Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [145]
Francie’s sitting room was on the ground floor, with tall windows overlooking California Street. It was small enough to be cosy and yet large enough to accommodate all her needs, her books, her desk, and the comfortable chairs and sofas she had chosen in pale amber brocade, but it still had that vaguely empty feeling of newness. The house was deliberately unostentatious. It was built of cream limestone in English Georgian style, with a plain facade and a four-paneled black wooden door with a pretty scalloped glass fanlight, and the only marble to be seen was on the front steps and the pastry table in the white-tiled kitchen. The floors were of wide-planked elm, crafted by a master and polished to a pale tawny sheen, and the only paneling was in the library, where it was appropriate. A glorious “flying” staircase seemed to sweep without support to the semicircular gallery on the second floor and tall windows filled the whole house with light. The English architect told Francie it was based on a house in London’s Mayfair, and its elegant simplicity was certainly different from the ornate grandeur of her childhood home and Harry’s monstrous replica just down the road.
When Edward Stratton left her Francie had not cried, nor had she wallowed in self-pity. She accepted that he had the right to change his mind about marrying her. She would have told him the truth given the chance, but Harry had beaten her to it. Harry had decided her fate for her and her sadness turned to anger and steely resolve.
She had finally built her house and as it grew so did her confidence. The L. T. Francis Company had become the Lai Tsin Corporation and their fleet of ships crisscrossing the world now numbered seventeen, transporting goods for merchants and manufacturers as far apart as Liverpool and Los Angeles, Bombay and Singapore, Istanbul and Hamburg; and their name featured in the shipping charts published in every newspaper in the world.
Lai Tsin had the mysterious knack of being in the right place at exactly the right moment, and though he counted no friends amongst the businessmen of San Francisco and the taipans in Hong Kong, he was no longer treated with the contempt they showed a coolie. He never wore Western clothes and in his long, blue embroidered robe he had a quiet dignity that commanded the grudging respect of the men with whom he did business, and they would have been hard put to think of a single bad deal he had made or any act of injustice he had committed.
From her window Francie saw the burgundy de Courmont drive past and glimpsed her brother’s curious face as he turned to stare, but she did not smile in satisfaction. Five years had passed since the fateful night Harry had ruined her life, but to her surprise all she felt for him now was indifference. She watched as the chauffeur held open the door and the butler hurried down the steps while a footman ran to fetch his bags: Harry had never moved a step in his life without a dozen servants to do his bidding and she wondered contemptuously if he even remembered how to put the toothpaste on his brush or how to shave his own face. And with his puffy eyes and the extra padding of weight, he looked a decade older.
She shrugged and turned away, wondering what he would say when he found out that she was his new neighbor, but in truth she didn’t really care. There was nothing Harry could do to her now. Her wealth might not yet match his, but if the rumors