Rome's Revenge

She could always telephone her mother, currently pursuing merry widowhood in Miami, but she’d probably find Sonia absorbed in her daily bridge game. And Gramps would only want to hear that she’d had a good time, so she’d have to fabricate something before she saw him next.

Maybe I’ll get a cat, she thought. The final affirmation of spinsterhood. Which at twenty-three was ridiculous.

Perhaps I should change my name to Tina, she thought. There Is No Alternative.

She carefully removed the silver dress, and placed it over a chair. She’d have it cleaned, she decided, and send it to tonight’s charity’s second-hand shop. It would do more good there than it had while she’d been wearing it. Or had it really been wearing her?

Moot point, she thought, reaching for her moss-green velvet robe. And paused…

She rarely looked at herself in the mirror, except when she washed her face or brushed her hair, but now she found she was subjecting herself to a prolonged and critical scrutiny.

The silver-grey silk and lace undies she wore concealed very little from her searching gaze, so no false comfort there.

Her breasts were high and firm, but too small, she thought disparagingly. Everywhere else she was as flat as a board. At least her legs were long, but there were deep hollows at the base of her neck, and her shoulderblades could slice bread.

No wonder her blonde, glamorous mother, whose finely honed figure was unashamedly female, had tended to view her as if she’d given birth to a giraffe.

I’m just like Dad and Gramps, she acknowledged with a sigh. And if I’d only been a boy I’d have been glad of it.

She put on her robe and zipped it up, welcoming its warm embrace.

She dabbed cleanser on to her face, and tissued away the small amount of make-up which was all she ever wore. A touch of shadow on her lids, a glow of pink or coral on her soft mouth, and a coat of brown mascara to emphasise the curling length of the lashes that shaded her hazel eyes. Her cheekbones required no accenting.

From the neck up she wasn’t too bad, she thought judiciously. It was a shame she couldn’t float round as a disembodied head.

But she couldn’t understand why she was going in for this kind of personal assessment anyway. Unless it was Shelley’s reference to Rob, and all the unhappy memories his name still had the power to evoke.

Which is really stupid, she thought quickly. I should put it behind me. Move on. Isn’t that what we’re always being told?

But some things weren’t so easy to leave behind.

She went across her living room into her small galley-kitchen and poured milk into a pan, setting it on the hob to heat. Hot chocolate was what she needed. Comfort in a mug. Not a stony trip down memory lane.

When her drink was ready, she lit the gas fire and curled up in her big armchair, her hands cupped round the beaker, her gaze fixed on the small blue flames leaping above the mock coals.

One day, she thought, she’d have a huge log fire in a hearth big enough to roast an ox.

In fact, if she wanted, she could have one next week. One word to Gramps, and mansions with suitable fireplaces would be laid open for her inspection.

Only, she didn’t want.

She’d found out quite early in life that as the sole heiress to the Grant building empire the word was hers for the asking. That her grandfather was ready to gratify any whim she expressed. Which was why she’d learned to guard every word, and ask for as little as possible.

And this flat, with its one bedroom and tiny bathroom, was quite adequate for her present needs, she thought, looking round her with quiet satisfaction.

The property company who owned it had raised no objection to her getting rid of the elderly fitted carpets and having the floorboards sanded and polished to a gleaming honey shine.

She’d painted the walls a deep rich cream, and bought a big, comfortable sofa and matching chair covered in a corded olive-green fabric.

She’d made a dining area, with a round, glass-topped table supported by a cream pedestal and a pair of slender high-backed chairs, and created an office space with a neat corner desk which she’d assembled herself from a pack during one long, fraught evening, and which held her laptop, her phone and a fax machine.

Not that she worked at home a great deal. She’d been determined from the first that the flat would be her sanctuary, and that she would leave Grant Industries behind each time she closed her door.

Although she could never really be free of it for long, she acknowledged with a smothered sigh.

But she used her home computer mainly to follow share dealings on the Internet—an interest she’d acquired during her time with Rob, and the only one to survive their traumatic break-up. A hobby, she thought, that she could pursue alone.

It had never been her parents’ intention for her to be an only child. Cory had been born two years after their marriage, and it had been expected that other babies would follow in due course.

But there had seemed no real hurry. Ian and Sonia Grant had liked to live in the fast lane, and their partying had been legendary. Sonia had been a professional tennis player in her single days, and Ian’s passion, apart from his wife and baby, had been rally driving.

Sonia had been playing in an invitation tournament in California when a burst tyre had caused Ian’s car to spin off a forest road and crash, killing him instantly.

Sonia had tried to assuage her grief by re-embarking on the tennis circuit, and for a few years Cory had travelled with her mother in a regime of constantly changing nannies and hotel suites.

Arnold Grant had finally intervened, insisting that the little girl come back to Britain to be educated and live a more settled life, and Cory’s childhood had then been divided between her grandparents’ large house in Chelsea and their Suffolk home, which she’d much preferred.

Sonia had eventually remarried, her second husband being American industrialist Morton Traske, and after his death from a heart attack she’d taken up permanent residence in Florida.

Cory had an open invitation to join her, but her mother’s country-club lifestyle had never held any appeal for her. And she suspected that Sonia, who was determinedly keeping the years at bay, found her a secret embarrassment anyway.

Their relationship was affectionate, but detached, and Cory found herself regarding Sonia very much as a wayward older sister. Most of the mothering in her life had been supplied by her grandmother.

Beth Grant had been a serenely beautiful woman, confident in the love of her husband and family. The loss of her son had clouded her hazel eyes and added lines of sadness to the corners of her mouth, but she had given herself whole-heartedly to the rearing of his small daughter, and Cory had worshipped her.

However, it hadn’t taken long for Cory to realise there was another shadow over her grandmother’s happiness, or to understand its nature.

The feud, she thought wearily. The damn feud. Still alive even after all these years.

It had been the only time she’d known her grandparents to quarrel. Seen tears of anger in Beth Grant’s eyes and heard her voice raised in protest.

‘This can’t go on,’ she’d railed. ‘It’s monstrous—farcical. You’re like children, scoring off each other. Except it’s more dangerous than that. For God’s sake, stop it—stop it now…’

Her grandfather’s answering rumble had been fierce. ‘He started it, Bethy, and you know it. So tell him to give it up. Tell him to stop trying to destroy me. To undermine my business—overthrow my companies.’

Arnold Grant had smiled grimly. ‘Because it hasn’t worked, and it never will. Because I won’t allow it. Anything he does to me will be done back to him. And he’ll be the one to call a truce in the end—not me.’

‘The end?’ his wife had echoed bitterly. ‘What kind of truce can there be when you’re trying to annihilate each other?’

She’d suddenly seen Cory, standing in the doorway, and had hustled her away, chiding gently.

‘Gran,’ Cory had asked that night, when Beth had come to tuck her into bed, ‘who’s Matt Sansom?’

‘Someone who doesn’t matter,’ Beth had said firmly. ‘Not to me, and, I hope, never to you. Now, go to sleep, and forget all about it.’

Wise counsel, Cory thought, grimacing, but sadly impossible to follow. And, since her grandmother’s death six years before, the enmity between the two men seemed even more entrenched and relentless.

Only last week her grandfather had been gloating because he’d been able to filch a prime piece of real estate which Sansom Industries had been negotiating for from under their very noses.