The Australian Heiress Read Free

him?”
    “I don’t think Harry really cared, as long as he thought he had control. We were never exactly close, my father and I, as you know.”
    “Well, it was his loss he never got to know his beautiful clever daughter.”
    Camille’s expression turned bleak. “Let’s face it, Lindy. Harry didn’t want me, but I was in his life. As for Philip, he didn’t make a fool of me. I did that all by myself.”
    T HIRTY MINUTES LATER every name on the guest list had been checked off. The entrance foyer, the gallery, the magnificent reception rooms lit by spectacular chandeliers were thronged with people.
    Many of the guests had passed the Guilford mansion innumerable times, but few had ever been invited in. With Harry Guilford’s millions and buccaneering style it was expected the house would be the last word in knock-’em-dead opulence. But far from ostentatious, the interior decor was remarkable for its classic good taste.
    Most people assumed it was the work of a leading decorator, but in fact Camille had taken on the job herself; once her father had decided she knew what she was about, he’d given her carte blanche. Of course, Harry would have found it inexcusable in a woman not to be able to decorate a house. That was women’s work, after all. A man’s work was making money.
    But now Harry was dead and the winding-up process was excruciatingly painful. Some might have considered their only child their greatest treasure. Not Harry Guilford. For nearly all her life Camille had borne the pain and bewilderment of rejection. It had been a terrible thing to know she offered her father no parental delight. Perhaps a son would have mattered.
    It had taken one of her father’s top executives to suggest she could become a real asset to the corporation. Not really believing it, her father had taken her on and Camille had bloomed—to the extent it seemed possible her father might notice her as a person in her own right
    Yet he never had. Now he never would. Because noone had ever mattered to Harry Guilford except his wife, Natalie. Camille’s mother.
    Her mother had died when Camille was six, when she was no longer a baby but a child capable of feeling terrible grief. The tragic story was as disturbing now as ever. Natalie Guilford had drowned, washed off her husband’s yacht in a violent squall. The horror of the incident had almost sent her adoring husband mad.
    As for Camille, she’d spent her lonely childhood asking God why? All the children she knew had mothers. Mothers who loved and cared for them. Natalie’s sudden violent death had created an unfillable void in her child’s life. Worse, Natalie had been pregnant, and so Camille had also lost a sibling, whether a brother or sister, she still didn’t know. The subject seemed a terrible taboo and was never mentioned. Then she’d been shunted off to boarding school while her father, his heart turned to stone, concentrated on forging a business empire.
    A flash from a nearby camera brought Camille back to the present. Moments later she was asked to pose beneath her own portrait. It was the only painting she actually owned. Life-size, it had been commissioned by Harry to mark the occasion of her twenty-first birthday, four years ago. Not because he loved her, but because of the highly favorable publicity it garnered. Harry was cast in the press as the doting father who showered his daughter with fabulous gifts. Although the notion was a myth, Camille had never said a word to dispel it.
    For the next few minutes flashbulbs exploded in her face while she obligingly posed before her seven-foothigh portrait. In it she wore an extravagant gown oflace and taffeta. The deep green backdrop was the perfect foil for her mane of hair, which was a glorious mixture of red, gold and amber. It foamed in sumptuous waves and curls over her shoulders and haloed a classically beautiful face, dominated by large lustrous eyes and a full curving mouth. The artist had captured wonderfully