When the Devil Drives
Sara Craven
MILLS & BOON
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Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.
Table of Contents
‘SIMON, YOU DON’T—you can’t mean this! It’s a joke, isn’t it—one of your appalling, tasteless bloody jokes?’
Simon Chalfont’s face reddened, and his glance shifted away from the anguished appeal in his sister’s eyes.
‘I’m totally serious, old girl.’ He sighed. ‘God, Jo, if I could change things, I would. But you weren’t here, and the bank wouldn’t lift a finger to help me. I was desperate.’
‘So you’ve mortgaged us—this house—the workshop—the little we have left—to Cal Blackstone.’ Joanna Bentham’s hands gripped the back of the chair as if it were the only reality in a suddenly tottering world. ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t credit that you’d do such a thing.’
‘And what was I supposed to do?’ Simon demanded defensively. ‘Lay the men off? Close the workshop? Try and sell this house?’
‘If you were so strapped for cash, surely there are other sources you could have borrowed from in the short term?’
‘A loan shark, perhaps,’ Simon suggested derisively. ‘For God’s sake, Jo, do you know the kind of interest those people charge?’
‘I know the kind of interest Cal Blackstone could charge.’ Joanna drew a shaky breath. ‘Simon, don’t you realise what you’ve done? You’ve sold us lock, stock and barrel to our greatest enemy!’
‘Oh, I knew that was coming.’ Simon flung himself on to the sofa, giving his sister a trenchant look. ‘Don’t you think it’s time we grew up and forgot all about this ridiculous family feud? Isn’t carrying the thing into a third generation going over the top?’
‘Ask Cal Blackstone,’ Joanna bit back at him. ‘He hasn’t forgotten a thing. Fifteen years ago, his father took the mill away from us. Now his son’s coming for the rest. And, thanks to you, he hasn’t even had to fight for it.’
There was a sullen silence.
Joanna released her grip on the chairback, rubbing almost absently the indentations the heavily carved wood had left in her flesh.
Cal Blackstone, she thought, and her skin crawled. The grandson of the man who was once glad to work for my grandfather as an overlooker at the mill. The trouble-maker, the rabble-rouser who tried to close our doors with strikes over and over again. The self-made millionaire who drove Chalfonts to the edge of bankruptcy, and died swearing he’d put us out on the street.
Even after the fierce old man had gone, there was no respite for the beleaguered mill. His son Arnold had proved just as inimical, just as determined. In the end Chalfonts had had to be sold, and there was only one bidder.
Arnold Blackstone got it for a song, Joanna thought, anger welling up inside her. Chalfonts, who’d been making quality worsteds on that site for over a hundred years. And he made it a byword for cheap rubbish, aimed at the bottom end of the market.
The only thing remaining from the old days was the name—Chalfonts Mill—kept deliberately by the Blackstones, Joanna’s father had said bitterly, as a permanent thorn in the family’s flesh—a constant and public reminder of what they’d lost.
Now, under the direction of Cal Blackstone, his grandfather’s namesake, the mill, as such, no longer existed. The looms had been sold, and the workforce dispersed, and the vast building had become a thriving complex of small industrial workshops and businesses.
Because Cal Blackstone wasn’t interested in quality or tradition. He was an entrepreneur, a developer of property and ideas. Local gossip said there was hardly a pie in a radius of two hundred miles that he didn’t have a finger in. And what he touched invariably turned to gold, Joanna reflected, wincing inwardly. He’d already more than doubled the fortune his father and grandfather had left, and at thirty-three years of age it was reckoned his career had barely even started.
To the outrage of the local landowners, he’d acquired Craigmoor House and its park, which had been derelict for years, renovated it completely, and, in the face of strenuous opposition, turned it into a country club, with an integral restaurant and casino, and a challenging nine-hole golf course in the reclaimed grounds.
Within a year, all those who’d been most vociferously outspoken against the plan were