Tall Poppies (2 page)

Tony grinned. If he’d chosen the Hon. Monica Fletcher first, he’d have had no problems whatsoever. As it was, there was only Elizabeth.

Tony glanced at his sons. Charles, Lord Holwyn, thirteen. Dark and intense, he was destined to look like his father. Charles was handsome and callous, calculating like his mother and ruthless like Tony. Just into his teens and already cocky and self-possessed. It was easy to be confident: Charles was heir to a title, a castle, London property and a vast fortune. Eleven-year-old Richard would get a slice of that too, though nothing like as much. Another boy might resent it, but Richard was lazy and easygoing. Charles had dominated Richard since they were tiny boys, and Richard never complained. Richard was popular with the girls because he was so pretty; he made average grades in school; he’d be a gentleman of leisure and do very well. The kid was only eleven but Tony could tell. Richard was the image of his mother.

If only they had not had Elizabeth.

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The earl checked his watch and felt rage stealing over him. Elizabeth was late for her own ball.

Elizabeth. Daughter of Louise, Countess of Caerhaven, his first wife and the only woman ever to make him look a fool. To this day Tony hated the bitch. Louise worked when he asked her not to, refused to play hostess, and cuckolded him with Jay DeFries. His former best friend. Careless whether they were seen in public, Louise made Tony Savage a laughing stock and then divorced him before he’d had a chance to divorce her. He’d hated everything about her, even his infant daughter. Louise perversely delighted in the fact her baby was a girl. And little Elizabeth was just like her mother: the same downy, ,dark blonde hair, green eyes and long, lean body, not a sign of her father on her. Tony was sure she wasn’t even his, but admitting his wife might have borne another man’s child would have been too shameful.

When Louise died, aged twenty-seven, of breast cancer, the infant Lady Elizabeth moved back to her papa. She grw up a green-eyed, rebellious minx, her mother blossoming back up in her like a flower, an almost uncanny replica, laughing at Tony even in death.

Tony ruined Jay DeFries. Dragon was powerful: it wasn’t difficult. He took over DeFries’s business, muddied the books, got the Fraud Squad in. His former best friend had gone down for eight years, bankrupt. Hanged himself in jail.

As Dragon grew bigger, thewhispers grew smaller. Soon nobody dared mention Louise or Jay; Tony Savage, Wall Street’s Robber Baron, heard nothing but flattery. But young Elizabeth, running wild, flirting with the local boys, dressing indecently, blossoming into exquisite, dangerous beauty, was in his face every bloody day. She didn’t mix with her brothers or stepmother. She was her mother’s kid. The cuckoo in his golden nest.

‘I have no idea,’ said Monica, beckoning Charles over.

IO

‘Darling, do go and find your sister. Tell her to come down here at once. It’s her sixteenth, and David Fairfax has been waiting for her all evening.’

Tony Savage looked across the grey stone of the Great Hall, lit by torches flickering in iron sconces and the roaring fire burning in the grate, past the rich swirl of silk, lace and velvet, to where the plump figure of a young man stood, surrounded by toadies and cradling a glass of vintage champagne. His Grace the Duke of Fairfax, one of the most eligible men in England. Suitor for the hand of his only daughter.

‘Can’t think what he sees in her,’ Tony said.

In her bedroom in the West Wing, Lady Elizabeth Savage leaned against the chill stone of the turret window and stared out into the night. Her eyes were used to bleak darkness’and she could make out most of the landscape: the stable roofs, the black stretch of forest outside the castle walls, the low hills in the distance. She ignored the sounds of the glittering party, below her and listened for the endless sigh of the sea. The cold air tasted of salt.

Granny was dead. Only two days ago she had been sitting with her in the East Wing, chattering about business, politics, and the roaring twenties. Granny never minded her talking on, her curiosity and ambitions. Two days without her already seemed like an eternity.

Despite what she said - ‘Don’t be ridiculous, child, everybody loves you’- Elizabeth knew Dad and Monica didn’t care for her. She thought-it was because she wasn’t a boy.

Elizabeth grew up eager and vivacious. Scandalously careless of her station, she made friends with the servants’ kids, climbed apple trees in her vest and knickers, and got suspended four times from Cheltenham - twice for smoking, twice for swearing at her teachers. A cold letter to the countess had threatened expulsion. She

wasn’t bookish, but Elizabeth was fascinated by business, the only thing about her dad she admired. There was an almighty row the day Tony discovered she’d been sending away for Dragon company reports.

‘What is this nonsense, young lady?’ he spluttered. Elizabeth hurried to explain. ‘I’m just taking an interest, Daddy. I thought I could study how Dragon does its marketing - you know I’m interested in how people sell things—’

‘How people sell things? What are you, a salesman?’ ‘I want to work at Dragon,’ Elizabeth said stubbornly. ‘You have no idea what you want to do.’

‘I do. I’m fifteen years old. I want to work in advertising, in Dragon …’

‘Over my dead body.’ Tony actually laughed. ‘The company is going to your brother! Behave like a lady for once in your life.’

White faced, Elizabeth had turned and raced away up

the stone staircase, looking for her grandmother. Flushed with anger, her father drew a deep breath and walked slbwly back to his offices. With every year that passed, he was more certain Elizabeth would disgrace the family just like Louise.

But no. He would never let it happen again.

Elspeth, the dowager countess, had occupied the East Wing for twenty years since her husband died. She loved Elizabeth, although she too was convinced the girl was Jay DeFries’s bastard. Elspeth’s heart sank each year Elizabeth grew older, looking like a younger, prettier version of Louise. She knew Tony would never give the child a chance.

When Elizabeth sobbed out what her father had said about Dragon, the old lady coughed drily and gave her a hug.

‘Never mind, Lizzie. He’ll come round.’

‘He won’t.’ Elizabeth buried her face in the stiff cotton petticoats. ‘He doesn’t want me to do anything! He said it wasn’t ladylike … and he said if I’m expelled he’ll have Dolphin put down!’ Dolphin was her Labrador puppy. He slept on her bed and she loved him fiercely.

‘Did he?’ Granny said, frowning. ‘I was expelled once, dear.’

‘You? When? Why?’

Elizabeth’s face was blotched red and puffy from crying. Her son was going to crush this one, unless somebody stopped him. Liz was a merry little thing. She wouldn’t let Tony snuff the child out.

‘The year before I married your grandfather. From finishing school in Switzerland.’ A wicked chuckle. ‘For

painting my nails red.’

‘Just for that?’

‘Very Wanton in those days.’ Elspeth smiled, slipping her wrinkled hand over Elizabeth’s smooth one. ‘So, you want to work? If that’s what you want, dear, you shall.’

Elizabeth shook her head. ‘Daddy said the company belongs to Charlie. He won’t let me anywhere near it.’

‘But it isn’t up to him. I own fifteen per cent of the stock … it was a wedding gift. It would get you a seat on the board. If you like, I’ll call a lawyer and change my will. You can have it on your eighteenth birthday.’ Granny’s wrinkled face creased into a smile. ‘I don’t need to play at tycoon any more.’

Elizabeth stared at her grandmother. ‘Truly? But what will Daddy say?’

‘He can like it or lump it,’ the old lady said crisply. ‘Oh, don’t worry, child. I’ll speak to your father tomorrow. He can bluster away, but that never frightened me.’

She knew Daddy had called on his mother the same day.

When he went up to her again the following morningl

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however, the earl found Granny stiff in her chair. Dead, from what the family doctor called a ‘routine coronary’.

Elizabeth resented every smiling idiot at the ball downstairs. All she wanted was to be alone, to have a little time to mourn. The wonderful news about Dragon was dust and ashes without Granny. How can I bear being stuck with the rest of them? Elizabeth thought blinking back tears.

There was a heavy creak as the ancient oak door to her bedroom swung open.

‘I should have known you’d be hiding up here,’ Charles said. His low voice was full of disapproval. ‘Everybody’s

waiting for you. It is supposed to be your party, Lizzie.’ ‘Nobody asked me if I wanted a party!’

‘You’re spoiling things again, as usual. Mamma can’t believe how selfish you’re being. Don’t you know David Fairfax wants to see you?’

‘I couldn’t care less about David.’

‘What’s that dress you’re wearing? That’s not the gown Mamma bought you!’

lie was annoyed. Elizabeth glanced back at the plain green Laura Ashley dress with the huge bow on the bottom, lying rejected over a Regency chair. She’d known there was no way out of this horrible ball, so she’d snuck upstairs to Granny’s rooms last night. Undisturbed by the cleaners, she’d unpacked the gown she wanted from Elspeth’s chest of drawers; under folds of crisp white tissue, hidden away for nearly sixty years, was this vision of a dress. It was a cloud of the palest gold silk trimmed with cream lace, a whalebone corset tapering down to a billowing skirt over stiff petticoats of ivory lace, a discreet pattern in gold thread and seed pearls dusted over the bodice. It fit Elizabeth’s long, lean body snugly, pushing her small breasts together and lifting them up, the skirts sweeping gracefully with every movement of her legs. She’d pulled her tawny hair up into a .formal

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rench pleat, added topaz drop earrings and slipped her feet into apricot satin heels.

Dad could try and ignore her now.

‘It was one of Granny’s,’ Elizabeth told him. ‘Just go away, Charles, please.’

‘All right, I’m going, but you’d better get down there. Otherwise, Father’s going to come up here and drag you down, in front of everybody …’

He would, too. Elizabeth knew that. She had to face her parents and all their vacuous friends …

Taking a deep breath, Lady Elizabeth Savage composed herself, opened her bedroom door, and walked slowly down the winding stairs to her sixteenth birthday party.

F

‘I told you before. I can’t come back early tonight, I have economics,’ Nina said.

‘Yeah? And what are we supposed to do? The stock needs checkin’.’

Nina shrugged. They were arguing in the tiny, cramped kitchen, standing shoulder to shoulder while Nina

‘washed the dishes. Ellen gave them a perfunctory wipe with the towel and stashed them in the rack. She was only interested in haranguing her daughter.

‘You’re never around,’ Ellen whined. ‘You’re always studyin’ or out with your friends. Don’t even have time for your mom.’

‘Mom, I have to go to school, and I took that job at Duane Reed,’ Nina told her shortly. She was too tired for this. SATs were two months away, she worked weekends and two nights a week at the local drugstore, and three evenings she had to be as fresh as she could for Jeff. The deli was just too much extra grind. They’d have to work it out by themselves.

Mr David had been right. Nina’s math teacher had called her in last semester and laid out the facts.

‘Nina, I have to tell you, I’m concerned about your grades trailing off.’ He’d looked at the solemn little face bunched with worry under its mop of raven hair. ‘Your concentration seems to be wandering, you’re constantly tired, and Sister Agnes tells me you fell asleep during chemistry practical last week.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try harder.’

‘I don’t think that’s the problem.’ He paused. ‘Are things difficult at home?’

Nina stiffened. ‘No, sir.’

Peter David gently motioned his star pupil to a chair, wondering how to handle this. He took a personal interest in the welfare of Nina Roth. She had an instinctive grasp of economics, the like of which he had not encountered since leaving Harvard. What most of the other teachers took for shyness and quietness, he knew was something very different - a blind concentration, a steely determination to master her subject. Nina might be a gangly, awkward teenager, but there was a core of iron in her soul that almost scared him. Nina Roth was destined for great things.

And now she was letting it crumble to dust. Her grades had plunged. Her essays lost their sparkle. The Ivy League scholarships he’d assumed were sure things were slipping away.

Mr David felt close to this girl. He’d asked around when Nina first came to St Michael’s, knew all about the lazy father and the lush mother, heard on the grapevine that the kid practically ran the family store herself-no wonder she was so clear about basic business economics. You didn’t have to be a shrink to see that Nina was compensating hard for her parents’ failure, and he approved of that. But now something had changed; she was getting exhausted at school.

He knew Nina was too proud to discuss it, but everything would go up in smoke if he didn’t do something.

‘You work for your parents, don’t you?’ Mr David asked gently. ‘Have you taken on any extra duties besides that? School clubs, for instance? Drama, volleyball, something like that?’

Nina smiled slightly. Drama or volleyball, indeed. He

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must think she was like Missy or Josie or the rest of them.

Since she’d been dating Jeff, she needed more money. He liked her to look pretty, to have good Levi’s, cool boots, whatever the other kids took for granted. And though he always picked up the cinema tickets or the beer or whatever, she wanted to spring for it sometimes, and there was no way her parents would come up with an allowance.

Before Jeff Glazer she hadn’t had a social life, but that had changed, and she needed money.

St Michael’s, Jeff and her parents all taught Nina the same lesson: money was everything. It was new uniforms