Kane and Abel - Page 207/207

Abel had only one request of Florentyna. That she and Richard would accompany him on his journey to Warsaw ia nine months' time for the opening of the latest Baron.

"Can you imagine," he said, again excited, his fingers tap.ping the side table. The Warsaw Baron. Now there is a hotel that could only be opened by the president of the Baron Group!

During the following months the Kanes visited Abel regularly and Florentyna grew very close to her father again, Abel came to admire Richard and the common sense that tempered all his daughter's ambitions.

He adored his grandson. And little Annabel was - what was that awful modem expression? - she was something else. Abel had rarely been happier in his life and began elaborate plans for his triumphant return to Poland to open the Warsaw Baron.

The president of the Baron Group opened the Warsaw Baron six months later than had been originally scheduled. Building contracts run late in Warsaw just as they do in every other part of the world.

In her first speech, as president of the group, she told her guests that her pride in the magnificent hotel was mingled with a feeling of sadness that her late father could not have been present to open the Warsaw Baron himself.

In his will, Abel left everything to Florentyna, with the single exception of a small bequest. The testament described the gift as a heavy engraved silver bracelet, rare, but of unknown value, and bearing the legend 'Baron Abel Rosnovski.

The beneficiary was his grandson, William Abel Kane.