Silk

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.