Silk

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?’