chair, staring at Cecil Williams. ‘A great deal more?’ she repeated in a low voice. ‘Fifty million?’ she whispered anxiously.
Cecil shook his head. ‘Something like seventy-five million.’
‘I can’t believe it!’ she exclaimed, a stricken look crossing her face. ‘How could the board condone that investment?’
‘I have no idea. I was told, in private, that there was negligence. Personally, I’d call it criminal negligence.’
‘Can we prosecute someone?’
‘She’s dead.’
‘So it was Mary’s fault? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘That is what has been suggested to me, but we won’t have the real facts until we’re in there, and you’re managing director. Only then can we start digging.’
‘It won’t be soon enough for me,’ she muttered in a tight voice. Glancing at her watch, she went on, ‘I think I had better go and change. Nicholas Throckman will be arriving here before we know it.’
Elizabeth was in a fury, a fury so monumental she wanted to rush outside and scream it into the wind until she was empty. But she knew it would be unwise to do that. It was an icy morning and there was a bone-chilling wind. Dangerous weather.
And so instead she rushed upstairs to her bedroom, slammed the door behind her, fell down on her knees and pummelled the mattress with her fists, tears of anger glistening in those intense dark eyes. She beat and beat her hands on the bed until she felt the anger easing, dissipating, and then suddenly she began to weep, sobbing as if her heart was breaking. Eventually, finally drained of all emotion, she stood up and went into the adjoining bathroom where she washed her face. Returning to the bedroom she sat down at her dressing table and carefully began to apply her make-up.
How could she do it? How could she tip all the money into Philip’s greedy outstretched hands? Out of love and adoration and wanting to keep him by her side? The need to keep him with her in London? How stupid her sister had been. He was a womanizer, she knew that only too well. He chased women, he had even chased her, his wife’s little sister.
And the duped and besotted Mary had poured more money into his hands for his real estate schemes in Spain. And without a second thought, led by something other than her brain. That urgent itch between her legs … driving sexual desire … how it blinded a woman.
Well, she knew all about that, didn’t she? The image of that hunk of a man Tom Selmere was still there somewhere in her head even after ten years. Another man on the make, lusting after his new wife’s stepdaughter, and a fifteen-year-old at that. Married to Harry’s widow Catherine before Harry was barely cold in his grave. And wanting to get Harry’s daughter into his bed as well. Hadn’t the widow woman been enough to satisfy the randy Tom? She had often wondered about that over the years.
Philip Alvarez was cut from the same cloth.
What the hell had Philip done with all that money? Seventy-five million. Oh God, so much money lost … our money … Deravenels’ money. He had seemingly never really accounted for it. Would he ever? Could he?
We will make him do so. We have to do so. Surely there was documentation? Somewhere. Mary wouldn’t have been that stupid. Or would she?
My sister’s management of Deravenels has been abysmal. I have long known that from my close friends inside the company, and Cecil had his own network, his own spies. He knows a lot more than he’s telling me; trying to protect me, as always. I trust my Cecil, I trust him implicitly. He’s devoted, and an honourable man. True Blue. So quiet and unassuming, steady as a rock, and the most honest man I know. Together we’ll run Deravenels. And we’ll run it into the black.
Rising, Elizabeth left the dressing table, moved towards the door. As she did so her eyes fell on the photograph on the chest. It was a photograph of her and Mary on the terrace here at Ravenscar. She’d forgotten it was there. Picking it up, she gazed at it. Two decades fell away, and she was on that terrace again … five years old, so young, so innocent, so unsuspecting of her treacherous half-sister.
‘Go on, Elizabeth, go to him. Father’s been asking for you,’ Mary said, pushing her forward.
Elizabeth looked up at the twenty-two-year-old, and asked, ‘Are you sure he wants to see me?’
Mary looked down at the red-headed child who irritated her. ‘Yes, he does. Go on, go on.’
Elizabeth ran forward down the terrace, ‘Here I am, Father,’ she called as she drew nearer to the table where he was sitting reading the morning papers.
He lifted his head swiftly, and jumped up. ‘What are you doing here? Making all this noise? Disturbing me?’
Elizabeth stopped dead in her tracks, gaping at him. She began to tremble.
He took a step towards her, his anger apparent. He stared down at her, and his eyes turned to blue ice. ‘You shouldn’t be on this terrace, in fact you shouldn’t be here at all.’
‘But Mary told me to come,’ she whispered, her lower lip trembling.
‘To hell with Mary and what she said, and I’m not your father, do you hear? Since your mother is dead, you are … nobody’s child. You are nobody.’ He stepped closer, shooing her away with his big hands.
Elizabeth turned and ran, fleeing down the terrace.
Harry Turner strode on behind her, followed her into the Long Hall, shouting, ‘Nanny! Nanny! Where are you?’
Avis Paisley appeared as if from nowhere, her face turning white when she saw the bewildered and terrified child running towards her, tears streaming down her face. Hurrying forward, Avis grabbed her tightly, held her close to her body protectively.
‘Pack up and go to Kent, Nanny. Today,’ Harry Turner told her in a fierce voice, glaring at her.
‘To Waverley Court, Mr Turner?’
‘No, to Stonehurst Farm. I shall telephone my aunt, Mrs Grace Rose Morran, and tell her you are arriving tonight.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Without another word Avis led Elizabeth towards the staircase, cursing Harry Turner under her breath. What a monster he was. He punished the child because of the mother. She loathed him.
Elizabeth looked at the photograph again, and then threw it into the wastepaper basket. Good riddance to bad rubbish, she thought, as she left the bedroom.
THREE
Elizabeth ran down the wide staircase and crossed the Long Hall, then she paused, listening. She could hear male voices in the nearby library, and hurried there at once. She pushed
