Stormspell Page 17

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, careless of the glass in his hand, covering his face with kisses. Her delight at the proposed appointment was exuberant, and Dominic had to hold her off eventually, saying flatly: 'You haven't asked why my father is giving up the reins. Surely you realise he wouldn't have done it without good reason.'

  Barbara's jubilation gave way to a puzzled frown. 'But I thought—I mean, I assumed he had decided the time was right—' Her voice trailed away. 'He's not been taken ill, has he?'

  Dominic disentangled himself from her hands, and got restlessly to his feet. 'Not exactly,' he conceded, smoothing his ruffled hair. 'But he's not a well man. and the doctors have finally persuaded him he'll kill himself within a year if he goes on as he is.'

  'Oh!' Barbara pressed her lips together now, looking up at him anxiously. 'I'm sorry, Dom. I had no idea.' She made a helpless movement of her shoulders. 'And here was I. thinking you were crazy not to be jumping for joy.'

  'Mmm.' Dominic swallowed another mouthful of his drink. 'Jumping for joy?' He paced broodingly across the screened fireplace. 'What if I were to tell you I'm not entirely convinced I'm the right man for the job? That quite honestly the responsibility of it scares me silly?'

  Barbara moved to the edge of the sofa, holding out her hand towards him. 'Don't say that, Dom,' she exclaimed, half impatiently. 'You know you're the only man for the job. Your father made that company. He built it up from nothing. When your grandfather died, it was just a string of little pharmacies, getting their supplies from one of the larger chemists. If Jake Crown hadn't had the vision to realise that drugs were going to be big business, if he hadn't created his own laboratories, his own wholesale organisation. Crown Chemicals would never have come into being.'

  'I know that.'

  Dominic expelled his breath harshly, but Barbara wasn't finished yet. 'You know the organisation inside out. You've worked in the laboratories, you've spent time in the factories, you've studied economics, and business management; it was even your idea that Crowns began producing health foods. For heaven's sake, Dominic, you can't turn your back on it now. It needs you, and you need it.'

  'Like I need a hole in the head,' Dominic retorted grimly, and Barbara rose to her feet, standing before him, small and determined.

  'It's a challenge, can't you see that?' she exclaimed. 'And I can help you. Just like I've helped Daddy.'

  Unbidden, an image of Ruth as his wife flashed before his eyes. She was not like Barbara. He suspected she was more like Barbara's mother. The idea of being the chairman's wife would probably terrify her. She was a child when it came to such things. But then she was just that, he thought bitterly. A child! And he was a despicable swine, for violating her as he had.

  'Dominic, what are you thinking about now?'

  Barbara's slightly peevish voice came to him as if from a distance. 'I'm sorry,' he said, blinking. 'Did you say something?'

  'I asked what you were thinking,' she retorted, plucking at his sleeve. 'Dominic, you're not really serious about this, are you?'

  'About what?' Dominic's mind was suddenly blank, and it took some seconds for recognition to return to him. 'Oh—you mean about the corporation.' He shook his head. 'I guess not. How can I? Jake owns fifty-one per cent of the stock.'

  'So you'll have control!' Barbara could hardly contain her excitement. 'Oh, Dominic, I can't wait to tell Daddy.'

  Dominic grimaced. 'I'm glad you're pleased,' he conceded flatly. 'Can I have another drink? And then I think I'd better go.'

  Much to Barbara's regret, he left before midnight, and her fingers lingered on his lapels when he was kissing her goodbye. 'Tomorrow night,' she made him promise, pressing herself against the muscled strength of his thighs. 'You won't get rid of me so easily then. We'll eat at the apartment, and I won't refuse an invitation to breakfast.'

  As it happened, Dominic ate dinner alone the following evening, at a hotel in Berne. He had a meeting the next morning with his father's Swiss bankers, and during the following days, he visited all the European divisions of Crown Chemicals. It was necessary, his father said, to make his presence felt, and certainly at the end of that first week Dominic felt better equipped to handle the operation. No amount of telecommunications could take the place of a personal appearance, and he had to acknowledge that Jake knew what he was talking about.

  The hectic activity of Dominic's first week as nominal head of Crown Chemicals precluded any chance of seeing Barbara again, and their contacts were limited to the medium of the telephone. She was disappointed, she said, and Dominic had no doubt that she was: but she was also ambitious, and she had not overlooked the position she would occupy once they were married. It was worth the separation to know that come September, she would take his mother's place, and rather cynically Dominic wondered what she would have done had he refused the obligation his father placed upon him. She cared for him—or so she said. But would she care for a humble economist equally as well? He guessed he would never know, and decided that too much introspection was bad for his morale.

  He arrived back from Cologne at the end of that first week feeling utterly exhausted. Too many hours looking at files and dossiers, listening to the various heads of departments outlining their plans for the coming year, eating scratch meals and drinking too much, combined with many hours of waiting around at airports, had robbed him of any enthusiasm he had started out with. He felt he wanted to sleep for at least forty-eight hours before facing another balance sheet, and telling Shannon he was taking no calls, he fell into bed without even taking a shower.

  Around midday, approximately fifteen hours later. Shannon ventured into Dominic's room with a breakfast tray. His employer was still dead to the world, but when he jerked the cord of the blind, releasing daylight into the room, Dominic stirred. He groaned, rolled on to his back, and then squinted up at the little Irishman with dour impatience.

  'I said—no calls,' he muttered, scowling. 'And close those blinds, can't you? I don't want to know what time it is.'

  Shannon set down the tray on the bedside table, and stood firm, not at all perturbed by this show of acerbity. Dominic was seldom at his best in the mornings, and Shannon was not offended.

  'Sure, and it's noon, sir,' he informed his employer brightly, folding his hands. 'I'd be wishing you good morning, only the clock has already struck the hour.'

  'So what?' Dominic grimaced at the tray beside him. 'You can take that away as well. I'm not hungry, just tired. Go away and leave me alone.'

  'Ah, well, I would do that, sir, but your father's been calling since ten o'clock, and I promised him you'd be up at midday.'

  'Did you?' Dominic gazed up at him in exasperation. 'And who gave you permission to tell my father that?'

  'It's a lovely day. sir.' said Shannon, beaming. 'Doesn't it make you wish you were up and out in it?'

  Dominic acknowledged this evasion, and heaved a sigh. 'You mean out of here and into my office, don't you?' he suggested, with some irony. 'Oh, all right, pour me some coffee. I suppose I'll have to make a move.'

  Shannon nodded his approval, and bent over the tray, while Dominic struggled up on the pillows. It was twelve-fifteen, he saw. with some amazement. He had not slept so long since he was a child.

  There was a copy of The Times on the tray beside the coffee pot, and while Shannon added sugar to the cup of aromatic black liquid he had poured, Dominic flicked through the pages. The headlines didn't interest him. The current industrial action being taken by one of the larger unions had appeared in all the continental papers, too, but as it didn't directly affect the corporation, he was not involved. He was more interested in the share prices in the city, and the political unrest in South America where they were hoping to expand.

  He saw to his relief that the latest siege in Central America had ended without bloodshed, and he was about to toss the paper aside and take the coffee cup Shannon was holding out to him when a picture on one of the inner pages caught his eye. He doubted he would hav
e noticed it at all, had the name Pascal not been in evidence, and even then he stared at it for several seconds without really believing what he was seeing?-

  'Your coffee, sir.' Unaware, Shannon was becoming mildly impatient, and Dominic looked up at him almost aggressively.

  'All right.' he exclaimed, taking the cup and in So doing slopping half its contents into the saucer. 'Did I ask you to wait?'

  Shannon sighed, and removed the cup from his employer's hand again, bustling through to the bathroom to attend to the spilt liquid, and Dominic, temporarily relieved of an audience, gave in to his own exclamation of impatience. Then, discarding any pretence at indifference, he read the blurb below the picture with narrowed hostile eyes.

  It was not a particularly good picture. Without the accompanying blurb and the individuality of her aunt's name. Dominic could have been forgiven for not giving it a second glance. Certainly he would never have recognised Ruth without some added assistance. In what appeared to be a well-cut shirt and jacket—the picture was only small, he could see no more than her head and shoulders—her hair either cut or confined in some way. she looked much different from the way he remembered her. She looked uncertain, too, or maybe that was just the way the camera had caught her, and Dominic felt his emotions stir with a mixture of feelings. There was disbelief, of course, and incredulity, but there was anxiety, too, and another emotion far less easy to identify.

  'There you are, sir.'

  Shannon had returned with a clean saucer, and having topped up the cup was now offering it to his recalcitrant employer. This time Dominic took it broodingly, but without any aggression, and Shannon inclined his head with evident relief.

  'You won't forget the time, will you. sir?' he ventured, viewing Dominic's apparent absorption with the paper with some disapproval, and the younger man looked up almost abstractedly.

  'What?'

  'Your father, sir.' prompted Shannon with a sigh. 'You haven't forgotten—'

  'Oh. no. No.' In point of fact, Dominic had. but he refused to give Shannon that satisfaction. 'I'll get up in a few minutes. If my father phones again, you can put the call through here.'

  'Yes. sir.' Shannon nodded, and took a step towards the door. Then, as if compelled to reassure himself that Dominic was all right, whatever the consequences to himself, he hesitated. 'There—er— there's not bad news in the paper, is there, sir?' he enquired intrepidly. 'I mean. I couldn't help noticing—'

  Dominic slumped back against his pillows and regarded the Irishman resignedly. 'No.' he said, after a few moments. 'No. it's not bad news exactly. Just something I didn't expect, that's all.'

  Shannon still lingered. 'It wouldn't have to do with that picture of Miss Pascal and her niece on page five, would it?' he suggested, and Dominic stared at him with an astonishment that turned rapidly to irritation.

  'What the hell do you mean?' he demanded, thrusting the half empty coffee cup back on to the tray and dragging himself upright again. 'What do you know-about Miss Pascal?'

  Shannon was not abashed, it's an unusual name, sir. And I found it on the pad beside the phone last week. You'll forgive me for glancing through the paper now. I'm sure, and when I read the young lady's name—'

  'You put two and two together,' muttered Dominic dourly, pushing the paper aside. 'All right—as you've probably read it yourself. Davina Pascal is Ruth Jason's aunt.'

  'And it seems her father has died.' put in Shannon sympathetically. 'Sure, the young lady's lucky to have relatives like that.'

  'Yes.' Dominic now found he was not so sure. Seeing Ruth's picture like that, reading that her father had died, and that her aunt had brought her back to England, threw all that had happened between them into sharp perspective. He didn't know why, but he felt a curious kind of resentment towards both Ruth and her aunt, and although he kept telling himself that this was what he had wanted for her, what he had hoped for, it didn't quite ring true.

  'Seems like the young lady's father died soon after you came home, sir,' Shannon was saying now. and Dominic watched with ill-concealed frustration as the Irishman picked up the paper and turned to the picture again, and its accompanying article. 'Poor girl! Sure, London must be quite a frightening place for her.'

  Dominic pushed the bedclothes aside, and got out of bed. 'She'll survive,' he remarked, a little brutally, and Shannon looked up at him reprovingly.

  'I thought you owed the young lady your life,' he exclaimed, as Dominic strode across to the bathroom. 'Sure, and it might be a kindness to show your face at Wellington Mews, mightn't it?'

  Dominic hesitated in the bathroom doorway. 'You don't miss a trick, do you. you old reprobate?' he demanded, half amused, in spite of himself. 'I suppose you got the address from the phone pad, too, did you?'

  'Ah. no. That I looked up for myself.' admitted Shannon with a sigh, it's not far from here. Just across the park—'

  'I know where it is.' retorted Dominic shortly, and slammed the bathroom door before the Irishman could say anything else.

  Nevertheless, later in the day, with the immediate de-briefing with his father completed. Dominic found his thoughts irresistibly drifting to what Shannon had said. Ruth and her father had saved his life, he acknowledged grimly, stabbing impatiently at the blotting pad with a paper knife. He did owe her that much. And regardless of how callously he had behaved. there was a bond between them. Even if she didn't want to see him, he ought to make the effort to see her. for courtesy's sake. He could always offer her his help if she needed it—to find a place to live or get a job. Doubtless her aunt was taking care of all of that, but he should assure himself of her well-being.

  With a smothered exclamation he got up from his desk and walked restlessly across to the windows. How the hell could he do it? he asked himself savagely. What if she hadn't told her aunt about him? There was no real reason why she should, and his own family had taken pains to keep the story out of the papers. How could he present himself at her aunt's home, without giving any explanations? Particularly as Ruth was unlikely to welcome his appearance.

  Expelling his breath on a heavy sigh, he turned back to survey his office. It was not the office he had previously occupied, but it was not the chairman's office either. His father still occupied that. He was not quite yet ready to give up all responsibility, and it had been agreed that there should be a six-month period, during which time Dominic was expected to ease himself into his father's shoes. In consequence, he had been given an office on the penthouse floor, and the use of his father's secretary, Mrs Cooke, who had been with Crowns almost as long as Jake Crown himself.

  One thing Dominic had learned in these first few days of power, and that was that his father had avoided delegation of duty. In all aspects of the business. Jake had kept his own finger on the pulse of the organisation, and not one of his executives had been given a responsibility he himself could shoulder. Dominic suspected this was not the way. In a small business, perhaps, with time to oversee all departments. But in a corporation like Crowns, to expect to absorb all aspects of the organisation was madness. What was more, it was physically impossible. and it was this, as much as anything, which had ultimately destroyed his father's health.

  Now. Dominic paced back to his desk and pressed the call button that connected with the secretary's extension. 'Mrs Cooke, could you come in here for a moment?' he requested shortly, and released the button to resume his seat behind the desk.

  He wondered, as Adelaide Cooke entered the room, whether in fact she had ever been married. Despite her courtesy title, he had never heard her mention her husband's name, and certainly his presence had never prevented her from working the outlandish hours his father had often demanded of her. Tall and thin, with horn-rimmed spectacles and tightly-drawn greyish hair, Mrs Cooke exuded competence and efficiency, and a total dedication to duty that Dominic sometimes found irksome.

  'Yes. Mr Dominic?' she said now, holding her notebook and pencil firmly between both hands. He was invariably addressed as Mr Domini
c, to distinguish him from his father, but today that too was a source of irritation he tried hard to conceal.

  'I'm leaving now, Mrs Cooke,' he informed her politely, getting to his feet once again. 'There's nothing urgent awaiting my attention, is there?'

  Mrs Cooke looked slightly scandalised. It was only half past four, after all. Mr Crown seldom left before six o'clock, and Mr Dominic had not put in an appearance until after one o'clock.

  Now. however, she consulted her notepad, before lifting her head. 'There was a call.' she declared, frowning slightly. 'While you were in the chairman's office. It was from—Miss Symonds. I explained that you were in conference, and she said she would call back.'

  Dominic's lips tightened. 'You didn't tell me. Mrs Cooke.'

  'No.' Mrs Cooke looked slightly discomfited now. 'As it Was a personal call. I didn't think it was urgent. And as Miss Symonds said she would call back—'

  'In future. I'd like a list of any calls that come in while I'm in conference to be left on my desk. Mrs Cooke/ Dominic interrupted her crisply. 'Personal or otherwise. I'll decide if they're important.'

  'Yes. Mr Dominic.'

  Mrs Cooke inclined her head, and briefly he felt contrition. It was not her fault, after all. His father wouldn't have welcomed that kind of information, particularly when it had nothing to do with the corporation.

  'Right.' Dominic inclined his head rather more agreeably. 'Was there anything else?'

  Mrs Cooke shook her head. Then: 'Shall I tell Mr Crown you're leaving? He may wish to speak with you before you go.'

  'Be that as it may.' Dominic's lips twisted rather ironically. 'I don't intend to give him the opportunity.' he asserted dryly. 'Tell him he can ring me later, if there's anything urgent.' He massaged the back of his neck with weary fingers. 'I doubt if I'll be going out this evening.'

  'And Miss Symonds?'

  'Barbara? Oh. yes.' Dominic's hand dropped to his side. 'If she calls again, tell her I'll ring her this evening. Right now. I need a drink—a strong one!'

  Mrs Cooke did not look as shocked as he had expected now. Instead, she permitted herself a faint smile, and he realised she had humour, after all.