Chris. Sally WentworthЧитать онлайн книгу.

       CHAPTER ONE

      THEY were all there—the Brodeys—gathered together in the beautiful gardens of their magnificent baroque palácio near Oporto. All of them had come to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the House of Brodey.

      This lunch party was the first in a week of festivities that would culminate in a grand ball, but today there were only about a hundred and fifty invited guests—and one gatecrasher.

      Those guests who had received official invitations were mostly in the wine trade: buyers from France, America, Britain, even as far away as Australia; local shippers; expert viniculturists from the Brodey bottling plant in Vila Nova de Gaia and from their many quintas in the Alto Douro. There was a preponderance of men in dark suits, the women mostly wives or daughters invited out of courtesy.

      The members of the family moved easily among them, working their way through the guests, their presence marked by the eddying circles of people around them. Perhaps the largest group was gathered around the head of the house, Calum Lennox Brodey; Old Calum, they called him, in his eighties now and his tall back a little stooped, but his eyes still bright with intelligence and enjoyment of life as he talked and laughed with his guests. A group of almost equal size stood near his grandson and heir, also named Calum, who ran the family business—or perhaps empire would be a better name for it, so wide were its interests now.

      A girl—a tall, slender blonde in a flamboyantly coloured outfit that stood out from the dark business suits like a flame tree—broke away from one of the groups and went to take a glass of iced white port from one of the waiters. She was followed by a man in his late thirties, equally tall, with lean features and figure, and an air of suave charm that could only denote a Frenchman. He said something to the girl and put a possessive hand on her shoulder, but she shook him off and went to talk to some guests who were looking a little lost, smiling with warmth and putting them immediately at ease. Her name was Princess Francesca de Vieira and she was Old Calum Brodey’s granddaughter, and the man with her was a French count, rumoured to be her next husband.

      There were also other members of the family from the Madeiran branch of the company at the party, but it was these three—Old Calum and his two grandchildren—that held the fixed attention of Tiffany Dean as she stood just inside one of the stone archways that led on to the terrace above the rich green lawns on which the guests stood. She knew so much about the Brodeys, had been studying them for the past two weeks, ever since she’d determined to gatecrash this party. There had been plenty of information about them, in the local Portuguese papers, of course, and in international magazines; Francesca especially had figured in the latter, her spectacular marriage to an Italian prince and her even more spectacular divorce having been grist to the mill for the gossip columnists and the even busier paparazzi.

      Tiffany watched her, envious of the bright trousersuit and even more so of the other girl’s obviously innate air of self-confidence that could only come from never having to worry about money, from always having the best of everything. The best education, the best clotheseven the best men.

      The younger Calum Brodey carried himself the same way, with the same slightly arrogant tilt to the chin that would have singled him out from the crowd even if he hadn’t been so tall and fair-haired. All the Brodeys were fair because it was a tradition among them that they always married blonde women—their ‘English roses’, as some romantically minded journalist had called them in an article Tiffany had read as part of her research into the family. Although she’d had no training, she had herself written a couple of articles for a magazine—light, female-orientated pieces—and her contact there, realising that an Englishwoman might stand more chance than a local, had asked her to try and do an inside story on the Brodeys, especially young Calum.

      Ordinarily Tiffany would have refused—such an invasion of privacy wasn’t her scene—but circumstances had forced her to accept. The first reason was of course her almost complete lack of money; she had been out of a job for so long that she was already on the breadline and fast becoming desperate. The second was more personal. She remembered her contact, a junior editor, coming to see her and offering what seemed like a huge sum if she could get close to Calum, dig up some new gossip. ‘With your looks and your blonde hair,’ the man had said persuasively, ‘it will be easy for you. Just try to find out what goes on behind the public face they all show to the world. There’s no harm in it; they’re used to publicity and love it even if they say they don’t.’

      Tiffany was shrewd enough to know that that probably wasn’t true, and despite her poverty would have refused the assignment. But she had a grudge against the Brodeys. It was through them that she’d lost the job that had brought her to Portugal in the first place. Not that she’d ever come even close to meeting any of them, of course; she had been a very insignificant cog in the large business project of which the Brodey Corporation was the principal financial investor. And it had been the Brodeys who had been the first to back out when the recession hit, making the other investors follow suit so that the project collapsed, leaving herself and all the other workers out of a job. It was her seething resentment at this uncaring ruthlessness that had finally overcome her scruples and misgivings and made her accept the on-results-only assignment. So she had gatecrashed the party, knowing it was her last chance. Her last desperate throw of the dice.

      It had been far easier to get into the palácio than she’d dared to hope; Tiffany had waited until there was a queue of cars at the gate and people had started to get out impatiently and walk down the driveway, then she had merely joined a small group and walked in with them, not even needing the sentence about joining her husband inside that she had carefully rehearsed in Portuguese in case she was asked to show her invitation. But now that she was here she had to think of a way of getting herself introduced to Calum Brodey, hopefully in a way that would attract his attention. Once he’d noticed her all she had to do was hold his attention long enough for him to get interested in her. If her luck changed. If he even bothered to look at her.

      Biting her lip, Tiffany determined to be positive. Taking a deep breath, she walked down the terrace steps to join the party.

      A waiter came around the side of the house carrying a tray of filled glasses. Seeing Tiffany without a drink, he paused so that she could take a glass. As she did so another hand, male, reached out from behind her to take one. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a tall, broad shouldered man in a light-coloured suit. She went to walk on, but he said, ‘Hi, there. You look as if you might speak English.’

      His accent immediately identified him as North American, from the States probably.

      Tiffany hesitated a moment, then nodded. ‘Do you have some kind of problem?’

      ‘Only that I don’t speak Portuguese and I hardly know anyone here. I saw you standing over there, watching everyone, and figured you might be in the same boat.’ He held out his free hand and gave her an engaging grin. ‘The name’s Sam, Sam Gallagher.’

      Again Tiffany hesitated; she didn’t want to get stuck with the American, but on the other hand it might be useful to have a man in tow for a while. So she smiled in return and shook his hand. ‘I’m Tiffany Dean.’

      He gave her an appreciative glance, his eyes running over her slim, petite figure in the silk suit it had cost her last penny to hire, and coming back to