The man stood in the doorway of the shop, huddled in a corner, sheltering from the icy wind. It was freezing on this bitter January morning, and he felt tempted to hurry off to the nearby Hyde Park Hotel for a cooked English breakfast.
Yet he was unable to tear himself away from this doorway, where he had always had a perfect view of the building opposite, one which he had for so long coveted as his own.
Leaning forward, he stared at the grand and impressive edifice across the road. It had been standing there for over eighty years, but it was unscathed, untouched by the passage of time and impregnable. He thought of it as a bastion of prestige, privilege and wealth.
And it should have been his.
Tragically, he had been cheated. It had fallen into the hands of Paula O’Neill, who now thought of it as her own, when in reality it was his by rights.
In the mid-1980s he had almost wrested the flagship Knightsbridge emporium and the provincial Harte stores away from her, when she had made a series of mistakes in a deal related to the stores. So flawed was her judgement that she had played right into his waiting hands.
Unfortunately, just as he reached out, had the stores almost in his grasp, he had been betrayed. As a consequence of this unwarranted and unexpected betrayal, Paula O’Neill had managed to outwit him.
She had been his nemesis for years, but it was from this precise moment that he had become her sworn enemy, had vowed to wreak his revenge on her. And soon he would do that; he would finally triumph over her.
Abruptly, the man stepped forward, moving out of the doorway, his attention on two young women who had hurried out of the store and were studying the windows fronting onto Knightsbridge.
One of them was a redhead, and he knew her at once. She was Linnet O’Neill, Paula’s daughter; however, she was now a Kallinski, after marrying the Kallinski heir last month. His thoughts settled on the little church in Pennistone village where they had been married. How easily it would have burned to the ground, killing everyone in it, and his problems with the Hartes would have been solved for ever more.
He cursed Mark Longden under his breath for losing his nerve. What a weak-kneed hypocrite he had turned out to be; he had been exiled to Australia by Paula O’Neill, and good riddance to bad rubbish.
For a moment the man was baffled, unable to pinpoint the other woman’s identity. She was bundled up in a loden cape and long scarf, and her face was obscured. But then she turned and he instantly recognized the distinctive chiselled profile.
His chest tightened, and a virulent anger surged through him as he gazed at Evan Hughes. She was his new nemesis, the American woman who had insinuated herself into the family and was about to become a Harte. He muttered an expletive … she was already a Harte, thanks in no small measure to his father’s long-ago lust. And now she threatened everybody by her very existence, especially himself. She, too, was now a target along with Paula and her redheaded brat.
A smile slid onto his handsome face; he stared hard at the two women for a very long moment before setting out in the direction of the hotel for breakfast.
That self-satisfied smile remained intact as he turned up the collar of his expensive and impeccably-tailored vicuna coat and increased his pace.
As he walked, he considered a plan he had recently formulated … one so devilishly clever it might have been devised by Prince Machiavelli himself. How ingenious it was and it would surely help to bring about the fall of the house of Harte. He was convinced of this outcome.
Jonathan Ainsley laughed out loud. They were going to get their just rewards. He would see to that.
Envy slays itself by its own arrows.
Medieval saying: Anonymous
Flurries of silvery snowflakes were blowing in the wind, sticking to the plate-glass windows of Harte’s and on the faces of the two pretty young women gazing so intently into those windows.
Evan Hughes brought a gloved hand to her cheek and wiped the dampness away. Then she drew closer to Linnet O’Neill, shivering and hunching into her dark-green loden cape, feeling the sharp bite of the intense cold.
Instantly, Linnet glanced at Evan, and exclaimed, ‘I’m so thoughtless, dragging you outside to look at our windows on a day like this! You’re freezing. Come on, let’s go inside. We’ve seen enough.’
Linnet took hold of Evan’s arm and hurried her towards one of the double doors leading into Harte’s.
‘I’m all right, honestly,’ Evan protested as she was propelled across the floor of the cosmetics department, adding irately, ‘I’m not a cream puff, you know, I’m not going to melt away.’
‘You’ve got guts of steel, I’m very well aware of that!’ Linnet shot back. ‘It just became frightfully cold all of a sudden, and if you catch a cold, or get sick, Gideon will have my guts for garters.’
Evan burst out laughing, as usual amused by Linnet’s penchant for quaint, rather odd sayings; she was frequently startled by the other girl’s bluntness, as well as her pithiness, which could be quite stringent at times. Evan considered her recently-discovered cousin to be unique. She had never met anyone quite like her, and in this past year of working together they had become close, the very best of friends.
Moving through the eye-catching, glamorous displays of cosmetics and perfumes, Evan felt her icy limbs beginning to thaw in the warmth of the store, and she loosened her scarf, opened her cape. Smoothing her hand over her huge, bulging stomach, she confided, ‘I feel like an enormous beached whale, Linny. I can’t wait to