So she had finally heard that old story. Jay had wondered when she would. It was fairly common knowledge locally, after all. His cousin Cassandra had enjoyed regaling him with it when she had heard it from the Fitton Leghs, not realising he had already heard it, but then Cassandra had inherited that flawed de Vries pride, which he personally found so warped and destructive.
Jay put his hand on Amber’s arm, but she shook him off.
Amber ran up the stairs and along the landing until she had reached the welcome security of her bedroom. Her grandmother might consider it a form of punishment to say that she had to remain here, but she preferred to be here and on her own with her despair.
She tensed as she heard a brief knock on the door, but relaxed when Mary, the parlour maid, came in. Mary was twenty-five and courting a grocery assistant in Macclesfield. She had a bubbly personality and a warm smile, but now she was avoiding looking at her, Amber saw, as she went towards the desk and said apologetically, ‘The mistress says as how I was to come up and remove your drawing things, Miss Amber.’
Amber’s face burned hot with humiliation and grief. Her grandmother must have guessed that she would want to find solace in her drawing. Well, if she thought that she would apologise in order to get them back, she was wrong!
It was growing dark by the time Jay negotiated the rutted carriageway to Felton Priory in the shooting brake with which Blanche Pickford had provided him as her estate manager. She had informed him he may use the motor car ‘for a certain amount of private motoring, since I dare say you will want to see your grandfather, and he is not obviously able to visit you.’
Had those words been a kind gesture on Blanche’s part or an unkind underlining of the fact that Barrant was confined to a wheelchair? Jay knew which his grandfather would have chosen to believe.
Dusk cloaked the shabbiness of the house and its surrounding parkland. Unlike Denham Place, Felton Priory could never be described as an architectural gem, being a haphazard mixture of differing periods and personal styles, refronted by the fifth Viscount in a pseudo-Gothic style of outstanding ugliness.
With typical arrogance, or perhaps artistic blindness, Jay’s grandfather insisted on considering Felton the premier aristocratic residence in Macclesfield, if not Cheshire, and Jay was good-humoured enough to indulge him, although in truth Jay much preferred the handsome Dorset rectory where he himself had grown up.
Jay considered himself fortunate that the de Vries inheritance of pride and arrogance had passed him by.
He parked the shooting brake on the gravel forecourt, taking the steps to the heavy portico with lithe strides.
His grandfather’s butler opened the door to him. Jay had telephoned ahead to warn him of his visit, knowing that Bates, older than his grandfather by a good ten years, and rheumatic, found it increasingly painful to walk the long distance from the warmth of the butler’s pantry to the main entrance.
‘Good evening, Master Jay,’ Bates welcomed him, taking Jay’s driving coat, cap and scarf.
‘Good evening, Bates,’ Jay returned. ‘How is the rheumatism?’
‘Not too bad at all, thank you. Your grandfather has had a bad couple of days, though, I’m afraid.’
‘Thank you for warning me. His legs are playing up again, are they?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
Despite the fact that both his legs had had to be amputated, Barrant suffered acute pain in what his doctor had described to Jay as ‘phantom limbs’. When the pain was at its worst the only thing that could relieve it was morphine, which had to be prescribed by Dr Brookes.
Jay’s grandfather vehemently objected to the fact that a law had been passed that meant that contrary to what had been common practice beforehand, morphine and all its derivatives could now only be obtained by doctor’s prescription. As Jay knew, his grandfather wasn’t the only one to feel that the government’s Dangerous Drugs Act had interfered in something over which they had no right. For many of the Bright Young Things of the twenties, as the newspapers had labelled a certain fast set of rich young men and women, the law had come too late. They were already, like poor Elizabeth Ponsonby, the young socialite whose wild ways had been referred to in the gossip columns, addicted to both drink and drugs, and as with prohibition in America, all the law had done was drive the supply and purchase of intoxicants and narcotics underground.
‘Your grandfather’s waiting for you in the library, Master Jay.’
Felton Priory’s library was a large rectangular room, which Jay’s grandfather had made his personal domain after his accident. A Chinese lacquered screen discreetly concealed the bed, which Jay had had brought downstairs so that his grandfather could ‘rest’ when he felt like doing so, instead of having to use the cumbersome dumb waiter to transport him and his wheelchair up to the second landing that gave access to his bedroom.
‘Ha, here at last, are you?’ Barrant greeted Jay. ‘I dare say that Blanche works you hard and wants her pound of flesh from you. Bates,’ he roared at the butler, ‘bring me a brandy – and make it a large one.’
Jay looked at his grandfather with concern. ‘I thought that Dr Brookes had forbidden you to drink brandy?’
Barrant gave his grandson a saturnine look. ‘No doctor tells me what to do. If I want a brandy I’ll damn well have one. Anyway, what does he know? Young fool. His father was bad enough. Thought he’d end up killing me before he retired, but the son’s even worse.’
The old man was obviously having a bad day.
His hair, once as thick and dark as Jay’s own, was white now. Pain had carved deep grooves in the flesh at either side of his mouth, and hollowed out the features beneath the high cheekbones. Fierce passions still glittered in the dark blue eyes, though driven, Jay suspected, by frustration and arrogance.
Barrant took the brandy Bates had brought him without any acknowledgement, waiting until the butler had left before saying sharply, ‘So the Pickford boy is putting himself up as a candidate to take over Barclay Whiston’s seat, is he? That will be Blanche’s idea, of course. He won’t get it. Too much of a lightweight, and no amount of money is going to alter that. He’s not the man his father was.’
A look Jay couldn’t interpret crossed his grandfather’s face. ‘Get on well with him, do you?’
‘Everyone gets on with Greg,’ Jay answered calmly.
‘Cassandra don’t think much of him.’
Though Jay didn’t say anything, Barrant still grunted and said, ‘You’re right, it’s time Cassandra found herself a husband. No looks to speak of, but she’s got de Vries blood in her veins. Too sharp in her manner by half, though. No man wants a wife with a tongue like vinegar. Don’t know where she gets it from. Certainly not from your grandmother. She was as meek as milk.
‘Cassandra was telling me that Blanche is sending the girl to London with some fool idea of thinking she can buy a title for her.’
‘Amber is to be presented at court, yes.’
‘Good-looker, is she?’
‘Yes.’
Barrant grunted again. ‘She’s still trade, though. Your grandmother was a Fitton Legh. Her ancestors came over with the Conquest, just like the de Vrieses. It’s good blood that counts in a marriage, not good looks. Like to like. You remember that when your time comes. Not that you’re a true de Vries, since it’s its father’s name a child carries and not its mother’s.’
The bitterness in his grandfather’s voice was as familiar to Jay as the reasons for it. Barrant de Vries had never got over losing his son and he never would. His grandfather would have valued him far more, Jay knew, if he had been born to Barrant’s son and not one of his daughters.
‘You’re