Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [10]
He gulped down his brandy, remembering the story of his grandfather and the nuggets of gold accumulating in the vaults of the California Bank and thought wryly that the old trader had been right. Gold was the only safe investment in times of trouble. But now he needed a little help. He needed capital to finance a new company prospecting for oil off the California coast and he had invited Buck Wingate to dinner to soften the other guys up for the kill. He wanted to show them that he didn’t really need the money, he just wanted to count his old friends in on a sure thing. But Maryanne hadn’t played the game properly tonight. She had acted cold and superior, like she didn’t quite know what she and Buck were doing here with these inferior people. Maryanne was a bitch and he wished he had one like her.
Harry poured another brandy. He needed an alliance, not a marriage. It was time he found himself a woman with money and power and ambition. After all, look what it had done for Buck. And if his wife were as cold as Maryanne, then, like Buck, he could always take his pleasures elsewhere. He was sure women like Maryanne didn’t mind that sort of thing. In fact, they probably welcomed it since it saved them the trouble of having to accommodate their husbands when they had so many other important things to do—like the children and the houses to run, and the servants, and the charity lunches, and the dressmakers, and the political meetings and functions, the fund-raising dinners and the full calendar of events on Washington’s social circuit. But the bitch had given him the cold shoulder tonight when by right she should have been gazing gratefully into his eyes and telling everyone to invest in his oil wells.
He downed another brandy thinking of the women in his life, the endless train of mistresses and one-night stands, his two worthless wives, and Francie. God, he could remember like it was yesterday; his father telling him, when he was still only a kid, that his sister was crazy and that she did not deserve to have the Harrison name. It was at their mother’s funeral when he realized that he was the important one. He was the son and heir. She was a mere girl and she just didn’t count.
CHAPTER 3
Francie couldn’t sleep. She heard the cars and voices as Harry’s guests left and quiet settled over the city. Her mind cast back where it didn’t want to go.
Her first memory was of the week her brother was born. The year was 1891. She was three years old and she climbed from her bed in the third floor nursery and tiptoed down the stairs to the landing to see what all the noise was about. The grand hall, with its dark oak paneling, its stained-glass dome and Italian marble pillars, was lit as bright as day. Menservants wearing the burgundy Harrison livery were hurrying back and forth to the dining room carrying platters of food under the supervision of Maitland, the English butler.
Clinging to the banisters, she watched with fascination a world she had never seen before. Snatches of conversation and laughter came from the dining room and she could hear her father’s booming voice barking an order at Maitland. The butler emerged into the hall, his face impassive as he repeated the order to one of the servants and she shrank back into a corner as the man hurried past her up the stairs.
A few minutes later he returned carrying a tightly wrapped bundle. It was her new baby brother, who she knew slept in a crib by her mother’s bed, and whom she had only been allowed to see once for a few minutes when her father was out. “Because he’s afraid of the germs, dear,” her mother had said. The servant disappeared toward the kitchen with the baby, and Francie’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. Were they going to put him in the oven and cook him for supper?
She clung terrified to the banisters and a few minutes later Maitland strode across the