Scandals

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Chapter One (#ulink_b4c27541-2bcd-50da-8d27-db50063d50a8)

Christmas 1991

‘It won’t be long now. They’ll all be here soon,’ said Amber.

Jay gave his wife an understanding smile, acknowledging her excitement.

They were in the drawing room at Denham, the elegant Palladian house Amber had inherited from her grandmother. The low-lying December sun was striking beams of pale light through the windows to illuminate the room’s soft blue and yellow décor, as Jay and Amber anticipated the arrival of their family.

Amber may have just had her seventy-ninth birthday, but even now she possessed a child’s delight in the magic of Christmas.

This youthful enthusiasm she had never lost, combined with her experience of life, had made her the driving force behind the success of Denby Silk, the Macclesfield silk mill, she had also inherited from her grandmother Blanche Pickford, instigating innovative procedures and designs. Amber had opened her own interior design studio in London’s Walton Street, and kept the business going during the war, and the even more economically difficult post-war years. Eventually she had handed over the day-to-day running of the business to younger members of the family so that they could continue and expand on her success. Here was a woman who had had the strength to endure the deaths of her first husband, Robert, Duke of Lenchester, and her son, and to go on from that to support and protect her own family here at Denham, as well as Jay’s own motherless daughters, before making his life the happiest it had ever been by agreeing to marry him. She had given him two more children, their twin daughters, Polly and Cathy. And now their shared extended family were ‘coming home,’ to Denham to celebrate Christmas.

Continuing a routine that was almost as traditional for them as Christmas itself, he asked her obligingly, ‘So who exactly is coming?’

‘Everyone,’ Amber assured him, smiling.

Ticking off the names on her fingers, she listed them for him, starting with the eldest: Jay’s two daughters from his first marriage.

‘Ella and Oliver are flying in from New York. They’re bringing Sam with them, but Olivia has a writing commission she has to finish for one of the magazines she freelances for so she’ll be coming on a later flight than her parents.

‘Janey’s going to come over later this morning and stock the freezer, and of course she and John and the boys will be spending Christmas Day with us. Luckily both boys will be able to come home.’

Janey, Jay’s younger daughter, and her husband, John, Lord Fitton Legh, lived only a few miles away from them in Cheshire at Fitton Hall. Harry, their heir, was currently working as a land agent for a wealthy landowner in Norfolk, since leaving Royal Agricultural College in Circencester, whilst his younger brother, David, had followed Fitton family tradition and was undergoing army officer training at Sandhurst.

‘Emerald telephoned yesterday to say that she and Drogo will be here on Christmas Eve,’ Amber continued, ‘and that Katie will come to us direct from Oxford.’ She paused and then admitted ruefully, ‘I know that Emerald is my daughter, Jay, but I do wish sometimes that she wasn’t quite so…so…privileged, and so, well, such a snob. It certainly isn’t Drogo’s fault, even if he is a duke.’

Drogo, Emerald’s husband, had inherited the title of Duke of Lenchester from Amber’s first husband, Robert. Emerald’s discovery that her father was not Robert, as she had always believed, but Jean-Philippe du Breveonet, a French artist, had led to rift between Amber and her eldest daughter, and even though that rift was now healed, Emerald had insisted that the fact that Robert was not her father was to remain a secret known only to Amber, Jay, Emerald herself, Drogo, and, unfortunately, her ex-mother-in-law, the Dowager Princess of Lauranto.

‘Emma and James will be coming with Emerald and Drogo.’ Amber proceeded with her list, referring to Emerald’s elder daughter and her younger son. ‘I’m so glad, James and Sam get on so well with one another. I suppose it helps that they are a similar age.’

‘What about Robert?’ Jay teased his wife. ‘You haven’t mentioned him yet.’

Robert was Amber’s eldest grandson, Emerald’s son from her brief runaway marriage to Alessandro, Crown Prince of Lauranto, a marriage that had been dissolved via the machinations of Alessandro’s mother.

Robert, now in his thirties, lived in London where he worked as a very successful architect, running his own practice.

‘Robert’s driving himself down.’

‘And coming alone?’

Jay knew that it was a matter of some concern to Amber that Robert was still single and seemed to prefer to have a constant and rapid succession of women through his life and his bed rather than to settle down.

‘Yes, he’s coming on his own. I do wish he could find the right person, Jay. Life hasn’t been as kind as it might to him. And although I would never say so to Emerald, I don’t think that the life he lived with her as a child can have helped, on top of knowing that his father didn’t want him. Olivia adores him, I know, but Robert has never shown any interest in her. Oh, don’t look at me like that,’ she laughed. ‘I’m not going to turn into a matchmaking grandmother. As it happens, I don’t believe that Olivia and Robert would be right for one another. Robert needs someone who will make him work hard to win her. Much as I love him I have to admit that some things in life have come too easily for him and that has made him rather thoughtless and arrogant. He is a very good-looking young man, independently wealthy and well connected, but that loving sweetness he had as a child has gone, and I do worry that unless he starts to think about others a little more, his life will be less happy than it could be.’

‘Things haven’t been easy for him. He’s always admired Drogo, and Drogo has been an excellent stepfather to him, but it is Jamie who will inherit from Drogo, not Robert.’

‘Do you think that is the root of the problem, Jay? Do you think that Robert minds that it is Jamie, and not he, who will one day step into Drogo’s shoes?’

The anxiety in Amber’s voice had Jay immediately seeking to reassure her.

‘No. To be truthful I think the problem is the situation ation with his real father. From the moment he could understand the situation, Robert has known that his father, or, more accurately, his paternal grandmother, has refused to accept or acknowledge him. When Alessandro remarried, Robert must have expected, as we all did, that there would be a child from that marriage to continue the line. But now Alessandro has died without producing an heir, and Robert’s paternal grandmother is courting him with a view to him stepping into his late father’s shoes. The unwanted unworthy child has become the desired and soughtafter future Crown Prince. In view of that it is perhaps no wonder that Robert has become increasingly cynical.’

Amber sighed. ‘Emerald is adamant that she does not want Robert to accept either the olive branch that Alessandro’s mother has extended to him, or the crown, but the Dowager Princess is a very determined woman who is used to having her own way. She dominated Alessandro and was the power behind the throne during his lifetime. Emerald has always refused to tell Robert about her real father, and although she hasn’t said so, some of her antagonism to this recent visit Robert has made to Lauranto to see his grandmother must be because she is afraid that the Dowager Princess might tell Robert the truth. I hope she doesn’t, Jay. That information should come from Emerald. I begged her to tell Robert whilst he was still young enough to accept it matter-of-factly and not to make the mistake I made when I concealed the truth from her, but she wouldn’t. I know that people who don’t know him think that Robert is too proud, that he has too high an opinion of himself, but I think that’s just a defence mechanism he’s adopted to protect himself. I still remember him asking me if it was true that his father had left his mother because he didn’t want him. Poor little boy. Some other boy at school had taunted him about Emerald and Alessandro’s marriage being annulled.

Jay patted his wife’s hand. He knew that Robert, her first-born grandchild, had a very special place in her heart.

‘What about the others?’ he asked her. ‘Will Rose be coming?’

At the mention of her late cousin Greg’s daughter, from his relationship with his Hong Kong Chinese mistress, Amber’s face lit up. She had loved Rose from the minute she had seen her, a tiny, very sick, unloved baby, brought back to Denham by Greg.

Rose had grown up at Denham with Jay’s own daughters and Emerald, and she now lived in London with her husband, Josh, a very successful entrepreneur who had built his hairdressing business into a multimillionpound empire. Rose and Josh did not have any children of their own, but Rose had taken to her heart her husband’s illegitimate son from a brief affair he had had before he and Rose had met.

‘Rose and Josh are coming. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Rose here.’

‘So that just leaves Polly and Cathy,’ said Jay, referring to his and Amber’s own twin daughters.

‘Cathy and Sim are driving up from Cornwall with the girls, and Polly and Rocco will be flying in from Venice with their two boys. We are so very lucky, Jay. I am lucky,’ Amber stressed, reaching out to hold his hand, ‘because I have you.’

It was typical of her that she should say that, Jay thought.

‘No, Amber, it is I who am the fortunate one,’ he told her tenderly.

Theirs had been a wonderfully happy marriage, all the more so, Jay reckoned, because of the despair and heartache they had both endured before they had married one another, Amber through the betrayal of her first love, Jean-Philippe, then through the road accident that had resulted in the death of both her husband and dearly loved son, and Jay himself through an unhappy marriage to his mentally unstable first wife.

She had been so blessed, Amber thought gratefully in turn, and in so many different ways, but the blessing she valued the most had been Jay’s survival of the heart attack that she had feared would take him from her. They had waited so long to share their love and be together gether, that even now she still felt that every minute they shared was a precious gift. It grieved her that not all their children and grandchildren had found such happiness in their lives.

‘So that’s everyone accounted for then, is it?’ Jay teased.

‘Not quite. There’s still Cassandra,’ Amber reminded him.

They looked at one another and their faces fell.

‘I know that she’s your cousin, Jay, and of course John’s stepmother, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t forget the past and her cruelty.’

‘I know.’ Jay gave Amber’s hand a gentle pat. Its skin might be soft and loose and mottled with age now, but to him she was still the same beautiful girl she had been when she was seventeen, and his love for her had had to be a secret he could not share with anyone.

Cassandra! Jay had no more liking for his cousin than Amber did.