Lies and Weddings(23)
Francis gave his friend a weary smile. “Yes, I’m very grateful for the terms you were able to negotiate for me. Truly.”
Thomas smiled back, even though his eyes couldn’t hide his dismay. He was the only person in the world who had the full picture of the earl’s finances, and he wished he’d never been made aware of them. No one had any inkling that behind all the magazine features and Instagram stories of the glamorous Greshams—luxuriating in couture at their swoon-worthy manor, glistening with golden tans aboard their antique black-sailed yacht in the Ionian Sea—rose a gargantuan mountain of debt.
Decades of profligate spending by previous earls had all but depleted the ancient Gresham trusts by the time Francis had succeeded to the earldom, and Arabella’s extravagant ambitions to expand her empire only made things worse. With the hotels mortgaged to the hilt and every line of credit from his various bankers nearly exhausted, Francis had several years back confessed everything to Thomas in a moment of desperation, hoping his friend might know of someone, anyone, who could throw him a lifeline. And Thomas had actually succeeded against all odds in convincing Rene Tan—the exceedingly wealthy and obsessively private billionaire from the Philippines—to loan Francis the staggering amounts that would stave off the banks. But that had meant mortgaging more and more parcels of land on the once-great Greshamsbury estate, and now there was precious little to offer as collateral aside from the Big House itself.
The two friends sat in silence, Francis scooping out the last bits of rice. Thomas looked up for a moment and saw a jet streak across the cloudless blue sky. He thought of the dozens of aristocratic and glamorous names that were about to descend on the island for the wedding of the year.
“Isn’t there someone on the guest list you could approach for a loan? Hasn’t Arabella invited a dozen billionaires?”
“You know I’ve never been comfortable talking about money with anyone, and none of those people are really the sort I’d ever hit up.”
“So naturally you are spending millions of pounds to entertain them all week.”
“Naturally,” Francis said with a wry smile.
“Is Arabella’s brother out of the question? Peter was rather nice to lend us his plane for the ride over.”
“Peter loves to lend his fleet—I’m told it actually saves him money to keep all his planes constantly moving. But Arabella would rip her own tongue out and feed it to herself before ever asking her brother for a cent.”
“How about your Norwegian soon-to-be relatives? Don’t they own all the oil in the North Sea?”
“That’s an idea! The Norwegians are a generous bunch, aren’t they? Perhaps Max’s parents will take pity on me now that we’re going to be kin.”
“Let’s drink to that.” Thomas raised his bottle of beer hopefully.
Francis clinked his bottle against his old chum’s. “Sk?l!”
After the friends parted, Thomas’s Uber was ferrying him back to his hotel when he noticed something on the hilltop overlooking the ocean.
“Is that an old fort over there?” Thomas asked the driver.
“That’s Pu‘ukohola Heiau, the temple built by King Kamehameha. It’s a very sacred place for Hawaiians,” the driver replied.
“Can one get close to it?”
“You can walk right up to it. There’s also a smaller temple that’s now submerged in Pelekane Bay where Kamehameha used to sit and watch the sharks, so the legend goes.”
“Really? A submerged temple?”
“Yes. It used to sit at the water’s edge, but thanks to rising water levels, it hasn’t been seen since the 1950s. You wanna take a look-see?”
“Sure.”
“You know, in all my years driving, you’re the first person that’s ever wanted to go there.”
“I suppose most people who visit the Big Island just want to enjoy the beach.”
“They don’t ever leave their resorts, or if they do they just want to go to the Tommy Bahama restaurant.”
The car turned off Kawaihae Road onto a narrow road that led to a newish-looking visitor’s center. “Take your time, and don’t go into the water in the bay unless you want to be shark food,” the driver quipped.
“I’ll try my best not to.” Thomas headed into the visitor’s center to get a quick lay of the land before walking up the hill to the temple. He strolled around the perimeter, marveling at the meticulously arranged stones used to create the structure. There was something about the place that reminded him of the ancient stone circles that could be found throughout the countryside in Devon.
Following the winding path through a meadow of beach grass that shimmered gold in the sunlight, he came to a point overlooking the small bay. Although nothing could be seen in the water and gentle waves lapped invitingly onto the picturesque little beach, a sign read:
WARNING: Although sharks usually avoid shallow water in bright sunlight, their frequent presence in this bay has been observed for centuries. Their dorsal fins (primarily of black-tipped reef sharks) are often seen from here. Please don’t wade or swim in these waters.
Thomas tried to imagine what it had been like in the early 1800s for King Kamehameha to sit atop his thronelike temple at the water’s edge, surveying the island and all the islands beyond that he had conquered. Something flashed in the ocean, and for a moment Thomas thought he saw the fin of a shark glinting in the water. He knew it was a myth that sharks were naturally violent, just like it was a myth that sharks never got cancer. Because of this, so many cancer patients around the world believed that taking shark cartilage supplements would cure them, and Thomas had to constantly tell patients that they were wasting their money.