Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [32]
Harry Harrison covered his ears as the noise of the single shot ricocheted from the stone walls of the courtyard. He watched as the big sand-colored dog sank slowly to the ground, a puzzled expression in its amber eyes. There was very little blood, but he felt sick. Still, he knew his father had been right—he had explained it all to him on board ship as they paced the decks together recrossing the Atlantic. He glanced at his sister—a sobbing heap, her arms around the dead dog—and he felt no pity for her. His father had said she deserved it and he believed him.
The Harrison servants gossiped, and it had soon became common knowledge in smart San Francisco drawing rooms that millionaire Harmon Harrison kept his daughter in a maid’s room with bars on the windows; that he had shot her dog to punish her; that he beat her when she was naughty, which was often; and that he had hired a strict governess to teach her French and sewing and Bible studies, and to instill some moral principles in her.
“Every family has its cross to bear,” they had whispered to each other over their teacups. “But young Harry Harrison is a different matter, so handsome like his father, such aristocratic bearing and splendid manners. He will go far—and one day he will inherit his father’s millions.”
Francie Harrison was soon forgotten and for the next ten years she lived in a twilight world on the fourth floor, studying French, embroidering neat flowers on traycloths that were never used and taking decorous walks each afternoon with her jailer.
Each week the governess reported on her conduct to her father, and if the demerits were too many she was summoned to his study and beaten with Princess’s old lead.
Harry was sent to his father’s prep school back East and she saw him occasionally when he returned for vacations. He acted rude and avoided her whenever possible. He behaved arrogantly with the servants and was as smooth as silk in society. Harry, she decided, was a worm and not worthy of her attention. He was just like his father.
A prisoner in her own home, Francie yearned for her mother and for Princess, dreaming of the days on the old ranch when she had been happy.
CHAPTER 7
Josh Aysgarth was a dreamy little lad with dark blond hair and solemn, clear gray eyes and a smile that would melt anybody’s heart. He and Sammy Morris were as different as chalk and cheese; Sammy was as dark as Josh was fair and as stocky as Josh was slender. Sammy was quick-tempered, brooding, and moody, and Josh was slow to anger and saw no malice in anybody. He lived in a dream-world of his own. But Mrs. Morris always claimed Josh led Sammy into trouble at school and Annie said it was Sammy who was the bad’n. Still, she treated Sammy like Josh’s own brother and gave him whatever section of her heart was left over from Josh.
That’s why it was such a blow when Frank Aysgarth decided to move up in the world and built himself a foursquare, four-bedroomed redbrick house off on its own atop a leafy hill. He added a wooden front porch and a thick surround of laurel shrubs and called it Ivy Cottage, though there was not a scrap of ivy anywhere near it. He moved all their old furniture as well as a new three-piece suite upholstered in dark green velvet, a heavily carved oak sideboard with a mirrored overmantel, a matching table and six solid oak chairs into his new house along with his family.
When Josh first told him of the move Sammy was devastated. “We’ve lived next door to each other all our lives and now you’re moving a mile away. It might as well be fifty,” he raged, red-faced with the effort of keeping back his angry tears. “We’ll never get to see each other again.”
“Course we will,” Josh said, putting a comforting arm around Sammy’s shoulders. “We’re best friends, ain’t we? Nothing’ll keep us apart.”
And nothing much did, because Josh spent much of the week at Sammy’s place, saving him the long walk to school in bad weather, for there