Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire (17 page)

After imploring the lawyer to do his utmost to free her husband, she had returned to the hotel with Willard and the other security men. Most of the reporters were less interested in her as a woman alone, although she did catch sight of herself on a news bulletin leaving the Courthouse. Glancing through news items on Daniel’s tablet, she realised with a sense of disgust that the arrest of Francis and counter arrest of Daniel was providing a feeding frenzy for the local media, providing all kinds of tawdry stories. One of the most disgusting that she read, seeing the headline on a gossip site, implied that Daniel Stone had killed his first wife and wondering how long the second one would last. For so long her husband had sought to keep himself away from the media glare, yet now he was thrust into it without any choice, subjected to all its gossip and lies.

She wanted to see him as quickly as possible, but Nathan told her she must bide her time, that within a couple of days she would be able to visit him—that with any luck she would not even have to visit a jail. As such, she felt like a caged tiger, prowling in her hotel room with its views across the bay and Golden Gate Bridge. With a grim and savage sense of irony, she often found herself staring ruefully at Alcatraz. There was no way Daniel could ever end up
there
of course: it was merely a tourist site now. But as the waters of the bay crashed upon the barren rock, she was reminded how the golden state treated its prisoners.

When Willard came to her the next day with news that a woman was in the lobby and wanted to see her, Kris’s thoughts immediately went out to the stranger who had been seated in the Courthouse on the day of Daniel’s arraignment. As she followed the heavy set man down to the hotel lobby, at first she thought that the elegant figure in a grey, two-piece suit with her back to the elevators was indeed the woman from the Court, but very quickly she realised something was not right. That woman had dark hair, but she could see a flash of blonde beneath the hat and wondered if it was Francis Roth’s mother. Her stomach churned sickeningly at this, but as the woman turned around to glance towards Kris, smiling as she did so, her dread took on a very different form.

For a second she halted—simply stopped. All she needed to do was to ask Willard or one of the other security men to escort Maria Gosselin from the hotel and she would not have to deal with that woman ever again. At the same time as she thought this, however, she realised that this would never happen. Her hatred towards Maria, which at one point had been so visceral when she thought that the French lawyer would drive her and Daniel apart, had in truth almost disappeared the day that she had been stripped of that ruby ring which she had worn as a kind of totem to her worship of Daniel Stone. Indeed, that day Kris had learned to feel something like pity for Maria Gosselin.

Nonetheless, it was not easy to see her sitting in this hotel now, yet at the very least she had to find out what Maria was doing in San Francisco. For six months, she had heard nothing about her nor had she sought out any information as to her whereabouts: for her to turn up here was more than coincidence.

Maria nodded as Kris came around the table and sat in front of her, somewhat stiffly. The French woman looked nervous and, still wearing her sunglasses even inside, and her smile was taut.

“Thank you for seeing me,” she said as Kris smoothed her skirt over her knees. Maria looked as elegant and beautiful as ever, but to Kris it seemed that her slender grace was more fragile than it had been before, the attempt to fight off the advances of approaching age rather than accept the life that lay before her. For some bizarre reason, pity struck her again: in contrast to Maria Gosselin, Kris was a somewhat plainer woman and yet her love was allowing her to blossom in a way that the lawyer would never experience.

“I understand that I should offer you congratulations,” Maria began hesitantly. Her mouth twitched as she spoke, suppressing the jealousy that she evidently felt.

Kris nodded briefly, barely acknowledging the sentence. For a moment, she allowed a heavy silence to sit between them before abruptly asking: “Why are you here, Maria?”

“I see you have learned to be more forthright.” Maria glanced down, fumbling with the clutch bag she had brought with her.

“I don’t have time for any games, not anymore.” Kris was surprised at the tone of her voice. Barely an hour before she had been on the verge of collapse, despairing of what would happen to her, but now she felt her resolve stiffen, a hardness spreading through her very limbs, a toughness she would not have thought possible before. It was as though some of the strength she had witnessed in Daniel in court—a newly found, quiet purpose—was refracted through her, shining through her eyes and illuminating everything she saw.

“No, of course not.” As Maria’s head dipped, for the briefest moment she caught a glimpse of those green eyes that had seduced and entrapped her before. Now, however, everything about the French woman indicated anxiety and nervousness, from the way she avoided Kris’s gaze to the constant play of her hands, fumbling with the clasp of her bag.

“I don’t have much time, Maria,” Kris repeated, firmly. “Why are you here? To offer your services to Daniel? We have a very good lawyer, thank you.”

At this, Maria’s head shot up. The smile that slowly crossed her lips was bitter, and even in the shadows of her sunglasses Kris could see that Maria’s eyes were flickering from side to side.

“No, I’m not here to work for Daniel. God knows I would love to.”

“Then why are you here?”

Maria paused before answering. “When Maximilian Roth sends for you, you don’t refuse.”

Kris felt a tic forming in her lip, dragging it upwards in an irregular beat. “So,” she snarled at last, a sudden maliciousness overwhelming her, “you’re working for Roth. I’m sure you’ll perform a very good service for him in the courtroom.”

She started to rise, but Maria’s hand shot out and grabbed hold of her wrist. For a second, Kris almost lashed out: part of her would have gladly have torn those glasses from this woman’s face, shredded those acid green eyes. She restrained herself, however. That was not what was required here.

“You don’t understand,” Maria told her. “Please, sit down.
Please
. I don’t have much time, and you need to know this.”

Reluctantly, Kris returned to her seat.

“I’m not here to represent Francis,” Maria continued.

“Then why
are
you here?”

“As... as a witness.”

Kris frowned at this. “A witness? Were you here, in San Francisco? I don’t understand.”

Maria shook her head. “Not a witness to
that
. Of course not. I... I’m here to testify as to your... character, and to Daniel’s as well.”

For a second, Kris sat in silence, then the anger inside her began to well up like a whirlwind. As her voice rose, Willard looked across to her, watching events carefully in case she would need him.

“How dare you!” she almost shouted. “How dare you... you... bitch!” She yanked her hand away from Maria and stared at her with loathing. “One mistake, a mistake that you’ll never allow me to forget. Is that it?”

Maria’s mouth was terse, her lips pursed. “I didn’t expect you to understand, but you’ve got to try.” As Kris opened her mouth to shout, she raised her hand and suddenly snapped. “Shut up! Just for one minute. This is important—and it isn’t about you, it’s about Daniel!”

The effrontery of the woman did indeed cause Kris to pause for a few seconds, and Maria began to speak rapidly.

“You don’t understand, but you need to try,” she repeated. “At this very moment Maximilian Roth is doing everything he can not just to free his son but to destroy Daniel. I don’t know why—I can guess some things, but I don’t
know
. But listen to me: if I stand up in court, and have to tell what... happened between us, along with the testimony of the women he’s bringing in from Victor’s, your reputation won’t stand a chance.”

“What do you mean?” Kris asked, tersely. Her eyes were fixed on Maria’s face with a mean expression.

“The club. The defence intends to testify as to yours and Daniel’s... perverse lifestyle. I don’t know exactly what they mean to say, but I’m sure that it will be to Francis’s benefit, not yours.”

“Lies, all lies,” Kris hissed.

“Do you think any of that matters? I told you that when a man such as Maximilian Roth commands, you obey—you had better remember that.” For a second, Kris felt that despite the antagonism of Maria’s words, her face looked truly afraid.

“Listen! If Maximilian gets his way, your case will fall apart—fall apart entirely. You’ll be left with nothing, and your reputation will be in complete tatters, as will Daniel’s. What’s more,” at this, Kris heard genuine pain in Maria’s voice, “the Roths intend to exact the maximum sentence they can for Daniel’s assault. They want to see him rot in jail here.”

“But... why?” Kris was astonished and confused by what she had just heard. Maria, however, was beginning to rise from the table.

“I don’t know—I don’t
want
to know. I don’t want to be here, Kris. I’m sure you don’t believe me, but for the past six months I’ve tried to put... what happened behind me. I genuinely tried to live a life without Daniel Stone, and now...” Once more the tone of her speech was bitter as she considered how events were unfolding. “And now I’m here,” she finished, taking a step away from the table.

“But you don’t have to testify,” Kris began to reply, hearing the folly in her voice even as she spoke. “Go back to Paris, leave here.”

Maria’s laugh was harsh, humourless. Holding her bag, she nodded to Kris and glanced towards her security men. Just before she turned to leave she offered her final piece of advice: “Drop your case. Make a deal with Maximilian. Do it, for Daniel’s sake. There are some men in this world who will stop at nothing to get what they want. Maximilian Roth is one of them. I’m sure you were frightened of Francis. I... have met him. But he’s nothing, nothing at all compared to his father.”

With that, she turned her back on Kris, her shoulders stiff like armour. As she left the lobby, pushing through the doors into the bright, Californian sunlight, she did not look back.

For two more days, Kris operated in a state of turmoil. Her contact with Daniel was restricted, with messages largely being passed through Nathan Armstrong. The dapper lawyer was always meticulously polite, but she could not help but feel that everything she was being told had been subtly censored in some way.

In addition, the presence of her security guards was becoming oppressive. She was informed by the lawyer that Daniel had extended their contracts immediately—indefinitely if necessary—but while the three of them rotated their shifts now, and remained as discreet as possible within the hotel, the fact that she knew they were nearby was enough to make her feel as though she was the one in prison.

Press attention in her had died away almost instantly, although one of the guards (was it Tony or Kurt? She was ashamed to admit that she could not remember) had manhandled a reporter who attempted to sneak past to her room for an interview. Fortunately, the airwaves and main news sites appeared to have lost interest in the story as it passed on, but whenever Kris searched online for any information she found increasingly salacious snippets of defamatory gossip about herself and Daniel.

In other circumstances, she would have even found some of the stories amusing. Because they generally were so wildly off the mark with regard to her, she was also willing to suppose they missed their target when discussing Daniel. The stories of his harem made her raise an eyebrow—the truth was in many ways even more bizarre than the speculations of the gossips. However, old photos and snippets of news about the bad boy behaviour of playboy Daniel Stone did begin to emerge, and some of those presented an increasingly unflattering portrait of her husband that she could not entirely ignore. That was his past, however, long before he had met her.

Although some of the images of him with incredibly beautiful women caused her heart to burn momentarily, it was the look on Daniel’s face that caused her most pain. In those days, his reputation with the few paparazzi who encountered him was a grim one, and occasionally they suffered a broken camera—or worse. In those pictures that did make it into the public domain, his demeanour was inevitably sullen and recalcitrant, although that only made her desire him even more.

But she also realised what else Daniel had given up for her. In recent years, he had become a virtual hermit as far as the world beyond the immediate concerns of Stone Enterprises was concerned, and even there he tended to operate more and more through proxies such as Felix Coltraine. He had girded himself about with a secure fortress of privacy—and now, with her insistence that he defend her, Kris had provided the wrecking ball that would bring down the walls that surrounded him.

For her own part, she was grateful that she only had to deal with a very few people directly. Anne and Andrew, having heard garbled accounts of what had happened, called and emailed, and when she told them what was going on they begged her to return to London. Elaine Christiansen had also been in touch, though Kris found her messages more difficult to read, tinged as they were with a more proprietary concern for the young boy who had once been her ward. Still, she answered dutifully, but what she really wanted—more than anything—was to see Daniel.