The Emma Harte 7-Book Collection: A Woman of Substance, Hold the Dream, To Be the Best, Emma’s Secret, Unexpected Blessings, Just Rewards, Breaking the Rules. Barbara Taylor Bradford

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СКАЧАТЬ in the year might be too late, Emma. I must leave as quickly as possible now, to attend to my interests over there and confer with the men who run my companies. You know how I feel about Japan’s threat to the Pacific. I can’t possibly leave anything to chance.’

      Emma’s face had paled. ‘I don’t want you to go!’ she cried ‘I’m frightened – frightened you’ll get stuck in Australia if war breaks out before you can return to England. We could be separated for years.’ She rose and went to kneel at his feet. She looked up at him. ‘Please don’t go, darling. I beg you not to go!’ She touched his face lightly, the dearest face in the world to her, and her eyes brimmed.

      ‘You know I must, Emma darling,’ he said with the utmost gentleness. He smoothed one hand over her head and his eyes regarded her tenderly. ‘But I won’t stay for long. Only two months at the most. Things are in relatively good order out there. They have been for years. However, I must be sure everything will run smoothly, should I have to be absent for longer than the usual year. And I might have to be. We don’t know how long this war will last when it does come, do we?’ He smiled at her confidently. ‘I’ll get back quickly. I want to be with you in England when the conflict starts. I certainly don’t want you to be alone. Now come along, cheer up, sweetheart. I’ll only be gone eight weeks. That’s not so bad.’

      Emma did not argue with Paul or further attempt to dissuade him, knowing it would be fruitless to do so. His holdings were so vast they staggered the imagination, and he could not shrug off the responsibilities they entailed, which were of equal magnitude. Power had its undeniable privileges but it brought crushing burdens as well. It was quite apparent that Paul, in all good conscience, could not ignore the world political situation, and the effect it would have on his business. Because of who and what she was, Emma understood his motives and acknowledged the necessity of his plan, even though she was not enamoured of it.

      And so she put up a gay front for the next few days before she sailed. But the idea of being separated from Paul depressed her more than it ever had before, and that awful sense of foreboding stayed with her during the entire voyage to England. Even when she was settled in their house in Belgrave Square it persisted, gnawing at her peace of mind.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

      Torrential rain was falling when Paul left the nursing home on the outskirts of Sydney. He turned up the collar of his trench coat and made a dash for the Daimler.

      He was drenched when he got inside and he shrugged out of his wet coat, tossing it carelessly on to the back seat. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his streaming face before lighting a cigarette. He noticed that his hand shook as he did so. He was in a blinding rage with Constance, so that was not very surprising. He had been on the verge of striking her a few moments before, and it had taken all of his will power to control himself, to take his leave of her with a degree of civility. The violence of his emotions appalled him. He had never struck a woman in his life, had not experienced such overwhelming anger in years.

      Paul inserted the key in the ignition, pulled out of the parking area, and turned into the main road leading back into the city. His patience with Constance had entirely evaporated years ago, along with his pity, and now he loathed her. Loathed her. Damn it, he wasn’t going to be tied to her any longer. He would find a way to get the divorce himself. He would talk to his solicitor. There must be a legal loophole, a means of disentangling himself from this ridiculous marriage, which had not been a marriage for twenty-seven years. It was absurd that a man of his undeniable power should find himself in such an untenable situation, shackled to that demented creature, who surely held on to him only out of sheer perversity. He wondered what he had ever done to Constance to make her want to punish him. He had been a good husband in the early years. It had been her drinking and her promiscuousness which had come between them, and inevitably killed his love for her. He must have his freedom. For Emma and Daisy. And he was bloody well going to get it, come hell or high water. He gripped the steering wheel and hit the open road with ferocity.

      The etiolated sky, bleached out by lightning, rocked with the deafening booms of thunder and, as if there had been a sudden cloudburst, the rain fell more profusely, sluicing down the windows in streaming sheets, dimming his vision momentarily. He took the turn in the road too fast, saw the approaching lorry too late. Instinctively he swerved and braked, but the car was travelling at such high speed it seemed to move with its own velocity. It went into a slithering skid and spun out of control, careering across the wet road. He fought to regain control but despite his enormous strength he was unable to do so. The car slewed up over the embankment, leapt into the air, somersaulted down into the gully, and impacted against a formation of boulders. He felt himself being crushed against the steering wheel, and then he blacked out.

      It was the lorry driver who pulled him out of the wreckage a fraction of a second before the car burst into flames. Paul was still unconscious when the ambulance arrived at the hospital in Sydney two hours later. And he remained unconscious for several days. That he had lived at all was a miracle, the doctors said.

      Paul manoeuvred himself across his study in the wheelchair until he was directly in front of his desk. He lit a cigarette and then settled down to peruse the pile of legal documents Mel Harrison, his solicitor, had left with him a week ago, just before he had been discharged from the hospital. He had gone over them endlessly, searching for any kind of small omission, or a clause that might lack clarity, and so far he had found none. But to be absolutely certain before he signed them, he went through them for the last time, reading each page slowly, weighing each word scrupulously. At the end of three hours he was satisfied nothing could be misinterpreted. As usual, Mel had drawn the documents with his special brand of brilliance. Every one of them was watertight and would stand up in any court of law, in any country in the world, should they be challenged. He did not expect that to happen. He was mostly concerned that his exact intentions were crystal clear, and indeed they were. Paul smiled for the first time in days. Something had gone right for once.

      It was almost six o’clock. Mel was due any moment. What a staunch, supportive, and devoted friend he had been in the last three months since the accident, always there when he was needed, and often when he was not. Preparing legal papers; attending to matters too confidential to hand over to anyone else; visiting the hospital on a daily basis; even neglecting his wife and family at weekends, to sit with him and bolster his courage, to pull him out of the black moods which sometimes engulfed him. Since the bandages had been removed, Paul had not wanted any visitors except Mel and the men who worked for the various McGill corporations. He had certainly not wanted his other friends to see his shattered face. He could not have stomached their sympathy, or their pity.

      Despair trickled through him and he closed his eyes, wondering how much longer he could go on. Sometimes he thought he could not tolerate another day of living in this wretched state. What a rotten twist of fate. The accident would never have happened if he had listened to Emma in New York and not returned to Sydney. Now here he was, chained to a wheelchair and dependent on others for almost everything he needed. It was a condition that did not sit easily with him. He had always been in the enviable position of being able to bend life to his will, to reverse circumstances to suit himself. But ever since the crash he had experienced a sense of powerlessness so acute it was devastating. It engendered a monumental frustration that spiralled into blazing anger. Even his money and his influence, always potent weapons in the past, had become quite useless to him.

      Smithers, the butler-valet who had been in his employ for years, knocked and entered the study, interrupting Paul’s thoughts. ‘Mr Harrison has arrived, sir. Shall I show him in here, or do you want to go into the sitting room?’

      ‘In here, Smithers, please.’

      A moment later Mel was grasping his hand. ‘How are you, Paul?’

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