Silver

He spoke to her, softly, so as not to arouse the wrath of the snow. In English first, since her pale skin made him think she must have Celtic origins, and then, when that got no response, in French, and finally in Italian, half a dozen ruefully apologetic words that drew no response other than a coolly enigmatic look that for some reason made him feel slight chagrin. She had eyes like those of a young hawk he had once tamed: wild and feral; dangerous both to herself and others; green eyes that threw back the reflection of the trees edging the snowfields.

The lift stopped. He had to step past her to get off. She stood back from him and apologised.

In Russian.

The shock of it made him stand and stare at her. Russian, for God’s sake! Just who the hell was she?

He stood watching her as the lift swung her upwards. Silver permitted herself a small smile. She’d heard about Guido Bartoli and wondered if they’d meet. He was an Italian count with a very Catholic marriage and a reputation for treating his mistresses with extreme generosity, as indeed he could afford to—but his wealth wasn’t what interested Silver. She had contemplated using him for the final test and then had changed her mind, but it was a good omen that they should have met, and by accident, today of all days.

She stretched luxuriously, breathing in the cold, sharp mountain air. The threat of the storm and its attendant danger exhilarated her. She felt a fierce surge of pleasure and power run through her body—a body lithe with exercise and careful honing. A body that matched the beauty of her face.

She touched her skin and frowned slightly, reaching for her goggles. She mustn’t let euphoria make her take a stupid risk… Calculated risks, now, they were a different thing altogether. Calculated risks were designed to test her progress, her readiness for a task which she had never deceived herself would be anything other than hard. She pulled on her goggles, her eyes focusing on the horizon. Green eyes with a touch of grey, that changed colour so that people who looked at her often weren’t sure what colour they really were.

It had started to snow, and the peaks above her had disappeared.

No matter… she shrugged the thought of danger aside as the lift shuddered to a halt and she got off. The only passenger… the only skier foolhardy enough to come up so high, to risk the danger of off-piste skiing. But it wasn’t on a mere whim that she was risking her life on this, one of Gstaad’s most dangerous runs. It was a very definite purpose that had brought her here. The final test, bar one…

But first the run… and then… and then the ultimate barrier must be breached. For until it was…

A fine, delicate shudder ran through her. Closing her eyes, she arched back her throat and looked upwards, an expression of rapt, fierce anticipation carving the perfect structure of her face… an expression that was almost ecstatic as her body quickened with feverish excitement, her eyes behind her goggles glittering cold as the ice- and snow-covered mountain.

She smiled to herself as she recalled the look of chagrin in Guido Bartoli’s eyes when he’d realised she was not going to respond to his flirting. It had amused her to address him in Russian. She had a facility for learning languages and was equally fluent in Italian, French and a number more. A legacy from her father, who had…

But no, she was not going to think of the past… not today. She had lived with it as her closest companion for the last two years, and today she was going to step away from it.

Guido had been right about one thing, though. She was Celtic in origin, heiress to a fortune so staggeringly large that even her trustees weren’t quite sure exactly what she was worth.

And not just heiress to a fortune, but heiress to an ancient title as well, carrying a family name that echoed with over a thousand years of history. Her ancestors had been Celtic princes when Egypt had ruled the known world. They had been princes long before the Romans had discovered the misty shores of the land of the Angles, their names written on every page of history that followed that invasion. They had also had a facility for picking a winning side, and their English titles had added weight and wealth to their hereditary Irish lineage.

She was the last of her line, and her father had reared the girl who was the only child fate had seen fit to bestow on him as the son he had never had.

She stood ready at the top of the slope, poised, alert, the adrenalin flowing through her veins like a powerful drug. The day; her life; eternity itself lay spread out before her like the village below, offered up to her as a sacrifice, as she in turn offered up herself… To live or to die… the decision was not hers. Who but the fates knew on which side they would weigh the scales? A higher power, if such an authority existed, must see into her soul and know what she planned; reared by a father who had been insistent on a sporting code of ethics that no longer existed, she had felt it only fair to give that power a chance to intervene. If it chose not to do so…

She bent her knees, her body fluid and ready, waiting until the falling snow thickened, driven by the wind, and then she dug her poles into the fresh snow and laughed out loud, throwing herself forward into the ferocity of the storm.

If she was good enough, if her skill matched her self-confidence, she would survive; if it didn’t, she would die, her body broken and her beauty destroyed.

The final test… but not the final hurdle. That still remained… and she knew enough about her own make-up to recognise what this ski-run was all about… the final psyching up for the barrier through which she must pass if she was going to go on and achieve her ultimate goal.

Snowy trees flashed past, blurred by her speed and the impact of the storm, and she felt the siren song of all she had done and would do sing in her blood.

This was her first taste of the narcotic of absolute self-confidence, but it would not be her last.

The chalet was small and utilitarian, unlike her own. Hers was a luxuriously equipped hideaway owned by a Saudi Arabian prince who had been persuaded to allow her to hire it for an unspecified amount of time. Its sole appeal for Silver was its inaccessibility. The overwhelming richness of its decor, the ostentation of its size and splendour, irritated her to the point of distaste. It was as though someone had tried to create the fabled luxury of a rich nomadic sheikh’s tent within the totally unsuitable framework of a wooden chalet.

This one, though, was everything that such a building should be. Neat and four-square, with a balcony on the upper floor and a large glass window for viewing the mountain. Smoke curled slowly from the chimney, but she didn’t hesitate as she used the key she had purloined to let herself in.

She was still wearing the cerise ski-suit. The chalet wasn’t far from where she had finished her run. Another piece of careful planning. To the rear of the property lay the garage and drive, cleared of snow for access to the narrow road that linked the remote cluster of chalets, of which it was one, with Gstaad.

She let herself in and closed the door behind her. The entrance hall was plain and yet welcoming in a way in which the large, imposing, marble-flagged hallway to her rented chalet was not.

This one had a natural wood floor covered with a rag-rug. The floor was highly polished, and Silver smiled grimly as she stepped on the rug and discovered that it had been very carefully stuck to the floor.

As she opened the inner door she saw that several other rugs covered the polished floor in the main living-room of the chalet, their textures different, so that anyone walking on them would realise even blindfolded which way they were walking. One row led to the sofa, in front of the stove, another to the small kitchen, and the third to the stairs that rose up in one corner of the room.

She didn’t linger in the living-room, despite the tempting warmth of the log-fuelled stove, but instead crossed it and went upstairs.

The chalet had two bedrooms, both with their own bathroom, and, outside, a passage linked the chalet to the garage and sauna.

She knew all this without having to look. She had done her research well, and in all honesty it hadn’t been difficult. Annie had been all too easy to milk of information. She was so ridiculously proud of Jake and all that he had done—all too ready to sing his praises to anyone who was ready to listen.

Silver wondered idly whether, when Annie visited him up here, they shared one bed or whether she slept alone. Nothing she had ever said had indicated that they were lovers—just the opposite—and Silver knew that Annie still loved her dead husband, but…

Halfway up the stairs she paused, wondering what it would be like to make love with a blind man. Would it give a woman an added thrill of excitement to know that he must learn her by touch, taste and scent alone, and therefore employ those senses to make up for his lack of sight—or would she feel repulsed by the knowledge that those dark blue eyes could see nothing other than the blackness of permanent darkness?

At the top of the stairs she wondered if he had made love to many women since losing his sight, and then she shrugged the thought aside, heading first for his bathroom, where she stripped off her clothes and stood beneath the hot sting of the shower until her skin glowed.

Then, wrapped in a huge, fluffy white towel, she went into his bedroom, noting approvingly that the simple furniture was exactly right for the chalet, that the two paintings on the wall had been chosen with taste and a good eye for colour, and that the sheets on the bed were pure cotton and freshly laundered.

For a man who was currently virtually unemployable, and who had apparently no money of his own to fall back on, he lived very well. Very well indeed, even if the chalet did belong to one of Annie’s wealthy patients.

Silver wasn’t deceived by the chalet’s apparent simplicity. Such a blending of colours and fabrics, so much use of materials that were natural rather than synthetic, so much attention to detail, right down to the pure and very expensive soap in the bathroom, not to mention the Hockneys on the wall downstairs—all whispered discreetly, to those with the properly attuned ear, of wealth and privilege. And more than that: of knowing just how such things should be done… and when, and by whom…

The chalet wasn’t representative of Jake’s taste, though; how could it be? It wasn’t his. What kind of tastes would he have, a man who spent his life with the very roughest kind of people—those who dealt in drugs—and who was in Switzerland to recover from the effects of the bomb blast which had tragically destroyed his sight.

She unstrapped the plain gold watch which had been her father’s last birthday present to her, along with the details of the various secret trust funds he had set up for her and the deeds to the Irish castle which had been in the family long before William the Bastard had ever set his covetous eyes on Harold’s England.

She had loved her father. Now he was dead—a hunting accident, one of those appalling, unthinkable accidents that should surely never have happened to such a keen and excellent sportsman, a rider admired for his ability and skill.

No accident, of course, but her father had been too wealthy, too important, had had his fingers in far too many pies that no one wanted stirring for too much fuss to be made, and, besides, only she knew the truth. A quiet announcement… the death of the Earl of Rothwell, Lord Wesford, James, William, Geraint… and so on… All his titles and dignities… all his names: family names, each showing an affiliation for the various causes her family had espoused over the years. James for the Stuarts, William for the Hanovers, Geraint, a derivation from the family’s French titles.

She still missed him. Her father had had a brain which had allowed him to build a modest inheritance, counted merely in the odd million or so, into a multi-billion-pound empire. There wasn’t an innovation or a discovery he hadn’t been aware of and involved in—secretly, subtly… he had not been a man who ever courted publicity.

He had also been a first-rate sportsman. He had had everything to live for, mourned his friends at the funeral. What a tragic waste that he should die. And she had moved among those mourners, blundering, overweight, unable to imagine the enormity of her loss, for once unaware of the amused and contemptuous looks people gave her, the raised eyebrows and unkind comments… the incredulity that a man like her father should have produced a child like her.

But that was all behind her now. This wasn’t the time to dwell on the past, other than to acknowledge what it had given her. Now she had to concentrate on the future… a future she could only be fit for if… She tensed, hearing a car drive up to the chalet. It had to be Jake. The taxi that collected him from the hospital would have picked him up at three, as it always did. Now it was almost four.

She wondered how long it would take him to find her. Not too long, surely? She had deliberately worn a particularly strong scent. She wondered if he would recognise it. She didn’t normally wear it during the daytime, and to the best of her recollection there had only been one evening occasion on which she had met him. That had been Annie’s birthday, when she had booked a table for her friend at Gstaad’s most exclusive eating spot, only to have her refuse, uncomfortably explaining that she had already agreed to have dinner with Jake.

Silver smiled to herself as she remembered how Jake had stood there and looked at her… Strange to think he was blind. No one looking at him and not knowing it would ever realise. He had somehow or other perfected a trick of looking directly at people that made it seem as though he could actually focus on them.

He hadn’t invited her to join them, simply smiled at her in that grim-lipped, scornful way of his that made it so abundantly clear what he thought of her. Rich bitch… spoiled playgirl… shallow… useless… predatory… she hugged to herself with glee the words he had not voiced but nevertheless felt, enjoying them, and the joke of it was that he had no idea that it was for that—because of his so obvious contempt and disdain—that she had picked him above the others she had contemplated approaching. His blindness only gave the situation an added piquancy.

It was a pity he knew so much about her. She had been angry when she’d discovered how much Annie had told him, but in the long run it was probably for the best. It would make any explanations so much less tedious and messy. And there would have had to be explanations, no matter whom she had chosen.

The car drove away and the door to the chalet opened. She had left the bedroom door open, but she still couldn’t hear him moving. She had noticed that about him before: that silent, menacing tread that Annie had once told her was a legacy of his early army training.

Annie had never told her why he had left the army and joined the special anti-drugs squad of carefully chosen operatives, working alone and in secret, reporting only to their superior in Whitehall. Whatever the reason, it was unimportant as far as her plans were concerned.