Daughters of Fortune: A Novel

by Hyland, Tara

  “So what do you think?” she asked, once she’d finished.

  “Sounds great.” He switched the heat down on the pan of oil, ready for the banana fritters he was cooking for dessert. Then he walked over and took her wineglass, setting it down on the table. He reached up and brushed a honey blonde lock away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “But, given that this is the first time I’ve had dinner with my wife in weeks, why don’t we forget all about Melville for the rest of the evening.”

  His hands moved to her shoulders, his thumbs beginning to massage the tender nook above her collarbone. She closed her eyes, sighing contentedly as his fingers worked their magic.

  He leaned down close to her ear. “I thought we could take dessert upstairs.” His voice was low and inviting. “I could give you one of my special all-over body massages. It’s guaranteed to relieve stress . . .”

  Elizabeth sighed again, but this time it was a sigh of regret. Her eyes fluttered open.

  “I’m really sorry, Cole. But I can’t. I need to put down some thoughts on what I saw tonight.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “I need to do it while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

  He released her shoulders and turned away. “Fine.” He walked back to the stove. “Do you still want dessert?”

  “Maybe later.”

  Cole’s back was to Elizabeth, so she couldn’t see his face, but she could tell from the set of his shoulders that he was annoyed. Going over to him, she put her arms around his waist. “I’m really sorry,” she murmured. “I’ll be as quick as I can, and then maybe I can join you upstairs . . .” She trailed off and ran her hands over the front of his trousers.

  He stood impassively, stirring the pan. She increased the pressure, until finally he groaned.

  “Okay, okay,” he relented. “We can finish this off later.” He reached down and removed her hands. “But you’d better cut that out now, otherwise I won’t be able to wait.”

  He bent and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Feeling happier, she went off to her study.

  Sometime later, Cole woke to find Elizabeth still wasn’t in bed. He rolled over to check the bedside clock: it was three in the morning. Jeez. She couldn’t still be working, could she? He considered leaving her to it but knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep until he’d made sure she was all right.

  As he walked through the house, he remembered again why he loved it here so much: it felt like a proper home. It was funny how he had begun to appreciate that sort of thing lately. He’d even started to think about children. When he’d first looked at the house, he’d caught himself picturing which room would make a great nursery. Not that he’d dared bring it up with Elizabeth. Last time he had, a couple of months earlier, she’d swiftly reminded him that she was still only twenty-eight and that for her, at least, children were still a long way off. He guessed she was right. Ten years ago, when he’d been that age, he’d been working every hour to get to the top. However much he might want a more settled life for them, he was going to have to wait for her to catch up.

  He found his wife in the study, curled up on the couch, fast asleep. Melville’s annual report lay open on the floor beside her. She’d obviously lain down to read it and ended up nodding off. Cole thought about carrying her upstairs to their bed, but he didn’t want to risk waking her—she needed all the rest she could get. So instead, he went over to the closet and found a blanket to keep her warm.

  After he’d tucked the cover around Elizabeth, Cole stood for a moment watching her. Asleep, she looked relaxed and content. He didn’t get to see her like this very often these days, and he missed it. As much as he loved Elizabeth for her strength and ambition, it was nice sometimes to know that there was a softer side to her, one that was reserved for him alone. Cole hoped William would be back at work soon. Maybe then she’d ease up a little and finally find some time for them.

  After her trip to Pharm-Mart, Elizabeth started to do some more investigation into Melville Essentials. She quickly realized what the problem was. William’s brainchild of creating a line of goods at a lower price had at first increased turnover for the company without harming established sales. But, as the years went by, her father had gotten greedy. At the peak of Melville’s popularity, several manufacturers had approached the company, offering to pay an annual fee in exchange for being able to use the brand name. They were then at liberty to put the Melville name on anything they produced—from plastic key rings to shoddy knock-off bags. These had cheapened the Melville image, so no one wanted to buy the high-end goods.

  Having realized just how deep-rooted the problem was, Elizabeth focused on gathering all the necessary information to help support her case for abolishing the low-end Melville Essentials. She was certain that this was the only hope for putting the glamour back into the brand, but she also knew that convincing the board wasn’t going to be easy. Essentials represented 50 percent of current turnover—and, more importantly, it had been her father’s idea. Thank God, at least, that he wasn’t going to be around for the fight.

  She thought carefully about how to begin her presentation. She’d gotten Piers to do some analysis and learned that while Essentials might account for half of sales, margins were so low that the line only represented ten percent of profits. But she didn’t want to start with the detailed analysis. She needed a way of grabbing the board’s attention straight off.

  So she decided to gather together products that defined every decade since Melville began. She spent a long time searching—through the stockroom and charity shops, as well as the stalls of Portobello and Spitalfields markets—until she had everything together: a short retrospective of Melville. Every item told a story about the company and how it had evolved. There were the original handmade leather men’s shoes from the 1880s; the boots created especially for the army during the First World War; the first pair of women’s shoes designed in the 1920s; a silk scarf made in the parachute factory that Rosalind, her grandmother, had bought after the Second World War; right through to a dress from the first ready-to-wear collection in the 1960s.

  When Elizabeth finally stood in front of the board two weeks later, she spoke passionately about each item as it was passed around the oval table, from one board member to the next, for inspection. They had no idea what the subject of her presentation was—she’d made sure to keep it under wraps. Today, she wanted the element of surprise on her side. She allowed them time to admire the quality of the material, the superiority of the craftsmanship, the intricacy of the hand-stitched seams. And gradually she could see on all of their faces something that hadn’t been there for a long time—passion for their product, a belief and pride in their company. She allowed herself a small smile. This was exactly what she had wanted them to feel.

  “And lastly,” she said, “we have the item that I feel defines how Melville is seen today by the public.”

  Elizabeth signaled for her assistant to bring over the final box. She had deliberately packed this, and all of the previous items, in carefully labeled, black satin boxes, the kind that the store used to gift wrap purchases. She made a show of untying the white lace ribbon that decorated the box, easing the lid off carefully, then unwrapping the layers of tissue paper underneath until she finally reached the item that had been packed in the middle. Slowly she eased it out, as though it was precious. The board leaned forward, all of them eager to see what required such careful consideration. Finally, she pulled out the item and held it aloft for everyone to see.

  In her hands, Elizabeth cradled the cheap plastic copy of the Devonshire handbag. She could see confusion around the table. She glanced over at her assistant, who went ahead and handed out an identical handbag to every member of the board, letting them inspect it for themselves.

  “But this is a cheap knock-off,” Peter Harding, the marketing director, burst out.

  “Yes, Elizabeth,” Hugh Makin joined in. “We all know that these illegal copies are sold on the market stall
. It’s something that every company has to put up with, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  There was a chorus of agreement around the table.

  Elizabeth placed both hands on the table, palms flat, and leaned forward.

  “Actually, gentlemen, that’s where you’re wrong. Dead wrong.” She paused, waiting for her words to sink in. “This item is being produced courtesy of our licensing agreement with Von Welling, a third-rate German manufacturer, who pays us three million pounds a year to produce handbags just like this. It carries the Melville brand name, and it has every right to do so.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  No one interrupted for the next forty-five minutes, as she skillfully argued her case for closing the Melville Essentials line. She talked about how the number of products had grown from three hundred in the mid-seventies to over twenty thousand today; alarmingly, the vast majority of those weren’t being produced directly by Melville, but by third-party manufacturers who had bought the license to produce goods bearing the company’s brand. She explained that while there were only twenty-five dedicated Melville stores throughout the world, another four hundred outlets were allowed to sell Melville goods—such as third-rate department stores, pharmacies, and duty-free shops. She showed pictures of brightly lit, garishly decorated drugstores, with basement buckets filled with cheap Melville-branded goods. It made for uncomfortable viewing.

  “It’s no wonder we can’t sell this,” she concluded, holding up the five-hundred-pound Devonshire handbag, “when we’re selling a twenty-five-pound version down the road in a cut-price drugstore.”

  She paused for a moment. She knew they were all worried about William’s reaction if they agreed to abolish Melville Essentials, but she also knew this was the right step.

  “Meliora Conor,” she said simply. It was the original Melville motto. I Strive for the Best. “Striving for the best—isn’t that what we should be doing?”

  Around the table, the men started to nod. There was no question how everyone was going to vote.

  40

  _________

  William was fed up. After he’d had a series of angina attacks, his doctor had recommended he take another three months off work—as though the first hadn’t been bad enough. “You have a very stressful job,” he’d said. “I really think it would be unwise for you to go back into that high-pressure environment at this time.” William would have happily ignored the advice and gone back anyway, but Isabelle had begged him to listen. “Please do as he says,” she’d implored. “I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.”

  Usually, Isabelle had a flair for the dramatic—but this time there had been no tears. The plea had been so simple, so heartfelt, that he was moved to give in.

  “Fine,” he’d agreed heavily. “I’ll stay home until after Christmas. But then I’m going back, whatever anyone says.”

  That might have satisfied Isabelle. But as the days and weeks dragged by, William found himself growing increasingly irritable—snapping at the doctor, the nurses, the staff, and his wife—even his daughters, when they found the time to visit or call. Work had been such a big part of his life for so long that he had no idea how to fill his time when he was away from the office. He hadn’t realized how central it had become to his existence—that his status was so intimately linked with what he did. And what worried him most was that the longer he was away from the company, the more frightened he felt about going back.

  That afternoon at the hospital had changed everything for Piers. Hearing William laughing at him with Hugh had been a turning point. It was as if he was seeing his elder brother clearly for the first time. He’d been hurt that William had excluded him from his discussions with Caitlin, but he’d thought it was simply an oversight. Then to learn that William had such contempt, such a lack of respect for him—after that, Piers had begun to realize precisely what a fool he’d been all these years. He had devoted his life to William—had worked under him, had always put his elder brother’s needs first. And none of it had ever been appreciated. William didn’t care about him. It was exactly as his mother had said—William tolerated him. In that moment, Piers suddenly wished that he had listened to her that night. If he had, instead of arguing with her . . . well, then maybe she’d still be alive.

  It was a revelation. All that time, he’d blamed himself for what had happened to her when, in fact, it had, at least in part, been William’s fault.

  After leaving the hospital that particular night, Piers had called up NW8 on his way home and had them send a girl over to his Richmond townhouse. She was supposed to calm him down, but, no matter what she did, he hadn’t been able to achieve the release he’d wanted. The longer she’d tried, the more anxious and frustrated he’d grown.

  “Look, maybe we ought to call it a night,” she’d said eventually, stifling a yawn. “It’s obviously not happening.”

  It was the yawn, followed by a quick little glance at her watch, that set him off. He was paying for this—the least she could do was show him some respect. Without thinking, he’d pulled his hand back and struck her once, hard, across the cheek.

  “What the fuck!?” she’d yelled, clutching her face.

  “I’m sorry,” Piers had spluttered, frightened and appalled by what he’d done. “I didn’t mean to—”

  But she wouldn’t listen. “Freak,” she’d spat, before grabbing her clothes and rushing out.

  NW8 wasn’t impressed. Piers was not surprised to receive a call from someone at the company. The anonymous voice had demanded twenty grand compensation for the girl and informed him that his membership would be immediately terminated. Piers apologized profusely, saying it would never happen again. The voice at the other end of the line didn’t sound that interested.

  The incident was unfortunate, but it taught him one lesson: that it was important to remain calm, keep his feelings in check, and not rush into anything. So he put aside thoughts of confronting William, deciding there were subtler ways to get revenge. Instead he kept up his daily visits to the hospital, continued to act the part of the devoted brother, the part he’d played all these years. Then, back at Melville, he took the board aside and told them that the doctor thought it would be best if William wasn’t bothered with news about the company. For now, they should refrain from going to visit.

  As the days went by, he could see William fretting about why no one had come to see him. “Where’s Hugh?” he demanded gruffly at the end of the second week. “I thought of all the buggers, he’d be here.”

  Piers feigned embarrassment. “I’m sure they’ll all be in to see you in a day or two.” But there was no conviction in his voice.

  William looked at him with shrewd eyes. “Well, they’ll be lucky if I don’t sack the lot of them when I get back,” he said with false bravado.

  Piers had counted on the fact that William wouldn’t call to ask them where they were. And he was right. His brother had too much pride to beg for a visit. And, feeling vulnerable after his heart attack, he had lost a lot of his old confidence.

  As the weeks passed, William moved back to Aldringham. At first Elizabeth and Caitlin had come down regularly to see him, but as the turnaround began to take up more and more of their time, their visits dwindled, and William became increasingly isolated from everyone apart from Piers. He came to rely on his younger brother for updates on the business. And Piers knew exactly what to say to unnerve him.

  “You’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about, old chap. Elizabeth has taken control of everything.”

  William scowled. “Oh?”

  “She’s doing a fabulous job, everyone says so. Reminds me of mother in a lot of ways.”

  Piers watched William’s face turn white.

  “Although of course you’re missed,” he said quickly—too quickly to give William any real reassurance. He left soon after that, allowing William time to brood.

  The following weekend, when Piers came to visit, the first thing William want
ed to know was what exactly Elizabeth was up to.

  “Oh, nothing much,” Piers said, deliberately vague. “I really shouldn’t have said anything last time.”

  “Well, you did say something. And now I want to know what’s going on.”

  This time, Piers tried to be hearty. “Nothing you need concern yourself with now, while you’re still recovering.”

  “Piers.” William’s voice was firm and threatening. “Tell me.”

  His brother gave a quick, worried glance toward the door, as though expecting Isabelle to walk back in. “Well, if you insist,” he said reluctantly. “I suppose the biggest move has been getting rid of Melville Essentials.”

  William’s hands clenched into two fists. “Melville Essentials?” he choked out. “The board agreed to get rid of Melville Essentials?”

  “Yes, it was a unanimous decision,” Piers began. Then, seeing the look on William’s face, he stopped. “Oh, God.” He assumed a pained expression. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. Now I’ve upset you.”

  William quickly shook his head. “No, no,” he insisted. “I’m not upset. Just . . . surprised.” He swallowed deeply. “Now, come on. Fill me in on exactly what’s been happening.”

  For the next hour, that was precisely what Piers did.

  He had everything carefully planned. If anyone at Melville asked him whether it would be all right to visit William, he gave them the same story.

  “Maybe in a few weeks,” he’d say regretfully. “He’s still very weak.”

  They’d nod sagely in agreement, relieved that they didn’t have to go down to Aldringham. Instead, they’d ask Piers to pass along their best wishes to William—which he always made sure to do, because it reminded his brother that no one had come to see him.

  41

  _________

  Caitlin stared down at her sketchpad. It was blank. The wastebasket next to her desk was filled with balled-up sheets of paper, ideas she’d started and then discarded. She had been made head designer three months ago. The title seemed to be a curse. From that day onward, she’d lost all creativity.