Sara Craven - King Of Swords

Julia felt immensely weary. ‘Why didn’t you tell me—call me back from Aunt Miriam’s?’

‘We wanted you to have a good time. And there was nothing you could have done.’

‘There must be something. I’m not going to let Ambermere go like this.’ Julia tried to smile. ‘Perhaps no one will want to buy the Albatross. No one we know has that kind of money.’

There was a long silence, then Lydia said quietly, ‘These days, darling, estates like this tend to look for buyers from abroad. And Mr Poulton has found one for us.’

‘Abroad?’ Julia echoed dazedly. She shook her head. ‘Not some Arab prince? I don’t believe it…’

‘Not quite. In fact—’ there were bright spots of colour burning in her mother’s cheeks ‘—I would almost prefer it. This man is Greek—a so-called tycoon. His name is Alexandros Constantis.’

‘Constantis?’ Julia’s brows snapped together. ‘That’s familiar. Does he have a relative called Paul?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Lady Kendrick said with distaste. ‘What I’ve heard of his antecedents is bad enough. I have no wish to enquire into his immediate family. Not that they have very much to do with him,’ she added with unaccustomed waspishness.

‘Then it must be the same man,’ Julia said slowly, thinking, remembering. ‘I had dinner with Paul Constantis a few times—he was charming. He had a post at the Greek Embassy—something fairly junior, I gathered, but he used to joke about nature having intended him to be a millionaire until fate, in the shape of his cousin Alex, had prevented it.’

‘Poor boy,’ Lydia Kendrick said, almost fiercely. ‘I imagine that’s only too true. You’re too young to remember the scandal, of course, but George Constantis was an immensely wealthy man, with a fortune in banking and property all over the Mediterranean. He was a widower, and childless, and his estate was expected to go to his sister and her children. Then lo and behold, on his deathbed, he suddenly revealed that he had an illegitimate son and had left his entire business empire to this child.’ She shook her head. ‘The family wouldn’t have objected to some kind of provision, naturally, but to have this person no one had ever known existed foisted on to them—over them—was appalling. He wasn’t a child, of course. He was already a grown man—but it was said he’d been dragged up in total poverty in some slum, and could barely read or write. There was some mystery about the mother, apparently. It seems she was some little peasant girl Constantis had seduced.

‘They fought, of course. They tried to prove he wasn’t Constantis’s son at all, insisted on blood tests, but they were inconclusive, so then they tried to overturn the will in the courts, saying this Alex had exerted undue influence on the old man while he was ill. It was quite a cause célèbre . But they lost—and he took everything.’

And now, Julia thought, rage rising inside her, now he’s trying to take Ambermere from me. But he won’t. Not someone like that.

‘An uncouth barbarian,’ Paul Constantis had called him, she remembered. Well he wasn’t going to lay his vandal’s hands on her home, if she could prevent it!

She got to her feet, ‘I’m going down to talk to Daddy,’ she said, trying to keep her voice level. ‘There must be something we can do. And surely this Constantis creature can’t be the only prospective buyer we can find?’

‘Apparently he’s made an excellent offer,’ her mother returned. ‘He does a great deal of business over here, and wants a permanent residence where he can entertain.’

‘Bouzouki nights with plate smashing, no doubt,’ Julia said grimly, moving to the door. ‘We’ll see about that!’ She ran along the gallery and down the wide curve of the big staircase, letting her hand slide down the highly polished balustrade as she had always done. As she always would do, she told herself. Ambermere had to be saved somehow.

As she reached the foot of the stairs, the study door opened and her father emerged with Gordon Poulton at his side. He looked tired and haggard, and in spite of her bitterness Julia felt a wrench of her heart at his obvious distress.

He looked up and saw her, and tried to smile. ‘Jools, sweetheart, no one told me you were home. ‘How marvellous!’

She ran to him. ‘Daddy, tell me it’s not true. Promise me you haven’t sold Ambermere to this appalling Greek peasant!’

She heard Gordon Poulton make a shocked noise, and saw her father’s brows snap together in sudden quelling anger. From the shadowy doorway behind them, a third figure detached itself and stepped forward.

Julia felt as if a hand had closed round her throat. She knew him at once, of course. It was the man she’d seen in the lower paddock and taken for a tinker.

No wonder he’d laughed at her! she thought dazedly.

Only this time he wasn’t laughing at all. As the hooded dark gaze swept her from head to foot, she felt as if the flesh had been scorched from her bones by some swift and terrifying flame.

It was all she could do not to fling up her hands to defend herself.

The Tower struck by lightning, she thought, from some whirling corner of her mind, and the King of Swords, coming to cut down her pride and separate her from everything she loved.

THE SAPPHIRE dress looked superb. Julia regarded herself critically in the full-length mirror, making a minute adjustment to the seams of her stockings, and tucking an errant strand of hair into place in her carefully casual topknot.

She looked elegant, poised and sophisticated—just as the daughter of the house should, she thought bitterly. But she was only attending the party under protest, and after the most thunderous row she’d ever had with her father. Even the thought of it now could still make her shudder.