Potrait of Jamie Read online

  Immediately Jaime entered the large entrance hall, her eyes fell on the tall Oriental vases that stood on either side of an eighteenth-century lacquered chest exquisitely decorated in gold and turquoise on a black ground. Long blossoming branches grew out of them, reflected in the Chinese Chippendale mirror that hung above the cabinet. Against the opposite wall were a pair of Chinese armchairs inlaid with mother-of-pearl. They were clearly not intended for comfort, but they were wondrously beautiful. A great bronze dore chandelier hung directly above Jaime's head, the floor was parqueted and covered with a fine Imperial Chinese rug and the magnificent cantilevered stairway, with its elaborate carving and Gothic balusters, marked the beginning of a remarkable art collection that Jaime was to find covered every available wall in the house, and even the specially-lit corners. Reception rooms opened off either side of the hall, but Jaime was not to see them then, for a young woman suddenly winged down the stairway crying a name:

  'Quinn, darling!'

  Jaime stood resolutely, feeling extremely unwanted. With the gift of all females she had defined Georgia's true feelings instantly. Georgia's daughter Sue-Ellen was a sleek and cosmeticised twenty-four-year-old version of her mother. They had similar coloured hair and eyes and similar expressions, though Sue-Ellen's youth saved her. She was flinging herself headlong at Quinn, who took hold of her arms before she latched them round his neck, her fair-skinned face full of a delicious excitement. 'Darling, darling!' she continued breathlessly, not in the least put out by a certain resistance in him.

  'Sue, where are your manners?' Georgia chided her fondly. 'Turn around this minute and say hello to your cousin Jaime.'

  'Hello, Cousin Jaime!' Sue said without turning her head.

  'A welcome, I'm sure, that makes Jaime's heart glad,' Quinn said smoothly.

  'Dear me, dear me!' Sue-Ellen gathered herself and spun round and advanced on Jaime with her hand out. 'Welcome to the bosom of the family. You've been an outsider for so long.'

  'And looking forward to returning,' Jaime said pleasantly. 'How are you, Sue?'

  'Oh, terrific! Maybe the reverse. You're the living image of your mother.'

  'So I've been told.'

  'Grandfather is going to be very taken with you,' Sue-Ellen said.

  'Not odd in a grandparent,' Quinn observed dryly, then shot back the cuff of his shirt and glanced down at his wrist watch. 'I'll take Jaime up to him if I may, Georgia. There are a few things he'll want to know, then I'll be on my way.'

  'Surely you're staying for a while. What about dinner?' Sue-Ellen wailed.

  'Not this evening.' Quinn expressed his regret with his rare charming smile that hovered for a second only. 'My grandmother is expecting me to dine with her.'

  'What happens if you rang up and said you were dining here?' Georgia suggested, a little in awe of Margo Sterling.

  'I wouldn't think of disappointing her, Georgia. If you're ready to meet your grandfather, Jaime, it's this way.'

  'I am,' Jaime said quietly, pulsating with nerves and acutely aware of the cynical thoughts that nourished mother and daughter.

  'Hurry back, will you, Quinn?' Sue-Ellen begged, 'I'll wait for you here. You're the last man in the world to act nursemaid—surely Jaime can go up by herself. It's the fourth door on the right as you go along the gallery.'

  'I think Jaime can have her hand held this once,' Quinn said, his black eyes brilliant and sharp as needles.

  'Just charming! How do you do it, Jaime, those big blue eyes?'

  'I thought Quinn was just being considerate.'

  'Why, Sue, how you talk!' Georgia remonstrated with her daughter. 'I don't know what Jaime will think of you.'

  'She'll know soon enough,' Sue said a little viciously, her green eyes narrowed to slits. 'By the way, Uncle Viv and the family have been invited for dinner. A little get-together in Jaime's honour. Sure you won't change your mind, Quinn? Leigh will be so disappointed. It's a sort of contest between us.' Her green gaze, transferred to Jaime, was as instructive as a stop light.

  'Shall we go up now, Jaime?' Quinn grasped Jaime's arm, quite unconcerned by all the female interest so fervently avowed.

  'Yes, please,' she said in a soft undertone, honestly considering leaving within the hour.

  The gallery was long and beautifully proportioned, hung with paintings and chairs set at intervals, a lovely stained-glass window set at one end through which the sun poured on to the polished floor and the Persian runner. Jaime was beset with a strange nostalgia, a wave of emotion that was making her eyes shimmer. There was nothing for her here in this beautiful house. It would have been better for her never to have come. She tugged on Quinn's arm and he looked down at her, an unaccustomed compassion on his dark, handsome face.

  'Where's that refreshing fighting spirit?' he demanded.

  'Can't you tell they don't like me? They don't want me here.'

  'Did you expect anything else?'

  He scrutinised her for a long minute and something in his expression made her put her shoulders back. 'All right, we've come this far!'

  'And we'll go all the rest.' His strong arm descended and tightened around her delicate shoulders. 'This is going to be a new kind of life, Jaime, one unknown to you, so that sometimes you'll feel like a different person, but I'm convinced you'd survive any upheaval.'

  'Can you tell me why?' she demanded.

  'Because basically you're a very strong person.'

  'You don't know me.'

  'Because it's been only a few days?'

  'Quinn?' She looked up at him, for that moment entirely at his mercy, a young girl still, blue glints in her hair, her young face intent, absorbed by the tragic past.

  'It's all right, Jaime.'

  'Have you been hearing a word I've been saying?'

  'God help me, I remember every one of them. Your grandfather is waiting for you with a full heart and that's the truth. Compassion has been nearly driven out of this family, but you have it. Keep it undimmed until you're an old, old lady with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who adore you.'

  'I don't think I'm ever going to be able to thank you for this,' she said. 'Probably I'll forget it sometimes.'

  'You will, with your volatile temper. Turn your face up, beauty like yours is hard to come by and your grandfather will want to see it the very first minute.'

  Jaime drew a deep breath, since that was all she could do, and saw Quinn pause outside a solid cedar door that gave on to her grandfather's suite of rooms. He paused for a moment, looking back at her, then he tapped on the lustrous panelling. A woman's voice answered, calling a: 'Come in,' and after a few seconds a pleasant-faced, competent-looking woman in an impeccable white nurse's uniform came to the open doorway.

  'How are you, Mr Sterling? Miss Gilmore!' She smiled at Jaime, her brown eyes searching. 'Sir Rolf is expecting you.' She didn't wait for an introduction but went swiftly out of the door and shut it softly behind her.

  Jaime could see her grandfather quite clearly, standing against the windows staring at her as though he found her face a thing of more profound beauty than any in history.

  'Jaime!'

  'Grandfather!'

  He shook his silver head, and a terrible sadness covered his face.

  It was too much for the tender-hearted Jaime. She covered the space that divided them like a gazelle, flinging out her arms for all her preconceived notions, driven by some force quite outside her, to comfort this old man who was her grandfather. Somehow her own face was pressed to his heart, his hand shaking but inexpressibly tender, shaping the back of her head. 'Little Jaime, and to think I've never known you.'

  'Hush, Grandfather!'

  'I'll die easily now.'

  'You won't die at all. I've only just arrived.'

  'So precious, so precious, my granddaughter I've never known. Can you ever forgive me for failing you?'

  'I've been happy,' she told him, 'I love my father.'

  'Yes, some women are made for devotio
n. Look up at me, Jaime! Quinn, my dear boy, how can I ever thank you? Mission accomplished as usual.'

  'You could let me go ahead with Dinsmore & Donovan. How are you, Sir Rolf, you look a new man!'

  'I feel it. You can talk to me later about D&D. Believe it or not, I agree with you. Can't you come to dinner, my dear boy? Bring Margo, of course, though she's never approved of me. We must welcome our youngest member of the family. Isn't she beautiful, the image of Rowena!'

  'There are differences if you look for them.'

  'Over Nigel, isn't she—Margo?'

  'As you're over your daughter. Thank you for the invitation, Sir Rolf. Naturally I'll allow my grandmother to decide. She was expecting me to dine with her.'

  'You'd like him to come, wouldn't you, Jaime? After all, he brought you back to me. Great powers of persuasion has Quinn!'

  'He must please himself, Grandfather, and consult his grandmother. But yes, I'd like them both to come.'

  'Thank you, Jaime.' There was no edge of mockery in that dark, sardonic voice. 'I have a report here I'd like you to look at, sir. No filling in, just the facts.'

  Sir Rolf nodded. 'Let's hope you're right.'

  'I am right.'

  'You're a ruthless young devil, Quinn. All the Sterlings rolled into one.'

  There was a hard flicker of anger in Quinn's dark eyes..'You could never have applied that word to any one of them. I'm the man I am because that's the way I have to be!'

  Sir Rolf looked away from him, frowning. 'I'd rather one of my own was that! Don't imagine I don't know what I've got in you, Quinn, a trouble shooter.'

  'There's no question of owning me, Sir Rolf.'

  'I guess I like to own everybody. You're as arrogant as that fallen angel, you know that? You're the man I pick for all the difficult assignments, but I don't know you, do I?'

  Across Jaime's head Rolf Hunter studied his most brilliant executive. No one could touch him in the technical department either. He knew the business from top to bottom; plant,' productivity, the latest technology. He was an expert in management. The men all chatted away to him cheerfully when they had never been known to approach his own sons. He could handle the unions as well as government officials and he was liked and respected by every member of the Board outside his own family. The boys—well, it was reasonable for them to hate him. Quinn was clever and strong and so positive when they only knew the language and went through the motions efficiently. It wasn't enough. He should be worried himself by young Quinn Sterling and he would have been even a few years back; now nothing seemed to matter. Making money was no longer important. He had more than enough of it and he would have let it all go to have Rowena's daughter come home again. Only one mistake he had ever made in his life and it had been colossal. Now he had been given the chance to make reparation.

  He smiled at Quinn with ironic appreciation, proud of him in spite of the fact that Quinn was almost as big a fox as he was himself. What happened from now on he couldn't prevent. After his death, somehow Quinn Sterling would gain control, despite all the weapons his sons would bring in and use against him. Besides, there was too much he liked about Quinn himself, though occasionally he caught glimpses of Philip Sterling, his first partner, and was startled by the resemblance.

  Philip with his impeccable ideals, Philip the intellectual, the brilliant engineer, with a family who found the young Rolf Hunter just that bit their social inferior though he had been a go-getter then. It had been he who put Hunter Sterling on the map, not Philip with his masterly conceptions. In a lot of ways Quinn was a radical departure from his father and grandfather, but now and again Rolf caught the same aristocratic aloofness in those brilliant black eyes. These days it amused him, though it frightened the boys Gerard and Viv, out of their wits. His grandsons, so far, were non-events. Magnates were born, one couldn't cultivate them. Quinn Sterling would bring the wheel of fortune full circle.

  What Rolf had done to Quinn's father, though provoked, had been damnable. Nothing daunted him in those days. Margo Sterling, a charming and very cultivated woman to this day, stared right at and through him, yet she had loved Rowena. Well, Rowena on whom she had lavished such affection repaid her cruelly. Margo had a son, Nigel. Life was hard. Families made one suffer. Was it any wonder he turned to business? He had made it everything up to now.

  Jaime, the silent observer, looked from her grandfather to Quinn. Both of them were very striking men, much of a height, which meant over six feet, her grandfather with a full, pure silver head of hair and flaming black eyebrows, dark grey eyes like a piece of steel; Quinn with the sparkling arrogance of achievement and a look of breeding, contemptuous of hypocrisy, his black eyes flashing with complete directness, as relentless in his fashion as Rolf Hunter was in his. Both of them had tremendous charisma, and a genius for seeing right through to essentials, shutting out everything else. Both of them with an air of power, stronger now in the younger man and for a number of reasons. Rolf Hunter was coming quickly to the end of his life and he had almost forsaken the business empire he had built up.

  'Grandfather?' Jaime, feeling suddenly protective of him, put out her hand to this lion of an old man and he took it and held it tightly, his wonder and peace increasing every minute he gazed at her face. 'We've so much to talk about. When I get changed, can we walk in the garden? It looks incredibly beautiful, and the harbour!'

  'It's nothing ... nothing, compared to your face!' For an instant Sir Rolf looked transfixed, his mind in the past. 'I always knew you'd come back, Rowena.'

  Jaime couldn't move or speak, taken utterly by surprise. Quinn moved suddenly, taking a manilla folder crammed with typed pages out of his briefcase and slapping it down on the writing desk near the window. 'I'd like you to read this, Sir Rolf. We'll lose money if you don't!'

  'Money, money!' Sir Rolf cried affably. 'All right, my boy. I'll do just as you say and thank you once again.'

  'No thanks needed at all,' Quinn said briefly. 'It was a pleasure. Now if I have to get to the city and then back to Rosemount I'd better hurry. I'll see you again, Jaime.'

  Jaime lifted her small head high, bewildered by some razor-sharp note in his voice. 'Tonight, I hope,' she looked up at him gravely, her blue eyes magnetic in her golden face, but she didn't move away from her grandfather.

  'I'll convey your invitation to my grandmother,' he said with exquisite courtesy, studying both their faces with a kind of sombre intensity as though marking them for ever. She had thought he despised all her family, and maybe this would be true of her as well. She was at a loss with him, uncertain, back to square one. If she wanted to go with him, and she did, she gave no sign of it, locked to her grandfather's side, appearing extremely young and graceful beside him.

  Quinn moved to the door, turned quickly to salute them, then he was gone. His strength and authority, the mingled protectiveness and antagonism, whatever it was he felt for her, seemed to go with him. She was on her own and she would have to know how to cope.

  When Quinn arrived at Rosemount, he found his grandmother waiting for him with singular, distressed curiosity. With his arm around her shoulders, he led her into the drawing room, exclaiming over the beauty of her hair which she had had specially shampooed and set that day to mark his homecoming. She listened to his compliments solemnly but with great pleasure, for she went to a great deal of trouble with her appearance when her arthritis these days often had her in indescribable pain. Enthroned in her favourite wing-backed chair, she waved her grandson into the chair opposite, searching his lean handsome face with pride and an insatiable need to hear about this girl, Jaime. Such an odd name for a girl, but that would have been her father's contribution.

  Quinn took her hand, his eyes wandering over Margo's infinitely dear face. A beauty in her youth, the signs were still there in plenty—the indestructible bone structure, the breeding, the spirit and the intelligence. Once her eyes had been an overwhelming blue, not the exquisite lapis lazuli of Jaime's, but the blue of the sea; now they wer
e faded, soft and cool like the sky seen through rain. She had great courage. She had known tragedy, losing her husband and two of her children, but she had survived and her will was like iron.

  'Tell me,' Margo said abruptly, in her rather deep voice. 'Is she as lovely, as enchanting as Rowena?'

  'I almost yearn to tell you she's as plain as a wallflower, but she's everything Rowena was and more.'

  'I find that highly painful. Do you think I'm awful, darling?'

  'No, I don't. They want us to join them for dinner, by the way. A celebration.'

  'Oh no!'

  'There's no need to go.'

  'I'll come right out with it, I can't stand them. Why should that man be rewarded, that wicked old man?'

  'I think he's repenting,' Quinn soothed.

  'Life is full of surprises. What he did to your father, not Philip so much, but your dear father, I'll never forgive him!'

  'I can attend to that little problem,' Quinn said austerely.

  'I'm not sure if I approve of that either.'

  'Then you'll have to get used to it, darling. I'm the tycoon, not you!'

  'Oh, Quinn!' she said, and touched his cheek. 'The old stories, they're tragic, are they not?'

  'They've never made me laugh. Jaime, too, has had a struggle. It hasn't been easy for her. Her father is talented, but not serious about anything except maybe revenge. He's never forgiven Rowena, either!'

  Margo nodded. 'Poor Rowena, I wonder if she lies easily in her grave. She was still so young when she died. From the minute she married him things went badly.'

  'It's impossible to dislike him. He has a lot of charm and I'm quite sure he could have been a much bigger success with just a little drive!'

  'Not everyone enjoys success, my darling boy. Success carries difficulties and responsibilities, bigger and bigger worries.'

  'Well, I'm not going to stop here,' Quinn said, swiftly and completely.

  'That's no news!' Margo Sterling smiled at her grandson, studying him for that instant quite objectively. 'I know your grandfather would think some of the things you've been doing lately were dangerously unsuitable!'