Читаем A Dangerous Fortune (1994) полностью

He wondered what Nora would say when he told her, and his imagination gave him the answer. He pictured her face set in lines of hard determination, and he heard the unpleasant edge to her voice, and he could guess the exact words she would use: "It will cost you every penny you've got."

Oddly enough, that decided him. If he had pictured her bursting into tears of sadness he would have been unable to go through with it, but he knew his first intuition was right.

He went into the house and ran up the stairs.

She was in front of the mirror, putting on the pendant he had given her. It was a bitter reminder that he had to buy her jewelry to persuade her to make love.

She spoke before he did. "I've got some news," she said.

"Never mind that now--"

But she would not be put off. She had an odd expression on her face: half triumphant, half sulky. "You'll have to stay out of my bed for a while, anyway."

He saw that he was hot going to be allowed to speak until she had had her say. "What on earth are you talking about?" he said impatiently.

"The inevitable has happened."

Suddenly Hugh guessed. He felt as if he had been hit by a train. It was too late: he could never leave her now. He felt revulsion, and the pain of loss: loss of Maisie, loss of his son.

He looked into her eyes. There was defiance there, almost as if she had guessed what he had been planning. Perhaps she had.

He forced himself to smile. "The inevitable?"

Then she said it. "I'm going to have a baby."

PART III

1890

Chapter ONE

SEPTEMBER

Section 1

JOSEPH PILASTER DIED in September 1890, having been Senior Partner of Pilasters Bank for seventeen years. During that period Britain had grown steadily richer, and so had the Pilasters. They were now almost as rich as the Greenbournes. Joseph's estate came to more than two million pounds, including his collection of sixty-five antique jeweled snuffboxes--one for each year of his life--which was worth a hundred thousand pounds on its own, and which he left to his son Edward.

All the family kept all their capital invested in the business, which paid them an infallible five percent interest when ordinary depositors were getting about one and a half percent on their money most of the time. The partners got even more. As well as five percent on their invested capital they shared out the profits between them, according to complicated formulas. After a decade of such profit shares, Hugh was halfway to being a millionaire.