Read Embrace Me for Free Online Page A

out who her friends are, anything they might know about her. Joe, you can try the restaurants she’d have frequented. Here’s a list. Start with San Lorenzo and Harry’s Bar.’
    Harry’s club was Brooks, which had been his father’s, his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s. A bequest from his Uncle Raymond took care of any bills run up there and the annual membership for Harry’s lifetime. Upon Harry’s death, the bequest was to pass to his sons if there were any. Uncle Raymond had been Harry’s father’s brother, a bachelor who’d loved his freedom and detested the very idea of marriage. He’d been reclusive yet strangely social when it suited him, a well-respected High Court judge. Uncle Raymond had adored his nephew and had been a second father to Harry whose own had been as generous as he could afford to be but indifferent as a parent. They had always had a slightly formal relationship. His mother had died soon after Harry had been born. She had been the great love of his father’s life, and with her death love and emotion were buried in the same grave.
    Another bequest Uncle Raymond had left Harry was a set ofrooms at Albany, a large and elegant Edwardian building set back off the street by iron gates, with a circular drive before the front doors where an impeccably uniformed doorman presided. Albany was famed for its A-list residents. When Harry learned that Olivia Cinders had also lived there he was not encouraged. He had had no intimation of it before the case broke as this was a building famed for privacy, the discreet behaviour of its tenants and the silence of its staff.
    On enquiring all he gained, besides entrance to her set of rooms, was the information that she’d rarely used them. That she was more apt to spend a few hours there during the daytime, and was never there at the weekend. That she was adored by the staff, who said they knew nothing about her life except what they read in the papers and did not believe for a minute that she was capable of killing anyone. Harry had known the doormen most of his life. They knew all the liaisons that took place in Albany, and would keep strict silence. Scandal was not Albany’s style. Harry knew he had already gathered as much as he was going to from the staff and the board that ran the building. He’d been clever enough not to be so intrusive as to annoy them but knew he’d get no further.
    At Brooks he dined alone, watching and listening to the club members. One of their own in such a scandal was bad publicity for the upper classes. It was sure to be a topic of general conversation for at least a few minutes. Harry was just attacking his jam roly-poly when he received his first piece of concrete information.
    ‘A lovely girl, damned attractive,’ he overheard. ‘The Buchanans of Sefton Park, were inseparable with her, the girls especially, will be shattered by any scandal. If Olivia made it to them, she’ll be all right, they’ll take care of her. She’s always run with the best and they won’t let a star like her down, no matter what she did or didn’t do. It was foolish of her to run away, though. Should have stood her ground no matter what had happened to the prince. A bit cowardly that. The running away, I mean.’
    ‘Do you think she did it, Archie?’
    ‘Early days, Bumpy. If she did it will have been self-defence, of course. A sordid affair, though, whichever way you look at it.’
    Harry finished his pudding and took his coffee in the main room. He drank it slowly with beautiful Lady Olivia in the forefront of his mind, afterwards feeling compelled to return to her rooms at Albany.

Chapter 4
    It had been easy to trace the owner of the car found abandoned in Sefton Under Edge. The vehicle was London-registered to a Mrs Caroline Wasborough of 28 Hay’s Mews, Mayfair. When an officer from the Oxford police department called to verify ownership of the car she claimed she had not even known it was missing. When told by the officer