The Emma Harte 7-Book Collection: A Woman of Substance, Hold the Dream, To Be the Best, Emma’s Secret, Unexpected Blessings, Just Rewards, Breaking the Rules. Barbara Taylor Bradford
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Harte, I am absolutely sure of everything I’ve said,’ Gaye answered quietly. ‘Furthermore, I have not added or subtracted anything, and I haven’t exaggerated either.’
‘Is that all?’
‘No, there’s more.’ Gaye bent down and picked up her handbag. She opened it and took out a tape, which she placed on the desk in front of Emma.
Emma regarded the tape, her eyes narrowing. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a tape of everything that was said, Mrs Harte. Except for whatever occurred before I went into the filing room. And the first few sentences I heard. They are missing.’
Emma looked at her uncomprehendingly, her eyebrows lifting, questions on the tip of her tongue. But before she could ask them, Gaye proceeded to explain more fully.
‘Mrs Harte, the tape machine was on. That’s why I went back to the office in the first place. When I went into the filing room, and heard them shouting, I was distracted for a minute. I turned off the filing-room light so they wouldn’t come in and see me. It was then that I saw the red light on the machine flickering and I went to turn this off, too. But it suddenly occured to me to record their conversation, since I was getting the general drift of it, and realized its importance. So I pressed the record button. Everything they said after that moment is here, even the things which were said after I closed the door and couldn’t hear clearly.’
Emma had the irresistible desire to laugh out loud, a bitter, hollow laugh. She resisted the impulse, lest Gaye think her raving mad and out of her senses, or hysterical at the most. The fools, the utter fools! she thought. And the irony of it! They had chosen her own boardroom in which to plot against her. That was their first and most crucial mistake. An irrevocable mistake. Kit and Robin were directors of Harte Enterprises, but they were not on the board of the department-store chain. They did not come to board meetings at the store, and so they did not know that she had recently installed sophisticated equipment to record the minutes, another time-saving device. It liberated Gaye for other duties and she simply typed up the minutes from the tapes when it was convenient. The microphones were hooked up under the boardroom table, hidden for aesthetics rather than for any reasons of secrecy in the elegant Georgian room with its fine antiques and paintings of great worth. Emma looked down at the tape on the glass desk, and to her it was an evil thing, lying there like a coiled and venomous snake.
‘I assume you have listened to this, Gaye?’
‘Yes, Mrs Harte. I waited until they left and then I played it back, I took it home with me on Friday and it hasn’t been out of my sight since then.’
‘Is there much more on it? More than you have already told me?’
‘About another ten minutes or so. They were discussing …’
Emma held up her hand, utterly exhausted, unable to hear any more. ‘Never mind, Gaye. I’ll play it later. I know quite enough already!’
She stood up and walked across the room to the window, erect and composed, though her steps were slow and dragged wearily across the thick carpet. She moved the curtains slightly. It had started to snow. The crystal flakes fell in glittering white flurries, swirling and eddying in the wind, brushing up against the window and coating it with a light film as delicate and as fine as white lace. But the flakes were rapidly melting under the bright sun, running in rivulets down the glass and turning into drizzle before they reached the ground. Emma looked down. Far below her the traffic moved in slow unending lines up and down Park Avenue and the scene was strangely remote. And everything was hushed in the room, as if the entire world had stopped and was silent, stilled for ever.
She pressed her aching head against the window and closed her eyes and thought of her two sons, of all her children, but mostly of her adored Robin, her favourite son. Robin, who had become her antagonist after they had clashed a few years before about a take-over bid for the chain of stores. A bid which came from out of the blue and which she did not want to even discuss, never mind consider. When she had refused to talk to the conglomerate involved, he had been vociferous in his condemnation of her, exclaiming angrily that she did not want to sell because she did not want to relinquish her power. She had met resentment from him in such virulent proportions that she was at first incredulous and then truly infuriated. What nerve, what gall, she had thought at the time, that he would dare to dictate to her about her business. One in which he did not have the slightest interest, except for the money it brought him. Robin the handsome, the dashing, the brilliant Member of Parliament. Robin with his long-suffering wife, his mistresses, his rather questionable male friends, and his taste for high living. Yes, Robin was the instigator of this deadly little plot, of that she was quite sure.
Kit, her eldest son, did not have the imagination or the nerve to promulgate so nefarious a scheme. But what he lacked in imagination he made up for in plodding diligence and stubbornness and he was uncommonly patient. Kit could wait years for anything he truly wanted, and she had always known he wanted the stores. But he had never had any aptitude for retailing, and long ago, when he was still young, she had manoeuvred him into Harte Enterprises, steered him towards the woollen mills in Yorkshire, which he ran with a degree of efficiency. Yes, Kit could always be manoeuvred, and no doubt Robin is doing just that, she thought contemptuously.
She contemplated her three daughters and her mouth twisted into a grim smile as she considered Edwina, the eldest, the first born of all her children. She had worked like a drudge and fought like a tigress for Edwina when she was still only a girl herself, for she had loved Edwina with all her heart. And yet she had always known that Edwina had never truly felt the same way about her, oddly distant as a little girl, remote in her youth, and that remoteness had turned into real coldness in later years. Edwina had allied herself with Robin at the time of the take-over bid, backing him to the hilt. Undoubtedly she was now his chief ally in this perfidious scheme. She found it hard to believe that Elizabeth, Robin’s twin, would go along with them, and yet perhaps she would. Beautiful, wild, untameable Elizabeth, with her exquisite features and beguiling charm and her penchant for expensive husbands, expensive clothes, and expensive travel. No amount of money was ever enough to satisfy her and she needed it as constantly and as desperately as Robin.
Daisy was the only one of whom she was sure, because she knew that of all her children Daisy truly loved her. Daisy was not involved in this scheme of things, because she would never be a party to a conspiracy engineered by her brothers and sisters to slice up the Harte holdings. Apart from her love and her loyalty, Daisy had the utmost respect for her and faith in her judgement. Daisy never questioned her motives or decisions, because she recognized that they were generated by a sense of fair play, and were based entirely on judicious planning.
Daisy was her youngest child, and as different in looks and character from Emma as the others were, but she was closely bound to her mother and they cared for each other with a deep and powerful love that bordered on adoration. Daisy was all sweetness and gentleness, fine and honourable and good. At times, in the past, Emma had mused on Daisy’s intrinsic purity and honesty and worried about it, believing her to be too open and soft for her own safety. Emma had reasoned that her goodness could only make her dangerously vulnerable. But, eventually, she had begun to comprehend that there was a deep and strong inner core in Daisy that was tenacious. In her own way she could be as implacable as Emma, and she was unshakeable in her beliefs, brave and courageous in her actions, and steadfast in her loyalties. Emma had finally recognized that it was Daisy’s very goodness that protected her. It enfolded her like a shining and impenetrable sheath of chain mail and so made her incorruptible and inviolate against all.
And the others know that, Emma thought, as she continued to gaze out at the skyline of Manhattan, her heart flooded with despair. She was still shaken; however, the stunned feeling that she had been bludgeoned about her head and her body was slowly dissipating. She discovered, too, that although she had been thunderstruck initially, this reaction was also a passing thing. She actually felt no sense of surprise now at Gaye’s story. It was not that she had ever anticipated these actions of her children, for in all truth she had not. But few things came as a surprise to Emma any more and in her wisdom, understanding, and experience of life, family treachery was not surprising to her at all.