Page 70 of The Lost Heiress
She smiled and steered the conversation elsewhere, and it wasn’t until much later, when it was time to leave, that she made her way across the room to RJ.
“Shall we go?” Astrid asked, keeping her voice light.
“Why? Aren’t you having a good time?” RJ said.
“We have tickets to the ballet,” Astrid reminded him.
“Who gives a fuck about the bloody ballet?”
“I do,” Astrid said. “I’ve been looking forward to it all week.”
“All right,” RJ said with a sigh. He checked his watch. “I’ll get you a cab. You go on ahead, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Curtain’s in half an hour,” Astrid said.
“I know, darling. I’ve plenty of time.”
He hailed Astrid and Florence a cab.
At the theater, Astrid and Florence took their seats in the upper gallery. When the houselights dimmed, Astrid glanced back expectantly toward the doors.
“He probably got caught in traffic,” she whispered to Florence.
Svetlana Beriosova was dancing the lead that night—Giselle, a young peasant girl who fell in love with a nobleman who had disguised himself as another. At the end of the first act, she realized that her beloved had misled her: he was not who he claimed to be; he was already betrothed to another. Svetlana descended into madness as she danced an adagio, whipping her pale, willowy limbs into a creamypirouette, dipping low into an elastic plié. Florence followed the smooth lines of her body, saw the way her braid had come undone, the dark halo of curls that fell to her shoulders. The straps of her dress were loose, and even from a distance she could see the pink buds of her breasts showing through the gossamer tunic. Giselle’s beloved watched her from the sidelines as she fluttered across center stage. Everyone watched her—her mother; her admirer, Hilarion, who had tried to warn her; and the villagers. They all watched, unable to console her, to stop her descent. She was despair; she was heartbreak—everyone understood that; she didn’t have to say one word. When she collapsed onstage and the curtain fell, Florence looked over at Astrid and saw her surreptitiously wipe a tear from her eye. No one else saw; the theater was dark, and the seat Astrid had saved next to her was still empty.
Chapter Twenty-Six
August 1982
Ransom was at Cliffhaven again that weekend. He seemed to be there all the time these days, which Saoirse found irritating. It was the party planning. He couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to know everything, down to the smallest detail. And he was always rearranging things, making adjustments behind her back. For instance, she’d put the raw bar outside on the patio, and he’d moved it inside.
“Who doesn’t like fresh air and caviar?” she asked him.
But he’d argued it would be too warm out and that it would last longer, be fresher, in the house’s AC.
Saoirse had wanted hot-pink dinner napkins, but Ransom called the color crass and replaced them with a pale blush color; he’d nixed the sword-swallowers and fire-breathers.
“This is not a circus,” he’d said.
Now he had called her into his study, stood across from her as she took a seat in front of his desk. Uncle Bass was there too. He took the seat next to her, leaned toward her amicably.
“Here you go, my girl,” Bass said, handing her a portfolio. “Ransom and I have been working on this for a while, and we think this is something that everybody can be happy with.”
She flipped it open on her lap, skimmed the pages. To her surprise, it was not about the party. It was the plan they had discussed that day on the beach—how she might divest her shares in Bass Corp. and invest it elsewhere. Only, it was also decidedlynotwhat they had discussed.
“Two and a half percent a year over five years,” Saoirse said. “Until I reach a holding of twenty percent, which I would retain.”
“We can give you a seat on the board as well,” Bass said, sounding very satisfied with himself. “Think about what you might accomplish with that influence? Together, we could steer the company in the right direction, to a more ethical treatment of the animals—increasing stall sizes, incorporating grazing periods—things of that nature.”
“A more ethical slaughterhouse?” Saoirse said. “If you still plan to off Wilbur, I doubt it makes much difference to him whether he has an extra few feet in his stall to stretch his legs.”
“We could introduce a vegetarian meal option,” Bass went on, keeping his voice upbeat, optimistic. “Some sort of pasta-and-veggie dish, perhaps.”
“This isn’t what we talked about,” Saoirse said.
“Saoirse, be reasonable,” Bass said. “This plan reduces your share of Bass Corp. by nearly forty percent, freeing up a large amount of assets to do with what you want—support your PETA, perhaps. You don’t want to divest any more than that. You’d no longer be a significant shareholder in the company.”
“I don’twantto be a significant shareholder,” Saoirse said. “I don’t want any part of it. I thought I made that very clear.”
