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There had been no need to renew that vow two years later when, at the age of eighteen, they had left boarding-school for the last time. It was by then as if written in stone. There would be no string of lovers. Only one man would do. The right man. If they didn’t find him, they would give themselves to no man.
Yancie and Fennia’s ‘right’ men had come along, and they had married them. Astra, having undergone further extensive and in-depth business training, was career-minded and dedicated to her job. She had hopes of going higher and yet higher up the professional ladder. Marriage simply had no place in her plans.
She worked hard, evenings and weekends, and had no time for any kind of a relationship. Which was fine by her—she’d seen enough of her mother’s ‘relationships’ to know that that route wasn’t for her.
Not that Astra was lacking for offers. She had rich red hair, green eyes and, though naturally pale, a dream of a perfect skin. Her figure, while slender, curved in all the right places. And, according to Sukey Lloyd—a girl the three cousins had been at school with—Astra had legs to die for.
While feeling quite friendly on the inside to her fellow man, Astra found she could do little about her cool, aloof-looking exterior. Indeed, she had been completely unaware of her cool and aloof look until a couple of months ago when she’d turned down yet another invitation out from a newcomer to Yarroll Finance, who, peeved at her crisp thank-you-but-no, went away muttering, ‘Now I know why they call you North Pole Northcott!’
She hadn’t thought that had bothered her but, friendly with one of the secretaries who sometimes did some work for her, Astra found herself one day asking her if everybody at Yarroll’s had a nickname.
‘Only the favoured few,’ Cindy had replied. And, on a gasp as she realised what lay behind the question, she exclaimed, ‘You’ve heard?’
‘North Pole Northcott?’
‘Oh!’ Cindy murmured—and, obviously trying to make light of it, added, ‘Never mind—your mum loves you.’
That, Astra considered, was extremely doubtful. She had returned to live with her mother when she had finished school, but that arrangement had never been going to work. Her mother lived an idle life of socialising and greed. Astra—to her mother’s shame—wanted to work for her living.
It was a constant bone of contention between them that Astra, while living at home, was taking a full-time course which involved taking further exams for her chosen career. So that by the time Carleton Northcott decided to retire and move to his second home in the Windward Islands, and suggested that if Astra didn’t want to go to Barbados with him she could move into his London apartment and keep an eye on the place for him, Astra thought it the best idea she’d heard in a long while. Her mother must have thought so too, for this time she raised no objection.
All of which had worked out for the best, Astra reflected as she washed her used dishes at the kitchen sink. Over the last few years, what with being so busy with her job, and Imogen having a full social calendar, Astra rarely saw her mother. Though, dutifully, she would telephone and occasionally her mother—usually when she was having some kind of disaster with her current male, and both her sisters were engaged elsewhere—would pay her a visit.
Which, Astra thought, dragging her mind back to the present, her briefcase as yet still unopened in her study, wasn’t getting the work done. She dried her hands, and ten minutes later she was totally absorbed in her work.
Strangely, though, after all the multitude of thoughts that had gone through her head that evening, when later she turned off her computer and went to bed it wasn’t of her family that she thought. For quite some while she lay sleepless, her mind not on any member of her family, but on the tough-sounding board member of Blyth Whitaker International, a man she had yet to meet.
Next day, Astra arrived at the Blyth Whitaker building in good time. Incongruously, when she would have said she knew her business inside out, she suddenly started to feel a little nervous. What nonsense! she scoffed, but couldn’t deny that she was glad the mirror in the lift she had been directed to showed her looking cool and immaculate in her black suit and white silk shirt.
Briefcase in hand and in her smart plain black, two-and-a-half-inch-heeled shoes, Astra stepped out of the lift determined to keep looking outwardly composed. On the face of it, there was no reason why she should lose the tiniest bit of composure—even if it was Mr Sayre Baxendale himself that she was there to see.
Even if it seemed too incredible to be true that Sayre Baxendale had asked for her personally, she was good at her job. Why did she feel the need to keep reminding herself of that? Good grief—she couldn’t remember the last time, or any time for that matter, when she’d had the jitters about meeting a client. For heaven’s sake, he was expecting her; she wouldn’t have got past Reception had that not been so.
Astra found the door she was looking for, and, since she was expected, tapped on it only lightly, and went in. A tall black-haired man was at another door with a woman in her late twenties who was on her way out so that Astra caught only a glimpse of her. The woman seemed vaguely familiar. But Astra met so many people in her job that it didn’t surprise her that the woman, his PA, most probably, could be someone she had already met.
However, she was here to see Sayre Baxendale, who had closed the door after the woman and was coming back into his office. ‘Astra Northcott, Yarroll Finance,’ she introduced herself. She was softly spoken, her voice unaccented, with a hint of friendliness—otherwise her appearance and everything else about her was totally businesslike.
She extended her right hand—he ignored it. ‘Take a seat,’ he instructed shortly.
Astra didn’t know what it was about this man; he was good-looking certainly, was broad-shouldered, without fat, had dark eyes, and she could well imagine that sensational-looking females would come chasing after him rather than him having to exert himself. But she felt more niggled by him than anything else. No one had ever declined to shake hands with her before.
Astra was aware that his dark glance was giving her a thorough going over, as if to note every detail—her figure, her thick red hair, worn as she usually wore it in a sophisticated chignon, her green eyes, her pale skin. She felt herself dissected—and put back together again—and that too annoyed her.
Which left her, since she instantly did not care at all for this man with whom she was here to do business, to draw on every scrap of her professionalism. She went calmly over to the chair he had indicated—it was opposite to the one he took—his large, uncluttered desk in between them.
‘I am unsure which kind of personal package you may be interested in, Mr Baxendale,’ she remarked pleasantly, placing her briefcase on his desk. ‘If you’d care to give me a few details of what you have in mind,’ she went on, her long, slender fingers already at the fasteners on her briefcase, ‘I’ll…’
‘I’m not remotely interested in any personal package you have to offer.’ He cut her off before she could finish, and Astra, her fingers falling away from her briefcase, just sat and stared at him, stunned.
He’d somehow made that sound as if she wanted him to be personally interested in her! Fat chance! She started to recover from her incredulity, and almost told him that it sounded to her as if his sensational females should be less forthcoming than they were if he thought she was remotely interested in him either—personally. But she was here on business, or thought she was, and to have him, Sayre Baxendale, as one of her clients would be a prize indeed.
So she remained calm, remained even a hint friendly, as she enquired, ‘You are Sayre Baxendale? I am speaking with the same man who contacted Yarroll Finance yesterday and suggested I come to see you today?’
‘I asked you to come and see me today,’ he replied bluntly, no suggestion about it.
Somehow Astra managed to keep a pleasant look on her face. ‘I must have got it wrong,’ she murmured apologetically. ‘You’re more interested in some commercial…’ She broke off; she saw he was looking at her sceptically. And anyhow she didn’t ‘do’ commercial. Her intelligence going into overdrive, she had a positive notion that if his Finance section couldn’t come up with everything he wanted on the commercial side, then heads in that section would roll thick and fast. ‘You’re neither interested in a personal package nor anything commercial, are you, Mr Baxendale?’ she enquired as calmly as she could.
He studied her, his dark eyes fixing at last on her cool green ones. ‘No,’ he answered shortly.
Instinctively, Astra wanted to get up and walk out of there. But she was here representing her firm and, anyhow, she was more professional than that. ‘May I ask, then, why you have asked to see me today?’ she enquired—and very nearly dropped when he told her.
However, he did not tell her straight away, but first, to her surprise, referred her to someone she had completed a deal with several months before. ‘Does the name Ronald Cummings mean anything to you?’ he asked.
It was a name she was unlikely to forget! She’d had a client named Ronald Cummings. That was to say she had dealt with—long and tediously—Ronald Cummings, a fifty-year-old who’d changed his mind constantly in the months prior to him finally settling on the investment she had arranged for him.
‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss anyone who may or may not be a client,’ she kept her professional hat firmly in place to reply.
Sayre Baxendale was unimpressed. ‘Ronald Cummings has no such ethics when it comes to discussing you!’ he informed her shortly.
‘You know Mr Cummings?’ Astra enquired, more to give herself a moment to sort out in her head what the dickens was going on here than anything else.
‘His daughter happens to be my PA,’ Sayre Baxendale answered crisply.
‘His daughter?’ The woman she had caught a glimpse of just now? Astra speedily thought back to three or four months ago, grateful that she had an excellent memory. No wonder the woman looked familiar—she had met her. ‘Mrs Edwards,’ she pulled out of nowhere, and didn’t think that was too bad considering she had met the woman only once. But this was no time for self-congratulation; Sayre Baxendale was looking every bit as tough as she’d heard he could be. ‘Mrs Edwards, Mr Cummings’s daughter, is your PA?’ she questioned.
He didn’t deign to answer. Straight-to-the-point-Baxendale, Astra dubbed him. ‘We were speaking of Ronald Cummings and the extremely bad advice you gave him.’
‘Bad advice!’ she echoed, staring at him disbelievingly.
‘Not to say bordering on the criminal,’ Sayre Baxendale didn’t flinch from accusing.
‘Criminal!’ Astra exclaimed, and as anger stormed through her at such a heinous accusation she flared hotly, ‘I very much hope you can substantiate such a remark.’ My stars! This man was the end! ‘Neither my company nor I will put up with such defamation…’
‘I’m sure Yarroll Finance will be delighted to know that their representative is far more interested in earning a fat commission than in…’
‘That’s outrageous!’ Astra flew, rising furiously to her feet and glaring at the objectionable man who stared back at her, imperturbable, when she felt angry enough to hit him.
‘It would be, if it were untrue,’ he replied, rising to his feet and staring down at her. ‘However, I’ve seen for myself the Porsche you drive—which takes quite a chunk out of your income in monthly repayments, I suspect…’ What impertinence! The car was paid for! ‘…and that suit you’re wearing would put most women back three months’ salary.’
There was so much Astra could have said in her defence to such a charge. For one, that she had bought her car with only a part of an inheritance from her paternal grandfather. For another, she could have told Sayre Baxendale that her father insisted on paying considerable sums into her bank account from time to time. In fact, she could have told Baxendale that, if the truth be known, she had not the smallest need to work at all. As for the commission she’d earned on the Ronald Cummings package—and, recalling the way the man had dithered and constantly changed his mind, oh, my, how she’d earned it—commission had been the last thing on her mind throughout the whole transaction.
But she said none of those things, and indeed did not so much as attempt to defend herself. Very much to her own surprise, she had to admit, she heard herself actually bluntly enquire, ‘You’ve seen my car?’
If he too was surprised that she chose to enquire rather than defend, he didn’t show it, but told her equally bluntly, ‘Veronica Edwards drew my attention to you getting out of your car the other day when we were in Great Portland Street on business.’ That was a week ago! Astra recalled she had been in Great Portland Street a week ago. ‘Where I saw you and your car is incidental,’ Sayre Baxendale stated, clearly not prepared to waste any more of his precious time. ‘I’ve seen all the papers relative to the deal you put together for Ronald Cummings; the near criminal investment you calculated for him—forgetting completely to mention that he stood to lose his home, his property if he…’
‘I would have told him that!’ Astra exclaimed hotly—it would have been second nature to do so. ‘I…’
‘Where?’ Baxendale demanded. ‘It’s not written anywhere!’
Wasn’t it? She couldn’t remember. ‘You have the advantage over me, you’ve seen the paperwork recently. I’ll have to check…’
‘And when you do check also that there wasn’t a better deal you could have sold him.’
How dared he? Putting financial deals together was her job! What did he know about it? ‘You’re saying you know that there is?’ she challenged, angry sparks flashing in her wide green eyes.
Sayre Baxendale stared at her for long moments before he crisply replied. ‘I wouldn’t presume to know anything of the sort.’ Though, before she could take any comfort from that, he was going on toughly, ‘According to my finance people, not only have you advised this man extremely badly, you have also overlooked the fact that, though not yielding such a handsome commission, but bearing in mind the full knowledge you have of the man and his circumstances, there was a much more suitable package you could have sold him.’
Astra stared at him in disbelief, that offensive ‘handsome commission’ remark barely touching her. Without question, Baxendale’s finance people would be on top of the job, but… ‘I doubt very much that your finance section have all the details,’ she defended bravely—of course they had all the details; Veronica Edwards was the man’s daughter; she’d have shown them completely everything. ‘But I’ll check it out.’
‘Good!’ Baxendale retorted. ‘And when you’ve checked perhaps you’ll come back and tell me what you intend to do about it.’
Astra read three distinct messages in that last sentence. One, she had just been dismissed from this interview. Two, this man was convinced that he was right and that she was wrong. Three—and there was a threat there—that if she didn’t check it out he would be on to her employers, the highly respected Yarroll Finance Company, tout de suite.
To that, Astra added a fourth. She did not take kindly to being threatened. Nor did she take kindly to the way this man had spoken to her. Never had any man spoken to her the way Baxendale had. Her pride was up in arms. My word, had she been right to wonder why he had asked to see her in connection with some private finance—all too clearly, that had never been his intention!
She stared once more into those dark, dissecting eyes, and tilted her chin a proud fraction. Then, without saying another word, she caught hold of her briefcase and headed to the door. Four—if that swine of a man was waiting for her to come back and report to him, would he have one hell of a long wait. She hoped he held his breath!
CHAPTER TWO
ASTRA’S anger against Sayre Baxendale was still on the boil when she reached her office. Oh, how she was going to enjoy sending him the sweetest of business letters telling him how she had re-checked on what was suited to Mr Cummings’s circumstances at the time of their negotiations, but she could only confirm that her advice to her client had been first-class. If Mr Baxendale would care to check himself, or perhaps get his finance people to do so—she liked that line; it suggested, politely of course, that Baxendale was brain-dead in the figure department—they would see that Mr Cummings could not have been better advised. So put that in your trumpet and blow it!
She realised she would have to itemise certain details of Ronald Cummings’s current finances, and to include such confidential matter went against all her instincts. But, since the man’s daughter had obviously already fully discussed her father’s financial standing with Sayre Baxendale and his finance department, she didn’t think it could be termed as breaking client confidentiality.
Nothing if not thorough, Astra found the Ronald Cummings file on her computer, did a cursory scan and then printed out everything she had. That done, she surrounded herself with facts, figures and details of any scheme that might be even vaguely relevant to her client’s circumstances. She then went back to her very first note in her dealings with him. From there, methodically, she carefully worked her way through page by page, note by note.
It had not been one of her easiest of negotiations. The man had dithered, changed his mind a number of times. She had a note to say she had suggested to him that perhaps he might like to leave it for a short time while he thought over the several options she had suggested.
She also had a note to say no, he was adamant, he would be fifty-one in November, he thought he’d better get something arranged now. She had, in fact, she saw, many notes about what had taken place between her and her client.
Her first shock in making her in-depth scrutiny of what had taken place, however, was to find that, while she was absolutely positive she must have told Ronald Cummings that if he continued on the plan he had chosen his property might be at risk, she hadn’t made a note of it. Nowhere could she find in the many letters she had written to him any note of that most important warning.
Astra’s second shock came when she started fitting Ronald Cummings’s details to all of the plans available at that time. Though, initially, it had seemed that nothing fitted his circumstances, in actual fact there was something that did. It was then, with thundering disbelief, she realised that, yes, there was a much better package she could have put to him! A package that would have been much more beneficial to him.
It was a staggering shock, and at first Astra just couldn’t believe she had overlooked the much better plan. But—she had!
Because she just couldn’t believe it—she was usually so methodical, so on top of her job—she double-and triple-checked out every fine detail. But, galling though it was, Sayre Baxendale had been right! In the light of this other plan, her client had been very badly advised! How could she have made such a dreadful mistake? Normally she was so clear-headed.
Astra thought back to the time when her negotiations with Ronald Cummings had started to take shape. And then she realised how her normal diligence with regard to her work must have slipped. It had been around that time that her much loved cousin Yancie had been involved in a car accident. Yancie hadn’t been seriously hurt, but neither Astra nor Astra’s equally much loved cousin Fennia had known that when they’d dropped everything and in a terrified panic had raced to the hospital.
They had barely recovered from that fright when Yancie had announced that she was getting married and, because neither she nor Thomson had wanted to wait very long, her two intended bridesmaids had to drop everything and help her out! What with having to take time off for rushed dress fittings and everything else, Astra now realised that for the first time ever she hadn’t given full attention to her job.
It was no good blaming it on the excitement of Yancie getting married, or, Astra realised, to make the excuse that surely she was entitled to a little time off. There was no excuse. Nor could she use the excuse that Ronald Cummings had changed his mind so many times, there was every probability that she had put forward the better proposal but that he had rejected it—she didn’t have a note of it. And anyhow having clients who were unsure what they really wanted was all part and parcel of the job. It was her job to help, to advise—and she had fallen down very, very badly.
Astra took a deep breath, and, the facts staring her in the face, she accepted what she had to do. She picked up the phone and rang Norman Davis’s extension. ‘Is it convenient to see you straight away?’ she enquired.
‘Rather!’ he answered jovially—and to Astra it seemed as if her boss had been sitting there just waiting for her to get in touch to tell him how her meeting with Sayre Baxendale had gone.
Armed with a sheaf of papers, Astra left her desk knowing that she was going to have to own up to negligence. There were thousands of pounds at stake here—it was up to her to put it right.
Norman Davis was on his feet when she went into his office, a beaming smile on his face. He was not smiling ten minutes later.
There was a lot he could have said, but, although he seemed as shaken as she felt when Astra had told him everything, all he did say—and she silently thanked him for it—was, as she had supposed, ‘Leave everything with me, Astra—I’ll double check it all myself. But if there has definitely been a mistake it will have to be put right. Perhaps you’ll come and see me in the morning.’
She left him and went straight home. That evening, knowing she had no alternative, Astra wrote out her resignation. She did not sleep well but even when she had so much else to think about one tall, black-haired, dark-eyed man whom she had met that day—and oh, she so earnestly wished she hadn’t—seemed to return to her mind again and again. Oh, clear off, she fumed, punching her pillow; but for him and his interference, she might have got a decent night’s sleep. Well, one thing was for sure—she was glad she was never going to have to see Sayre Baxendale again!
Astra still felt very much shaken by what had happened when she presented herself at Norman Davis’s office in the morning. He was not a happy being, she could tell; she knew the feeling. Clearly his checks had shown the same results as hers—she had fallen down extremely badly on the job.
Before she handed him her resignation, however, Astra informed him that she personally would make financial reparation to their client—only for her offer to be refused. ‘Yarroll Finance will take care of that,’ Norman Davis insisted, letting her know, if she didn’t already, how worthy the company was of its highly esteemed reputation. She had sold the plan in the company’s name; the company would, therefore, take care of compensation.
There seemed nothing else to do but to hand him her resignation. Norman Davis didn’t look any happier but, as she had seen no alternative but to resign, she knew he had no alternative but to accept her resignation.
‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’ He took the words she had been going to say out of her mouth. ‘Your work until now has been exemplary. You were tipped for much higher things.’
‘I’m sorry I let you down,’ Astra answered quietly, this, the whole nightmare of it, a bitter pill to swallow. They shook hands and he walked to the door with her. ‘Will you write to Mr Baxendale?’ she felt honour-bound to ask—she didn’t want to have to do it, yet, for the sake of the company, it couldn’t be ignored.
‘I’ll clear up the Cummings end first, then drop him a line thanking him for his interest and letting him know the matter has been settled to Mr Cummings’s satisfaction,’ he answered, and warmed her down-on-the-floor feeling by giving her arm an affectionate fatherly squeeze before letting her go.
Norman Davis had let her off working out her notice, so Astra went home and tried to put it all behind her. It was not that easy. Apart from the humiliation of having to resign, she was used to hard work, enjoyed hard work, and without it she felt bereft. She couldn’t settle to do anything. To pick up a book and try to bury herself in its pages was beyond her.
She thought of phoning Yancie, but her cousin would be upset for her and, given that it looked as if Yancie was going to be visited by a coven of mothers, Astra didn’t want her newly-returned-from-honeymoon cousin to be upset on her behalf. Her other close confidante, Fennia, was still on her honeymoon.
When Astra’s inner disquiet got too much for her, she telephoned her father in Barbados. ‘How’s my best dad?’ she asked him brightly.
‘Wanting to see his best daughter,’ he answered his only child. ‘When are you coming to see me? You can’t work all the time, you know, sweetheart.’
‘As a matter of fact…’
Her phone call to her father lasted about twenty minutes. As a parent he wanted to slay all her dragons. As a former businessman of high integrity, he appreciated that Yarroll Finance had taken the only course they could: to indemnify their client, and to accept her resignation.
Astra went to bed that night trying to pin her thoughts on something other than the ghastly happenings since she had yesterday walked into Sayre Baxendale’s office, introduced herself and held out her hand.
She now knew why he had refused to shake hands with her—oh, didn’t she just! He’d made no bones about stating he thought she was more interested in her fat commission and it was hard luck for any poor sucker of a client who came into her orbit. Sayre Baxendale…
Oh, get out of my head, do, Baxendale. Now, should she go and stay with her father for a while—if he had his way she would go and live with him—or should she look around for another job?
She felt very pulled towards going to visit her father, but felt too restless to lounge around in Barbados doing nothing. Yet she shied away from the idea of looking for another job—should indeed any firm in the same line of business want to employ her after this!
Fortunately she was in a position where she didn’t have to work. But the loss of the job she had loved and had strived so tirelessly to be perfect at was too new for her to be able to contemplate working in any other field, just yet.
Her feeling of being bereft was still with her the next morning. It seemed odd not to have to go along to the study and make a few business phone calls. She decided to pay her mother’s half-sister a visit.
‘Well, look who’s here!’ her aunt Delia exclaimed delightedly.
‘You’re not going out? I should have phoned.’
‘No, you shouldn’t. You know I’m always pleased to see you. You’re usually much too busy in that career of…’ She broke off. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’
‘You always did know the three of us better than most.’
