The Scarlet Thread (31 page)

“I will,” Aldo Fabrizzi said. “You'll come to the wedding? We're fixing it for January. Here in New York. They're young, and you know what hot blood is. They don't want to wait.” He grinned.

Lucca chuckled. He raised his glass of Strega. “Here's health and happiness and sons to them,” he said.

Aldo called for the bill, and side by side, surrounded by their bodyguards, they made their way through the restaurant, stopping once or twice to accept greetings from other diners. Outside, the big, sleek cars, armor-plated under gleaming paintwork, glided up to receive them. They drove off side by side and then, at the first intersection, swung apart and went their separate ways.

SIX

The casino was finished. The last decorator had left, the last curtainmaker had settled the drapes and swags of silk and velvet, the last piece of furniture was in place. They were a month late. The opening was now scheduled for September. Steven and Angela toured the rooms. He wanted to share his triumph with her first. He brought her there at night, to see it illuminated in its glory, as the rich and famous would see it.

The baccarat tables were in place in the
salon privé
, where only the richest were admitted. There were roulette wheels and tables for blackjack in the outer rooms, where the stakes were more modest. He held Angela's hand as they made their tour, and at one of the roulette tables, Steven paused and spun the wheel, throwing the little ball. It rattled into a red socket.

“Seven,” he said. “My lucky number, darling. And so much of it is due to you. You've made it beautiful for me.” He took her in his arms. “I want you to be part of this. I want you to be excited by what we've done together. You are, aren't you?”

“You know I am,” Angela told him. “It's wonderful, Steven. I'm very proud of you.”

“We'll have a good life,” he said. “We'll make lots of money and we'll have a fine business to hand on to our boy. I'm not going to stop at this, darling. This is just the beginning. I'm going to build a hotel next. I'm going to invest in property. There's so much scope here on the coast. So I won't be just a gambler. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I would. I worry about one thing.”

“Tell me,” he said gently. “Tell me what it is.”

“Ralph's stories about people killing themselves because they'd gambled everything away. You won't let that happen, will you?”

“I don't believe half of what he tells us,” he said. “He likes to make an impression. It's part of his job. What about the people who've made fortunes and walked off?”

“That doesn't happen very often,” she answered.

“Thank God for that,” he teased her. Then he said seriously, “But if it would make you happy, we'll have a policy. If it's known someone's getting in too deep, we'll close down the game. How would that be?”

“Oh, darling, will you really do that? I would be so much happier. And so would you.”

He said softly, “I guess I would. I'll set it up.”

It was a perfect night for a gala opening. The weather was hot, with a light sea breeze, the sky a backdrop of black velvet, diamond-studded with stars. The casino was bathed in light; even the gardens were illuminated.

Steven was there early, supervising the last details. Maxton had spent the day on the premises. He changed into evening dress upstairs in his private office. He was excited, and amused by that excitement. For years he had felt immune to strong emotions. Only the visceral thrill of gambling ever affected him, sending adrenaline pumping, making his hands tremble. But tonight was special.

It had come together very quickly at the end, as such projects tend to do, after delays and frustrations that made the opening date recede into improbability. Then it was ready! Everything was done, down to the last flower arrangement. The staff had lined up and passed inspection, and the croupiers and dealers were in their places, immaculate in evening dress.

Maxton had ordered champagne to be brought up to his handsome office, with its elegant desk and comfortable leather chairs and a cocktail cabinet for entertaining. He popped the cork and poured a full glass, then he raised it in a private toast.

“To you, Great-uncle Oleg. Wherever you are, you old devil. You'd have enjoyed tonight.”

He had persuaded Steven not to change the name. And Angela had been his ally. Casino Poliakoff had a dignified, romantic sound. And it was good publicity. To whet public curiosity, Maxton had circulated stories, true and invented, about the origins of the splendid house built by a crazy czarist aristocrat for his French mistress. As a final touch, he had suggested that a portrait of the count be placed in the entrance hall.

“But there isn't one,” Steven objected.

“I think I can get hold of a photograph. Then all we have to do is get someone to copy it in oils.”

And to Angela he said later, “I didn't say anything to Steven, but the old boy was a sort of ancestor. His sister married my grandfather.”

“He knows,” she said. “Have you got a photograph?”

“Yes,” he said. “I have. I actually brought an old album back with me last time I went to England. It had pictures of my mother I rather liked, and it seemed a pity to take them out, so I made off with the whole thing. There's a splendid snap of Oleg in uniform. I think we could commission a rather handsome portrait from it.… I didn't know Steven knew there was a connection,” he added casually.

Angela said, “Steven knows everything about you, Ralph. Don't ever try to hide anything from him, will you? He wouldn't like it.”

“I wouldn't be able to, it seems. Fair enough.”

He hadn't been pleased, she could see that. He left her rather quickly. When she saw him two days later he was his charming, easygoing self.

They'd brought the boy over to attend the opening. Ralph thought it a ridiculous thing to do. Charlie was a nice fellow, in Ralph's view, but in danger of being ruined by his parents. Steven was the most indulgent stepfather, worse than Angela, who at least tried to insist that he not skip school and that he take his exams seriously. Steven's obsession with another man's son was very odd. He didn't seem the type to lavish paternal love on a stepson. Maxton resented the relationship. It upset his theories on fathers' attitudes to their sons. But he was intelligent enough to suspect that his own bleak family background was the reason.

It was laughable, but whenever he saw Steven and Charlie going off together, he felt a jealous pang. Steven was teaching the boy to play golf. He was not interested in sports, but he had taken up tennis and riding and now golf, so as to be a companion to Charlie when he stayed with them. And then there were Charlie's friends. They flew in at Steven's expense and were put up at the villa. A boat with a skipper was chartered to take them sailing; every facility from waterskiing to scuba diving was paid for and organized. Again, Maxton recognized that he was jealous. He envied Charlie Lawrence his good looks, his self-confidence. He envied him the kind of love and attention that had never come Ralph's way.

And he watched Angela with her son; it gave him a new perspective on the role a mother plays in a boy's upbringing. She was gentle and affectionate, firm when it was in Charlie's interest, but above all, she was a friend to whom her son could turn if he felt in need of comfort or advice.

He marveled at her kindness, not only to those close to her but to him, the stranger who'd come into her life whether she wanted him or not. No woman had ever been kind to Ralph. He'd been made to feel he was a changeling by his family.

That was what his old nanny used to say when he'd been naughty. “I don't know where you came from, you're such a bad boy! A real little changeling you are.”

He felt cold with hatred when he remembered her. He was always being punished. His bottom would sting from angry beatings with a hairbrush. There were six children under her care, but he was always judged the culprit, even when he wasn't guilty. “Up to bed with you—no supper. That'll teach you.” There was no appeal against her tyranny. His mother was a remote figure who drifted in and out of her children's lives at set times, and her embraces were brief and never encouraged intimacy. Nanny ruled the nursery kingdom. She cuddled his brothers and sisters, settling them in her big lap and tickling them, or rocking them to and fro, but it seemed to Ralph that she hated him. He lived in fear, and those who wanted to stay in Nanny's good graces showed him no favor.

“I've spoken to her ladyship.
You're
not going to the pantomime!”—the Christmas treat before he went back to preparatory school. He was seven, and the pantomime was Dick Whittington. He'd been looking forward to it all through the holidays. Now his mother had sided with the enemy and confirmed her sentence.

He watched from the window as the others set off by car, and he cried as if his heart would burst. There was no kindness in women. Even the nursery maid tattled on him to curry favor.

No kindness and no pity. They punished you when you were a child, and when you grew up, you knew what to expect from them. So you used them for pleasure, but you reserved your love for yourself. He was twelve when his tormentor died; a governess took her place with the smaller children, but it made no difference to Ralph.

He was growing up fast, a clever, ugly youth with a wild streak in him. No one understood him or tried to win his confidence. He seemed to have a natural penchant for trouble and no interest in the solid pursuits of horse, gun and rod. In fact, he hated hunting—a crime in his father's view. But he loved racing and even as a schoolboy had been caught making book on the derby and threatened with expulsion. He had shamed them all. He'd heard someone say once when he was still in his teens and in disgrace for some misdeed he'd since forgotten, “It's the Russian blood, I suppose—totally unreliable.” He thought it was an aunt, talking to his father, but he couldn't be sure.

Steven was displaying a degree of nervousness about the opening that surprised Maxton. He was even more surprised at the new house rule that Steven had introduced. Clients were not allowed to gamble in excess of their known means. Experienced staff could quickly tell when a man or woman had begun to gamble out of desperation. They were instructed, on pain of dismissal, to close the game. Maxton had mentioned that such a ruling was unheard of in any gambling establishment.

Steven had dismissed the objection. “That's the way Angela wants it. She got upset by all the suicide stories you told her. I promised, and that's the way it's going to be.”

He hadn't struck Maxton as a man likely to be swayed by his wife's moral scruples, but Ralph was wrong about that too.

The love of a good woman, Ralph Maxton mocked to himself, but it was self-mockery. And envy was deep there too. Lawrence didn't deserve her. He couldn't think of anyone who did. “I warm my cold heart at your hearth.” He enjoyed poetry, and that line from a Renaissance verse often came to mind when he was with Angela.

He'd been ill with flu the month before, when preparations were most hectic, and she herself was working long hours on the decorations and the final touches in the public rooms at the palace. No one had ever bothered with Ralph when he was sick. The ladies who'd lent him money had received favors in return, not least a buoyant cheerfulness. When he was hungry and broke, he'd sung for his supper. Illness and depression were endured alone.

But Angela amazed him. And embarrassed him. She came to his flat with food and old-fashioned remedies for coughs and colds that made him wince with memories of his childhood. And he felt a strange sense of weakness as he let her arrange his removal to the villa. “You can't lie here all on your own with a temperature like that. No arguments. You're coming home, where I can keep an eye on you.” He'd tried to laugh it off, but he was wrapped up and hustled out of the apartment, on his way up to her villa at Valbonne to be nursed.

It had quite unnerved him. He wasn't falling in love with her, he insisted, just because she was kind and made a fuss over him.

He had never been in love with any woman. Madeleine, the avaricious little
poule de luxe
who'd shared his Christmas bounty at the Hôtel de Paris, was his soulmate, his choice of female company. He felt safe with her.

No, he was not going to open his cold heart to Angela Lawrence. Perish the thought. As if to strengthen that resolve, he had included Madeleine and her aging protector in the guest list for the gala opening. He finished a second glass of champagne before going downstairs.

Steven was waiting in the main hall. He looked at his watch. Charlie was escorting his mother. He saw Maxton and said, “They're late. Five minutes late.”

“The traffic's heavy,” Maxton reassured him. He gave a quick glance at his own watch, a handsome gold Rolex. A present to himself. His old one had been pawned during the lean years.

“I see headlights.” He came away from the glass doors opening out onto the portico entrance. “They're here,” he said.

The doors were swung open by two liveried doormen, and Angela walked through them with her son.

“You look beautiful,” Steven said. He took both her hands. “Doesn't your mother look beautiful?” he asked Charlie, and then, without waiting for an answer, he said, “And you look great, son. A white tuxedo—very smart.”

“Mum chose it,” Charlie explained. “Gosh, doesn't everything look terrific! Look at the flowers and all the lights.”

Steven ushered them to the stairs. “We have fifteen minutes before the first guests arrive. Champagne's on ice upstairs. Come on. Let's drink to success tonight!”

Maxton watched them go. It was a very wide stair, so Steven was able to walk up between his wife and the boy, an arm around each. Maxton turned away.