The Marriage Merger. Liz Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ just how unattractive that was, she restrained herself. She didn’t give up, though. ‘I’m going there to look at some ancient finery, take some pictures and then write about it, Indie. It’s not a spectator sport,’ she said. ‘And Bram Gifford will not be amused when he finds out that it’s nothing to do with the store.’

      ‘You’ll have to convince him that it is. Tell him you’re working on next year’s collection. Ask his advice about camera angles if he gets tricky,’ she suggested, abandoning buttering in favour of arm-twisting. ‘Men can’t resist any opportunity to display their superiority. Especially Farraday men,’ she added, with feeling. ‘I just need you to keep Bram Gifford busy and out of my hair while the lawyers work on a strategy to keep them out. It isn’t much to ask.’ She paused only long enough to draw breath. ‘Unless you want to see them move in and take over?’

      Flora didn’t care much one way or the other, but she knew better than to say so.

      ‘The last thing I want is him being left to his own devices, poking around the store, probing into things that don’t concern him,’ India added. ‘And if you leave him behind, that’s what he’ll be doing.’

      Flora thought that as a major shareholder Abraham Farraday Gifford had every right to ask difficult questions. But since that was part of the agreement—whichever family was in control ran the place without interference—she didn’t bother to say so. Her apparently watertight excuse to avoid getting involved in this shadowing scheme had just developed a leak.

      ‘Any progress with the lawyers?’ she asked, infinitely hopeful.

      ‘Well, the fact that the agreement states control should pass to the “oldest male heir” offers considerable scope on the sex discrimination front, but it isn’t going to hold Jordan Farraday for long. He’s older than I am, so he can surrender the “male” bit without giving away a thing—’

      ‘After which it’ll be a mad race to see who can produce the first baby Claibourne or Farraday so that the next generation can do this again in another thirty years,’ said Flora. Put like that, maybe she did have a duty to help put an end to such nonsense.

      Her sister apparently missed the irony, because she simply shrugged and said, ‘As women, I think we might have the upper hand there.’

      Flora doubted that. She strongly suspected that if Bram Gifford called for volunteers, he’d be in severe danger of being trampled in the crush.

      ‘In the meantime,’ she went on, ‘I’ve got to make my case on the grounds of equality in the workplace. Which means proving I’m Jordan Farraday’s equal.’

      ‘So prove it. Go ahead and announce your stunning plans for the total revamping of Claibourne & Farraday. Surely that’s the quickest way to demonstrate your capability?’

      ‘There’s a problem with that.’

      Flora waited.

      ‘I can’t announce my plans right now because they include removing the name Farraday from the store.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I’m going to relaunch it as Claibourne’s. One snappy, modern name instead of two long-winded ones.’

      ‘Oh, fudge! I really wish you hadn’t told me that.’ Flora really wished she hadn’t asked. She wasn’t good at secrets. Not those kind of secrets. She’d used up her entire store of secrecy genes keeping just one. ‘I can see how that might be…um…’

      ‘Like waving a red rag at a bull? Inviting court injunctions and goodness knows what else?’

      ‘I shouldn’t think goodness would have much to do with it.’

      ‘Which is why you have to keep Bram Gifford occupied for the next month. Try and stun him with one of your flashes of genius—demonstrate just how indispensable you are to the success of the store. I don’t expect him to be on our side, but if he can be neutralised—’

      ‘You’re not suggesting I neutralise him the way Romana neutralised Niall?’ Flora asked. ‘Because I’m telling you now—’

      ‘Until they return from their honeymoon we won’t know who neutralised whom,’ she said. ‘I need you, Flora. I really need you.’

      That her sister would admit to needing anyone had to be a first. India had always been entirely self-sufficient. But Flora had her own problems. ‘I just don’t see what I can do. I’m going to be working in the museum most of the time and when I’m not there I’m going to have to take a trip into the interior to look at the excavations. It’ll be very short on mod cons and it’s got nothing to do with the store.’ She hoped, if she kept repeating that, India might eventually realise the futility of involving her.

      ‘Bram Gifford doesn’t have to know that.’

      ‘Oh, please! His middle name is Farraday. He won’t be that easy to fool.’

      ‘Then don’t even try. The Tutankhamun treasure inspired the Egyptian look. With a bit of effort your “lost princess” could do the same. Just give us something to work with. And it won’t hurt Mr Gifford to work up a sweat following you through the rainforest.’

      ‘What about me?’

      ‘You won’t even notice the discomfort. You never do.’ India finally smiled. ‘It won’t be that bad, Flora. I’ve been doing a little research of my own and, believe me, Bram Gifford is at the top of every girl’s wish list.’

      ‘Not mine,’ she said, with feeling. She’d seen photographs of him in Celebrity magazine—a golden bear of a man, oozing wealth and power, with an endless succession of lovely women clinging to his arm.

      Her mother would adore him.

      ‘Hey, I’m not suggesting anything serious, but it wouldn’t hurt to flirt with him a little. Just don’t, whatever you do, fall in love with the man.’

      The warning was quite unnecessary. If he was going to be dogging her heels, the next month was going to be quite bad enough without making a total fool of herself. Once was more than enough. But she didn’t say that. What she said was, ‘Don’t be silly. There isn’t a girl alive who could meet him without falling in love with him. That’s what men like Bram Gifford are for.’ Her mother had an entire collection of them. But she pulled a face so that India would know she was joking.

      India, realising that she’d won, laughed more with relief than amusement. ‘I have the feeling that meeting you will be a unique experience for him.’

      Bram leafed through the thick file of newspaper cuttings and magazine articles that in one way or another touched on the life of Flora Claibourne. Other than the dreary formal portrait used on the jacket of her book, which made her look ten years older that she was, and the broadsheet reviews, few concerned her as an individual.

      Mostly they included her as an add-on. She was a member of a well-known family whose loves and lives had always provided fodder for newspaper diarists. She didn’t appear to have had any affairs worth reporting, though. Unlike her mother, who was a tabloid editor’s dream.

      Peter Claibourne’s second wife had been a model. Tall, leggy and stunningly good-looking in those early photographs. She hadn’t stayed with Claibourne long. She hadn’t СКАЧАТЬ