Beautiful Creatures

by Lulu Taylor

  They rode it fast and hard, both eager to reach their peaks, and a few moments later Octavia felt the great surge overcome her and cried out with the strength of the blissful feelings possessing her.

  Ethan grunted as he rolled over, his prick dripping with their combined juices. ‘That was amazing,’ he said. He looked over at her and grinned. ‘Always is when we’ve just won.’

  ‘So Noble’s is ours,’ breathed Octavia, relishing the languor of her post-orgasmic release.

  ‘Thanks to me.’ Ethan stretched out luxuriously. ‘And Robert Young, I suppose.’

  ‘So he sorted it all out for you?’

  ‘Yep. Old man Radcliffe was totally against us buying in, not surprisingly. Threatened to resign. He didn’t, of course. Young pointed out that it was ludicrous to reject an offer that would help the company to escape from some of its debt burden. If they didn’t accept, they would have to find fifteen million to repay another instalment on their loan, with the shop still operating at a loss and without paying a dividend for years. He brought the rest of the board over to his side, and that was that.’

  ‘And Radcliffe gave in and signed.’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘He didn’t have a choice, really. And now we’ve revealed that Butterfly Limited has been buying shares on the quiet. We kept it a secret right up to the point where we had to declare that we own an eight percent stake in the shop. Yesterday Butterfly announced that we intend to acquire more until we have a controlling stake and can complete a takeover.’

  Octavia shivered with excitement. ‘You know what?’ she said, caressing Ethan’s chest and moving her hand slowly downwards. ‘All this talk of takeovers and stakes is giving me an appetite all over again …’

  49

  Amanda pulled her chin up under knees and watched an insect crawling slowly over the wooden floorboards of the tree house. She hadn’t been up in it since she was a teenager, when she used to escape the family by coming out here with a rug, some apples, a thermos of sweet tea and a pile of books. It was reassuringly the same, if a bit tattier and more weather-worn than before. One day, she supposed, it would fall down, but it still seemed secure and sturdy enough. The ladder up to the platform had taken her weight without any trouble.

  If only everything could remain so comfortingly constant.

  She looked out over the lawns, soft and velvety in contrasting green stripes, to the well-tended flower beds teeming with pale pinks and lavenders, and over to the sixteenth-century manor house where she’d lived all her life until she’d moved to London.

  No matter what happens, Fa and Ma will always be here, she told herself. It doesn’t matter if the shop goes, if it all goes. We’ll still have this, and we’ll still have each other.

  The announcement of the sale of Noble’s premises had been a dark day for the Radcliffe family, her father in particular. Young had tried to persuade them that it was for the best, and that the agreement was water-tight – the shop could never be ousted from its premises, the old building could never be sold to anyone else. At least this way they had the money they needed to keep the whole thing afloat.

  Amanda could see it made sense, but that didn’t stop her from mourning the loss of the grand old place. It was horrible, going into her office, knowing that the magnificent building now belonged to some faceless corporation, a collector of assets to whom the history of Noble’s meant nothing at all. They didn’t care that Victorian ladies had bought their paisley shawls there, or that the beau monde had once flocked to Noble’s see the latest Art Deco furniture and fitments. They didn’t care that twenties flappers had sought out tassels and boas from its haberdashery department, or that the fifth floor had seen wartime lectures on how to make do and mend. It was just a figure on a balance sheet to them. An asset. A piece of property that meant no more than any soulless supermarket hangar on a piece of scrubland. It broke Amanda’s heart.

  And that, she had thought, was the end of it. With the cash injection, surely a new era had begun. She’d been hopeful that Robert Young would let her increase her budget and perhaps implement some of the changes she’d been begging to make. But he’d been quite adamant: the company had to concentrate on getting back in the black, and that meant spending less, not more.

  Stupid prick, she thought, tracing a knothole in the floorboards with her finger. Amanda knew her father bitterly regretted appointing Young but now that he was there, it was extremely hard to get rid of him. Too late now anyway. The damage has all been done.

  They had only just learnt of the fresh danger facing them. Young had called them in to an emergency board meeting on Friday to tell them that a new company had shown its hand: Butterfly Ltd had already accumulated 8 percent of the shares in Noble’s, enough to give them sizeable voting power. They were on the way to rivalling the 12 percent owned by the Radcliffe family and once that happened, would have control of the company. It was obvious that this was a hostile takeover bid, and that soon the shareholders would be consulted on the prospect of this unknown company buying the majority holding. Butterfly was going to show its hand at a shareholder meeting later the following week, and explain its motives.

  I’m looking forward to it, Amanda thought grimly. I’m damn well going to fight against this. I don’t know who these Butterfly people are, but I’m going to tell them what they can do with their eight per cent.

  Just then, she heard a commotion coming from the house. Her mother was shrieking, and then she saw the back door open and her father come stumbling out.

  ‘Amanda!’ he roared, his face red. ‘Amanda!’

  ‘Yes!’ she cried, leaping to her feet and scrambling down the tree-house ladder. When she reached the bottom, she raced across the grass towards her father who was standing at the edge of the lawn.

  ‘It’s Young!’ Graham said in a broken voice. ‘That bastard … He’s sold us out.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ she gasped.

  ‘He’s joined Butterfly Limited. He’s taken his five percent and sold it to them. They’ve got overall control. The company’s been taken away from us.’

  ‘Oh, Fa, no!’ She clutched at his hand, hardly able to believe it.

  He nodded, too choked to speak.

  ‘Damn Robert Young! How could he?’ Hot tears sprang to her eyes. ‘He owes everything to you, to the company. And he’s sold us out. They must have made him some pretty exciting promises. Oh, God!’

  Graham’s eyes had turned glassy. ‘Noble’s … our company … gone … after a hundred and fifty years. … What would Father say? Grandfather? How could I lose their creation like this?’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ cried Amanda fiercely. ‘You mustn’t think that!’

  But Graham didn’t appear to hear her: his face was flushing even harder, growing more and more scarlet, and his breath was coming ever louder, with a strange grating sound to it.

  ‘Fa – are you all right?’

  Graham turned his head towards her but his eyes had a far-off expression, a faint light of panic in their depths. He was fighting for breath, she realised, pulling air into his chest with heavy, rattling gasps.

  ‘Fa? Fa! Fa – what’s happening?’ Amanda felt paralysed. All she could do was watch as his face began to set into a rigid expression and his eyes opened wide, with his mouth a black hole in the middle of his face. Then he stiffened and fell slowly to the ground, eyes still staring.

  ‘Fa!’ Amanda screamed. Then she turned and ran for the house, shouting to her mother to call 999.

  * * *

  The ambulance seemed to take an age, though it was perhaps only ten minutes or so, speeding through the Kentish country roads to find them. The green-uniformed paramedics raced over to Graham, carrying resuscitation equipment, oxygen masks and canisters. They bent over his body, using all their resources to revive him. They shouted incomprehensible things to each other – numbers and statistics. They used their defibrillator, pressing the pads to his pathetically white bare chest, making his body jerk horr
ibly as they applied the electric shock that they hoped would bring him back. After twenty minutes of ceaseless effort with no change, they loaded Graham on to a stretcher and into the ambulance, still working at resuscitation.

  Amanda stood to one side, her arms around her shaking, weeping mother. As the ambulance pulled away, leaving only the detritus of abandoned sterile wrappings on the lawn, she said that she would drive them both to the hospital.

  ‘We’ll see how Fa’s doing when we get there,’ she said gently, but in her heart she knew that it was useless. She had seen him die right there on the lawn. Nothing they had done had been any good at all. He would be dead on arrival, she was certain of it, but it was easier for them to record the death at the hospital than here, on Graham’s own beloved lawn by the house he’d lived in all his life.

  ‘Come on, Ma. Let’s go,’ she said, stroking her mother’s hair. Deep inside, Amanda’s heart had turned to stone. They did this. Young. Butterfly – whoever the fuck they are. They killed him.

  50

  Roddy’s party was at the Hôtel du Cap, a glamorous white-walled place perched high above the brilliant blue Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by lush pine forests. It had been a favourite of high society since the 1920s. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor had honeymooned there, Somerset Maugham had drunk himself stupid there, and any number of film stars and tycoons had made their way from fabulous yachts to its jetty, and from there into its luxurious interior.

  The wind ruffled Octavia’s hair softly as the launch bumped over the sea towards the hotel. It was going to be a wonderful evening. Roddy’s parties were amazing. He loved theatre, adored creating showpieces. There was always something to draw a gasp from even the most jaded of party-goers. The small boy from the rough side of Glasgow was able to show them all how it should be done.

  Ethan turned to her, eyes invisible behind his sunglasses but a wide smile revealing his amusement. ‘It’s funny to think that the whole Noble’s thing started in order to help Roddy get into the big time. He doesn’t exactly need it now.’

  ‘No.’ Octavia smiled back. ‘We need him much more than he needs us.’

  ‘Well, that’s thanks to you,’ Ethan said, turning to look back at the approaching coast line with its rocky cliffs and pine trees. ‘If you hadn’t given him the initial investment he needed, he never would have exploded on to the fashion scene the way he has.’

  ‘True.’ Octavia slipped her sunglasses on. ‘But the person he owes it all to is Iseult. She had faith in him right from the start. She’s the one who really made him.’

  After Flora’s wedding, photographs of the bride had been in all the papers and the accompanying editorials had sighed over her dress – so beautiful, so stylish, so amazingly well designed … by Roddy Wildblood, the hot new designer whose debut fashion show had caused such a stir recently. One of the papers, though, had printed a picture that showed the bride staring into the lens of a camera with lips pulled back in a grimace that looked like a cross between a snarl and a strange, bitter smile. Wedding day nerves? asked the caption. Flora Beaufort, sister of socialite Octavia, on her way to marry businessman Baron Otto von Schwetten.

  But it was the dress people talked about most. Iseult, as good as her word, had pulled every string and had Roddy featured in Vogue, his photograph taken by Bailey. In Go! magazine there was a reportage on Roddy, a series of black-and-white photographs taken in his East End studio, showing him hard at work and deep in the creative process: designing, cutting and stitching. The last photograph was of Octavia, hair loose, high-cheekboned, hand on hip, staring provocatively into the camera as she modelled the outfit he had been creating in the previous pictures. It was fantastic publicity. Roddy Wildblood became the name on everyone’s lips.

  The day those pictures were taken was also the day Octavia had told Roddy she was going to become his backer. Butterfly Ltd was going to invest a million pounds in his business, in return for a 20 percent stake. Ethan had told her that she could have got far more of the business – after all, where were the other backers? They weren’t exactly lining up, and if they had, they would have driven a much harder bargain. Ethan thought 50 percent at least was what she should push for, but Octavia had refused.

  ‘I can’t take Roddy’s identity away from him. He is the business, the business is him.’

  ‘You’ve left him eighty percent,’ Ethan protested. ‘That’s far more than he needs.’

  ‘I’m not in this for money. I want to help Roddy.’

  Ethan had been exasperated by that, telling her she would never succeed in business if that was how she thought, but Octavia would not back down.

  Then, fate intervened. Just when she, Iseult and Roddy had picked out a shop on New Bond Street, a good position opposite Cartier, and the lease was about to be signed, everything changed. Sy Hoffstein, managing director of Celadon, a company that owned many prestigious luxury brands and fashion houses, rang Roddy up and offered him the job of chief designer at the House of Delphine.

  It was an extraordinary coup. Delphine was a wonderful fashion house, created by Delphine Rouchard in the 1970s in order to realise her vision of playful, wearable, modish clothes for young women. She had been the inspiration behind city shorts, those crisp, sharply creased sexy little numbers, worn with platform heels or knee-length boots and floaty lace blouses. Her signature look was sophisticated yet girlish: the Delphine woman didn’t wear formal two-pieces or pearls or carry stiff handbags. She wore high-waisted flares, long-collared, slim-fitting shirts, owl-eyed sunglasses with white frames, low-cut tee-shirts with pocketed mini-skirts, or dungaree-dresses cut high across the thigh. She carried slouchy leather bags, or slung fringed purses on long slim handles over her shoulder. She was unutterably cool.

  But the House of Delphine had lost its way over the years, especially after Madame Rouchard retired in the early nineties, and had subsequently gone through several renaissances, with top-name designers brought in to reinvigorate and refresh the brand. Some had succeeded better than others. The last big name, Sally Sands, had done brilliantly, sparking off new trends for sailor-girl dresses; huge white leather handbags and platform espadrilles, but then she had gone off to raise a family and Delphine had slumped again in the care of more mediocre talents.

  Now Roddy was being offered the most incredible opportunity to revitalise the house. He would be based in Paris, designing six collections a year, heading up a hand-picked team and earning himself a small fortune in the process.

  ‘You’ll take it, of course!’ Iseult had screamed when he had told them the news.

  He’d grinned. ‘I’d be fifty kinds of fool not to, wouldn’t I?’

  And they’d all celebrated together: the Bond Street shop could wait while Roddy found fame and fortune in Paris.

  The time had felt absolutely right for him. In fact, he’d been trembling on the brink of something big for ages, and this was just what he needed to break through. The workload had seemed impossible at first. As soon as he started, he had to prepare a collection to show in only two months’ time. But Roddy being Roddy – an untamed genius, as Iseult put it – he not only designed his main collection but a full accessories line as well, and the new Delphine look stormed the Paris fashion shows, to be received with rapture by the cognoscenti and buyers alike. The most obvious sign of success, though, was that the High Street shops all had copies on their racks within weeks: tiger-striped leather mini-skirts, denim tee-shirts and high wedge-heeled clogs were everywhere. The couture customers were crazy about his delicious evening gowns, inspired by Boucher and Fragonard: mad, floral-printed shepherdess dresses, with wild netting, cheeky corsets and silken bustles.

  ‘But these,’ sighed Iseult, holding a pair of shoes from the evening-wear line, ‘these are the ones I’d like to be buried in!’

  They were a towering stiletto with a five-inch heel and a small platform under the sole, in lavender satin, embroidered with crystals in the pattern of flowers and edged in lace.

&
nbsp; ‘They are gorgeous,’ Octavia said admiringly. She’d wanted to buy them herself but it was clear that Iseult had claimed ownership, so instead she bought a pair of lime green satin heels embroidered with jet beads and edged in violet tulle. They were £2000 a pair and sold out in minutes – a sign that Roddy really had arrived.

  He took to the high life like a duck to water: he abandoned London in the flash of an eye, though he kept his funny, tatty old studio there, and made his home in the glamorous St Germain area of Paris in a flat bought for him by Celadon. He acquired a French boyfriend called Didier and began to party as though his life depended on it.

  And now here they were, about to celebrate the success of his latest collection and the return to prominence of the House of Delphine.

  Ethan helped Octavia out of the launch and she walked carefully along the jetty. Tonight she was wearing a long silk Maria Grachvogel dress in suitably oceanic swirling blues and turquoises. It was a halter-neck with a low cowl back that showed off her tanned shoulders and an expanse of smooth brown back. She’d teamed it with a pair of Louboutins called ‘Poseidon’ because they looked as though they were made from silver mermaids’ tails, with glittering scales overlapping one another. The heels were twelve centimetres high. Roddy would love them, she knew, though he would also be a little jealous that he hadn’t designed them himself.

  The ballroom had been given over to his party. Immediately she entered the room, Octavia clocked the familiar faces of A-list actresses, supermodels, heart-throb film stars and sports heroes. A famous footballer and his pop-star wife were chatting to their movie-star pals. One of American’s sweethearts was flashing a toned brown thigh while telling her latest leading man a funny story about how her earring fell off and plummeted down the front of her dress while she was on the red carpet. A short and rather tired-looking supermodel was asking if anyone wanted to go outside with her for a fag, while another was imperiously ordering her coterie about, sending them running round to satisfy her every wish. Roddy had pulling power now – anyone who was anyone wanted to be part of his glittering crowd.