Dangerous to Know (23 page)

“She got pregnant.”

“So?” Vivienne asked, raising a brow.

“We disagreed. About the baby. She wanted it. I didn’t. She dug her heels in. We argued. She said she was going to have it. No matter what I thought or said. In the end we had a screaming row. She left.”

“And you let her go?”

“Yes.”

“How could you be so stupid! So dense!” Vivienne cried, staring at me aghast. “How could you let that marvelous woman escape?”

I flinched under her critical gaze. “Look, Viv, I don’t want to get married,” I said finally. “And I certainly don’t want to have kids. She fully intends to have this baby. Against my wishes. When she said she was leaving I didn’t stop her. Anyway, it’s for the best.

It wouldn’t have worked. Not in the long run.”

Vivienne regarded me for a prolonged moment. Then she said in a low but vehement voice, “You’re a damn fool, Jack Locke. You’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life.”

PARI 3

PIIIII[ I once heard my brother Jack tell Vivienne I was fragile, and I was astonished to hear him say such a thing. How totally wrong he was in his assessment of me.

I am not a fragile woman.

On the contrary, I’m one of the strongest people I know, mentally and physically. Certainly my father always understood this; that’s why he called me a true Locke born and bred. -Sebastian saw in me the personification of the Lyon Locke character , and even said I was a genuine throw back to Malcolm Lyon Locke, that great Scotsman who was the founding father of our dynasty.

It is true, I have inherited many of the traits that made our family great. I have an iron will, determination, dedication, discipline, immense stamina, and a proclivity for hard work.

I am also unrelenting and ruthless in business, and my husband Gerald says I’m a born trader with ice water in my veins when it comes to wheeling and dealing.

My father called me an accomplished dissembler and one of the cleverest liars he had ever met. He assessed me as being rather better at prevarication than his father Cyrus. Sebastian had been laughing when he said this to me, and I know he had meant it as a compliment.

Although when he told Vivienne I was a liar he probably made it sound derogatory, and there is no doubt in my mind that he did tell her. He had always confided everything in her, ever since she had come into our lives when she was twelve and I was only four.

Nevertheless, he was proud of me, proud of my talents and skills, especially my negotiating skills. I had come to understand, early on, that he wished I had been born a boy. He would have much preferred to have had two sons to carry on in his footsteps, rather than just one.

However, in the end, the fact that I was a girl did not deter him when it came to the family business. As soon as I was old enough he steered me into Locke Industries in New York.

For several years now I have been running the British division of Locke in London, and the last time I spoke to my father, just before he died, he told me I had done a superlative job. He was very proud of me.

“You’re a chip off the old block, Luce. Well done, darling!”

In the course of this discussion, over dinner at his townhouse in Manhattan, he suggested that I might enjoy coming back to the New York office. It was there that I had started my business career after graduating from Yale. He said he had a special position for me: executive vice president in charge of all the women’s divisions of the company.

I had been toying with the idea ever since. I still toyed with it.

Certainly it was very tempting. All I had to do was tell Jack and he would arrange it. He had been at dinner that night, had noticed Sebastian ‘s enthusiasm and mine and had commented about it. My husband had no objection; in fact, Gerald rather fancied the idea of moving to New York where he would be able to work at the U.S. branch of his family’s investment bank.

If the truth be known, I should be head of the company, not Jack.

My brother was supervising the business long distance, as my father had done for many years of his life. It wasn’t very satisfactory, in my opinion, even though the C.E.O was competent, and had been hand picked by Sebastian ten years ago.

I was a hands-on manager and therefore I believed I would be better for the company. I longed to run Locke Industries instead of Jack, and there was no doubt in my mind that he would welcome this change.

My brother genuinely loved the chateau and the vineyards more than anything else in his life. Certainly he was good at running the estate.

I was proud that he had made such a huge success of the winery, and that his label was now a superior appellation. He had done it by himself, with the help of Olivier Marchand, and chapeau to him.

No one could convince me that Jack was really interested in Locke Industries. He was chairman and did what he did only because it had been drilled into him for years that this was his chief role in life.

Duty, duty, duty had been the eternal cry from Sebastian and Cyrus. Deep down within himself I think he probably hated Locke Industries. I loved the company; I lived for it.

An hour ago Jack had phoned from Alx-en-Provence. He had canceled the trip to London he had been planning to make this coming weekend. I was feeling somewhat put out with him because of this.

I had been looking forward to talking to him about Locke Industries and business in general.

Now our chat would have to wait until next month, when he had promised to come to the birthday party I was planning for Gerald.

At this moment Gerald was in Hong Kong on business; he would be returning later this week. The thought of my husband prompted me to get up from my desk and walk across the office. I paused at the mirror hanging on the wall above a seating arrangement of sofa, chairs, and a coffee table.

I stood in front of the looking glass for several moments, regarding myself, wondering what Gerald would think of my new image.

At first he would be extremely angry because I had cut off all my blonde hair. He loved my long golden tresses. But he would eventually get used to this short, caplike cut that was more up to date. Also, the hairstyle made my head look neater, smaller, and therefore more hal anced to my slender body.

Even my figure had changed, if only slightly, in the three weeks Gerald had been away. I had put on weight. Not much, only four pounds, but it was enough to make me look less emaciated. The weight gain had played havoc with my clothes and most of them were too small.

They would have to go. I had ordered several new suits for work and they would be delivered to me next week.

I was pleased about my weight gain. Not only did I look better, I felt better. The pounds had started to come on quite naturally in Decem her because unexpectedly I had started to eat properly again.

It was not that I had consciously dieted over the years; I never had.

Very simply, I had never had much of an appetite. Not since I was twenty, when I lost my taste for food. That was when Sebastian had teased me about my weight and told me I was fat. “A regular little butterball,” he had added a trifle scathingly, and the next day I had stopped eating correctly. In essence, I had brainwashed myself not to feel hunger, and in the process I had been starving myself for years.

For a long time Gerald had wanted a child. Now so did I.1 felt the timing was right. After all, I was twenty-eight and Gerald was thirty three. We were both the perfect age to start a family.

I wanted heirs. Sons and daughters who would rejuvenate the declining dynasty that the Locke family had become. I wanted my children to carry on, to lead the family into the twenty-first century, to expand our fortune and carry on the tradition started generations ago.

Turning away from the mirror, I hesitated, and then on an impulse I left my office and hurried down the corridor to the boardroom.

I went in and closed the door behind me, switching on the lights as I did. On the walls hung the portraits of the men who had made our family great.

In all truth, I did not need any reminders of my impressive heritage.

This had been imprinted on my brain since I was a child, and I was Ifilled with immense pride to be a Locke, to come from such a long line of brilliant entrepreneurs.

My father had forever termed them robber barons, and in the most derisive way, but I never thought of them as such. They were my idols, whether they were robber barons or not.

Occasionally I liked to study their portraits. These were copies of the originals that hung in the boardroom in New York. I had had them copied for the London boardroom by a prominent artist, who had, in my opinion, painted portraits much superior to the originals. Their likenesses invariably inspired me to greater heights.

Viewing the images of my ancestors had now become something of a ritual with me. Each man fascinated me; I wished I had known them all.

I always started out with the founding father, Malcolm Trevor Lyon ocke.

As I stood gazing up at his face now, I wondered, as I so often id, what kind of man he had really been, my great-great-great-grand Y good looks had come from, and Jack’s as well. Malcolm Physically he looked like a nineteenth-century version of Sebastian.

Or rather my father had resembled him, and it was easy to see where black hair, fresh complexion, and bright blue eyes of a typical all about him. He was a legend in the family. Born in Al small fishing village and seaport on the east coast of Scotland Dundee, he had sailed for America in 1830. He had been nine years old when he set forth to seek his fortune.

story goes, Malcolm soon discovered that the streets of New not paved with gold as he had been led to believe. And so to Philadelphia.

A blacksmith by trade, Malcolm was enterprising and something of an inventor, always tinkering with bits of machinery and farm tools.

Whilst he worked as a blacksmith, he started his own tool shop and small forge on the side, and operated them in his spare time.

It was in 1837 that the first steel plow with a self-scouring moldboard was invented. One year later, in 1838, Malcolm, who had himself been experimenting with plows, came up with an invention of his own.

Malcolm Locke created a moldboard of chilled cast iron that scours best with the least friction. It changed his life and set him on the road to becoming a millionaire. In fact, it was the beginning of the family fortune and Locke Industries, although in those days it was called the Locke Tool Company, so named by Malcolm.

From the portrait of Malcolm I moved on, stood in front of the painting of Ian. He was the eldest son of Malcolm and his wife Amy MacDonald, and Ian had been born in that propitious year of 1838.

When he was old enough, Ian went into the business with Malcolm, who by this time not only manufactured moldboards but all kinds of farm machinery and implements as well. The Locke Tool Company grew and prospered under Ian’s steady if uninspired guidance.

Ian’s first son Colin was born to him and his wife Georgina Anson in 1866.1 peered at his face. Colin did not look like Ian or Malcolm, but he had inherited the latter’s genius for invention and his pioneering spirit.

When he was in his late twenties Colin went to Texas to drill for oil.

He did not make a lucky strike and eventually returned to Philadelphia and the family business.

However, his experiences in the oil fields had prompted him to tinker around with drilling bits. Also, he worked on numerous other inventions in this tool shop. But mostly, when he had time, he tried to improve on the fishtail bit, which was most commonly used for drilling.

He knew from experience that it constantly broke.

It was some years later, when he was in his early forties, that Colin came up with a drilling bit that would change the Locke Tool Company yet again.

After years of frustration and numerous different versions, he finally invented a bit that would drill through rock and quicksand. It was formed like two pine cones, one moving clockwise, the other counter clockwise. These revolving cones, moving in opposite directions, had

170 cutting edges.

It was 1907 and Colin Locke’s drilling bit was revolutionary. He was one year ahead of Bo Hughes, who invented a similar bit in 1908 and formed the Hughes-Sharp Tool Company.

I looked at Colin’s portrait intently.

My great-grandfather was not as good looking as the other Locke men who had gone before him. He had blonde hair and dark brown eyes, and it was obvious to me where my coloring had come from.

Colin appeared quite dolorous in the painting. Sebastian had actively disliked him, and almost as much as he had disliked his father.

It was Colin Lyon Locke’s invention that formed the basis of an even greater fortune for the family and the Locke Tool Company.

His famous drilling bit was sold all over the world, even as he continued to perfect it for several years. It is not possible to drill for oil today without using it, and the bit brings in hundreds of millions every year, just as it has since the day Colin invented it.

My grandfather’s portrait hung next to that of his father. Cyrus, born in 1904, was the first child of Colin and his wife Sylvia Vale.

Grandfather was now in his ninety-first year. Whenever I thought of him I saw a white-haired old man in my mind’s eye. Here, in this portrait, he was young, in his late thirties, and he had been attractive enough in a somber, glowering way. His hair had been a light brown and he had black eyes. He seemed out of place with his ancestors.

To me he did not look like a Locke at all.

I thought again of the man I had seen at Sebastian’s funeral and an involuntary shiver ran through me. How terrible old age was. Once Cyrus had been dominant, domineering, tough, and ruthless. He had run Locke Industries with an iron hand.

Now he was nothing. He had no power or influence in the company where he had once been king. He was just a frail, little old man who looked as if a wind would blow him over.

I moved on from the painting of my grandfather. The one next to it, the last one, was of Sebastian Lyon Locke.

My father.