Daughters of Fortune: A Novel (21 page)

William summoned a maid to show Cole up to his room. When they got there, he tipped her five pounds. Seeing her confusion and embarassment, he realized he’d made some kind of faux pas. It was his American mentality: if it moves, tip it. She left in a hurry—Christ, she probably thought he was paying for more than the turndown service.

Once she was gone, he had a good snoop around. Like everywhere else in the house, there were the ubiquitous double-height windows and soaring ceilings. But what set the room apart was the distinctive masculine feel. Neutral tan and ochre walls provided an ideal blank canvas for framed hunt prints and cases filled with revolutionary muskets. Furnishings were at a minimum: a king-size brass bed dominated the room, along with a free-standing wardrobe and a kidney-shaped writing desk, both in rich mahogany. A stag’s head had been stuffed and mounted on a wooden plaque opposite the bed. It was all very colonial. Cole flopped down onto the oxblood leather Chesterfield armchair and laughed out loud. This brother sure had come a long way from the projects.

William had been right about Cole’s background: he was a
very
poor boy, made
extremely
good. Cole Greenway had grown up in the infamous Soundview section of the Bronx. His childhood home was one of the anonymous high-rise towers on 174th Street and Morrison Avenue. Other than the fact that he was black, his father’s identity remained a mystery. His mother was a poster child for the disenfranchised African American: five kids by four different fathers and a series of minimum wage jobs. Soundview itself was a dump, boasting a crack epidemic and twenty homicides a year. Cole was a product of his environment. By the time he turned fifteen, playing truant, drinking all day, and jacking cars were all part of daily life.

But then everything changed. One bitter New York afternoon, his best friend became number eighteen in the annual body count. A stray bullet. A life over. Another statistic.

“If he’d been where he was supposed to be, in sixth-period English, it would never have happened,” the dead boy’s mother kept saying at the funeral.

It was a wakeup call for Cole. He started attending school regularly, started paying attention. To his surprise, he found he was good at it. At six foot six, he turned out to be good at basketball, too. He tried out for the team and made it. His coach kept an eye on him, recognizing
raw talent when he saw it. When the time came, he called the scouts in to watch.

A basketball scholarship gave Cole a free ride through Dartmouth. But he was no brainless jock. With a 4.0 GPA he could have made it on grades alone. He managed to play ball all four years, as well as come in the top quarter of his class. There was talk of the NBA, but a recurring knee injury forced him to rethink. It didn’t take long for him to decide on his future career. He wanted money. He wanted security. He wanted Wall Street.

He interviewed with all the big banks. Sedgwick Hart was more than happy to recruit him into their corporate finance department. They were paying the most, so he was happy to accept. His fellow trainees eyed him on the first day and assumed he was there to make up the minorities quota. He quickly proved them wrong.

His first year, he averaged ninety hours a week. He made vice president at twenty-four. The
Wall Street Journal
ran a glowing profile on him. He was what the American dream was all about. Last year, at the tender age of thirty, he made executive director. The youngest ever ED at Sedgwick Hart.

The day Cole found out about the promotion, one of the senior partners invited him into his plush corner office and offered him a temporary assignment in London. Hints were dropped that he would make partner within two years if he went. Cole didn’t need telling twice. He had no real ties in America. Women came and went, but right now he was too focused on making it to the top.

Cole took London by storm. He quickly made a name for himself in Sedgwick Hart’s Canary Wharf offices as an expert on hostile takeovers. When William Melville contacted the bank looking for an adviser, Cole was the obvious choice.

Cole had seen the look in William Melville’s eyes when they first met and knew exactly what he was thinking. He was used to it. Too young and too black—immediate suspicion. But it never took long to prove himself. And then they were all over him. Just like William was now.

The meeting with Grenier Massé et Sanci had gone well this week. Cole had made it clear to Armand Bouchard that with 60 percent of Melville’s shares in family hands, GMS could never get control.

“We could still build up a stake,” the Frenchman had said. “Demand a seat on the board.”

Cole had been ready for him. “You could,” he agreed, “but we’ll go to court and argue that it’s a conflict of interest to have representation from a rival fashion group. You’ll be left with a two-hundred-million-pound investment that’s frankly useless.”

Bouchard had been forced to concede the point—and walk away. William, delighted with the outcome, had been even more insistent that Cole come down this weekend. Cole could already guess why. William wouldn’t be the first client to try to poach him. They never succeeded. Nowhere could match a U.S. investment bank in terms of monetary reward. For him, that’s what it was all about—the cash. And he was making a bundle of it. Although not enough to afford a place like this, he thought, casting an eye around the exquisitely furnished room. Well, not yet anyway.

He propped himself up on his elbows, considering what to do next. He’d already hung up his clothes. It hadn’t taken long because he hadn’t brought much with him: a rented tux, a pair of chinos, and the jeans he was wearing. He checked his TAG Heuer watch, bought with his first bonus. It was only six. With an hour to go until preprandial drinks—whatever the hell they were—he decided to go for a walk and check the place out.

He managed to find his way downstairs, and one of the staff pointed him in the direction of the grounds. There was nothing shabby about the exterior either. It was old-world Englishness meets Californian modernity. He passed a huge infinity pool, dipped his hand in, and was impressed to find it was heated. He pressed on, down some huge stone steps carved out of the side of the rockface, and on by the grass tennis courts. It was all downhill from there, down the sweeping lawns, down, down, until the manicured gardens ended and met the borders of the wilder parklands.

He stopped still then, shielding his eyes as he looked out across the skyline. A seemingly unending vista of lush fields stretched to the horizon, bordered by a great forest of oak and sycamore trees. There was no one around for miles. Jeez, he’d never seen so much empty space. He breathed in deeply, fresh air filling his lungs. It was the rural idyll, and he couldn’t help being impressed. And this was someone who’d always been allergic to any landscape devoid of concrete and cars.

He was about to head back in when a movement in the distance caught his eye. Far away, something or someone had emerged from the
thicket of trees that circled the deer park. It was just a blip, a dark blur on the horizon. Cole narrowed his eyes. The blur moved closer and closer, until at last it finally came into focus. It was a horse and rider, galloping across the large open field toward him.

Cole stood watching, transfixed. He didn’t know a lot about horses, but he could appreciate the beauty of seeing man and beast together, working in synchronicity. He could also appreciate that the jockey riding that magnificent black stallion was absolutely fearless. Christ, even from here that thing scared the shit out of him, as it thundered across the flat, hooves pounding the ground, soaring over bushes as high as his shoulder. You had to admire the guy . . .

But as horse and rider drew closer, Cole suddenly realized that he’d been mistaken. The jockey wasn’t a man after all. It was a young woman. And a hot one at that, he thought with a grin. Dressed in skin-tight jodhpurs, blonde hair flying out from under the black velvet riding hat, a fierce expression on her face, she was like a modern-day Lady Godiva—a fully clothed version, unfortunately.

He stood, hands on hips, waiting for her to draw level with him.

She was even better looking up close, attractive in that English aristocratic way. In her early twenties, he reckoned, and definitely to the manor born. He could spot class when he saw it. If this was the quality of the booty, then maybe the weekend wasn’t going to be such a washout after all. Women had never been a problem for Cole, and, as the girl pulled her horse up beside him, he got ready to work his magic. Unfortunately, the vision didn’t give him a chance.

“I presume you’re lost?” Her voice was just as he’d expected, clipped and haughty, full of good breeding.

He grinned easily. “No, definitely not lost. Just taking a look around—” He was about to say “before dinner” but she cut him off.

“Well, you really shouldn’t be out here, you know,” she snapped. The horse whinnied, reacting to the irritation in her voice. Cole eyed the stallion nervously—that thing was huge. But the girl looked unperturbed, patting the great beast’s mane reassuringly.

“I’m sure it’s been made clear to you where you can and can’t go on the estate. The garden is out of bounds. The kitchen’s at the side of the house. If there’s any confusion, perhaps you could clarify it with your manager.”

He frowned, unsure of what she was saying. Then it hit him: she thought he was part of the catering staff. Attraction turned instantly
to anger. He recognized the disdain in the blonde’s eyes; the way she looked down her nose at him. She reminded him of all those Boston Brahmins at Dartmouth—the ones who’d been happy to hang out with him, the big basketball star, during the school year but still never thought he was good enough to take home for summers in Cape Cod.

He was about to set her straight, but she didn’t give him a chance. She whacked the horse’s rump with her riding crop. It reared up on its hind legs, nearly knocking Cole in the mouth. Instinctively he ducked away. The girl pulled on the reins, turning the stallion in one smooth move. Cole realized a fraction too late that he hadn’t moved far enough away. He stood frozen as the horse’s great hooves landed straight in a puddle. Muddy water sprayed up, drenching his one pair of jeans.

“Shit!”

Hearing him swear, the blonde glanced back briefly. Her eyes flicked over the damage.

“Sorry about that,” she called, not looking in the least bit repentant. “But it’s your own fault. You really shouldn’t be out here.”

With that, she squeezed her firm thighs against the horse’s trunk and cantered away. Cole watched the haughty figure disappear into the distance. Well, whoever she was, he thought, one thing was for sure—she was a bitch.

Elizabeth was in a good mood when she got back from her ride, which only improved when she got a message from Magnus to say that he was definitely going to make it down to Aldringham tonight. That was the main reason she’d come back from university this weekend, on the off chance that she might see him.

Three years on, they still hooked up whenever possible. Not that they were exclusive—Magnus had made that clear early on. “We have fun together, Elizabeth,” he’d said, “but that’s all this is. It isn’t ever going to be a relationship.”

At first, she’d been hurt. But as time went by, she’d decided he had the right idea. In a few months she would be starting at Melville. She had her career to focus on and didn’t have time for relationships. Sex with no emotional attachments suited her. There had been other guys at Cambridge—good catches, each and every one of them—but any time they wanted to get serious, she ended things. Magnus was the only one who had stayed constant in her life.

Now, thinking of him downstairs, she quickly showered and slid into a Ghost dress, a slither of crepe in purest white to show off the tan she’d earned on the tennis courts. It was a simple, classy look. She left her damp hair loose and slipped into matching heels. Thank God Magnus was over six feet so she could wear them.

As tradition dictated, drinks were being served in the drawing room. Elizabeth was one of the last to arrive. The fifty-foot room was already full of men in black tie, with splashes of color provided by their female escorts. As a nod to summer, the sash windows had been thrown open and the damask curtains tied back, to allow a breeze to filter through.

Picking up a glass of vintage Krug from the tray of a passing waiter, Elizabeth began to circulate. Working the room came easily to her—a smile here, an empty pleasantry there. As she moved through the crowd, it looked to the outside world as though she was being sociable, but in fact she was trying to find Magnus. For a horrible moment she wondered if he hadn’t made it after all. But then she spotted him, standing across the room near the fireplace.

He looked good—more than good, she corrected herself; he looked great. At forty-eight, he was handsome in that intelligent, upper-class way. Still lean, too—no hint of the office paunch that most men developed after a few years of banking lunches. He must have felt Elizabeth’s eyes on him, because he glanced up and over in her direction.

“Hi,” he mouthed. She made a motion to say that she’d come over to him, but before she could move, her father was by her side.

“Ah, there you are, my dear.”

Across the room, Magnus saw what was happening and shrugged at her, a gesture that said, “We’ll catch up later.” Elizabeth pushed her disappointment aside and gave her full attention to her father.

“Yes, Daddy?”

He took her by the arm. “I wanted to introduce you to the young man I’ve been telling you about, the one from Sedgwick Hart.”

That sparked Elizabeth’s interest. She had been dying to meet the corporate finance genius that William had been raving about.

She followed her father toward the makeshift bar area, where a group of a dozen industrialists, politicians, and city whiz kids were engaged in a heated debate. Elizabeth was already forming a pleasant greeting, preparing to be all charm. But her smile froze as she watched William approach a tall, well-built black man and lightly tap one of his broad
shoulders.
No
, she thought.
No, it couldn’t be . . .