Читать книгу Silk - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 20

Chapter Thirteen

In less than a week they would be leaving for the South of France, and the Belgrave Square mansion was busy with preparation.

‘Now, my dears,’ the countess informed Beth and Amber, ‘whilst the little ones will be going straight to Juan-les-Pins with Nanny and the servants, the three of us will be staying in Paris for a short time before joining them. You will both need clothes suitable for the South of France and these, of course, are best bought in Paris.’

Paris! Amber and Beth exchanged thrilled looks.

‘Oh, Amber, I am just so excited,’ Beth burst out after her mother had been called away to take an urgent telephone call. ‘It’s going to be such fun. We shall need new tennis dresses, and swimming togs. Oh, and I do hope that Mummy will let us have some of those new pyjama suits that Vogue says everyone is wearing.’

Amber was still thinking about the excitement of going to the South of France half an hour later as she went up the steps to the front door of Lady Rutland’s house in Cadogan Place. Louise and Lady Rutland were, she knew, out visiting an elderly cousin of Lady Rutland’s who lived in Richmond.

‘There’s a visitor to see you, miss,’ the butler told her as he let her in. ‘A Mr Fulshawe. He said to tell you that he’s here on your grandmother’s behalf. I’ve put him in the library.’

Jay was here and on her grandmother’s behalf? How ominous that sounded. Amber quickly walked across the hall and pushed open the library doors, trying to quell her anxiety as she did so.

Jay was standing in front of the unlit fire. He was wearing city clothes and, she realised with sudden surprise, he did not, as she had imagined, look out of place in them at all. Far from it. He looked, in fact, very handsome and smart.

‘Your grandmother instructed me to come,’ he told her. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’

‘Bad news?’ Her mind raced. What did he mean? She searched his face but there was no clue to be found there. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is it the mill?’

He was shaking his head.

‘Greg?’ Anxiety sharpened her own voice. ‘It is Greg, isn’t it?’ she demanded when she saw the small movement he made. ‘Something’s happened to him. What, Jay? Oh, please tell me.’

‘It isn’t Greg, although in a sense it does concern him. It’s Caroline Fitton Legh.’

‘Caroline?’ Amber repeated blankly. Jay had come all the way to London to tell her something about Caroline? Her anxiety for Greg had eased back, and now she felt confused.

‘There is no easy way to tell you this, Amber. Caroline is dead.’

Of all the things she might have been dreading hearing, the death of Caroline Fitton Legh had not been one of them. She was – had been – so young and so very alive. It seemed impossible. Amber remembered how beautiful she had looked the afternoon she and Greg called on her at Fitton Hall. She had been so kind, so very friendly and warm. Amber was perplexed. How could she have died? She suddenly remembered what Cassandra had said: that Greg was in love with Lady Fitton Legh. But Greg had laughed when Amber had told him that.

Her heart was beating uncomfortably. She felt somehow afraid.

‘But how?’

‘An accident,’ Jay told her briefly.

‘Does my grandmother want me to go home for the funeral? Is that why you are here?’

Jay shook his head. ‘Lord Fitton Legh has announced that there will be only a small private family ceremony.’

‘I can hardly believe it,’ Amber admitted. ‘Everyone must have been so shocked. Especially poor Cassandra.’

There were dark shadows beneath Jay’s eyes and a certain hollowness to his face.

‘Amber.’ He stopped and exhaled. ‘Your grandmother has charged me with … that is to say, there is something she wishes me to tell you. Come and sit down.’

Obediently Amber sat down in the chair he was holding, waiting uncertainly whilst he took one opposite her. There was no fire in the grate and the room felt cold. This side of the house did not catch the sun.

‘You will know, of course, that Greg is on his way to Hong Kong.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Amber agreed. ‘He seemed pleased to be going when he wrote to me about it, although I don’t understand what that has to do—’ She broke off when Jay held up his hand to stop her.

‘There is no easy way to tell you this and I would rather not have been the one to do so, but your grandmother believes you should know, and I confess that I share her feelings. You are bound to hear of it anyway when you return to Macclesfield, and no doubt so well embroidered that you will not be able to tell truth from fiction.’

Amber’s stomach was churning nervously. She had no idea what it was that Jay had to tell her but she did know that it was something unpleasant.

Jay looked at Amber. There hadn’t been a minute on the train journey south – first class at his employer’s insistence – when he hadn’t been thinking of this meeting and what he would have to say, how much he might have to say and how he was going to say it.

It had shocked him to realise how much Amber had matured in such a short space of time; the way she had received him, her manner, her composure now as she controlled her emotions; the girl he had known had gone, and a calm and assured young woman had taken her place.

He took a deep breath. ‘The reason your grandmother sent Greg to Hong Kong was because he and Lady Fitton Legh had been involved.’

Amber absorbed the careful words and then looked at Jay. ‘Do you mean that they were having an affair?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Grandmother sent Greg away because she discovered that he was in love with Lady Fitton Legh?’

‘No. That is to say, I don’t think it was a matter of their being in love, so much as a matter of chance and circumstance, throwing them into one another’s company.’

‘Yes,’ Amber acknowledged.

Jay was amazed she seemed so calm, so unmoved by this latest news. My, but she was a world away from the girl he had known so well.

‘Unfortunately it was Lord Fitton Legh who first discovered the affair – not your grandmother – and there was some gossip about it before your grandmother was able to prevail upon him to see the wisdom of the matter being kept as private as possible. Whilst he demanded that Greg be punished by banishment from Cheshire, I think that both your grandmother and Greg himself were happy that he should distance himself from events.’

Greg had been happy about going to Hong Kong – Amber knew that from his letter to her – so obviously he hadn’t loved Caroline. She remembered now how she had sensed his discomfort the afternoon they had paid their call, and how too she had thought Lady Fitton Legh’s manner towards him more intimate than seemed proper. Had she perhaps cared for Greg more than he had for her?

‘I don’t understand. What has Greg going to Hong Kong to do with Lady Fitton Legh’s death?’

Jay sighed. He had known they would reach this point.

‘Lady Fitton Legh was to have had a child.’

Amber guessed immediately what he was not saying. ‘Greg’s child?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But it is possible that it could have been Greg’s child?’

‘Yes,’ Jay admitted. What else could he do? The whole of Cheshire was thick with gossip and supposition, and Cassandra had sworn that Caroline had told her that the child was Greg’s and had accused him of abandoning her.

‘Does Lord Fitton Legh know that it could have been Greg’s baby?’

‘I should think so, yes.’

‘Oh, poor Caroline.’

‘Her situation was an unhappy one.’ Untenable was the word he should have used, Jay thought.

‘What happened?’

‘She drowned, in the lake. Cassandra found her and raised the alarm but it was too late. It is believed that she must have stepped off the path onto the grass, slipped and been unable to save herself. There had been rain, and the pathway and bank were muddy.’

Amber swallowed hard. A tragic accident, or had Lady Fitton Legh, unable to face the gossip and disgrace of bearing a child that might not be her husband’s, taken her own life? Had she perhaps loved Greg even though he had not loved her? How must it feel to love a man and be abandoned by him in such circumstances? Amber shuddered.

Seeing it, Jay wondered if he had said too much.

‘You are shocked, I know,’ he tried to comfort her. ‘But it is better that you know the truth rather than hear all manner of wild tales. I know how much Greg means to you.’

‘But what is the truth?’ Amber asked him. ‘How can we know? She must have felt so desperate and alone to take her life and that of her child.’

Jay reached for her hand and held it within his own. Caroline Fitton Legh had been shallow and selfish, much like Greg in many ways. Amber, on the other hand, felt things very deeply for others as well as for herself.

‘We must accept that it was an accident, Amber, for Lady Fitton Legh’s sake as much as that of anyone else.’

Amber nodded. Everyone knew, of course, that it was against the law to commit suicide and that a person doing so could not be buried in consecrated ground, or even have their burial place marked.

‘I’m glad that it was you who told me, Jay.’

‘We should talk of happier things. I have brought you something that I hope will please you and give you some comfort,’ he told her with a smile. ‘Your grandmother has charged me with the task of cataloguing various items and papers she has kept over the years, and amongst them I found this.’

As he spoke he was reaching into the attaché case he had placed on the leather-covered mahogany desk, and removing what looked like a thick sketchpad.

As he handed it to her Amber’s hands shook.

‘I think this must have been your father’s.’

Her senses were already recording the familiar scent of lavender water and tobacco mixed with graphite and paper coming from the pad even before she had seen her father’s signature across the front. Holding it tightly to her chest, she looked up at Jay, her eyes blurring with fresh tears.

‘Thank you, oh, thank you, Jay.’ And then she put the sketchpad down on the desk and hurled herself into his arms.

This time he didn’t stop her, comforting her whilst she cried.

‘I shall never give up on my dream to do what my father wanted me to do,’ Amber told Jake passionately after he had released her and handed her a clean handkerchief.

‘So no handsome young man has touched your heart whilst you have been in London?’ Jake teased her.

‘No.’

‘Are you sure? Only your letters often mention a certain Lord Robert.’

Amber wound his handkerchief between her fingers. ‘I do like him, and we are friends, but only friends. I saw him kissing another man, and I do know what that means. Love can be so frightening sometimes.’

The words were out before she could stop them, causing her face to burn.

‘Yes,’ Jay agreed soberly. ‘It can.’ He paused and then added, ‘Such a love as Lord Robert’s, in this country at least, is against the law and punishable by imprisonment, and so it is rarely spoken of.’

‘I would not do so to anyone but you, Jay,’ Amber told him, sensing that he was giving her a warning. ‘Somehow I always feel I can tell you anything.’

‘I hope you will always feel like that.’

They looked at one another in silence, and it was Amber who was the first to break it.

‘How long are you in London for?’

‘I return to Macclesfield today.’

‘So soon?’ Her heart sank.

‘Yes, in fact I must go now if I am to catch my train,’ he said, getting ready to leave.

On impulse Amber turned to him. ‘You will keep writing to me, won’t you?’ When he made no response, she begged him urgently, ‘Please, Jay, you must. There is no one else I can trust. You are the only person who understands how I feel about … about things.’

She meant about her parents and the way in which her dreams had been taken from her, Jay knew. His heart ached for her, and not just his heart. He closed his eyes. For both their sakes he should refuse her request. She was not a child any more and he didn’t know how much he could trust his ability to maintain the old easy relationship they had shared when she had been.