Маргарет Уэй – Australia: Outback Fantasies: Outback Heiress, Surprise Proposal / Adopted: Outback Baby / Outback Doctor, English Bride (страница 19)

It wouldn’t have surprised Francesca in the least to learn that Valerie had become more than a secretary to her grandfather. He’d had countless affairs, yet still been a man incapable of true love. Still, Francesca found her new secretary courteous and obliging, with an air of having everything fully under control. Time would tell. At the moment Valerie was proving extremely useful. She had no mind to replace her. She certainly didn’t want to put any woman out of a well-paid job—especially one who had to fend for herself. For the time being things could continue as they were. She didn’t want to become a suspicious person—it wasn’t her nature—but sadly she had entered a very suspicious world.

Bryn had taken time out to fully alert her to security threats. The offices and executive conference room were regularly swept for bugs. Telephones, cellular and cordless, were by their very nature a threat. If royalty could have their phones tapped, so could anyone. Some years back a small transmitter had been discovered to be concealed inside her Uncle Charles’s phone. She knew her grandfather from that day on had upgraded security measures, making sure all telephones and audio visual equipment were removed from conference rooms where confidential matters were discussed. Even so, more and more sophisticated devices were coming on to the market. Trusting one’s staff was extremely important. A strip search apart, who knew what anyone was hiding? Thank God it hadn’t come to that.

It would have given Francesca the greatest pleasure and satisfaction to have been able to take Carina on board. A different Carina, who herself was open to change. But Carina continued to complain bitterly to anyone who would listen about how she and her father had been robbed. Court action, however, to overturn their grandfather’s will did not eventuate. The view of the public was that the right heiress had been handed the job. The public was rarely wrong.

‘Leopards don’t change their spots,’ Bryn remarked during a late-night telephone conversation. They both had such a packed agenda it was difficult to meet. ‘You can’t seriously believe Carina would involve herself in any kind of work?’

‘It could make her feel better about herself. It could be the start of some sort of reconciliation between us.’ Francesca spoke hopefully. ‘I don’t want this feud to continue, Bryn.’

‘Dream on, Santa Francesca!’ A theatrical groan travelled down the wires. ‘Carina doesn’t share your concern for the less fortunate. She thinks by looking gorgeous she’s more than repaying her debt to society.’

Gradually Francesca was brought around to thinking she might ask Elizabeth to come on board. She still wanted people she could trust. If needs be, with her life. She no longer felt as safe as she once had. She was a sitting duck in so many ways. She had her allies, but she had to become a hard-headed realist. She had her enemies too. People who were lying low, waiting for her to fail. But Elizabeth was different. Elizabeth had raised her. Elizabeth had always been on the charity circuit, but Francesca thought she could do a great deal more if she were allowed to.

She spoke to Bryn about it, over a hastily arranged lunch date.

‘An interesting idea—maybe a bit provocative, given the estrangement in the family.’ He had taken his time to reply. ‘You know that Lady Antonia and I have done everything we possibly could to get my mother involved in our foundation, but her heart doesn’t seem to be in anything any more. Not since my father died. My mother is a one-man woman.’ His sigh was full of a deep regret. ‘But I have to say I understand it.’

‘Do you think Annette would help me?’ she stunned him by asking.

In the middle of taking a bite out of a bread roll he coughed, then quickly swallowed a mouthful of water. ‘God, Francey!’ he exclaimed, touching a lean hand to his scratched throat.

‘I’ve shocked you?’

‘You have. But shock on.’

She kept her eyes on him. ‘Annette and I get on so well together. You know we do.’

He nodded. ‘Okay, so you’re very sensitive and intuitive. Both my grandmother and my mother have a soft spot for you. And it’s you more than anyone outside myself that my mother confides in. She knows whatever she says to you you’ll be certain to keep it between yourselves. My mother doesn’t trust a lot of people. With good reason. But she trusts you.’

Francesca did something she had never dared to do before. His lean tanned hand was lying on the table. She reached across and closed her hand over it, interlocking their fingers. ‘That goes both ways,’ she assured him, feeling stronger for his touch. ‘I trust Annette. I’ve told her a lot of things I haven’t told anyone else.’

‘Including me?’ Did she know his senses were being heightened to a painful edge? He wanted to pick up her hand and carry it to his mouth. But he knew that would only scare her off.

‘Yes, including you.’ She blushed, rose mantling her beautiful skin. ‘But just think of this for a moment. Lady Macallan is such an exceptional woman that Annette might consider herself unable to act on her level. But with me? She’s known me since I was a baby. I’m the merest beginner.’

‘Are you really? The merest beginner? You’d have fooled me.’ Bryn’s brilliant black eyes glittered, but in his way he was already tossing this extraordinary idea around in his head. ‘You could ask her.’

‘I have your permission?’ There was a quick flare of joy in her eyes. ‘You don’t know how much I appreciate that. We both know people might question why Annette Macallan would choose to join the Forsyth Foundation in any capacity.’

‘Count on it,’ Bryn confirmed bluntly.

‘Oddly enough, I think she might enjoy it. As much love as there is between Lady Macallan and Annette, Lady Macallan is a formidable woman—a true personage. It’s in that sense your mother might feel overshadowed.’

Bryn gave her a fathomless stare. ‘She told you that?’

‘No, no, no!’ Francesca shook her head. ‘Your mother would never say such a thing. Lady Macallan is her second mother. She adores her. It’s just something I sense. Surely you’ve sensed it too?’

When he answered his tone was crisp enough to crackle. ‘God, Francey, I’m confronted by this every day of my life,’ he said. ‘I’m very proud of my grandmother. What a woman! And I think I get some of my own strengths from her. But she and I have been waiting for years now for my mother to take back her life. She was only a girl when my father married her. Just nineteen. She had me less than two years later. Dad was her lord and master. He didn’t aim to be that. It just happened. They were very much in love, right up until the end. We were all so damned happy. Too happy. One shouldn’t ever tempt the gods. After Dad was killed much of my mother died too. Her own parents—my Barrington grandparents—didn’t stand by her. Oh, they tried for a while, but gradually they became impatient with her. She was supposed to pull out of it after a certain period of mourning. She didn’t. I’m sure she’ll be saying my father’s name with her last breath.’

‘And who’s to say he won’t be waiting for her?’ Francesca spoke gently to this man she loved, wanted to be with through eternity. ‘Millions and millions of people believe in a resurrection, an afterlife.’

Bryn’s sigh was jagged. ‘Be that as it may, we have to get through what life we have now. Speak to my mother if you want. Anything that helps her helps me. But don’t be disappointed if she gently rejects the idea.’

‘That’s fine. I won’t press her. I understand her pain. I understand the way she felt nearly destroyed without your father. But she did live for you.’

A terrible frustration showed itself in Bryn’s eyes. ‘She can’t continue to live for me, Francey. She has to live for herself. God, she’s only just turned fifty. She’s a beautiful woman. Yet she has locked herself away for years. Dad would never have wanted that. He loved her so much he would only want her to be happy.’

Francesca smiled in an effort to relieve his tension. ‘Let me talk to her. In some ways I’m not in a good situation, am I? A lot of people are waiting for me to screw up. Carina is hoping one of these days I’ll simply disappear into the desert and never come back. I need help. No one knows that more than you. I want a woman—women, as it happens, as Elizabeth is another—I can trust. I’ll put it to Annette that way. I won’t be asking a great deal of her. I’ll do as you say. Take it day by day.’

Bryn gave a hollow laugh. ‘If you can get my mother out of the house I’ll worship at your feet for ever.’ Though wasn’t he already doing just that? ‘Did I tell you, you look stunningly beautiful?’

‘Yes, you did.’ Colour mounted beneath her flawless skin. ‘It’s a new outfit. I didn’t go shopping. No time. I asked Adele Bennett to pick me out a wardrobe, which she did, and then brought it all over.’

‘You couldn’t have asked for anyone better,’ Bryn said, his eyes travelling over her. She wore a sleeveless navy silk dress that showed off the elegant set of her shoulders and her slender arms. The dress was very simple in design but striking in effect, with broad strokes of colour as if she, the artist, had taken to it with a brush: violet, yellow, and a marvellous splash of electric blue that put him in mind of a kingfisher’s plumage. It looked wonderful on her. Adele Bennett he had met at various functions. She owned exclusive boutiques in several state capitals. She must have relished the job of outfitting Francesca, with her beauty, her height and her willowy figure.