By ignoring the letters, the older woman had acted as her own worst enemy. More recent missives had taken on the cold, clipped edge of threat. They were facing eviction from their home. Tilda felt as if spooky fingers were tightening round her lungs, for the challenge of delivering such terrifying news to her mother was at that moment beyond her. Beth was too frightened even to walk down the drive to the front gate, so how could she possibly cope with the awful upheaval and disgrace of being literally cast out on the street? And if she could not cope, how would it affect Tilda’s four younger siblings?
‘Tilda…’ Beth surveyed her daughter with a heavy heart ‘…I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about this months ago, but I felt so guilty about having married Scott. Everything that’s gone wrong for us since then is my fault.’
‘You can’t blame yourself for marrying him. He didn’t show his true colours until after the wedding and now he’s out of our lives, so let’s not go back there,’ Tilda urged in a deliberately upbeat tone. ‘Stop worrying about this. I’ll look into it and see what I can sort out.’
The buzz of the doorbell sounded extraordinarily loudly in the strained silence.
Dismay tightening her features as she checked her watch, Beth flew upright. ‘That’ll be a customer. I’d better splash my face with some cold water!’
‘Go ahead. I’ll answer the door.’ Tilda was grateful for that timely interruption, for she did not want to be tempted into soothing her mother by offering empty assurances that everything would come all right. Even in the grip of shock as Tilda still was, she could see little prospect of a happy ending to her family’s predicament. After all, only repayment of the debt could settle it and they were all as poor as church mice.
Frustration hurtled through Tilda, who felt as if her brain was suffering from a stress overload. Why, oh, why, had she given up a steady job to pursue an academic qualification for three years? But the decision had made sense at the time, offering as it did the prospect of a career with eventual excellent earning potential. Unfortunately it meant that now she had no savings and had a large student loan to pay back. Even though she was currently working full time again in a position with good prospects, she was a junior member of staff and her salary was not generous.
Tilda found her former employer, Evan Jerrold, on the doorstep. Once again Evan had his arms wrapped round a fat roll of curtain fabric. The sight would have provoked a smile from Tilda on a normal day, because in old-fashioned parlance—and he was an old-fashioned man—Evan was sweet on her mother. After a chance meeting with Beth one day when he had given Tilda a lift into work, the older man had gradually become a regular visitor. For months now he had been dreaming up new furnishing projects that gave him ample opportunity to ask Beth to advise him on colour, fabric and style.
Tilda showed Evan through to her mother’s workroom at the back of the house. The kindly older man had originally encouraged Tilda to give up her office job and go to university. An academic, who had inherited a thriving family firm, Evan had ensured that Tilda always had a job there during her college vacations. Tilda went into the kitchen to gather up the letters and take them upstairs. She was thinking sadly that Evan, the survivor of a bitter and costly divorce battle, would run a mile once he heard about her mother’s financial embarrassments. But, in all probability, nothing more than friendship would have developed between Beth and Evan, anyway, Tilda told herself in exasperation. Since when had she believed in fairy tales?
Her own workaholic father, whom she barely remembered, had been knocked down and killed by a drunk driver when she was five years old. Her mother’s subsequent second marriage had been a disaster. Bullied and cowed by Scott, Beth had been in no fit state to protect her children. In Tilda’s last year at school, her stepfather had made her work at night in a sleazy club run by one of his cronies.
Tilda forced her straying thoughts back to the present and scolded herself for that momentary slide back into the past. What was needed was action, not time-wasting regret for facts that could not be changed! She reached for the phone and rang the number of the legal firm on the letterhead to ask for an appointment. Humble pleading on the score of extreme urgency won her a late-morning slot the next day. Having arranged several days’ leave from her current employment as an accounts assistant, she called her bank and asked how much money she would be allowed to borrow. Her worst fears were fulfilled when the loan officer pointed out that she had no assets and was still on probation in her current job. As she had never been a quitter she contacted three other financial institutions in the hope of receiving a more promising response before she accepted defeat on that issue.
The following day she put on a black trouser suit and caught a train to London. She made a punctual appearance at the imposing legal offices of Ratburn, Ratburn and Mildrop in the City. Ushered into the presence of an urbane, well-turned-out lawyer, she was tense and within minutes it seemed that every word she uttered was worthy only of a stony rebuttal.
‘I’m unable to discuss your mother’s confidential affairs with you, Miss Crawford.’ An explanation of Beth’s agoraphobia merely led to a further question. ‘Unless, of course, you have acquired power of attorney to speak and act on Mrs Morrison’s behalf?’
‘No…but I was once quite friendly with Prince Rashad,’ Tilda heard herself say, desperate to prove her credentials in some way and win a serious hearing.
The middle-aged lawyer dealt her a cool appraisal. ‘I am not aware that His Royal Highness is involved in this matter.’
Tilda became even tenser. ‘I appreciate that the loan was ostensibly advanced by a business called Metropolis—’
‘I cannot discuss confidential matters with a third party.’
Her full soft mouth compressed. ‘Then let me talk it over with Rashad direct. Please tell me how I can get in touch with him quickly.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible.’ Before she could pursue the point, the older man stood up to signify that the meeting was at an end.
Less than two minutes later, Tilda was back out on the street again. She was mortified by the reception she had received. She caught the bus to the opulent Embassy of Bakhar, where her request for a phone number or meeting with the Crown Prince was treated with a smiling but dismissive courtesy that gained her not a millimetre of access. The level of security and discretion that appeared to surround Rashad’s movements was daunting. Direct contact with him was clearly not to be had for the asking. Her only option was to leave her phone number, which would be passed on to his staff. Throughout her unsatisfactory visit, she was quite unaware of a bearded older man with silvering hair, who had left his office the moment he had seen her name pop up on his computer screen. A troubled frown on his stolid features, he watched her depart from his vantage point on the landing above.
Determined not to be beaten in her quest, Tilda went straight to the nearest library and used the Internet. She was initially infuriated by the discovery that Rashad was currently in London and yet nobody had been prepared to admit that. But when she noticed the date of the charity benefit he was to attend and realised that it was being staged that very day, it lent wings to her thoughts and her feet.
At the reception desk of the exclusive hotel where the benefit was being held, Tilda learned that admission was by invitation only. She paid for an eye-wateringly expensive soft drink so that she could sit in the hotel foyer. Sophisticated women in fashionable cocktail frocks walked in and out of the crowded ballroom. A door was propped wide to facilitate the exit of a man in a wheelchair, and Tilda caught a glimpse of a very tall, powerful male standing about thirty feet inside the room.
Her heart lurched as if she had suddenly been thrown high in the air without warning. It was Rashad, and there was something so
