Summer's Awakening (9 page)

'But her situation isn't the same as mine was. I was left with nothing... and I did have some English blood in me. My mother had talked about England, and I knew a great deal about it. Emily is
totally
English, and while I'd travelled all over the States, she has never even been to London.'

'Then we'll make sure she has a day there before flying to Miami. It's unfortunate you don't drive. You'll have to learn—a car is a necessity where you're going."

'I do drive. I'm a complete beginner, but I have
a
licence. I just can't afford to run a car at present.'

'Not on what you've been paid up to now, but from tomorrow that changes. I shan't be in Florida with you—or not very often. You'll be able to call me at all times, and there'll be staff to run the house for you. But you will be fully responsible for my niece's welfare, and I'll pay you a salary commensurate with that responsibility. If all goes well, you'll have job-security until Emily is sixteen or seventeen. But we'll have to see how it works out. For the present, I suggest
a
contract reviewable after six months.'

And then he suggested a salary, first in dollars and then in its current sterling equivalent, which made her gape in astonishment.

'But that's going to the other extreme. I don't need all that,' she protested.

His lion's eyes narrowed, watching her with an expression she couldn't interpret.

After a pause, he said, 'Learn from your father's improvidence, Miss Roberts. Enjoy the present, by all means, but give some thought to the future. You may not be aware of it yet, but we're living in the dawn of the Computer Age. In the next two or three decades, all our lives will be changed more radically than by the Industrial Revolution of the last century. It's hoped that new technology will create as many jobs as it destroys; but at this stage nothing is certain. Unemployment is already high—it could go higher. So make the most of your opportunities.'

She was struck by his tone of voice as he spoke of the changes ahead. The only person to whom she had talked about computers had been old Mr Renfrew. In recent years the facilities at the nearest large public library had been greatly improved by the introduction of microfiche to replace the old-fashioned card indexes. Other modernisations had taken place in the reference section.

She would have expected an archivist to welcome the new information storage and retrieval systems. Mr Renfrew had been against them; perhaps because deteriorating eyesight had made it difficult for him to read small print shown on a screen.

It was clear that James Gardiner's reaction to the Computer Age was one of excitement and enthusiasm.

She said, 'I shall try to, certainly. But when you speak of the transition to America being less painful for Emily than coming to Europe was for me, you're ignoring the fact that she has a home here. We were living in a rented apartment at the time of my parents' accident. I had no roots anywhere, and certainly not the deep tap-root which Emily has here. I don't understand why she has to be moved to America... why she can't continue as she is, in the place where she belongs.'

He didn't reply to that immediately, and Summer had the curious sensation of having her innermost thoughts probed by a penetrating intelligence, a kind of mental laser beam.

He said, 'Don't
you
want to go to America?'

'Yes, very much. There's nothing I should like better. But it's Emily's life we're discussing. Her place is here, at Cranmere. If you don't care about your heritage, then she is the last of the Lancasters. It may even be possible that the Queen will grant her the title of Marchioness, in the same way that Lord Mountbatten's elder daughter was made Countess Mountbatten after he was killed in Ireland.'

'I think you overrate the importance of a title,' he answered. 'I've never regretted dropping mine; and, as long as she's under my aegis in America, Emily will be known as plain Emily Lancaster. If she chooses to revive her title later, that's up to her. But a title with nothing to back it is like a crown without a kingdom. If it were possible to keep the estate going until she's grown up, maybe she could find a rich husband who would change his name to Lancaster. But that's talking of six years from now, and my guess is she won't be that kind of girl anyway. Right now the sane course
of
action is to put the house on the market and auction the contents.'

'You mean...
sell
Cranmere?' she expostulated.

'Correct,' he said crisply.

'But you can't do that! You can't throw away her birthright because she's thirteen... and a girl. It isn't fair. I think it's... damnable!'

'Life rarely is fair, Miss Roberts. Although I don't personally see this an outstanding example
of
its unfairness.'

'Naturally not. It doesn't affect you,' Summer said hotly. 'No doubt it will be to your benefit.'

The lines of his sun-tanned face tightened, the firm lips compressing for a moment before he said, 'What do you mean?'

What had she meant? She had flung the afterthought at him without choosing her words or considering their implication.

Now, as he looked coldly at her, waiting for her to explain herself, she had an uneasy feeling that she was skating on thin ice. It could be that what she had meant was defamation of character; and James Gardiner wouldn't like that any more than he liked disobedience.

On the other hand, they were alone. There was no one to hear her accuse him of using his niece's misfortune to feather his own nest.

She said recklessly, 'You're not dense, Mr Gardiner. I think you're extremely astute. As it stands, Emily's inheritance is no use to you. But converted into funds—very substantial funds—of which you, as her administrator, would have control for some years...' She finished the sentence with an expressive shrug.

There was a long-drawn-out silence. James Gardiner leaned back in his chair and watched her, his gaze as intent as that of a cat watching a mouse. Or a lion watching a springbok.

At length, he said softly, 'That's a very unpleasant suggestion, Miss Roberts. Are you prepared to stand by it?'

Her mouth felt dry, but her clear grey eyes didn't waver.

She said evenly, 'I'm prepared to do anything necessary to defend Emily s rights, and her happiness. Someone has to.'

'And you don't trust me to do it?'

'Why should I trust you, Mr Gardiner? You're a stranger to me. All I know is that you left here under a cloud, and as far as I'm aware, you never made contact with your family until the only one left was a little girl of thirteen. You've repudiated your title. Perhaps you've repudiated a great deal more than that. Things like honesty and decency. All the civilised values.'

His reaction to this was to smile. 'Dr Dyer told me you had a lot of guts—he was right. You're prepared to risk losing a good job to stand up for Emily.'

Her pale cheeks flooded with colour. Not because of the praise implicit in what he had said, but because of his gall in referring to a conversation in which he—damn his eyes!—had been as insulting about her as it was possible to be.

She never swore out loud, and only rarely in her mind, but right now there was only one word to apply to James Gardiner.

She looked at him, smiling at her, and she thought: You bastard!

Did he read the message in her eyes? She couldn't be sure.

He said, 'Okay, I'll explain to you why your fears are unfounded. In my teens, when I wasn't poaching or doing various other illicit things, of which you've probably heard exaggerated rumours, I was interested in transistors. Later on, when I went to America, I became a computer buff.'

His body flexed. He stood up and began to pace about the room, as he had in the course of their first talk.

'Six years ago,' he went on, 'I founded
a
company to manufacture personal computers and some software. In case you don't know, software refers to video games and programmes for use with computers. The giant of the computer industry is IBM—International Business Machines. Everybody's heard of them. For a long time they concentrated on mainframe business computers and ignored the personal computer—that market was left to a number of much smaller companies, of which the most successful were Apple and my company. Our stock has a market value of two billion dollars, and as chairman of the board, I have shares worth two hundred and fifty million dollars. I have no designs on Emily's fortune, Miss Roberts. I'm a rich man, and getting richer. But I made my money the hard way, and I'm not going to use it to shore up
a
tottering tradition which means nothing to me.'

Was he speaking the truth? Was he really the head of a booming billion-dollar company? Or was that a spiel which he didn't think she would check out?

'Neither Emily's father nor her grandfather were men of foresight,' he continued. They made bad investments... bad decisions. The estate is heavily in debt. If I had nothing else to do, and I wanted to come back to England, I might, by careful management, be able to pull it out of the red. Might is the operative word. However, I have things to do, and no wish to come back. Two weeks is the most I can spare from my own affairs.'

He glanced at his watch. 'I'd better get back—that sandwich will be beginning to curl at the edges.'

As he put on the waterproof coat, she said, 'When are you going to tell Emily? Tonight?'

'I thought so—yes. Unless you'd prefer to tell her?'

'Whoever tells her, it's going to be a terrible shock. Cranmere has been her whole world.'

'A very small world,' he said shortly. 'Almost as confined as a convent.'

He picked up the cap, his glance running over her. She flushed. She felt sure he was thinking that, with her lack of sex appeal, she might just as well be a nun.

She said, 'Perhaps it would be better not to tell her yet. When we're in Florida, particularly if she's happy there, it won't come as such a blow.' Then she shook her head. 'No, on second thoughts, I couldn't deceive her like that. She has to be told, however much it upsets her. I think you should break it to her—she's taken an immediate liking to you.'

'Unlike her tutor,' he said mockingly. 'You don't like me or trust me, do you, Miss Roberts?'

She ignored that. 'Thank you for driving me home,' she said, with frigid politeness. 'Goodnight, Mr Gardiner.'

After he had gone, she made herself a pot of tea and sat by the fire, wondering about the influences which had transformed the seventeen-year-old Etonian, Lord James Lancaster, into Mr James Gardiner, a naturalised American computer tycoon.

She couldn't understand his indifference to his ancestral home. If he only occasionally visited the house in Florida, where did he live? And who was the woman in his life?

There had to be one. He might think she was well-suited to a convent, but no one would ever suspect him of monastic leanings—not with that sensual mouth.

What kind of woman would be James Gardiner's girl-friend, she wondered. A beauty: that went without saying. Would she have brains as well? Or was he one of those men who didn't require his woman to be intelligent as long as she had a lovely face and an alluring body?

It would do him a great deal of good, thought Summer, sipping her tea, if one day he were to encounter the female equivalent of himself; a girl with good looks, brains, panache, a successful career—and an impregnable indifference to the charms of Mr James Gardiner.

Her eyes on the play of the flames, all thought of supper forgotten, she began to visualise the scene at an elegant black tie dinner party. It was taking place in a luxurious apartment on the fashionable East Side of Manhattan. The host and hostess and seven, or possibly nine, guests, one of them him, were drinking cocktails and waiting for the last to arrive: the most sought-after girl in New York; talented, beautiful, always exquisitely dressed and—no one knew why—still single.

As if from the front row of the stalls, her mind's eye surveyed the details of the
mise en sc
è
ne.

A spacious, softly lit, split-level living room with large windows, the curtains still open to show the glittering lights of the city by night.

Everywhere there were beautiful flowers. The women were expensively coiffed and dressed by America's top designers,
their jewels catching the light as they turned their heads and moved their hands.