask Mummy to make sure that we get invited to the same things. Finishing school in Paris was awful, worse than school, and now I still have to go to the Vacani School to learn to curtsy, and you know how clumsy I am.’
‘We’ve done that,’ said Amber. ‘I was hopeless at first.’
‘Oh, were you? That’s much better than getting it right first go.’
When Amber looked unconvinced, Beth told her, ‘Mummy says that it’s always the girls who get the curtsy right from their first class who go and do something silly when they’re presented. Oh, watch out, here comes Louise,’ she warned.
‘What are you two talking about?’ Louise demanded suspiciously.
‘I was just telling Amber how lovely it is to see her here.’
‘She’s only here because my mother has taken pity on her,’ Louise told Beth sharply.
Amber and Beth exchanged knowing looks.
The three of them, although they themselves did not know it, made an attractive picture standing together, Beth with her soft light brown hair and her sweet expression; Louise, the tallest of the three of them, the most ‘knowing’, her short bobbed hair as sleek and dark as a raven’s wing, and her blue eyes fringed with long dark lashes. But it was Amber, with her strawberry-blonde hair, her dark gold eyes and her perfect bone structure, who lifted the visual appeal of the trio above mere prettiness to true beauty.
‘You’ll be having a coming-out ball, I expect?’ Louise asked Beth.
‘Yes,’ Beth told her, ‘Mummy’s already worrying about finding enough young men to invite, especially if there are other balls on the same night. It would be awful if there aren’t enough men for us to dance with.’
‘Debs’ delights, you mean?’ Louise looked scornful. ‘Who wants to dance with them? Not me. I want to dance with a real man, someone exciting and … dangerous.’
‘From the warnings the comtesse has been giving us about not getting into cabs on our own with debs’ delights it sounds as though they are dangerous.’ Amber pointed out.
‘What? Because they might try to steal a kiss?’ Louise tossed her head. ‘Well, personally I think I’d rather like to know what it’s like to be kissed, wouldn’t you?’
Whilst Beth looked shocked Amber replied honestly, ‘It would depend on who was doing the kissing.’
‘Well, yes, of course. He’d have to be handsome, and rich, although I suppose in your case, Amber, all that would matter was him having a title.’
‘She’s such a cat,’ Beth said angrily after Louise had gone. ‘She hasn’t changed at all.’
Amber said nothing. After all, what could she say when Louise’s comment had been the truth, at least as far as her grandmother was concerned?
‘I’m so pleased we shall be coming out together,’ Beth told Amber warmly. ‘I’ve been dreading it, but now it’s going to be fun. Oh, look, Mummy wants us.’
Amber hung back.
‘What is it?’ Beth demanded.
Uncomfortably Amber explained how she’d been excluded and ignored, adding that she didn’t want to put Beth in an embarrassing position by clinging on to her.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s Lady Rutland people want to avoid and not you,’ Beth told her firmly. ‘She isn’t very well liked, you know.’
And not as well connected or socially powerful as Beth’s mother, as Amber soon discovered, after Beth had insisted on dragging her over to her mother.
People who had ignored her when Lady Rutland had introduced her were now being astonishingly pleasant. Girls who had previously turned their backs on her were now smiling at her and making room for both Beth and Amber to join them round tables set up for tea.
Engrossed in conversation, Amber only noticed the dark look Louise was giving her when she happened to glance up and see her, standing by the door with one of her own coterie of friends.
Seeing her look at Louise, the girl sitting next to Amber told her conspiratorially, ‘That’s Louise Montford. She’s fearfully fast, you know. My brother met her at a house party over Christmas.’
‘What do you mean?’ Amber asked her curiously.
The other girl gave her a coy look and then told her breathlessly, ‘Well, when they were playing hide-and-seek one evening, no one could find Louise for ages, and then when they did find her in one of the boots cupboards she swore that she’d been on her own but someone else said that they’d seen one of the boys sneaking away from the cupboard just before they found Louise. And then another night she went and joined the boys in the billiard room after supper, and she was the only girl there. One of the boys, Edward Fearton, told my brother that she’d let him kiss her and that she’d sat on his lap and let him put his hand on her knee. If she isn’t careful she’s going to get herself in an awful lot of trouble.’
Amber digested these confidences in silence. It was true that the kind of behaviour the other girl had just described was very fast and not acceptable at all for a young unmarried girl. There was a certain wildness about Louise at times, she admitted, as though the other girl enjoyed taking risks and breaking the rules. But the reality was that Louise could not afford to flout convention, not if she was to make the kind of marriage her mother needed her to make to repair their family finances, to someone of equal social standing to her own, and with money: the kind of man that every mother wanted for her daughter and the kind of man too who could take his pick of socially acceptable well-brought-up young women when looking for a wife. The kind of man who was not likely to choose a young woman with the wrong kind of reputation.
‘I suppose you think you’re something special now just because Beth has taken up with you,’ Louise challenged Amber later when they had returned to Cadogan Place. ‘Well, you aren’t. You’re still just a Macclesfield mill girl. What was Julia Smethington-Blythe saying to you about me? And don’t say she wasn’t because I know she was. I could tell from the way she was whispering to you.’
‘She mentioned that her brother had met you at a house party, that’s all,’ Amber answered diplomatically.
‘Oh, him. He was a complete drip. He couldn’t even dance, and his teeth stick out.’
Louise scowled. She hated Amber almost as much as she hated the life that being poor imposed on her. Louise craved luxury and excitement; she wanted to sweep into the most fashionable places wearing the most expensive clothes and jewels, on the arm of a handsome man and looking so wonderful that people turned to stare at her.
Louise had never known a time when money hadn’t dominated her life. Her mother rarely spoke of anything other than their lack of it. Louise had only been able to attend the exclusive girls’ school she had because a relative had paid the fees.
Mummy was always irritatingly vague about the exact relationship between her and ‘cousin Hugh’. So much so, in fact, that Louise was beginning to wonder if they were lovers.
Louise was extremely interested in people’s sexual relationships, and all the more so if they were illicit. In fact, Louise found the whole idea of sex very exciting. It must be rather fun to be the mistress of a very rich man; a man who was prepared to indulge one’s every whim and shower one with clothes and jewels. First, of course, she would have to be married: a rich husband and then a rich lover. She hated being only seventeen and treated like a child. She couldn’t wait to be grown up and free to do whatever she wanted.
The invitations were mounting up on the mantelpiece in the drawing room of the house in Cadogan Place, and all the more so, Amber suspected, since Beth’s mother had kind-heartedly taken Amber under her wing.
Some mothers might be having to cut corners, but of course, thanks to Amber’s grandmother, there was no question of economising for the ball Lady Rutland was giving for Louise and Amber, after their formal presentation.
Lord Cadogan had given permission for the private gardens to be used, and a marquee was to be erected there, whilst decorators had been set to work refurbishing the reception rooms.
Some families were hosting private dinners before their balls but Lady Rutland had eschewed this idea, much to Amber’s relief.
Along with everything else she had managed to organise during her week’s stay in London, Amber’s grandmother had chosen both the flowers for the ball and the supper menu – a copy of one chosen by the Duke of Westminster for a ball at Eaton Hall he had given for Royalty – even though she herself was not going to be present.
Amongst the invitations arriving at Cadogan Place was one from the Hon. Mrs Guinness to attend a ball at 10 Buckingham Street, which had caused Amber a pang of anxious guilt, and worry that Lady Rutland might wonder how Diana Guinness had come to be sending them an invitation, or even worse, that somehow or other it might come out that she had met Amber at the Ritz, until Lady Rutland had remarked that there was a family connection between her own late mother and Diana’s family, the Mitfords.
‘We have been invited as well,’ Beth had informed Amber, when Amber had told her about the invitation. ‘My mother’s family are connected to the Guinnesses, although Mummy is a bit concerned about me going.’ Beth had pulled a small face. ‘I don’t think Mummy approves of the fact that Diana is so very modern, but I think she is such fun. My mother’s godson is part of that set and he says that she gives the most wonderful parties.’ Beth giggled. ‘To be honest I don’t think that Mummy always approves of Teddy either, but of course she can’t say so, and since he has insisted on accompanying us she can hardly refuse. I’m looking forward to it.’
‘So am I,’ Amber had agreed fervently.
It was nearly a week since she’d last seen Lord Robert, and she missed him dreadfully, although he had warned her that he was having to go away for a few days.
She may have told Beth that she was looking forward to the Guinness party, but right now, as she stood in front of her bedroom mirror whilst Renton finished fastening the buttons of her kid gloves, prior to Amber leaving for the ball, Amber acknowledged ruefully that what she was actually feeling came closer to nervousness.
Amber’s Norman Hartnell gown was a soft eau-de-Nil. The bodice was trimmed with rows of tiny crystal drops that shone in the light, and was modestly high-necked, but the skirt was rather dashingly cut on the bias.
Over it Amber would be wearing a matching draped satin bolero jacket several shades darker than her dress, but lined in exactly the same eau-de-Nil satin.
Her hair had been dressed in soft curls, the pins securing it decorated with small individual crystals to complement those on the bodice of her dress.
Her matching satin purse was just the right size to hold a dance card, a handkerchief and a small bottle of scent. Lady Rutland did not approve of makeup, although Amber knew that Louise ignored her mother’s disapproval and wore lipstick.
‘Are you sure I look all right, Renton?’ Amber asked her maid anxiously. She had found the maid a little stern and formidable at first, but she had quickly come to value her judgement and her good taste, and had soon found that she was turning to Renton for the answers to her questions on matters of etiquette in high society with which she was unfamiliar, rather than Lady Rutland. Renton, Amber had learned, had grown up on the estate of the Earl of Rads-bury in Norfolk and had gone into service with the countess at fourteen, determinedly working her way up through the household hierarchy until a vacancy as a lady’s maid to one of the countess’s friends had brought her to London, and then to Cadogan Place when her previous mistress had died.
Renton had told Amber that she had been on the point of returning to Norfolk to share a cottage with her sister, who was now retired, when she had been interviewed by Amber’s grandmother.
‘I could see straight away that Mrs Pickford knew what was what,’ Renton had told Amber, surprising her with the approval she could hear in her voice, ‘and that she knew how to treat a person properly.’
Amber acknowledged that she was glad that her grandmother had chosen Renton to be her maid.
‘You look just as you should,’ Renton told her now, giving Amber one of her very rare smiles. Amber felt that, in her own way, Renton was every bit as formidable as her grandmother.
The road outside the Guinnesses’ house was filled with chauffeur-driven cars conveying guests to the party, but whilst Louise was anxious to get out of the car and impatient at the delay, Amber was content to gaze wide-eyed at people whom she recognised from the newspapers and the society magazines; people like Emerald Cunard, who was wearing what Amber knew immediately must be a Schiaparelli gown, white satin with a black satin cape. Eventually their car was close enough to the entrance to the house for them to get out, Lady Rutland’s gown of puce satin rustling stiffly as they climbed the front steps.
Once inside, a smiling maid offered to relieve them of their wraps.
Amber’s eyes widened when she saw how low-cut Louise’s rose-pink gown was, surely much lower than when they had had their fittings.
The elegant reception room on the first floor was filled with so many people that the sheer volume of their conversation made it impossible to hear the music from the quartet playing in the antechamber.
A waiter carrying a tray of glasses came towards them.
‘Cocktail, madam?’
Amber looked uncertainly at the bright green liquid, but Louise was already reaching for a glass whilst her mother, who was engaged in conversation with another chaperone, had her back to her. She had finished her drink and picked up a second by the time Lady Rutland joined them.
Amber was relieved to see Beth, but her relief turned to amazement and delight when she saw who was standing at the countess’s side.
Lord Robert!
Confusingly, though, the countess was asking Lady Rutland if she might introduce ‘her godson’ and Amber had no idea what to say when the familiar hand, white-gloved tonight, of course, took her own.
‘Amber, my dear, please allow me to introduce to you my godson, Lord Robert Devenish, the Earl of Montclare. Teddy, Miss Amber Vrontsky.’
Amber held her breath, praying that Lady Rutland would not recognise in Lord Robert Devenish the professor who had been attending Cadogan Place, whilst her own head spun dizzily with the shock of discovering that ‘her’ Lord Robert was also Beth’s ‘Teddy’.
Lord Robert was smiling at her. ‘Miss Vrontsky, I do hope I can look forward to the pleasure of dancing with you later?’
He had that mischievous look in his eyes that Amber now knew so well. Her heart was beating giddily fast.
Before she could answer him, though, the countess said firmly, ‘You may dance with Amber, Teddy, but you are not to introduce her to those rackety friends of yours.’
‘Cecil would be most hurt if he heard you describing him as merely rackety, Aunt Phoebe. He likes to think of himself as positively dissipated,’ replied Robert, laughing.
The countess gave him a reproving look. ‘Well, I dare say that your grandfather would agree with him.’
Immediately his expression changed, the amusement dying out of his eyes, to be replaced by a hard blankness that made his handsome features look as though they had been carved from stone. Amber was shocked. She had never seen him look so formidable and withdrawn.
‘Louise’s gown is fearfully low-cut, isn’t it?’ Beth whispered to Amber under cover of her mother’s conversation with ‘Teddy’. ‘I’m surprised her mother allowed it.’
‘It wasn’t like that when we went for our last fittings,’ Amber whispered back.
‘It makes her look very fast. No wonder George Ponsonby’s made a beeline for her.’
Amber looked over to where Louise was standing talking to a dark-haired man of medium height. As it had done before, something in Louise’s manner made Amber feel uncomfortable.
‘Just look at how close to him she’s standing.’ Beth looked scandalised. ‘Mummy was talking about George Ponsonby last week. She says that he’s a fortune-hunter and an adventurer, and not to be trusted. There was a terrible scandal a couple of years ago when this poor girl had told all her friends that they were going to be engaged, and then he just dropped her. Her family had to send her abroad. There was talk of … you know …’
‘What?’ Amber demanded, puzzled.
Beth leaned closer to her. ‘People were saying that she was going to have a baby and that was why she had to go abroad.’
They both looked at Louise, who was now dancing with George Ponsonby. He might be handsome, but he was one of those men who somehow looked too smooth and polished, his smile too ready, and his hair too brilliantined. He was holding Louise very tightly but, far from looking uncomfortable, she seemed to be revelling in his attention.
‘Mummy said earlier that Louise’s manner is far too forward and that it’s already causing comment,’ Beth added.
* * *
Louise was dancing with George Ponsonby again when Lord Robert guided Amber out onto the dance floor a little later.
‘Why does Beth’s mother call you Teddy?’ she asked him.
‘It was my mother’s nickname for me when I was a baby. She died when I was two, and since Aunt Phoebe was her best friend she still uses it.’
Amber gave him a sympathetic look. ‘It must have been horrid for you having to grow up without her.’
‘Yes, it was rather.’
His voice was clipped and Amber guessed he wanted her to change the subject.
‘I was so relieved that Lady Rutland didn’t recognise you.’
‘Lady Rutland is the kind of person who only sees what she wants to see.’
He was an excellent dancer. Amber felt quite light-headed with the ease with which he swung her round as they glided across the floor.
As he whirled her round, Lord Robert told her, ‘Cecil’s over there with Diana, and Ralph Seaforde. I shall be in fearful trouble with Aunt Phoebe, though, if I take you over to join them.’
Amber looked in the direction he was indicating. Ralph Seaforde was tall and willowy, with dark hair and slightly olive skin. He turned to look at them, and for some reason Amber felt herself recoil, which was silly because he wasn’t even looking at her. He was looking – staring, really – at Lord Robert …
The ball was over and they were on their way home. Amber was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open and her feet positively hurt from all the dancing she had done.
Although the ball had been very exciting, and she had danced with Lord Robert, somehow the evening had left her feeling confused and not as happy as she felt she ought to be, although she couldn’t explain to herself just why she felt the way she did, except that it had something to do with Lord Robert and the way he had seemed different somehow, distant almost at times, and not the kind teasing Lord Robert she knew and liked so much, she acknowledged. Not for the world did she want to admit that the evening – and Lord Robert – had left her feeling slightly forlorn and deflated.
Louise, on the other hand, wasn’t tired at all. She was positively fizzing with excitement and energy, her face flushed and her eyes sparkling. George Ponsonby was exactly the kind of man she liked: wickedly handsome and dangerous, and with that look about him that said that he could introduce her to the most interesting and exciting things. Just thinking about him brought Louise a sharp thrill of excitement. She had had her fill of kissing inexperienced boys in broom cupboards, and watching the effect she had on them when she teased them with promises she had no intention of keeping. That was schoolgirl stuff, and she wasn’t a schoolgirl any more. She was a woman.
Chapter Nine (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
‘Do you ever wonder what our futures really will be, Amber?’
They were at a tea party at the Savoy and it was the day after a luncheon at which they had all been entertained and scared by a fortune-teller hired by their hostess to keep her guests entertained and amused.
Louise predictably had been the first in the queue to step into the small brightly coloured tent, erected in the drawing room, inside which the fortune-teller had been seated.
‘No,’ Amber answered Beth, teasing her, ‘because I already know what yours will be. You will be engaged before the end of the season to a very suitable and delightful young man with a title and a fortune. He will have a large estate in the country and a handsome town house in London, and once you are married you will have lots of deliciously pretty little girls and handsome little boys.’
‘And I know what yours will be,’ Beth countered. ‘You will meet a wonderfully handsome and wickedly dangerous artist, who will fall passionately in love with you, and you with him. He will offer you his heart and his hand. You will refuse him at first, but then once he has proved himself to you, you will accept him and then together you will design the most wonderful silks. I wonder what the fortune-teller told Louise – she was in there for ever.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Amber, ‘but whatever it was it must have pleased her because she has been looking very secretive and smug ever since.’
‘I’m getting really nervous about our court presentation and I’ll be glad when it’s over. I’m so pleased that we’ll be at the early courts instead of having to wait until June, aren’t you?’
They were to be presented the following day, and Amber agreed, swallowing back her own fear.
‘Lady Rotherford, my godmdother, has accepted Mummy’s invitation to my ball.’ Beth flushed slightly. ‘Her son, Alistair, will be escorting her. I haven’t seen him for ages, but he used to be such fun, but of course we’ve got your ball first. Did I tell you that Teddy has insisted on escorting Mummy?’ Beth gave her a teasing look. ‘Do you know what I think? I think that Teddy could be falling in love with you. He’ll be a duke when his grandfather dies, you know, and he’s fearfully rich.’
Amber laughed. ‘Of course he isn’t,’ she denied.
The truth was that she rather thought she might be falling in love with him, Amber admitted. Not that she was going to say that to Beth, just as she hadn’t admitted that she had already known Lord Robert before Beth’s mother had introduced them. It was her secret alone, and one that gave her a warm glow every time she thought of him.
‘We’ve had fun together, haven’t we?’
Amber nodded.
They were in the rooftop café in Selfridges, Lord Robert in his disguise.
‘I hadn’t realised that you and Beth were such good friends.’
Suddenly Amber felt anxious. ‘It doesn’t make any difference, does it?’
‘Of course not. You’re so busy now that you won’t have time for your old professor soon.’
Amber was about to protest when Lord Robert continued, ‘Which is just as well. I suspect that we would be found out if we continued with our little game much longer, and whilst it has been both delightful and innocent, the last thing I want is for your reputation to be called into question.’
Amber’s hand trembled as she put down her china cup.
‘Yes, yes, of course. You are right. I know that.’
She did. Amber had learned a very great deal about life during the short time she had been in London. If Beth had been shocked and disapproving about Louise dancing with George Ponsonby, then how much more so would she be if she knew that Amber had been out on her own with Lord Robert? London society loved to gossip, and that gossip could be cruel. A young unmarried girl’s reputation must not be tarnished by any trace of scandal.
The loving gentleness of her parents and their marriage seemed a world away from the things Amber saw around her now. People spoke openly of the Prince of Wales’s mistress, a married woman, of course. There were so many different rules to be learned and codes to be understood. She had been shocked when she had learned that Diana Guinness, whom Amber had been inclined to hero-worship, talked openly about Evelyn Waugh’s devotion to her and had allowed the author virtually to move in with her and Bryan whilst he recovered from his divorce.
In society, once a woman was married and had given her husband an heir, it was, Amber had learned, deemed perfectly acceptable for her to take a lover. Even Beth, who was so prim and proper, spoke openly of relationships between couples who were not married.
A man who was a member of the aristocracy could and did expect his mistress to be invited to the social events he might be attending and as his partner, provided her pedigree made her socially acceptable to his hostess. They could even be invited to house parties together, but must always be given separate, but conveniently close, rooms. The Prince of Wales when conducting an affair always chose to surround his mistress with a handful of his close friends, sometimes including her husband.
Then there was the other kind of mistress, the ones that men set up in discreet expensive houses in St John’s Wood where they visited them. These mistresses were often show-girls of one sort or another. They could accompany their aristocratic lovers to Cannes or Monte Carlo; attend the Grand Prix, and louche parties with them, but they could not accompany their lovers to the kind of formal society events to which a man could take his aristocratic mistress.
There were aristocratic wives who had originally been on the stage, but they were few and far between.
One thing that was non-negotiable, though, was that a young woman who was not married had to preserve her reputation at all costs.
Amber was very close to tears and she was terribly afraid of disgracing herself. She mustn’t embarrass Lord Robert by creating a silly scene. She’d miss him so much – he had been so very kind to her – but she was just a young inexperienced girl and he was worldly and so handsome that he could have any girl his heart desired. She couldn’t possibly expect him to fall for her, she thought miserably as the dusk started to gather over Oxford Street. That would be the stuff of fairy tales, and she was far too sensible to allow herself to believe in those.
Louise shivered as she waited in the doorway of Harvey Nichols, as much with excitement as impatience. They had chosen this rendezvous because, as George had said, if anyone was to see them Louise could simply claim that she had been shopping and that they had bumped into one another.
She had known from the minute he had looked at her in that meaningful way at the Guinness ball that she would have to see him again. If he hadn’t suggested it himself then she would somehow have found a way to make sure that their paths had crossed again.
Louise shivered once more, this time only with excitement. It had made her feel so important when George had singled her out for attention. She knew all about his reputation, of course, but that had only made him seem all the more attractive.
He thought that he could seduce her, but instead she intended to make him fall in love with her. Louise had discovered at a young age how easy it was to manipulate men, and how exciting. There was something in her that craved excitement.
Louise longed for the day when she would be one of those fêted beautiful women whose lives were spent in luxury, their every whim indulged. The life Louise longed for wasn’t the one her mother planned for her: a dull boring life of wifely duty to some equally dull and boring man of equal social status to her own to whom she would be expected to be grateful for marrying her, despite the fact that she did not have a dowry. No, what excited Louise was the kind of life she had seen lived by the beautiful young women escorted and indulged by their rich, often much older, lovers; a life that would allow her to dress in beautiful clothes and jewellery and to be part of the fast set that spent their lives in a social whirl of pleasurable activity, that took them from the casinos of the French coast to the louche nightclubs of London, travelling in fast cars and sleek yachts, sleeping in the most luxurious hotel beds, eating the most delicious food and always being on show so that she could be admired; desired by men and envied by her own sex, but always the sparkling glittering centre of the ‘in’ crowd.
Her lover would adore her and lavish her with gifts – a racehorse or two; jewellery, of course; a pretty town house, and a villa in the South of France. Nothing would be too much, her every wish would be granted. And of course there would be other men, young, deliciously handsome men who would also lust after her and adore her.
She wanted it all. She would have it all, Louise promised herself fiercely.
Her relationship with George Ponsonby was simply the place where she would start.
She couldn’t marry George, of course. She didn’t want to. He wasn’t rich enough, for one thing, but it would be a triumph to be able to claim him as her conquest, especially when he had such a bad reputation. She’d be hailed as the woman who’d finally tamed him.
A taxi was pulling up; George got out and smiled at her. Louise didn’t smile back.
‘You’re late,’ she told him petulantly. ‘I was just about to go home.’
His mocking ‘Liar’ brought a flash of temper to Louise’s eyes.
‘You and I, my dear, are two of a kind. We know what we want and we don’t let it go when we’ve found it. Now, do you really want to go into Harvey Nichols or shall we find somewhere more private? There’s a club I know not very far away where they make the most wicked cocktails.’
‘That’s silly,’ Louise told him, refusing to give in to the intoxicating sensation she could feel inside herself. This was so very exciting, because it was so very dangerous. She was playing with fire and she knew it.
George smelled of the sandalwood cologne he always wore, stronger than was considered ‘British and gentlemanly’. He was wearing a dark grey suit with a pink chalk-stripe, over a white shirt and with a maroon silk tie. He looked, Louise knew very well, just that little bit too smart, his clothes just that little bit too well fitting, his hat tilted just so at a slightly rakish angle and his confidence very evident in the swagger with which he walked.
‘How can a cocktail be wicked?’ she responded.
‘Come with me and I’ll show you.’
Chapter Ten (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
‘But you can’t have been as terrified as I was; I promise I was literally frozen and unable to move …’
‘I was frightful …’
‘Well, you were lucky. I was shaking all over and I was sure that my combs would come out and my headdress fall off.’
‘I can’t even remember if I did curtsy, I was so scared …’
The ordeal of their presentation was finally over. Amber, Beth and Louise, along with their fellow debs, had had their names called in stentorian tones by a liveried member of the royal household and had made their formal curtsies to the King and the Queen, the photographs had been posed for and taken, and their relief now scented the air as intoxicatingly as a heady wine.
Their voices high-pitched with relief and excitement, the girls all vied with one another with their tales of how terrified they had been.
Amber felt almost light-headed with a relief that she knew went deeper for her than it did for the other girls. They had grown up knowing the role they were to play and that their formal presentation would be part of that role. For her it was different. She had felt awkward and ill at ease, intimidated sometimes by the other girls, especially in the early days, and afraid of what her grandmother’s ambitions would mean for her. Afraid too of letting her grandmother down. But now at least that hurdle had been overcome, and she need not fear her grandmother’s anger on that account.
She had no idea what the future held, but at least the ordeal of her unwanted presentation was now behind her, Amber acknowledged. She hardly dared let herself think too much about the future and her own hopes. They made her feel too vulnerable and afraid, knowing what her grandmother wanted for her. It would take a miracle to give her the future she wanted, woven with the kind of love her parents had shared, and her own passion for silk, into its every weft and warp.
Tired chaperones were chivvying their charges towards waiting cars, wishing they might return home to bed instead of having to go on to one of the evening’s many balls, but only one ball could be the highlight of the season, the one that everyone would remember and use as a yardstick to measure the others against. Lady Rutland, of course, hoped that it would be her ball, just as every other hostess hoped that it might be her own. It was the social diarists in the society papers, though, who would pass judgement and decide.
Whilst they had been at court waiting to be presented, an army of magicians had been working their magic on Cadogan Place, preparing everything for their coming-out ball, or so it seemed to Amber when she saw the tiny lights shimmering in the trees and ornamenting the marquees, through the car window.
Lady Rutland didn’t allow her time to marvel, though, bustling the debs inside and into Renton’s efficient care, warning their maid that their guests would be arriving for the ball in just over an hour.
‘Don’t worry, your ladyship, everything is organised. Cook’s sent up a bit of supper for them to have before they get into their ball gowns.’
From her bedroom window Amber could look down into the gardens. She could hear the musicians tuning up. Her tummy was churning too much for her to be able to eat the light dish of baked cod sent up by Cook. The scent of fresh paint still permeated the house, even up here in her bedroom. It was a wonderfully balmy evening, a perfect evening for a ball, in fact.
Renton came bustling in, shaking her head when she saw that Amber hadn’t eaten her supper.
‘I’m sorry, Renton,’ Amber apologised, ‘I just can’t.’
‘Well, that makes two of you, because Miss Louise has left hers as well. Now come on, let’s get you out of that court dress and into your ball gown.’
‘Oh, Amber, this is all so beautiful,’ Beth gasped appreciatively two hours later, as they stood side by side in one of the marquees, flushed and breathless from dancing, and they drank the silver and black champagne cocktails that had been specially created for the ball.
The interior to the marquee had been lined with mother-of-pearl silk, and tied with white and black ribbons and bunches of white and silver flowers to match the huge urns of white and silver flowers outside. The black satin ceiling was covered in clouds of white tulle studded with tiny silver stars. Black and silver cloths covered the tables and the lights shone softly on the silver-gilt chairs, their backs tied with black and white satin ribbons and small posies of white gardenias and silver-painted foliage. It was a simple colour scheme and Amber had worried that it might seem dull after the exuberance of the many costumed and themed balls that were all the rage. But it looked simply magical.
Even the gowns Amber and Louise were wearing had been chosen to harmonise with the colour scheme. Louise was wearing a gown of silver lace, over an underdress of white satin with a daringly plunging back, so that her creamy skin was revealed through the lace. She had her hair newly shingled, which suited her, but she was sulking because her mother had refused to invite George Ponsonby.
Amber’s gown was in the bias-cut style of Vionnet, in four-inch bands of white satin, white seamed with narrow bands of tiny silver tissue stars. Amber too had had her hair shingled, but in a much softer style than Louise’s, and two pretty diamanté clips in the shape of hearts kept her curls in place.
Later, when Amber actually overheard Emerald Cunard remarking approvingly to someone that the pale colours of the debs’ gowns and the white theme of the marquee reminded her of the elegance of one of Syrie Maugham’s famous white room schemes, Amber’s heart swelled with so much pride that she thought it might burst.
Even Lady Rutland was smiling for once, graciously accepting everyone’s praise, although privately Amber knew that it was her own grandmother who should have been receiving it for she had been the one to plan everything. It bewildered Amber that someone with such a strong sense of style as her grandmother should turn her back on the fabric that to Amber possessed more of that quality than any other.
Even though the ball was far from over, it was already being pronounced a success. Amber could have filled her dance card twice over, thanks to the good offices of Lord Cadogan, who had generously stepped in to act as a male presence at the ball, and had also conjured up a score and more dashing young men with the right kind of pedigree from the Blues and Royals, who could be seen dotted here and there amongst the guests, their dress uniforms making a vivid splash of colour against the ladies’ gowns and the men’s evening dress.
Amber had danced with several of them herself, but best of all had been dancing with Lord Robert, who had kept his promise to come to the ball.
Lord Robert … There was a tiny bruised place in Amber’s heart now when she thought about him. She wasn’t going to be silly about it, she had told herself. And it would be foolish to give any meaning to Beth’s statement that he was falling in love with her. He must know so many pretty girls – prettier than she, and far more suitable. He was twenty-seven after all, a full ten years older than she. But he wasn’t married, a tiny voice in her head said … Amber’s heart gave a little thump, and then another as she looked up and saw that he was coming towards her.
‘I hope you are going to save me another dance,’ he told her.
Amber wanted to say that she would have saved him all her dances, had he asked.
‘Only if you promise that you will take me to West Compton,’ she told him.
She could see that she had struck the right note because his eyes had that lovely warm twinkle in them.
‘I’ve just been speaking with Diana and she said to tell you how lovely you look and how much she’s hoping you can be friends.’
‘Oh, that’s so kind.’
‘And Cecil says that he is extremely cross that your grandmother has not asked him to take a formal photograph of you, but that he is going to anyway, and that he intends to tell Lady Rutland so.’
Amber was becoming quite used to the flamboyant way of speaking and dressing adopted by Lord Robert’s set, even if something about the way that Ralph Seaforde watched Lord Robert all the time made her feel uncomfortable.
Both Lord Robert and Cecil had sent her corsages to wear, but instead she had worn the one that Jay had sent for her, laughing when Lord Robert had teased her about her secret admirer. She had been so thrilled this morning when the flowers had arrived with a small note to say that they were from Jay, and even more touched when she learned from Renton that he had actually telephoned and asked to speak to her to solicit her advice on what kind of corsage would be most appropriate.
Dear Jay. She wished that he and Greg could have been here. Lady Rutland and Louise weren’t her family, after all. In fact, she felt closer to Beth’s mother, and it had been the countess who had discreetly checked that she was holding her bouquet properly before she was called in to make her curtsy, and who had produced a clean handkerchief for her for those tears afterwards, as well as one for Beth.
Louise wasn’t enjoying the ball whatsoever. In fact she was very angry. With George and with her mother. Before she had learned that George was not going to be invited and that nothing she could say would change her mother’s mind, she had told George that she expected him to come and dance with her, but he had refused, saying that he had a prior engagement.
‘Then you must break it,’ she had told him imperiously.
‘If I do that then it will have to be worth my while to do so,’ he had responded.
She had known what he meant, of course, but she was not so stupid as to let him trick her like that.
When she hadn’t responded he had continued, ‘You would have to promise me something very special.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
He had smiled at her then in a way that she hadn’t liked, saying smoothly, ‘Well now, I dare say your mother has been warned not to allow the heiress to meet any fortune-hunters. She’s a pretty-looking piece, I must say, and very tempting even without the grandmother’s money. Almost makes me wish I had a title.’
Louise had been so angry that she had tried to hit him, but George had been too quick for her, twisting her arm behind her back so painfully that she had cried out.
And that was when he had kissed her. God, but it had been so exciting. And it had made her so angry. She was still angry. Angry and on edge, and desperate for one of the cocktails to which George had introduced her. And another of those passionate kisses …
These weeks in London had opened Amber’s eyes to so much, she thought as her partner thanked her for their dance and bowed. Her parents’ love for one another was still her ideal, but she recognised now that for most young women of Beth and Louise’s class the right husband was considered more important than love, especially by their families. The right marriage, a good marriage, was a necessity if they were to enjoy the position in society to which they had been born.
Diana Guinness, for instance, made no bones about how much she enjoyed her husband, Bryan’s, wealth. Without the advantage of a good marriage how were one’s sons and daughters to be provided for and their futures in turn secured? If the benefits of social advantage were not worth having, then why were so many mothers anxious to push their daughters up from the middle class, and why did society look down on them and mock them for their ambitions? Social privilege was a fiercely guarded territory and just as subtly out of bounds to those who did not have the right credentials to enter it as Lord Cadogan’s gardens were to those who could only stand and stare in through the iron railings.
To marry well might not be what she wanted, but she could understand now why so many girls did, Amber acknowledged ruefully, as she left the marquee to slip outside and make her way along one of the paths through the shadows of the garden so that she could enjoy the cool air.
Even Beth had confided to her that she was anxious not to disappoint her mother and that she hoped that by the end of the season she would have received an acceptable offer of marriage from someone she could grow to love.
Love. Amber didn’t want to think about love. It had been so wonderful to dance with Lord Robert. He was such fun and she felt so happy when she was with him, so free …
A movement beneath the trees caught her eye, as two figures emerged from the darker shadows. Something about the stiffness of their bodies told her that there was discord of some kind between them, and so she held back, not wanting to intrude. She realised with a jolt that it was Lord Robert and Ralph Seaforde.
Seaforde said something to Lord Robert, and then started to walk away from him, but Lord Robert went after him, catching hold of his arm to stay him. At first Ralph Seaforde shrugged him off but then Lord Robert stepped in front of him blocking his path.
It was obvious now that they were quarrelling, even though Amber couldn’t hear what was being said. And then suddenly, so suddenly and so shockingly that Amber could not believe what she was seeing, Lord Robert reached out to Seaforde and embraced him, taking him into his arms and holding him, kissing him on the lips. As though he were kissing a woman and not another man …
Amber recoiled in disbelief, wanting to look away and yet unable to do so. Surely she could not be seeing what she was seeing? It wasn’t possible! She must be wrong, must have misunderstood. But she knew she had not done. She blinked, her eyes dry and sore as though somehow what she had seen had burned them. There was a horrible miserable feeling in the pit of her stomach. All she wanted to do was blot out what she had seen and get away, but as she moved, Amber heard Lord Robert call out her name. He must have seen her!
She panicked. She couldn’t stay to speak to him, not after what she had seen. She turned, running blindly through the darkness, her heart pounding.
He caught up with her within a few yards, taking hold of her arm and telling her urgently, ‘Amber, I’m so sorry. What you saw … You won’t understand.’
‘You’re wrong, I do understand,’ she told him almost fiercely, before wrenching her arm free and hurrying towards the lights of the marquee.
This time he didn’t follow her and she told herself that she was glad.
Of course she had understood. She wasn’t a complete fool, no matter what he might have thought. Greg had told her about ‘it’ in that boastful way of schoolboys towards younger relatives, and wanting, of course, both to shock her and show off his own newly acquired knowledge. She had been shocked and disbelieving then, but now she understood. Robert was one of those men who preferred his own sex.
How silly she had been for so nearly falling in love with him. And it had only been nearly, Amber told herself firmly. Nearly, that was all. Nothing more. So there was no reason for her to feel so humiliated. As her grandmother had felt humiliated when Barrant de Vries had rejected her? To her own surprise Amber felt tears stinging her eyes at the thought of her grandmother as a hurt and vulnerable young girl. Had Blanche ever been that? If so, it certainly didn’t show now. If she had then Blanche had somehow grown a tough second skin to cover her sensitivity.
It was pointless her attributing sensitive feelings to her grandmother she may never have had or comparing herself with her, Amber told herself. Lord Robert had not rejected her. He had been kind to her. It was silly of her to feel such a painful sense of loss.
The band were still playing the same number that they had been playing as she left the marquee, the coloured paper lanterns were still throwing out their soft light, other girls were still giggling and flirting with their dance partners. None of that had changed and yet within her Amber knew that something had been altered for ever.
It wasn’t just because she could so easily have fallen in love with Lord Robert; it was more than that. Something inside her flinched from what she had seen. It could not be forgotten, though, any more than the wrong dye could be washed out of a piece of silk. A clever designer might be able to find a way to incorporate the dye into a new design and so disguise it, but it would never be hidden from their eyes, no matter how well concealed it might be from those who did not know.
How frightening love could be, and how painful. How confusing and difficult to understand. People were not always what they seemed. Poor Lord Robert, he had looked so anguished.
She felt so different now – older, somehow, and more grown up; stronger too, Amber recognised, because she must be strong, for her own sake. But how could she be strong when she felt so hurt; so betrayed? She had trusted Lord Robert and believed that they were friends, and yet all the time she thought she had known him she had not known him at all. That made her feel very alone. Lord Robert and the friendship she had believed they shared had become a symbol, a touchstone almost for her of her future and all that she hoped it might be. She had told him her dreams for that future, trusted him with them, believed that there was a special bond between them. But how could there be when she had not known something so important about him? She had not known him at all. All she had known was a chimera, a fiction. How could she ever trust her own judgement again?
Was this what growing up was? Learning not to trust others, learning not to rely on them or to accept them at face value? Learning to accept that where there was love there was also pain? Could she bear all of that? Sorrowfully and with a heavy heart Amber acknowledged that she must bear it.
Never again would she put her feelings on such open display, she promised herself. That Amber was gone. The Amber that would grow from her would be different; wiser, and less vulnerable. Less ready to trust so easily.
Chapter Eleven (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
May 1930
The weeks were flying by so fast now, that Amber felt she barely had time to draw breath.
Under the strict chaperonage of the countess, she and Beth had attended luncheon parties, fashionable race meetings, afternoon teas and, of course, night after night of parties and coming-out balls.
A group of debs, including Beth and Amber, had even been taken to the Kit-Cat Club where they had all sat excitedly together, trying not to look too awed to see the Prince of Wales there with his entourage.
Amber had looked to see if she could see Lord Robert, even though she knew from Beth that he was visiting friends in Yorkshire. She hadn’t seen him since the night of the ball, and although she had tried not to do so, she still missed the fun they had had together, even if she no longer felt that little flutter of her heart whenever she thought of him.
Someone she and Beth were sure they had seen at the club, though, had been Louise seated in a corner with her escort, whom Beth swore was George Ponsonby.
‘Louise will ruin her reputation; no one will want to marry her,’ Beth had prophesied.
Although Amber and Louise slept under the same roof, Amber and Beth had been so busy attending the functions to which they had both been invited that Amber barely saw Louise any more.
She and Beth had tried their first cigarette, giggling together as they did so. Poor Beth had been dreadfully sick and Amber had felt almost as unwell.
It was hard to believe that it was over a month since her own ball, Amber thought, as she sat down to her breakfast, having said ‘Good morning’ to Lady Rutland.
Amber was drinking her coffee when Louise came in and sat down at the table, immediately lighting up a cigarette. Her nails were varnished a deep shade of red and the way she inhaled and then blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke was incredibly sophisticated, Amber thought slightly enviously.
Lady Rutland, who had begun to frown disapprovingly the moment Louise had lit her cigarette, announced sharply, ‘Amber, if you have finished your breakfast, I would like to speak with Louise alone.’
Although she had closed the door as she left the breakfast room Amber could still hear Lady Rutland telling Louise angrily, ‘Put that cigarette out at once, Louise. I will not have you smoking at the table, and what is this I have heard about you being seen in some nightclub with a man?’
Not wanting to eavesdrop Amber hurried upstairs.
She had been in her bedroom a matter of minutes when Louise burst in without knocking, plainly in a furious temper.
‘It was you who told Mummy about me being with George at the Kit-Cat Club, wasn’t it, you little sneak?’
‘No,’ Amber defended herself. ‘It wasn’t.’ Louise no longer had the power to intimidate her. Her confidence had soared since Lord Robert had taken her under his wing and Beth had returned from her finishing school in Paris to renew their friendship.
‘You told her because you’re jealous,’ Louise stormed, ignoring Amber’s response. ‘You want him for yourself. Well, you’re wasting your time. George would never look at someone like you, whose family are in trade.’
Amber didn’t bother dignifying Louise’s insult with a response. It was laughable that Louise should think she was interested in George Ponsonby. Amber thought he was selfish and self-serving, and didn’t find him in the least bit attractive.
‘Mummy can say what she likes,’ Louise continued angrily, ‘I’m not going to stop seeing him.’
Louise had gone before Amber could say anything, slamming the door behind her.
‘I can’t imagine ever doing something that Mummy had forbidden me to do,’ Beth told Amber, after Amber had related the incident to Beth later in the day.
They were in the countess’s private sitting room in the Levingtons’ Belgrave Square house, waiting for the countess, who was to accompany them to a luncheon party at the Savoy Hotel.
There was a copy of The Times on the countess’s desk, and Amber noticed that its main story contained yet more bad news about the growing number of unemployed. Jay had mentioned in his last letter that several of Macclesfield’s mills had had to lay men off because of the slump in trade that had followed the previous year’s Wall Street crash.
One could see poor people begging everywhere in London, and the Labour government seemed no more able to mend matters than the Conservatives had been.
‘Mummy will be here soon,’ Beth told Amber. ‘There’s something she wants to discuss with you, but I’m not supposed to say anything. Oh—’
Beth stopped speaking as her mother came into the room and looked at them, shaking her head at Beth wryly, before turning to Amber to smile and say, ‘Amber, my dear, the débutante dances will soon be at an end, and I was wondering if your grandmother has discussed her plans for you for the summer?’
‘Grandmother hasn’t mentioned anything in her letters,’ she answered the countess shyly, not sure where the conversation was leading.
‘Very well, in that case I shall write to her to ask her permission for you to accompany us to the South of France next month – that is, of course, if you are happy for me to do so?’
If she was happy? Could it really be in any doubt?
‘Oh, yes. Yes, thank you,’ Amber responded fervently.
How could she not be thrilled at the thought of spending the summer in the South of France, and with Beth, her best friend in the whole world?
She gave Beth a look of gratitude, which Beth returned with an excited smile.
The countess went on to inform Amber that their party was going to include Beth’s father, the earl, and their eldest son, Henry, Viscount Hollowes, both of whom were currently in Australia where, as Beth had already told Amber, her father had business interests in a sheep station and in mining. They would also be joined by the nursery party, comprising Beth’s two younger brothers and the baby of the family, her sister, Arabella, and that they would be staying in Juan-les-Pins where the earl was renting a villa for the summer.
‘I’m so happy that you’ll be coming to the South of France with us,’ Beth confided excitedly to Amber later over luncheon. ‘It’s going to be such fun.’
‘Yes,’ Amber agreed.
She could hardly take it in that she was to visit the South of France, the haunt of so many famous artists. She couldn’t wait to see the places and the colours that inspired them. It would be a relief not to be constantly looking over her shoulder to see if she could see Lord Robert too.
The South of France. How very lucky she was to have such a good friend as Beth and how grateful she was to the countess for inviting her to join them.
‘But you said you were going to take me somewhere exciting, not some dingy horrid hotel in Brighton,’ Louise objected, taking several nervy drags on her cigarette.
They were standing in the bedroom of the hotel and although she had known all along what George had in mind, now that she was confronted with the unattractive reality of their surroundings, defying her mother for the delicious thrill of taking such a dangerous risk no longer seemed either exciting or glamorous. And, in fact, somehow George himself no longer cut the dashing figure here in these drab surroundings as he had done in the prim drawing rooms of Mayfair and the correspondingly louche nightclubs.
In fact, if she was honest with herself, what Louise actually felt right now was not excitement but distaste. She had hated the way the man in reception had smirked and looked her over when George had registered them as Mr and Mrs Smith, but she had been too shocked by the fact that he had done so to object.
When George had suggested driving her down to Brighton for ‘something special at a discreet little place I know’, Louise had envisaged herself sweeping into a glamorous establishment where heads would turn admiringly in her direction and suave handsome men would leave their companions immediately to demand an introduction to her.
They would have lunch – with champagne, of course – and then cocktails in a piano bar.
Carelessly Louise had ignored the small problem of how she was going to manage to stay out so late without explaining her absence to her mother.
Now, faced with a bedroom smaller than her maid’s at home, its wallpaper peeling, and the smell of damp and greasy cooking pervading everything, the issue of her mother’s likely reaction to her absence suddenly became vitally important.
‘I really can’t stay,’ she told George, affecting insouciance. ‘I had no idea it would take us so long to get here. Mummy will be simply furious if I’m not back in time for cocktails at the Edales’.’
‘Really?’ There was a look in George’s eyes that warned Louise he was not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.
How exciting. And how powerful it made her feel to know that he wanted her so much.
‘Yes, I want you to take me home now,’ she told him.
‘And I want – you,’ George responded.
Louise tried to sidestep him as he came towards her but the bedroom was too small and all he had to do to throw her down on the bed was take hold of her arms and force her backwards.
‘No, George. You mustn’t,’ Louise protested, feigning anger. This was just as she had imagined it would be: the delicious feeling of power and wantonness, the knowledge that George was overwhelmed by his desire for her. If she could do that to George then how much more easily would she be able to manipulate someone older – and richer. Avarice gleamed in her eyes.
‘It’s too late to play teasing games now, Lou,’ George warned her. ‘You’ve been coming on to me for weeks, and you know it. Stop worrying, you’re going to love it. Your kind always does. Careful, you don’t want me to go tearing that pretty blouse you’re wearing, do you? What would Mummy say?’
She was genuinely angry now – she hadn’t planned for things to go this far. Teasing George was one thing, actually letting him do ‘it’ was another.
Somehow Louise managed to fight him off and push her way past him to the door, but it was locked and whilst she struggled helplessly with it he caught hold of her, dragging her back to the bed.
This definitely wasn’t what she wanted or how things were supposed to be. George was tugging at her clothes, undressing her swiftly and expertly, despite her protests and struggles, until all she was wearing was her pale pink silk chemise and her matching French knickers with their lacy edging.
Automatically when George let go of her and stood up to remove his own clothes, she lifted her hands to cross them over her breasts. She wasn’t going to let him know that she was apprehensive. Men like George didn’t feel any sympathy for women who cried and pleaded; a woman had to stand up to a man like George. Louise knew that instinctively.
She might be nervous but she was still curious enough to risk a look at him. She hadn’t seen a man naked before, not properly, although she was familiar with the feel of that thick jut of flesh rearing up in swollen urgency, having allowed George to put her hand on it on several occasions, including one time when he had unbuttoned his trousers and pushed her hand inside his underwear to really touch ‘it’.
She hadn’t expected that it would look so ugly, nor have that awkward-looking pouch of flesh hanging beneath it.
‘Like what you see?’ George asked. ‘Want a closer inspection?’
She tried to look nonchalant as she gave a small shrug, but she was wasting her time, she realised, because George was more interested in pushing down the straps of her camisole to bare her breasts, before cupping them in his hands and then kneading them and tugging almost painfully on her nipples.
She relaxed a bit when he started to kiss her – she was, after all, on familiar territory here – but when he transferred his mouth from her lips to her breasts she tensed again and then tensed even more when she felt him tugging – sucking – on her nipples, first one and then the other. An unfamiliar sensation zigzagged right through her body, causing a dull ache low down inside her that began to grow in intensity. George’s teeth suddenly raked her nipple, causing her to cry out and jerk away from him, but he pulled her back, sliding his hand into the open leg of her knickers, and touching her almost roughly where she had secretly and daringly touched herself before but never like George was doing, working his fingers into her, ignoring her protest that he was hurting her, rubbing that special magical place she had found during her own explorations until suddenly Louise wasn’t thinking about how she could bend George to her will any more because she wasn’t capable of thinking anything, only doing; arching her back, moaning and crying out, protesting when George abandoned the source of her pleasure and instead pushed a pillow beneath her hips and then rolled on top of her, raising her knees and then pushing slowly into her, ignoring the stiffening that accompanied her demand for him to stop.
But he refused to stop, and then miraculously the pain disappeared, and the sensation of him thrusting deeper and faster inside her became a challenge she felt driven to meet, and then a need that had her crying out to him.
When he groaned and tensed Louise wondered what was happening, fearful that something was wrong, and even that he might be stuck inside her, but before she could panic, he groaned again and pumped furiously into her, before exhaling in satisfaction and slumping over her.
It hadn’t been at all like she had thought it would be. George had been so rough, too rough at times. And all that sweat and hard work, and that sticky wetness she could feel leaking from her now that George had removed himself from her.
‘There, I told you you’d like it, didn’t I?’
Louise was sitting up in bed, the sheet dragged up to cover her breasts whilst she smoked the cigarette George had just lit and passed to her. George was lying beside her, his head propped up watching her with a smug expression on his face.
‘No, I didn’t like it at all,’ she denied sharply. She was still angry at having her hand forced.
George laughed. ‘No? Then what was all that, “Oh, George, please, oh, George. Oh, oh …” all about then?’ he laughed.
She had enjoyed it, Louise admitted, but she was still furiously cross with George. After all, this was not the kind of place in which she had expected to lose her virginity. She deserved better. But she’d make him pay …
Chapter Twelve (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
Lady Rutland wasn’t at all pleased that Amber had been invited to the private pre-ball dinner party Beth’s parents were hosting on the evening of Beth’s coming-out ball, when Louise had not, but since her grandmother had not only written to her saying how delighted she was that Amber had been invited to accompany Beth to the South of France, but had actually also telephoned her as well, Amber had felt justified in ignoring Lady Rutland’s crossness.
Lord and Lady Levington’s Belgrave Square house was far grander than Lady Rutland’s in Cadogan Place; the flowers to decorate the ballroom had been sent up from the hothouse at Chevenely, their country estate, having been expressly grown for Beth’s ball.
Since it was the first time she had met the Earl of Levington Amber had been worrying that she might not earn Beth’s father’s approval, and that the invitation to the South of France might be rescinded. However, to her relief Lord Levington had treated her most kindly, putting her at her ease straight away.
Amber had been partnered for dinner by Beth’s elder brother Henry, Viscount Hollowes. Fresh-faced, with Beth’s soft brown hair and his father’s hazel eyes, his manner slightly awkward and intense, Henry had talked earnestly to Amber about Australia over dinner.
‘Henry isn’t really used to girls,’ Beth had confided to Amber. ‘Mummy thought it would be good for him to stay here in London whilst I was doing the season, but Daddy said that it was more important that he went with him to Australia.’
Beth looked truly radiant tonight, as much because of the presence of her godmother’s son, Alistair, as anything else, Amber suspected, watching her friend later as she was whirled round the dance floor in Alistair’s arms. Sturdily built, with red-gold hair and bright blue eyes, the Hon. Alistair McCrea might not appear as glamorous as some of the more polished debs’ delights, but there was a reassuring quality about him. He was the kind of young man who would take his responsibilities very seriously, Amber could see, and those responsibilities would naturally include his wife. Ultimately he would inherit not only his father’s title and Scottish lands but also a small Hertfordshire estate that would come to him via a great-uncle on his mother’s side of the family, Beth had confided to Amber, and Amber suspected that Beth was halfway to falling in love with him already.
Lucky Beth, Amber thought, to be able to fall in love with someone so suitable. But then Beth was the kind of girl who wanted to please her parents, especially her mother to whom she was extremely close.
With something as very exciting as the South of France to look forward to Amber could almost forget the scene she had witnessed the night of her ball, and how much she missed the fun she had had with Lord Robert. Almost. But not entirely.
Beth hadn’t mentioned him recently and Amber had not liked to ask, afraid her enquiries would give her away. Diana and Bryan Guinness were here at the ball in a group that included Diana’s brother, Tom Mitford, Jim Lees-Milne, Oswald Mosley and his wife, and the novelist Evelyn Waugh, all of whom Amber recognised, having either been introduced to them or had them pointed out to her on previous occasions.
Amber saw them whilst she was dancing with Henry, and trying not to feel uncomfortable about the way he was looking at her so intensely, without saying a word. They were all crowding around Oswald Mosley, a very good-looking man in the mode of Rudolph Valentino, who all the popular papers were lionising because of his decision to resign from Ramsay MacDonald’s government over the rejection of what was being termed the Mosley Memorandum: a document that set out plans for large-scale public work programmes to provide jobs and an income for the poor and out of work. Personally Amber thought that anything that relieved the dreadful situation whereby men were unable to find work to support their families should be praised and put in force as soon as possible. Not that she knew very much about politics, of course.
They were almost level with the group when Diana, who was standing next to Mosley, suddenly screamed, and then laughed, shaking her head as she exclaimed, ‘Oh, you beast, Mosley,’ before turning to her husband and telling him, ‘He has just dropped something icy cold down my back, Bryan.’
‘Oh, no, poor you,’ the pretty brunette clinging to Tom Mitford’s arm protested, whilst Oswald Mosley opened his fist to reveal some of the small pink puffballs that had decorated the supper tables.
‘It was only one of these, iced with champagne,’ he was drawling, obviously enjoying the tease. ‘You were so deliciously hotly defensive of my Memorandum, Diana, that I felt it my duty to cool you down before you burned poor Ramsay’s reputation to cinders.’
The dance had come to an end, and Amber was rather relieved to be able to wriggle free of Henry’s tight grip.
‘You must go and find your next partner,’ she reminded him gently when he showed no sign of moving from her side.
His blurted, ‘I’d much rather dance with you,’ made Amber feel freshly uncomfortable.
And when a familiar voice drawled, ‘Ah, but Miss Vrontsky is engaged to dance this dance with me, I’m afraid, Henry old chap,’ she was too relieved to feel self-conscious when she turned to look up at Lord Robert.
‘I take it that you were not wanting to dance with him again?’ he asked once Henry was out of earshot.
‘Not really,’ Amber admitted, ‘but you need not stay and dance with me if there is …’ She stopped, floundering uncomfortably.
‘I want to dance with you very much.’
Now she was blushing, Amber realised in vexation.
‘But I think we should stroll instead,’ Lord Robert suggested, offering her his arm. ‘We can talk more easily that way.’
Lord Robert obviously knew the house well, Amber realised, because he soon found a small anteroom to the ballroom, its doors open to a balcony just wide enough for two people to stand and enjoy the evening air.
‘I’m sorry I was so silly about … about things,’ Amber told him.
‘You weren’t silly. In fact, I doubt you could ever be silly, Amber.’ When she looked at him, her eyes wide with uncertainty, he told her, ‘I should not have behaved in the way that I did. Some things should remain private. Not seen and not heard.’
‘I dare say that it isn’t always easy not to betray one’s feelings, when they are very strong.’ Now Amber was looking out into the darkness, unable to bring herself to look directly at Lord Robert.
‘You are as compassionate as you are kind. I loved foolishly and I paid the price for it.’
His words made Amber feel intensely sad for him.
‘I used to think that loving someone meant that person would be happy like my parents were happy, but love isn’t always like that, is it?’
‘No, it isn’t. Love can be many things, some of them damnably painful. I hope that when you find love it will be the kind of love your parents shared.’ He paused and then said abruptly, ‘I have missed you and our outings together.’
‘Have you?’ Now Amber turned to look at him. ‘I have missed you too. I thought you must be cross with me because—’
‘No. If I was cross with anyone it was myself.’
He reached for her hand and held it gently. ‘Shall we be friends again?’
‘Oh, yes.’
They looked at one another, and smiled.
‘Cecil will be pleased. He considers that you have great promise, you know, and would, I think, like to see you as another Syrie Maugham.’
Amber’s eyes widened at the compliment. Syrie Maugham, the former wife of the famous playwright, was currently the most fashionable interior decorator.
‘My grandmother would never allow me to set up in business,’ she told Robert sadly.
‘No, I dare say not, but your husband might if you choose him carefully, and he is rich enough,’ he told her.
Amber laughed. ‘So now I must find a titled husband to please my grandmother and a rich one to please Cecil.’
Robert looked at her. ‘I hope you will find a way to follow your own heart, Amber, for if anyone deserves to it is you.’
His kindness brought Amber near to tears, and as though he sensed how close she was to being overwhelmed by her emotions, Lord Robert said teasingly, ‘We’d better get back to the ballroom before Henry sends out a search party and you are accused of attempting to sully my reputation by enticing me out onto this balcony.’
Amber laughed again. She was so pleased that they were friends once more, but even better, she had realised standing on the balcony with him that he was now just dear Robert, her friend, and nothing more. Her former feelings had disappeared and she recognised them for what they were: her first proper infatuation. Who could blame her when he was so handsome and so exciting? But she knew that when true love finally showed its face, she’d know it in a heartbeat.
Chapter Thirteen (#ue06af8bf-ced4-5ff5-9234-e9635c824cdb)
In less than a week they would be leaving for the South of France, and the Belgrave Square mansion was busy with preparation.
‘Now, my dears,’ the countess informed Beth and Amber, ‘whilst the little ones will be going straight to Juan-les-Pins with Nanny and the servants, the three of us will be staying in Paris for a short time before joining them. You will both need clothes suitable for the South of France and these, of course, are best bought in Paris.’
Paris! Amber and Beth exchanged thrilled looks.
‘Oh, Amber, I am just so excited,’ Beth burst out after her mother had been called away to take an urgent telephone call. ‘It’s going to be such fun. We shall need new tennis dresses, and swimming togs. Oh, and I do hope that Mummy will let us have some of those new pyjama suits that Vogue says everyone is wearing.’
Amber was still thinking about the excitement of going to the South of France half an hour later as she went up the steps to the front door of Lady Rutland’s house in Cadogan Place. Louise and Lady Rutland were, she knew, out visiting an elderly cousin of Lady Rutland’s who lived in Richmond.
‘There’s a visitor to see you, miss,’ the butler told her as he let her in. ‘A Mr Fulshawe. He said to tell you that he’s here on your grandmother’s behalf. I’ve put him in the library.’
Jay was here and on her grandmother’s behalf? How ominous that sounded. Amber quickly walked across the hall and pushed open the library doors, trying to quell her anxiety as she did so.
Jay was standing in front of the unlit fire. He was wearing city clothes and, she realised with sudden surprise, he did not, as she had imagined, look out of place in them at all. Far from it. He looked, in fact, very handsome and smart.
‘Your grandmother instructed me to come,’ he told her. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’
‘Bad news?’ Her mind raced. What did he mean? She searched his face but there was no clue to be found there. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is it the mill?’
He was shaking his head.
‘Greg?’ Anxiety sharpened her own voice. ‘It is Greg, isn’t it?’ she demanded when she saw the small movement he made. ‘Something’s happened to him. What, Jay? Oh, please tell me.’
‘It isn’t Greg, although in a sense it does concern him. It’s Caroline Fitton Legh.’
‘Caroline?’ Amber repeated blankly. Jay had come all the way to London to tell her something about Caroline? Her anxiety for Greg had eased back, and now she felt confused.
‘There is no easy way to tell you this, Amber. Caroline is dead.’
Of all the things she might have been dreading hearing, the death of Caroline Fitton Legh had not been one of them. She was – had been – so young and so very alive. It seemed impossible. Amber remembered how beautiful she had looked the afternoon she and Greg called on her at Fitton Hall. She had been so kind, so very friendly and warm. Amber was perplexed. How could she have died? She suddenly remembered what Cassandra had said: that Greg was in love with Lady Fitton Legh. But Greg had laughed when Amber had told him that.
Her heart was beating uncomfortably. She felt somehow afraid.
‘But how?’
‘An accident,’ Jay told her briefly.
‘Does my grandmother want me to go home for the funeral? Is that why you are here?’
Jay shook his head. ‘Lord Fitton Legh has announced that there will be only a small private family ceremony.’
‘I can hardly believe it,’ Amber admitted. ‘Everyone must have been so shocked. Especially poor Cassandra.’
There were dark shadows beneath Jay’s eyes and a certain hollowness to his face.
‘Amber.’ He stopped and exhaled. ‘Your grandmother has charged me with … that is to say, there is something she wishes me to tell you. Come and sit down.’
Obediently Amber sat down in the chair he was holding, waiting uncertainly whilst he took one opposite her. There was no fire in the grate and the room felt cold. This side of the house did not catch the sun.
‘You will know, of course, that Greg is on his way to Hong Kong.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Amber agreed. ‘He seemed pleased to be going when he wrote to me about it, although I don’t understand what that has to do—’ She broke off when Jay held up his hand to stop her.
‘There is no easy way to tell you this and I would rather not have been the one to do so, but your grandmother believes you should know, and I confess that I share her feelings. You are bound to hear of it anyway when you return to Macclesfield, and no doubt so well embroidered that you will not be able to tell truth from fiction.’
Amber’s stomach was churning nervously. She had no idea what it was that Jay had to tell her but she did know that it was something unpleasant.
Jay looked at Amber. There hadn’t been a minute on the train journey south – first class at his employer’s insistence – when he hadn’t been thinking of this meeting and what he would have to say, how much he might have to say and how he was going to say it.
It had shocked him to realise how much Amber had matured in such a short space of time; the way she had received him, her manner, her composure now as she controlled her emotions; the girl he had known had gone, and a calm and assured young woman had taken her place.
He took a deep breath. ‘The reason your grandmother sent Greg to Hong Kong was because he and Lady Fitton Legh had been involved.’
Amber absorbed the careful words and then looked at Jay. ‘Do you mean that they were having an affair?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Grandmother sent Greg away because she discovered that he was in love with Lady Fitton Legh?’
‘No. That is to say, I don’t think it was a matter of their being in love, so much as a matter of chance and circumstance, throwing them into one another’s company.’
‘Yes,’ Amber acknowledged.
Jay was amazed she seemed so calm, so unmoved by this latest news. My, but she was a world away from the girl he had known so well.
‘Unfortunately it was Lord Fitton Legh who first discovered the affair – not your grandmother – and there was some gossip about it before your grandmother was able to prevail upon him to see the wisdom of the matter being kept as private as possible. Whilst he demanded that Greg be punished by banishment from Cheshire, I think that both your grandmother and Greg himself were happy that he should distance himself from events.’
Greg had been happy about going to Hong Kong – Amber knew that from his letter to her – so obviously he hadn’t loved Caroline. She remembered now how she had sensed his discomfort the afternoon they had paid their call, and how too she had thought Lady Fitton Legh’s manner towards him more intimate than seemed proper. Had she perhaps cared for Greg more than he had for her?
‘I don’t understand. What has Greg going to Hong Kong to do with Lady Fitton Legh’s death?’
Jay sighed. He had known they would reach this point.
‘Lady Fitton Legh was to have had a child.’
Amber guessed immediately what he was not saying. ‘Greg’s child?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But it is possible that it could have been Greg’s child?’
‘Yes,’ Jay admitted. What else could he do? The whole of Cheshire was thick with gossip and supposition, and Cassandra had sworn that Caroline had told her that the child was Greg’s and had accused him of abandoning her.
‘Does Lord Fitton Legh know that it could have been Greg’s baby?’
‘I should think so, yes.’
‘Oh, poor Caroline.’
‘Her situation was an unhappy one.’ Untenable was the word he should have used, Jay thought.
‘What happened?’
‘She drowned, in the lake. Cassandra found her and raised the alarm but it was too late. It is believed that she must have stepped off the path onto the grass, slipped and been unable to save herself. There had been rain, and the pathway and bank were muddy.’
Amber swallowed hard. A tragic accident, or had Lady Fitton Legh, unable to face the gossip and disgrace of bearing a child that might not be her husband’s, taken her own life? Had she perhaps loved Greg even though he had not loved her? How must it feel to love a man and be abandoned by him in such circumstances? Amber shuddered.
Seeing it, Jay wondered if he had said too much.
‘You are shocked, I know,’ he tried to comfort her. ‘But it is better that you know the truth rather than hear all manner of wild tales. I know how much Greg means to you.’
‘But what is the truth?’ Amber asked him. ‘How can we know? She must have felt so desperate and alone to take her life and that of her child.’
Jay reached for her hand and held it within his own. Caroline Fitton Legh had been shallow and selfish, much like Greg in many ways. Amber, on the other hand, felt things very deeply for others as well as for herself.
‘We must accept that it was an accident, Amber, for Lady Fitton Legh’s sake as much as that of anyone else.’
Amber nodded. Everyone knew, of course, that it was against the law to commit suicide and that a person doing so could not be buried in consecrated ground, or even have their burial place marked.
‘I’m glad that it was you who told me, Jay.’
‘We should talk of happier things. I have brought you something that I hope will please you and give you some comfort,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Your grandmother has charged me with the task of cataloguing various items and papers she has kept over the years, and amongst them I found this.’
As he spoke he was reaching into the attaché case he had placed on the leather-covered mahogany desk, and removing what looked like a thick sketchpad.
As he handed it to her Amber’s hands shook.
‘I think this must have been your father’s.’
Her senses were already recording the familiar scent of lavender water and tobacco mixed with graphite and paper coming from the pad even before she had seen her father’s signature across the front. Holding it tightly to her chest, she looked up at Jay, her eyes blurring with fresh tears.
‘Thank you, oh, thank you, Jay.’ And then she put the sketchpad down on the desk and hurled herself into his arms.
This time he didn’t stop her, comforting her whilst she cried.
‘I shall never give up on my dream to do what my father wanted me to do,’ Amber told Jake passionately after he had released her and handed her a clean handkerchief.
‘So no handsome young man has touched your heart whilst you have been in London?’ Jake teased her.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure? Only your letters often mention a certain Lord Robert.’
Amber wound his handkerchief between her fingers. ‘I do like him, and we are friends, but only friends. I saw him kissing another man, and I do know what that means. Love can be so frightening sometimes.’
The words were out before she could stop them, causing her face to burn.
‘Yes,’ Jay agreed soberly. ‘It can.’ He paused and then added, ‘Such a love as Lord Robert’s, in this country at least, is against the law and punishable by imprisonment, and so it is rarely spoken of.’
‘I would not do so to anyone but you, Jay,’ Amber told him, sensing that he was giving her a warning. ‘Somehow I always feel I can tell you anything.’
‘I hope you will always feel like that.’
They looked at one another in silence, and it was Amber who was the first to break it.
‘How long are you in London for?’
‘I return to Macclesfield today.’
‘So soon?’ Her heart sank.
‘Yes, in fact I must go now if I am to catch my train,’ he said, getting ready to leave.
On impulse Amber turned to him. ‘You will keep writing to me, won’t you?’ When he made no response, she begged him urgently, ‘Please, Jay, you must. There is no one else I can trust. You are the only person who understands how I feel about … about things.’
She meant about her parents and the way in which her dreams had been taken from her, Jay knew. His heart ached for her, and not just his heart. He closed his eyes. For both their sakes he should refuse her request. She was not a child any more and he didn’t know how much he could trust his ability to maintain the old easy relationship they had shared when she had been.

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