by Lucy Gordon
‘Yes, but we don’t have to talk about it, and you can keep an eye on him discreetly. It helps that you don’t look like a nurse.’
This was an understatement. Freya was delicately built with elegant movements, a pretty face and a cheeky demeanour. She might have been a dancer, a nightclub hostess, or anything except a medical expert with an impressive list of letters after her name.
An adventurous spirit had made her leave her last job in response to her mother’s request.
‘I was getting bored,’ she said. ‘Same thing day after day.’
‘You certainly won’t get that with Amos,’ Janine had remarked.
She was right. After only a few days Freya remarked, ‘It’s like dealing with a spoilt child. Don’t worry. I can do what’s necessary.’
Luckily, Amos liked his stepdaughter and under her care his health improved. It was she who now came bouncing out onto the balcony and said, ‘Time for your nap.’
‘Not for another ten minutes,’ he growled.
She smiled. ‘No, it’s now. No argument.’
He grinned. ‘You’re a bully, you know that?’
‘Of course I know that. I work at it. Get going.’
He shrugged, resigned and good-natured, and let her escort him as far as his bedroom door. Janine would have gone in with him, but he waved her away.
‘I can manage without supervision. Just keep your eyes open for Darius. I can’t think what’s keeping him.’ He closed the door.
‘What’s going on?’ Freya asked as the two women walked away.
‘Goodness knows. He was supposed to arrive this morning but he called to say there’d been an unexpected delay.’
‘And then all the other sons, Leonid, Marcel, Travis, Jackson, just a few days apart. Why is Amos suddenly doing this?’
‘I can only guess,’ Janine said sadly. ‘He puts on this big act of being fully recovered, but he had a scare. He’s seen that his life could end at any time, and he’s…getting things sorted out, is how he puts it, starting with changes to his will.’
‘Funny, he’s so organised that you’d think he’d have fixed that ages ago.’
‘He did, but I believe he’s taking another look at all of his lads and deciding-I don’t know-which one will manage best-’
‘Which one is most like him,’ Freya said shrewdly.
‘You’re very hard on him,’ Janine protested.
‘No more than he deserves. Of all the arrogant-’
‘But he’s very fond of you. You’re the daughter he never had and he’d love you to be really part of the family.’ She paused delicately.
‘You mean he wants me to be his daughter-in-law?’ Freya demanded, aghast. ‘The cheeky crook.’
‘Don’t call him a crook,’ Janine protested.
‘Why not? No man builds up the kind of fortune he did by honest means. And he’s taught his sons to be the same. Anything for money, that’s how they all think. So if one of them can talk me into marriage he’ll cop the lot. Was Amos mad when he thought of that? Nothing on this earth would persuade me-there isn’t one of them I’d ever dream of-ye gods and little fishes!’
‘Don’t tell him I told you,’ Janine begged.
‘Don’t worry. Not a word.’ Suddenly her temper faded, replaced by wicked mischief. ‘But I might enjoy a good laugh. Yes, I think it deserves that.’
As she hurried away her mother heard the laughter echoing back, and sighed. She couldn’t blame Freya one bit. She, of all people, knew what madness it was to marry into this family.
Darius arrived the next day, apologising with a fictional tale of business dealings. Not for the world would he have admitted that he’d been forced to leave Herringdean, return to the mainland and check into a hotel to put on a fresh suit. Normally, no power on earth could force him to change his plans and he resented it. Another thing for which Harriet Connor was to blame.
He found her mysteriously disturbing because she seemed to haunt him as two people. There was the girl who’d briefly charmed him with her instinctive empathy for his feelings about the isolated place. And there was the other one who’d interfered with his plans, destroyed his dignity with her stupid hound, and committed the unforgivable crime of seeing him at a disadvantage. He had dismissed her from his mind but she seemed unaware of that fact and popped up repeatedly in one guise or another.
A fanciful man might have defined her two aspects as the Good Fairy and the Bad Fairy. Darius, who wasn’t fanciful, simply called her ‘that wretched female’.
His father greeted him in typical fashion. ‘So there you are at last. About time too.’
‘An unexpected matter that required my attention.’
Amos grunted. ‘As long as you sorted it out to your advantage.’
‘Naturally,’ Darius said, brushing aside the memory of lying on the sand. ‘Then I got here as soon as I could. I’m glad to see you looking better, Father.’
‘I am better. I keep saying so but my womenfolk won’t believe me. I suppose Freya talked a lot when she collected you from the airport.’
‘I asked her questions and, like a good nurse, she answered them.’
‘Nurse be damned. She’s here as my stepdaughter.’
‘If you say so.’
‘What do you think of her?’
‘She seems a nice girl, what little I’ve seen of her.’
‘She cheers the place up. And she’s a good cook. Better than that so-called professional I employ. She’s doing supper for us tonight. You’ll enjoy it.’
He did enjoy it. Freya produced excellent food, and could crack jokes that lightened the atmosphere. She was pleasant to have around, and Darius found himself wondering why more women couldn’t be like her instead of invading other people’s private property with their sharp remarks and their dangerous dogs.
Awkward. She’d said it herself, and that was exactly right.
After supper, in his father’s study, the two men confronted each other.
‘I gather things aren’t too good?’ Amos grunted.
‘Not for me or anyone else,’ Darius retorted. ‘There’s a global crisis, hadn’t you heard?’
‘Yes, and some are weathering it better than others. That contract you had the big fight over, I warned you how to word the get-out clause, and if you’d listened to me you could have told them where to stuff their legal action.’
‘But they’re decent people,’ Darius protested. ‘They knew very little about business-’
‘All the better. You could have done as you liked and they wouldn’t have found out until too late. You’re soft, that’s your trouble.’
Darius grimaced. In the financial world, his reputation was far from soft. Cold, unyielding, power-hungry, that was what people said of him. But he drew the line at taking advantage of helpless innocence, and he’d paid the price for it; a price his father would never have paid.
‘But it’s not too late,’ Amos conceded in a milder tone. ‘Now you’re here there are ways I can help.’
‘That’s what I hoped,’ Darius said quietly.
‘You haven’t always taken my advice, but perhaps you’ve got the sense to take it now. And the first problem is how you’re going to deal with Morgan Rancing.’
‘I must tell you-’
‘I’ve heard disturbing rumours about some island he owns off the south coast of England. They say he’ll try to use it to cover his debts, and I’m warning you to have no truck with that. Don’t give it a thought. What you must do-’
‘It’s too late,’ Darius growled. ‘Herringdean is already mine.’
‘What? You agreed to take it?’
‘No, I wasn’t given the chance,’ Darius snapped. ‘Rancing has vanished. Next thing, I received papers that transferred ownership of Herringdean to me. His cellphone is dead, his house is empty. Nobody knows where he is, or if they do they’re not talking. I can either accept the island or go without anything.’
‘But it’ll be more trouble than it’
s worth,’ Amos spluttered.
‘I’m inclined to agree with you,’ Darius murmured.
‘So you know something about it?’
‘A little. I need to go back and inspect it further.’
‘And you’re counting on it to pay your debts?’
‘I don’t know. But in the meantime I could do with an investor to make a one-time injection of cash and help me out.’
‘Meaning me?’
‘Well, as you’re always telling me, you’ve survived the credit crunch better than anyone.’
‘Yes, because I knew how to treat money.’
‘Like a prisoner who’s always trying to escape,’ Darius recalled.
‘Exactly. That’s why I came to live here.’
He pushed open the door that led out onto the balcony overlooking the view over the bay that now glittered with lights against the darkness.
‘I talked to a journalist once,’ Amos recalled. ‘She asked me all sorts of tom-fool questions. Why had I chosen to live in Monte Carlo? Was it just the tax relief or was there something else? I brought her out here and became lyrical about the view.’
‘That I would have loved to hear,’ Darius said.
Amos grinned. ‘Yeah, you’d have been proud of me. The silly woman swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Then she wrote some trash about my being a man who appreciated peace and beauty. As though I gave a damn about that stuff.’
‘Some people think it has value,’ Darius murmured.
‘Some people are fools,’ Amos said firmly. ‘I’d be sorry to think you were one of them. You’ve got yourself into a mess and you need me to get you out.’
‘Two firms I did business with went bankrupt, owing me money,’ Darius said grimly. ‘I hardly created the mess myself.’
‘But you made it worse by giving Mary everything she asked for in the divorce settlement.’
‘That was before the crisis. I could afford it then.’
‘But you didn’t leave yourself any room for manoeuvre, no way to claw any of it back. You forgot every lesson I ever taught you. Now you want me to pour good money after bad.’
‘So you won’t help me?’
‘I didn’t say that, but we need to talk further. Not now. Later.’
Darius spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Will my father invest in me, or will he not?’
‘Don’t rush me.’
‘I have to. I need to make my decisions quickly.’
‘All right, here’s a way forward for you to consider. A rich wife, that’s what you need, one who’ll bring you a thumping great dowry.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Freya. She’s already my stepdaughter, and I want her properly in the family as my daughter-in-law.’
Darius stared. His ears were buzzing, and somewhere there was the memory of Freya, on the drive from the airport, saying, ‘Your father’s got some really mad ideas. Someone needs to tell him to forget them.’
She’d refused to elaborate, but now he understood.
‘Why not?’ Amos asked genially. ‘You like the girl, you were laughing together at dinner-’
‘Yes, I like her-far too much to do her such an injury, even if she’d agree, which she wouldn’t, thank goodness. Do you really think you could make me crawl to do your bidding? If I have one thing left it’s my independence, and I won’t part with that.’
‘Then you’ll buy it at a high price. Don’t blame me when you go bankrupt.’
Darius gave a cold smile. ‘I’ll remember.’
He turned and walked away, resisting the temptation to slam the door. Within an hour he’d left the house.
CHAPTER TWO
T HE storm that swept over Herringdean had been violent, and nobody was surprised when the lifeboat was called out to an emergency. A small crowd had watched the boat plunge down the slipway into the sea, and a larger one gathered to see it return later that night.
Soon the rescued victims had been taken ashore into the waiting ambulance and the crew were free to exhale with relief and remove their life jackets.
Harriet took out her cellphone, dialled and spoke quickly. ‘Is he all right? Good. I’ll be home soon.’
When they had all finished making their report she slipped away and was followed by Walter and Simon, fellow crew members and friends.
‘Hey, Harry,’ Walter called. ‘You sounded worried on the phone. Is someone ill?’
‘No, I was just checking on Phantom. I left my neighbour looking after him. She promised to keep him safe.’
‘Safe? Why suddenly? You never worried before.’
‘I never had cause before. But now I worry. He’s a very powerful man.’
‘Who?’
From her pocket she took a newspaper cutting with a photograph and passed it to Walter.
‘“Darius Falcon,”’ he read. ‘“Giant of commerce, skilled manipulator, the financial world is agog to know if he will avert disaster-”’ He lowered the paper. ‘How does a big shot come to know Phantom?’
‘Because he’s bought the island,’ she said. ‘Rancing had money troubles and he solved them by selling this place.’
Simon swore. ‘And not a word to the people who live here, of course.’
‘Of course. What do we matter to men like that, up there on their lofty perch? If you could have seen him as I did, arrogant and sure of himself-’
‘You’ve met him?’ Simon demanded.
‘He came here a couple of days ago and I saw him on the beach. Phantom made a mess of his suit and he got mad, said he’d make me pay for a new one, and Phantom shouldn’t be allowed out. So tonight, I asked my neighbour to watch over him while I was away, in case…well, just in case.’
‘Hell!’ Walter said. ‘But is he really as bad as you say? If you two had a dust-up he probably just got a bit peeved-’
‘You didn’t see his face. He was more than a bit peeved. Now, I must get home.’
She hurried away, leaving the two men gazing after her, frowning with concern.
‘Surely she’s overreacting?’ Simon mused. ‘A bodyguard for a dog? A bit melodramatic, surely?’
‘She’s been that way for the last year,’ Walter sighed. ‘Ever since her husband died. Remember how good she and Brad were together? The perfect marriage. Now all she has left is his dog.’
‘Hmm,’ Simon grunted. ‘Personally, I never liked Brad.’
‘You say that because you fancied her rotten.’
‘Sure, me and every other man on the island. Let’s go for a drink.’
Harriet’s car made quick time from the harbour to Ellarick, then to the little shop that she owned, and above which she lived. As she looked up the window opened and Phantom’s head appeared, followed by that of a cheerful middle-aged woman. A moment later she was climbing the stairs to throw her arms about the dog.
‘Mmm,’ she cooed, and he responded with a throaty growl that sounded much the same.
‘No problems?’ she asked Mrs Bates, the neighbour who’d kept watch in her home.
‘No sign of anyone.’
‘Let me make you a cup of tea,’ Harriet offered gratefully.
But Mrs Bates refused and departed. She was a kindly soul and she knew Harriet wanted to be alone with Phantom, although how she could bear the loneliness of the apartment Mrs Bates couldn’t imagine.
But to Harriet it would never be lonely while Phantom was there. She hugged him fiercely before saying, ‘Come on, let’s take a walk. You need space to go mad in.’
They slipped out together into the darkness and walked down through the streets of the town, heading for the shore.
‘But not “the ogre’s” private beach,’ she said. ‘From now on, that’s out of bounds.’
They found a place on the public sands where they could chase each other up and down in the moonlight.
‘That’s enough,’ she gasped at last. ‘Yes, I know you could go on till morning, but I’m out of puff.’
She threw her
self down on the sand and stretched out on her back. Phantom immediately put a heavy paw on her chest, looking down into her face while she ruffled his fur.
‘That’s better,’ she sighed. ‘How could he not like you when you were trying so hard to be friendly? Being hurled to the ground by you is a real privilege. You don’t do it for everyone.’ She gave a soft grunt of laughter. ‘Just people with expensive clothes. If he really does send me the bill you’ll be on plain rations for a long time. So will I, come to think of it.’
He woofed.
‘The funny thing is, when I first saw him…he seemed decent, as if he really loved the sun and the fresh air; like someone who’d found himself in heaven. But when I discovered who he was he looked different. And then he was so rotten to you-’
Suddenly she sat up and threw her arms around the dog.
‘You must be careful,’ she said fiercely. ‘You must, you must! If anything happened to you I couldn’t bear it.’
Harriet buried her face against him. Phantom made a gentle sound, but he didn’t try to move. This often happened, and he knew what he must do: keep still, stay warm and gentle, just be there for her. Instinct told him what she needed, and his heart told him how to give it.
‘They think I’m crazy,’ she whispered, ‘getting paranoid over your safety. Well, perhaps I really am crazy, but you’re all I’ve got-without you, there’s no love or happiness in the world…only you…’
She kissed him and gave a shaky laugh.
‘I expect you think I’m crazy too. Poor old boy. Come on, let’s get home and you can have something special to eat.’
They left the beach, climbing the gently sloping road that led to the town. Suddenly she stopped. Far away, she could just make out the house where Rancing had lived before he fled, and where ‘the ogre’ would soon appear. It went by the grandiose name of Giant’s Beacon, which might have been justified in its great days, but seemed rather over-the-top now that it was in a state of disrepair. At this distance it was tiny, but it stood out against the moonlit sky, and she could just make out that lights were coming on.
‘He’s here,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, heavens, let’s get home, fast.’
