Sins

Emerald?

??s attitude and her way of life were alien to Amber. She had assumed that after the humiliation of her first marriage being annulled Emerald would quickly find herself a second titled husband–even if just to prove that she could. But instead Emerald had thrown herself into fast living, with a series of fleeting relationships with men who, though well born and wealthy, nevertheless had notorious reputations as womanisers.

Amber remembered how scornful Emerald had been on the only occasion she had tried to talk to her about her life, and the fast set of which she had become part, telling her coldly that she was in no position to talk about moral values, given her own past.

All Amber really wanted was for her family to be happy. Of course, she wasn’t going to worry them with her concerns about the growing problems Denby Mill, the family’s silk mill in Macclesfield, was facing.

Although she had her own considerable fortune, keeping Denby Mill going, and its workers in full-time employment, was almost a sacred duty to Amber. She had actively encouraged her family to share in her commitment to the mill and its future, but business wasn’t as sound now as she had hoped. Angelli Silk, where the twins were trainee designers, had recently decreased the number of orders to Denby as their own expansion meant that they could now fill those orders themselves.

Amber and Jay were going to Venice to see Ruigi Angelli, the head of the family business, later in the summer. If, for the sake of Denby Silk, she would have to plead with Ruigi not to cut their order any further, then that was exactly what she was prepared to do.

Amber looked at Rose, a familiar pain aching inside her. It seemed impossible now that there had ever been a time when she and Rose had been so close that Amber had thought of her as her own child.

It was only natural that the young should want to be independent and make their own mark on their world, and it wasn’t as though she and Rose had quarrelled or anything. No, it was just that she felt as though Rose had somehow stepped away from her and put up a barrier between them like a glass wall that could not be seen but which she felt and which would never let her in. Certainly the closeness she had once believed she would always share with her niece, and which would have allowed her to discuss her concerns for the mill’s future with her, had gone.

‘Are you all right, Grandma?’

The anxious question from her beloved grandson brought Amber a fresh stab of pain. How much she wished that he could be brought up surrounded by the love of a mother and a father. Was there something about their family that meant that none of its children could know that? Her own parents had died young, Emerald had been little more than a baby when she had lost the adoring father she had had in Robert, and now here was Emerald’s son also growing up without his father, and without the love of his mother. She must not think that, Amber told herself, as she smiled at her grandson and reassured him, ‘No, I’m just thinking how pleased Granddad will be to see you.’

‘Uncle Drogo says he’s going to come and see me as well.’

Drogo–there was another cause for concern. Robert adored Drogo, and Drogo had been very good to him, but if Beth was right then any day now Drogo was expected to propose to Gwendolyn. Once they were married Gwendolyn would not welcome Robert in Drogo’s life, given that he was Emerald’s son. Amber felt very strongly that Robert needed a younger male influence in his life than Jay could provide. She believed that the relationship, the love, that existed between Drogo and Robert echoed in some ways the love that Robert and Luc had shared, although, of course, theirs had been the closer bond of father and son.

Amber worried about Robert, and she worried about him all the more because he was Emerald’s son and because Emerald would not allow her to worry about her. In worrying so much about Robert’s emotional happiness, she was, Amber knew, also worrying about her daughter’s. What was going to happen to Emerald when nature finally forced her to recognise that she could no longer attract a ceaseless parade of lovers? How would she cope? What, if anything, did she have within herself to sustain her once she lost the satisfaction she derived from the outward show of her female power? It grieved Amber desperately to think of her daughter as someone with nothing with which to sustain herself, and it grieved her even more to know that that was her fault.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Rose was in a rush. She was having dinner with Josh–a regular monthly fixture–and if she wasn’t careful she was going to be late.

The past few years had seen many changes in his life, but through them all his friendship with Rose and their partnership had remained a constant.

Rose had been one of the witnesses to his Caxton Hall wedding to the model he had married in 1960, and she had commiserated with him when it had ended two years later in the divorce courts. She had celebrated with him when he had opened his second and then his third salon, and she had celebrated with him again when he had been named London’s top hairdresser.

She had even smiled as warmly as she could three months ago when he had introduced her to his new steady girlfriend, an American, Patsy Kleinwort, who had replaced the succession of pretty faces whose bodies had filled his bed since his divorce.

And through it all, foolishly, she knew she had cherished their friendship, their business partnership and their monthly dinner dates.

Josh was so successful now that he no longer needed a business partner, but neither of them ever referred to that fact, and Rose had taken his silence on the subject as a sign that he, like her, cherished the bond between them and the legal excuse they had for maintaining it. He must, she had decided with relief, want her in his life.

She certainly wanted him in hers. Because the truth was that on that Christmas Eve nearly a decade ago, when he had taken her to bed and banished the loathsomeness of Arthur Russell’s attempted rape of her, although she hadn’t known it then, nor indeed for several years afterwards, Rose suspected she had fallen in love with him. She hadn’t realised what had happened to her until it was too late. She had known, though, standing on the steps of Caxton Hall, watching him with his new bride, and she certainly knew it now.

She had tried to get over it, busying herself with her business, even going out with other men–and going to bed with them if she had felt there was any chance at all that they could help her to stop loving Josh, at least in the early years. Now, though, she had given up hope of stopping loving him. And besides, even if he had loved her in return…Rose frowned. She hated herself when she started being self-pitying and allowing that sense of dark misery deep inside her that she ‘wasn’t good enough’ to overwhelm. Things were different now. Girls from every part of the world and every nationality could be seen in London–pretty, confident, happy young women, with pride in themselves and their cultural identity; girls who were doing their own thing. The old stigmas had been trampled beneath the dancing feet of the sixties generation, and between their sheets. She knew this, so why was she still hung up on her own parentage? It was pathetic. She was pathetic.

She had tried. She hadn’t seen Josh for virtually six months after the wedding. Too busy shagging, he’d told her happily and besottedly when he had eventually surfaced from his post-wedding bliss. She’d smiled and nodded, his happiness reinforcing her own grim determination to cling to the only thing in her life she felt she could trust, determined to prove to the world that she might be the daughter of a wastrel and a Chinese peasant, but she still had the talent and the business skills to make it on her own.

She should have broken away then, she almost had, but Josh had taken to calling round at the small office further down the King’s Road that she’d found for herself, cadging cups of coffee and cigarettes and, later, pouring out his heart to her about the increasing problems within his marriage.

She had tried to look both surprised and nonjudgemental when he had told her, obviously astonished and feeling betrayed by the discovery, that Judy was a party girl who liked staying out until the small hours and then sleeping all day and that she resented the amount of time he spent working.

Rose could have told him what Judy was like right from the start.

Then there’d be the nights when Judy hadn’t come home, and the rows when she did, finally ending up with her admitting that she had found someone else.

Foolishly Rose had hoped that finally Josh might turn to her for comfort.

She had hoped through three more years and ten times as many girls, during which they had shared anniversaries and Christmases and even holidays, but never ever again a bed. Hope, as Rose had discovered, was a stubbornly obstinate plant, and deeply rooted. And once it had taken root it was very difficult to remove. She had also discovered that exactly as it said in the Bible, ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ And right now her heart was very sick indeed, because now Josh had met Patsy, who had taken one glance at Rose and given her a look that had said quite plainly ‘hands off’.

But Patsy wouldn’t be here tonight. Tonight Rose had him all to herself.