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  CHAPTER TEN

  GERALDINE FRANCES found it hard to believe that two years had passed so quickly, but that was how long it had been since the Christmas Charles had declared his love for her. Now she was almost nineteen, and in all the time since she and Charles had become unofficially engaged she doubted that they had spent more than two months together.

  At first she had missed him dreadfully, ached to be with him, scanned the British gossip Press when they were out of the country, hungrily gleaning what snatches of information she could.

  Charles featured regularly in such articles. And why not? He was an extremely social and handsome man, always popular as a dinner party guest… as an escort…

  She tried not to torment herself by wondering how many other women had tried to seduce him into their beds. She was the one he loved, and she must hold on to that knowledge.

  There were times when it was hard, times when she saw him photographed with some lovely girl hanging on his arm and jealousy raked her with painfully sharp claws, making her reach for the phone, desperate for the sound of his voice, but always she managed to stop herself, to remind herself that their relationship must include trust… that she must learn to accept that they could not as yet spend all their time together.

  When she did see him, he always seemed to be almost amused by the pain she tried so hard to hide, telling her carelessly that she had nothing to worry about, that she was to be his wife, and adding that her father had made him promise that there was to be no mention of their new relationship until he himself gave permission for their engagement to be formally announced.

  The last time she had broached the subject, after having seen him photographed in a society ball dancing with a girl who so plainly adored him that she had been unable to prevent herself from questioning him jealously about her, he had shrugged and said nonchalantly, ‘My dear Gerry, what would you have me do? You don’t know these carrion who feed off the social scene as I do. If I turned my back on women completely they’d be suggesting that I was gay… is that what you’d prefer?’

  Poor Geraldine Frances hadn’t known what to say. The truth was that she wanted Charles with her, that she suffered agonies every time she saw him photographed with someone else, or read about him escorting someone else, and was unable to stop comparing the partners he favoured with herself. She was so fat, so plain, and they were so lovely…

  The sensible thing to have done would be to resist the temptation to read such articles, but they were a compulsion akin to her need to eat, and there was no way she could control it.

  She ached to be with Charles, longed for his company, but there were so many things her father wanted to do… people he wanted her to meet… things he wanted her to learn.

  And he, too, seemed to have changed. He had lost a lot of his old insouciance and become far more serious… far more intent. He had also started wearing glasses, complaining that he was having a small problem with his sight. Geraldine Frances had noticed when she was out with him that occasionally he seemed to hesitate or stumble, and she had teased him about it at first, until she had seen how much he disliked it.

  It seemed a rather odd vanity in her father that he should resent becoming a little short-sighted, but she loved him too much to want to hurt him, so when he told her tersely that he didn’t want his short-sightedness mentioned to anyone else, not even Charles, she accepted his dictate.

  In the past two years they had spent very little time in England, and even less in Ireland, which she loved so much. Instead there had been months in New York, weeks in Switzerland, long hours and exhausting days spent listening to lawyers and accountants, meeting bankers and financiers, learning, always learning about the vast powerhouse of wealth that existed to feed and protect her inheritance… Wealth which had been accumulated mostly by her father, whose genius for financial affairs was something she herself had apparently inherited.

  Three months ago she had learned all about the Queen granting her father a petition so that Geraldine Frances could be allowed to inherit his titles, and, through her, her children.

  She had been touched and amused by her father’s determination to transfer them to her. After all, Charles was the next male in line, and when she was his wife their children would in any case inherit through him, but her father had been adamant, refusing to say anything other than that he wanted her to carry the title.

  The fortune he had made was different; it was his personally, and would not have been entailed with the title. Her grandfather had had the foresight to protect what monies did go with the earldom and Rothwell itself from the ravages of death duties, and her father had done exactly the same thing. But he wasn’t just making sure of her inheritance, he was ensuring that she would be competent to deal with it. To nurture it and protect it, and most of all to nurture and protect Rothwell.

  It had come as something of a surprise to her to discover how strongly her father felt about Rothwell. He had spent so much of his life travelling that she had not realised how passionately he felt about the house and land. Again and again he made her promise that she would always remember that Rothwell itself, the titles, the land were a sacred trust and that they must be passed over into no other hands… not even those of her husband… Hopefully, he told her, she would have the sons he had been denied.

  ‘Teach them well,’ he had said. ‘Because it is on their shoulders that the future of Rothwell will fall.’

  Dutifully she gave him her promise, while at the same time reminding him cheerfully that he himself would probably be able to see his grandsons growing up.

  ‘You aren’t senile yet,’ she had teased him, and James, the specialist’s words always there in his mind, had turned away from her so that she shouldn’t see the helpless anguish he knew must be in his eyes. No, he wasn’t senile yet… but the deterioration had begun. Slowly, oh, so slowly… barely perceptible on his good days… but there were other times… He shuddered and prayed that his daughter’s children would have longer to grow up in than he could allow her.

  Already he could see the signs of maturity touching her, signs of which she herself was unaware. He was shamed by the desire he still had that if he must only have a female child she might at least have been physically attractive. It was not Geraldine Frances’s fault that she was the way she was, and, worse, he knew that inwardly she did have beauty and grace.

  It grieved him beyond measure to acknowledge that even he, knowing of that beauty and grace, should still look upon her and wish that fate had been generous enough to bestow an outer facade to match that inner beauty, and not just for her own sake.

  James Fitzcarlton was a man who, all his adult life, had enjoyed the company of beautiful women. Geraldine Frances’s mother had been one of them. Small, delicate, she had possessed all the fragility and high breeding that went with being the daughter of one of America’s first WASP families. Their marriage had been a dynastic one, each of them aware of what they were bringing to it, but they had shared mutual desire, mutual respect, and, even though he suspected that they might not have remained faithful to one another, James knew their marriage would have endured.

  During the years since her death, there had been many discreet, orderly affairs, in the main with women who moved within the same social circles as he did himself—generally married or divorced women, especially after he discovered that he couldn’t father any more children.

  How bitterly that had rankled. Margaret, coming upon him at a weak moment, just after he had discovered that the childish disease he had picked up from Geraldine Frances had left him sterile, had listened to his furious burst of temper against fate… against his wife for dying… against Geraldine Frances for being a girl and against himself for thinking he had all the time in the world to provide Rothwell with an heir.

  Now there would be no heir other than his daughter.

  Margaret hadn’t liked that. Her son was his heir, she had objected angrily. It was ridiculous to even think of leaving such a vas
t inheritance to Geraldine Frances… a girl. And James had known illuminatingly then, without her having to say it, how much she had resented his birth, his taking from her Rothwell and all that it stood for. He had always known she resented him, but until then he had not known how much… or why.

  After that he had watched Charles closely, acknowledging that the boy had the all-important Fitzcarlton blood. But he also had his father’s weaknesses… He was right to believe that the responsibilities of Rothwell could not be left safely in his hands—right to have begun his petition to the Queen.

  As the year drew to a close, James watched his daughter closely. Her intelligence, her astuteness outmatched even his own; her quick grasp of essential data, and the sheer breadth of her ability to use that data, delighted him.

  Sitting round a boardroom table, she commanded respect… sitting at a dinner table was a different matter altogether.

  She had lost little weight during the year, and when she spoke of Charles her eyes glowed with love, but that only served to emphasise the paucity of her physical gifts, and it was with terrible sadness that James admitted that she would probably marry Charles and that there was nothing he could do to stop it—but not just because his time was running short and his love for her was such that he wanted to protect her for now and for the future. Not even because he knew how desperately she loved her cousin… loved him, adored him, ate, dreamed and talked him every day of her life.

  It was the broader view he had to consider… the future which he would never see. Above and beyond his instinctive desire to protect his daughter from the pain he already knew her marriage would bring was his duty to protect Rothwell.

  If he told her of his doubts about Charles… if he destroyed her trust in him, her love for him, she would be left alone. He wondered how long then it would take her to realise that if she didn’t marry and have a child… children… Rothwell would eventually pass to Charles and to his children.

  If only he could be sure that he could hold off the devastation that threatened him…

  Their travels had had a secondary purpose, and one which he had kept hidden from Geraldine Frances.

  She must have a husband; that was clear to him. She had to marry and have children, otherwise Charles’s children would inherit on her death, and he knew his nephew well enough to know that Charles would marry and produce those children.

  Throughout their travels he had been carefully assessing the sons of his business acquaintances and friends, watching their reaction to Geraldine Frances at the skilfully arranged meetings that threw them into her company. Their reaction was depressingly similar. They were invariably polite to her, well mannered and sometimes even kind, but nothing could hide the fact that physically they were unresponsive to her as a woman.

  There would be no husband for Geraldine Frances among their ranks, that much was obvious to him.

  In the most private recesses of his soul he acknowledged his hope that somehow a miracle might occur: that Geraldine Frances would somehow or other metamorphose into, if not a beautiful, then at least a passably attractive young woman, attractive enough to appeal to a man who wanted her for more than the fact that she was James’s heiress, a man whom he could like and respect, whom he could trust… a man who was not Charles.

  No, those hopes were fading. In London Charles was waiting… knowing… James would not be able to fob Geraldine Frances off with well-intentioned fibs much longer. Soon she would be asking him to make good his promise to allow her and Charles formally to announce their engagement.

  He had done all he could to safeguard her future, and, more important, to safeguard Rothwell. There was no way Charles could break the trusts he had set up for Geraldine Frances and her children, no way he could overset his explicit instructions, but once he, James, was dead Geraldine Frances would have total control of everything. Could he trust her to hold to her promise to him, not to allow anyone, not even Charles, to take over that control? She was so vulnerable where her love for Charles was concerned…

  Already, without her knowledge, he had made other provisions… signed powers of attorney so that, when the inevitable happened, she would be able to smoothly take over the reins he would be forced to relinquish, and without Charles being able to interfere.

  His lawyers, those grey, shadowy men in Switzerland and the equally skilled firm he employed in London, knew all there was to know, and they would not fail him. Legally he had made everything just as secure as he could, but there was no way he could legislate for Geraldine Frances’s emotions, or for Charles’s greed.

  He ached to be at Rothwell… longed for it with an intensity that was unfamiliar, as though his very soul was starved for the tranquil familiarity of it… He who had always been so restless, who had always enjoyed travel and variety, now wanted nothing more than to sit in his library and look out over Rothwell’s magnificent park.

  He told Geraldine Frances they would be going home for Christmas, wishing her delight were not so obviously caused by the thought of seeing Charles.

  That evening she wrote to Charles telling him they would soon be on their way home.

  Charles read the letter and laughed cruelly over its shy declarations of love. That fat, boring lump… Did she really believe he could love something like her? Hadn’t she got the wit to see it was Rothwell he wanted, and that she was simply the price he had to pay for getting it?

  After James had refused to admit him to his confidence financially, and to share his business dealings with him, Charles had ostensibly gone into business with an acquaintance as a financial consultant.

  The business was a good screen for his drug dealing, and gave a plausible explanation for the generous income he seemed to receive.

  When his partner left to set up in business on his own, Charles announced that he was closing down the office and intended to conduct his future business from the Rothwell Square house. It was a very convenient arrangement. The clients who visited the house were invariably young, wealthy, and often socially well connected. The pretence that Charles was advising them on their business affairs was one that suited both parties.

  In reality, the fees that Charles charged them were indirect payments for the drugs he was supplying to them.

  His reputation passed by word of mouth and the number of clients he supplied increased. He was invited everywhere. Occasionally he came into contact with some of his fellow pupils from school, but very few of them were privileged enough to move in the same social milieux he inhabited.

  Helen Cartwright was the one exception to that rule. She was fast gaining a reputation as a first-rate photographer, and was now a personality in her own right, no longer photographing social affairs for glossy magazines but flying all over the world to different locations, commissioned by a variety of top-quality journals.

  Charles saw her occasionally, sometimes with a man in tow, more often not. When they met, neither of them mentioned their shared schooldays. Charles had sometimes wondered if she might be gay; if so, she concealed it very well.

  The thought of spending Christmas with Geraldine Frances held no appeal at all.

  He had a new lover—not one of his insecure models this time, but the daughter of a prominent Catholic barrister to whom he had been introduced at one of the many parties he attended.

  She was the same age as Geraldine Frances, but there the similarity ended. Outwardly quiet, almost enough to be described as unfashionably chaste, beneath her demure exterior she concealed a sexual appetite like nothing he had ever known.

  For the first time in his adult life he came close to experiencing something approaching the intense sexual ecstasy he had felt during that unforgettable initiation ceremony.

  She had the ability to drive him outside his normal caution and discretion, and, even while he was aware of the risk he was taking in openly squiring her at so many social events, he was powerless to stop himself… He didn’t love her, his emotions weren’t engaged in the least, but he desired her, lust
ed for her, needed her with an intensity that refused to be sated.

  She had an expensive taste for cocaine, which was how he had first come to know her. When they made love she liked to rub the stuff on his body and then inhale it. He shuddered suddenly, his body urgently aroused. It was always like this when he thought about her. Sometimes he could barely wait to get her inside the house before taking her, quickly, savagely tearing at her clothes and her flesh, driving into her until she screamed with pleasure.

  She was the first woman he had allowed to stay overnight at the Rothwell Square house. So far he had resisted her urgings to allow her to move in. If she had one fault it was her jealousy… She had no idea about Geraldine Frances, but then no one had; he had taken good care to make sure they did not. Obeying his uncle’s dictate that nothing was to be said about any potential relationship until he gave his permission for the formal announcement of their engagement suited Charles admirably.

  But now he sensed time running out on him. At first, when James had announced his intention to travel and to take Geraldine Frances with him, he had worried that he might lose her… that someone else might see her value and snatch Rothwell away from him. But, if anything, her absence from him had only strengthened her feelings for him. Her letters bore witness to that.

  Now she was coming home and he was summoned to Rothwell for Christmas. It would be the usual boring affair. A very dull Christmas Eve, handing out presents and bonuses to the staff. Church on Christmas Day morning, with James reading the lesson in the local village church. Lunch at Rothwell, just the three of them, and afterwards the opening of the presents, followed by a cold and dreary walk through Rothwell’s parkland, before supper.

  On Boxing Day there would be a small and very dull round of cocktail parties to attend, and then possibly a couple of days’ hunting with the Belvoir.