Wealth means something different to a family like mine. It’s simply to be accumulated so that you can pass it down to your heirs and secure the lineage. We’ve been in Debretts forever. Seriously, my family tree went back nine-hundred years, maybe more if anyone cared to look. Probably some Royal blood, too, if the wrong side of the bedsheets counts.
I was brought up in a castle, Roecaster Castle in Dorset, but I’m not rich. No, all the money and property passes down to the elder son, my brother Sinclair. It’s always been that way. I don’t think about it much, to be honest. I grew up knowing that’s how it would be. And besides, if tradition said that everything was split amongst all the children equally, the castle and its grounds would have been long gone, sold to the National Trust to be another stately home for the public to visit.
Well, we did that, too. You know, let the great unwashed tour the castle and grounds on certain designated days throughout the year, sell them cream teas and a guidebook that I wrote in between my first and second years at university. But on the days when we were closed to the British public, the castle was my playground—I could get lost for hours wandering through the orchards and formal gardens, drifting ghostlike through the 124 rooms, not including the vast, dust-filled attics, or the chilly, dungeon-like cellars.
But rich, no. When I married—or if—I could expect to inherit no more than £50,000 and that was it. Not even enough to buy a one-bedroom ex-council flat in London.
It was irritating that I wouldn’t get anything at all until I married some over-privileged Rupert.
No, I didn’t have a fiancé named Rupert—it was just what my set called the Eton idiots who went to Sandhurst officer training because their family had been military since Nelson was a twinkle in his daddy’s eye.
If you looked in the Oxford Dictionary, it would say something like this:
Rupert, A (noun). British Army slang for an Officer, especially one that is upper class, nice but dim, and utterly lacking in skill or sense.
Daddy planned to keep me dependent and tied to his apron strings until I married a man like that. It was positively feudal.
Nobody said what would happen if I decided not to marry—it was simply assumed that I would.
I rubbed my eyes then stared at my fingers, blackened from my eyeliner and the smoky-look that I’d been going for last night.
Wincing, I peeled off my false eyelashes and flicked them away with my fingers, just in time for the cell door to clang open.
“Time to go, Miss Forsythe,” said the desk sergeant.
“Really? I was hoping for a cup of tea first, I’m parched.”
He didn’t seem to think I was amusing, so I jammed my poor, abused feet back into my torturous shoes and clip-clopped along the corridor past other cells with noisy inmates.
I wondered how much I’d have to brown-nose dear old dad to get out of my latest scrape? How many dreary charity balls would he make me go to as penance? It was a sobering thought.
My stomach roiled in protest when I saw the man himself standing waiting for me, and what little colour I had, fled from my cheeks.
“Arabella.”
Those four syllables were imbued with disgust and disappointment. I’d heard the same tone from him a thousand times, so it was nothing new. I forced myself to remain slumped, fighting the urge to straighten my spine.
“Hello, Daddy!” I said with a saccharine smile.
It wasn’t a smile that was returned.
“You’ve gone too far this time,” he stated coldly. “Drunk and disorderly, urination in a public place.”
It sounded a lot worse than it was, and I wondered idly what he was going to threaten me with this time: loss of allowance, servitude on the family estate, being arm-candy to one of his banking friends at some boring stockholder party.
He nodded at the police officers, thanking them briskly for their time and apologizing for my appalling behaviour. He also promised a chunky cheque to the National Association of Retired Police Officers.
And that was it. End of story. All crimes swept away under the carpet of birth, breeding, and a fat wallet.
He gripped me by the top of my arm as I was frog-marched out of the police station.
“I can walk,” I snapped.
“Can you?” he asked icily. “It seems to me that even something as simple as walking is beyond your meagre capabilities, Arabella.”
I grimaced. He’d told me I was stupid so many times, it was easy to believe him.
“I’m not a child,” I muttered petulantly.
“No. You just insist on acting like a toddler having a tantrum instead. Well, I’ve had enough.”
I tugged my arm free.
“So have I, Daddy!”
Stevens, the chauffeur, held open the car door for me.
“Thank you,” I muttered as I slid into the expensive leather interior.
Dad didn’t speak to me all the way home, a gloomy fifteen minutes where I was left to contemplate my many sins and ponder my punishment.
But as the Rolls Royce Silver Ghost slid smoothly to the porticoed entrance, he finally spoke.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
He didn’t even look at me.
Well, that was going to be another fun conversation, one where he treated me like a child, and I promised it would never happen again.
But he hadn’t finished.
“And Arabella, if you insist on dressing like a whore, try not to dress like a cheap one.”
Shame burned in my chest, and I wrenched the door open before Stevens had even put the car in park. I kicked off my shoes in the opulent hallway of our London townhouse and ran up the stairs.
Nausea filled my stomach, and when I saw my reflection in the large mirror, I knew that my father was right. I looked cheap. Cheap and worn out and sad.
No, I wouldn’t let him do this to me again. I was better than that.
I phoned Alastair to find out where he’d disappeared to last night.
“Did you get home, okay?” he yawned.
“No, I was kidnapped. But they were nice. They made me tea and recharged my phone. I think they’re bringing me a bacon sandwich.”
“Send one my way,” he yawned again.
I rolled my eyes.
“Look, I need to talk to you because…”
“Oh God, it’s not even ten o’clock. It’s way too early! Call me later,” and he hung up before I had a chance to speak.
Bloody typical.
I was tired of men cutting me off. I needed to find better friends.
I shuffled into my en suite bathroom and stripped off the hooker dress, shoving £1,200 worth of appliqued satin into the rubbish bin. I knew I’d never wear that dress again—I couldn’t even bear to look at it.
The shower was my friend: gushing hot water soothed my sadness, and eased my aches and pains.
The hot water didn’t run out. Daddy would never let that happen. Hot water was endless, along with the rooms in our houses and the money we spent on possessions. The only thing in short supply was affection. Poor little rich girl.
I wrapped myself in a thick bath towel, warmed by the heated towel rail, and stumbled into my room, squinting at the thin winter sunshine in the world beyond my window. I picked up the remote control, and the thick velvet curtains slid together soundlessly. Blessed darkness.
I’d only been asleep for a few minutes when a soft tapping on the door woke me.
I ignored it for as long as I could, but whoever was disturbing my beauty sleep wasn’t going away.
“What?” I snarled, my voice muffled by my pillow.
The door opened and the light flipped on, causing me to groan.
“Your father wants to see you, Lady Arabella,” said Mrs. Danvers.
Her name wasn’t really Mrs. Danvers, but that’s how I thought of her. She answered to ‘Brown’. I think she had a first name, but even though she’d worked for my family for twelve years, I’d never heard anyone call her anything
except ‘Brown’.
Well, except for me. I also called her ‘Chief Bitch’. She was so far up my father’s arse, I was surprised she could see daylight.
“He’s in his study.”
“Yeah, whatever. Turn the light off when you go.”
She went. Leaving the light on.
See? Bitch.
I wish I could say that I ignored my five minute warning and went back to sleep, but I didn’t. I wish I could say that I wasn’t afraid of my father, but I was.
His temper was legendary, and you did not want to be on the receiving end of that. My stomach clenched nervously.
Maybe throwing a party for two-hundred people in the Mayfair restaurant he owned, and running up a teensy little bar bill had pushed him over the edge. And getting caught peeing in the alley along with some of my male friends…
He wouldn’t want that for his precious princess. Hmm, my sarcastic voice sounded a lot like my normal voice.
I dressed quickly. No one kept Sir Reginald Forsythe, Earl of Roecaster waiting. Especially not his younger child, his troublesome, tear-away daughter.
I slid into the study as silently as possible, trying to make myself blend in with the hand-printed wallpaper.
It didn’t work. Even with his back to me, staring at a computer screen dribbling numbers, he knew I was there.
He swung around to face me, crossing one leg over his expensive wool-blend trousers. He scanned me leisurely, and I squirmed under his cool appraisal.
“Arabella.”
“That’s me!” I said brightly.
“You’ve always been a disappointment.”
Wow, straight for the jugular.
“Exposing this family to public ridicule.”
As he was factually correct, I kept my mouth shut.
“Thank God your mother died before you could disappoint her, too.”
I cringed, feeling the slice of his surgical repugnance.
“You’ve failed in everything you’ve ever attempted: school, university, even finishing school, although how you managed to be sent down from that still astonishes me.”
“If only you’d let me get a job, Daddy…” I began bravely.
“I’m talking!” he roared, his face turning purple. “You don’t bloody talk when I’m talking! When I stop talking, that’s when you talk!”
“Sorry, Daddy.”
“At least God has given you a modicum of beauty, because He hasn’t given you brains.”
Lashed by his words, I was silent.
“Tomorrow morning, I’m leaving on a business trip. You’re coming with me as you’re obviously not capable of being left without constant supervision. I’ve told Brown to pack for you. The car leaves at five. In the morning.”
He turned back to his desk and I was dismissed.
I knew from bitter experience that there was no use arguing with him. I had no idea where he went on his business trips, but my father had his manicured fingers in many pies. It could be Shanghai or New York, Sydney or Vanuatu.
But as it turned out, it wasn’t any of those places.
Arabella
FREEZING RAIN PELTED me as I scuttled down the steps of the small aeroplane, catching a glimpse of snow-capped mountains in the distance. Hunching my shoulders, I headed for shelter in the nearby arrivals building.
It was our third airport of the day, and I had only the haziest notion of where we were. No one had spoken to me except the flight attendants, and there was only so much nasty in-flight tea and coffee one could drink without regrets.
For the last nine days, I’d followed my father to boring business meetings in far-flung corners of the world: Namibia, Chile, Siberia, Kazakhstan and now here. He was buying up coalfields at a time when other businesses were turning to Green energy. It was his belief that with the Chinese opening a new coal-powered station each week, their demand for fossil fuels would soon outstrip their own national production. And when that happened, he’d be ready to supply.
Not that Daddy Dearest ever spoke to me directly, he just introduced me to the people he was doing business with, showing appropriate fatherly affection before dismissing me to a bland hotel room. He’d also taken away my credit cards, so shopping trips were out of the question.
I was bored out of my brain, but didn’t have a means of escape. Instead, I watched a lot of terrible subtitled TV, or swam in the tiny pools, or even worked-out listlessly in the tired hotel gyms. Dad made sure that I didn’t have a chance to drink anything stronger than coffee, or sometimes a single glass of wine on the rare occasions I was invited to dine with him, all carefully supervised, of course. Because I couldn’t be trusted. I was a disappointment, and I wished I could feel indifferent.
It was a subtle punishment: proximity to a parent without any of the love that I might have hoped for. ‘Hope’ and ‘my father’ weren’t words that I’d united in a sentence since I was seven.
Today, we’d flown into Armenia, a country that I’d vaguely heard of (but couldn’t find on a map), although I’d learned that there were untapped coal seams within the forests just across the border into Azerbaijan (which I’d had to learn to spell), and just the teensy problem of the countryside being littered with landmines from a previous war.
Daddy Dearest was here to donate to a charity that cleared war-torn countries of landmines. And it was all tax deductible.
What a coincidence that there were coalmines to plunder, too.
Although I wasn’t completely sure where ‘here’ was since we’d landed at a large airport—somewhere I couldn’t read the name of because the writing system was unfamiliar. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. It made me feel very small, very insignificant.
Then we’d driven another six hours, edging along a steely blue lake before heading ever upwards through the mountains, past a long-forgotten monastery, winding along hazardous hairpin bends that had me closing my eyes, a torturous journey, painful in its silence, until the scenery widened into patches of farmland and we arrived at our destination, half quaint Alpine-style buildings, half ugly Soviet grey concrete monoliths.
Our driver, a silent, Slavic type with ruthless eyes, drove us to a modern hotel, all glass and chrome, but tiny in comparison to other more cosmopolitan hotels in other world cities, and with just 33 rooms.
My luggage and I were escorted to a large, modern suite with a double bed, but I was somewhat disconcerted to see that the towels had been cunningly twisted into the shape of swans, with rose petals scattered across the crisp sheets.
My escort appeared very proud of the swans, so I smiled politely and left a couple of dollar bills on the coffee table for him. Over the last week, I’d learned that hotel staff always preferred American dollars to the local currency.
I sat on the bed, and the two swans collapsed, the romantic gesture crumbling, which seemed fitting. Nevertheless, I pulled out my phone to call Alastair. The bastard hadn’t returned a single text since I’d been away, but I was so bored and lonely, I was willing to overlook his inadequacies and give him another chance. He was supposed to be my best friend.
He finally answered after the first three times I dialled his number had gone to voicemail.
“Bloody hell, Harry,” he grumbled, “are you stalking me?”
“Don’t be a bigger arse than you have to be, Alastair,” I sighed. “I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with no one to talk to except Dad’s shady business associates.”
“Well, I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” he complained. “I’m not supposed to talk to you, and besides,” he hissed, lowering his voice, “I’m entertaining a rather nice little tart that I’ve just met and you’re cramping my style.”
My head spun with so many pieces of new information.
Alastair and I had known each other forever although we’d never been official. Neither had we wanted to be, but we’d been each other’s plus-ones at all the weddings this season and he wasn’t bad in bed. I’d assumed … I wasn�
��t sure what I’d assumed.
“What do you mean, you’re not allowed to talk to me?”
He sighed theatrically.
“Harry, darling, your dear papa paid my bar bill at Claridge’s and Annabel’s, and bunged me a couple of grand to go and shag someone else. Apparently, I’m leading you astray and you’re too thick to know it. Didn’t he tell you?”
I swallowed the insult along with the pain.
“You’re such a bastard, Alastair.”
“I know. That’s why you love me. Now be a good girl and bugger off—I’m trying to get my leg over.”
He cut me off, leaving me staring at my silent phone.
I was twenty-six years old and my own father was paying my friends to stay away from me.
I didn’t think I could sink any lower.
DINNER THAT EVENING was a gloomy affair. I’d dressed nicely, although my Alexander McQueen gown was totally wasted, apart from curt introductions, no one talked to me except to inquire how I found the soup (in a bowl garnished with a mint leaf), how I found the Dolma (on my plate, minced), would I try the local Pakhlava pastry saturated with syrup (probably not—one must watch one’s figure, and try not to throw up at the dinner table). Thank God I hadn’t tried the Ayran, a frothing beer-mug full of cold yoghurt-beverage mixed with salt.
I smiled dutifully and stared longingly at the bottles of wine the men drank, but Dad had told them I didn’t drink, so that was that.
I excelled at small talk—every girl of my class and education did, but the only way I could punish my father was to remain as incommunicative as possible without actually being rude. It was the only morsel of control I had in my life. If he treated me as a child, I’d behave like a petulant one.
I still didn’t understand why he’d brought me on this trip. If he wanted to curb my drinking, just send me to rehab in Primrose Hill. At least I’d be with friends.
Dad hadn’t told me anything about his ongoing plans, so I had no idea how long I’d be away for, or where we might be going next. But during dinner, I managed to glean a few snippets, such as we’d be heading into the mountains the following day and that there was still snow on the higher ground.
Bombshell - Jane Harvey-Berrick Page 3
