Guardian to the Heiress

by Margaret Way

  “Well, you were the target, not your friends.”

  “So what do we do with this? Leave it alone?”

  “All actions have consequences, Carol.”

  “Can you imagine what a scandal it would create if we pointed the finger at Dallas?”

  “People love scandals, especially among the rich.” Damon masked his deep concern with sarcasm.

  “Do you think Troy would have stepped back and let me die?” she asked in horror.

  “Do you think he could have helped his mother?” The very thought robbed her of breath.

  “No, I don’t.” Damon had already arrived at his conclusion. “Troy might be a lightweight with too much money for his own good, but he’s leading a fairly normal life. He’s so arrogant he had thought it could include you. He isn’t after the money or the huge responsibilities. He would find them an enormous burden. He had hopes for the two of you. You successfully crushed them. He’d be angry and mortified but he’d eventually shrug it off. Make a future joke of it. Can’t you see him?”

  In a way she could. “How can anyone know? Barely six months have gone by since my grandfather died and someone is trying to get me out of the way. What do they want? Was it wrong for my grandfather to make me his heir? Didn’t he consider for a moment he could be putting me in danger? He knew his family. He knew Dallas.”

  “He may have had little time for them, Carol, but I’m certain he didn’t see them as potential murderers.” Damon tried to calm her.

  “He had no trouble believing it of my mother,” she said bitterly.

  “Carol, Selwyn Chancellor lost his adored son and heir. Your grandmother, Elaine, lost her son. They said the things they did because they were off their heads with grief. They were looking for a culprit. Roxanne fitted the bill.”

  “Well, she wasn’t exactly squeaky clean, was she?” Carol said dismally. “Two brothers shared her. At least we now know Adam was my father.” DNA tests had been conducted and the results delivered. Carol had avoided telling her mother, not actually believing her mother would care.

  “All we have is circumstantial evidence. No proof. I could confront Dallas,” he suggested, wanting to spare Carol further trauma.

  “We can confront her,” Carol said. “She’s not innocent.”

  Damon shook his head. “We don’t know that, Carol. Tracey could well be covering for the father of her coming child. If she’s crazy enough to go back to her abuser, to allow herself to fall pregnant to him, we have to assume she’s capable of lying for him, as well.”

  “Let’s start on Dallas first.” Carol felt suddenly beyond fear. She had Damon on her side. Who else did she need?

  * * *

  They left their visit to the following Saturday. Carol informed her uncle she would be coming. She didn’t say why; for all she knew, Dallas could arm herself with a weapon.

  “There comes a time to confront people,” Carol said determinedly as the massive gates to Beaumont opened.

  She didn’t sound angry or afraid. She sounded ready to go into battle. “Allow the possibility we could be wrong, Carol,” Damon warned.

  “Only we’re not wrong.”

  Maurice Chancellor himself greeted them at the door. “This is a pleasant surprise. Come in. Come in. You’re staying for the weekend, I hope?”

  “Just today, Uncle Maurice, as I said.”

  “Mrs Chancellor at home?” Damon asked, raising his glance to the gallery.

  “As a matter of fact, she’s not. She’s visiting a friend.”

  “Might I suggest you ring her and get her to come back home?” Damon said. “Where exactly does her friend live?”

  Maurice looked from one to the other. “Is anything wrong? You’ve found out something about the accident? You could have told me on the phone. We were terribly anxious.”

  Carol thought it was going to get a whole lot worse before it got better. “So, how far away is Dallas? Please don’t tell me Hong Kong.”

  Maurice Chancellor flushed. “My dear girl, she’s down the road. Mayfair—you would have passed it. Not that you can see the house from the road. But come in, come in. You’d like coffee, I expect?”

  “Thank you, Uncle Maurice,” Carol said. “I’ll go through to the kitchen while you ring Dallas. It’s most important she be here.”

  Maurice knitted his brows. “What for? Dallas knows nothing.”

  “About what, sir?” Damon intervened. “We haven’t said why we want to speak to you both.”

  “We now, is it?” Maurice looked more accepting than disapproving.

  “I am Carol’s lawyer and advisor,” Damon pointed out smoothly. “It was your father’s wish.”

  “Of course it was. I’ll ring Dallas from the study.” He made off.

  He must have had some difficulty persuading his wife to return because when they saw him again, his colour was high and he looked thoroughly rattled.

  “Didn’t want to come?” Carol asked.

  “Isn’t that the truth,” he responded wryly. “A very tough lady, is my wife.”

  “What’s she got on you, Uncle Maurice? We know it’s something.”

  The wryness shifted to extreme nervousness. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Carol.”

  Damon cut in. “You’re being given the opportunity, sir, to come clean. If Dallas weren’t your wife, one might suspect her of blackmailing you into staying in a loveless marriage.”

  Maurice Chancellor looked so badly shocked he might have been shot in the heart. “She could ruin me. It was in the early days of our marriage. My father was withholding money from me. He was always intent on pointing out how ineffective I was. Adam was the great hero, the son made in his own corporate image. I freely admit I’m no great shakes when it comes to business, but I managed to siphon off quite a few million. I was fool enough to tell Dallas. In the early days, she went through quite a lot of money, believe it or not. She always had to have a high-end luxury car. Of course, her father at the time was one of the country’s luxury car dealers.”

  “And she threatened to go to your father when you became involved with my mother?” Carol asked.

  “Exactly.” Maurice Chancellor hung his head. He looked wretched. “I’ll pay it all back, Carol. At least my father left me a rich man.”

  “I have just the charity you can donate it to,” Carol flashed back. “How many million was it, Uncle Maurice? I dare say we can find out.”

  * * *

  Dallas Chancellor arrived thirty minutes later, half circling the drive fast and braking right at the foot of the stone steps. To say she looked furious wouldn’t adequately describe it. Dallas Chancellor had little difficulty working herself into a volcanic rage.

  “What is this all about?” She stared around the group with over-bright, steely-grey eyes. They had finished coffee and were sitting quietly waiting for her.

  “A chat,” Damon said. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs Chancellor?”

  It said a lot for his natural authority that she did just that. “Now, are you going to tell me what’s so important it couldn’t keep?” She plonked herself down heavily into an armchair.

  “The little matter of the car crash,” Damon said as though it was nothing to worry about. “We all know it wasn’t an accident. When the police questioned you, Mrs Chancellor, you acted outraged. It was a fine performance. You never said you knew a great deal about cars.”

  “So what?” Dallas shot back. “It was irrelevant.”

  “No, it was you concealing a significant fact.” His tone firmed. “The fact you know cars could explain what might have happened. On your own admission, you hate Carol’s mother.”

  “Positively loathe her,” Dallas confirmed.

  “We all know that. A couple of days ago, Carol ran into someone who told her all about your father and his collection of vintage cars. From all accounts, you loved cars as much as your father. You favoured an Italian make, I believe?”

  “So what?” Dallas repeated as though
she could keep it up forever.

  Maurice Chancellor picked up a silver pot on a silver tray and poured himself some cold coffee.

  “We’re hoping you’ll tell us what you’re trying to hide.” Carol forgot Damon’s lawyerly words of caution. “It was you who tampered with the brakes of my car. You had the opportunity when you saw Troy off. You had the necessary skill.”

  Two things happened. Dallas laughed and the coffee cup fell out of Maurice Chancellor’s nerveless hand onto the beautiful rug. “God! Say something, Dallas,” he begged. “This can’t possibly be true. It’s that Tarik fella. The police thought so, though they mightn’t be able to pin it on him with his trumped-up alibi.”

  “Of course it is!” was Dallas’s swift reply. “You’ve put two and two together, Carol, my dear, and come up with ten.”

  Damon’s expression turned severely judicial. “We are, however, going to the police with what we’ve learned, Mrs Chancellor. There’s a tremendous amount of hate in you. All those years of jealousy deepened and darkened. The police are not in possession of the true facts. They saw you as a rich woman who genuinely knows nothing about the mechanics of cars. They’ll have a fine time chewing over what we’ve since discovered. They’ll have questions. They’ll expect you to come up with the right answers.”

  “Except you can’t, can you?” Carol felt pressure behind her eyes, tried to blink it away.

  Cold coffee was seeping into the valuable rug but no one paid any attention. Maurice Chancellor sat back, staring around so woozily he could have been drunk.

  “I saw Troy off then I went back upstairs immediately,” Dallas announced in her best ‘lady of the manor’ voice. “My husband will confirm that,” she added with utter confidence.

  “Well, Uncle Maurice?” Carol asked, trying hard to control her distress. It was so difficult to be strong.

  “I can assure you, I won’t let you get away with slandering me,” Dallas threatened, fully prepared to brazen it out. ‘Well, Maurice, don’t just sit there gawping.”

  Maurice Chancellor’s belated response was to rise to his feet. “Why don’t we call the police now?” he said, moving to stand directly in front of his wife. “You didn’t return to our bedroom, Dallas, after you saw Troy off. It was a good while after. I intend to tell the police that.”

  “Will you, now?” Dallas gave a loud, trumpeting laugh full of contempt. “I’ll have something to tell them, as well.”

  “Don’t bother,” Maurice said in the voice of self-loathing. “Carol and Damon already know. I’ve made my confession. You were an accessory to embezzlement, by the way. Ponder that. You’ve held it over me for many long, unhappy years. What a gutless creature I am. You’ve ruined our son, by the way. Carol is allowing me to pay the money into one of her charities. I’ll be more than happy to do that.”

  Dallas, too, was on her feet, showing the tremendous weight of anger in her. “You fool!”

  Maurice Chancellor’s handsome face was full of desolation. “The biggest mistake of my life was picking you for my wife. You were never the person I thought you were. No wonder I fell in love with Roxanne. I got little of it from you, or anyone else, for that matter. I was the forgotten boy, the forgotten man. I was never real to anyone. Not even my mother.”

  “Who was a basket case!”

  “You’re real to me, Uncle Maurice,” Carol said, suddenly feeling very sorry for him. “Please sit down again. We have to work out what to do.” Her blue gaze was more sad than recriminatory.

  “Thank you for that, Carol,” he said with a bent head.

  * * *

  Ninety minutes later, they were back in Sydney. Both of them had been very quiet in the car, both shaken by Dallas’s total lack of repentance. She had admitted nothing, but they just knew she was guilty. How to prove it? How to avoid a terrible scandal? How was it to be dealt with? Yet another terrible family secret? There could be no miraculous reconciliation; that was out of the question. Was Dallas still to be feared? The extraordinary thing was, Maurice Chancellor was all for keeping it in the family.

  “Dallas can clear off. Get out of the country,” he had said by way of a solution. “Believe me, she wouldn’t fancy going to jail.”

  The city, so beautiful by day with its magnificent blue harbour, was dazzling by night. The city towers and the icons, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, were ablaze with lights. For once Carol couldn’t find her usual response of delight in the sight. Damon saw her to her apartment. She stood quietly inside the door for a moment, looking a little bereft. She held her hands to her temples, then rubbed them. “Headache.” It couldn’t be her voice. It sounded so young. “Come in, Damon. Please don’t run away.” It was Saturday night. He could be going somewhere, when she badly wanted him beside her. She was sick of their set of rules.

  “I’ve no intention of going anywhere, Carol. I’m not surprised you’ve got a headache. You’re in shock.”

  “Plus the fact I haven’t been sleeping. Dallas tried to kill me, Damon.” She turned to him in utter disbelief. “Her mission failed. I wasn’t driving my car. But it was a miracle Amanda and Summer escaped with little injury. What’s to stop Dallas from trying again? She’s challenging us to go to the police—circumstantial evidence, no witnesses to what we say she did. Troy would back her. Dallas said my grandmother was a basket case. What does she think she is? I’ll tell you what she is—she’s deranged. I’m just so grateful she’s not my blood.”

  Damon looked grim. “Let’s not think about that now. I’ll get you a couple of painkillers. Where are they?”

  “In one of the kitchen drawers. Could you make me a cup of coffee—no, tea—as soon as possible, Damon?” she asked in a shaky voice.

  “Migraine? I know they can be really bad.”

  “I don’t suffer from migraines. Just a pounding here near my temples.” She placed her fingers against the spots. “I’ll take this outfit off, find something...” Her voice trailed off. “You know where things are.”

  “Leave it to me.”

  * * *

  When she returned she was wearing a long, floaty garment held by a halter around the neck. The fabric was lovely, silk on a sapphire-blue ground patterned in swirls of darker blue and green with touches of gold. He held the glass of water out to her, with two painkillers.

  “Thank you, Damon. You didn’t have plans for tonight, did you?”

  “Swallow the tablets,” he said, waiting until she had done so before taking the glass off her. “Sit down on the sofa and try to relax.”

  “So much bad history in my family,” she lamented, moving off slowly. “Now this. She wasn’t exactly drowning in guilt, was she? Maybe her sanity has gone.”

  “Sit quietly, Carol. Find an area of peace,” he advised.

  “Come and sit beside me, if you’re not planning to go away.” She felt reduced to pleading. “You’re always holding yourself in check. You think we went too far, too fast, don’t you?” She stared up at him, trying to read his closed expression, unreadable to her.

  “I won’t come and sit beside you until you stop talking,” Damon said. “Give the painkillers time to work.”

  “That could be ten minutes.” She was quiet for a moment, before firing up again. “What did she expect me to say? All is forgiven? God!” She met his dark eyes. “Okay, okay. I just need you beside me. I’ll close my eyes.”

  “Good girl.”

  “I’m a woman, Damon, with a woman’s needs.”

  As though she had to remind him! Every nerve in his body was strung tight.

  “I feel a bit sick,” she said after a few moments.

  “Breathe,” he urged very gently, putting a cradling arm around her. He couldn’t do otherwise. The scent of crushed rose petals floated from her skin, intoxicating him. “Keep breathing.”

  She tried to give herself up to it.

  “Keep going,” he murmured. “One breath after another. You...can...feel...your...tension...going. Breathe...breathe...” He sp
aced out the words.

  Carol rested her head against his shoulder feeling a rush of peace. “I’m so tired,” she murmured. Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing began to even out.

  “Then sleep,” Damon bid her. “I’m here.”

  “That’s all that matters,” she said drowsily, already beginning to drift away. Damon had the most wonderful soothing voice. Carol curled herself around him like a drowsy, contented cat.

  How difficult that made it to control the molten rush of blood through his veins. She was so small against him, but it was a woman’s body she possessed, effortlessly, innocently seductive. He could feel her warmth through the fabric of her floaty dress that showed off an unrestrained outline of her small, perfect breasts. He rested his chin in her rosy curls. Her breathing had deepened. She was in a light sleep when his strong male body was racked with sensations as painful as they were exquisite. How was he expected to endure this?

  Make the effort, his inner voice countered sternly. If she means so much to you, you can do it. Think of it as a test of your resolve to do what is best for her.

  He began to count, anything to suppress the build-up of sexual excitement. One... He counted four seconds before two... Four seconds before three... And so on. It wasn’t all that easy to keep the count without concentrating on what he was doing. Heaven would surely reward his efforts.

  * * *

  He must have dozed off himself because when he opened his eyes and looked down at her she was staring up at him, her eyes a fabulous blue.

  “The headache’s gone,” she whispered.

  “I’m glad.”

  She kept staring at him, her porcelain skin lightly flushed, her lovely mouth parted, showing the tips of her small white teeth.

  He could feel himself unravelling. She looked heartbreakingly young. “What are you trying to do to me, Carol? Whatever it is, I don’t know that I can combat it.”

  “Hush now.” She placed two fingers against his mouth. “Listen to your own heart.”

  “I’m trying to listen to my head.”

  “Sometimes the heart has more power than the head. Kiss me, Damon,” she invited softly. “I need you to kiss me. I know you want to.”