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Lady Fitton Legh inclined her head. ‘I do hope that it isn’t necessary for me to point out to you that it would be most unwise of you to indulge in any foolish romantic notions about my stepson, Rose.’
Rose’s heart skipped a beat. She desperately wanted to escape from the humiliation she knew was coming but of course it was impossible for her to do anything other than remain where she was.
‘John has always been kind to me,’ she said shakily. ‘I think of him as a good friend, not…not someone I might marry.’
‘Marry? Someone of your sort? I should think not indeed. If that was what you were hoping for then you are truly a fool. I was aware that you were mooning over him, but it never occurred to me that you were actually so lost to the reality of your own situation and the circumstances of your birth that you would dare to think of marriage.’ Her angry contempt was plain.
Rose wanted to defend herself but the awfulness of the situation was such that she couldn’t gather her thoughts.
‘Let me be plain with you, Rose,’ Lady Fitton Legh continued coldly. ‘My stepson is a young man and, like all young men, he has, shall we say, certain needs. It is my concern that given your background and your parentage you might be unwisely tempted into satisfying those needs. To follow in the footsteps of your mother, in fact, as one hears your sort does tend to do. That would not be a good idea.’
‘You have no right to talk to me like this,’ Rose protested, fighting back the hollow sick feeling of shocked misery that had invaded her stomach. ‘I have not done anything wrong.’
‘Not yet, perhaps, but you would be doing something very wrong indeed, Rose, if you encouraged John to have any kind of physically intimate relationship with you. Yo u see, it is not just a matter of you having a woman of the very worst sort as your mother, there is every chance that you and John could share the same father.’
If Rose had been shocked before, that shock was nothing compared with what she was feeling now.
‘No. That isn’t possible.’
‘I’m afraid that sadly it is. There must be something in the Pickford blood that drives those who possess it to behave immorally. Before she died, John’s mother confessed to me that Greg Pickford could be John’s father.’
‘You’re just saying that; it isn’t true–it can’t be true. If it was then someone would have said something.’ Rose felt bewildered and confused, unable to accept what Lady Fitton Legh was saying and yet at the same time sharply aware that the other woman meant every word. How could it be possible, though, for her and John to have the same father and them not know?
‘Would they? Your aunt certainly knows, and so too does my brother,’ Lady Fitton Legh informed her coolly. ‘If you don’t believe me why don’t you ask them? But, of course, I must warn you that if you do you will be risking John’s future. Once it becomes public knowledge that he might not be my late husband’s son, then of course John, being the man that he is, would feel obliged to forfeit the title and the estate as a matter of honour.’
What Lady Fitton was saying was
true, Rose knew. Now she felt nauseous.
‘You are no doubt wondering why I have kept silent on this matter all these years. The truth is that it suits me to do so, since John is a very good stepson. Were he to lose the estate then I would lose my own position. But what does not suit me is for you to become involved in any way with him. There will be no more Pickford bastards foisted off on the house of Fitton Legh. You do realise what it would mean if John were your half-brother, don’t you, Rose? Yo u do know what incest is, don’t you, and how disgusting and sickening a sin it is to have carnal knowledge of a person who shares your own blood? To even want that knowledge is a dreadful sin, a deviation from all that is decent and normal, although of course we cannot know with your heritage, your parentage, if words such as decency and normality can truly apply. No wonder poor Amber has felt obliged to keep you close to her, and keep an eye on you. At least John had someone respectable and acceptable as his mother. Your mother, of course, was little more than a whore. Have you inherited her nature, Rose? Under that seemingly innocent face you show to the world are you secretly as corrupt and vile as the woman who gave you life?
‘Poor Amber, I remember how horrified she was when her brother arrived home with you. No wonder she left you here at Denham rather than take you into her own home. I dare say that secretly, like her grandmother, she hoped that you wouldn’t survive. And it would have been so much better for everyone else if you hadn’t, Rose, especially John. Dear John, such a conservative, respectable young man. He would be horrified if he suspected that you and he might share the same father. He is kind to you now because that is his nature, but imagine how he would feel if he were to think that you could be half-brother and-sister. He would hate you for the shame that would bring him.’
‘Stop it,’ Rose begged her, white-faced. ‘Please stop it.’
Lady Fitton Legh’s smile was cruel and contemptuous.
‘Poor Rose, your very existence is a source of shame and fear to those who are closest to you, the truth a secret they are forced to keep, whilst pretending to care for you. Dear Amber always was good at appearing to be charitable. So clever of her to find a way of keeping you close to her whilst gaining everyone’s approval.’
What Cassandra Fitton Legh was saying wasn’t true. Amber loved her, really loved her, Rose wanted to say, but somehow the words stuck in her throat, whilst the barbs John’s stepmother had cast into her heart were fast tearing at it.
‘What I have told you is for your own good, Rose, and of course for John. If you truly love him, as I believe you do, then it must remain our secret.’
Their secret and a burden she would have to carry for the rest of her life, Rose recognised, but somehow far worse than the pain of knowing she could only love John as a brother, was that of knowing that the bond, the love, the everything she had thought she and Amber shared was a fiction, a folly, a deceit deliberately created to conceal the truth.
Lady Fitton Legh had been right to say that it would have been better if she had not survived, Rose thought bitterly.
‘John himself knows nothing of it, or of his mother’s dreadful behaviour, of course,’ Lady Fitton Legh was continuing, ‘and you must never tell anyone else, do you understand? Because if you do it will be John’s future you are destroying. After all, his mother, poor fool, may have been mistaken, and John could be her husband’s child after all. For John’s sake we must just believe that that is so, mustn’t we?’
Numbly Rose nodded. She felt sick with shock and grief. Her life as she knew it was in tatters around her feet.
Chapter Fifteen
Emerald stared at the card in front of her in disbelief.
‘HRH The Princess Marina and HRH The Duke of Kent regret that they are unable to accept…’
No! She had planned everything so carefully, right down to rehearsing the way she would deliberately lean into the duke when he danced with her so that he couldn’t help but be aware of her body. She looked at the ‘with regret’ card again. Surely it was a mistake, an error made by some stupid social secretary. Surely even now the duke was insisting to his mother that they must attend. He couldn’t not be there. It was impossible, unthinkable, unbearable…
