Night Over Water

Boots would still be hers. “I’m glad, Danny,” she said weakly.

“Your pa said it would be like this.”

The remark came out of nowhere and Nancy did not understand it. “What do you mean?”

“Your pa. He wanted you and Peter to fight.”

There was a sly note in Danny’s voice that made Nancy suspicious. He resented giving in to her, and he wanted to get in a parting shot. She was reluctant to give him that satisfaction, but curiosity overcame caution. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“He always said the children of rich men were normally bad businessmen because they weren’t hungry. He was really worried about it—thought you might throw away everything he’d earned.”

“He never told me he felt that way,” she said suspiciously.

“That’s why he set things up so you’d fight one another. He brought you up to take control after his death, but he never put you in place; and he told Peter it would be his job to run the company. That way you’d have to fight it out, and the toughest would come out on top.”

“I don’t believe this,” Nancy said; but she was not as sure as she sounded. Danny was angry because he had been outmaneuvered, so he was being nasty to relieve his feelings; but that did not prove he was lying. She felt chilled.

“Believe what you like,” Danny said. “I’m telling you what your father told me.”

“Pa told Peter he wanted him to be chairman?”

“Sure he did. If you don’t believe me, ask Peter.”

“If I didn’t believe you, I wouldn’t believe Peter.”

“Nancy, I first met you when you were two days old,” Danny said, and there was a new, weary note in his voice. “I’ve known you all your life and most of mine. You’re a good person with a hard streak, like your father. I don’t want to fight with you over business, or anything else. I’m sorry I brought this up.”

Now she believed him. He sounded genuinely regretful, and that made her think he was sincere. She was shocked by his revelation, and felt weak and a little dizzy. She said nothing for a moment, trying to recover her composure.

“I guess I’ll see you at the board meeting,” Danny said.

“Okay,” she said.

“’Bye, Nancy.”

“’Bye, Danny.” She hung up.

Mervyn said: “By God, you were brilliant!”

She smiled thinly. “Thanks.”

He laughed. “I mean, the way you worked him around—he never stood a chance! The poor beggar never knew what hit him—”

“Oh, shut up,” she said.

Mervyn looked as if she had slapped him. “Whatever you say,” he said tightly.

She was sorry right away. “Forgive me,” she said, touching his arm. “At the end Danny said something that shocked me.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked cautiously.

“He says my father set up this fight between me and Peter so that the toughest would end up running the company.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I do. That’s the terrible thing. It really rings true. I’ve never thought about it before, but it explains a lot of things about me and my brother.”

He took her hand. “You’re upset.”

“Yeah.” She stroked the sparse black hair on the backs of his fingers. “I feel like a character in a motion picture, acting out a scenario that was written by someone else. I’ve been manipulated for years, and I resent it. I’m not even sure I want to win this fight with Peter, now that I know how I was set up.”

He nodded understandingly. “What would you like to do?”

The answer came to her as soon as he asked the question. “I’d like to write my own script—that’s what I’d like to do.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Harry Marks was so happy he could hardly move.

He lay in bed remembering every moment of the night: the sudden thrill of pleasure when Margaret had kissed him; the anxiety as he worked up the courage to make a pass at her; the disappointment when she turned him down; and the amazement and delight when she had jumped into his bunk like a rabbit diving into its hole.

He cringed as he remembered how he had come the moment she touched him. This always happened to him the first time with a new girl: he had not owned up to it. It was humiliating. One girl had been scornful and mocked him. Mercifully, Margaret had not been disappointed or frustrated. In a funny way she had been aroused by it. Anyway, she had been happy in the end. So had he.

He could hardly believe his luck. He was not clever, he had no money, and he did not come from the right social class. He was a complete fraud and she knew it. What did she see in him? There was no mystery about what attracted him to her: she was beautiful, lovable, warmhearted and vulnerable; and if that were not enough, she had the body of a goddess. Anyone would have fallen for her. But him? He was not bad-looking, of course, and he knew how to wear clothes, but he had a feeling that sort of thing did not count much with Margaret. However, she was intrigued by him. She found his way of life fascinating, and he knew a lot of stuff that was strange to her, about working-class life in general and the criminal underworld in particular. He guessed that she saw him as a romantic figure, like the Scarlet Pimpernel, or some kind of outlaw, Robin Hood or Billy the Kid, or a pirate. She was extraordinarily grateful to him for holding her chair in the dining room, a trivial thing he had done without even thinking about it, but it meant a lot to her. In fact he was pretty sure that that was the moment when she had really fallen for him. Girls are peculiar, he thought with a mental shrug. Anyway, it no longer mattered what the original attraction had been: once they took off their clothes it was pure chemistry. He would never forget the sight of her white breasts in the dim, filtered light, her nipples so small and pale they were hardly visible; the riot of chestnut hair between her legs; the scattering of freckles at her throat....

And now he was going to risk losing it all.

He was going to steal her mother’s jewelry.

It was not something a girl could laugh off. Her parents were awful to her, and she probably believed their wealth should be redistributed, anyway; but all the same she would be shocked. Robbing someone was like a slap across the face: it might not do much damage, but it angered people out of all proportion. It could be the end of his affair with Margaret.

But the Delhi Suite was here, on this plane, in the baggage hold, just a few steps from where he lay: the most beautiful jewels in the world, worth a fortune, enough for him to live on for the rest of his life.

He longed to hold that necklace in his hands, feast his eyes on the fathomless red of the Burmese rubies, and run his fingertips over the faceted diamonds.

The settings would have to be destroyed, of course, and the suite broken up, as soon as it was fenced. That was a tragedy, but inevitable. The stones would survive, and end up in another suite of jewelry on the skin of some millionaire’s wife. And Harry Marks would buy a house.

Yes, that was what he would do with the money. He would buy a country house, somewhere in America, maybe in the area they called New England, wherever that was. He could see it already, with its lawns and trees, the weekend guests in white trousers and straw hats, and his wife coming down the oaken staircase in jodhpurs and riding boots—

But the wife had Margaret’s face.

She had left him at dawn, slipping out through the curtains when there was no one to see. Harry had looked out of the window, thinking of her, while the plane flew over the spruce forests of Newfoundland and splashed down