was the solution.
And so she had taken André’s advice and gone to see her father-in-law on a warm Thursday afternoon in July, arriving at his office in the Bond Street store unannounced. He had been startled and put out by her unprecedented visit, but being a gentleman of the old school, and courteous, he had invited her into his inner sanctum.
“Teach me the business, train me,” she had said earnestly. “I’m the only Jardine you have right now. Nigel and the twins are still little boys. What will happen to the company if you have another heart attack? Or get sick? Or die?”
Startled by the bluntness of her words, he had looked affronted. And he had stared at her askance, for a moment at a loss for words in the face of her breathtaking directness.
Swiftly she had gone on to explain. “Look, nobody wants to think of his own mortality, or think about dying, I know that. But you have to, you must. Ralph always said you were the most intelligent man he knew. He told me you were extremely clever, a genius really, and clearheaded. So think clearly now. Think unemotionally. You need someone you can trust, a person who could run the company if ever you were incapacitated. And it must be someone who has your grandsons’ interests at heart. Since I’m their mother, that’s me. Obviously. You need me. Anyway, face up to it, I’m the only Jardine available.”
Bruce Jardine had seen the rightness of her words. She was the only adult Jardine he could turn to, and therefore she was the only solution to his very real dilemma. Also, her sincerity, eagerness, and enthusiasm had convinced him that she really did want to work for him and learn the business. And so he had taken her on as his junior assistant, hoping she would not disappoint him.
“You’ve got to love this business if you’re going to be a success at it,” he would tell her repeatedly during the first years she worked at Jardine’s, and Stevie quickly discovered she did love it, every facet of it.
She loved the diamonds particularly, and the other gems and the creative side of the jewelry business. Yet it was the intricacies of the financial and corporate side that fascinated her. Within the first six months of working at Jardine’s, she displayed a talent for figures plus business acumen as well. Bruce had been pleasantly surprised.
It was only natural that she became indispensable to her father-in-law. Bruce Jardine, once her deadly enemy, eventually came around to making his peace with her. He recognized her considerable attributes, her talent, her genuine ability, and her willingness to work hard for long hours. As the months passed, he came to respect her. And he depended on her more and more.
One day, after she had been at Jardine’s for five years, the animosity and contentiousness she had come to expect simply ceased to exist.
Alfreda never became one of her admirers. On the other hand, Bruce’s wife had apparently realized the validity of her husband’s moves; she well understood that Stevie was the one person they could trust as the mother of their grandchildren, their heirs. And so she had kept a civil tongue in her head and stayed out of her daughter-in-law’s way. Alfreda had died in 1982, almost fifteen years ago, but right up to the day of her death she had disliked Stevie, had never shown her any affection or made even the smallest friendly gesture.
Rising, walking back to the desk, Stevie bent forward, picked up her wedding photograph, and peered at it intently for a moment or two. How young she and Ralph had looked. But then, they had been young, she most especially. I was just a little girl, only sixteen, she thought. A child. Why, I was younger than Chloe is now.
Oh, Ralph, who would have believed it? Believed that your father would take me into the business? Or that one day I would be head of Jardine’s on both sides of the Atlantic? She could not help thinking that life, the great leveler, was also so very unpredictable. I couldn’t have accomplished all that I have without friends, good friends, and most especially André Birron. She knew that André had taught her as much as Bruce ever had about the jewelry business. He had been her mentor in certain ways, and a genuine friend, almost like a father.
André had always given her the best advice, the soundest. When she was twenty-seven, she fell in love again, after four years of widowhood. She discovered she was pregnant a year later, and it was to André she had turned. She had flown to Paris to see him, to confide in him, although, being wary by nature, she had done so only to a degree. She had merely alluded to the identity of her lover, the father of her unborn child. Even before she had finished her sentence, André had held up his hand as if in warning.
“Do not tell me who he is. I do not want to know. Remember this, my Stephanie. Confide a secret to one person and it is a secret no longer,” the sage old Frenchman had cautioned.
And so she had kept her own counsel always, for this was her natural inclination. No one had ever known who her lover had been, or even tried to guess the man’s real identity. Not even Chloe knew who her father was.
Chloe. Stevie’s expression changed, became softer as she thought of her eighteen-year-old daughter. Now she was a D-flawless diamond. Quite perfect.
Stevie suddenly broke into a chuckle. Well, not really. Her daughter was only almost perfect, thank goodness. No one wanted a paragon of virtue. They were no fun, and usually too good to be true.
Chloe would be arriving later that afternoon, hopefully in time for dinner, and they would enjoy a cozy evening together. Tomorrow her mother and stepfather would be driving up from Manhattan to spend Thanksgiving Day with them, and the rest of the holiday weekend. She was looking forward to it, just as she knew Chloe was.
Derek Rayner had been knighted by the queen some years before, and he and her mother were now Sir Derek and Lady Rayner. As had been predicted long ago, he was now the greatest classical actor on the English stage, and at sixty-eight a living legend. He had been good to her mother and to her and her children.
Derek and her mother were childless, and so he played the role of father and grandfather to the hilt. But his love for them all was very genuine, and he adored Chloe.
Her son Miles was driving to Connecticut with the Rayners. He was her favorite son, if the truth be known, although she always tried to hide this fact from the others. She loathed playing favorites amongst her children.
Miles was a talented artist and a brilliant set designer. Currently he was living in New York, where he was designing the stage sets for a Broadway play. Unlike his brother Nigel and his twin, Gideon, he had never shown any desire to go into Jardine’s, although with his artist’s eye he had always appreciated the beauty of the jewels and the other objects of art Jardine’s made.
Despite his lack of interest in working in the family business, his grandfather had insisted he become a director since he was a major shareholder in the company. He had done so immediately. Jardine’s was his inheritance, and it had always been an important part of his life; his mother had seen to that.
It was Gideon who was the true jeweler in the family; Stevie had recognized that when he was a child. He was a talented, indeed gifted, lapidary, and he had inherited his father’s love of stones, most especially diamonds. Like Ralph, he was an expert when it came to cutting stones, and as one of the chief lapidaries at Jardine’s, he was involved in the creation of the exquisite jewels that the Crown Jewellers had been renowned for over the centuries.
Nigel, ever the businessman, and the spitting image of Bruce in so many different ways, ran the business end of the company, under her direction.
But Nigel wanted it all for himself.
Stevie was well aware of this these days.
