Read Online Gold Digger by Frances Fyfield - Free Book Online Page B

remembered, namely that foppish man, and the other, earnest creature who looked as if he was sent from central casting to be a lawyer, flanked the wedded couple and shepherded them away. No one could say if the pair looked happy or doomed: the focus was on the fight.
    ‘My, my,’ Beatrice said. ‘Cinderella goes to the brawl.’
    Gayle and Patrick stood to the side, too late to attend the wedding, because by some odd mistake, Raymond Forrest had given them the wrong time.
    ‘No matter we couldn’t stop it,’ Gayle said in her calm voice. ‘Nothing as tawdry as this could ever last. Come away.’
    King Frog has got married to the witch
, Patrick said to himself.
Good.
    ‘W ell, that went well,’ Saul Blythe said to Raymond Forrest as they travelled back together on the train later in the day.
    ‘As well as can be expected,’ Raymond Forrest said, stiffly.
    The two men were not mutually sympathetic. It was the first time they had met and even in the enforced intimacy of a shared table on an empty, London-bound train, they could not quite be frank with each other. One was a creative collector with a dubious morality, the other a solid man of duty. While Raymond was concerned to protect his client’s assets and scarcely noticed his client’s environment, it was that environment and all the paintings in it which was Saul’s sole concern. The landscape passed by in a journey already familiar to the couple whose strange marriage they had witnessed. Di loved the train, she had told Raymond Forrest, but then it seemed to him she loved everything without muchdiscrimination at all, and would inevitably love the spending of his client’s money, a prospect he regarded with grave suspicion. He was wondering if Diana Porteous knew the extent of her husband’s assets, and decided she probably didn’t – yet – whereas this man on the other side of the table most certainly did.
    Saul could almost see Raymond’s mind whirring with polite queries and a certain, sterile curiosity.
    ‘One would hope,’ Raymond said, ‘that people would leave them alone for a while.’
    ‘I fear they will,’ Saul said. ‘Can’t see local society rushing to embrace them. But tell me,’ he said, leaning forward over the table so far and so confidentially that Raymond recoiled, ‘how did the girls take the news of the nuptials? I gather you were deputed to give them the happy tidings and invite them to the wedding.’
    ‘Yes. Always the messenger boy. Are you acquainted with them, Mr Blythe?’
    ‘Yes, slightly.’ The lie tripped off his tongue. Saul was beginning to know them rather well.
    Discretion returned, along with pomposity. Raymond shook his head.
    ‘There was mention of moral degeneracy. Beatrice in particular considered her father’s decision to marry as an obscene insult to their mother. I was able to reassure them, in accordance with my instructions, that their expectations of him were assured, and he would do his duty by them. In other words, their inheritance remains whatever it was before.’
    Saul wanted to laugh and instead assumed an expression of equal gravity.
    Family duty; a concept Saul could not understand. Hesimply did not comprehend the duties created by blood. Duties towards things of beauty were surely greater.
    ‘But he’s done his
duty
,’ Saul said. ‘They got into adulthood on his money. After that, it was up to them, wasn’t it?’
    ‘You might assume so, but that isn’t quite how it works, in my experience,’ Raymond said. ‘Children of rich fathers will always feel entitled. Especially if they are already aggrieved. Especially if they blame him for the mess of their lives.’
    ‘But they did attend the wedding,’ Saul said. ‘Even if they were too late to bear witness.’
    Raymond nodded with the glimmer of a smile.
    ‘That was my fault, I fear. And then there was that convenient fight. Otherwise, I fear that Beatrice might have attacked the bride. She feels … strongly.’
    ‘And