by Penny Jordan
And as Charles stepped back from her she knew that the moment was lost. Her heart and body ached tormentingly for what might have been as she lumbered unhappily away from Charles and towards the door.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GERALDINE FRANCES stared resignedly out of her bedroom window. Rothwell felt so vast and empty with both Charles and her father gone.
They had left within an hour of one another, immediately after an early breakfast.
Charles had business to attend to, and, while she could applaud his industry, Geraldine Frances couldn’t help wishing that he could have put his clients off so that they could have spent this last day together, especially since her father was absent.
He, too, had business in the City, a lunch appointment with an old friend who was seeking his advice on some investment matters. Their lunch would extend until well into the afternoon, he had told Geraldine, and so instead of returning to Rothwell he would stay overnight at his London club before leaving for Belvoir in the morning.
Now, when it was too late, she was beginning to regret that she had not been included in the invitation. She need not have hunted, and at least she would have seen Charles in the evenings.
When she had suggested that instead of accompanying her father he might return to Rothwell, Charles had reminded her that he was not a wealthy man, that he had a living to earn, and that mingling with the other guests might, if he was lucky, bring him in some new clients.
Once again Geraldine Frances had not been able to find any fault with the business logic of his statement, but her heart felt sore all the same.
She went downstairs, and wandered aimlessly through the house. Most of the staff were on holiday, spending time with their families. The huge portraits of past earls and their countesses stared down at her as she walked down the stairs. She searched their aristocratic features, looking in vain for some resemblance to her own plainness, but there was none.
Had the artists flattered their sitters, or was it just some malevolent act of fate that had decreed that she, and she alone, should be marked out so excruciatingly?
Downstairs she walked into the library and picked up a handful of trade journals. She might as well catch up with her reading; there was nothing else for her to do.
She looked outside. It was a cold, crisp day, with frost whitening the grass. Ideal hunting weather, and just treacherous enough underfoot to add that extra exhilaration of danger that her father loved so much.
Once she would have enjoyed the cold freshness of such a day herself, either riding or walking, but oddly, since she had grown so obese, she felt the cold in a way she had never done before.
Now she shivered, despite the central heating and the vast fire burning in the library grate.
The coldness was inside, she recognised… and not just a coldness, but an emptiness as well. Despite the fact that it was less than an hour since she had finished her breakfast, she put down the journals and headed resolutely for the kitchen.
The atmosphere of breathless silence that greeted her as she walked in made her ears burn. She had hoped that the kitchen would be empty, but the staff were having their coffee-break, and so she was forced to retreat in stumbling disorder. Both the girls sitting at the table were about her own age, small, dark-haired and enviably slender. Tears welled in her eyes as she hurried back to the library. Upstairs in her wardrobe, hidden behind her clothes, were tins of biscuits and sweets, huge bars of chocolate… cheese and biscuits… She needed their comfort now to warm the cold place deep inside her… She needed it so badly…
Later she knew would come the inevitable self-disgust and loathing… the silent vows never to touch another morsel of food until she was thin… never again to indulge in anything so disgusting, so—primitive—but while she was gorging herself on her hoarded food nothing mattered but the need to cram it into her mouth as quickly as she could.
The day stretched emptily in front of her. She had no friends she could telephone or visit, and even if she had, it was Charles’s company she wanted, not another woman’s.
In London, James’s lunch went on even longer than he had anticipated. It was dark before he eventually left the Connaught. Inhaling the cold crispness of the winter air, he decided against using a taxi. He would walk instead. Do him good to have a bit of exercise… All that food and port was sitting far too heavily on his stomach, and he had a hard few days ahead of him… The walk would clear his head.
Halfway to his club, he suddenly remembered that he had intended to telephone Charles to ask if he wanted a lift down to Belvoir in the morning.
Much as he might privately dislike his nephew, James had a highly developed sense of family pride; an old-fashioned trait which demanded that, no matter what went on privately, in public the family put up a united front. It was something he had developed through his father’s training.
And so he changed direction and headed for Rothwell Square.
Realising the value of the London property he had inherited from his father, investing in it by improving the tall Georgian houses and having them restored and renovated, had been one of his earliest financial coups. Now the leases on these properties brought into the estate a very good income indeed.
The difference between the worth of selling the property outright and holding on to it, letting it out on lease, had been one of the first things he had taught Geraldine Frances.
In every lease was the stipulation that no alterations whatsoever could be made to the plain, almost austere Georgian facades of the houses, nor could the rows of iron railings that separated their basements from the pavement be painted anything other than very dark green tipped with gold that made Rothwell Square stand out so distinctively from its fellows.
The small enclosed private garden to which only inhabitants of the square had access had rails of the same colour, tall, elegant plane trees underplanted with bulbs that flowered in the spring, smooth green lawns, and an ornamental fountain flowing into a circular stone pond inhabited by some large, fat goldfish, said to have been put there by his great-grandfather.
By a stroke of luck, thanks to the family habit of never discarding anything, the original gas-lamps, installed in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, had been found stored away in the old carriage house at Rothwell.
James had had them re-installed, and the effect as one turned the corner and entered the square was almost of stepping back into the nineteenth century.
Another of James’s decrees was that no inhabitant of the square was allowed to park his car, no matter how grand, in front of the houses. To their rear all of them retained their original coach-houses, and it was here that present-day leaseholders were able to garage their Rollses and Mercedeses.
No one who was anything short of a millionaire had the wherewithal to lease a property in Rothwell Square, but, despite that fact, there was always a waiting-list of eager applicants when a lease became available.
Rothwell Square was undoubtedly one of London’s most prestigious addresses. When he remembered the run-down and shabby state in which it had been when he had inherited it, James reflected that it was perhaps not surprising that he should stand at its entrance himself, momentarily admiring its elegance.
Perhaps it was a fanciful notion, but he rather thought that even Robert Adam himself would have found little to cavil at in its present-day appearance.
Such modern vulgarities as festoon blinds, bay trees in tubs and sundry other fashionable items had no place in Rothwell Square.
The house he had deeded to his sister, in a rash moment of impulsive guilt, was the largest in the square. When Margaret had been wont to describe herself to her closest cronies as ‘virtually penniless’, she had conveniently overlooked the fact that she was living rent-free in one of London’s most elegant ‘small’ houses, if a four-storey town house possessing six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a drawing-room, a library, a dining-room plus, on the ground floor, a kitchen, sitting-room, and another sitting-room for the staff, could
ever be described as small.
In an equally rash moment James had allowed her to plunder Rothwell’s attics in order to furnish it, and then, because she had insisted that what furniture she had been able to find was all in need of restoration and re-covering, he had also allowed her to call in Colefax and Fowler and others of their like to transform what she had described as a positive hovel into something suitable in which she could live.
All too conscious of the fact that to his sister, having grown up at Rothwell, nothing else would ever be truly acceptable, James had said nothing about the size of the bills with which he had been ultimately presented.
Now, however, as he looked at the first and most imposing house in the square, he started to frown.
A car had drawn up outside the flight of stone steps leading up to the front door, and a young man was pacing the pavement impatiently.
He looked up as James approached, and James hid a swift stab of distaste as he observed his haggard face and wild expression. He had come across far too many drug addicts through his travels not to recognise immediately what the young man was.
Every nervous, unco-ordinated gesture betrayed him, every wild, uncontrollable movement of his body. By the looks of him he was a heavy user, quite probably overdue for the fix that would, for a time at least, quiet his spasms.
When he saw James approaching the house he came towards him.
‘It’s no use,’ he told James, intercepting him. ‘He’s not here. He told me to come round now… he promised me he would be here…’ His voice dropped to a fretful whine, his eyes suddenly dull where they had been over-bright, and as James watched him frowningly he muttered thickly, ‘Bloody pushers… They’re all the same.’ And then he added despairingly, ‘Where is he? He knows I need the stuff.’
And before James could stop him he rushed up the stone steps and began to pound maniacally on the door, frantically calling out Charles’s name.
James stared at him. At first he had thought his presence in the square was pure mischance, but now, listening to him, watching him, hearing him refer to Charles by name…
He followed him up the steps and said quietly, ‘This man who lives here—does he just supply you, or…’
The man looked at him, his expression truculent and suspicious. ‘What’s it to you?’ And then the awareness faded from his eyes and he said ramblingly, ‘He doesn’t like us coming here unannounced, we’re supposed to ring and arrange a meet, but I’m desperate, don’t you see?’
He had started to whine again, plucking at James’s coat, his body trembling convulsively.
Charles, supplying drugs… pushing drugs… James had asked for a miracle, never expecting to receive one, and now it seemed he had. No matter what her feelings for her cousin, he could not allow Geraldine Frances to marry Charles now… he could not take the risk of Rothwell’s becoming tainted with all that Charles so obviously was.
He paused on the steps, torn between waiting for Charles to return so that he could confront him with his knowledge, and pity for Charles’s victim, now a crumpled heap of flesh, crouching on the top step, howling mournfully.
Compassion won. Summoning a taxi, he briskly manhandled the other down the steps and into the cab. James told the cabbie to take them to the nearest hospital, and left the man there in the outpatients department. It was the best he could do for him, even if the fellow didn’t seem to think so… He had alternately raved and cursed at James throughout the entire drive.
When James returned to his taxi, the driver grunted.
‘’e won’t stay there, you know, guv. Be out again as soon as their back’s turned… seen it all before. Don’t matter who they are, once that stuff’s got a hold of them they’re all the same. Course, it’s them as sells it who I blame—pity the government can’t do more about it, but you’ve got to prove what they’re up to first, haven’t you? And they’re as full of tricks as a bagful of monkeys.’
Deep in thought, James gave him the address of his club. Once there, he went up to his room and picked up the telephone.
There was a man in London, an agent, for want of a better description, whom he had used on numerous occasions in the past whenever he had wanted something doing discreetly and quietly. He was a past master at extracting information from all manner of unlikely sources.
To James’s relief he was in, and agreed to see him straight away.
Peter Vincent lived in a small, plain house of no apparent distinction. Quiet and subdued, it was very like the man himself, but, as James already knew, Peter Vincent was a very astute and intelligent man indeed.
He was also a man whom James trusted absolutely. He, and certain other chosen men in Switzerland, in New York and in certain other countries, provided James with the network of information which enabled him to keep control of his vast financial empire. Geraldine Frances had already been meticulously introduced to all these men, and all of them had recognised within her much of her father’s financial astuteness.
Peter Vincent let James in, and frowned a little as he saw him. He had rarely seen his client in such an impatient mood.
Quickly James explained to him what he wanted him to do.
‘It won’t be easy,’ Peter confirmed, frowning a little. ‘You’re convinced that your nephew is dealing in drugs… it isn’t possible that the man had mistaken the address…?’
‘And the name?’ James asked wryly. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but unlikely.’
What was in his mind was that Geraldine Frances, vulnerable as she was to Charles, might refuse to believe him unless he was able to produce incontrovertible proof of what Charles was doing, and it was to this end that he was seeking Peter Vincent’s aid.
‘If your nephew is supplying, it will probably be to close circles of acquaintances… people known to him. That’s generally the way it works. It’s a pity you didn’t hang on to that young man; we might have been able to find out a little more. Leave it with me,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I’ve discovered something concrete…’
James returned to his club, his mind preoccupied. There was no going back now. Geraldine Frances could not marry Charles… not now…
She would have to marry, of course, but he would deal with that problem later. First he must convince her about what Charles was doing.
He remembered that he would be seeing Charles in the morning, and he also remembered that he had intended to ask him if he wanted a lift.
He was tempted to let him make his own way to Belvoir. If there was one thing that James detested, it was someone who caused the kind of physical and mental suffering to his fellow human beings which Charles was so wantonly and deliberately causing. He doubted he had the stomach to face Charles without betraying what he was feeling, and of course it was essential that he did not do so…
It was also essential that he did not arouse Charles’s suspicions in any way, and, although his nephew should have no reason to suppose that James had the slightest idea what he was doing, James well knew the value of paying attention to the smallest detail. Charles was well aware of his feelings about maintaining an outward appearance of family harmony. For James to neglect to suggest they travelled to Belvoir together would be out of character. He might not like Charles, but he could not ignore the fact that his nephew was a dangerous and shrewd man. It was unlikely that he would connect his refusal to offer him a lift with the possibility of his discovery that Charles was supplying drugs… highly unlikely… none the less…
This time James drove round to Rothwell Square. The car which had been parked so haphazardly there had gone. He frowned over this, wondering if it had been removed by the police or…
He parked his own car outside Charles’s house. There were exceptions to every rule… he might not permit others to park in the square, but he who made the rules might also break them.
He went up the steps and rapped on the door.
Charles answered it himself. He didn’t employ any live-in staff, just a dai
ly woman, claiming that permanent staff were a luxury he could not afford.
He looked a little less urbane than was normal, James recognised, as Charles moved back to allow him to step into the hallway but did not invite him further into the house.
‘I was just passing and it occurred to me you might care to travel down to Belvoir with me in the morning,’ James told him.
Charles nodded. He had been expecting James to either call or telephone with such a suggestion; that was one of the reasons he had got in such a panic when he’d realised that something had gone wrong with his communications system, and that the drugs he had arranged to collect from a pre-arranged source had somehow been delayed.
He refused to keep any supplies in the house; there had been an increased demand before Christmas, and one of the reasons he had had to return to London was because he had known quite well that many of his ‘customers’ would be waiting for fresh supplies.
In the end he had got the supplies he wanted; the delay had been caused by some confusion in the address of the pick-up spot, and he had had to drive what seemed like halfway across London before being able to find a telephone box he could use to find out what had happened and arrange a fresh pick-up.
It had taken him two hours longer than he had expected, and he had been starting to sweat with anxiety when he finally got the stuff. Charles hated it when things did not run according to plan; he had ‘customers’ waiting.
All of his users knew far better than to come to the house these days, a precaution which he had adopted on the advice of his supplier. He normally called on them, or arranged to meet them, and that was why…
He tensed and said tersely to James, ‘Thanks. I take it you’ll want a fairly early start?’
‘I thought we’d leave at six,’ James told him.
Charles still hadn’t invited him to sit down or offered him a drink, and now, as he confirmed that he would be ready, he was edging the older man back towards the front door.