Glittering Fortunes (2 page)

Chapter Two

‘O
H
,
BABY
,
YES
!
Keep going, stud—you
are truly the best in the world!’

With each brutal thrust Susanna Denver’s back was scraping
painfully against the knobs on her lover’s gold-plated washroom cabinet, but
then space was always going to be at a premium at thirty-five thousand feet
above the Atlantic.

‘Keep it dirty,’ Cato growled, his breath ragged in her ear.
‘You know I love it when you talk filth, you scandalous harpy.’

Susanna clamped her thighs around his waist and reached down to
clasp the most famous backside in America (recently initiated into the Hollywood
Hall of Fame after an Award-nominated nude scene). Sharp crimson nails dug into
his flesh.

‘Harder!’ she squealed, bucking a touch too fervently so that
behind her a decorative tap flicked on and she found her ass being sprayed with
water. ‘Faster!’

‘Not wet enough already?’ Cato snarled in that impossibly
attractive English accent, which made Susanna think of black-and-white World War
II movies where everyone went about smoking pipes and talking about
submarines.

‘Always for you, baby,’ she gasped, ‘always for you!’

Cato slipped a hand between her legs, dousing her in the liquid
heat.

‘Say my name,’ he croaked, ‘say it!’

‘Ca-to!’ she managed, the word severed in two as he thrust into
her, his black shock of hair abrasive against her chest and his face buried in
her tits.

‘Say my full name—my full name, goddamnit!’

‘Lord Cato! Fuck me, Lord Cato, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!’

Lord Cato did as he was told, seconds later coming so fiercely
that Susanna’s ass was slamming in and out of the porcelain bowl and Cato had
water coursing down his legs and into the nest of suit pants pooled at his
ankles.

‘You’re a rampant little nympho, aren’t you?’ he choked
afterwards, fighting to catch his breath. ‘Be a good girl and run along, I could
murder a gin on the rocks.’

Back in her seat on the Lomax private jet, Susanna patted her
hair and checked her reflection in a crystal compact. Her lipstick was
smudged—Cato preferred there to be a prime blowjob on the menu; it was one of
his foibles—she fixed it and smiled with satisfaction. Looking back at her
wasn’t just the face of Susanna Denver, romcom queen who commanded ten million a
movie—oh, no, it was the face of a future Lady of the Manor! She couldn’t
suppress the mewl of excitement that escaped when she thought of it. Surely it
was only a matter of time before Cato proposed, and what would she say? She
would say
Yes
,
yes
,
yes!
as fiercely as she had five minutes before
with his cock driving through her like a steel truncheon.

It was several minutes before Cato joined her (he always needed
the bathroom after sex: another eccentricity). He picked up his Tanqueray and
balanced the tumbler in the palm of his hand. The dark hair on his knuckles was
a stark contrast to the clean, ice-cracked liquid, and on his pinkie he wore a
fat gold signet.

‘Everything all right, darling?’ Susanna asked, giving him her
most winning smile. She had considered that he might have asked her to marry him
on the jet—after all, he spent most of his life on the darned thing—but
obviously he had something far more romantic planned for when they got to
Cornwall. She couldn’t wait to see the mansion: it looked like Charles Dickens
lived there, as if they’d have a chimney sweep, and a maid who wore a doily on
her head! It was too sweet for words.

‘Fine,’ Cato barked. She went to rub his shoulders but he
batted her off. ‘If you must know, I’d rather turn this filly around and be
touching down in LA in an hour’s time, not bloody Heathrow.’ He swigged the gin
in one.

‘Oh, darling,’ she comforted, ‘it’ll be gorgeous when we get
there...’

‘Will it? It’s England, Mole; it rains all the time.’

How Susanna wished he wouldn’t call her that. It was an
endearment—she had a freckle birthmark on the small of her back—but all the same
it made her sound like a soggy, twitchy little thing emerging blindly from the
ground. Cato had taken to introducing her as Mole in new company, which she
absolutely had to put a stop to.

‘I don’t mind a bit of rain,’ said Susanna, flipping open her
magazine.

‘You’re not cut out for it,’ Cato retorted.

‘I can be. I will be.’ She wanted to add
when we’re married
, but didn’t.

A muscle twitched at his temple. ‘If Charles did the right
thing and moved on I’d be a damn sight happier. Usherwood
is
mine, after all. I’m the eldest; it’s
my
inheritance. Still,’ Cato swirled the glass, ‘I can’t apologise
for being a trans-Atlantic man. Career calls—not that my brother would know the
first thing about that.’

Susanna flushed with pleasure. She loved it when Cato talked
about claiming the estate full-time. Things were going impossibly well for him
in LA right now, but come next year he would be ready to divide his time between
the two—and she would be right there alongside him as the next Lady Lomax. She
couldn’t wait.

‘Another,’ Cato commanded one of his staff, holding aloft the
empty glass. ‘Why he insists on being such a miserable bastard is well and truly
beyond me.’

Susanna craned to see. ‘Go easy on him, baby, he hasn’t been
with us long...’

Cato shot her one of his
your-stupidity-never-ceases-to-amaze-me
looks. ‘I’m not talking
about that cretin,’ he snipped. ‘I’m referring to Charles. Naturally.’

The gin landed, accompanied by a miniature offering of salted
nuts.

‘Just because Mummy and Daddy got lost in the fucking Bermuda
Triangle’—Cato said ‘fucking’ like ‘fah-king’—’I mean, let’s get over it, shall
we?’ He chucked the nuts into his mouth like a shot of Tequila and appeared to
swallow without chewing. Susanna found him urgently sexy. With his splintering
eyes and jet-black mane, so brutish and carnivorous, he possessed the kind of
unreconstructed maleness that had women worldwide longing to experience the
Lomax magic. Once she was his wife, Susanna Denver alone would achieve that
privilege.

‘These are stale,’ Cato complained of the nuts, but continued
to pulverise them nonetheless.

‘Try and relax, sweetheart...’

Cato loosened his tie. ‘I
am
relaxed. Just don’t talk to me about my brother.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You brought him up. And now look! I’m in a terrible mood
thanks to you.’

Susanna had learned early on in their acquaintance that Cato
was not a man with whom to be argued. She knew better than to raise the issue of
Charles (like the prince!), but privately thought their relationship was bound
to be strained what with the family history being so raw. Cato rarely talked
about the accident, only in garbled bursts when he was blind drunk on
Courvoisier. Thirteen years ago, Richmond and Beatrice Lomax had taken a
single-engine plane for a day flight over the Bahamas—at nine a.m. they had
departed; by twelve they had abandoned radio signal. Their plane was lost, the
bodies never found. To this day their deaths remained unclassified.

‘Put him from your mind,’ she calmed him. ‘Shall I rub your
shoulders?’

Cato scowled.

Susanna couldn’t help but suspect there was more to the
brotherly rivalry than met the eye. Reading between the lines it seemed that
Charles, the youngest, had always been the favoured son—and Cato resented him
for it. Funny how such petty jealousies could wind their way into adulthood.
Perhaps Susanna could be the peacemaker, encourage the men to see what was
really important. Once she and Cato moved into Usherwood on a permanent basis
she saw no reason why Charles should have to be evicted. Where would the poor
mite go?

On cue Cato pronounced: ‘Charles is in for a terrific surprise
when I tell him I’m taking over. He never could handle the place; it’s falling
apart around his bloody ears. What Usherwood needs is a
real
man to take care of it.’ Buoyed by the thought, he turned to
Susanna and awarded her an indulgent smile. ‘A bit like you, Mole.’

Susanna took his hand. ‘Indeed,’ she purred demurely, in the
way English ladies surely did when they were soon-to-be-heirs to great
stateliness and fortune.

Cato downed the drink, exhaling heavily through his nostrils
like a bull with a ring through its nose. He closed his eyes. When he opened
them he said, ‘I think I’ll have your mouth wrapped around my cock one more time
before we land,’ as though he were considering which route they would take into
the southwest once they hit the roads tomorrow (Susanna suffered from jetlag and
preferred a night at Claridge’s before entertaining an onward journey). She had
selected a vintage burgundy Bentley for the trip and might even don a floral
head-scarf, if the weather was clement.

England’s fields appeared like patchwork in the window, a quilt
of greens and yellows stitched together by thorn and thistle: Land of Hope and
Glory.

Susanna sighed the sigh of the devoted. She couldn’t wait to be
introduced to her new home. And once Cato proposed, everything would be just
perfect.

Chapter Three

C
HARLIE
L
OMAX
STOPPED
at the stream to let his dogs drink. He wiped his dark brow, the material of his T-shirt damp with sweat and sticking across his shoulders. It was a scorching day, thick with heat, the only sounds the steady babble and the hounds’ lapping tongues as they attacked the water in loud, contented gulps.

He squinted up at Usherwood House. One hand was raised to counter the glare, and the skin where his sleeve drew back was pale compared with the tan on his forearms. The earthy, musty pocket of his underarm was a hot, secret shadow.

The dogs clambered to their feet for a vigorous shake, their fur releasing a shower of glittering drops. Comet, the setter, pricked his ears in anticipation of his master’s next move: tail bright, eyes alert. Retriever Sigmund panted happily.

Russet sunshine bounced off the stonework, drawing-room windows rippled in the haze. Charlie could picture its quiet interior, shafts of light seeping through dusky glass. A sheet of verdant lawn rolled up to the entrance, studded with flower beds that flaunted summer colour despite their neglect. Mottled figurines hid behind oaks like ghosts, a head or a hand missing, moss-covered and cool in the shade.

It was habit to see everything that was wrong with the place: the dappled paintwork, the peeling façade, and at the porch a stippled, stagnant fountain whose cherubic statuette sang a soundless, fossilised tune. But on days like today, lemon sunbeams bathing the house, the old monkey puzzle rising proud in the orchard and the flat grey sea beyond with its white horses flirting on the waves, it was possible to imagine an inch of its former glory. When Charlie would return for yearned-for school break, the car pulling up alongside his mother’s classic Auburn, gravel crunching under the tyres and the smell of buttered crumpets soaking into the purple evening, those were the times he remembered. That was what Usherwood meant to him.

He climbed the ditch, put his fingers out so a soft, soggy muzzle came in curiosity to his touch, and with it the hot lick of an abrasive tongue.

Through the Usherwood doors the great hall echoed, high windows illuminating a mist of dust particles that drifted into the vaults. Above the sooty inglenook a portrait of Richmond and Beatrice was suspended, its frame a tarnished copper. The dogs skated muddy-pawed through to the library, tails thumping as they waited for Charlie to catch up.

‘Oh, you scamps!’ Barbara Bewlis-Teet, housekeeper since his parents’ day, came in from the kitchen. She shook her head at the dirt the dogs had brought with them. ‘Mr Lomax, you’d let those mutts rule the roost given half the chance!’

Charlie ran a hand through his raven hair. It had grown longish around his ears and he hadn’t shaved in a week, giving him a rugged, piratical appearance. His eyes were panther-black. The bridge of his nose had been split years before in a cricket match, and the residual scar made him look more fearsome than he was.

‘They’re all right.’ He pulled off his boots, thick with caked-on mud.

Affection made Barbara want to reach out and touch him, the boy she had once known—but she couldn’t, because Mr Lomax was untouchable.

How she wanted to rewrite the story whose beginning and end could be found in the landscapes of his face: the concentrated, permanent frown; the dark angle where his jaw met his neck; the fierce brushstrokes of his cheekbones. There was Charlie before the tragedy, a dimly recalled child with a clever smile and a skill for putting things together—cameras, watch mechanisms, telescopes-—to see how they worked; and Charlie afterwards, wilted at the Harrow gates, at thirteen so young, too young, for the education that sometimes what was taken apart could never be reassembled. She had driven through the night to collect him in her Morris MINI, doing away with the nonsense of a chauffeured car. Cato had left for the South of France, done with his final year, a hard-boiled show-off whom nothing seemed to touch. Barbara wasn’t sure when Cato had returned to Usherwood, if he even had, to join the mourners and to console the younger brother who had needed him.

‘Tea’s ready,’ she said gently, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Shall I bring it through?’ It was four p.m. sharp and the time-worn set patiently waited, citrus steam rising from the delicate chipped cups Barbara still insisted on using; a splash of milk in a porcelain mug, a silver basin of sugar and a plate of powdery gingerbreads. So long as Mr Lomax cared about Usherwood’s standards, so must she.

‘I’ll be at my desk.’

‘Of course.’ She nodded. ‘And shall I light a fire?’

‘No, I’ll manage.’

Barbara was used to his economy with words. He didn’t give himself away, not to just anyone. He was twenty-six this winter, and to all intents and purposes had removed himself from the world. He was a distant rock battered by storms, a locked door in a darkened corridor, a half remembered song.

After what had happened, how could it be different?

‘Very well,’ she said softly. ‘Will that be all?’

‘Yes,’ Mr Lomax replied, ‘that’s all.’

* * *

I
T
WAS
COOL
in the library; cellar draughts seeping through the floorboards, the damp in the walls making everything chill despite the heat of the day. Charlie dragged on a frayed Guernsey and lit the flames. His hands were broad and work-roughened, the flesh stained and splintered, chapped by outdoor grind. Sparks burst and crackled and he spread his fingers to warm them in the orange, spitting glow.

He settled at the morning’s post. Red warnings glared through envelopes, demands for payment and threatened court action. Sigmund padded over and absent-mindedly Charlie scratched the retriever’s head. The dog put both paws on his lap, resting his chops and gazing up at his master forlornly.

The books told a sorry story. Usherwood was in dire straits and despite Charlie’s initiatives—selling off his mother’s art collection; opening the outbuildings; renting the south field as a campsite—it scarcely touched the sides. Each cheque was engulfed by a rising tide of demands. The drive needed resurfacing, the greenhouse was suffering a leak, the roof in the old maid’s lodgings begged a restoration, the arch on the chapel was collapsing... He couldn’t keep up. Maintaining the occupied quarters was bad enough. They’d had neither heating nor hot water for over a month, and Charlie had taken to bathing early morning in the bitter spinney stream.

Of course he was meant to be rich. This was a mansion, after all—palatial, exquisite, the finest example of Jacobean architecture in the West Country—and its inhabitant aristocracy, heir to great fortune. But the upkeep had sapped every penny of that fortune. Huge chambers slept unused, locked away, spaces once bright and vital now relegated to the graveyard. Piece by piece the house was shutting down. It reminded Charlie of a night when he was eight, camping in the trunk of the withered oak with a blanket up by his ears. The house had seemed an advent calendar of golden windows, his father passing through to extinguish one light at a time until nothing was left but the stain of dark upon dark, the shell of a house sliced out of the night.

Amid a nest of paperwork, a red blinking caught his attention.

One message pending:

‘
Can’t stop
,
old bean,’
came a familiar, hated voice. ‘
Susanna’s been hankering after a taste of the Cornish Riviera and you know me—never one to disappoint a lady.
We arrive tomorrow.
Tidy the place up
,
won’t you?
Oh
,
and do spare us by getting those rotten hounds on a leash;
Susanna won’t like them a bit.’
He was about to ring off, before a parting: ‘
Tell the girls to whip up something nice.
Susanna wants British;
you know the thing.
Tarts.
Shortbread.’

The line went dead.

Charlie listened to it a second time before hitting delete. His knuckles cracked.

Cato Lomax.

Movie star, icon, Casanova—but the world didn’t know him as Charlie did. His Cato was narcissistic, decadent, reckless, wicked; the grubby-palmed boy who had terrorised him, pushing him from the apple tree so he knocked his front teeth grey, dunking his head in the glacial lake one vicious winter, bolting him in the stuffy leather trunk they had taken to Harrow and feeding in a sack of crawling beetles, trapping him in the secret passage that ran between the pantry and the sword room...

And then, when they were adults, taking from him the one thing Charlie could never forgive him for. People said it hadn’t been Cato’s fault, but Charlie knew better.

Acid clutched his heart when he thought of that furious, thundery night... Cato’s tail lights disappearing down the Usherwood drive, rain slashing the windows, a red torch bleeding into darkness...

The very last time he had seen her.

The manslaughter charge had been dropped. Nothing more said about it. That was what money could do—it could buy justice, as rotten and corrupt as it came.

But by Charlie’s judgement, his brother could never be forgiven.

Whenever he read about Cato in the papers, posing with a new actress girlfriend, he swallowed fury like a knot of wire. Despite it all Cato still imagined himself to be emperor of Usherwood. By virtue of his age the true and righteous Lord Lomax, winging in whenever it suited to boast his heritage to a Plasticine army of Americans. Cato had no clue about the place or what it needed; all he cared for was his reputation and the social currency Usherwood awarded. Being gentry wasn’t about playing polo and hanging pheasants; it was about a birthright that had been passed through generations, this wounded house that Charlie toiled for night and day because he
felt
it in his soul, his true devotion and his true belonging.

He went to the window and released the catch, grounding himself against the approaching storm.

That was it, then: the prodigal son returned.

Cato’s imminent arrival slid over the surrounding hills like an army on the mount. The air outside was fragrant. A cabbage white fluttered on to the sill, twitching its wings. Somewhere in the grounds a nightingale sang.