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held up his hand and shook his head. ‘Not now, Osborne. I called you in because I have just spoken to Mrs Harte. She asked me to go over to the store later this morning. Is everything in order? No problems?’
‘Absolutely not!’ Osborne was emphatic in his surprise. ‘Everything is under control.’
‘I assume you have been keeping an eye on her foreign holdings. Did you go over them yesterday?’ Henry played with the pen on his desk, still somewhat beset by worry.
‘We always do on Monday. We checked her American and Australian interests, and all are steady. Sitex is doing well. There’s actually been a rise in the price since the new president went in there. Look here, Henry, is something wrong? What’s up?’ he asked.
Henry shook his head. ‘Nothing that I am aware of, Osborne. But I do like to be completely current and informed before I see her. I think I’ll take a look at her accounts with you. Let’s go to your office.’
After an hour and a half of concentrating on the most pertinent of the Harte accounts, Henry was totally satisfied that Osborne and his assistants had been both precise and diligent in their work. All of the English figures were current and the figures for the foreign Harte holdings were as up-to-date as they could be with the changing world markets, the different time zones, and the rise and fall of stock prices. At eleven sharp, for he was punctilious about time, Henry put on his black overcoat, picked up his bowler hat and umbrella, and left the office. He stood on the steps of the bank, sniffing the air for a moment. It was cold but crisp and sunny. Osborne was right, it was a beautiful day for January, spring-like in its clear freshness. He walked swiftly down the street, swinging his umbrella jauntily, a tall, handsome man in his early sixties, whose serious and dignified demeanour belied a sharp sense of humour and a flirtatious nature.
Henry Rossiter had a cool mind, which was also quite brilliant. A cultured man, he was an art connoisseur, a collector of rare first editions, a devotee of drama and music. He could also ride and shoot like the gentleman he was, and he was Master of the Hunt of the county where his ancestral home was located. The product of a rich and old Establishment family, landed gentry, in fact, he was today a curious amalgam of upper-class English conservative principles and international sophistication. He had been married twice and was currently divorced, which made him one of London’s most eligible bachelors, much in demand by chic hostesses, for he was entertaining, charming, and adept in all the social graces, and something of a bon vivant. In short, he was attractive and lethal, a success both in business and in society.
Henry hailed a cab at the corner and got in. Leaning forward, he said, ‘Harte’s, please,’ and sat back, relaxed and confident that Emma could have no complaints about the bank. Absolutely none whatsoever. He still could not fathom the reason for her sudden invitation, but he had shed his incipient worry. Women, he thought with fond exasperation, unpredictable creatures at the best of times! He truly believed all women were quite impossible, having been baffled, confused, and bewitched by them all of his life. But now he felt compelled to readjust his thinking, as far as Emma was concerned. He simply could not, in all honesty, label her unpredictable or even impossible. Headstrong, yes, and sometimes even stubborn to the point of rigidity. But mostly he knew Emma to be prudent and levelheaded, and circumspection was undoubtedly her most basic characteristic. No, ‘unpredictable’ was not a word he would ever associate with Emma.
As the cab pushed its way through the congested traffic towards Knightsbridge, Henry’s thoughts stayed with Emma Harte. They had been friends and business associates for many years and had enjoyed a compatible and mutually rewarding relationship. He had always found Emma easy to work with, for her mind was logical and direct. She did not think in that convoluted female way, nor was her mind cluttered up with the usual womanish nonsense. He smiled to himself. Once he had told her that she did not have a mind like a woman at all, that it was more like a man’s. ‘Oh, is there a difference!’ she had retorted with some asperity, but there had been an amused smile on her face. At the time he had been a trifle hurt, for he had meant it as a great compliment, in view of his disparaging opinions of women, or rather, their intellectual capacities.
He had been entranced by Emma from the first day they had met. Then he had thought her to be the most fascinating woman he had ever encountered and he still did. Once, long ago, he had even believed himself to be in love with her, although she had never been aware of his feelings. He had been twenty-four and she had been thirty-nine and that most desirable of all creatures, the experienced older woman. She had been extraordinarily striking in her appearance, with her luxuriant hair coming dramatically to a widow’s peak above a broad forehead and enormous vividly green eyes that were bright and alive. She was filled with a tremendous energy, a robust vitality that was infectious, and he was always buoyed up by her vivacity and her incredible optimism. She was a refreshing change from the insipid and constrained women he had been surrounded by all his life. Emma had a sardonic wit, a capacity for laughing both at herself and at her troubles, and an innate gaiety and zest for living that Henry found remarkable. From then, until this very day, he had been continually staggered by her intelligence, her prescience, and her unconquerable determination. And he had always been susceptible to that natural charm of hers, a charm which Henry knew had been consciously distilled over the years, and which she had learned to use with consummate skill, carefully exploiting its effects to the fullest for the most propitious results.
For almost thirty years he had been her financial adviser. She always listened to him carefully and appreciated his suggestions and they had never quarrelled in all of this time. In a peculiar sort of proprietary way he was inordinately proud of Emma and what she had become. A great lady. An unparalleled business success. It was a well-established fact that Emma Harte’s London store surpassed any other in the world, not only in size but in the quality and variety of its merchandise. Not without reason was she known as one of the great merchant princes, although few knew, as Henry did, the enormous and crippling price she had paid for her success. He had always felt that the foundations of her immense retailing empire were compounded of her own self-sacrifice and dogged will power, her genius for selling, her instinctive understanding of the public’s whims, an unerring eye for recognizing trends, and nerve enough to gamble when necessary. He had once told Tony Osborne that the bricks and mortar of the store were wrought from her great vision, her amazing facility for finance, and her uncanny ability to rise from the most impossible situations to triumph. And he had meant it. As far as Henry was concerned, she had done it all alone, and the London store, of all the stores she owned, was a towering testimony to her invincible strength.
‘’Ere we are,’ the cab-driver said cheerily. Henry got out, paid the fare, and hurried down the side street to the staff entrance and the elevator that would take him to the top floor and Emma’s executive offices.
Gaye Sloane was talking to one of the secretaries in the outer reception office when Henry walked in. She greeted him warmly. ‘Mrs Harte is waiting for you,’ she said as she opened the door to Emma’s office and ushered him inside.
Emma was sitting at her desk, which was covered with papers. He thought she looked oddly frail behind it. She glanced up as he came in, took off her glasses, and stood up. He realized that her frailty had only been an illusion created by the large heavy desk, for she moved towards him swiftly, lightly, full of vitality, her face wreathed in smiles. She was elegantly dressed in a dark bottle-green velvet suit, with something white and silky at the throat caught in an emerald pin, and emerald earrings glittered at her ears.
‘Henry darling, how lovely to see you,’ she said as she took hold of his arm affectionately. He smiled and bent down to kiss her on the cheek and thought: She seems well enough. But he detected a drawn look around her eyes and she was paler than usual.
‘Let me look at you, Emma dear,’ he said, holding her away from him so that he could regard her more fully. He laughed and shook his head in mock bewilderment. ‘You’ll have to tell me your secret, darling. I don’t know how you do it, but you look positively blooming.’
Emma smiled. ‘Hard work, a clean life, and a clear conscience. And you shouldn’t complain, Henry. You look marvellous yourself. Come on, darling, let’s have a sherry and a chat.’ She led him over to the comfortable arrangement of chairs and a