by Penny Jordan
Now Davina’s father was the wealthiest man in the area, and it was his wealth as well as her own shyness that isolated Davina.
Their house was outside the village, set in its own grounds, a large early Victorian building bought by her father when he married her mother, after the war, when such houses were cheap. When Davina’s father brought senior members of his staff home with him for dinner he expected them to be impressed by the house’s grandeur, and they were.
He had a keen eye for a bargain: the heavy old furniture, the Edwardian silver had all been sale-room bargains, and since it was Davina and not he who had to polish the carved wood and the intricately moulded silver he had no idea of the work entailed in keeping his home and his possessions as immaculate as he demanded.
He didn’t love her, Davina knew that. He had wanted a son, and she always felt somehow to blame for the fact that she was not that son. She also felt guilty in some way because her mother had died, as though in doing so her mother had proved that her father was right to despise her sex as weak and second-class. Somehow Davina felt as though it was up to her to justify her sex’s right to exist, but these were vague unadmitted thoughts and feelings that subconsciously shaped the way she behaved.
Yes, she had been very lonely in those years—and then she had met Gregory. Tall, good-looking, charming Gregory had been the ideal she had dreamed of secretly for so long.
A brief knock on the office door roused her from her thoughts. She wasn’t using Gregory’s office with its ostentation and luxury; somehow she hadn’t felt able to. The contrast between it and the rest of the building had not only shocked her, it had also almost made her feel physically ill.
In her father’s day Carey’s had been austere enough, but it had been kept scrupulously clean and well painted. Gregory had discouraged her from visiting Carey’s. And so the shock of discovering the conditions in which their employees were expected to work was something for which she had been totally unprepared.
And she was just as guilty as Gregory in that regard, guilty of taking the easy way out, of going along with what Gregory wanted because she didn’t want to argue with him.
She felt responsible; she was responsible, even though Giles had tried to comfort her and reassure her that she was not to blame.
Giles! That would be him outside the office now—a small square room at the rear of their premises without a window, just a chair, a desk and a telephone, but it was all she needed. There was no place, in a company on the verge of bankruptcy, for plush, expensive offices, for fax machines and computers that lay idle through lack of orders. She had asked Giles innocently about the fax machine in Gregory’s office the first time she visited it after his death. He had looked away uncomfortably and when she pressed him he had blurted out that he thought Gregory used it for his money-market dealings.
That had been the first she had known of her husband’s disastrous gambling in the world money markets.
She called out to Giles to come in and smiled warmly at him as he did so. Although he was almost six feet tall, Giles always seemed shorter because he had a slight stoop. His thick dark blond hair flopped endearingly over his forehead and he was always pushing it back. He was a quiet, studious-looking man who at forty still had a boyishness about him. There was something gentle and non-threatening about Giles that Davina found very appealing.
She wasn’t sure when she had first realised that Giles was attracted to her. Last Christmas at their annual Christmas party he had danced with her, and then, when she was in the kitchen stacking used glasses in the dishwasher, he had come to help her. He had kissed her before he and Lucy left. A brief enough embrace, but she had sensed the need in it … even though she had firmly denied to herself later that it had existed.
She liked Giles and of course it was flattering that he was attracted to her, but she was married to Gregory, and Giles was married to Lucy.
Only now Gregory was dead.
‘Giles—come and sit down.’ She patted the spare chair and smiled warmly at him.
He looked tired, and she felt guilty. He was their personnel manager and was not really equipped to take over the running of the company, but there was no one else. Gregory had always refused to allow anyone to share control of the company, and now Davina knew why: he hadn’t wanted anyone else to know how much money he was losing.
The sales director, their accountant, their chemist—all of them had reported directly to Gregory and had had no real power at all; the chemist had already left, telling Davina grimly that there was no point in his staying. The company was living on its past, he had told her, and Gregory had kept his department so starved of the money needed for research that their very existence was little more than a bad joke.
The sales director had said much the same thing, and their accountant was in reality treated as little more than an accounts clerk, dealing with the wages and day-to-day expenses.
The only person Davina had been able to turn to had been Giles, who at least knew something of how the company functioned.
She was learning, though, but what she was learning she did not like. The working conditions of her employees shamed her, as did their poor wages.
‘You look tired, Giles,’ she said sympathetically.
‘Davina, I’m sorry … I hate to let you down, but I’m going to have to hand in my notice.’
He had been rehearsing his speech all day, dreading making it, but last night Lucy had given him an ultimatum. ‘Leave Carey’s or I leave you,’ she had told him. She was given to making tempestuous threats, and at one time the volatility of her nature had entranced and amused him. She was so different from him, so alive and vital, but gradually he had begun to find her unpredictability a burden; to find that he was longing to go home to someone who was calm and relaxed, who wanted to listen to his problems rather than to unload upon him the avalanche of her own. Someone, in fact, like Davina.
Davina, who was always so calm and so kind. Davina, who had never once in anyone’s hearing criticised her husband, even though everyone knew that he had been unfaithful to her; Davina, whom, to his increasing despair and guilt, he was beginning to believe he loved.
‘Giles, there’s no need to apologise. I’m more than grateful to you for all that you’ve done. Without your support, your loyalty …’ Davina made a wry gesture. ‘I know what you think … what everyone thinks—that nothing can save Carey’s now, that we’re bound to go bankrupt.’
‘You could trade on for another six months or so, but that’s all,’ Giles told her.
‘I can’t give up yet, Giles,’ Davina told him. ‘And it isn’t for my sake. If Carey’s closes down so many families will suffer.’
Giles remained silent. What she was saying was true. Carey’s was the largest, virtually the only major local employer.
‘If you could just stay for a little while longer,’ Davina pleaded with him. ‘We could still find a backer … a buyer …’
Davina could see the indecision in his eyes. She hated having to do this, but what alternative did she have? Without Giles the company would have to close. She was doing all that she could, but there was so much she had to learn. If Giles left they would lose what little credibility they still had, and it was all too likely that the bank would insist on her closing down the company.
‘I know I shouldn’t ask,’ Davina continued. ‘You’ve got your own future to think of, yours and Lucy’s, but Carey’s needs you so much, Giles …’ She took a deep breath, and then looked directly at him and said quietly, ‘I need you so much.’
She saw the colour recede from his face and then flood painfully back into it. He moved as though he was about to get up and then settled back in his chair.
‘Davina …’
‘No, please don’t say anything now. Think about it. Talk it over with Lucy,’ Davina begged him. ‘Philip Taylor at the bank has promised to do what he can to help us find a buyer.’
The overhead light highlighted the delicacy of her face.
She had lost weight since Gregory’s death, Giles thought and then wondered bitterly what it was about that kind of man that gave him a wife who was so devoted and loyal, so gracious and loving, while he …
He swallowed quickly. He must not think like that about Lucy. He loved her. He had been desperately in love with her when they married, and she had loved him … had wanted him. He flinched a little as he recognised the direction his thoughts were taking, shifting his weight slightly as his body was jolted into a sudden sharp and dangerous awareness of how alone he and Davina were, and how much he desired her. When he had kissed her last Christmas she had felt so light in his arms, so small. He had wanted desperately to go on kissing her … holding her.
‘Please, Giles,’ she repeated huskily now, and he knew that he couldn’t refuse her.
Lucy often said things she didn’t mean; often lost her temper and gave him ultimatums which within hours she had forgotten. In fact, he had been surprised that she actually cared what he did. Sometimes recently when she looked at him he felt almost as though she hated him, there was so much anger and bitterness in her eyes.
‘I’ll … I’ll think about it,’ Giles promised her.
Davina smiled her thanks at him.
Outwardly she might appear calm, but inwardly her stomach was churning; inwardly she felt full of despair and guilt. How could she be doing this to Giles, using him … using what he felt for her? But what alternative did she have? It wasn’t for her own sake. Owning Carey’s meant nothing to her. She felt no possessive pride of ownership in the company.
But what she did feel was a very powerful and strong sense of responsibility towards its employees, an awareness of how guilty she had been over too many years of turning a blind eye to what was going on.
She could have overridden Gregory’s refusal to let her come to Carey’s. She could have insisted on doing so, but she had, as always in her life, taken the easy way out.
Well, there was no easy way out now … not for the people who depended on Carey Chemicals’ survival for their living.
She was all right. She had the money her father had left her, money that had been left untouched since his death—a good deal of money, in her eyes, but Mr Taylor had explained patiently, almost a little condescendingly to her that, as far as Carey’s was concerned, it was little more than a drop in the ocean.
He had told her then the extent of the company’s overdraft, an overdraft secured by Carey Chemicals’ premises and land, and she had blenched at the extent of it.
The money had been lent to Gregory some years ago by his predecessor, he told her grimly. An advance that should never have been made and certainly would not have been made in today’s harsh financial climate.
That advance, together with Carey Chemicals’ profits, Gregory had used to fund his money-market gambling.
Why had he done it? He had always been a man who enjoyed taking risks; who craved their dangerous excitement. That was, after all, why he had died. He had been driving far too fast for the road conditions, the police had told her, and yet there had been no need. He had not been expected anywhere. No, it had been the thrill of driving at such an excessive speed that had excited him, and killed him and the woman with him, just as his greed and reckless addiction to danger was now killing Carey’s and threatening the livelihoods of everyone involved with it.
Davina stood up, and so did Giles.
They both walked to the door. Giles opened it for her. She thanked him, taking care not to stand too close to him, guiltily aware of the way his hand trembled slightly as he opened the door.
‘Give my love to Lucy,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t seen her for ages.’
She felt uncomfortably hypocritical for mentioning Lucy’s name, as though she had no knowledge of Giles’s feelings for her.
They left the building together, walking to their separate cars, Giles waiting while Davina unlocked and got into hers.
Carey’s was within easy walking distance of the village, its two-storeyed buildings surrounded by the lush Cheshire countryside. The site on which her grandfather and father had originally set up the business had once been occupied by a corn chandler’s. The original two-storeyed Cheshire brick mill was still there. It had a preservation order on it now, because of its age.
Face it: Carey’s doesn’t look like a profitable drug-producing company, Davina reflected as she drove off. She surveyed the jumble of buildings that housed the company, contrasting them with photographs she had seen of the premises of the huge multinationals that dominated the drugs market.
Carey’s, she had to admit, was an anomaly. But for her grandfather’s discovery of that heart drug, Carey’s would never have existed. At home she had his notebooks with his meticulous descriptions of the drugs and potions he had made up for his customers, human and animal. When he had been a young man there had been no National Health Service and very few ordinary people had been able to afford the fees of a doctor, so men like her grandfather had doctored them instead.
She thought it was a pity that her own father had been so reluctant to talk about his childhood and his parents. It had been her mother who had told her about her grandfather, and she had only known him for a couple of years, as he had died shortly after she and Davina’s father had married.
There was a portrait of Davina’s father in the room that was used as the boardroom, and Davina had always thought that there should have been one there of her grandfather as well.
There never would be now, of course. If she was lucky enough to find a buyer, the last thing they would want would be portraits of the original founders of the company.
She drove home, worrying about whether or not Giles would stay with the company, and trying to quell her guilt at the way she had manipulated him.
And then, even more guiltily, she found herself wondering what her life would have been like if she had married someone like Giles instead of Gregory.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT HAD been Davina’s father who had been responsible for Davina’s meeting Gregory.
Gregory had come to work for Carey’s as their technical salesman and her father had invited him to one of the dinners he occasionally gave for certain members of his staff.
Davina had been busy in the kitchen when everyone arrived. These dinners were always something of an ordeal for her. Her father was a perfectionist and Davina dreaded his disapproval if everything was not as he wished it to be.
She had spent virtually all week preparing for this dinner, shopping, cleaning, polishing the silver, washing, starching and then ironing the table linen. And picking flowers from the garden and then arranging them. Her father would never countenance wasting money on buying flowers.
He personally selected the menus he wished Davina to serve, and they were always complicated. Her father was a fussy eater, preferring small, delicately cooked dishes, but on these occasions he liked to impress with lavish cordon bleu meals.
Sticky and uncomfortable from the heat of the kitchen, praying frantically that she had correctly judged the timing and that the hot soufflé her father had insisted on for the first course would not deflate before everyone was seated, Davina heard the kitchen door open. Expecting to see her father walk in to tell her that she could serve the soufflé, she was astonished to see instead a very good-looking young man.
He smiled at her, a warm flashing smile that showed the whiteness of his teeth. His skin was tanned; his brown hair shone. He was tall and lean, and there was a warmth in his brown eyes as he smiled at her that made her face burn even more hotly than the heat from the kitchen.
‘Hello, I’m Gregory James,’ he said to her, introducing himself and holding out his hand.
Automatically Davina extended hers and only just stopped herself from gasping out loud at the frisson of sensation that struck her as he slowly curled his fingers around hers and shook her hand.
No one had ever affected her like this before. In her naïveté her skin flushed darker, her whole body tr
embling as she succumbed to his sexual magnetism.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ Gregory told her smoothly as he released her hand.
For a moment Davina felt confused. There was something about the tone in which he delivered the apology that jarred on her, some falseness, some instinctive awareness of a mockery of her, as though he intended the words to have a double meaning, as though he was laughing at her for her reaction to him, but these feelings were so vague and unformed that they had vanished before she could really grasp them, leaving her to stammer a few incoherent words, while Gregory continued, ‘Your father was on his way to tell you that everyone is ready to eat, and I asked if I might deliver the message for him. And to see if there was anything I could do to help.’
To help? Davina gave him an unguarded startled look. Her father believed that it was a woman’s place to be subservient in every way to the males in the household, and the thought of any man offering her any kind of domestic help was a concept with which Davina was completely unfamiliar.
‘Thank you, but there’s really no need,’ she began breathlessly, but he stopped her, looking at her until she could no longer meet the intensity of his gaze as he said slowly,
‘Oh, yes, there is. There is every need. I’ve been wanting to meet you, Davina.’
He … this wonderful, good-looking man, had been wanting to meet her? She shook her head dizzily, wondering if she had fallen asleep and was having a dream, but no, it was real. He was real. She was so flustered that she could barely even breathe, never mind think of moving, and Gregory, watching her, allowed himself a small inner smile of satisfaction. Good. She was obviously as naïve and dumb as he had heard. He had met her. Now the rest should be easy.
* * *
Brought up by a widowed mother who had died while he was in his first year at university, Gregory had always bitterly resented the good fortune of others, a good fortune which had been denied to him. His mother was poor. He was clever and good-looking, but he learned early in life that that did not compensate for lack of wealth. Wealth was power, and power was what Gregory wanted. He had learned young to smile and say nothing when others taunted him or drew attention to his second-hand school uniform and the poverty of his possessions. His time would come. He would make sure that it came.