The Australian Heiress

by Way, Margaret

  The sound of footsteps in the hallway alerted them. Nick Lombard was returning, holding a much happier-looking Melissa by the hand. At least Clare Tennant was wrong about one thing. Whatever his anxieties about his difficult little daughter, Camille had no doubt whatever Nick Lombard loved her.

  Melissa, seeing Camille standing alone by the French doors, broke away from her father.

  “Melissa, you have something to do first.” Her father stopped her in her tracks.

  Obediently Melissa turned, the brightness of her expression fading as she addressed Clare Tennant.

  “I’m very sorry for being rude to you, Clare,” she said in a rehearsed voice. “I apologize.”

  Immediately Clare Tennant gave the child a charming smile. “Apology accepted, Melissa. We all say things we don’t mean.”

  Camille, standing by the open doors, caught the broad wink Melissa directed at her. It was so adult, so roguish, it was all Camille could do not to burst out laughing. Melissa wasn’t taken in by Clare Tennant, either.

  WITHIN A WEEK Camille had moved into an apartment on the North Shore. It was pricey, but it was in a good area with excellent security.

  Recent events had made her acutely conscious of the lunatic fringe. She’d been informed that Hilda Gray was being held at a psychiatric institution “indefinitely.” Though not actually stated, it had been implied any release would be a long time off. Mrs. Gray had received the worst possible assessment at the time of her committal—judged of unsound mind and not fit to stand trial.

  Though the whole incident upset Camille enormously, she couldn’t help feeling grateful she wouldn’t be a major witness in an attempted-murder trial. That had been her nightmare. Far too much notoriety was already attached to the Guilford name.

  Tommy and Dot, after settling her in, had retired to their vacation home in the Blue Mountains. Not far out of Sydney, the area was famous for its scenic beauty and relaxed way of life. It wasn’t far for Camille to travel, either, a major consideration for Tommy and Dot when determining where to live.

  Once Camille was settled in, the next thing on the agenda was starting a new career. An art dealer? She would have to see. She’d always made a point of patronizing the showings of the young up-and-coming, her support drawing a good many people with the wherewithal to buy. The established artists she would have to leave to Claude. She intended to concentrate on the new kids on the block. The way to begin, obviously, was to seek Claude’s advice. Their little spat at the Guilford art preview hadn’t prevented him from ringing her several times since Hilda Gray’s attack. The world would come to an end before she and Claude stopped being friends.

  Camille drove to his. sandstone cottage. Only a stone’s throw from a busy thoroughfare, it was completely private, hidden from view down a long narrow easement and fronted by a large old-fashioned garden. At the height of summer it was awash with roses: not the formal beds Camille was used to, but much more relaxed with shallow-rooted perennials, bulbs and color-blended annuals to enhance the “wild garden” theme. One side of the cottage was covered by a large flowering climber with blush pink roses. Camille’s heart lifted at the entrancing sight. Could there be a flower more beautiful than the rose?

  As she walked up the stone-paved path swinging the glassy red plastic bag that contained her peace offering—a bottle of Claude’s. favorite Bollinger— Cappy, his marmalade cat, suddenly sprang from his resting place in a cool cave of ferns to wind himself around her legs.

  “Hello, sweetie.” She bent and picked the cat up, stroking him while he preened with pleasure. This was a regular game, Cappy making a dive for her ankles—though never once had the cat caused a run in her stockings or inadvertently scratched her.

  “It’s about time, too.” Claude beamed as he opened the front door. “You know how I love your visits.”

  Camille leaned forward and kissed him. “I’ve missed you, too. The garden’s quite magical. All the wonderful fragrances! You really are a genius, Claude.”

  “It’s my escape, dearest. I’ve got some wonderfully weathered old stone vases I’ll show you later. I thought they might look particularly well on your balcony. I’ve got lots of trailing plants that will go in them and spill over the rim. Here, let me take the old fleabag off you.” He grasped Marmalade and plonked him out the door.

  “A little present for you.” Camille passed Claude the gift bag.

  Claude peeked in and exclaimed with delight. “If you promise to stay to dinner, we can finish this off together.”

  “I’d love to!”

  “Come and sit down, darling.” Claude led the way into the drawing room, which was furnished with an overabundance of riches, all of impeccable taste. “I’ve a recent acquisition I’d like to show you. I’m going to keep it for a while before I sell it.”

  “As long as it’s not to Perdita Masterman,” Camille said with a groan, settling herself on a sofa upholstered in a rich ruby weave.

  “Vulgar old thing!” Claude uncovered a large painting standing on an easel. “Now, look at this. I’m determined to sell it to a true believer. Is it all right to mention Nick Lombard now that he saved your life?” He turned back, eyes twinkling.

  Camille ignored the comment about Nick Lombard. She stood up and approached the canvas in her stocking feet. “Claude, how perfectly beautiful,” she breathed. “How in the world did you get this?”

  “Darling, I can’t reveal my secrets, not even to you.”

  “You’ll have to let me in on a few. I’m thinking of becoming an art dealer.” Camille couldn’t take her eyes off the large impressionist painting of a beautiful young Edwardian woman reclining in an armchair. The mood was romantic, soft, languorous.

  “Ah, wonderful plan, Camille. You know I’ll support you in every way I can,” Claude promised. He turned back to the painting. “The family who owned this have had it in their possession since the late 1890s. They’re not as rich as they used to be, but still rich by anyone else’s standards. No one will notice it’s missing from their wall, because they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get a reproduction. It looks the genuine article from a distance, but it would never stand up to close scrutiny.”

  “Someone will notice sooner or later,” Camille said. “What happens when your prospective buyer hangs it on his wall?”

  “I didn’t say I acquired it in Australia, darling. I’m not so secretive I can’t tell you. It was France.”

  “Harry would have been on to it like a shot.”

  “Your father was never an art lover, darling. You know that”

  “I’m not even a hundred percent sure he was my father,” Camille blurted. It was quite unintentional. The impetus came from deep inside her.

  Claude turned to her in astonishment. “Dearest girl, what are you saying?”

  “Nonsense, probably, but there’s a lot you haven’t told me, Claude. A lot you’ve been holding back.”

  He flinched. “Don’t be so hard on me. I knew your father too well. Look, let me make a cup of tea,” he suggested, obviously desperate for breathing space.

  “You knew my mother before her marriage, didn’t you?” Camille followed Claude into the country-style kitchen, which was equipped for a professional and also had a dresser spilling over with a collection of blue-and-white nineteenth-century china.

  “I did.” Claude put on the kettle. “Your mother was an orphan, as you know. I met her. through your great-grandmother, who reared Natalie after her parents were killed. Mrs. Cooper was on the board of the National Art Gallery for some years before she died. She introduced me to Natalie. She was enormously fond of her. Natalie was as sweet as she was beautiful. She made you feel joy just being in her presence.”

  “Then you must have met Hugo Vandenberg, as well.”

  Claude nodded, his expression somber. “Oddly enough I met him the same night I met your father. Hugo was Natalie’s escort at some opera do. I could see at once he was deeply in love with her. I would have thought she was in love
with him, too. But for your father, they would have been married.”

  “You say that with a world of regret.”

  “I do.” Claude’s eyes were sad. “All three of them are dead. A tragic triangle if ever there was one. I remember the occasion exactly. It was as though I was watching a play unfolding. Vandenberg, gentleman to a fault, pitted against that handsome rogue, Harry, blue eyes on fire, devouring poor doomed Natalie. Harry always had that element of danger, of risk, about him. It reached out and captured her, chained her, really. I remember his smiling so malevolently at Hugo—the smile of a tiger. Natalie was the doe. There was this insatiable hunger about him, a tremendous sexual charge.”

  Claude paused, then went on, “I have to tell you I disliked Harry intensely. Always did. My sympathies were all with Vandenberg, my fears for Natalie. It was obvious from that first meeting she was going to be in the middle of them. With anyone else but Harry, Vandenberg might have let go. But Harry was a brutal devil. He smothered Natalie with his passion. He allowed her no friends. She was his exclusively. Just the two of them. He didn’t even want a child to come between them.”

  “Isn’t that deeply significant He didn’t love me. Could it be possible I’m not his?”

  Claude looked stunned. “Hush, child, hush!” He rattled the cups and saucers he was setting on the table. “The thought has never crossed my mind.”

  “Not ever, Claude? You knew the situation.”

  “So did your mother,” Claude answered without a moment’s hesitation. “She would never have dared to be unfaithful to Harry. Had he lived in an earlier age, he’d have simply run a rival through with his sword. As it was, he had plenty to do the job for him. If your mother had been unfaithful to him, he’d have killed her.”

  It was the last thing Camille wanted confirmed. “Maybe he did kill her!” she cried. “She might not have been swept off Sea Eagle. She could have been thrown.”

  Claude looked aghast. “Camille, she was his life. He nearly lost his reason after the accident. There was an inquest. I attended it. We all realized Harry was beside himself with grief. He’d lost the only person who meant anything to him.”

  “Maybe it was guilt,” Camille shot back. “I always thought he was possessed by demons.”

  There was a shift in Claude’s expression as he cast his mind back. “Your father had plenty of enemies even then. Plenty of people who hated him, wanted him brought down. But no one, I repeat no one, seriously thought he had anything to do with his wife’s death. Anyone who ever met them was conscious of his obsessive love for her.”

  “What if she rejected him, Claude?” Camille’s legs gave out and she sat down abruptly at the table.

  “Darling girl, this is horrible what you’re saying.”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “They’re both dead now.”

  “That’s no answer. No answer at all. The past won’t go away. It dogs us to the grave. Did you have no idea Hugo was Nick Lombard’s uncle?”

  Claude, too, sat down at the table and out of sheer habit began adjusting the centerpiece of golden lemons. “Nick Lombard was just a boy. We’re talking twenty years ago.”

  “So when did you find out?”

  Claude gave her a deeply cautious look. “What is this, dearest—the third degree?”

  “I don’t want to make you sad, Claude. You’ve always been a very dear friend. It’s just that I have to know. Too much has been kept from me.”

  Claude shot her a pitying look. “Darling, you appreciate the terrible difficulties?”

  Camille nodded, her rose-gold hair a bright aura around her pale face. “My father brought misery to so many people. I used to think he hated me. Maybe he did.”

  Claude reached out and clasped her hand. “Hating was Harry’s nature. He only loved Natalie.”

  “Or pretended to love her.”

  Claude smiled sadly into her eyes. “I’m utterly convinced he did. I would never lie to you. Natalie was Harry’s heart. After he lost her, he was like a jungle animal.”

  “You must know she renewed her relationship with Hugh, don’t you?”

  Claude’s shoulders sagged. “If she did, I don’t know how she managed it. Harry watched her like a hawk.”

  “He couldn’t watch her all the time. It’s possible to have an affair right under someone’s nose.”

  “Then she was playing with her life,” Claude said grimly. “Vandenberg’s, too. She would have had to be desperate. Natalie was a lovely person. A woman of great loyalty, not an adultress.”

  “Except in the end she was loyal to Hugo. Harry was a temporary madness.”

  “Lombard told you all this?” Claude asked painfully.

  Camille nodded and bit her lip. “It’s taken its toll on him, too. His uncle meant a great deal to him. You know what happened afterward?”

  “Vandenberg killed himself. Yes, I know that.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “He shot himself,” Claude said starkly. “The Vandenbergs are very private people. The whole thing was hushed up. It was years before I knew of Lombard’s involvement.”

  “Were you aware my mother was pregnant at the time of her death?”

  Claude’s cherubic pink face drained. “It came out at the inquest. Surely the most telling reason why Harry would never have harmed her. Their innocent child.”

  “He didn’t care a hoot about me.”

  Claude shook his balding head. “Your father was a ruthless man, God knows. But I didn’t see him as a murderer.”

  “Maybe, like me, you have to reform your image of him.”

  Claude’s face was filled with anguish and confusion. “I couldn’t begin to believe it. I’d be ill. If only we knew what Lombard was getting at. His uncle’s death must have twisted him. He would have been in his teens—a critical time. I loved Natalie. We all did. I wouldn’t have stood by if—” Claude broke off, unashamed tears in his eyes.

  “Forgive me, Claude.” Camille placed her hand on his, applying comforting pressure.

  Claude struggled for control. “No one can know exactly what happened that terrible day. All I know is your father suffered dreadfully. You must believe that. He lost his soul when he lost Natalie. And now all three of them are gone.”

  “Except Nick Lombard and me.”

  “Maybe you should keep as faraway from him as possible,” Claude said gravely.

  Camille gave an odd laugh. “Fate is working against that.”

  “He’s involved with that Tennant woman, isn’t he?”

  “She seems to think so.” Camille resumed her seat.

  “Take care, my dear,” Claude warned. “You’re a babe in arms compared to Clare Tennant. She’s a striking-looking woman, I grant you, but there’s something sinister about her. The old boy’s family despise her. Rumor had it he was about to make another will when he had the final stroke. She got the lion’s share.”

  “Did you know Nick’s wife?”

  “No.” Claude rubbed a distracted hand over his shiny pink pate. “I saw her at a few functions. She came from a well-to-do but rather tricky family. One-half were brilliant, the other half unstable. She was beautiful. Dark hair, ice blue eyes, white skin. Much too thin but a marvelous dresser. The little girl has no look of her at all.”

  “She has her father’s eyes. Magnificent eyes. And his thick curly hair, which she wears in an unflattering braid. She has lots of problems, but she tugs at my heartstrings.”

  “She’s a little…slow?” Claude asked delicately.

  “Why would you say that?” Camille looked at her friend in surprise.

  “My dear, it’s the rumor.”

  “Then pass this one on. She has a superior intelligence. Unfortunately she’s been mishandled. She told me her mother adored her, called her her little princess, yet Clare Tennant tells an entirely different story. She says Melissa’s mother couldn’t stand the sight of her.”

  “How appalling!” Claude’s eyes wide
ned. “If it’s true. I wouldn’t believe too much of anything that woman said. On the other hand, it would explain a lot.”

  “So maybe Melissa invented the perfect relationship because the reality was too much to bear.”

  “But Lombard himself? I can’t believe—”

  “He loves her,” Camille interrupted. “He’s worried about her, as well. But they do have a good relationship.”

  Claude exhaled a long relieved breath. “Thank God for that! I have to say what little I’ve seen of the man has impressed me. His wife may have been neurotic, though I wouldn’t know. I do know she was a great one for parties.”

  “Who isn’t?” Camille smiled ironically.

  “Certainly not me. How shall I put this? Wild parties. You know what forms those can take….”

  “I don’t want to speculate.”

  “But you intend to keep the relationship going?”

  “What relationship?”

  “There’s no need to feel guilty, my darling. I simply meant you care for the child.”

  “She needs someone to look out for her.”

  “You don’t see the stunning Clare Tennant in that role?”

  Camille showed her anxieties. “She comes into the small category of women who don’t like children. She’s not at all maternal. She’s an overtly sexual creature.”

  “That doesn’t go down badly with men,” Claude remarked dryly.

  “I’d have thought Nick Lombard would want a great deal more in a woman than that.”

  OVER DINNER they discussed the feasibility of Camille’s opening an art gallery dealing exclusively with promising young artists, who often had difficulty getting their work shown.

  Claude wasn’t at all surprised by Camille’s shift in direction. As her mentor, he took it as a compliment she wanted to move into the art world. She had a fine critical eye; she’d lived with fine art all her life; she had the business skills to make a go of it.

  All she needed were premises and some capital. Claude knew of a good place, currently leased by an antique dealer who was moving into a larger building; he thought he could arrange something there. As for capital, he could lend her money. After all, she was his honorary niece, and it was agreed Camille might have difficulty getting a substantial loan from a bank.