The Eden Inheritance (2 page)

Lilli, of course, cared nothing for her father's age. He was, quite simply, Daddy, stern, sometimes unapproachable, yet with a surprising capacity for tenderness where she was concerned. In the last resort Lilli knew, without acknowledging it, that she could wind him around her little finger.

This, however, she judged, was not the time to try. Obediently she went into the salon.

‘What is it, Daddy?'

‘I want to talk to you.'

After the brightness of the sunshine outside it was dim in the salon; Lilli, her eyes not yet accustomed to the change in the light, could not read the expression on his face. But even if she had been able to see his features clearly it did not necessarily mean she could have guessed at his mood. Otto Brandt was nothing if not enigmatic.

He put an arm around her shoulders now, leading her to a chaise, covered in soft green velvet, which might have been more at home in the drawing room of a French château or an English castle than here in this luxurious but undeniably alfresco salon.

‘I have to go away for a little while, Lilli.'

‘Oh?' She was sorry, but not surprised. For as long as she could remember Daddy had gone away on business trips at fairly regular intervals. ‘Where are you going?'

He smiled and tapped her small straight nose.

‘That's not something you need to know. I should only be gone for a few weeks, but one never knows. It might be longer. Whichever, I want you to promise to be a good girl for me while I am away.'

‘Of course, Daddy!' But already she was thinking of the glorious days she would be able to enjoy with Josie. ‘You'll be back before I have to go away to school, though, won't you?'

‘Of course. Yes, I am sure I shall. I just wanted to tell you, Lilli, that … your daddy loves you very much.'

Something in the way he said it frightened her suddenly; a prickle of intense cold ran down her sun-warmed spine.

‘I know that, Daddy.'

‘Of course you do. And something else. Supposing, just supposing, something should happen to me, you know that you are well provided for.'

The prickle became worse, fingers of burning ice.

‘What do you mean, Daddy? If something should happen to you?'

He took her hand, his long fingers closing over her small brown ones.

‘I'm not planning on leaving you for a long time yet, Lilli, but one never knows. This is a very uncertain world. It is best to be prepared.'

Lilli had begun to tremble violently. Mama had gone away. Jorge had gone away. She could not bear it if Daddy went away too. Oh please! I'll never again wish I could be free to play with Josie all the time just as long as Daddy doesn't go away too! Lilli prayed.

‘Daddy …'

Daddy smiled, the wide curve of his well-shaped mouth making him look young and handsome again.

‘Don't look so frightened, little one. I didn't mean to scare you. But I want you to understand that this will one day all be yours. You will want for nothing.'

With a wide sweep of his hand he indicated the salon and its contents. Lilli's face puckered.

‘I don't understand.'

‘No, I don't suppose you do. You take it all for granted, don't you? You have no idea of the value of the treasures in this room. You see the silver candlesticks and the bronze statuette of Ceres, goddess of the harvest, and the pretty little Louis XIV clock? Together they are probably worth a king's ransom. I know they mean nothing to you now but one day you will love them as I do. And if hard times should ever come …'

His voice tailed away. Now, with her eyes growing more accustomed to the dim tight, Lilli could see just how serious was the expression on his handsome face, marred only by a long silver scar which ran from the corner of one eye down his cheek and which now seemed to stand out more vividly than ever.

‘I do like them, Daddy,' she said, eager suddenly to please him. She looked around, trying to see the treasures through his eyes but aware only of items she had grown up with but never been allowed to touch. Then her glance lighted on just one of them and she brightened. ‘I like the picture – you know I do.'

‘The picture …' He followed her gaze. ‘Ah, you mean the triptych. Yes, it's beautiful, isn't it?'

He got up, taking her hand and leading her across the marble-tiled floor to where the triptych hung. Intricately painted, the three panels arranged so that the softly diffused light caught the rich colours and made them glow, the triptych portrayed the life and death at the stake of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans. Lilli looked up at it. She did like the picture – or triptych as Daddy called it. It fascinated her, although it also frightened her a little.

‘Supposing I say that it is yours
now
, Lilli – would that make you feel better?'

‘Mine!'

‘Yes. It must stay where it is, of course, but it can be Lilli's triptych. Not many little girls of your age own something so beautiful or so precious. Doesn't that make you feel special?'

Lilli gazed up at the triptych, awed, and suddenly yes, she did feel better.

Not because she was concerned with its value or even with its artistic worth, for such things were beyond her, but because somehow she knew in that moment that the triptych was going to play a very important part in her life. Mysteriously it was almost as if the future had reached out and touched her with a teasing finger, bestowing on her all the glory and the suffering portrayed in the picture. It did not occur to her then, or for many years to come, to wonder where the treasures had come from or what story they might have to tell. Lilli's fingers curled trustingly into her father's.

‘Thank you, Daddy,' she said.

T
HE TWIN
-
ENGINED
Piper Navajo touched down smoothly, wheels kissing runway with scarcely a judder, and slowed, to turn on to the taxiway.

In the pilot's seat Guy de Savigny let go the controls, steering with the rudder pedals as he attended to the shut-down preliminaries whilst the aircraft was still rolling. The hour was late; the runway markers and the lights blazing out of the control tower and airport buildings, to which he was heading, were the only sparks of illumination in the velvet darkness now that the rolling hills hid the neon glow of the city from his view. Guy manoeuvred the aircraft on to the apron and parked in one of the unloading bays. Now that he had landed he felt suddenly tired. Whilst flying the need for complete concentration kept him on his toes, and with no first officer in the co-pilot's seat the workload was high enough to necessitate his remaining alert throughout the whole flight. There had been times when Guy, who suffered from occasional migraines, had brought the plane in and not even noticed the needles of white-hot fire in his temples until the shut-down checks were completed, so total was the concentration demanded of him. But that was the way he liked it. It was the reason he had remained a freelance commercial pilot instead of moving on, as many of his friends had done, to the big airlines. There might be prestige in being a captain or first officer with BOAC or British Caledonian. The logbooks of those who chose to go with the big boys might read like a world gazetteer. But how much did they see of their exotic destinations? One hotel room is very like another, however luxurious, and Guy felt, with a slight edge of scorn, that the way they earned their fat salaries could hardly be described as flying – not flying as he knew it. He would go crazy, he thought, if he had to rely on a computer to do all his work for him, and the very idea of sitting in a cockpit for up to eight hours with nothing more stimulating than the
Telegraph
crossword to occupy his mind made him shudder. As for the money, that was scarcely a consideration. Guy was not exactly wealthy yet, but he would be one day. As heir to the de Savigny estates in Charente, and all that entailed, a nest egg and a pension were the last things on his mind.

Not, of course, that flying the mail from Aberdeen to Bristol five nights a week exactly consituted a dream job. To begin with it had not been so bad; the Navajo was an aeroplane Guy had been itching to get his hands on and there had been other routes to vary the monotony – to Oslo and Antwerp, St Malo and Amsterdam. But things had changed; the company he worked for on a freelance basis had arranged their schedules so that he now found himself regularly on the Aberdeen-Bristol route and he was beginning to tire of it.

What the hell is the matter with me? he sometimes wondered when the familiar restlessness prickled beneath his skin. Why do I always have to be looking for something different, some new avenue to explore or mountain to climb? Why can't I, for once, be satisfied and stay satisfied? But he couldn't. He was thirty-one years old and he still felt as eager to go out and conquer the world as he had been at nineteen, with not the slightest desire to put down roots anywhere.

Perhaps, he thought, it was because he knew he had the de Savigny inheritance hanging over him. When his grandfather died he would be the next Baron de Savigny. It was an awesome prospect and not one he relished, but it was a destiny from which it was impossible to escape.

Then again perhaps it was because he was the product of two cultures, two countries, with both French and English blood running in his veins. Guy had been brought up in England but he had always spent a good portion of each summer at the Château de Savigny with his grandparents. Kathryn, his mother, had insisted on it. But the division of his time between England and France had unsettled him. Far from feeling as much at home in Charente as in England, as Kathryn had intended, he had actually felt at home in neither. In both countries he was something of a foreigner, he thought wryly, his English upbringing marking him out as different in Charente in spite of the respect accorded him as the future Baron, his heritage a constant pinprick of discomfort when he was amongst his English friends. As a child at public school in England he had been ragged mercilessly once his peers had ferreted out the reason for his foreign name – until he had learned to stand up for himself. Guy had learned early to use his fists; it had landed him in all kinds of trouble but the word had soon got around amongst the other boys that to jeer at Guy de Savigny was to get a bloody nose, and they had come to respect him for it. But there was still the odd remark, the odd occasion when Guy was only too well aware of his divided loyalties, and that strange sense of lack of belonging had followed him into adulthood.

Being half French had its advantages too, of course. The fluently bilingual Guy had found French lessons so totally unnecessary that he had been able to spend them reading his favourite space-travel novels under the desk. In adult life as a pilot he had few communication problems when he flew abroad – by using one or the other language he could usually make himself understood.

Then again his mixed blood and his French name seemed to make him attractive to women – at least, that was what Guy put his success with them down to. He was always faintly surprised by the attention they paid to him, underestimating the effect his dark good looks and slim but powerful frame could have on the most sophisticated and experienced of them. He was too used to the startlingly blue eyes that stared back at him from the shaving mirror each morning, and the aquiline nose and firm jaw did not, in his opinion, constitute conventional male beauty. He had no idea of how well the white shirt and black uniform jacket with the captain's insignia suited him, and the easy-going confidence of his manner was totally unconscious.

But Guy seldom took advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves to him in this direction. He liked the company of women well enough and was a good and generous lover. What he did not like was the way they invariably tried to tie him down. To Guy, freedom was the most important consideration. Perhaps, he thought – when he did think about it, which was seldom – perhaps it was knowing that the baronage, with all its inherent responsibilities and restrictions, was lying in wait for him that made him so averse to any other ties. But for whatever reason, whenever a woman began to show signs of possessiveness his instinctive reaction was to back away – fast.

Tonight, however, the problems that involvement with a woman could cause were the last thing on his mind. The only consideration looming large was getting back to his bachelor flat on the other side of town, pouring himself a large whisky, running a bath and then falling into bed – alone.

He parked the Navajo, watched the post office workers unload and then locked up the plane and went into the airport building.

At this time of night, two-thirty a. m., in the middle of winter, the concourse was as deserted as the runway had been, the airline pigeonholes shuttered like sleeping eyes, the small shop and bureau de change locked up for the night. Guy's footsteps echoed hollowly on the tiled floor. A security guard was standing in the doorway smoking and looking out at the stars. Guy said good night to him and walked across to the staff car park where a few vehicles glimmered with a light dusting of frost.

As he neared the car park Guy heard the hollow rasp and dying whine of an engine that someone was trying, unsuccessfully, to start up. Some poor sod has got trouble, he thought – it didn't sound good.

His path took him close to the car in question and as he approached, the driver gave up the struggle and got out, closing the door with a slam.

‘Having problems?' Guy called.

‘Yes – damned thing won't start. Hey – Guy – is that you?'

‘Yes,' Guy said, faintly surprised. ‘Who's that?' The car park was badly lit and his tired eyes had not yet fully accustomed themselves to the dark.

‘Bill Walker, you dozy bugger!'

‘Bill!'

They had trained together in their early flying days, racing one another for their private pilot's licences, then both instructing with the same club as they strove to accumulate the hours they needed to progress to the next stage and the next. Their paths had diverged when they began professional commercial flying but occasionally they would bump into one another on an airport concourse, in the briefing room, or in a bar.