Brother Betrayed

Four

FourSir John Russell’s leg ached from his ankle to his groin, even though he’d spent most of the evening sitting. But his pride hurt even more. As he sipped a late-night brandy with Nathan in his rooms at the Holborne Hotel, where they had resettled remarkably quickly, he reflected on the night’s exchanges.

The glimpse of Pania’s turned back, the determined strong line of her café-au-lait shoulders against the ruffled neckline of her dark-blue evening gown, the diamond earrings projecting shards of silver light as she stalked to the door, a picture of composure, off to do the very thing he’d practically begged her not to do. He gave a deep sigh and dragged himself back to the present. He was brooding over his brandy, gritting his jaw in frustration.

She obviously didn’t plan to take notice of anything he’d said. She appeared to be hell bent on pursuing her cozy understanding with Harvey Miller. Miller is a nice enough chap, a very successful impresario, but he isn’t the right man for Pania Hayes. I’m amazed she can’t see it.

He sighed and took another sip of liquor, savoring the radiating inner glow as it went down. How on earth had he allowed himself to be sucked into accepting Mrs Wilmington’s matchmaking invitation? He must be getting addled. Or desperate.

“Can’t believe he’s gone,” he said to Nathan, who was sprawled lengthways on the leather couch with his boots off. “I’d got to thinking he’d go on forever, he was so full of vigor.”

“I know. It’s impossible to take in.” Nathan swiveled to place his feet on the floor and, anchoring an elbow on each thigh, hands under chin, regarded him speculatively. “You haven’t said much about it, but my guess is it wasn’t simply bad luck.”

Russell nodded curtly. “It wasn’t just bad luck. The old man and his love were dead before the fire started. And as Mrs Hayes was smart enough to ask earlier tonight, how does a fire start in an upstairs bedroom in the summer? Unless it started in the kitchen below, but it doesn’t look as if that was the case.”

“Beats me,” Nathan sighed, and they sank into companionable silence.

John felt a lightness replacing the dead weight of fatigue that had enveloped him. “It’s really good to have you and Seb around, Nat. Especially at a time like this. You understand what Ting Hon was to the family. What he still is to us boys.” He raised his near-empty glass in tribute. “To Chung Ting Hon.”

Nathan followed his lead. “To our mentors — Chung Ting Hon and Sir Robert, our irascible father.”

John felt his chest fill with a reassuring draft of air. It was good to be together. They were the three sons of a twice-widowed Hong Kong empire-builder. John was the eldest, born to Clara, an English gentlewoman, thirty-eight years ago. When she died when he was four years old, his father wasted little time in marrying Honor, a young American, who died giving birth to Sebastian, now thirty.

He sighed. “Yes, our one-of-a-kind father. He didn’t have much luck with his women, did he? Although he had enough of them.”

He hadn’t intended the comment to sound as sour as it did, and flicked a rueful half-smile to Nathan. The soon-to-be-wed youngest, now twenty-eight, nodded in sympathy. “I know what you mean. We were all lucky my hardy Aussie mother lasted the distance.” Arabella, Sir Robert’s third wife, had provided the love and emotional security their brilliant but distant father couldn’t, melding the unruly Queen’s Road household into a harmonious unit that occasionally had included Ollie.

“Arabella was superb.” John raised his glass once more. “To Arabella.” He took another sip and sighed contentedly. He was just a little bit tipsy with brandy and a deadening lack of sleep, but he felt warm inside.

John thought back to the steamy Hong Kong day of his father’s funeral, with the dizzying mix of Protestant and Chinese ritual required in farewelling a merchant prince who had lived more than half his life in the Orient.

That was the last time they had been together until a few months ago. Immediately after the funeral the Queen’s Road house was closed down and the family dispersed. Arabella took Nathan — then just ten — back to Sydney, and Sebastian went to his mother’s family in Boston for a Yankee education. John was commissioned to take his father’s place in Russell & Chung, opening the California office.

When John yawned, Nathan stood and put the glass he’d been nursing down on the side table. “You need to get some sleep. Come to think of it, so do I. But where do we go from here? You’ll want to get on to rebuilding before the snow comes, I imagine.”

“You’re right there. But I have to get to the bottom of this mess. I have to find Ollie. Ting Hon was upset — I’d even say bewildered — when he didn’t turn up for our meeting yesterday. It’s so out of character. You know what Ollie’s like. Punctilious and particular, just like the scholar he is. And Zeng really rubbed it in.”

“What do you think has happened to him?”

He contemplated the remaining inch of amber liquid in his glass, then downed it in one swallow. He shuddered and banged the glass down. “I’m hoping he’s just gone into hiding. Maybe he’s been threatened and has decided to lie low for a week or two. There’s some kind of power struggle going on in the Black Dragons, that’s for sure. And I suspect Zeng is right in the middle of it.”

Nathan put his hands on his hips and stretched. “He’s standing in the opposite corner from Ollie, you can bet on that. The fires of jealousy burn strong in that one. Always have.”

“You’re not wrong there.” He gave a second weary yawn and pulled at his silk cravat. “I suppose we should be going to bed. I’ve got to be on deck for the funeral tomorrow.”

Nathan nodded. “Good idea. Me too.”

His brother was at the door about to leave when the hotel’s night manger burst into the room, breathless and red-faced. “Sir John, there’s a lady insists on seeing you. Even at this hour, she won’t be denied.” His bald dome had a sweaty gleam. The sentence was barely out before a tall, red-headed woman loomed up behind him. She stopped in the doorway and ran one hand distractedly over her head. Her hair had fallen free of a loosely drawn chignon, but it wasn’t just the unruly tresses that signaled distress. She had a wild look in her eyes, as if she was escaping — or was it pursuing? — something terrifying. In her other hand she held a rolled-up parasol. She prodded the rotund manager in the back with the pointed shaft and stepped around him.

With her flawless creamy complexion, mysteriously flecked hazel-green eyes and shimmering copper hair, Selina Hamilton Chung had been the belle of many an English ball, but she had never cared for the acclaim of the crowd. A brilliant and strong-minded woman, she fell in love with Ollie when they met at his mother’s house on university holidays one summer. The unorthodoxy of the marriage, when she could have secured an aristocrat with castle and title if she so desired, perplexed society matrons, who could still be occasionally heard to mutter “Such a beauty! Such a waste!”

In her wake tripped a slender teenager with perfect Cupid’s-bow lips and pretty almond-lidded eyes who was going to be a ballroom show-stopper just like her mother.

Selina strode forward, her chin tilted at a desperate angle. “John, you must help!” She looked at him with glassy-eyed panic, drawing her daughter to her side as she did. “Lily and I need your help. Something dreadful has happened to Ollie. Please! Please do something.” Her voice was close to cracking.

John half-rose, leaning on his cane, and Selina drew herself to a sharp halt. “Oh, I’m sorry. What have you done to yourself? Don’t get up.”

She swept to his side and sank down on the sofa beside him, gesturing to Lily to sit next to her. “I went to Gold House. What on earth happened? It’s a ruin.” She ran her hand over her head again. “What’s going on? Has the world gone mad?”

John grasped her hand with long gentle fingers and steadied her. “We’ll get to that later. What’s happened to Ollie? You said something dreadful?” He stared at her, his body tilted forward for her answer.

“He hasn’t been home for two days. He didn’t say anything about going away. You know Ollie — he wouldn’t do that.”

He nodded. “You’re right. That is very unlike him. And I’ve got more bad news, I’m afraid. Tell me, have you just arrived?”

“Yes, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to apart from the coach driver and the hotel staff.”

The manager was hovering at the door, unsure whether to stay or leave. John beckoned to him. “Could we have a pot of tea and crumpets or similar here as fast as possible, Reynolds? Mrs Chung and her daughter need something to eat. And we’ll need some extra rooms.”

He turned and gestured to Nathan who had been standing to one side quietly observing. “Selina, I don’t think you’ve met my younger brother Nathan, from Sydney. He’s been visiting for the last month or so. Nathan, meet Ollie’s wife Selina Chung and their daughter Lily. Selina, Nathan was about to leave but I think it’s best if he stays and hears you out.”

Selina nodded. “Of course.” Nathan sank onto a chair opposite the sofa and nodded to the two women. “Delighted to meet you both. Ollie was older than me when we were growing up, but he was always John’s favorite cousin, we all knew that. We might not have been related by blood but Ollie was still family.”

Selina shook his hand. “Nathan, lovely to finally meet at last. Ollie has spoken of his Hong Kong childhood, and the kindness your mother showed him, many times. Have you met up with him again since you’ve been here?”

“Just once, when John had a big welcoming lunch. It was the first time since our father died that we’ve all been together. I’m hoping that won’t be the last time — but we’ve got a lot on our minds at present.” He shrugged as if to say, “We’ve got to take it day by day.”

John said, “Brace yourself, Selina. There is no easy way to tell you what happened here last night.” He tented his fingers and gazed over the top of them. He knew that Selina and Lily would be preparing themselves for bad news, but he was confident they couldn’t imagine the disaster he was about to disclose. He felt the burn of acid in his stomach, and took a deep breath. “Chung Ting Hon and his new wife died in a fire at Gold House last night. They were trapped in their bed. I couldn’t get to them in time.”

Selina thrust her hands to her face and wailed through her fingers. “Oh no! That can’t be! Not Ting Hon! There must be some mistake . . .” Her silvery voice trailed off.

John shook his head. “I’m so sorry. No mistake. I know it’s unbelievable. We are preparing for his funeral tomorrow.”

“How? How did it happen?” Selina’s voice came out in a fierce whisper, her shock immediately transmuted to anger. “Did Ji Zeng have anything to do with it? Did he?”

John’s insides cramped, and he had to take another deep breath before he could reply. “Selina, why would you think that? What possible reason could there be for him to kill his own father?”

“He resents everything he doesn’t control. He’s been giving both Ting Hon and Ollie a dreadful time this past few months with his plans for expanding the business. Ridiculous stuff.”

She darted an anxious sideways glance at Lily, and John sensed she didn’t want to say anything more in front of her daughter. He shook his head. “I know things have been rocky. But why would you suspect him of something as treacherous as that? Killing Ting Hon? I can’t believe he’d do it. Be reasonable.”

“Reasonable? Ollie vanishing isn’t reasonable either! And what about your house? Is it reasonable that it’s burnt to the ground? We can forget reasonable.”

Her voice had a sharp, rising edge. She was clearly close to breaking. Selina Chung was renowned for her cool composure and in all the years he’d known her he had never seen her lose her dignity.

“John, he hasn’t got you enlisted on his side too, has he? You don’t agree with where he wants to take things? Your good name is worth more, surely? You wouldn’t betray Ollie for thirty pieces of silver?”

He was so shocked by the challenge he could barely believe she’d voiced it. “You can’t seriously think that.”

She grimaced and looked past him with an unfocused, distant stare. “I don’t know what to think any more, I really don’t. I just know something is seriously wrong and we cannot afford to ignore it . . .” She shot a quick sideways look at Lily, who sat beside her, tight mouthed and white faced.

She had intended to finish the sentence with “or else”, John was sure of it. “Or else we won’t see Ollie alive again.” “Or else we’ll be too late.” But a quick glance at her grieving daughter had silenced her.

Selina patted Lily’s hand and attempted a reassuring smile. “I know it’s terrible news, darling. But we must try and get some sleep. We won’t hold up tomorrow if we don’t, and we don’t want that. We have to be at our strongest to farewell your darling Yeh Yeh, your grandad.”

The mention of her affectionate nickname for her grandfather Chung Ting Hon shattered Lily’s fragile composure. She turned her head into her mother’s shoulder and her slight frame shook with sobs.