But despite his bad-temperedness Arabella had always thought of him affectionately, a bit like a long-distance grandfather-figure. Having dealt with him personally over the last five years, albeit by mail only—his telephone number was always omitted from his own correspondence—she now deeply resented her father’s decision to send Stephen instead of herself to see the man.
‘You misunderstood me, Father,’ she told him stiltedly as she stood up stiffly. ‘By my remark, I meant you had no right sending Stephen to see one of my authors without my permission.’ She looked at him challengingly with steady blue eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses; she was a tall woman with a delicate stature, her fiery red hair which she had inherited from her mother secured back in its usual restrictive bun at her nape, her features striking rather than beautiful. At the moment, her small, pointed chin was set at a determined angle.
‘Don’t go getting on your high horse, Arabella.’ Her father sighed impatiently as he saw the angry glitter in her eyes. ‘It sounds as if we have enough problems with Stephen being forcibly ejected from this fellow’s place, without—’
‘Merlin was perfectly within his rights to throw Stephen out,’ she said in defence of the author, noting the way her brother winced as he was once again reminded of his humiliating experience. ‘Merlin doesn’t even know Stephen—’
‘He’s my son, damn it!’ Her father bridled indignantly.
‘And who are you to Merlin, either?’ she prompted impatiently.
Her father drew himself up to his full height in the high-backed leather chair. ‘I own this publishing company!’
She shook her head. ‘That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it. For the last five years Merlin has been dealing exclusively with A. Atherton—’
‘For the last five years the man has been a damned nuisance,’ her father interrupted irritably. ‘He is without doubt the most difficult author we have ever had to-deal with, a hermit to the point of being invisible. In fact, I’ve a good mind to—’
‘For the last five years Merlin’s books have probably been the mainstay of this company.’ Arabella quietly cut in on her father’s bluster, sure he was going to come out with a totally nonsensical statement about dropping Merlin from their list.
It was nonsensical even to think along those lines; without Merlin they probably wouldn’t have a list at all. Oh, they had other, less successful authors, lots of them, but the Palfrey books had been worldwide bestsellers from the very beginning, and they had remained so.
Even to consider telling an author of that magnitude to find a new publisher simply because he didn’t fit in with her father’s old-fashioned belief that it was the publisher who mattered and not its writers would be financial suicide at this particular time in the publishing business. Especially with a film contract in the offing. Her father’s idea of publishing was about twenty years out of date, and she somehow doubted he would ever catch up.
‘There are other authors—’
‘Not as good, and you know it,’ she said wearily. ‘I wish you had told me what the two of you were doing,’ she added with a heartfelt sigh. ‘I could have predicted the outcome!’
One thing about which Merlin had been consistent in the last five years was his desire for absolute privacy. Stephen’s just arriving at his home like that, from Atherton Publishing or otherwise, would not have gone down well at all. In fact, they would be lucky if Merlin didn’t tell them he was changing publisher! And that would be disastrous.
She sighed again. ‘Someone will have to go down and soothe the poor man’s indignant feelings—’
‘I’m not going!’ Stephen instantly protested, a look of horror on his face, and appearing so much like their father at that moment. ‘The man isn’t sane.’
‘Well, I’m certainly not getting personally involved in this,’ their father dismissed arrogantly. ‘I’ve always thought the man was odd, tolerable only because he’s so successful.’
They both turned expectantly to Arabella. Something else- she could have predicted. They were so much alike, these two men, with no foresight to speak of; over the years the two of them had come to expect Arabella to be capable of bailing them out of any difficulties they might have dug themselves into. The problem was, she had always managed to do it, too. Although they might just have gone too far this time!
‘I’ll write him a letter—’
‘Do you think that will be enough?’ Stephen frowned. ‘I—er—I’m afraid I was slightly—vocal, before I left his premises.’ He looked uncomfortable now, ‘In fact, I may have implied something to the effect of what Father said just now.’ He grimaced self-consciously at Arabella’s censorious look. ‘He was just so damned rude, Arabella,’ he said defensively. ‘I couldn’t let him talk to me that way.’
No, of course he couldn’t; he was Stephen Atherton, son of Martin Atherton. God, when would these two learn that the days of champagne parties had passed, that it was the authors that mattered nowadays, for without them there wouldn’t be the money to pay for the way her father and Stephen liked to live? It was as well there was one practical member of this family. Although salvaging something out of this mess was going to strain even her efforts at tact and diplomacy!
She shook her head. ‘I’ll send a letter, but I intend following it up with a visit of my own,’ she decided firmly. ‘I’ll do the first today,’ she added decisively, ‘before Merlin can come at us with all guns blazing after your cavalier attitude.’ With an impatient look at the pair of them, she left the room to return to her own office, intent on writing that letter right away, determined to get it in the post this evening.
Although what she was supposed to say by way of an excuse for her brother’s behaviour she wasn’t exactly sure. In the end she decided that whatever she said in the letter was sure to be wrong, so she kept it simple, merely informing Merlin that she would be calling on him herself two days hence, unless otherwise notified by him. She knew that the only way Merlin could be sure of reaching her in time to put off the appointment would be to telephone her office, and as the two of them had never so much as spoken on the phone in the last five years she somehow didn’t think there was much likelihood of him making that call.
And he didn’t. Probably he just intended waiting until she arrived at his home so that he could throw her out too!
But, after the mess her brother and father had made of things, she didn’t have too many options left. Besides...she had to admit she was secretly rather curious about Merlin herself. And maybe, just maybe, he would be gentleman enough, like his character Palfrey, not to use brute force on a woman...
She had been intrigued by the character of Palfrey from the first, probably too much so, because over the years he had become the yardstick by which she judged the men who occasionally tried to enter her life. They were invariably found wanting. Oh, she wasn’t silly enough to believe the interest of those men was solely in her, anyway; the Atherton publishing company, and the wealth that went along with it, was a natural draw for any ambitious young man, the spinster daughter of the family an obvious catch.
But Arabella had her own ideas about the man she wanted to spend her life with—unfortunately he had lived almost two hundred years ago, and was entirely fictitious, as he existed only between the pages of a book and in the imagination of the man she was hopefully about to meet.
The thought of never again receiving a Merlin manuscript, or losing herself in the life of Robert Palfrey, was enough to harden her resolve to talk to Merlin herself. As far as she was concerned, he could dismiss the idea of a film about his character, as long as he continued to submit those manuscripts about the man with whom she was half in love...
And