Return of the Forbidden Tycoon

It was only this afternoon talking to Sue that she had realised what she intended to do. Squaring her shoulders slightly, she went downstairs. It was time she made a fresh start, put the past behind her once and for all and what better way could there be to do that than to embark on a new career?

As she dialled the number of Harry’s workshop, she smiled slightly to herself. It was almost two years since they had first met now. She had gone to London on business to see Ricky’s solicitor. Following her husband’s death she had discovered that he had considerable debts outstanding to various gambling establishments, and although the solicitor had advised her that she was under no legal obligation to clear them, she had insisted that she wanted to do so. With the sale of what had been her father’s land, she had been able to clear the last of these outstanding amounts, and it had been that that took her to London.

With a free afternoon at her disposal she had wandered through Covent Garden, pausing to study the goods on sale on the wide variety of stalls, and it was there that her interest in stained glass had been rekindled when she spotted an attractive selection of window ornaments on sale on one of the stalls.

Seeing her interest, the girl who ran the stall had told her about the artisans’ workshop which had recently been established in London’s dockland to give craftsmen an opportunity to develop their work, and she had gone on to invite Kate to go back there with her to see the workshops for herself.

Normally very reticent about involving herself with strangers, on impulse Kate had accepted her invitation, and it had been at the workshop that she first met Harry. Harry was their mentor and teacher; Lucy, the girl who had invited Kate back with her, explained that it was Harry who taught them the intricacies and skills of working in stained glass, and on hearing his name, the tall, bearded man had ambled over to introduce himself and to chat to Kate.

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bsp; Other craftsmen besides the glass workers shared the same premises, and Harry had elected to take Kate on a brief tour. She had watched fascinated as she saw her contemporaries engrossed in such traditional skills as gilding, marbling, marquetry and a wide variety of other crafts, but it was the glass work that fired her imagination.

What she had intended to be a brief courtesy visit in response to Lucy’s invitation lasted well into the late afternoon. They were a very friendly crowd, most of them around her own age or younger, with a smattering of much older tutors, who like Harry were keen to pass on their own skills to a younger generation.

‘It’s their interpretation of the skills we teach them that we find so stimulating,’ Harry told her enthusiastically. ‘They’re young and their ideas are fresh. It’s fascinating, and an education for us to see what they can do.’

While he was talking Kate was absorbed in watching a young man deftly shaping the lead to hold the glass he was working on, and seeing her, Harry smiled, touching her arm to say disarmingly, ‘You’re dying to try it for yourself, aren’t you?’

‘It fascinates me,’ she admitted. ‘We touched on the subject very briefly on the arts course I took, but I hadn’t thought of it as having any modern application.’

‘Mmm…you thought of it as being applicable only to church windows, that sort of thing. Well, it’s a common enough mistake, although nowadays many young architects and designers are becoming far more aware of its possibilities. Only the other week young Rob over there finished a commission for a renovated Victorian conservatory. It really was beautiful, a trail of climbing roses all along one glass wall. The small bits and pieces, the window hangings, plant containers, that sort of thing, they’re the bread and butter, but the jam is in the new commissions we’re getting, and we’re getting more and more all the time.’ He paused and looked at her consideringly. ‘If you’re really interested, why don’t you come to my classes?’

Kate had shaken her head, instinctively retreating from the suggestion in the way that she retreated from everything. Her life with Ricky had left painful scars, and the loneliness of her life which Sue saw as a handicap she saw as protection, but less than a week later she found herself on the London train once more with the intention of taking Harry up on his offer.

Since then, her friendship with Harry, and to some lesser extent with some other members of the workshop, had grown, and six months ago her first commission was accepted—a feature window panel for the new, prestigious office block of a three times winner of the Queen’s Award to Industry, whose go-ahead young architect wanted a modern design to include both these and some indication of the company’s business. Since this was the rapid transportation of parcels and goods, Kate had chosen a bird motif, the swift, and when Harry told her that her design had been accepted she had been almost speechless with delight.

Quite early on in their relationship she had discovered that Harry lived only twenty miles away from her. She had met his wife and two grown-up daughters and their children and now felt quite comfortable in the small family circle.

Harry’s suggestion that they set up in business together had come entirely out of the blue. It would be a challenge for both of them to move outside the protective security of the craft centre, but it was a challenge that suddenly she was eager to accept.

Harry was convinced that her design for Howard Transport would bring in further commissions, and in addition to that, Harry himself had been offered a contract with the Church authorities to make repairs and care for the windows in parish churches in a fifty-mile radius of Dorchester, which would bring in enough work to keep them both working steadily in the early months of their partnership.

Their work would not make them millionaires, Harry had told her that, but it would be stimulating and a constant challenge. Already she was a regular visitor to the Victoria and Albert Museum, avidly studying everything she saw, her busy mind drinking in all that was best of the period and working out how she could translate it into modern-day designs.

Liz, Harry’s wife, answered the phone and chatted to Kate for a few minutes before summoning her husband.

When he took over the receiver, Kate had a few seconds’ panic. Was she acting too impulsively? She would have to sell the house to raise her share of the capital they would need to set themselves up and give themselves a safe margin of working capital, and despite everything that had happened she was still deeply attached to her home…but then how long could she keep it on anyway? As she had said to Sue earlier, the roof needed attention…Taking a deep breath, she banished her panic, and calmly told Harry of her decision.

Hary was predictably delighted.

‘That’s great! I’ll make us an appointment at the bank…and how about coming round for dinner on Saturday to celebrate?’

‘I’d love to, but I can’t. I’ve already promised to have dinner with an old friend.’

The words were out before Kate realised what a first-rate excuse he had given her to pass on Sue’s dinner party, but it was too late to recall them now, Harry was chuckling and telling her that it was high time she started going out a bit. Harry knew nothing about her past life, other than that she had been widowed young. She never mentioned Ricky other than in passing, and neither Harry nor his family ever questioned her about him. It was so much easier to adopt the mantle of a young woman, widowed tragically young, who had loved and been loved by her dead husband, than to live with the truth, which was, no doubt, why she was sometimes so prickly with Sue, she thought guiltily.

After all, it was not Sue’s fault that she had confided in her, and like the true friend that she was, Sue had never raised the subject with her since. She had needed the catharsis of confiding in someone, so why now did part of her resent the fact that she had?

Shrugging aside thoughts far too deep for such a mellow summer afternoon, Kate opened the french windows and went outside.

The sunken brick patio, with its terracotta pots of plants and traditional wrought iron furniture, had been designed by Ricky’s mother, and Kate often wondered wistfully if things might have been different if she had known Ricky’s parents. They had died when he was four years old, killed in a plane crash, leaving Ricky to be brought up by his grandfather.

Beyond the patio lay the smooth greenery of the lawns with their cottage garden herbaceous borders. A brick path in the same soft earthen colours as the house and patio meandered through the lawns and through a rose-smothered brick wall to the enclosed area which had originally been a kitchen garden and which was now a brick-paved sun-trap complete with pool and fountain and some extremely large and lazy koi carp.

Kate loved the garden almost as much as she loved the house. She found working in it relaxing and therapeutic. She had spent almost the entire summer following Ricky’s death busy in it, exhausting herself physically to the point where she could drop into bed at night and fall fast asleep.

Those had been worrying days; days during which she had finally grown up, when she realised the extent of the debts her husband had left…the extent of his infidelity to her. Days when she had finally come to realise that the blame for the failure of their marriage was not hers alone…that she was no more to blame for the fact that Ricky was not attracted to her than he had been.