Silk

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

‘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

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.