You’ll be seeing him again! Oh, sweet Lord! Forget the man.
Only her senses were exquisitely, excruciatingly sharpened. She realized to her dismay it was affecting her normal behaviour. Only how did one stop the mix of excitement and panic that stormed through her? She needed to block both emotions. A woman’s weakness only gave a man power. She didn’t want any man to dominate her thoughts, let alone her life. She wanted peace, peace, peace. A mature man, who had suffered himself, could give her that. Peace was important, a sense of being protected. God knew she’d had little of it in her fraught life. At twenty-five, she was still in recovery. At least that was how she thought of it.
Recovery.
Her history was a tragic one. But no one must know it. Not yet. When it came down to it meeting the Wainwrights had only complicated her life. She had to decide what she needed to do next. In less than half an hour, Marcus would be picking her up in his chauffeured Bentley. Marcus was a true gentleman, noble of character, much as her father had been. It would be a sin to lead Marcus on yet she knew she could have a real life with Marcus. No dramas. No concealing her true identity. She would have security. The age difference didn’t really bother her. Or it hadn’t until she had met Marcus’s nephew, David. Waves of emotion started to wash over her …
God, if you’re up there, you have to help me! I’ve no one else to call on.
Her parents had died very tragically in a car crash, ten years before. Only the crash had been engineered. She knew by whom. He would never do it himself. He would never be brought to justice. He lived in far-off America. But he had the power, the connections and the money to organize a hit even across continents. There would never be a mention of his name in connection with the tragic event. Laszlo had many friends in high places, even if he had many more enemies. But they couldn’t get to him. Like the Wainwrights, Laszlo was a billionaire with huge international interests in oil and steel.
And she had something he wanted very badly. The Andrassy Madonna. A precious icon that had been in the family since the seventeenth century. Up until recent times Laszlo had believed the Madonna, fashioned by medieval craftsmen—her robes and headpiece studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and seed pearls—had disappeared into the hands of the invading Russians when the estate was pillaged at the end of the Second World War. Laszlo’s father, Karoly, had done the wise thing gathering up his family and what he could of his fortune and fleeing Europe for the United States and safety. There, he became enormously rich again.
Her great-grandfather had stayed to the death. His eldest son, Matthias, the heir, had elected to stay with his father, resisting all pleas to make his escape. It was her grandmother, Katalin, who, as a little girl, had been the one to escape with the help of a loyal family servant. Her greatgrandfather and her great-uncle had been taken prisoners and never seen or heard of again. It was a tragic story repeated all over war-torn Europe and Russia.
But the Madonna believed to be lost for ever was in her possession. Proof of her identity. It gave her power, but offered no immunity against Laszlo. Rather the reverse. Possession put her in danger. After the Berlin Wall came down the estate had been returned to the Andrassy-Von Neumann family, albeit in ruins. Laszlo claimed to be the rightful heir and gained possession of the estate, when she was the rightful heir. Only she would never make her claim. Never be in a position to make it. Laszlo would get rid of her before he allowed her to take anything he considered belonged to him. She would be just another young woman to go missing never to be seen again. Laszlo was a powerful man with all the money and a team of lawyers. She had neither. She had long since learned Might was Right. Not the other way around. Laszlo had been pumping a great deal of money into the country of his birth, buying influence and friends in high places. Many of the valuable stolen paintings and artifacts had been returned to him, but the thing Laszlo most wanted was the Andrassy Madonna.
And she had it. The one thing her grandmother had been able to spirit out of a war-torn Hungary.
She shook herself out of her dark, disturbing memories. For a short but intense period of her life, she had found herself in enemy territory, struggling to get by with no one close to trust. The risks had been compounded by her sex. A good-looking young girl on her own was considered fair game. Here in this country of such peace and freedom she was getting herself together. She regretted some of the things she had said to David Wainwright, especially the bit about his family being parvenus. One of her tempestuous moments. She’d thought she had learned to override them, but contact with David only made her painfully aware the wide range of emotions of her preadolescent years, when she had such wonderful parental care, were reforming.
For the occasion she had mixed two pieces she liked and felt confident in: a lovely apricot silk shirt with the sleeves pushed up, tucked into a great pair of cream silk-cotton trousers. She had settled on a wide deep pink and cream leather belt to sling around her waist. The belt pulled the outfit together. Several long dangly necklaces, pretty but inexpensive, around her neck, a striking silk scarf patterned in apricot, pink and chocolate, to tie back her long hair at the nape. She had a good cream leather shoulder bag to go with the outfit. The latest in high-heeled sandals. She knew Paula Rowlands would be there. If the Valentino David’s girlfriend had worn at the gala was anything to go on she knew how to dress. She wondered how serious the relationship might be. It wasn’t intense or she would have noticed. But money married money. Everyone knew that. Passion waned. Money handled wisely just grew and grew.
Lady Palmerston’s residence was situated in the most elite location in the entire country, nestling as it did between beautiful blue bays with breathtaking views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Marcus had told her on the drive over David had a penthouse apartment less than five minutes away. Maybe he often walked over to visit his great aunt. She realized if one had to enquire how much properties like these were worth, one didn’t have and would never have the money to afford them. Now she had an extremely wealthy man as a good friend. She knew she could make something come of it. A lot of women regarded marrying a rich man as a goal in life. Could she? She and Marcus were moving inexorably into another stage of their relationship. Falling in love with his nephew was unthinkable.
Yet her grandmother had been born in a palace. No fantasy, the truth. Sonya had never dared visit the magnificent Andrassy-Von Neumann estate but she had been shown many old books and seen the photographs of it taken before the Second World War broke out in Europe. She had studied them over and over, awestruck. Her grandmother had been born in a fairy-tale palace? The palace looked like something out of a dream. But the dream had been destroyed. She knew the estate had been taken over by the advancing Russian army in 1945. The stately palace had been left a wreck and its great tracts of valley with its lake, trees and wonderful gardens and glorious statuary left in ruin and rubble. All of the statues of gods and goddesses, water nymphs and the like had been used for target practice. Many act of senseless revenge, the glass in all the windows smashed. Inside the great house the grand collections of family crystal, glass and handmade porcelains. The valuable paintings had been declared sacrosanct. They had been carefully wrapped up and taken away.
War.
Was there ever going to be an end to it? She thought, Never. Life took some momentous turns. There were countless stories of reversals of fortune down through the ages. The Czar and his family who had lived in splendour had died in horrifying circumstances. The last Emperor of China had lived out his life as a market gardener. Her beautiful dispossessed grandmother had died relatively early, with a broken heart that had never mended. Her mother, taught both Hungarian and German at her mother’s knee, had sailed through her days like a swan on a lake, with perfect composure, but it was a composure that masked her deep, deep grief.
She had told Marcus none of this. Marcus didn’t even know her real name. As she had told David, Marcus didn’t pry. She knew he was waiting for her to confide in him, but she had built such walls of defence. Talking about her past would be accompanied by an inrush of pain. No one need know her traumas. All these long years no one outside her grandmother, her parents, now herself had laid eyes on the Madonna. She had not been allowed to see the Madonna herself until her sixteenth birthday.