Scandals
Prepare to be SCANDALISED with international multi-million-copy selling Penny Jordan.For over five decades, Amber Fulshawe has been at the helm of Denham Silk, the Macclesfield mill that she inherited from her Grandmother. With many tumultuous years behind them, Amber and her beloved husband Jay, are looking to the legacy that their own grandchildren will inherit.But long-buried secrets and hidden desires have always lain at the heart of the family as this generation are finding out.Ambitious Robert is ready to assume his title and is about to marry his adoring cousin Olivia. But a dark passion threatens to destroy everything he holds dear.Naive beauty Kate is about to learn that love can be twisted and cruel.Damaged Nick blames his failing marriage on his domineering Father-in-law, but is something else at the heart of his woes?Domineering Cassandra's influence is waning, but she has one last nasty surprise…On the eve of her 80th birthday, will Amber be able to guide her family and Denham Silk towards a safe future?
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Scandals
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 HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Penny Jordan 2010
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: 9781847560759
Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007371686 Version: 2016-10-11
To silk – the most magical of fabrics that always casts its spell on me.
Table of Contents
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.’
