Cat on the Scent

            “Indeed.” He reached for another scone. “They want their country back, you know. I read the papers front-to-back in the hospital. Just because I was slightly indisposed didn’t mean I should alter my regimen. Why England would even want to keep Scotland or Wales is beyond me. And Ireland? Pfft.” He made a dismissive motion with his hand.

            “That’s why we live here.”

            “Yes. Except here we have to listen to the bleatings of the underclass, interwoven as it is with color. Silly.”

            “Not to them,” Sarah said a mite too tartly.

            “Reading the speeches of Martin Luther King, my pet?”

            She recovered. “No. What I’m saying is, there is no perfect place, but some are closer than others. And this is very close to heaven.”

            “Americans are too rude to develop proper tea culture. It takes a great civilization to do that: China, Japan, England. Do you know even the Germans are starting to get it?”

            “With ruthless efficiency, I’m sure.” She smoothed her dress skirt.

            He held out his cup for a refill. “They aren’t that efficient. That’s a myth, my dear. I’ve done business with them for years.”

            “I never appreciated how good a businessman you were until you were nearly taken away from me.”

            “Oh?” He reveled in the compliment.

            “You never discuss business with me.”

            “Dull, my darling. With you I savor the finer things in life: music, dance, novels. I adore it when we read together and I love it when you read to me. You have such a seductive voice, my sweet.”

            “Thank you. But I must confess, H., I rather like business. I read The Wall Street Journal when you’re finished with it and I puzzle my way through Süddeutsche Zeitung sometimes. I wish I had gone further in school.”

            “Beauty is its own school.”

            “The more I know, the more I admire your acumen.”

            He placed the cup on the tray. “Sarah, building airports is not a suitable venue for a woman.”

            “But darling, you don’t do that anymore. Now you invest in the stock exchange, here and in London. And you have other irons in the fire. It’s fascinating. You’re fascinating.” She stood up and pressed her hands together, standing quite still. “If you had died, if that fool had killed you, I would have been totally unprepared to administer your empire.”

            He guffawed. “That’s what I pay lawyers for and—”

            “But who will watch them? You may trust them. Why should I?”

            “Really, my dear, they would serve you as faithfully as they have served me.”

            “Henry, my experience of life is that each time money changes hands it sticks to somebody’s fingers. That army you pay is loyal to you—not to me. And there is the small matter of your ex-wife and your two daughters residing in palatial splendor in England. Well, I forgot, Abigail is in Australia now, in outback splendor.”

            “My ex and my daughters are provided for. They can’t break my will and they’d be fools to try because the astronomical costs would jeopardize their resources. I pay the best minds on two continents. Rest yours.”

            “No. I want to be included.”

            “Sarah, you have twenty thousand dollars a month in play money. You can do whatever you like.”

            “That’s not what I’m asking and I am not impugning your generosity to me. What I want is to understand your business holdings.”

            “I—” Flummoxed, Vane-Tempest began to stutter.

            Still standing with her hands pressed together, Sarah half whispered, “Because I did not know whether you would live or die, I sat at your desk and I read your papers. I opened the safe and I read the papers in there. You are an amazing man, Henry, and I don’t even know the half of it. I only know what you’re doing here in Albemarle County. I haven’t a single idea of what you may be doing in Zimbabwe or New Zealand or Germany. I do know you avoid the French like the plague.”

            His mouth twitched. “I see.”

            “You formed a corporation with Tommy Van Allen, Archie Ingram, and Blair Bainbridge, I learned. Teotan Incorporated. To date Teotan has purchased over two million dollars’ worth of land. I had no idea Archie Ingram had resources at that level. The others, of course, aren’t paupers, although no one is in your league.”

            His eyes narrowed. “Archie put up sweat equity.”

            “Archie is your conduit to and from Richmond. I’m not in your league either, H., but my brain does function. Archie is a county commissioner. He could point toward those areas that the state will develop or claim for highways and bypasses. Am I correct?”

            “Yes.”

            “And now he has cold feet.”

            “Yes.”

            “If the full extent of his participation is discovered, he will certainly lose his seat and may even be raked over the coals, politically and legally, for peddling influence. I believe that’s the term for it.”

            “Precisely.”

            “Is that what he’s been fighting about?”

            Sir H. Vane-Tempest sat for a moment. His beautiful wife, that trophy of all trophies, surprised him. He’d been married to the woman for seven years and he’d had no idea her mind was this good. She shocked him. He was also shocked at his own blindness. He had discounted her. Oh, he loved her, he lusted after her, but he had discounted her.