Dangerous to Know (24 page)

And what a beautiful man he had been. So handsome. The eyes so brilliantly blue, the hair jet black. And his features were as arresting as his coloring was, finely sculpted and well defined. No wonder women had dropped like flies at his feet. I couldn’t blame them.

He had been a gorgeous specimen.

Five wives he had had. But only two children by two of them. I wondered, as I had so often wondered lately, why he had not had more offspring.

His first wife, Josephine Allyson, had been Main Line Philadelphia and an heiress in her own right. She was the mother of Jack and had died when he was two. She had left him all of her money, millions, which had been held in trust until he was twenty-one.

My father’s second wife had been my mother Christabelle Wilson.

When he married Christa he had been the grieving widower, or so I had been led to believe.

I was the result of their brief union.

When I was small my mother was sent away to dry out in a clinic in New Haven. She never came back to live with us. I saw her from time to time, but it was Sebastian who brought me up.

After he divorced my alcoholic mother, he took up with Antoinette Delaney, Vivienne’s mother. Their love affair never became more than that, because she was married to William Delaney who was wandering around the South Seas.

Sebastian’s relationship with Antoinette ended when she fell down our cellar steps and broke her neck. If she had lived I suppose she could have divorced William for desertion at some point, and married my father. I know he wanted to formalize their love affair. He told me this once. And he was certainly broken up about her death.

My father’s third wife was Stephanie Jones, who had only a very short sojourn with us. She had worked with Sebastian as one of his assistants at the Locke Foundation. Jack and I both liked her. She had been an intellectual and rather quiet, but lovely looking, a cool, refined blonde who reminded me of Grace Kelly. Stephanie had always been kind to Jack and me, and we were sad when she was killed in a plane crash.

Then along came the great Vivienne.

My father was married to her the longest. Five years. It seemed like an eternity to me. I know he made her pregnant and that she had a miscarriage. Sebastian told me that himself. He was heartbroken about the loss of the baby.

I suppose it was inevitable that he would marry Vivienne. He had always favored her when she was growing up, and he became her guardian after her mother died. He paid her school fees and supported her financially, and she was always with us during school vacations and special holidays.

My dislike for Vivienne was quite intense. I couldn’t stand her really, and I was glad when they finally split up. I always thought my father deserved better.

His fifth and last wife was Betsy Bethune, a career woman. To me she was the most unsuitable person he could have married. She was far too busy being a famous concert pianist to be a good wife to my father and I was not in the least surprised when he divorced her. I had never understood why he had married her in the first place. It was an enigma.

I stared hard at the painting of my father, and for the longest time, studying his face intently.

Yet again I asked myself why he had killed himself. It just didn’t make sense to me. He had seemed perfectly all right when I was staying with him in New York. In fact he had not been gloomy as he so often was. He was much more relaxed, even happy, that week before he the holidays.

My dislike for Vivienne was quite intense. I couldn’t stand her really, and I was glad when they finally split up. I always thought my father deserved better.

His fifth and last wife was Betsy Bethune, a career woman. To me she was the most unsuitable person he could have married. She was far too busy being a famous concert pianist to be a good wife to my father and I was not in the least surprised when he divorced her. I had never understood why he had married her in the first place. It was an enigma.

I stared hard at the painting of my father, and for the longest time, studying his face intently.

Yet again I asked myself why he had killed himself. It just didn’t make sense to me. He had seemed perfectly all right when I was staying with him in New York. In fact he had not been gloomy as he so often was. He was much more relaxed, even happy, that week before he took his life. I wish he hadn’t done it. I missed him so much.

I had always loved my father, even though he preferred Jack to me in many ways. He had always devoted so much of his time and energy to Jack, but I suppose that was natural, since Jack was his only son and the their apparent.

Vivienne had come between my father and me from the moment she had arrived on the scene with her unbearable mother. She stole my father from me when I was a child, but I managed to get part of him back when I was grown up.

After all, I was his real child, his biological child, with genuine Locke blood running through my veins. When I was a teenager he saw in me the second son he had always wanted. That was one of the reasons he had given me so much power in Locke Industries later on.

Of course he knew I was a good businesswoman, practical and efficient like him; he knew, too, I would not let him down. He was also aware of how much I cared about the company.

Yes, my father had loved me. He had made that very clear in his will.

“I give and bequeath to my dearest and most beloved only daughter Luciana …” Those had been his words before the bequests to me had been listed.

My father had left me half of his personal fortune and many of his prized possessions. Most of all, I cherished the priceless art collection of Impressionist paintings, especially all of those van Goghs, which he had given to me. That gesture in itself was another expression of his love.

I sighed to myself as I took one last, lingering look at the portrait of -Sebastian. Then I walked out of the boardroom, turning off the lights and closing the door behind me.

I, My secretary Claire had placed a pile of foxes on my desk in the short time I had been visiting with my ancestors in the boardroom.

They were mostly from Locke Industries in New York.

I read them all carefully, dealt with those that needed a response, and made notations on the others. After signing a batch of letters, I went into the adjoining office and gave everything to Claire.

Returning to my desk I made half a dozen calls to Locke in New York, settled various bits of business, and then looked over my appointments for the remainder of the week.

Tomorrow I had a date for lunch at Claridge’s with Madge Hitchens from the Locke Foundation. She was on her way to Mrica on behalf of the foundation, and she had stopped off in London for a few days to see her daughter Melanie who was attending the Royal College of Art.

Other than Madge I had no other special engagements, just routine work all day, and that night Gerald would be arriving from Hong Kong.

Closing my appointment book, I put it away in my desk, then went in to say good night to Claire.

The London offices of Locke Industries were situated in Berkeley Square, and I paused for a moment when I came out of the building.

It was six o’clock and still light, a pleasant evening at the end of March, and I decided to walk home to Belgravia. I made for Charles Street, which would take me into Curzon, and from there I could head into Park Lane and Hyde Park Corner.

I liked walking in London, looking at the old buildings, enjoying a feeling of the past, and of history and tradition; also, it happened to be my favorite city. My father first brought me here with Jack when he was fourteen and I was twelve. Of course I fell in love with the place, the people and the culture, not to mention the manners of the British.

They were so polite and civilized it was a pleasure to be around them.

It was the summer of 1979, and my father had come to London ostensibly to sell his apartment in Mayfair. But after he had put this on the market, he then turned around and bought a house in Eaton Square.

I was with him the day he viewed the house for the first time, and I’m not certain who liked it the most, Sebastian or me. Jack had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever. He was simply marking time until we left for the Chateau d’Case in Air-in-Provence, the only place he ever wanted to go. He had loved the chateau intensely for seven years.

It was his grand passion.

In any event, the house was duly purchased, decorators were sent in, and we came back at the end of the year to spend Christmas at our new home in London. A great deal of care and money had been spent on it, and Colefax and Fowler had done a superb job, had created elegance, a warm ambiance, and great comfort. It was a real home, not a design statement, and Sebastian in particular was pleased with the I finished result.

For me the trip was marred by Vivienne’s presence, but I was so happy to be in London I managed to disguise my displeasure behind a fraudulent smile. This I affixed to my face permanently.

I also managed to make myself scarce that winter, rushing off to the Victoria and Albert, the British Museum, the Tower of London, Ma dame Thssaud’s, and my favorite place of all, the Tate Gallery. I loved to wander around looking at the paintings, especially the Thrners.

When we were growing up, Jack was always telling me that Sebastian was after Vivienne. He said it was a campaign, called it the Gradual Seduction of Vivienne, making this sound like the title of a play or movie. Jack insisted Sebastian was the fat cat waiting to pounce on the innocent virgin. But I didn’t really agree with him; in my opinion, it was the other way around.

In fact, I had always believed that Vivienne was after my father even when she was a teenager, and when her awful mother was still alive Her avid interest in Sebastian became more apparent than ever to me that Christmas of 1979, and she never let him out of her hung on his every word, and his arm, never gave me or Jack a alone with him.

At the time, I told Jack she was sleeping with Sebastian, but he pooh-poohed the idea. My brother had had a crush on Vivienne the Great for as long as I could remember, so I suppose he had not been able to support the thought that our father was where he wanted to be -in her arms.

I remember I wasn’t too crazy about this thought myself, since she had long endeavored to drive a wedge between my father and me. As Sebastian’s lover she would have a greater opportunity to do that, and knowing her she would take advantage of that situation.

I was smart enough to realize that I couldn’t change the situation, if it did indeed exist. For this reason I involved myself in my own activities and let them get on with it. I advised Jack to do the same, but he persisted in hanging around the house. He called it, “keeping an eye on things.” I called it spying.

I came to know London well in those days, and the London house was my favorite place to be, after the Manhattan townhouse where I had grown up with Jack and Sebastian. Luckily for me, we spent quite a lot of time in England over the next few years. My father was becoming more and more involved with his Mrican charities, and London made a good jumping off point to that continent for him.

After he married Vivienne he seemed to lose interest in London and in the house. In fact, they stayed at Claridge’s when they were on their honeymoon, and later that year he bought the old mill in Lourmarin. I was glad my father had done this, because it prompted him to give the chateau to Jack, and this made Jack so happy he was almost delirious.

I was twenty-three when I moved to my favorite city permanently.

Sebastian gave me one of the top jobs at the London office, and I was in my true element at last, running some of the women’s divisions.

Over the years Locke Industries had become a huge conglomerate.

We no longer made Malcolm’s plows, at least only a token number; instead we manufactured tractors and other kinds of farm machinery, as well as pick-up trucks, jeeps, golf carts, and station wagons.

We had a building-materials division that produced everything from doors and windows to floors and walls. We made prefabricated houses, garages, and barns. Our bathroom division manufactured a decorator designed line of tubs, showers, toilets, and all the accessories used in a bathroom.

We even had a shower-curtain division.

This diversification had been started by my great-grandfather Colin and my grandfather Cyrus, long before this was a popular trend in business.

Then my father had followed their lead when he was still running the company on a full time basis, quite some time before he became so heavily involved with his charity work.

over the years Sebastian had bought a number of corporations which he then proceeded to mold into the women’s divisions of Locke Industries.

He had purchased companies that manufactured wellknown brands of clothing, undergarments, hosiery, shoes, swimwear, sports attire, and leisure wear.

When my father sent me to work in London, five years ago now, one of the first things I did was to buy a company specializing in cosmetics and bodyare products. This led to several other acquisitions, but the first one quickly became a huge money earner, and I’m very proud of this particular purchase.

For years I had believed myself to be a dyed-in-the-wool career woman, and I had never really given much thought to marriage, even though I’d had plenty of boyfriends. But I had only been in London a few months when I fell in love.

It was Thomas Kamper, a business acquaintance, who introduced me to his brother Gerald, with whom he worked in the family’s merchant bank in the City.

Gerald and I hit it off immediately, and our feelings were reciprocal.

His lean, dark good looks and candid blue eyes struck a chord in me, and within six months of our first meeting we were married. I was twenty-four and he was twenty-nine.

I am still not sure whether Gerald’s mother, Lady Fewston, was very happy about her youngest son acquiring an American for a wife, but Sebastian was all for the union. He liked Gerald, approved of the short engagement, and as a wedding gift he gave us the house in Eaton Square.