His voice was amused, tender, the timbre of it close to her ear affecting her in the most unexpected and extraordinary way.
‘I’ll make a bargain with you, Emerald. Yes, I’ll marry you, provided the only man in your bed from now on is me, and provided you agree that we should at least try for good sex. I mean, we do have an heir to get, after all, Maybe an heir and a spare, and a couple of girls as well. May as well found a dynasty; there’s all that money to find a home for.’
‘Drogo,’ Emerald started to protest, and then stopped, had to stop in fact, because Drogo was kissing her, and suddenly it seemed the most natural thing in the world to throw her arms around his neck and hold him close so that she could kiss him back.
His hand had just burrowed under her sweater, his touch on her bare breast and her nipple pleasingly sure and skilled, when Robbie pushed open the door, coming to an abrupt halt.
‘Uggh! You’re not kissing? That’s for cissies,’ he said with disgust.
‘And would-be mummies and daddies,’ Drogo whispered in Emerald’s ear as he discreetly straightened her sweater and told her, ‘I think we should resume this affirmation of our agreement to provide Robbie with a father, my heir-to-be with a mother, Osterby with a mistress and my bed with the only woman I’ve ever really wanted to hold in my arms there, a little later on, don’t you?’
His hand was still cupping the side of her breast, aching tormentingly now for more of his touch whilst her lower body pulsed with the need he had aroused. But she had made a promise to put Robbie first, she reminded herself, as she pulled away from Drogo and told her son, ‘Robbie, darling, guess what. Uncle Drogo and I are going to be married.’
‘You mean that we’re all going to be living together?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
Emerald looked at Drogo.
‘Very good,’ he agreed. ‘In fact very, very good indeed.’
Part Three
Chapter Fifty-Five
February 1977
Amber was the only person in the hospital waiting room. Outside it was still dark. There had been snow on the road from the heavy fall earlier in the day and she had been terrified that the ambulance wouldn’t be able to get through.
How was it possible that Jay, who was so fit, could have had a heart attack? Amber shivered and squeezed her eyes tightly shut in prayer.
‘Please don’t take him from me,’ she begged silently. ‘Please let him live.’
They’d wanted her to go home. They’d said there was nothing she could do, but she wanted to be here; she wanted to be with Jay.
The family would have to be told, of course. Amber tried to concentrate on the practical issues that would involve. Janey and John and their two children, both boys, were close at hand at Fitton Hall. Robbie, who loved his grandfather so much, was away skiing with friends, taking a year out before going up to Oxford, whilst Emerald and Drogo and their two girls would be at Osterby. Emerald, who was so desperate to give Drogo a son, and so angry because she had not done so.
Ella and Oliver were in New York with their daughter, and Rose would be in West Sussex. As always when she thought of Rose, Amber’s heart ached over the distance her niece had put between them, withdrawing from the close relationship they had once shared.
In the early years of her marriage Rose and Pete had always spent Christmas at Denham with the rest of the family, but more recently the problems with Pete’s health, caused by his drinking, meant that he was not well enough to go anywhere and as Rose virtually refused to leave his side, neither did she. Rose had put up a wall between them–between herself and all her family, in fact–fending off all Amber’s attempts to find out why, and Amber could only suppose sadly that it was because of her marriage, and out of some kind of loyalty to Pete, perhaps thinking that her family might be critical of him in an attempt to be protective of her. Rose was a very proud and a very private person, but Amber feared that she was also a very lonely person and her maternal heart ached for the niece she loved so much and still thought of as a daughter. And finally, of course, the twins. Polly would have to come from Venice, where she lived with her husband, Rocco Angelli, and their twin sons, whilst Cathy was living in St Ives with her artist partner and her two daughters from other relationships.
Jay loved their shared progeny so much, as they did him.
They couldn’t lose him. They mustn’t. How could such a healthy man have a heart attack? Amber’s body shook violently.
It had been a perfectly normal February day. In the morning Jay had driven over to see one of their tenant farmers, and Amber had had a charity committee meeting. Then in the afternoon they’d gone together to the mill for their regular monthly meeting with its manager.
When they’d got home Jay had complained about an ache in his arm, she remembered. He’d thought he must have got it from chopping wood for the fire. They’d laughed about the aches and pains of getting older–Jay was in his early seventies now, and she was sixty-four–not old at all really.
Over dinner they’d talked as they always did about their family, especially their grandchildren. They’d been in bed before midnight.
It had been just gone two o’clock when she’d woken up to find Jay sitting up in bed, clutching his chest, his face pale grey and beaded with sweat in the light of the bedside lamp she switched on.
She known immediately then, of course, panic coursing through her to set her own heart beating heavily and too fast, as she’d rung 999, whilst Jay protested that there was nothing wrong with him, and that she wasn’t to fuss.
He’d still been protesting when the ambulance had arrived.