Silk

‘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

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.