that she’s only the chauffeur’s daughter. You mustn’t let her get ideas above her station.’
And that had been that. Suzanne had turned away and heard the door shut before she had even made it down the corridor into the hall. The message she had been sent to deliver had flown out of her head completely. It had left a nice, tidy spot, just the right size for her disillusionment to set in.
‘And I hold you responsible for the way my father was treated,’ she told him bitterly. ‘You may not have been around, but you owed it to the people who worked for your father to see that they were treated properly, instead of just vanishing off the face of the earth and leaving your stepmother in charge. Did you even know that people who had worked for your father for years at the house were dismissed only weeks after your father died?’
She was gathering momentum now and was astounded when he said evenly, betraying no emotion whatever, ‘Yes, I did.’
‘You...you did?’
‘I made sure that they were all financially compensated. Very generously compensated.’
‘How on earth did you find out?’ Suzanne asked, frowning and trying hard to work out how a man thousands of miles away could have discovered that. Did he have some mysterious crystal ball in his New York penthouse, which he looked into every time he wanted to see what was happening on the other side of the world?
‘I have my ways.’
‘Spies, you mean?’
‘Nothing quite so dramatic.’ A shadow of a smile flitted across his dark features. ‘Someone there has been keeping an eye on things for me. He told me as soon as Martha began firing old hands.’
‘Why didn’t you return yourself to sort it out?’
‘It would have been impossible.’
Which, to her ears, implied that he hadn’t been bothered; but then, if he had been so unbothered, why would he have made sure that his father’s men were compensated? Why?
‘So you did know about the way Martha treated Dad, then?’ she threw at him in an accusing voice, and he shook his head.
‘As far as I knew, he was one of the ones who remained in her employment and, as I told you, my offer of money was amicably but firmly returned to sender. I will admit, though, that I was told of...changes, for want of a better word. Certain facts were reported back to me.’
‘What facts?’
‘Nothing that you need concern yourself with.’ His tone of voice did not invite lively debate on the subject. He had thrown her, she thought, a few scraps of information, but he had no intention of explaining any more to her. Probably because he felt no need to launch into any lengthy explanations to a girl who was, after all, beneath him in social standing.
‘What did you do with your father’s possessions?’ he asked suddenly, and she scowled.
‘There weren’t many. The few big things he had accumulated over the years, I left with a friend in Leamington Spa. I brought the smaller things to London with me.’
She looked down into her coffee-cup. There was a locket with a picture of her mother inside, a stack of old letters which she had written to Santa Claus over the years, and which he had assiduously kept in a scrapbook, all her report cards from school, a box of photographs, the watch which old Mr Sutherland had given to him on his fiftieth birthday and which he had worn every day of his life from the moment he had received it. She had packed them neatly into a small cardboard box and had kept them in her cupboard in the bedsit.
She hoped that he wasn’t looking when she wiped a tear away-from her cheek. She didn’t want him rushing across to her with a load of phoney sympathy and a handkerchief.
‘Now,’ he said, and there was, thankfully, no indication that he had noticed her brief lapse, ‘shall we discuss the job?’
‘There’s really no need—’ she began, thinking that this sounded like a rerun of what she had said when he had offered her a room in his apartment.
‘I realise that,’ he cut in abruptly. ‘Just as I realise what a bitter pill it is for you to swallow, taking anything that’s handed to you from a member of my family. But this isn’t the act of charity that you’d like to believe. I have several companies over here, all bought with some of my father’s inheritance two years ago. I took them over when they were in receivership and they’re all now thriving.’
He had bought companies in England after he had moved to America? Why would he have done that? And if he had done that, why bother to go to America at all?
‘You’ve been back to England since you went away?’ she asked, perplexed.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And still you never came to the house to see your stepmother?’
‘No.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Don’t,’ he said with a tinge of impatience, ‘ask so many questions.’
‘Yes, sir!’ she muttered under her breath, and he shot her a crooked smile.
‘Good girl. Now, there’s a position vacant in one of the companies for an assistant accountant How far had you reached in your studies?’
Suzanne tucked her feet up underneath her and leant forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Her long hair fell in an untidy tousle of ringlets down the sides of her face and she gave the question some thought.
‘I was on the verge of qualification,’ she admitted, steeling herself for another fight, but he made no comment, and she explained to him just what she could do, what areas of tax she felt qualified to cover, how knowledgeable she was on company litigation, all the aspects of audit control which she had found very simple at the time. While she spoke, he nodded, listening in silence until she had finished, and she gave a nervous little laugh.
‘Of course, I may have forgotten all of it.’
‘I hardly think so. If anything, you’re probably overqualified for the job I have in mind, but if you were temping then it’ll be more challenging that what you must have been doing.’
‘When it comes to photocopying and filing, most things pose a greater challenge,’ she said with a laugh. Strange, but it felt as though she hadn’t laughed in years. She could hardly believe that that carefree amused sound had actually come out of her. And in the company of a man who sat on the opposite side of the fence to her.
He told her how much she would be paid, and she looked at him with a fair amount of amazement.
‘That’s awfully high,’ she said at last, and he shook his head in genuine amusement.
‘You will never get far in business if you insist on being honest to that degree,’ he said. ‘I pay my workers well because I want their loyalty and hard work. After all, they are the backbone of the company and if they’re disgruntled they won’t stay. High turnover of staff is very bad if a company is to succeed.’
‘And success is what it’s all about.’
‘That’s
