Her mother had died when she was six, after which she’d been raised by her father, a self-made oilman, who’d prized her and showered her with indulgences while seldom having much time to spend with her. His death had left her fabulously rich but alone in every way that counted.
She knew the value of her looks and her wealth, but she might have grown up ignorant of all other values but for a naturally warm heart. She had a temper, but an impish sense of the absurd was constantly undermining it, and if she possessed one charm greater than her beauty it was her ability to laugh at herself. Nobody knew where that gift came from for her mother had been a gentle melancholy lady, and her father had been too busy making money to laugh. It had grown out of her own nature, and it occurred to nobody that it might be a defence. Why should the beautiful, privileged Meryl Winters need defences?
After her explosion at the bank she’d stormed off to see Benedict and they’d been wrathful together, until she’d repeated Larry’s remark about ‘making frocks’. Then Benedict had produced an explosion of his own, which had reduced Meryl to laughter.
Now she was asking teasingly, ‘How’s your lady-killing charm working on Amanda these days?’
‘Don’t mention that woman,’ Benedict snapped. ‘The worst mistake of my life was to marry her, and my best decision was to leave her.’
‘Says who? She threw you out. I heard your neighbours were kept awake by you banging on the door pleading to be let in.’
‘Lies. All lies.’
‘And don’t forget you called her from my apartment with your speech of reconciliation all worked out, and she slammed the phone down as soon as she heard your voice.’
‘Don’t upset me when I’m pinning,’ he begged. ‘There could be an accident.’
‘Not if you want my ten million dollars.’
‘Well, I’m not going to get it, am I?’ he reminded her peevishly. ‘Not until you’re twenty-seven. And not even then if Larry Rivers has anything to do with it.’
‘He won’t. Absolute control passes to me on my twenty-seventh birthday-unless I marry first. Then I get it on my wedding day. But I’m blowed if I’m waiting another three years. I’m fed up with Larry controlling my life.’
‘He hardly controls it. You’ve got that apartment on Central Park, another one in Los Angeles, you spend a fortune on clothes and cars, and he pays the bills without question.’
‘But if I want a lump sum he can block me. I’m going to change that, even if I have to do as I said and haul someone in off the street to marry them.’
‘You’ve got men pursuing you by the dozen. Won’t one of them do?’
‘No, it should be someone right outside my normal life, who’ll serve his purpose and then vanish.’
Benedict laughed. ‘Then why not advertise?’
The next moment he wished he’d held his tongue, for Meryl whirled around on him, her eyes shining. ‘Benedict, you’re a genius. That’s exactly what I’ll do.’
‘There’s something wrong with this whisky of yours,’ Ferdy Ashton observed, studying the bottom of his tumbler.
Jarvis, Lord Larne, raised his head from the desk where he was working. ‘Something wrong with it?’ he asked, frowning.
‘It keeps disappearing,’ Ferdy complained. ‘I could swear this glass was full a moment ago. So was the bottle. And look at them now.’
Jarvis’s rather stern face softened into a grin. ‘You’ve got my special vanishing whisky,’ he said. ‘It always seems to be around when you’re here.’
‘Well, it’s certainly vanished now.’
‘You know where it’s kept.’
Ferdy looked around him at the library of Larne Castle as though expecting a fresh bottle to present itself for inspection. Behind the thick brocade curtains a window rattled slightly in the night wind. It was tightly shut, or at least as tightly as could be managed, but there wasn’t a window in the building that didn’t let in a draught. The place was eight hundred years old and urgently in need of repairs to help it withstand the gales. Its inhabitants protected themselves as best they could with heavy drapes and roaring fires. There was one in the grate this minute, casting a red glow over the two Alsatians stretched out on a shabby rug before it.
Nearby sat their master, also shabby despite his ancient, aristocratic title. From his appearance Lord Larne might have been one of his own tenants. His dark brown hair looked as if it needed a cut, and its shaggy disarray somehow typified him. His corduroy trousers were old and darned, as though in continual use for hard country work, which, in fact, they were. The sweater Jarvis wore over them had started life in an expensive shop, but it too had come down in the world.
He was a tall, powerfully built man, massive about the shoulders but lean in the face, with dark eyes that easily grew fierce over a nose with a faint hook. That nose told the story of the awesome Larne temper that he let rip only occasionally, often at the stupidity of the world, especially when it threatened his ancient heritage.
But with anyone who had his affection the fierceness vanished, replaced by an all-forgiving tolerance. With Ferdy Ashton tolerance was often tinged with exasperation, but the fondness never wavered, which baffled observers.
Just what the serious, puritanical Jarvis saw in the irresponsible Ferdy nobody could fathom. He was as willowy slender as Jarvis was bull massive, his voice as light and reedy as Jarvis’s was deep and resonant. Their friendship had started at school and they were the same age, but Ferdy’s boyish looks and manner made him seem younger.
He was an artist, when he bothered to be anything. He had talent, which he was too lazy to use, treated life as a joke, never troubled about tomorrow, and would probably be shot by an enraged husband before he was fifty. No worries troubled his brain, and perhaps that was the secret of his attraction for the permanently troubled Jarvis.
‘Not a drop of whisky in the place,’ he mourned now. ‘You’re a hard man, Jarvis Larne.’
‘I’m a poor one; I know that.’
A young woman with handsome features and an air of disapproval spoke from the library steps. ‘You’d be less poor if you didn’t let spongers soak up your whisky and live rent-free in your cottages.’
Ferdy surveyed her cynically. ‘If that’s meant for me, sister dear, I’ll thank you to keep your observations to yourself. Jarvis and I settled the rent of my cottage long ago.’
‘I know you settled it, but when did you last actually pay it?’
‘Don’t split hairs. I pay for my cottage and my drink, not in cash, but in the pleasure of my company.’
Sarah Ashton made a noise that was perilously close to a snort. ‘I’d like to see Jarvis pay his bills with the pleasure of your company-such as it is,’ she remarked acidly.
‘Leave him alone, Sarah,’ Jarvis advised amiably. ‘You know he’s incorrigible.’
‘He wouldn’t be if you didn’t encourage him.’
‘Yes, I would,’ Ferdy said at once. ‘I was born incorrigible.’ He went to the drinks cabinet, considered its sparse contents, and returned to his seat empty-handed. On his way he caught his heel in the shabby carpet and almost fell into the chair. He grasped the arms to steady himself, and heard a dismal wrenching sound as the threadbare material tore. ‘I’ve made a hole in your chair,’ he announced with an air of discovery.
Jarvis shrugged. ‘I doubt I’ll notice it among the others.’
‘You know what you could do with, Jarvis lad?’
‘A new chair, probably.’
‘A rich wife.’
Jarvis’s grin returned. ‘To be sure, they’re going begging, aren’t they?’
‘As a matter of fact they are.’ Ferdy picked up the newspaper which he’d been reading a moment earlier. ‘See here,’ he said, jabbing with his finger at an advertisement.
Jarvis took the paper and read, “‘Wanted-one fortune-hunter to marry heiress: Millionairess seeks nominal husband in order to gain control of her own fortune. Generous terms to the right man”.’
He tossed the paper back to Ferdy. ‘Someone’s idea of a practical joke,’ he growled. ‘Either that or a journalist. If you think I’m going to offer myself up to ridicule you’ve taken leave of your senses.’
‘But suppose it’s for real? Why pass up the chance?’
‘Because for one thing I’ve nothing to offer a millionairess-’
