‘Quite a picture you’ve painted, Aunt Emma. Obviously I’ll have to have my wits about me.’
‘That’s always wise, Shane, whoever you’re dealing with.’ She smiled faintly. ‘On the other hand, you’re going to Ross for advice, not pitting yourself against him in a business deal. You’ll be able to handle Ross Nelson very nicely. In fact, I think you’ll get along with him just fine. Don’t forget, he owes me a few favours, so he’ll bend over backwards to be co-operative and helpful.’
‘I know your judgement is never flawed, always spot on,’ Shane replied. He rose, walked around the sofa to fix himself another drink, thinking of the characterization she had drawn in her thumbnail sketch. He was anxious to meet the man. It was obvious that Nelson was going to be invaluable. And he was impatient to get the ball rolling with the New York hotel. He needed to submerge himself in business, to take his mind off troubling personal matters. Ross Nelson might possibly be a pain in the neck in his private life, but who cared about his philandering. As long as he was smart, shrewd, trustworthy, and willing to help, that was all that mattered.
Blackie’s eyes flicked briefly to his grandson, and then settled on Emma. ‘I’m not so sure I like the sound of this Ross Nelson fellow,’ he began.
Emma cut him off with a laugh. ‘My money’s on Shane. He’s a grown lad who knows how to take care of himself very well. Very well indeed, Blackie. I’ll even go as far as to say that Ross Nelson might have met his match in Shane.’ This observation seemed to entertain her, and she continued to laugh.
Shane grinned, but made no comment.
He was looking forward to meeting Mr Ross Nelson more than ever. The banker would add spice to the New York venture.
They sat in front of the blazing fire in the library – just the two of them.
Blackie nursed a snifter of aged Napoleon cognac, and Emma sipped a cup of tea with lemon. He had poured her a small glass of Bonnie Prince Charlie, her favourite Drambuie liqueur, but it remained untouched on the Sheraton side table next to her chair.
They were quiet, lost in their diverse thoughts, relaxing after Mrs Padgett’s fine dinner. Shane had left, and, as much as they both loved him in their individual ways, they were content to have this time alone together.
The firelight flickered and danced across the bleached-pine panelled walls which had taken on a mellow amber cast in the warm roseate glow emanating from the hearth. In the garden beyond the French doors, the towering old oak creaked and rustled and swayed under the force of the wind that had turned into a roaring gale in the last hour. The door and the windows rattled, and the rain was flung against the glass in an unrelenting stream, beating a steady staccato rhythm, and it was difficult to see out through this curtain of falling water. But in the fine old room all was warmth, cosiness and comfort. The logs crackled and hissed and spurted from time to time, and the grandfather clock, an ancient sentinel in the corner, ticked away in unison.
His eyes had been focused on her for a while.
In repose, as it was now, Emma’s face was gentle, the firm jaw and determined chin and stern mouth softer, less forbidding in the flattering light. Her hair held the lustre of the purest silver, and she seemed, to him, to be a lovely dainty doll, sitting there so sedately, perfectly groomed and dressed as always, elegance and refinement apparent in every line of her slender body.
She had not changed really.
Oh, he was aware that when the flames blazed more brightly, he would notice the wrinkles and the hooded lids and the faint brown speckles of age on her hands. But he knew, deep in his soul, that she was still the same girl inside.
She would always be his wild young colleen of the moors, that little starveling creature he had come across early one morning in 1904, when she had been tramping so bravely to Fairley Hall to scrub and clean in order to earn a few miserable coppers to help her impoverished family. His destination had been the same place, for Squire Adam Fairley had hired him to do bricklaying at the Hall, and then he had stupidly gone and lost himself in the mist on those bleak and empty Godforsaken hills … so long ago … but not so long to him. He had never forgotten that day.
Blackie’s gaze lingered on Emma.
He had loved this woman from the first moment he had met her and all the days of his life thereafter. He had been eighteen, that day on the lonely moors, and she had been a fourteen-year-old waif, all skin and bones and huge emerald eyes, and she had touched his heart like no one else before or after, and bound him to her forever without even trying.
Once he had asked her to marry him.
She, believing it was out of kindness and friendship, and the goodness of his heart, had refused him. She had thanked him sweetly, her face wet with tears, and explained that she and the child she was carrying, by another man, would only be burdens to him. And she would not inflict such a terrible load on her dearest friend Blackie, she had said.
Eventually, he had married Laura Spencer, and he had loved her well and true. And yet he had never stopped loving his bonny mavourneen, even though at times he was hard pressed to explain that unique love to himself, or articulate it to her, or anyone else for that matter.
There was a time when he had half expected Emma to marry David Kallinski, but once again she had turned down a splendid, upright young man. Later, she had confided the reason to him. She had not wanted to create trouble between David and his family, who were Jewish. Although Mrs Kallinski was motherly towards her, Emma said she had long realized that as a Gentile she would not be considered appropriate as a daughter-in-law by Janessa Kallinski, who was Orthodox and expected her son to marry in the Faith.
Then one day, Joe Lowther had come riding by, metaphorically speaking, and to Blackie’s astonishment – and not inconsiderable bewilderment – Emma had plunged into holy matrimony with Joe. He had never been able to fully comprehend their union. In his opinion, it was difficult, if not downright impossible, to hitch a race horse and a cart horse to the same wagon. But Joe had been a kindly man, if plodding and dull and not particularly brilliant or engaging. Still, he and Blackie had liked each other well enough and had gone off to fight a war together. And he had seen Joe Lowther killed in the muddy trenches of the bloody, battle-torn Somme, and had wept real tears for him, for Joe had been too young a man to die. And he had, never been able to talk about Joe’s ghastly death, to tell her that he had seen Joe blown to smithereens. Only years later did he learn from Emma that she had married Joe, who adored her, to protect herself and her baby daughter Edwina from the Fairleys, after Gerald Fairley had attempted to rape her one night at her little shop in Armley. ‘It wasn’t as calculating as it sounds,’ she had gone on. ‘I liked Joe, cared for him, and because he was a good man I felt honour-bound to be a good wife.’ And she had been devoted, he knew that.
The second time he had wanted to marry Emma he had truly believed his timing was perfect, that he had every chance of being accepted, and he was buoyed up with soaring hopes and anticipation. It was a short while after the First World War when they were both widowed. In the end, though, uncertain of her true feelings for him, and filled with sudden nervousness about Emma’s astonishing achievements in comparison to his own, he had lost his nerve, and his tongue, and so he had not spoken up. Regrettably. And she had unexpectedly gone off and married Arthur Ainsley, a man not good enough to lick her boots, and had suffered all kinds of pain and humiliation at Ainsley’s hands. Finally, in the 1920s, as he was biding his time and waiting for the propitious moment, Paul McGill had come back to England to claim her at last for himself.
And he had lost his chance again.
Now it was too late for them to marry. Yet, in a sense, they had something akin to marriage and just as good, to his way of thinking … this friendship, this closeness, this total understanding. Yes, all were of immense and incalculable value.