by Margaret Way
“I don’t know about freak,” he said dryly, well aware of Charlotte’s abilities. “Top of the class, straight A student. Your uncle Conrad has been swanning around the country house for years now.” He didn’t bother to hide his distaste. Conrad Mansfield, in his opinion, was a self-important, callous man. One didn’t expect a fine writer to be cruel. On the contrary, a writer would need to be a person of compassion.
“Maybe he needed some encouragement from Poppa, who despised him,” Charlotte said by way of explanation. “You don’t happen to know the reason, do you?” She shot him a keen glance.
Brendon tried to give her at least part of the truth. “I think Sir Reginald found it painful that your uncle bounced back so quickly after his brother’s tragic death. It’s no secret Conrad had a lifelong problem with sibling jealousy.”
“I expect it was hard for him, with my father being Poppa’s clear favourite and heir.” Charlotte always tried to be fair. “Anyway, Uncle Conrad has made a name for himself in literary circles. Personally I didn’t think he had a book in him, let alone what is considered a minor masterpiece.”
“You’ve read it?” Brendon raised an enquiring black brow.
“Of course I’ve read it, Bren,” she said, tartly. “Don’t be ridiculous. Have you?”
“Like you, I didn’t think he had it in him.” Brendon shrugged. “They’re talking about making it into a film. I believe Cate Blanchett has been approached.”
“Really? She would be perfect as Laura,” Charlotte said. “This is a strange conversation, isn’t it?”
“All our conversations are strange, Charlie.” There was an enigmatic look in his luminous eyes, made more startling in contrast to his bronzed skin and his jet-black hair and brows. “Are you sad?” he asked, unsure what was going on behind her small, composed face.
She shook her head slowly. “I wouldn’t term it like that, Bren. Poppa was a very distant figure, with a whole side of his life not accessible to me. At the time of my parents’ death, I was still a child, remember.”
“A highly intelligent, thinking twelve-year-old landed with as much grief as any child could bear. I remember how observant you were even then. Observant well beyond your years.”
Charlotte’s slender shoulders rose and fell. “More’s the pity! I’d have done better not to have been so watchful. I’ve hardly seen Poppa in the past five years. I really have no reason to love him, except I do. Did. As my grandfather, which is not to say I liked him. I think his only friend was your grandfather, and even he had to walk away. Poppa was into his eighties, not that he looked anything like it or acted anything like it. He hated growing older, losing his physical powers.”
“He didn’t see it coming, Charlie.”
“None of us see it coming unless we hold a gun to our heads, like that poor stockbroker in the papers. I’m sorry if I appear too calm.”
“I didn’t expect floods of tears, Charlotte,” he said. “You’ve had a lot to bear.”
She brought up her blond head. Golden tendrils were curling onto her forehead and the sides of her cheeks, increasing her angelic look. However, Charlie had access to a keen tongue that took people aback. “I wasn’t going to set myself up for more pain, Bren,” she explained. “I was in tatters after my parents were killed. I adored my father. I loved my mother, too, though I didn’t see a lot of her. She liked to escape. Besides, she had functions to go to from daylight to dark. My father was always there for me. Even Poppa was different when my father was alive. When my father was killed, whatever Poppa had used for a heart got shoved into a steel box. A little heart he kept back for me. I was Christopher’s child, the same blond hair and green eyes. Poppa’s green eyes. Poppa made your family pay for your part in my father’s death.”
Brendon’s arresting features became a taut mask. “He made my family pay far too much for far too long.”
“The Mansfields and the Macmillans have a terrible history,” she said. “It’s hate that links us far more than friendship.”
“Isn’t it up to us, Charlie, not to let it go on a moment longer?” Brendon implored. “Despite everything, our grandfathers stuck together as partners. They were together at the end. My grandfather is not a rogue.”
“Leastways, not that we know.” She emphasized the “know.”
He ignored that, continuing on. “One reason Sir Reginald trusted him.”
“I believe he did,” Charlotte had to concede. “I expect, too, that Sir Hugo had a great deal on Poppa. If my grandfather had a weakness, Sir Hugo was the only one to know it. And he didn’t breathe a word about it. Admirable, in its way.”
Brendon stared back at her. Charlotte Mansfield, at seventeen, was far more intelligent and more knowledgeable on a whole variety of subjects, including human psychology, than any other young woman he knew.
“The funeral?” she suddenly asked with a frown. “No state funeral. That’s out of the question.”
The tone was worthy of Sir Reginald. “Atta girl! That’s the spirit.” The old devil didn’t deserve a state funeral.
“No spirit involved,” Charlotte said. She was more aware than Brendon that her grandfather had been no saint.
“There’s only one hitch, Charlie. There’s your uncle Conrad,” he reminded her.
“Never mind Uncle Conrad,” Charlotte replied with an oddly familiar sweep of her hand. “No state funeral. We can’t avoid a large funeral.”
“No,” he agreed. The legal community, the business community, the Establishment, anyone who was anyone, would make it their business to attend and be photographed doing it.
“I’ll be there, for Poppa,” Charlotte said. “I will speak for him. He will come over as a loving father and grandfather. We can’t allow his terrifying persona to get in the way. I’ll need clothes. My friend Natalie’s mother will help me choose.”
“That’s Marella Hatton?” he asked. Charlotte would be in safe hands with Marella, who consistently won the vote for best dressed.
Charlotte nodded. “She’s a lovely woman, so kind, so elegant. I can’t let Poppa down.”
“You won’t, Charlotte,” Brendon said with absolute certainty.
She smiled at him, with very nearly a tear glistening. “You’re my man, Bren!”
“I try to be,” he said wryly, knowing full well it was going to turn out to be a very difficult role.
* * *
So, at seventeen years of age, Charlotte Mansfield became Sir Reginald Mansfield’s heiress, the primary beneficiary of his will, ahead of a long list of expected beneficiaries, institutions, charities, and the like. Charlotte had taken precedence over Sir Reginald’s remaining son, Conrad, who nevertheless had been amply provided for, as was Conrad’s son, Simon, his only child.
The reading of the will, however, remained in everyone’s memory as a horror session. Conrad Mansfield had afterwards taken expert legal advice to contest the will, but all efforts had come to nothing. Sir Reginald had seen to that. Conrad Mansfield had been left a rich man. He was no longer a partner in Mansfield-Macmillan after all. He was an author with, in most people’s opinion, a dream of a life.
If he had ignored his niece for much of her life, his hostility and resentment burned ever brighter as his teenage niece grew into womanhood. His resentment surprised no one, least of all Charlotte. Conrad Mansfield had not been appointed her guardian until she attained her majority. That role had fallen to Sir Hugo Macmillan. Sir Hugo had been handed considerable responsibility, which he took very seriously. Charlotte Mansfield had been brought up understanding the concept of power. It was in the blood.
Chapter 2
Four years later...
Charlotte took the elevator to the top floor of the Mansfield Building with rippling waves running through her. She exited the lift and then walked down the carpeted corridor to Brendon’s office, giving the very pretty young woman at a front desk, bearing the name tag, Rebecca, a wave. Rebecca waved back. A moment later, she knocked on the door with Bren’s n
ame on it and then opened it.
“Got a minute?” she asked, walking in regardless.
“Hit me,” Brendon said, humour in his silver-grey eyes. He was slouching back elegantly in his chrome and leather chair, two hands behind his handsome dark head.
“I won’t hold you up. I know how busy you are, even if you don’t look it.”
“You can always come back later,” he said, slowly straightening up.
“Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. My lord.” Charlotte threw back her mane of golden hair. It waved deeply to her shoulders, where it flipped out in foaming curls. “I’ll only take five minutes of your precious time.”
“No need to call me ‘my lord,’ Charlie. At least not yet.”
“You sure you want to be a judge?” she asked, studying him closely. No wonder so many women got carried away by Bren. He was an extraordinarily attractive man, sophisticated and sexy, the sort of man women hankered after and longed to meet. For all that, he didn’t have a conceited bone in his body, which was more than she could say for most males of her acquaintance.
“My vocation, Charlie,” he said. “You look great, by the way.” He looked her over with an approving smile. At almost twenty-one, it was hard to take one’s eyes off of Charlotte Mansfield, the heiress. Apart from her beauty, her dress code made everyone sit up and pay attention. Her bronze leather jacket spoke top Italian design, as did her custom-made jeans. Underneath she wore a collarless white silk shirt. All garments worn with flair. Wedge-heeled boots gave her five-three an extra few inches. An expensive-looking leather tote bag was slung carelessly over one shoulder.
Charlotte took a chair opposite him. “How kind of you to say so, Brendon dear.”
“Well, you certainly don’t need Marella these days.”
“Of course I need her,” Charlotte said loyally. “She’s my honorary aunt. I’ll never look as good as Marella.”
“You’re already there, sweetie pie,” he assured her. “So, let’s get down to business. I’ve a cold case I’m working on.”
He had her full attention. She was, after all, in her final year of reading Law. “Interesting?” she asked.
“The unsolved murder of Zara Goldberg,” he said.
“Before my time.”
“Nineteen ninety.”
“Ah, yes!” Charlotte cried. “I remember now. Wasn’t it thought it was the second husband or the stepson? Or both? She was extremely rich.”
Brendon nodded. “From an old Jewish family resettled in Australia. His wife gave the stepson an alibi. The husband was at his club. Both had developed an insatiable taste for money. Madame Goldberg had forked out plenty, and then she stopped, telling hubby and playboy stepson there was no more. It’s been a lot of work trying to draw all the pieces together,” he said, running a taut hand through his crow-black hair. “I can’t afford to make any mistakes.”
“Your father is handling the case?”
“Of course.”
“Only you’re doing all the work,” she said breezily.
“Be pleased for me, Charlie,” he begged. “I know I’m a big help to Dad. But he’s the hugely experienced QC at the top of his game. I’m only on my way.”
“I am pleased for you, Bren,” she stressed. “Better yet, I’m proud of you. You just happen to be my favourite Macmillan.”
“What can I say to that”—he shrugged—“when you think ill of everyone else?”
“Not ill, precisely,” she qualified. “It’s all a matter of trust. We’ve learned to tolerate one another these past few years, though your mother will never get around to hugging me.”
“Not when you clearly don’t want to be hugged,” Brendon didn’t hesitate to point out.
“True. I might have welcomed a hug as a child, but never mind. Sir Hugo is a man of conscience. He’s done his very best for me. Now it’s all coming to an end. In another month I’ll turn twenty-one.”
“And that’s a good feeling?” he asked.
Her beautiful green eyes sparkled with satisfaction. “You bet. It’s time I began to exercise my powers.”
Brendon stared across the desk at her. “What is it you want to change, Charlie?” he asked, very seriously indeed. He had grown very protective of Charlie, only the more protective, the more the worry. Charlotte Mansfield wasn’t an amenable young woman. She ruffled sedate feathers. Many people, including his own family members, had been far too slow to take Charlie’s measure. His own grandfather was of the belief that young women were to be seen and enjoyed but not heard. Old-school stuff he didn’t go along with. Charlotte was already making her mark.
Charlotte didn’t have to think for one second. “My grandfather, for all his lack of tolerance for others in his circle, was a genuine philanthropist. I want to step up programs that have fallen into a certain decline, or perhaps handled with too much caution. I want to get more involved in the culture of the city. The Arts is one area crying out for more funding.”
“You can do all that,” Brendon said, his expression signifying his approval. “You don’t have to pitch headlong into it, though. Everything you want to do needs serious discussion.” He and Charlotte had had many long conversations over the years when she endeavoured to outline her hopes and plans. Coming into a considerable fortune brought great responsibilities to the right-minded.
“No point in inheriting a great deal of money if one doesn’t do worthwhile things with it,” Charlotte pointed out, not for the first time. “An area of great moment to me is violence against women. We’ve spoken about it lots of times before. I want to buy the old Toohey Building. I see it’s come on the market. Renovate it. Offer it as a shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic violence.”
“As far as I know, Charlotte, the building is all but falling down,” Brendon said, a vertical frown between his black brows.
“Then we pull it down. Rebuild. I won’t be thwarted.”
“There will be a few people not overly fond of your plans,” Brendon warned her. He knew of a shady developer or two who were planning on securing the old building.
“We’ll face that when we come to it,” she said with characteristic self-confidence.
“Who is we exactly?” Brendon asked, lifting his brows.
She gave him a lovely smile. “You and me, pal. I want you, not your grandfather or your father, looking after my affairs, Bren. I plan on appointing you my advisor. You’re not working on full throttle yet, but you soon will be. You’re spoken of very highly by the big guns. Professor Morgenstern never lets up singing your praises.”
“The Prof is a great friend of my dad’s,” Brendon pointed out.
“Your dad is not a great friend of mine. As I’ve said a million and one times, you’re the only Macmillan I trust.”
He gave her a tight smile. “My dad doesn’t deserve your mistrust, Charlie.”
“I understand perfectly. You’re biased,” she said, staring back at him.
“I can live with that. I love my dad.”
“I didn’t say you were perfect.” Charlotte wondered if Brendon’s father, Julian, ever thought of her dead mother. Did their affair really happen? Or had the rumours sprung from malice? Surely many lives had been ruined by lies. She physically pulled back as a tiny chink of memory opened up in her head.
“Think whatever you like, Christopher. I thought there was trust between us. It seems not. Keep up the accusations and I’ll move out. I’ll take Charlie.”
“What is it?” Brendon leaned forward, a note of urgency in his voice.
She shook her head as if to clear it. “Nothing.”
“It had to be something,” Bren insisted. “You turned inwards. You looked like you had remembered something?”
She felt his penetrating regard. “Just a flash, Bren. My mother was saying she was moving out and taking me. My father must have been accusing her of something, something she vigorously denied.”
“The destructive rumours?” he suggested.
“I expec
t you’re right.” She had great faith in Brendon and his high intelligence. At twenty-nine Bren was still a junior barrister, but no one doubted, least of all Charlotte, that he would in a few years take silk, which meant becoming a Queen’s Counsel. He would then be following in the steps of his father and grandfather. Sir Hugo was still nominal Head of Chambers, but Brendon’s father, Julian Macmillan, was the preeminent senior counsel. Charlotte was in her final year at law school, where she had gained a stand-out reputation as an extremely bright, hardworking student, with the promise of a brilliant future ahead of her.
What Charlotte wanted above all was to follow Brendon’s footsteps into criminal law. Her interest was defence, whereas Brendon had already successfully prosecuted minor league criminal cases. Serious criminal matters for both private and legal aid clients were naturally referred to one or other of the seven members of Chambers, all silks.
“So, what’s this, then, a day off?” he asked, dropping the subject as Charlie had gone a little pale. He’d seen her maybe four or five times in the past work-filled month.
“I called in sick,” she said, breezily. “Not true. Tough class this morning. I wanted to ask you if you’d come with me this weekend to Clouds. You can bring a girlfriend if you like. Lovely Lisa Dixon, isn’t it?”
Brendon made a little movement of impatience. “As heartbreaking as it is, Lisa and I broke up. I don’t think Lisa wants me back.”
“Not what I heard.” Charlotte’s response was swift and tart.
“Weren’t you just the teeniest-weeniest bit jealous?” He gave her one of his heart-stopping smiles. He had beautiful white teeth that heightened the effect of that smile, especially set against his yearlong tan. Bren and his sailing pals were always out on the Harbour on his yacht, Wild Rose. He had told her once he had named it after her. Brendon didn’t lie. She had no reason to doubt it.