This Man's Magic

by Stephanie Wyatt

  This Man's Magic

  By

  Stephanie Wyatt

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THIS MAN'S MAGIC

  How could she get her career off the ground if no one knew her name? Sorrel Valentine knew there was one way—if her father would acknowledge her as his daughter to Lucas Amory, head of Amoroso. It was a lot to ask, but Sorrel had never taken into account the possibility that Lucas would believe her hard-won letter of introduction was a forgery…

  First published in Great Britain 1987

  by Mills & Boon Limited

  © Stephanie Wyatt 1987

  Australian copyright 1987

  Philippine copyright 1987

  This edition 1987

  ISBN 0 263 75759 5

  CHAPTER ONE

  They were good, certainly her best work to date. But dammit, what was she going to do with them? Perched on the sofa, long legs drawn up so her chin rested on her knees, Sorrel Valentine brooded over the designs spread before her on the low table.

  For five years, ever since she had left the Birmingham School of Jewellery at the end of her three-year course, she had worked steadily to build up a career, and up to a point she had done reasonably well. She had her contract to supply a set of designs four times a year for a firm of costume jewellery manufacturers, and a shop in Shepherd's Market was beginning to sell her hand-crafted pieces of fine jewellery quite regularly. But she'd had few interesting commissions as yet. It was a case of the chicken and the egg. How could the rich and famous commission work from her if they'd never heard of her? And how were they going to hear of her if no one bought her work and talked about it to their friends?

  Sorrel sighed. Having cherished her independence for the last five years, she was beginning to wonder if she hadn't been too independent. But then, she thought wryly, no one had ever offered their help. Or perhaps she just hadn't been hungry enough. Though no one among her friends at the craft centre knew it, she could be living on the proceeds of her godmother's legacy without doing a stroke of work. Considerations other than monetary ones drove her: the need to do something constructive with her time, to use the God-given talent and the skills she had acquired at college. Even that, if she was honest, was only part of it.

  The ambition to become a craft jeweller had been born when she was twelve, after Fred Mullins had taken her around Valentine & Co, introducing her to the staff, who showed her, and allowed her to handle, some of the precious gems her father dealt in. As an adult she had come to recognise that that adolescent ambition had been an attempt to have something in common with her father who hardly seemed aware of her existence, an attempt to make him notice her and think well of her. And she was perceptive enough to realise that even now her burning ambition was fuelled by a desire to show her parents that the world thought something of her, even if they didn't.

  Sherry-brown eyes gleamed with self-mockery as a bright 'Cooee…' broke in on her introspection and a familiar tousled mop of marmalade-coloured hair appeared at the opening into her hall.

  'Oh, you are here. It was so quiet I wondered… Charlie's starving and guess what? I've forgotten to buy bread again.' Tammy's uninhibited laughter rang out. 'I don't suppose you could…'

  It was a familiar request and Sorrel grinned, unwinding her long legs to stand up. Tammy was always forgetting something, bread… milk… 'I've got a better idea,' she said. 'Call Charlie over and eat with me. There's a steak and kidney pie that only needs a few minutes in the microwave.'

  The rest of Tammy followed the marmalade head into the room, a large lady, as tall as Sorrel herself but built on much more generous lines, her ample curves swathed in one of the swirling caftans she favoured, as brightly coloured as the stained glass she worked in. 'You're sure we won't be interrupting?' she demurred, but not very convincingly.

  'At the moment, any interruption is welcome,' Sorrel said ruefully. 'Maybe you and Charlie can come up with an answer to my problem.'

  'The difficult we solve at once, the impossible takes a little longer,' Tammy grinned, backing to yell across the stairwell, 'Charlieee,' as Sorrel made her way to the kitchen.

  'A dockland warehouse!' her mother had exclaimed in horror when, on leaving college, Sorrel had told her she had found the place where she wanted to set up her business. But as soon as Sorrel had seen it she had known it was for her. Not only did it have spacious living accommodation with an ever-changing view of the river and a workshop unit on the ground floor, it also offered her the chance to belong to a tight-knit community of craftsmen.

  Sorrel's desire to find a place for herself in a world that till then seemed to have no place for her had made her stick to her guns, and her mother had capitulated, not even taking the trouble to view the property herself. And neither had her father visited her, merely assuring her that Valentine & Co would supply her with any precious stones she wanted.

  It had been her godmother's legacy that had provided her working capital and the means of furnishing her home. Originally one enormous, high-ceilinged room, it now had a kitchen and a bathroom divided off at one end. Between these two rooms was her front door and entrance hall, while above them her gallery bedroom was reached by a spiral staircase.

  For the first few weeks of her occupation she had literally camped out in the vast, echoing space, owning only a bed and an easy chair. Five years had seen a lot of changes, and Sorrel had a home not even her mother could disparage, had she cared to visit. Rugs were scattered on the gleaming floor of her sitting-room. Sea-green curtains, at present closed against the dank February night, hung at the three floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Thames, while the collection of easy chairs and sofas were upholstered in a deeper, toning sea-green. The dining-table and six chairs, the two occasional tables and the old Welsh dresser she had picked up at a sale had been lovingly stripped down and repolished by a local craftsman, who had also built bookshelves to run the entire length of one wall with space for her stereo and collection of LPs and tapes. Her gallery bedroom was carpeted in pale apricot to match the colour-washed walls, while a burnt orange cover on her bed provided a splash of colour.

  Her kitchen was well equipped too, for, having one of her own for the first time, Sorrel had discovered she enjoyed cooking. Taking one of her steak and kidney pies out of the freezer, she popped it into the microwave oven before splitting a long French loaf, spreading it with garlic butter and wrapping it in tin foil to heat when the pie was done.

  As she hurried out of the kitchen to set the table, she collided with Charlie. A man in his late forties, his wild, once brown hair and beard grizzled now; a giant of a man, his head only just clearing the balcony to her bedroom, wide-shouldered and barrel-chested, his sweatshirt fighting a losing battle to meet his belted jeans over his swelling paunch. Muscular arms and hands like hams made him look more like a prize fighter than anyone's idea of an artist, and his nose reinforced that impression. Broken more than once in his eventful life, it gave him a truly villainous appearance, an appearance totally belied by a pair of bright blue eyes that brimmed over with humour.

  ' 'Ello, darlin'. Tam persuaded you to feed us again, 'as she?' The big cockney swept her up in his arms so her feet dangled six inches from the floor.

  'Put her down, Charlie,' Tammy scolded. 'You don't maul the cook until after we've eaten.'

  With firm ground beneath her feet and breath in her lungs again, Sorrel was able to say, 'You know where the beer is, Ch
arlie. And if you'd open a bottle of wine for Tammy and me…'

  With a beer can in one hand and an opened bottle of wine in the other, Charlie wandered across to sit beside Tammy on the sofa. They were still there, so absorbed in Sorrel's designs that they didn't even notice when she put the steaming, fragrant pie on the table.

  They were the nearest she'd ever come to having really close friends, she thought affectionately. Both warm-hearted, tolerant people, Tammy about ten years Charlie's junior, playing the role of mother as often as that of lover. And yet the partnership seemed to work, to an extent Sorrel often found herself envying. But then she herself had never had any flair for personal relationships.

  Telling herself not to get maudlin, Sorrel called, 'Come and get it,' plunging her knife into the pie's crust.

  Charlie leapt up with alacrity but Tammy lingered over the exquisitely coloured jewellery designs with the specifications in Sorrel's meticulous handwriting alongside. 'These really are fabulous, Sorrel! Wouldn't this be just me, Charlie?' She brought one of the designs to the table, a necklace made up of linked scrolls of gold with a centre pendant, a large, gleaming peridot set in another scroll of gold.

  Charlie's blue eyes twinkled wickedly. 'I'll say it would! I'm just picturin' you wearin' it… an' nothin' else.'

  'Lecher.' Tammy took a good-natured swipe at him, which he ducked before saying to Sorrel, 'Are these the result of all those hours you spent in the V & A?'

  Sorrel nodded, helping herself to another slice of hot garlic bread. 'I really fell for that medieval jewellery. The settings are heavy by today's standards, yet the craftmanship was superb.'

  'They're copies, then?' Tammy asked curiously, and Charlie blew a raspberry of derision. 'Shows 'ow long it is since she took a look round a museum!'

  'Not copies, Tam.' Sorrel cast a quick glance at the pages still strewn over the coffee table: pendants, earrings, hair ornaments and chaplets, bracelets, belt buckles, long strings of jade and gemstone beads set in gold and interspersed with faceted stones, double rings meant to be worn on adjoining fingers, rings whose settings were hinged to reveal a cavity inside. 'It would be impossible to make copies today. Gemstone cutting was in its infancy then, so they used the polished stones in their natural shapes, or very primitive cutting to get more lustre and a workable shape. Not at all likely to appeal to the modern woman who expects her jewellery to sparkle. No, I tried to get into the minds of those early craftsmen to imagine the kind of thing they might come up with if they'd had some of our modern techniques.'

  'And succeeded,' Charlie put in.

  A gratified flush coloured Sorrel's cheeks. 'Though in a few cases I have used cabochons rather than faceted stones—moonstones, opals, star stones and cat's eyes—to enhance the Gothic effect.' She thought of the blue and white moonstones she had used in an early try-out, the completed pendant which she had given to her sister as a present for Christmas, and for which she still hadn't received a thank you!

  As they sat later over their coffee, Tammy asked curiously, 'So what's your problem when you have a commission like this, Sorrel?'

  'They've not been commissioned, and that's the problem,' Sorrel grimaced.

  'You're not lettin' Mellings 'ave 'em!' Charlie remonstrated.

  'That'd be a wicked waste,' Tammy concurred, her pleasant features screwed into a ferocious scowl.

  'My own feelings entirely, but that leaves my only other outlet, the shop in Shepherd's Market,' Sorrel sighed.

  'And you couldn't afford to make all these up on spec,' Tammy nodded sympathetically. 'The cost of the gold alone would be prohibitive. Thank God my work doesn't call for such expensive materials! What you need,' she went on, 'is for one of the big boys to notice you. Someone like… Bulgari, for instance.'

  At Sorrel's derisively raised eyebrows at the mention of the internationally famous jewellery house, she defended, 'It's not so out of the question, not with designs like these.'

  'The snag bein' 'ow does she get an introduction to someone like that?' Charlie returned to the basic problem. 'It's not so much what you can do as who you know, and Sorrel's no better than I am at cultivatin' people of influence.'

  'And I suppose firms like Bulgari and Amoroso have the cream of designers on call, anyway. To break in there you really would need influence,' Tammy said glumly.

  Amoroso… The name produced an odd inward shiver. Her father had many contacts in the jewellery world, and one that she was very much aware of. Over the years in the society columns she had often seen him pictured with Lucas Amory, sometimes just the two men together, more often with female companions; her father with his wife and Lucas Amory with a wide assortment of beautiful women gazing adoringly at him. She knew the type, having suffered at the hands of a man very like him. But Lucas Amory was Amoroso, and it wasn't unreasonable to think her father might be willing to give her an introduction.

  'You're looking very thoughtful, Sorrel,' Charlie said perceptively. 'Got an idea?'

  How much should she tell them? she wondered. 'As a matter of fact,' she said slowly, 'my—I do know someone who knows Lucas Amory.'

  'It has to be female,' hooted Tammy, an avid reader of gossip columns. 'And I doubt any lady of his acquaintance would be eager to bring another woman to his attention.'

  'It's a man, actually.' Better not to mention the relationship that her father had always been so reluctant to acknowledge.

  'In that case, what are you waiting for?' Tammy demanded archly. 'If you're sure, that is, this man friend will trust you within a mile of Lucas Amory. Oh, don't mind me, love,' she added at the suddenly troubled look on Sorrel's face. 'Anyway, hasn't the gorgeous Mr Amory got a regular thing going with that Italian model now? P'raps he's finished sowing his wild oats and is preparing to settle to matrimony with her.'

  Sorrel made no comment. It was remembering how distant and unapproachable her father had always been that brought a frown.

  'Go on,' Tammy urged. 'Why don't you ring your friend now?'

  But Sorrel shook her head. Phoning her father at home wouldn't be a wise move, not when his wife might answer. 'I don't know his home number,' realising even as she said it that she didn't even know where he lived now. 'I'll call him at work tomorrow.'

  'Mr Valentine will see you now.'

  Taking a deep breath, Sorrel rose gracefully to her feet, ignoring the ill-concealed curiosity of the svelte, grey-haired secretary and quelling the apprehensive flutters in her stomach. She gripped the edge of the portfolio tucked beneath her arm and stepped forward, glad now of the expensive, deep-gold wool suit she had splurged on, for knowing she looked well groomed was a wonderful boost to her flagging confidence.

  Eyes riveted on the tall, lean man rising to acknowledge her behind the impressive desk, Sorrel was unaware of the secretary retiring. He looked older, but of course he was, five years older than when she had seen him last. Hair that had been thinning then was almost gone now, yet the baldness still managed to lend distinction- to the smoothly dispassionate features. Eyes she seemed to remember as hazel now looked grey, though that could have been a reflection of the grey suit he was wearing.

  Conscious she was staring, she became aware that his scrutiny was equally searching, though there was no welcome in it. The wary eyes were the eyes of a stranger.

  Well, what else had she expected? That the five years had wrought a miraculous change? They were strangers. Her sherry-brown eyes gleamed with amused self-mockery as she held out her hand. 'Hello, Father.'

  'Sorrel.' His voice was smoothly polite, as if she was a distant acquaintance and his hand gripped hers only briefly. He invited her to be seated, adding, 'I'm pleased to see you looking well.'

  The prick of resentment at this meaningless platitude was quickly hidden behind her habitual mask of cynical amusement. 'Are you, Father? Pleased to see me, I mean? I've been on the premises often enough in the last five years. Had you wanted us to meet you could have seen me then, and I wouldn't have needed to make this appointment.
'

  Amazingly he seemed to flinch. 'Sorrel… you must understand…'

  The cool amusement in her eyes hid the pain of her growing up years, for she had never understood why, although her father had paid her school fees and supplied her with copious pocket money, he had never once visited her. She hadn't understood why, when it was his turn to have her during the holidays, she had always been taken to stay with the family of Fred Mullins, the head security guard at Valentine & Co, only seeing her father for the occasional 'treat'. Not that she had disliked staying at the Mullins's terraced house in Hammersmith. It had been more of a home to her than the crumbling mansion her mother had moved into on her second marriage. Fred Mullins had been more of a father to her than the man looking at her so uncomfortably now, the Mullins's son and daughter more family than her own half-brother and half-sister at Thorley Hall, and they certainly meant more to her than her father's two sons whom she had never been privileged to meet.

  She watched his mouth tighten into a thin line. He was going to refuse her request, she was sure of it, and her stomach churned with disappointment. And then she thought, dammit! It wasn't too much to ask.

  'Father…' she leaned forward, an unconscious plea in the lines of her slim body. 'I've been careful not to bother you for five years, but I need to beg a favour of you.'

  The Hatton Garden traffic four floors below sounded loud in the sudden silence. At last he looked up. 'If it's within my power…'

  'Oh, it is…' Eagerness animated Sorrel's delicately chiselled features, lending a genuine sparkle to her brown eyes. 'I have some designs that would be perfect for Amoroso to produce, but if I just walk in off the street with them, the chances are no one of any importance would even get to see them. But Lucas Amory is a friend of yours, isn't he? So if you could arrange a meeting where you could introduce me, I might be able to persuade him to take a look…'