Silk

‘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.

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.