Daughters of Fortune: A Novel

by Hyland, Tara

  “The first year of the course is about developing technical skills and confidence,” Madame informed them early on. She wasn’t lying. Caitlin had come to the school expecting to have her creativity fired, but instead she found she was expected to learn the tedious arts of garment construction and pattern-cutting, endure computer aided design lessons, and write essays on the history of couture.

  “When are we going to start working on some of our own designs?” she asked one day.

  Madame gave her a cool look. “When you have finally mastered the simple art of sewing a hem.” To illustrate her point, she picked up the skirt Caitlin had been working on and in one easy movement pulled the stitching apart. She threw the material back onto the desk in disgust and walked away.

  After that, Caitlin sat quietly in class, trying to absorb everything that Madame said and reminding herself that she was here to learn. Her only consolation was that everyone else seemed to be struggling as much as she was. All she could do was keep her head down and try her best.

  William tried not to feel disappointed as he put the phone down. It had been Caitlin, calling to say that she wouldn’t be coming home for Easter. She’d claimed to have too much work. That had been her excuse for missing Christmas, too.

  When the phone rang again a second later, he half-hoped it was going to be Caitlin, telling him that she had changed her mind. Instead, it was his secretary.

  “Everyone’s gathered in the boardroom, Mr. Melville,” she informed him with her usual brisk efficiency. “Are you ready for them?”

  Years of practice had made him an expert at compartmentalizing his feelings. He did this now, putting thoughts of the growing distance between him and his middle daughter from his mind. He couldn’t be distracted today of all days.

  “Yes. I’m ready,” he said with a confidence that surprised him.

  He hoped to God he was.

  It was Piers Melville who had first heard about the takeover approach that morning. As finance director, he closely monitored Melville’s share price. When the stock opened 5 percent higher than the previous day’s close, he knew something was up. A call to the luxury goods analyst at Morgan Stanley had revealed the reason for the movement—rumors were circulating about a possible bid for the company.

  “Who?” Piers had demanded. “Who’s behind this?”

  The name being mentioned was Armand Bouchard.

  Piers had gone cold. The French businessman had a reputation for being a ruthless predator. He’d slammed down the phone and rushed next door to William’s office—barging in without knocking. William had just been getting off the phone himself. Piers had taken one look at the grim expression on his brother’s face and known the news had already reached him.

  “That was Armand Bouchard,” William had told him. “He wants to meet next week.”

  William had immediately put a call in to U.S. investment bank Sedgwick Hart to help with the defense. His contact had promised to send over its resident specialist in takeover battles: Cole Greenway.

  Now, just one hour later, Melville’s eleven directors gathered in the boardroom, waiting for Cole to arrive. When he walked in ten minutes later, William was somewhat taken aback. These days, he mostly dealt with Sedgwick Hart’s private banking division, which was staffed by portly, middle-aged men, ex-Etonians each and every one. Cole Greenway was the very opposite of this. Young, black, and American, to William he looked more like a rapper than a banker. Only the thousand-dollar Hugo Boss suit and smart Emporio Armani glasses gave a clue to his real profession. William guessed correctly that this was the reason he wore them.

  However, once Cole started speaking, any doubts William might have had quickly vanished. Given that he’d only started looking at Melville sixty minutes earlier, Cole already seemed to have a grip on the company that would rival most of William’s senior management team. Most importantly, though, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the aggressor, Armand Bouchard.

  The French businessman was the founder and chairman of the luxury goods conglomerate Grenier, Massé et Sanci. Bouchard had been on the acquisition trail for the past few years. With a coffer full of spare cash, he was taking advantage of the early nineties recession—which had hit the luxury goods sector particularly hard—to snap up smaller companies at a bargain price. Over the past few years, William had watched many fashion brands being assimilated into the GMS Group. But he had never expected Melville to be a target.

  “Bouchard favors the creeping takeover,” Cole told his fascinated audience, his dark eyes staring at them over his trendy square-rimmed glasses. His accent was pure New York—Bronx rather than Upper East Side. A poor boy made good, William decided.

  “He likes to build up a stake until he gets into a position of control,” Cole continued. “Now, given that 60 percent of the company is still in family hands, the only way he could do that is by convincing you to sell—”

  “Well, we’re not likely to do that!” William interrupted.

  Cole had been pacing the floor while he talked. Now he came to a halt, placing his hands on the back of a free chair. He gave William a wry smile.

  “Hey, I gotta be honest here. You’re not the first family-controlled company to say that. Bouchard is a brilliant man. He’s not gonna come in here, all guns blazing, demanding that you hand the company over to him. He has a way of, uh . . .” he paused, choosing his words carefully. “Well, let’s say he has a way of persuading people that it’s in their best interest to work with him. And yes,” he continued quickly, seeing that William was about to interrupt him again, “that includes men like you, who were adamant that they’d do nothing of the sort.”

  William felt the first prickle of fear. “So what do we do?” he asked gruffly. He didn’t want to let on how worried he was.

  Cole straightened up to his full six feet six inches. It was an impressive sight. “Our best bet is to put him off ever trying to get a toehold in Melville. And here’s how I propose we do that.”

  For once, William shut up and listened.

  The banker was certainly a compelling speaker. In fact, there was an energy about him that fired up the whole room. Most of the board were older men, uninterested in fighting battles. They had been selected for their willingness to rubber stamp William’s decisions rather than any innate talent. But Cole was clearly here to win. William was grateful. He knew it could be hard for an outsider to understand the importance of the family in a business like this. But the two were inextricably linked.

  For a moment William couldn’t help wishing his mother was here. But her heart condition kept her confined to bed these days. Obviously he still had Piers to back him up, he thought, glancing over at his brother, who was busy scribbling down in his neat, precise handwriting every word that Cole said. But while Piers was dependable and competent, he wasn’t an ideas man. He would always look to William to provide direction. Whereas Rosalind—she would have put up a formidable fight, even now.

  Not that he had any doubts about his ability to see the company through this crisis. Melville had flourished under his tenure and would undoubtedly continue to do so for many years to come. Of course—and he hated to admit this—the sheen had come off the brand a little bit lately. In the sixties and seventies, the Melville name had been so inextricably linked to glamour in the eyes of the public that practically anything with the company’s label had sold. However, over the past decade, Melville had begun to lose that cachet. The bread-and-butter accessory lines of handbags and shoes were still doing well—their classic Englishness would never go out of fashion. And the lower-priced goods sold through Melville Essentials were keeping profits up. But the buzz and excitement that had once made Melville the name to own was no longer there.

  William could live with that, though. He didn’t take it as a reflection on his management skills—it was just part of the cycle that luxury brands went through. While Melville might be past its heyday, it was still one of the greatest fashion houses in the world, the brand
name associated with class and breeding, old-fashioned English values. He still believed that he had handled his legacy well. William was the fourth generation to run Melville. He was determined not to go down in history as the man who sold out. That was something Armand Bouchard would just have to get used to.

  The meeting wrapped up soon after that. As the other board members filed out, William cornered Cole.

  “So you think this will work?” he asked Cole eagerly. “That this is enough to make him stay away?” He had been impressed with Cole’s ideas of how to deal with the GMS approach. Already he was convinced Bouchard would back off.

  Cole was more cautious. “For the time being, at least. Until he finds another chink in your armor.”

  But William wasn’t interested in hearing any negatives. He wanted to savor the victory. “Well, I have every good faith that you’ll make sure there’s nothing to find,” he said. He was full of confidence in Cole now and suddenly keen to get to know this bright young man better. “Look, I’m having a small party this weekend, at my estate in Somerset. Why don’t you come down and join us? You can meet my wife and daughters.” He saw Cole hesitate and frowned. “As long as you don’t have anything planned, that is.”

  In fact, Cole did have plans—plans involving a little cutie named Chenille whom he’d picked up at the Kensington Roof Gardens last Friday. He couldn’t think of anything worse than hanging out with William Melville, but he was ambitious enough to know better than to refuse.

  “No plans that can’t be canceled,” he said.

  “Excellent!” William beamed at him. “Let me give you the details.”

  14

  _________

  Cole let out a low whistle as the taxi turned into Aldringham. “Fucking unbelievable!” he exclaimed.

  Up front the cab driver smiled to himself. The Yanks were always blown away by this place. It had that old English charm that they couldn’t get enough of.

  Cole felt his bad mood lift. He’d spent the train journey from London thinking about all the stuff he’d rather be doing than hanging out with William Melville this weekend. Friday nights were sacred to Cole. Working such long hours, he looked forward to letting off steam. Spending two days with a bunch of stuffy blue bloods wasn’t his idea of a good time.

  But, now he was here, he didn’t feel so resentful. Aldringham was like a palace. If nothing else, this is going to be an experience, he thought, shoving twenty pounds at the taxi driver.

  William came out to greet him personally, pumping his hand and slapping his back like a long-lost friend.

  “There are a lot of people I want you to meet this weekend,” he told Cole, ushering him into the magnificent hallway, “and I also have a business proposition I’d like to run by you. But that can wait until tomorrow.”

  After the impressive exterior, Cole had wondered if inside might be a disappointment—it wasn’t unheard of for these country piles to get rundown. But that wasn’t the case at Aldringham. The ground-floor reception rooms were grand and tasteful, with rich wood paneling, ornate hand-painted ceilings, and flagstone floors.

  William summoned a maid to show Cole up to his room. When they got there, he tipped her five pounds. Seeing her confusion and embarassment, he realized he’d made some kind of faux pas. It was his American mentality: if it moves, tip it. She left in a hurry—Christ, she probably thought he was paying for more than the turndown service.

  Once she was gone, he had a good snoop around. Like everywhere else in the house, there were the ubiquitous double-height windows and soaring ceilings. But what set the room apart was the distinctive masculine feel. Neutral tan and ochre walls provided an ideal blank canvas for framed hunt prints and cases filled with revolutionary muskets. Furnishings were at a minimum: a king-size brass bed dominated the room, along with a free-standing wardrobe and a kidney-shaped writing desk, both in rich mahogany. A stag’s head had been stuffed and mounted on a wooden plaque opposite the bed. It was all very colonial. Cole flopped down onto the oxblood leather Chesterfield armchair and laughed out loud. This brother sure had come a long way from the projects.

  William had been right about Cole’s background: he was a very poor boy, made extremely good. Cole Greenway had grown up in the infamous Soundview section of the Bronx. His childhood home was one of the anonymous high-rise towers on 174th Street and Morrison Avenue. Other than the fact that he was black, his father’s identity remained a mystery. His mother was a poster child for the disenfranchised African American: five kids by four different fathers and a series of minimum wage jobs. Soundview itself was a dump, boasting a crack epidemic and twenty homicides a year. Cole was a product of his environment. By the time he turned fifteen, playing truant, drinking all day, and jacking cars were all part of daily life.

  But then everything changed. One bitter New York afternoon, his best friend became number eighteen in the annual body count. A stray bullet. A life over. Another statistic.

  “If he’d been where he was supposed to be, in sixth-period English, it would never have happened,” the dead boy’s mother kept saying at the funeral.

  It was a wakeup call for Cole. He started attending school regularly, started paying attention. To his surprise, he found he was good at it. At six foot six, he turned out to be good at basketball, too. He tried out for the team and made it. His coach kept an eye on him, recognizing raw talent when he saw it. When the time came, he called the scouts in to watch.

  A basketball scholarship gave Cole a free ride through Dartmouth. But he was no brainless jock. With a 4.0 GPA he could have made it on grades alone. He managed to play ball all four years, as well as come in the top quarter of his class. There was talk of the NBA, but a recurring knee injury forced him to rethink. It didn’t take long for him to decide on his future career. He wanted money. He wanted security. He wanted Wall Street.

  He interviewed with all the big banks. Sedgwick Hart was more than happy to recruit him into their corporate finance department. They were paying the most, so he was happy to accept. His fellow trainees eyed him on the first day and assumed he was there to make up the minorities quota. He quickly proved them wrong.

  His first year, he averaged ninety hours a week. He made vice president at twenty-four. The Wall Street Journal ran a glowing profile on him. He was what the American dream was all about. Last year, at the tender age of thirty, he made executive director. The youngest ever ED at Sedgwick Hart.

  The day Cole found out about the promotion, one of the senior partners invited him into his plush corner office and offered him a temporary assignment in London. Hints were dropped that he would make partner within two years if he went. Cole didn’t need telling twice. He had no real ties in America. Women came and went, but right now he was too focused on making it to the top.

  Cole took London by storm. He quickly made a name for himself in Sedgwick Hart’s Canary Wharf offices as an expert on hostile takeovers. When William Melville contacted the bank looking for an adviser, Cole was the obvious choice.

  Cole had seen the look in William Melville’s eyes when they first met and knew exactly what he was thinking. He was used to it. Too young and too black—immediate suspicion. But it never took long to prove himself. And then they were all over him. Just like William was now.

  The meeting with Grenier Massé et Sanci had gone well this week. Cole had made it clear to Armand Bouchard that with 60 percent of Melville’s shares in family hands, GMS could never get control.

  “We could still build up a stake,” the Frenchman had said. “Demand a seat on the board.”

  Cole had been ready for him. “You could,” he agreed, “but we’ll go to court and argue that it’s a conflict of interest to have representation from a rival fashion group. You’ll be left with a two-hundred-million-pound investment that’s frankly useless.”

  Bouchard had been forced to concede the point—and walk away. William, delighted with the outcome, had been even more insistent that Cole come down this weekend. Cole could a
lready guess why. William wouldn’t be the first client to try to poach him. They never succeeded. Nowhere could match a U.S. investment bank in terms of monetary reward. For him, that’s what it was all about—the cash. And he was making a bundle of it. Although not enough to afford a place like this, he thought, casting an eye around the exquisitely furnished room. Well, not yet anyway.

  He propped himself up on his elbows, considering what to do next. He’d already hung up his clothes. It hadn’t taken long because he hadn’t brought much with him: a rented tux, a pair of chinos, and the jeans he was wearing. He checked his TAG Heuer watch, bought with his first bonus. It was only six. With an hour to go until preprandial drinks—whatever the hell they were—he decided to go for a walk and check the place out.

  He managed to find his way downstairs, and one of the staff pointed him in the direction of the grounds. There was nothing shabby about the exterior either. It was old-world Englishness meets Californian modernity. He passed a huge infinity pool, dipped his hand in, and was impressed to find it was heated. He pressed on, down some huge stone steps carved out of the side of the rockface, and on by the grass tennis courts. It was all downhill from there, down the sweeping lawns, down, down, until the manicured gardens ended and met the borders of the wilder parklands.

  He stopped still then, shielding his eyes as he looked out across the skyline. A seemingly unending vista of lush fields stretched to the horizon, bordered by a great forest of oak and sycamore trees. There was no one around for miles. Jeez, he’d never seen so much empty space. He breathed in deeply, fresh air filling his lungs. It was the rural idyll, and he couldn’t help being impressed. And this was someone who’d always been allergic to any landscape devoid of concrete and cars.