"Obviously I'm going to have to agree to give you my support," said Catriona, more coldly than she had meant to.
George looked at her narrowly. "I don't want you to feel that I'm exerting any undue pressure on you, Catriona. I don't want you to go away saying that you've been blackmailed, or anything unpleasant like that. Because, you know, it simply wouldn't be true."
"No," said Catriona. "I know."
He came and sat down again, just as close as before. "I'm offering eighteen million for the entire fleet; and that's an excellent price, considering how old most of your ships actually are. My accountants will go through the books and reconcile any little problems that might have cropped up in the past, and that will be that."
"And you'll keep the fleet together?"
"As far as commercially possible."
Catriona lowered her eyes. George raised a hand for a moment, a little way above her knee, but then Alice sniffed loudly, and fixed him with a stare like an outraged peregrine falcon, and he withdrew it.
"I don't want you to tell Edgar what we've discussed," said Catriona. "He likes to think of himself as my guardian, you know, now that my father's gone. If he knew that I'd found out about the Orange... well, I think it would embarrass him terribly. So, please don't say anything. I'll go and talk to him later and tell him that I've decided to support the sale to IMM."
George couldn't help smiling. "You're a brave, intelligent girl. I misjudged you. I admit it. You have style. Do you mind if I kiss you?"
"You can kiss me."
George leaned forward and, with difficulty, pecked Catriona's cheek. The feeling of his lips against her face made her skin tighten with coldness; but she was determined this time that he was going to dance to her tune; yes, and Edgar, too.
"Ill have to go now," she said. "But it's the fancy-dress ball tonight, and I'm sure I'll see you there. Have you decided on a costume?"
"I thought it was supposed to be a surprise."
"It is. But I rather saw you as Cyrano de Bergerac."
George let out a short, uncomfortable laugh. "Did you?" he said loudly. Then, more reflectively, "Did you?"
SIXTY-ONE
Catriona was very quiet while Alice dressed her for the fancy-dress ball. She was going as Cinderella, in a white satin fairy-tale gown with a flounced crinoline skin tied with ribbons, and a tight low-cut bodice that pushed her breasts into a deep dramatic cleavage, and which was panelled in the front with ruffles of Brussels lace and sewn with seed-pearls. She wore a high white wig, bedecked with bows and mother-of-pearl combs, and festooned with pearls, and her cheeks him rouged and accentuated with beauty spots. She felt ridiculously overdressed and extravagant, and ravishingly, archaically beautiful.
She was still thinking about George Welterman, though, and Edgar, and the strange history of the SS Orange. She knew now that it was true; George had confirmed that. And although it hurt her to have discovered that her father had been involved in illegal conspiracy in order to raise enough money to start building the Arcadia, it was a peculiar relief, too, to have had her doubts confirmed. She smoked a cigarette and watched herself in the mirror as Alice teased her wig, and thought about what she could do next.
The past three days on the Arcadia had aroused in her a feeling which she could not yet fully understand; but a feeling which was strong and deeply emotional nonetheless. It was partly pride, partly arrogance, partly ambition; and it was certainly a feeling which she inherited from her father. But it was something else, as well, something more valuable, and she was unable fully to understand it because she had never experienced it before. It was, in the very broadest sense, a feeling of responsibility.
It alarmed her. It gave her a sense of vertigo, because all the security which she had been accustomed all her life had suddenly dropped away from under her silk-slippered feet.
It could have been brought on by George Welterman's brutal rape. Or perhaps it was the genuine love which she was beginning to feel for Mark Beeney. The abrupt discovery that her straight and saintly father had been less than honest may also have had something to do with it; as well as the realisation that shipping, for all its glamour, was one of the fiercest and most unscrupulous businesses in the world.
But Catriona was growing up, flowering, maturing. And instead a playing, she was beginning to assert herself as a woman, and to feel the need to do it, too.
Without knowing how, she had begun to think that Keys Shipping could survive; and that they could keep the Arcadia, too. Her father must have believed it, or he wouldn't have built her. Her father must have seen her as his single greatest hope for the company's future. And if her father had considered that it was possible to keep the company going, why shouldn't she?
It might be absurd; the debts might be far too great; but why had her father believed so passionately in the Arcadia and Keys Shipping if there hadn't been a chance of winning through?
She had only a vaguest idea of what she was going to do, and how she was going to do it. But she wanted Edgar and George Welterman to continue to believe that all was well, and at the same time see if she could find some irrefutable evidence to show that all of them had been involved in the "sinking" of the Orange. She would have only to convince her mother that Keys could keep going as an independent company, and together they would have a majority vote.
Whether that majority would be worth anything in the face of bankruptcy, she didn't know. But she didn't want Keys sold off in an underhand rush; not yet, not to conceal the commercial sins of Edgar Deacon and George Welterman, and the moral sins of her father.
She didn't really want to sell the Arcadia to Mark Beeney, either, if she could possibly help it, however fondly she felt about him.
She was almost ready for the ball when there was a knock at her stateroom door. She heard Trimmer talking to somebody outside, and she called, "Who is it?"
"Mr. Philip Carter-'Elm, miss," Trimmer called back.
"Oh, good. Tell him to come in."
Philip Carter-Helm was dressed as D'Artagnan, with a plumed hat and breeches. He raised his hat and gave Catriona a sweeping bow. "You summoned me," he said, with mock pomposity.
"Yes," smiled Catriona, bobbing him a curtsey.
"Well?" asked Philip. "Was it anything in particular? Or did you want me to escort you to the ball?"
Catriona walked across the room with a sibilant rustle of silk skirts. "That's very kind of you, but Mr. Beeney will be taking me into the ball tonight."
"I'm disappointed, Miss Keys. I can't say that I'm not. But, well, I'm not an unsporting loser. I must say, though, that you look absolutely stunning. Marie Antoinette?"
"Cinderella."
"Well, that's appropriate enough, under the circumstances."
Catriona gave him a sharp, questioning look, and he tried to cover his discomfiture at what he had said by sweeping his cloak around him and saying, "All for one and one for all, don't you think?"
Catriona said, "Why did you and my father argue about the Orange?"
Philip remained where he was, his cloak wrapped around him like a protective shroud. He said nothing—nothing at all—and the silence was so uncomfortable and so obvious that even Trimmer looked up from the cocktail cabinet, where he was pouring them both a drink.