Diamonds are for Marriage: The Australian's Society Bride

Jinty didn’t hesitate. She grabbed Tonya’s arm, applying considerable pressure. “Out we go, Tonya. Out, out, I say! But, before we go, I expect you to apologise for that unforgivable remark.”

“The hell I will!” a distraught, bitterly angry Tonya ranted. “All this time Rupert’s sweet little Leo with her red-gold curls and her big green eyes has had her eye on the pot of gold.”

“Pot of gold! Is that what I am?” Boyd asked and gave an ironic laugh. “Try to get control of yourself, Tonya. Make the effort.”

“I said come with me, Tonya.” Jinty’s voice rose, near to a screech. “I’ve been praying for years and years you’d learn how to keep your stupid mouth shut, but it has all been for nothing.”

“But you’ve said yourself—” Tonya started to protest, but Jinty gave her a furious push ahead.

“Unbelievable!” Boyd muttered as they moved out of the door, Tonya dissolving into wails.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

Rupert suddenly appeared, looking deeply irritated—something he did very well. “What on earth’s going on?” he asked, staring towards the front door. “Was that my wife I heard screeching? Or was it one of the peacocks?” Peacocks did, in fact, roam the estate.

“It was Jinty,” Boyd confirmed. “Tonya put her in a very bad mood.” When his father didn’t respond, Boyd asked, “It was you who dumped Tonya on us?”

“You can’t dictate to me, Boyd. This is my house, might I remind you?” Rupert returned with supreme arrogance.

“The house is yours as the current custodian,” Boyd flashed back. “The house then passes to me. I’ve told you before, Tonya is a born trouble-maker. One wonders why you choose to ignore it.”

“Oh, she’s harmless.” Rupert threw up his hands. “Besides, Jinty likes her here,” he said with dizzying untruth.

“Jinty is as unhappy to see Tonya as the rest of us,” Boyd flatly contradicted. “If you have the time, Leona and I would like to speak to you.”

“Certainly, certainly.” Rupert was now at his most affable. “Come back to the study. What’s it about? Leo has already had a big promotion. One step at a time now, Leo.” He wagged a finger at her. “You’re only twenty-three, aren’t you?”

“Twenty-four, Rupert,” Leona said, marvelling that her voice sounded so composed.

“You’re not going to tell me you’re thinking of getting engaged?” He swung round to beam at her. “Young Peter, is it?” he asked conspiratorially.

“Young Boyd,” Boyd corrected very dryly, making the position manifestly clear.

Rupert stopped dead, just outside the open study door. “Is this some sort of joke?” His black brows rose and before Leona’s very eyes he turned into Geraldine’s tyrannosaurus.

“Why don’t we go inside?” Boyd suggested, clearly unimpressed by his father’s shape shifting. But the strain was showing on Leona. She was trembling. Rupert broke people. He was ruthless when crossed. Everyone in and outside the business world knew that. What about her father’s job? Rupert could sack her father on some pretext. Being a billionaire with vast holdings both at home and abroad would give any human being way too much power.

In brooding silence Rupert took a seat behind his massive partner’s desk. He kept his handsome head down. He didn’t look up. His blood pressure must have shot up because his face was very flushed.

Boyd saw Leona seated in a leather armchair, then he took the one beside her. “I can’t believe it’s such a shock to you, Dad. You don’t miss much. I know you and the Comptons have foolishly set your hearts on an alliance between our families, the thinking being that one family fortune is great, two is even better. Just like the Middle Ages. Chloe is a nice girl. I’m fond of her. She’ll make someone an excellent wife, but that someone surely isn’t me.”

That statement appeared to anger Rupert beyond words. He stuck out his bottom lip with the utmost belligerence. “What are you telling me?” He stared balefully at his son.

“It would be better for all if you could learn to accept that I make my own decisions, Dad,” Boyd said quietly. “Leona is the woman for me.”

Rupert stared back almost wildly. “She’s not a woman. She’s a girl. She’s your cousin. She’s family. I tell you, I simply won’t have it.”

“Rupert, please!” Leona’s voice begged for calm.

“You stay out of this, Leo,” Rupert thundered, shooting an intimidating glance at her.

“I was only going to say you shouldn’t allow yourself to get so angry,” Leona spoke up bravely. “You’ve gone very red in the face.”

“It’s a wonder I’m not purple!” Rupert bellowed. “I thought you were different, but you’re like every other god-dammed female.”

“That’s enough, Dad,” Boyd said, rising to his feet. “I consider myself honoured that Leona has consented to marry me. And, I have to tell you, she needed persuading.”

Rupert swore violently.

“Okay, that’s it! We’re done here!” Boyd put out a hand to Leona. “Come on, sweetheart, we’re going.”

She took Boyd’s hand. “What have you got against me, Rupert?” she asked as Boyd started to draw her away. “Is there something I should know about? You may be disappointed that Boyd won’t fall in with your plans, but you’re much more than disappointed, aren’t you? You find the idea intolerable. What is the real reason you’re so angry? There has to be one.”

“Don’t do it,” Rupert said, looking fiercely into her eyes. “And that’s an order.” His voice was harsh with authority. “If you know what’s good for you, your father and that upstart Robbie, you’ll do as I say.” As he spoke the blood was draining from his face, leaving a marked pallor. He looked far from a well man. Indeed, he looked as if he was suffering a psychotic episode.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Boyd demanded, brilliant blue eyes narrowing to slits.

For answer, Rupert lifted his heavy head, laughing darkly. “You’ll be waiting a long time before you’ll take the reins from me, my son!”

Arrogance, but the arrogance of achievement, settled on Boyd like a cloak. “I’ve as good as taken over the reins now, might I remind you, Dad? How could you threaten Leo and her family in such a way? I can tell you now you’ll have me to deal with if you try to hurt them in any way. You may be put out by our decision—you’ve spent a lifetime imposing your will on us all—but this time you won’t get anyone to back you. The family is very happy with me in the driver’s seat. So are the shareholders. So were you, for that matter. Leona is, by anyone’s standards, a beautiful, gifted, cultivated young woman. You’ve always treated her most kindly. What’s the huge problem now?”

“It’s not a good thing for you two to marry,” Rupert said rigidly, adopting his familiar autocratic tone.

Boyd tightened his hold on Leona’s trembling hand. “Stop talking rubbish. You know what you’re saying is ridiculous. There’s no impediment whatever—legally, morally or socially—to Leona and me marrying. We’re not even full second cousins. You’ll have to do better than that.”

Leona, mind racing, broke in, her green eyes fixed on Rupert’s face. “If you think there is some impediment, Rupert, you should speak out.” She could hear the fear in her own voice. Rupert’s violent reaction could be carrying them into dangerous waters.

There was a long silence, during which Rupert’s eyes drifted to the picture of Serena, which had hung on his wall since her death.

Leona heard the mounting anger and the challenge in Boyd’s voice. “So what are you going to come up with now, Dad?” he asked with icy contempt. “Guess what, Leo’s your half-sister? I wouldn’t put anything past you. You’d defame Leo’s dead mother. You’d defame my own beautiful mother, who had to tolerate so much from you. Only it won’t wash. There was no affair between you and Serena, if that’s what you’re trying to suggest. God, you disgust me!”

Abruptly, life for Leona had moved beyond challenging. Her breath was locked in her chest. “This isn’t happening, is it?” She looked to Boyd for confirmation. It came to her that he appeared much the more formidable of the two men.

“Sit down again, Leo,” Boyd said, putting gentle pressure on her shoulder and easing her into her chair. “Don’t let this upset you. This is only Dad playing his rotten games. He wanted Serena. My mother knew that. She told me years later that Dad had developed a real yen for Serena—the unobtainable—but Serena was an innocent. She didn’t even know about your secret infatuation, did she, Dad? She was a young wife and mother and she and my mother were very close. Serena would never have betrayed her husband, her child or her close friend even if she had known of your aberrant feelings.”

Leona’s voice was little above a whisper. “No, she wouldn’t have,” she said. She might have been only eight, but she remembered her mother vividly—her vital presence, her wonderful sense of fun, her endless grace, her capacity for loving, their secure family unit. These attributes had informed her life. “Is that why you’ve been so kind to me all these years, Rupert? Because I remind you of my mother?”

“The one woman he couldn’t have,” Boyd said, with no sympathy at all for his father. In fact, he was staring at him with open disgust on his face. “It follows, as it does with men like Dad who spend their lives in competition with their sons, I couldn’t be allowed to have you. My father is paranoid about losing. He lost my mother’s love very early on. Didn’t you, Dad? It took a while but then she began to see through you.”

“Shut up, Boyd!” Rupert gritted, his handsome features cold and set.

“Is that it, Rupert?” Leona appealed to Boyd’s father, sounding desolate. “You wanted to deny your own son?”

Difficult as it was to comprehend, there was a great ambivalence in Rupert Blanchard’s complex nature. Existing simultaneously with a great love and pride in his son and heir was a tremendous level of competition and rivalry. That conflict had found its most powerful expression right here and now. Boyd had to be denied Leona as he had been denied Serena. Not that Serena had been aware of his illicit feelings or the conflicts within him. Rupert couldn’t attempt to explain it. It just was.

Rupert had passed to a stage where he no longer tried to formulate answers. All his life he’d been under tremendous stress. People imagined that being a scion of the very rich was fortunate indeed. He’d had no real choices in life. His father had made it very clear to him that he was to take over Blanchards, run it with the same hard-headed skills and determination as the men of his family did. His sisters were permitted to do as they liked. Gerri had followed an academic career, while Josephine, who kept well clear of the limelight, had married her medical scientist, had four children and led a happy, fulfilled life. Not him. His beautiful Alexa had escaped him. In spirit at least. Serena had been a mid-life aberration. It could never have come to anything. But he had not forgotten. He had given Serena’s daughter, Leona, her mirror image, every advantage. She was a lovely young woman in her own right. Now he was finding it unbearable for his son and Leona to be looking at him in the way that they were.

Rupert groaned aloud, then buried his face in his hands. He had always thought that he knew Alexa well, yet he had never known that she had discovered his secret infatuation. Not only that, Alexa had confided his secret to their son. Why not? Mother and son had always been very close.