“Give me two years,” Hugh asked them. “And I will give you two million dollars, U.S., plus five percent of the profit of the company.” He gestured at the room. “If you like this, you could buy more of them. Or hire some servants, perhaps. Be waited on hand and foot.”

“Servants!” Heinrich spluttered. But Montfort saw that the idea appealed to him.

“Why not? You have laboured all your lives and for an inadequate reward. You are comfortable now, certainly. But why not work just a little longer and go out in a blaze of glory? Why not become truly rich? And, all the while, allowing ordinary women to wear truly fine jewels. We will not be another Tiffany; we will make unique, elegant gems that do not look as though they rolled from a production line.”

“I . . .” Heinrich licked his lips. “Will you excuse us?”

Sophie nodded. He rose, slowly, from his couch, holding out a hand to Gertrud; the two of them shuffled into the open-plan kitchen.

Hugh held his breath. It was odd; while he was waiting to find out if Sophie could love him, the jewellery business had held no fascination, but now that she was his, it was consuming him.

Was it healthy? Perhaps not; he had first been drawn by the need to obliterate his grief. Now Montfort wanted revenge. He kept replaying Pete Stockton’s gloating as he barked that Hugh was fired. He read the Wall Street Journal and the FT, and he watched the steady drip-drip-drip of articles chronicling the decline of Mayberry. Bad press. Nasty blind items. Shareholder flight. The stock, slowly but inexorably declining. The almost visible loss of confidence.

It angered him. So many years of hard, brutally hard work. All those long flights to Tokyo, all those months courting De Beers in South Africa. Montfort had built Mayberry. He had revived a dull, profitless little brand and made its shareholders rich. It had taken careful strategy, ruthless acquisition, trimming the fat and laying workers off. And in the process it had revolutionized an industry.

Now, something so trivial as a personal jealousy would destroy it. Pete Stockton was about to drive two formerly profitable houses into the ground.

Montfort wanted to punish the man. He wanted to avenge Sophie, and Tom, for her sake. And he was also tired of being number two. In fact, these days he was slightly ashamed that he had ever worked for any company in which he did not have a majority stake.

He wanted his own house. And the Brandts were key.

They came back into the sitting room. He was relieved to see they were smiling.

“Six percent, Mme Massot, and you have a deal.”

Sophie glanced at him. Hugh nodded.

“Deal,” he said. “Let’s go to work.”

Chapter 45

Chapter 45

“Beautiful,” he said. He bent and kissed the hand of his bride. “Don’t you think so, Natasha?”