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Chapter Seven

‘It’s intolerable and if I had my way he’d be thrashed within an inch of his life.’

Blanche Pickford looked at her visitor, schooling her expression not to betray the fury she was feeling.

‘I agree, Lord Fitton Legh; it is indeed intolerable when a married woman lies to her husband in an attempt to conceal an affair. As for your wish to thrash my grandson within an inch of his life, all I can say is that it takes two to commit adultery.’

Her neighbour’s already mottled skin turned almost purple with rage. ‘You have not heard me correctly, obviously, madam. It is your grandson who attempted to force himself on my wife. Dammit all, woman, there was a witness. Cassandra saw everything.’

‘Yes, so you said,’ Blanche agreed, adding pointedly, ‘Your poor wife, she must have felt very beset, having two ardent supplicants for her favours.’

Lord Fitton Legh looked as though he might explode. ‘Allow me to tell you, madam, that your reaction betrays your class, or rather your lack of it,’ he sneered. ‘Any person of breeding would understand—’

‘What? What is there to understand other than that my grandson and your wife have been having an affair under your nose? Is blue blood thinner than red? Do you wish me to understand that persons of breeding do not have affairs? Come, Lord Fitton Legh, let’s be plain with one another. You wish to see my grandson punished.’

‘Punished? I shall see to it that he is ruined. You can make up your mind to that. You won’t be foisting him off on the county as a prospective parliamentary candidate now, Mrs Pickford. When people learn of the way he has insulted my wife— Oh, you may look at me like that, but Cassandra is prepared to swear on the Bible that the crime was all his. My wife had confided to her how upset she was about your grandson’s ungentlemanly manner towards her, and naturally when Cassandra heard my wife cry out she hurried to her aid, only to discover your grandson on the point of assaulting her.’

‘Shocking indeed, and I dare say a total pack of lies. Whilst it is none of my business I would caution you against making your story public, Lord Fitton Legh. There are always those who believe that there is no smoke without a fire and, after all, Lady Fitton Legh is a very beautiful and high-spirited young woman married to a much older husband.’

‘Why, you … I’ll ruin him, I tell you. He won’t be able to show his face in Cheshire for the rest of his life.’

‘I understand your feelings. Greg has behaved badly. I am quite prepared to punish him for that by banishing him from Cheshire – and indeed from England – for a time. However, I am not prepared to stand by and see him ruined.’

‘You can’t prevent it.’

‘Such a pity that you should have to face this additional worry. I hear that your father-in-law has lost a very great deal of money on Wall Street recently.’

Blanche paused and looked down at her hands, as though more intent on studying them than continuing their discussion, before lifting her gaze to Lord Fitton Legh’s face and continuing almost gently, ‘You yourself are currently rather, shall we say, overextended – so much so, in fact, that you have had to mortgage Fitton Hall.’

‘You can’t possibly know that.’

‘Oh, but you see I do. You know, it is always rather foolish, I think, to let young people have their head without checking them, especially a certain type of young person. I am thinking of poor Cassandra here. One does not like to say too much, of course, but there has been talk about her preference for her own sex. I dare say there will be those who will wonder about the true provenance of her story with regard to my grandson. So sordid and unpleasant. But alas, it is too late now to remedy the situation. However, I’m sure that, two older and wiser heads together, between us you and I can come up with something more balanced and closer to the truth. A young man, foolish and impressionable, falls in love with a devoted and beautiful young wife. A regrettable situation but understandable. Of course, neither of them has any intention of giving way to their feelings. They are, after all, very honourable. Sadly, though, events conspire to throw them into one another’s company, a foolish moment of weakness on the part of the young man, allied to loneliness on the part of the devoted wife, lead to an embrace, which is instantly regretted by both parties. Unfortunately, though, this embrace was witnessed by an overexcitable young woman who has yet to learn the ways of the world.

‘Those with wiser heads decide that the young man should be sent away in order to learn the error of his ways; the devoted wife remains exactly that, of course. The young man – naturally and honourably – says nothing of the fact that the lonely wife invited him into the privacy of her private quarters and without a chaperone, knowing that her husband was absent. He, however, did admit this folly on her part to, shall we say, his family. But why torment the poor girl with the threat of even more shame than she must already bear? She has learned her lesson, we must suppose.’

‘That’s blackmail.’

‘No, Lord Fitton Legh,’ Blanche corrected him coldly. ‘It’s self-preservation. I understand that your pride has suffered a severe blow, but I am sure that the application of a comfortable sum of money – enough, shall we say, to pay off your creditors and enable you to keep Fitton Hall – will aid its speedy recovery.’

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.