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He smiled. ‘My grandfather always said revenge was a dish best eaten cold.’
‘I find that a nauseating idea.’
‘Is that going to be your new refuge—self-righteousness?’ He sounded amused. ‘It won’t cut any ice with me.’
‘I’m sure it won’t.’ She put up a hand in a revealingly nervous gesture, and smoothed her hair back over her ear. ‘I suppose you’re here to discuss your terms. I can’t say when Simon will be available—’
‘He doesn’t need to be.’ The grey eyes glinted up at her. ‘As you’re already well aware, the settlement I have in mind involves just the two of us—you and me. And I suggest, once again, that you sit down.’
She said thickly, ‘I prefer to stand. Say what you have to say, and go.’
He shrugged, and rose to his feet in one lithe, controlled movement. Like some jungle animal, she thought, flinching inwardly, flexing itself before the kill.
‘I told you my terms two years ago, Joanna. They haven’t changed. I want you.’ He looked at her levelly. ‘Come to me and I’ll write off Simon’s personal obligations to me, and his bookie friend.’
Joanna stood rigidly, feeling the colour drain out of her face. It was like standing in the dock, she thought dazedly, knowing you were innocent, but hearing a life sentence pronounced just the same. She wanted to scream aloud, to hit out in anger and revulsion, but a small, cold inner voice warned her to keep cool—keep talking—keep bargaining.
She lifted her chin. ‘What about this house—our home? Do you intend to take that too?’
‘Originally, yes,’ he said. ‘But if you behave with sufficient—er—generosity to me, I might be prepared to match it, and leave it in Chalfont hands for your father’s lifetime at least.’ He smiled at her sardonically. ‘Its fate rests entirely with you, beauty.’
She bit her lip, her whole being cringing from the implications in his words. ‘And the Craft Company? Will you leave that alone too?’
‘I think you’re beginning to overestimate the price of your charms,’ Cal Blackstone said drily. ‘No, my investment in the Craft Company stays—as insurance, if you like, for your continuing good behaviour.’
Joanna closed her eyes for a moment. She said evenly, ‘I suppose there’s no point in appealing to your better nature. Reminding you that there are normal standards of decency.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he said laconically. He glanced up at the portrait over the fireplace and his expression hardened. ‘At least I’m not evicting you without notice, throwing you on to the street.’
‘And if I tell you that I do have standards—that I have my pride and my self-respect? And that I’d rather starve in the gutter than accept any part of your revolting terms?’
He shrugged again. ‘Then that can be quite easily arranged,’ he returned. ‘The choice is yours. But I strongly advise you to think my offer over. You’ve got twenty-four hours.’
‘I don’t need twenty-four seconds,’ she said bitingly. ‘You can do your worst, Mr Blackstone, and go to hell!’
‘I shall probably end there, Mrs Bentham,’ he said too courteously. ‘But first I mean to order that independent audit I mentioned into the Craft Company’s accounts.’ He paused. ‘Simon may well find himself facing more than a bankruptcy court. How will the Chalfont pride cope with that, I wonder?’
‘I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t do such a thing.’ Her voice shook with the force of her conviction.
‘Ask him,’ he said. ‘Some time during the next twenty-four hours. Then call me with your final answer.’
‘You’ve had all the answer you’re getting, you bastard!’ she said. ‘I’ll see you damned before I do what you want!’
He gave her a sardonic look, as he retrieved the papers from the coffee-table and slipped them back into his pocket. ‘Don’t count on it, beauty. I promise one thing—when you do call, I won’t say that I told you so.’
Knuckles pressed to her mouth, Joanna stood like a statue as he made his way across the room to the door. As it closed behind him, she bent and snatched up a cut glass posy bowl, hurling it with all the force of her arm at the solid panels.
‘The swine!’ she sobbed, as it shattered. ‘Oh, God, the unutterable bloody swine!’
She was like a cat on hot bricks for the rest of the day waiting for Simon to return. It took all her self-control not to drive over to the nursing home and confront him there. She was sorely tempted, too, to drive over to the Craft Company and do her own spot check of the books.
But she discarded the idea. Such action would be bound to provoke just the kind of comment she wanted to avoid. And if, by the remotest chance, there was something even slightly amiss … She caught at herself. That was the kind of poisonous reptile Cal Blackstone was, she raged inwardly. Sowing discord and distrust wherever he went.
She couldn’t deny that Simon had been all kinds of a fool, but she couldn’t believe he was also a thief. She wouldn’t believe it.
‘There’s got to be some way out of this mess,’ she said aloud, through gritted teeth, as she paced the length and breadth of the drawing-room. ‘There’s got to be. Together we’ll think of something. We have to!’
She swallowed convulsively as that same small voice in her head reminded her of the sheer magnitude of what was threatening them all. The loss of their home, the destruction of their remaining business venture, and personal disgrace for Simon—and all at the worst possible time, if there was ever a good time for such things to happen, she acknowledged wryly.
It was no good telling herself that it was all Simon’s own fault, and he’d have to find some remedy himself. She couldn’t leave him to sink if she could help him to swim. But she couldn’t sacrifice herself either.
Cal Blackstone’s words rang like hammer blows inside her brain. ‘I want you. Come to me …’
He’s just offered me the ultimate insult, she told herself, by presuming I’d even consider such a degrading suggestion. He’s misjudged me completely.
Yet he’d summed up some of her past reactions with disturbing accuracy, she recalled unwillingly. His comments about her marriage to Martin had been too close to the mark for comfort.
She shivered. What was she saying? She’d loved Martin, of course she had. He’d been sweet and safe and there, and she’d thought that was enough. She’d convinced herself that it was.
Only it wasn’t, she thought wretchedly. How could it be? And it was disaster for both of us.
On the day of his funeral, she’d stood in the small bleak churchyard in the conventional black dress of the widow, feeling drained of emotion, totally objective, as if all this tragedy were happening to some other person. She could even remember being thankful that the demure veiling on her equally conventional hat concealed the fact that she was completely tearless.
Then she’d looked up and seen Cal Blackstone staring at her. He’d been standing on the edge of the small crowd of mourners, but his head wasn’t bent in grief or common respect. There had been bitterness in the look he sent her, and condemnation, and overlying all a kind of grim triumph.
Don’t think I’ve given up, his glance had told her. This marriage of yours was just an obstacle which has now been removed. And now I’m coming after you again.
The knowledge of it had been like a blow, knocking all the breath out of her body. Involuntarily, instinctively, she’d taken a step backwards in instant negation, her foot stumbling on a tussock of earth.
‘Be careful, my dear!’ Her father had insisted on attending the ceremony with her, standing bareheaded at her side in the windswept graveyard, and she’d snatched at his arm for comfort and support as she’d done when she was a small girl, and a crowd of jeering boys had thrown earth and stones at their car.
Oh, I will, she’d promised herself silently. I’ll take more care than I’ve ever done in my whole life.
Aunt Vinnie’s letter offering her sanctuary had been, like Martin’s proposal of marriage, a godsend, a lifeline, and she’d snatched at that too, telling herself that Cal Blackstone would eventually resign himself to the fact that she was gone, and abandon his crazy obsession about her.
He wasn’t really serious about it, she’d assured herself over and over again. For heaven’s sake, he was never short of female companionship, so he wasn’t exactly single-minded about his pursuit of her, if she could call it that. He didn’t chase her, yet he always seemed to be there, like a dark shadow on the edge of her world, a winter storm threatening the brightness of her horizon.
If she went away, and stayed away, with luck he’d forget her, and get safely married to one of the many willing ladies he escorted. Time and distance would solve everything. That was what she’d thought. That was how she’d reassured herself.
But how wrong was it possible to be? Joanna thought broodingly, as she paced restlessly up and down. Cal Blackstone hadn’t just been making mischief and trying to alarm her, as she’d secretly hoped and prayed. He’d meant every word, and that warning look he’d sent her at Martin’s funeral had been nothing less than a stark declaration of intent.
And typical of his appallingly tasteless behaviour, she thought with a fastidious shudder, then paused, a hysterical bubble of laughter welling up inside her.
Why the hell was she worrying about something as trivial as the way he’d treated her as a widow in mourning, when he was now threatening her and her entire family with total humiliation and ruin?
While she’d thought herself safe in the States, Cal Blackstone had been busy ensnaring Simon in a web of financial dependency, both personal and professional. Then he’d sat back and waited, like the spider, for the unsuspecting fly to return …
But that was defeatist talk, she told herself in self-reproach. After all, if the fly struggled hard enough, even the strongest web could be broken.
She was halfway through a dinner she had no interest in eating when Simon eventually came in. He looked tired and anxious, and for a moment she was tempted to leave him in the peace he so clearly needed at least until the morning.
She let him talk for a while about Fiona and the labour pains which had so unaccountably subsided while he ate his meal.
Then she said quietly, ‘Don’t you want to know what happened this afternoon?’
He shrugged, his face adopting a faintly martyred expression. ‘I suppose so. To be honest, Jo, although his letter threw me when it arrived, I’ve been thinking about it while I’ve been hanging around at the nursing home, and, frankly, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Things at work are picking up slowly. He’ll get his money back, and he’ll just have to be patient, that’s all. I hope you told him so.’
She picked up the coffee-pot and filled two cups with infinite care.
‘I didn’t actually get the chance,’ she said. ‘He didn’t come here to talk about work. It was your other debts he was concerned with. The ones you ran up at the casino, and the race-track.’
She watched him go white. There was a long, painful silence. Then he said very rapidly, ‘He told you that, but he had no right. He said there was no hurry. He knew I’d pay it all off if he just gave me time.’
‘How?’ She looked at Simon’s guilty, miserable face and knew that the question was unanswerable.
She nerved herself to go on. ‘He—he did mention the Craft Company in one context. He talked about the books—the accounts.’
‘What about them?’ Simon’s gaze was fixed on the polished dining table.
‘He said something about an independent audit,’ Joanna said, and stopped appalled as Simon’s cup dropped from his hand, spilling coffee everywhere.
‘Can he do that?’ The blue eyes were scared, imploring. ‘Can he, Jo?’
‘Is there some reason why he shouldn’t?’ She tried to speak evenly, but her voice trembled as she realised she had to face, to come to terms with the unthinkable.
He didn’t reply, just picked up his table napkin and began blotting up the coffee as if it were the most important thing in the world.
She said, ‘It’s true, then. There’s money missing, and you’re responsible.’
‘Whose bloody company is it anyway?’ he said, his tone mutinous, defensive.
‘Not yours to that extent. Simon, are you crazy?’
‘I had to do something. Fiona was miserable, and needed a break. She had her heart set on St Lucia. She’s never known what it is to be short of cash—she doesn’t understand.’
Joanna closed her eyes for a moment, trying to visualise Fiona’s reaction to the news that her husband had made them bankrupt and homeless. But her imagination balked at the very idea.
‘Go on,’ she said, with infinite weariness. ‘So you embezzled money from the Craft Company to take Fiona on an expensive holiday.’
‘I did not embezzle it!’ Simon’s face was flushed now with anger. ‘I borrowed it.’
‘With Philip’s knowledge and permission?’
‘I didn’t think it was necessary to mention it to him. After all, it was only a couple of thousand or so on temporary loan. I fully intended to pay it back. One damned good win at blackjack was all I needed.’
‘But you didn’t win.’
‘No, I started losing really badly. I kept telling myself my luck would change, but it didn’t. It just kept getting worse.’
‘Then why on earth didn’t you stop?’
‘I couldn’t,’ he said simply. ‘I had to go on trying to win.’
Joanna ran the tip of her tongue round her dry lips. ‘Did you borrow any more money?’ she asked carefully.
‘Some,’ he muttered. ‘I’d have been all right—I know I would—if bloody Blackstone hadn’t barred me from the casino. How the hell was I supposed to recoup my losses if I wasn’t allowed to play?’ He gave her a petulant look. ‘I still don’t see why he found it necessary to drag you into all this. I thought we had a gentlemen’s agreement about it.’
‘Cal Blackstone,’ she said quietly, ‘is no gentleman. Tell me, Si, and I want the truth—is there any hope that you’ll be able to repay at least the—loan from the firm?’
There was a pause, then he shook his head. ‘I can’t. Philip and I are both drawing minimum salaries at the moment. And I’ve had so much extra expense with the baby coming. The nursing home fees cost a fortune for a start.’ His expression became alarmed. ‘Blackstone won’t really insist on this audit, will he? I mean—I can explain to old Phil, and I’m sure he’d understand, but I’d rather not.’
Joanna murmured something non-committal, but in her heart she wasn’t at all convinced that old Phil would be quite so amenable to the news that some of their slender profits had been illegally squandered on gambling, and vacations in the West Indies.
‘So what does Blackstone want?’ Simon demanded apprehensively.
Joanna hesitated. ‘I’m not altogether sure,’ she prevaricated. ‘Now that I know his—allegations are true, I have to get back to him—work something out.’
‘Oh, goody.’ Simon’s voice was heavily sarcastic. ‘I didn’t realise that you two were so much in each other’s confidence. Yesterday you couldn’t stand the sound of his name. Today you’ve got your heads together, deciding what to do for the best about poor misguided Simon. Does he get his knuckles rapped, or just stand in the corner?’
Joanna bit her lip. ‘That kind of attitude doesn’t help.’
‘And having my private affairs chewed over behind my back isn’t totally acceptable either,’ Simon retorted furiously. ‘You should have refused to listen—referred him straight to me, instead of meddling in what doesn’t concern you.’
Joanna held on to her temper with an effort. ‘If you’re charged with embezzlement, it will concern me very closely,’ she said evenly. ‘It will concern us all. And imagine the effect it could have on Daddy.’
‘Oh, yes, let’s.’ Simon’s face was stony. ‘Look, everyone, Simon’s been a naughty boy. And Joanna’s the blue-eyed girl who’s going to put everything right. Well, bloody good luck to you!’ He glared at her. ‘What a pity you didn’t stay here and pitch in after Martin died, instead of swanning off to the States. Things might have been different then.’ He scraped his chair back and rose. ‘I’m going back to the nursing home to stay with Fiona. Have your high-level conference with Blackstone, sister dear, and get everything sorted. Feel free to let me know some time what’s been decided for me.’
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