Victoria Fox - Glittering Fortunes

‘Back again so soon?’

Another voice joined them. It was serious as thunder.

Susanna turned.

Oh my. Oh my, oh my.

She ought to rise to greet him but found herself rooted to the seat. This was Charles Lomax? It couldn’t be. Where was the weedy boy Cato had conjured, trailing at his brother’s heels with a snivelling nose? The vision before her could only be described as a man: categorically and formidably a man. He was wildly dark, darker than Cato, even, with thick, muscular shoulders and hard black eyes. His face was brutally beautiful, a passionate structure beneath the shadow of a beard. His hair was a liquid, livid sable. He carried the scent of damp forest glades and burning wood.

Olivia stood. The mangled attempt at a bandage spooled to the floor.

‘Anyone would think you weren’t pleased to see me,’ Cato sneered.

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Charles.

Cato pushed back the bench with an alarming scrape and sprang to his feet, his palms spread wide on the wood. ‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself,’ he spat. ‘Letting the place go to rack and ruin, risking a young girl’s life!’

The jet eyes landed on Olivia. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’ The girl spoke up. The wound had started to prickle with crimson and she clutched it to keep it hidden.

‘I’ll call for a taxi, shall I?’ Baps retreated, pulling Caggie after her.

‘We almost had a death on our hands,’ Cato hissed, ‘thanks to you and your lackadaisical attitude. Even after all these years do I still need to tell you how to run your affairs, old boy? Olivia here nearly wound up as road kill—if I hadn’t been so deft at negotiating that canyon of potholes who knows what might have happened?’

Charles was unmoved. ‘She looks all right to me.’

Susanna was gratified that, despite his brother’s looks, the Lomax charm had all gone in Cato’s direction.

‘I’m Susanna,’ she said, giving him her most winning smile.

He didn’t take his glare from Cato’s. ‘Would it be too much to hope you might arrive, for once, without the usual dose of drama?’

‘Please,’ Cato swiped back. ‘You’ve been thriving on drama for the past fifteen years.’

‘There’s only one of us who’s thrived.’

‘Is that so?’

‘That’s so.’

‘Do get over it, Charles,’ he blasted. ‘The rest of us have.’

Baps appeared, fingers knotted nervously at her waist. ‘A car is on its way.’

‘Thank you.’

Charles’ voice was shiveringly intense, deep and soft as the most exquisite of fucks, and Susanna was overcome with the desire to fling herself between the two brothers and have them each ravish her ferociously over the kitchen table, at the centre of which was a lamb casserole that was rapidly getting cold.

And then, something extraordinary happened. On Olivia’s way past, he seized her wrist and brought it towards him. The speed and seamlessness of the movement was utterly spellbinding. Wordlessly he pressed a rag against her skin and wound the lint, quickly, once and then twice and then it was done. It was horrifically sexy.

Bewildered, mumbling her thanks, Olivia shot from the room.

Moments later the front door slammed.

‘I’m going to bed,’ said Cato.

‘What about supper?’ Baps objected. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

Cato stopped at a level with Charles, the top of his head a fraction shorter than his brother’s. ‘I can’t think why, but I seem to have lost my appetite.’

A thread could have divided the men’s chests: Cato’s lifted and fell with the hot breath of combat; Charles’ was utterly still. The silent war raged on.

Cato broke it, lips curling round the bitter shape of a single word: ‘Goodnight.’

Susanna gazed longingly at the casserole as her lover slipped from the room. A bowl of crispy golden potatoes sat next to it, sprinkled with rock salt and rosemary.

‘Come along, Mole!’ came a distant, urgent summons.

With a brief, apologetic glance at Charles, she scurried after it.

ON SATURDAY MORNING Olivia wobbled up the muddy track to the Barley Nook stables, sandals slipping off the backs of her feet so that her ankle kept catching on the greasy chain. Her denim shorts were baking hot, and beyond the paddocks the green line of the sea was desperately tantalising. She stopped at the crooked gate and wheeled on to the verge, jamming the bike over a crusted fold of earth before resting it against the hedge. To the south lay the avocado expanse of the Montgomerys’ vineyard, where a pair of figures milled in floppy hats, their pastel edges blurred in the Cornish heat, fluid as a Monet watercolour. Up ahead a riding lesson was unfolding. Horses were circling the ring, the strident aroma of hide and manure vinegary and sweet.

Beth Merrill was in the stalls, grooming her beloved stallion Archie. Beth had been inseparable from her horse ever since she’d picked him up as a wild foal: crossing the grassland at the tip of Lustell Cove she had discovered him on the brink of death, tangled in barbed wire and severely dehydrated. Over time she had nursed him back to health, housing him at the stables and riding him every day.

Olivia waved excitedly, making her way over. The girls hugged.

‘I want all the details,’ Beth instructed, her green eyes sparkling. ‘I mean everything. Right now. From the beginning.’

Olivia laughed. ‘All right, give me a chance!’

‘You’re seriously working there?’

‘As of Monday—but swear to God, I didn’t know about the Cato thing.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Everyone in town’s going totally crazy. At first it was just a rumour, then Harriet Blease’s sister’s friend’s boyfriend said he saw them in this massive car going through the Usherwood gates and the window was down and apparently Susanna Denver’s had so many facelifts her chin’s up by her ears.’

‘She doesn’t look that bad.’

‘Well, go on then—spill!’

Olivia obliged, running through her first encounter with the Lomax family—she was still weirded out by the whole thing. Each time she recalled it she had to pinch herself, as if she had dreamed it, or it had happened to another person: the collision must have put her in a kind of stupor. She’d been led through the house by a movie star and his actress girlfriend, and it was only when she had returned to her own bed later that night that her brain had finally clicked into gear. Her mother’s caravan had never felt so small.

Beth listened intently, as she always had to Olivia’s adventures; a ten-year-old sitting cross-legged in the garden while she was showered with stories of monster quests and jungle riots, of pirate loot and buried treasure, and of how Addy had held Olivia’s hand one day when they were out in the forest and they thought Gun Tower HQ was being attacked but it had turned out only to be a badger. Since the girls were little, they had been like sisters. Beth was the more cautious, sensible one, a tempering agency on Olivia’s hot-headedness, where Olivia was reckless and fun, dragging her friend over walls and under fences, whispering secrets as they shared their first cigarette, pilfered from the locked tin box Flo kept under the sink. Seeing Beth at home was like no time at all had passed; they could have been those kids again, making potions with her mother’s hemp shampoo or dragging their sledge through the snow. They had shared so much at Lustell Cove.

‘Can I help, d’you think?’ Beth asked, awestruck when she reached the end. Her hair had gone coppery in the sun and her skin was tanned. ‘Since you’ve got the added bonus of visitors at the house? I could wash Cato’s pants?’