The Australian Heiress Read Online Free PDF Page B

uncle Hugo was greatly loved and greatly mourned. No comfort for any of us anywhere. Death is irrevocable.
    “Natalie’s incredible beauty, it seems, drove my uncle just as it did your father. But there was a black secret at the heart of your father’s drive for power, one that I couldn’t fathom at the time—I was just a boy and my grief almost paralyzed me. But even then I was determined one day to track him down, make him pay for what he’d done. In time I was able to beginmy own investigation, the final consequences of which you know.”
    He remained motionless for a moment, his extraordinary eyes black as night. “Now Harry Guilford knows what it’s like to be dead.”

CHAPTER TWO
    W HEN C AMILLE finally awoke, it was to bright sunlight. She lay for a moment staring at the ornate plaster rose in the ceiling before her mind began to relive the events of the night before.
    All that talk Lombard had done about her mother and his uncle! If it was true, it would explain a lot The man was obsessed. Obsessed with bringing her father down. God only knew what he had in mind for her. Did he see himself as some instrument of revenge?
    She recognized the name Vandenberg. It was famous. Julian Vandenberg was a concert pianist, Sir Charles Vandenberg an industrialist. She knew they were somehow related, but she didn’t know if they had any connection to Nick Lombard. The Lombards, merchant bankers, historically had their power base in Melbourne. It was only recently that Nick Lombard had made the move to Sydney. Different cities. Different states. Different business and social circles. Yet these circles, it seemed, were interlinked.
    Well, Claude could tell her surely; he had a prodigious memory. He knew everyone who was anyone in the entire country.
    When she went down to breakfast, she found Tommy Browning sitting at the table, reading themorning newspaper. “Anything in it about us, Tommy?”
    “Just a little piece, love.” He stood up immediately, folding the paper, a refined, civilized man in his late fifties. “Brilliant day!” he observed, glancing through the huge picture windows at the beautiful gardens and the swimming pool, which seemed to merge with the sparkling blue harbor.
    “The vultures are out early,” he went on. “They’ve been driving past the house since six o’clock. Not a one of them could come within a tenth of the asking price.”
    “I’m sure you’re right.” Camille allowed him to seat her. “This is prime real estate. Some big developer will move in, pull down the house, put two up. Maybe a third on the tennis court. Profit’s the name of the game.”
    “It certainly is!” Browning shook his well-barbered head. “Dot will be here in a moment with your breakfast. Both of us suggest you eat it.”
    “Yes, Tommy,” Camille said dutifully, taking a quick glance at the front page. There was a small piece close to the bottom. Harry would have hated that. “You spoil me, you and Dot.”
    “It’s our pleasure.” Indeed, trying to make Camille Guilford’s life a little happier had been the Brownings’ goal since they’d gone into service for Harry Guilford almost eighteen years earlier. They had profoundly disliked their late employer, but they had loved his sad lonely child, as intelligent, sweet-natured and beautiful as any parent could ever wish for. Yet she had not been loved by her father. In fact, he’d seen very little of her, and it had been Tommy and Dot who’d lookedafter the child, and Camille had come to rely on them for support and affection. They were her unofficial godparents, albeit majordomo and chef, and they’d reveled in their role, finding in it a measure of comfort and consolation. For they had lost their own beloved child, Mary, at age six. Measles, they’d been told. Nothing to worry about. They’d been told wrong. Measles had turned to meningitis.
    Browning broke out of his old sad reverie to ask, “What’s on the agenda today?”
    Camille looked