PENNY JORDAN - Silk

PENNY JORDAN

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Publishers 2008

Copyright © Penny Jordan 2008

Penny Jordan asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560735

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007281480

Version: 2018-05-22

Teresa Chris, my agent who gave me hope.

Maxine Hitchcock, my editor for this book.

Yvonne Holland, for her ‘beyond excellent’ copy editing.

Everyone at Avon and HarperCollins who made the

publication of this book – which is so very special to me

– possible.

My editors at Richmond, for their long years of support

for Penny Jordan.

Tony who has always ‘been there’, to listen and research

and drive me all those places I have needed to go in

order to make this book possible.

For my readers – those who have read me as Penny Jordan for so many years and those who I hope will read this book and become as entranced by the fabric that is silk as I am.

Title Page Copyright Prologue Part One Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Part Two Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Part Three Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Part Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight Chapter Forty-Nine Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty-One Chapter Fifty-Two Chapter Fifty-Three Chapter Fifty-Four Epilogue An Interview With Penny Jordan About the Author About the Publisher

21 November 2002

Late November always had such a haunting melancholic feel about it; the best of the autumn gone, the glory of the leaves only a memory when the wind rattled the skeletal branches of the trees. Did trees have memories, Amber wondered as she looked through the window and out into the parkland of Denham Place. Did they, like her, remember the urgent joy of spring with all its budding promise? Did they still feel in the dreary grey an echo of the heavy, heady, sensual warmth that had been summer? A reminiscent smile touched her lips, thinner now than they had been when she had been in her own summer, but her smile still lifted her high cheekbones and shone in the faded beauty of her eyes. Spring and summer; they had been so long ago for her, and autumn too, patterned with its rich colours as vibrant as her beloved silk.

Winter held her now, bare and sometimes bleak but still beautiful.

There had been frost during the night, riming the grass, showing the tracks of the muntjac deer her own grandmother had installed at Denham. She had been dreaming of Blanche recently, and all those others whom she knew would be waiting for her. Time passed so slowly now and she grew impatient to be with them.

But not today.

‘Are you really ninety years old today?’

The solemn question, from her youngest-but-two great-great-grandchild, made her smile and place her hand on his dark head.

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘I really am.’

‘Harry! I’m sorry, Great-grandmother. He didn’t wake you, did he?’

‘No, dear. Don’t worry.’

The young woman – the wife of one of Amber’s great-grandsons – looked harassed and tense. Amber felt sorry for her. They didn’t have an easy time of it, the young women of this modern age.

She had lived almost a whole century, a time during which there had been so many changes. Did her great-granddaughter-in-law, who complained about the demands made on her by her husband’s political career, realise that when she, Amber, had been born women had not even had the vote? Did she care? Would Amber have cared in her place?

Ninety years. An eternity. Amber suspected that many of her relatives who had come here today to celebrate the event with her would think so, anyway.

Yet to her in some ways it was no longer than the length of a small sigh, a single breath in the heartbeat of time.

Life was no more than a clever game of smoke and mirrors, which now, at this stage of her life, had become so transparent for her that the past, and those with whom she had shared it, had become as accessible as a series of open doors through which she could walk freely. No longer did her memories come only as shadows in her dreams. They were as real as she was herself, sharing her joy now in what they had played a part in creating. She could hear her father’s great shout of laughter and feel the bear hug of joy with which he would hold his great-great-great-grandchild.

Amber had asked for her chair to be placed where she could both see the room and look out of the window so that she could view both the past and the present.

She had always loved Denham, and the house in turn loved her. They shared secrets that were theirs alone.

As though she were there in the room, Amber could almost feel the icy disapproval of her grandmother, whose pearls were now ornamenting the slender neck of her eldest great-grandchild, Natasha, to whom Amber had given them, in part because her looks reminded her so much of Blanche. Natasha’s looks might be Blanche’s, but her nature was not, and with a shudder Amber prayed that her life would not turn out like Blanche’s either.

So many memories: some of them of things that had brought her great joy and others that had brought her unbearable pain, but all of them precious in their own way.

The November day was bright, with that sharp sunshine that late autumn sometimes brings. The cake had been brought in and so had the champagne.

The house was older than she by two hundred years, and the room settled easily into the expectant silence – it had witnessed many celebrations, after all, some public and some very private. A small smile touched her mouth; a very private memory revived. She could almost feel the warmth of the gust of laughter of the man who had made that memory with her.