Sylvina had not been paying much attention to Justin. He was putting on a show for William’s benefit, obviously. All she knew was that Justin had got thousands out of poor foolish Maynard, the way he had with so many lovers; he used them and discarded them, enjoying their desperation almost as if that was what turned him on.
‘Does this mean you won’t hire me to refurbish your villa?’ Justin said now, in a boyish voice.
‘No, of course it doesn’t. But, as I said before, I will need professional estimates. Truth is, with the problems I’ve been through I’ve not had time lately even to consider the island, but if you have ideas and experience, and you evidently have, then yes, you can do it. Why not? As for you, Sylvina, here’s a list of people who are high on the social agenda that I want to see eating out of my hands!’
The first two names on the list she knew. ‘Well, this will be no problem at all, Baron and Baroness von Garten are friends of mine.’ She recalled the way they had left dinner in front of William, and added hastily, ‘Not close friends, of course. But … yes, I know most of these names. It’ll be no problem at all.’
Justin rested his hand on Sylvina’s knee and gave it a small triumphant pat. He knew now his fish wasn’t even wriggling. The game was about to commence, and William, for all his business acumen, had no notion of where the ground rules began and ended.
It was quite some time before Sylvina was able to corner Justin alone, and ask him just what this deal to refurbish some villa was about.
Justin shrugged. ‘Well, sweet face, you are getting paid for Sir William’s entry into society, and I am doing the same for some island he’s got in the Caribbean. Nothing wrong in feathering my own nest – I’ve certainly feathered your bankrupt one.’
‘There’s no need to rub my nose in it.’ She moved closer. ‘But what was all that about a game, taking revenge? He’s not a crook, is he?’
‘No, straight as an arrow, pussy.’
‘So what were you talking about?’
‘Mind your own business.’
‘But if I’m going to be living in his pocket, so to speak, don’t you think I should know?’
He turned to her, and his eyes were so cruel that she stepped away. ‘You don’t want to know because it doesn’t concern you.’
‘But it is something that concerns you, right?’
He glared, refusing to answer, but under his breath he whispered, ‘It does, but he doesn’t know it … yet.’
Chapter Seven
Justin waited until he thought William was asleep, then crept into Sylvina’s room. He eased the door closed and flew on to her bed. Lying on top of her, he gripped her face with his hands. ‘We are rich, rich, rich, sweetheart! Didn’t I tell you it would work?’
‘Yes, you did, but it’s going to take a long time. He’s no pushover, and he’ll be counting every penny in that bloody little notebook.’
He rolled away to lie beside her, a big smile on his face. ‘Listen, he’s up for it, and you’ll not see that book out again. Just take your time and enjoy it. You’ll never have had so much money to throw around in your life!’
She leaned up on her elbow and looked down into his face. ‘Where will you be when I’m with him?’
Justin stretched and yawned. ‘I am heading for the British Virgin Islands. Preparing the island for his future house-guests.’ He giggled. ‘Obviously my fees for refurbishing it in my own inimitable style will be exorbitant, but style never did come cheap.’ He swung his legs from the bed and sat with his back to her.
Sylvina stroked his shoulder. ‘I don’t want any repercussions. I was serious about not wanting to get involved in anything illegal. I mean, he’s not going to be hurling people off the cliffs, is he?’
‘No, of course not. You heard him, he just wants to …’
‘Mmm, go on. William wants to what?’
Justin walked across to the window and opened the white muslin curtains. He twisted one round him so that it hid his face. ‘Everyone has a sexual fantasy. Everyone has wondered what it would be like to be taken to the ultimate erotic high. Unbridled lust and lechery is what is going to happen on the island.’
Sylvina laughed. ‘My darling, I know you’re an experienced screw, but you’re not everyone’s idea of the ultimate sexual partner.’ She sat up. ‘And don’t think for one second that I’m interested in any of your erotica. I’ve agreed to spend as much time as it takes with William, but no sex. Then I’ll be off, as soon as I’ve collected my fee. Do I really need a whole year with him?’
‘Yes, it’ll take that time to work over the island. I have to have enough time to prepare it.’
‘This list of names he gave me – I mean, they’re a bit ridiculous. I know the von Gartens, he met them here. What’s so special to him about them?’
‘No idea,’ he said, shrugging.
‘Cedric somebody, who’s he?’
‘Breeds racehorses, English aristo.’
She continued reading from the list: ‘I mean, Meryl Delaware? Dear God, everyone knows that wretched scribbler.’ One name had been underlined three times. ‘This Humphrey Matlock, who’s he?’
‘Newspaper magnate. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him – you read his grubby papers.’
‘Oh, well, he shouldn’t be a problem, then. But no one on this list is remotely “high society”.’ She put the list aside. ‘Is she going with you? She’s very fragile, you know.’
He let go of the curtain and sauntered to the door. ‘She’s never done anything she didn’t want to,’ he said quietly.
‘Don’t you mean she’s never done anything without you pulling the strings? What is she going to be doing?’
‘Mind your own damned business.’
‘Fine, I will. But be careful because I know she had another fit and one day she might just snap. Be prepared for when she turns on the hand that operates her. I hope your devious little mind isn’t setting me up to prepare William for her, marry her off for his money.’
He giggled. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep her away from him until the time is right. She’s my pièce de résistance, the perfect foil, my beloved sister.’ He opened the door and blew Sylvina a kiss. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, and closed the door softly behind him. Then he swung it open again. ‘Don’t you even contemplate marrying him either. You can announce an engagement but then you have to ditch him publicly. Understand?’
‘Oh, go to bed. One year with him will be sufficient, thank you.’
He closed the door again, and she lay back on her pillows. She’d done some crazy things in her life, but this one took first prize. Still, one million … one million!
Five days later, Sharee returned to Nice. She called the villa to be told by Marta that Sylvina had gone to Paris and had left no forwarding address. When she asked after Justin, she was told that Monsieur Chalmers was collecting his sister and would be departing for the British Virgin Islands, again with no forwarding address. She felt a little guilty about taking off for so long, but as no one was here, she couldn’t apologize. Her sojourn had turned into a sordid groupsex session, which in itself had not worried her, except that she had been unable to get off the yacht. Still, she’d made friends with Terence Hampton, or thought she had – although when she’d called to ask if he could run her to the airport, he had been unable to come to the phone.
Sharee eventually flew back to London and her small studio apartment. She continued to phone Sylvina on her various numbers, but her calls were not returned. It baffled her at first, but then made her feel that somehow she had been moved aside, as if Sylvina had instigated the boat trip. Although she knew it had been her own decision to go, doubts began to surface, and Sylvina’s rejection angered her. Not only had she been used like a whore on the movie producer’s boat, Sylvina had treated her in the same way.
William’s apartment in avenue Hoche was already lavishly decorated with the finest antiques and paintings. All it required were floral displays. Sylvina moved in and, for the
moment, William stayed in a suite at the Ritz.
Sylvina checked every society-function guest-list, making copious notes of the hottest faces on the circuit and the most fashionable venues. She had not expected to enjoy herself quite so much, but having a man so dependent upon her was a new experience she relished. And with no sexual chemistry to complicate the relationship, she and William were surprised to discover a genuine mutual friendship growing.
That William knew from the outset that sex with Sylvina was out of the question made him much more relaxed when she questioned him about his affairs. He found himself admitting that perhaps the disasters of his loveless marriages had been his fault. He had been too eager to move up the social ladder.
‘What on earth for?’ Sylvina asked, never having had to climb so much as a single rung herself. Her own family had been titled and she had married Count Lubrinsky at an early age. She had not seen their union as social climbing, because it was his wealth more than his title that she’d married.
Sylvina’s château had never really been a home, just a rambling, cold megalith, and one morning they drove down to the small hamlet where it was situated outside Tours. Even with its high turrets and splendid balcony, it seemed tired and grey.
‘This is where I was brought up, apart from the years I spent at school in England, of course, which I hated but it was still preferable to spending time here.’ It had been years since she had visited the place and she felt an unwelcome surge of emotion as she stopped the car. ‘Do you want to see inside?’ she asked, almost hoping he would say no.
But William got out and looked around, smiling. ‘Yes! This is wonderful!’ They wandered through room after room with empty walls and rotten floorboards. Trees and shrubs sprouted in corners, as if nature had taken over like a secret army. It was a sad wreck of a once beautiful palace.
‘My father gambled away his inheritance. I was never sure whether he married me off to a count so that he could still live here or so that he could still gamble. The Count was an elderly cousin. The marriage was not consummated, and he died a few months after my twenty-first birthday.’ She fell silent. Then she said flatly, ‘They should bring in the demolition people. It’s dangerous.’ Seeing it again, after so many years, had brought home to her her lonely childhood. The barriers placed across the stairs, cutting off rooms too dangerous to enter, were like the emotional barriers that divided her family.
‘This is all I have left,’ she went on. ‘My father spent the money I was left by my husband. Papa was a wastrel,’ she said, looking up to the massive barrel-vaulted ceiling where once chandeliers of the finest crystal had tinkled. The fact that William wanted immediately to restore the château while Sylvina wanted it torn down epitomized their differing attitudes to the past: he was awed; she was indifferent. ‘Why live in the past? It’s better to look to the future,’ she said.
‘But generations of your family lived here.’
‘So they did, and they’re all dead.’ She was starting to feel depressed by it, and over everything loomed her hatred of her father.
On the drive back to Paris William said he could not believe that when she received her money she would not rebuild the place. Sylvina couldn’t contemplate the idea. ‘No one can live in such a monster of a house,’ she said. She had no children to inherit it. Why would she want to resurrect something that was dead? It was a pointless exercise, as pointless, to her, as being overawed by wealth and a title.
‘That’s because you have it, and I haven’t,’ he said, as they returned to avenue Hoche.
‘No, it’s because you think it will give you something. I am telling you it won’t. All you saw was a large white elephant.’
‘No, I saw your past, your family’s past. It’s in every stone of that château.’ She cupped his face in her hands and kissed his cheeks. ‘They are dead and I am alive. The world has changed. I want to live in the present. If I were to spend all my money renovating the château, I would be living in the past. You should be angry that you wasted a second of your time worrying about what has happened to you. You are a rich man. You could have anything, be anything. Go and find yourself a young, beautiful wife. Have more children, and don’t dwell on the past. It will swallow you up.’ Suddenly she stopped. All this had made her forget why she was with him, which, as she had said, was all to do with the past.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing. Memories.’
Sylvina was still anxious when William left for the hotel, convinced she had made him think about what they were doing and worried he might pull out. Why had she been so bloody truthful? The million pounds looked as if it might disappear. But at the same time the images of her childhood would not lie quiet. Tomorrow she would have to work extra hard, just in case she had placed doubts in his mind.
Sylvina need not have worried. William too was caught up in the past he had always tried to submerge. The voices would not lie quiet. He wasn’t thinking about what Sylvina had said, just hearing the cries, seeing his mother press the ice-pack against her swollen cheek. He vividly remembered a particular night when, in tears, he had asked his mother if he should go to the police. She had slapped him and said, ‘You’ll do no such thing. This is private business. It’s nothing, do you hear me? Nothing happened here.’ He knew it had, but his drunken father was sleeping off the booze. ‘Don’t pay any attention to what you see, Billy love, just you get out. If you get to be somebody, this will all have been worthwhile. You can say it made you. Because if there isn’t a reason for it, he might as well kill me now.’
What had his mother meant? He had never stopped asking himself that question. Now he thought of the abuse he had suffered at the hands of the bloodthirsty media. He didn’t need to take their insults, as his mother, who’d had nowhere to run, had accepted his father’s brutality. It frightened him now to think that perhaps he had inherited her wretched acceptance of fate. She had never fought back, and neither had he. Paying out a million pounds to save his face was a cowardly revenge, perhaps as bad as his mother telling him that his success was worth her pain. He was ashamed that he had not fought back, ignored the lawyers by suing, even if it had meant losing money. At least he would have had some respect for himself. And what had he done instead? Run to Justin at his villa.
He picked up the phone and called Sylvina. ‘It’s me,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I don’t want to be on my own, Sylvina, just tonight. It’s not … Can I come round to see you?’
‘Yes.’
There was a long pause before she surprised herself by saying, ‘I was just about to call you.’
‘Well, I beat you to it.’
When Sylvina opened the apartment door, they looked at each other then embraced. It was not a sexual gesture, just mutually comforting.
‘After I left you,’ he said, accepting the brandy she held out, ‘I started remembering things that I didn’t want to think about. And then I couldn’t stop.’
‘Me too.’
They clinked glasses.
As they lay next to each other in the big Louis Quinze bed, William felt an unfamiliar warmth. ‘My mother …’ he said shyly.
She snuggled against him. ‘I was thinking of mine too.’
They slept that night in each other’s arms. They had not found the answers, they were not even sure what they were looking for, but they had found a deeper friendship.
The following morning they had breakfast together. As Sylvina poured his coffee she gave him an affectionate smile. ‘Had any more thoughts on what we talked about last night?’
He looked at her, surprised, a glob of marmalade at the side of his mouth. ‘What? What do you mean?’
She sipped her chilled citron pressé. ‘You’re not having second thoughts … about going on?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ he said, slurping his coffee.
It almost made her wince. In a formal setting his eating habits were acceptable, as she had observed at the dinner party, but when he was rela
xed, he reverted to childhood table manners; eating with his fingers and dropping crumbs everywhere.
‘For one thing, the island isn’t anywhere near ready, and for another, as good as you are at bolstering my confidence, I’ve still a long way to go. Besides, I’m enjoying myself. This is the longest period I’ve ever spent away from my work.’
She smiled. ‘Well, you’re not entirely away from it. You spend hours every day on the phone barking instructions, and I’ve seen the faxes at the hotel for you every night.’
‘Ah, yes. Well, I’ve got to keep my beady eye on everyone. I’ve got damned good staff, but you can never trust anyone else to make your decisions.’
‘You mean you can’t delegate.’ His sharp tone unnerved her.
‘Oh, but I can, my dear. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be worth the fortune I have accumulated over thirty years. I have thirty-five board members, even more top-level executives. Some have been working for me for years. I believe in giving tremendous responsibility to my team – it’s one of my talents. An even better talent is spotting new blood …’
Sylvina listened for a full ten minutes as William outlined his numerous business deals, down to the location of each of his endless factories. Then he described the new Internet site he had set up to sell his games on-line, even drawing with his sticky knife on the pristine tablecloth to demonstrate some new hi-tech computer link that kids could use to play for serious prizes across the world.
She gritted her teeth. The question on her lips was why William was playing around with her, albeit at a price, and why he was allowing Justin free access to his island at what she knew would be an astronomical cost. Darling Justin Chalmers could spend other people’s money even better than she could steal it. He had no morals, unless … Was it some kind of blackmail?
‘Is Justin hitting you for cash?’ she asked sweetly.
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