Despite the awful incident with her car, the disappearing suppliers and customers, and the threatening letters and phone calls she was still receiving regularly (she’d given up reporting them to the police, who plainly didn’t give a rat’s ass, but kept a careful log of everything herself), she was working flat out on Trade Fair at the moment. Determined not to give in to Brogan’s crass bullying tactics, she’d just gone public with a new and very successful ad campaign featuring naked black girls apparently being “lanced” by diamond-tipped spears. One image in particular, of a black woman holding up her baby while being shot at with a giant, James Bond–esque revolver firing diamond bullets, caused a furor in all the art and lifestyle magazines, and had even been picked up abroad. It hadn’t hurt that the shot was taken by a world-famous fashion photographer, an old friend of Scarlett’s, nor that Cuypers had made the error of making a public complaint to the Advertising Standards Agency, claiming that the black background, illuminated only by diamonds, was designed to encourage people to link the Trade Fair pictures with their product. (Which of course it was, although Scarlett was thrilled to have the chance to deny any such connection publicly, thus generating yet more attention for her campaign.)
But it wasn’t all good news. Thanks to Brogan’s efforts, Bijoux was still suffering. She’d also been forced to become more security conscious, installing expensive intruder alarms both at the shop and at home and hiring a semipermanent “doggie-guard” for Boxford whenever she was away. Mrs. Minton from downstairs adored the spaniel and spoiled him rotten, but Scarlett still felt anxious leaving him for more than a few hours. She’d wrestled with her conscience over her decision to fly up to Scotland rather than drive, as it meant a whole three-day weekend without him. But in the end she decided it was simply too much of a slog for such a short trip. She needed a real break and, as long as she avoided any major run-ins with Mummy and Cameron, this was her first chance all year to have one.
“Actually,” she said, as the driver swung the gray Land Rover into the bumpy driveway, “can you leave me here? I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
“Are ye sure?” he asked, pulling over. “It’s still a guid mile up to the castle, you know.”
“I know.” Scarlett smiled. “I grew up here, remember?”
“Aye, course you did.” The driver blushed. “Silly o’ me. But are you sure you want me to leave you?” He looked awfully doubtful, as if she’d asked him to set her down in the middle of Mogadishu.
“Quite sure, honestly,” said Scarlett. “I’ll enjoy the walk, and my bag’s not heavy. How much do I owe you?”
“Darling, good heavens, where did you spring from? And what on earth have you been doing? Your face is as flushed as a tomato.”
Caroline Drummond Murray greeted her daughter with her usual tactful grace. Draped over a cream brocade chaise longue in the drawing room, her face and neck covered with Ponds cold cream like a newly iced cake, and with an open copy of the Telegraph spread over her knees, she had clearly been enjoying an afternoon siesta when Scarlett walked in.
“It was such a glorious day, I thought I’d walk up the drive,” said Scarlett brightly, determined not to be drawn into an argument in minute one. “There are so many rabbits running around, it’s like Watership Down out there.”
“I know,” drawled Caroline, turning back to the Telegraph. “I must remember to tell Duncan to shoot some more of them. He’s getting terribly lazy in his old age.”
“Oh, no Mummy, come on, leave the poor things be,” said Scarlett, horrified. “What harm do they do?”
“Rabbits?” said Caroline. “Is that a serious question? They’re pests, darling, you know that. Let’s try and save our bleeding-heart liberalism for the Africans, shall we, and leave the rabbits out of it?”
“Where’s Daddy?” asked Scarlett, holding her temper with an effort. She might be a bleeding heart, but at least she had a heart to bleed. Sometimes her mother’s callousness was beyond the pale. “I want to give him his present.”
“Well, you can’t,” said Caroline, flicking over to the sports pages. “No family presents until tomorrow; that’s the actual day. It was Daddy’s request,” she added, catching Scarlett’s thunderous look.
“Where is he?”
“Fishing, I think, with Cameron. I’m not sure where they went exactly.”
“Cameron’s here already?” Scarlett raised an eyebrow. “Leaving the office on a weekday? That’s not like him. I’m amazed Goldman Sachs could possibly spare him,” she added, a touch bitterly.
“They can’t,” said Caroline, frostily. “He’s heading back to London first thing tomorrow, for a weekend meeting, if you can believe that.”
Scarlett thought of the countless weekends she’d spent working or traveling for Trade Fair but said nothing.
“He’s devoted to Daddy and Drumfernly, but he pushes himself too hard. It was quite an effort for him to get here, never mind being dragged off to that ghastly, cold river the moment he arrives. Your father can be terribly thoughtless at times.”
It hadn’t occurred to Caroline that she hadn’t even gotten up to greet Scarlett, never mind offered her a cup of tea after her long journey. Losing herself in the racing results, she didn’t even notice when Scarlett slunk off to her room to unpack, until the door clunked shut behind her.
Upstairs, Scarlett was looking at the photograph on her dressing table. The only shot she’d kept and framed from her modeling days, typically for Scarlett it was a group picture—showing her clapping with a gaggle of other girls at the end of the Lacroix catwalk show—but she still stood out a mile, her amber eyes glowing like coal embers amid the sea of blonde, blue-eyed beauties, her legs going on for miles beneath the tiniest of black satin mini-dresses.
Gosh, it all seemed like a terribly long time ago now, she thought with a sigh, kicking off her sneakers and flopping down on the bed. On the chair in the corner, Caroline had already laid out the rust-colored taffeta dress she expected her to wear for the party tonight, the same hideous puffball monstrosity she’d worn to every Drumfernly cocktail party and hunt ball since she turned eighteen. Aware that her mother was envious of her youth and good looks—Scarlett’s brief success as a model had been very hard for Caroline—she rarely protested at being forced to dress as one of the ugly sisters at home. After all, it wasn’t as if anyone of any interest was going to be there tonight. She was here for her father, who she very much doubted would notice if she turned up naked and sprayed in silver paint, much less in her familiar getup as an eighties prom queen.
By seven o’clock, the “carriages” had started arriving in force—ancient Land Rovers mostly, or Volvos splattered so liberally with mud they could have doubled as army camouflage vehicles—and a battalion of tweed- and taffeta-clad matrons, their pearls glinting in the moonlight, crunched their way across the gravel and into the ballroom. Once inside, they sheared off from their kilted, red-faced husbands like so many teenagers at a school dance, congregating in same-sex groups, the better to gossip about the latest scandal at the Women’s Institute or the whispers about the new gay vicar at Aberfeldy.
“Caroline, darling, you look divine,” one of the husbands gushed admiringly as she greeted him at the door. “What a goddess! The old boy couldn’t ask for a better birthday present.”
“Oh, Jock, you’re too sweet,” Caroline simpered, happily. “I’ve had this dress for years. Do go on in.”
In fact, the clinging, gray floor-length number from Ann Taylor had been shipped up to Scotland at great expense two weeks ago, since when a legion of local seamstresses had altered it almost daily until it fit Caroline’s lithe body like a second skin. With her dark hair piled up on top of her head in a more intricate version of her usual severe bun and all the Drummond Murray family diamonds at her throat, ears, and wrists, she looked positively regal. Thanks to the cold cream, her skin also glowed like moonlight. Tonight, for once, Scarlett would have a tough time upstaging her, she thought happily.
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br /> Meanwhile Hugo, the birthday boy, looked faintly ridiculous standing beside her. Short, round, and happy in his tattered kilt, and already three sheets to the wind on malt, he looked like Snow White’s drunken pet dwarf.
By the time Scarlett came downstairs, the party was already in full swing, with all the usual suspects getting stuck in to the booze and swaying mindlessly to the same Scottish dances played at every Banffshire party since time immemorial.
“About time.” Cameron, immensely pleased with himself in white ruffled shirt, kilt, and knee socks, his sporran, or traditional purse, perched obscenely over his groin like a Highland toupee, grabbed her by the arm. “Where’ve you been all afternoon? Poor Mummy’s been run off her feet.”
“I fell asleep,” said Scarlett, hitching a rust taffeta puff-sleeve back up onto her shoulder. She’d lost a lot of weight, thanks to the stress of the last few months, and the dress was constantly threatening to fall off her tiny frame. “I’ve had a hell of a week. Besides, Mummy’s spent the entire afternoon on the sofa. It’s Mrs. Cullen who’s done everything, as usual. Anyway, you can’t talk. You’ve been fishing all day with Dad.”
“We were discussing estate business,” said Cameron pompously. “He’s not getting any younger, you know. He needs more help up here.”
“I agree. So help him,” said Scarlett, seeing where this was going.
“Me? Don’t be ridiculous,” Cameron snapped. “I can’t just pick up and leave the office whenever I feel like it. This is a very crucial stage in my career. I could be less than twenty-four months away from partnership. You should make the effort.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” said Scarlett, smiling woodenly at her godparents as they passed, “I have a business of my own to run.”
“Oh, come on,” said Cameron patronizingly. “Your little jewelry shop is hardly in the same league as my banking career. You’re going to give it up eventually anyway, when you marry.”
“Says who?” said Scarlett indignantly. “Anyway, why the hell should I be the one to lose out? Drumfernly’s your inheritance, remember, not mine.”
Cameron frowned.
“The estate affects the whole family,” he said sanctimoniously, “although that’s just the sort of selfish attitude we’ve all come to expect from you.”
“Selfish?” Scarlett looked suitably flabbergasted.
“Yes, selfish,” said Cameron. “What else do you call those appalling advertisements with the naked blacks? Poor Mummy nearly died of shame. Can you imagine how that went down in Buckie?”
Scarlett was on the point of replying that she didn’t give a fuckie about Buckie and that Trade Fair’s ads were already making a real difference in the industry when she found herself being literally wrenched out of her brother’s grip and pulled onto the dance floor.
“Remember me?”
Hamish Sainsbury, her would-be suitor from Christmas, had obviously been taking assertiveness lessons. Either that or he’d read in Farmers’ Weekly that single ladies all swoon over a forceful man. Freshly returned from a tour of the vineyards in southern Portugal, his face was as red as boiled lobster. His paunch, if anything, had grown in the ten months since Scarlett had last seen him and now sat like a basketball, balanced atop the rim of his straining cummerbund. For once he’d opted for a traditional black evening suit instead of a kilt, a small mercy for which Scarlett thanked the heavens as he threw her around the floor like Fred MacStaire.
“Goodness, Hamish, you’re a jolly energetic dancer,” she panted. She was pleased to get away from Cameron, but talk about out of the frying pan.
“Been having lessons, actually,” he said proudly, jerking her backward in an ill-advised attempt at the mambo—ill-advised in that the band was playing the English folk song “Green Grow the Rushes O,” which didn’t exactly lend itself to flights of Latin passion. “Getting rather good. Though obviously it helps when one has such an inspiring partner.”
Scarlett smiled through gritted teeth. She was in danger of getting serious whiplash.
“D’you mind awfully if we get a drink?” she said, at last managing to interrupt him between twirls. “I’m gasping for a gin and tonic.”
“Of course, of course,” said Hamish, looking pleased at the chance to get her into a quiet corner. “Come on. I’ll beat a path through the heaving masses.”
Five minutes later, enjoying the first cool sips of her drink in the relative peace and quiet of the Great Hall, Scarlett felt flooded with relief. In fact, the respite turned out to be temporary. Hamish, though well meaning, was possibly the most boring man in Scotland. After fifteen minutes of listening to him droning on about the merits of traditional Portuguese wine-making techniques, she was starting to wish she’d opted for a quick death on the dance floor. By the time the gong sounded for dinner and the rest of the guests surged toward the tables like a plague of tartan locusts, she’d reached the point where it was a genuine struggle to keep her eyes from closing.
“Dash it,” said Hamish, consulting the whiteboard next to their table, “how infuriating. We aren’t seated together. You’re here and I’m”—he scanned the lists—“all the way over at table twenty-nine. With Emma bloody Cavendish, if you can believe it. Such a tedious woman. Hey, I know. What do you say we swap the place cards about a bit? I can swap with this chap over there.” He picked up the name card next to Scarlett’s. “Magnus Hartz.” He frowned. “Never heard of ’im. And then I can sit next to you.”
“Too late, I’m afraid.”
Scarlett spun around. Behind her a tall, dark, and quite jawdroppingly handsome American man in a lounge suit and without a tie was addressing himself to Hamish.
“I’m sure Miss Cavendish is quite lovely. But I’ve been looking forward to making Miss Drummond Murray’s acquaintance all evening. Magnus.” He extended a smooth, manicured hand toward Scarlett, who took it, mute with embarrassment. Then, gesturing at the chair in front of Hamish, he said, “If you’ll excuse me,” and sat down without waiting for a response.
Hamish, whose assertiveness course had not yet got as far as teaching him how to see off taller, handsomer male rivals, mumbled something about returning straight after coffee and slunk miserably off to his fate.
“So.” Magnus, who was even better looking close-up—all jutting jawbone and smoldering brown eyes—began buttering a bread roll. “You’re the famous Scarlett Drummond Murray. You’re considered quite the scarlet woman around here, you know, for those diamond ads of yours. My grandmother actually described you to me as ‘racy.’ I knew I had to meet you after that.”
“Oh,” said Scarlett, still utterly tongue-tied. Not only was he the most desirable man ever to have crossed the threshold at Drumfernly—possibly to have crossed any threshold, anywhere—but of course she’d had to meet him while dressed as a copper meringue. “Who’s your grandmother?”
“A lady named Jane Verney-Cave.” Magnus dispatched the roll in two easy bites. “She’s a friend of your mother’s, I believe.”
No. Not possible. This broad-shouldered American Adonis couldn’t possibly be the grandson of a wizened old crone like Mrs. VC.
“But…you’re American,” stammered Scarlett lamely. Honestly, she was going to start dribbling in a minute. What was it about attractive men that made her regress into something approximating an advanced case of Alzheimer’s? Happily, Magnus seemed not to notice.
“My mom, her daughter, met my dad in college,” he said, pouring them both a glass of red from the bottle in the middle of the table. “I grew up in Seattle, lived there all my life in fact, but Mom always brought us home to Scotland for vacations.”
“Really?” said Scarlett. “In that case, I can’t believe we’ve never met before.”
“Weird, isn’t it?” said Magnus, gazing unashamedly into her hazel eyes, then down over the smooth, white skin of her collarbone to the creamy swell at the tops of her breasts. That gross dress didn’t do her any favors, but nothing could detract from her incredib
le cheekbones or the sexy curl of her soft, wide lips. “I guess we should start making up for lost time.”
Never had a Drumfernly dinner party flown by so quickly. Scarlett barely touched her loin of venison and only managed a couple of spoonfuls of Mrs. Cullen’s ambrosial chocolate mousse because she needed something to do with her hands. Magnus turned out to be not just gorgeous but funny too, regaling her with stories of his dour Scottish grandmother trying to negotiate a mob of skateboarding kids in downtown Seattle on her one and only visit stateside and how as a kid he used to stuff fistfuls of haggis into his pockets when she wasn’t looking so he wouldn’t have to eat the “rancid stuff.” He was a lawyer, apparently, a career that, along with accountancy, usually had Scarlett’s eyes glazing over with boredom. But Magnus could make a bus timetable sound gripping. He was also gratifyingly interested in her career and the harassment problems she’d been having at Bijoux.
“I take it you reported all this already?” he said, when she’d finished telling him about the near miss with Boxie.
Scarlett nodded. “The police looked at me as if I were mad.”
“So maybe you take matters into your own hands? Try and get a hold of some evidence yourself. Show ’em something concrete that they’ll have to take seriously.”
“Like what?” she asked. “They’ve already seen the letters.”
Magnus shrugged. “How about installing CCTV cameras at your store?”
“Already have them.”
“Or at home, then? Put a voice recorder on your phone.”
Scarlett thought about it. “I could, I suppose. It all seems a bit Secret Squirrel though, doesn’t it? Besides, Brogan does everything anonymously, through his goons. He’s hardly likely to ring up and say, ‘Hi, it’s me, drop your campaign or else.’”
“Was that supposed to be an American accent?” Magnus laughed. “That’s terrible!”
Flawless Page 13
