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.
