Barbara Taylor Bradford - Power of a Woman

Rising, walking back to the desk, Stevie bent forward, picked up her wedding photograph, and peered at it intently for a moment or two. How young she and Ralph had looked. But then, they had been young, she most especially. I was just a little girl, only sixteen, she thought. A child. Why, I was younger than Chloe is now.

Oh, Ralph, who would have believed it? Believed that your father would take me into the business? Or that one day I would be head of Jardine’s on both sides of the Atlantic? She could not help thinking that life, the great leveler, was also so very unpredictable. I couldn’t have accomplished all that I have without friends, good friends, and most especially André Birron. She knew that André had taught her as much as Bruce ever had about the jewelry business. He had been her mentor in certain ways, and a genuine friend, almost like a father.

André had always given her the best advice, the soundest. When she was twenty-seven, she fell in love again, after four years of widowhood. She discovered she was pregnant a year later, and it was to André she had turned. She had flown to Paris to see him, to confide in him, although, being wary by nature, she had done so only to a degree. She had merely alluded to the identity of her lover, the father of her unborn child. Even before she had finished her sentence, André had held up his hand as if in warning.

“Do not tell me who he is. I do not want to know. Remember this, my Stephanie. Confide a secret to one person and it is a secret no longer,” the sage old Frenchman had cautioned.

And so she had kept her own counsel always, for this was her natural inclination. No one had ever known who her lover had been, or even tried to guess the man’s real identity. Not even Chloe knew who her father was.

Chloe. Stevie’s expression changed, became softer as she thought of her eighteen-year-old daughter. Now she was a D-flawless diamond. Quite perfect.

Stevie suddenly broke into a chuckle. Well, not really. Her daughter was only almost perfect, thank goodness. No one wanted a paragon of virtue. They were no fun, and usually too good to be true.

Chloe would be arriving later that afternoon, hopefully in time for dinner, and they would enjoy a cozy evening together. Tomorrow her mother and stepfather would be driving up from Manhattan to spend Thanksgiving Day with them, and the rest of the holiday weekend. She was looking forward to it, just as she knew Chloe was.

Derek Rayner had been knighted by the queen some years before, and he and her mother were now Sir Derek and Lady Rayner. As had been predicted long ago, he was now the greatest classical actor on the English stage, and at sixty-eight a living legend. He had been good to her mother and to her and her children.

Derek and her mother were childless, and so he played the role of father and grandfather to the hilt. But his love for them all was very genuine, and he adored Chloe.

Her son Miles was driving to Connecticut with the Rayners. He was her favorite son, if the truth be known, although she always tried to hide this fact from the others. She loathed playing favorites amongst her children.

Miles was a talented artist and a brilliant set designer. Currently he was living in New York, where he was designing the stage sets for a Broadway play. Unlike his brother Nigel and his twin, Gideon, he had never shown any desire to go into Jardine’s, although with his artist’s eye he had always appreciated the beauty of the jewels and the other objects of art Jardine’s made.

Despite his lack of interest in working in the family business, his grandfather had insisted he become a director since he was a major shareholder in the company. He had done so immediately. Jardine’s was his inheritance, and it had always been an important part of his life; his mother had seen to that.

It was Gideon who was the true jeweler in the family; Stevie had recognized that when he was a child. He was a talented, indeed gifted, lapidary, and he had inherited his father’s love of stones, most especially diamonds. Like Ralph, he was an expert when it came to cutting stones, and as one of the chief lapidaries at Jardine’s, he was involved in the creation of the exquisite jewels that the Crown Jewellers had been renowned for over the centuries.

Nigel, ever the businessman, and the spitting image of Bruce in so many different ways, ran the business end of the company, under her direction.

But Nigel wanted it all for himself.

Stevie was well aware of this these days. There were even moments when she thought her eldest son was plotting her departure from the company, planning her fall from grace.

Now she expelled a long sigh as she strolled back to the fireplace. She stood leaning against the mantelpiece, her thoughts focused on Nigel.

She had no real evidence to go on; it was just plain old gut instinct that told her that her son was against her. For a long time now she had seen Nigel for what he was…very much the way Bruce had been when he was a younger man—cold, calculating, controlling, and very ambitious.

There was nothing wrong with ambition as long as it was focused in the right direction. She was the first to admit this. But it was somewhat ridiculous of her son to be ambitious at her expense. After all, the business would be his one day. He would share it with his brothers equally, of course, but he would be running it as the eldest of the three and the undoubted business brain.

She wished she could shake off the worrying suspicion that Nigel wanted her to trip up in order for him to justify taking over from her in London. And indeed, New York as well.

“Fat chance of that,” she muttered. Bruce would never permit it. Her father-in-law was eighty-two now, and semiretired after some terrible attacks of gout, which had plagued him for years. But he was as alert as ever, not a bit senile, and very spry when he was free of his crippling ailment. She was very well aware that he cared about her, even though he did not show it very often.

Furthermore, and perhaps more to the point, he trusted her implicitly when it came to running the company. She had earned that trust, had proved to him time and again that she not only knew what she was doing but that she was brilliant at it. No, Bruce would not tolerate Nigel’s machinations, what he would term “youthful insubordination.” And he would be on her side.

Rousing herself from her thoughts about her eldest son, Stevie hurried out of the study and headed along the second-floor landing. Of medium height and slim, Stephanie Jardine was an attractive woman, with a head of dark curls, light gray-green eyes, and a well-articulated face. High cheekbones and a slender nose gave her a look of distinction; she was elegant in an understated way, dressed in a loden-green wool pants suit and sweater that brought out the green lights in her eyes.

Stevie took the stairs at a rapid pace, realizing that she had wasted a great deal of time dwelling on the past and Ralph, living through her memories both good and bad. She had guests arriving the next day, and even though they were family, everything had to be well prepared for them nonetheless. Her mother, in particular, had very high standards and was accustomed to a great deal of luxury as the wife of a famous star of stage and screen.

As she reached the great hall, the grandfather clock standing in the corner began to strike. It was exactly six o’clock. Chloe was due to arrive in an hour, and a smile touched Stevie’s eyes at this thought. She could not wait to see her daughter.

Somewhere nearby a door was banging, and she felt a rush of cold air blowing down the great hall. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the sun room, and she went through the archway that led to this area of the house.

The solarium, as it was usually called, was long with many windows; two sets of French doors led out to the covered porch that stretched the length of the back facade of the house. One of the doors had sprung open and it was swinging back and forth on its hinges, banging against a wooden chair.