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The Bachelor: Racy, pacy and very funny!
Tilly Bagshawe


It is a truth universally acknowledged, thata single man in possession of a good fortunemust be in want of… anything but a wife?The third book in the Swell Valley series by bestselling author Tilly BagshaweHenry Saxton-Brae has it all – a titled, self-made millionaire,his fiancée just happens to be a supermodel who is as kind and loyal as she is ravishingly beautiful. To top it all, he’s just bought Hanborough Castle, the jewel in the crown of the Swell Valley.Life couldn’t be better… for someone who was ready to settledown. Could he really be the only man in the world not in lovewith his future wife?Flora Fitzwilliam has been summoned by legendarydesigner Graydon James to restore Hanborough to its formerglory. She soon discovers that it’s not just the house thatneeds fixing, and Flora seems to be the only person who seesthe real Henry Saxton-Brae.Between her boss’s waning talents and Henry’s roving eye,Flora is being torn apart. Can she pull off the job, and makeHenry see that his bachelor days are behind him?Not since Rupert Campbell-Black has there been such a devastatingly sexy man in jodhpurs!

























Copyright (#u63b902be-411f-586e-aff5-73c85f527ea3)


Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

The News Building

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2016

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008132811

Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780008132835

Version 2016-05-24




Dedication (#u63b902be-411f-586e-aff5-73c85f527ea3)


For Nonny, with love.


Table of Contents

Cover (#ubbad640e-9a49-55fb-a8d8-194680c65f52)

Title Page (#u8439ab54-d8bf-5d22-94b0-82d7dec9a23c)

Copyright (#uff948a1c-d64b-54a9-8276-d0dbb65928d1)

Dedication (#u29fce162-24f3-5fc4-86c3-877c7db6061b)

Cast of Characters (#ue6702320-4d97-5331-a2c5-85d82dd02960)

Map (#u7b9a4b4b-8fdb-5348-bfed-388c51451782)

Prologue (#ub4540978-3a4d-5ca0-93f2-5be4662d65b3)

Part One (#ued316bb8-a007-5bbc-8499-5c10c474a78c)

Chapter One (#u4055ed0d-ec46-52f9-a9c4-60b01c9e8775)

Chapter Two (#u8d549d33-955f-537d-98a1-e18673939188)



Chapter Three (#u6b194e3a-e0b5-56e9-a840-b4df67c6c4c8)



Chapter Four (#u37cffec5-e585-5b91-ae24-6e00232bbec5)



Chapter Five (#u0b706e3d-4a49-59b7-a5b8-e24279944464)



Chapter Six (#u3d694a86-bd89-5d53-bda7-9613ac1348c5)



Chapter Seven (#ue73244d1-6022-5141-b8ba-17e572c0282d)



Chapter Eight (#ud3aae809-a585-5504-b76c-e5bc90c139e2)



Chapter Nine (#uafb62ef9-98ed-54d0-8c68-5f8e933f1d60)



Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)



Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)



Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)



Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)



Also by Tilly Bagshawe (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




























PROLOGUE (#u63b902be-411f-586e-aff5-73c85f527ea3)


Henry Saxton Brae was admiring his business partner’s considerable assets.

‘Harder!’ she commanded. ‘I’m almost there!’

Her eyes were closed and her breathing ragged. Her pretty, elfin face was twisted into an expression of intense concentration as she willed herself to orgasm.

Henry felt a moment’s deep loathing, first for George and then for himself. Then he closed his own eyes and erupted inside her, his fingers digging painfully into the small of her back as they both came.

‘Naughty,’ Georgina chided him, turning to rub the bruises already forming above her buttocks as she dismounted, with an insufferably smug look on her face. Every time they did this, George had ‘won’ and Henry had ‘lost’. She delighted in the power she had over him; her ability to goad him into sex, even though she knew deep down he despised her.

‘Robert’s bound to notice. What am I going to tell him?’

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ Henry muttered bitterly, pulling up his jeans. ‘Lying’s never exactly been a problem for you.’

‘Or you, darling,’ George shot back.

They were lying on the floor of Gigtix.com’s London offices, the internet box-office company that Henry Saxton Brae and Georgina Savile had founded together three years ago. It had made both of them fabulously wealthy, but it had also bound them together in what was becoming an increasingly toxic relationship. George’s recently acquired husband Robert, a barrister of quite earth-shattering banality, was far too unimaginative ever to suspect anything might be going on behind his back. But Eva, Henry’s girlfriend, was beginning to get suspicious.

Not girlfriend, Henry reminded himself guiltily. Fiancée.

Why had he given in to George again? Why? What compulsion kept driving him to cheat on the woman he loved, and who was a thousand times more beautiful than malicious, manipulative, spiteful George Savile, or any of his other meaningless flings?

‘I’m serious,’ George pouted, examining her bruises more closely. ‘How would you like it if I sent you back to Ikea with scratches all over your back?’

‘Don’t call her that,’ Henry snapped. ‘Ikea’ was Georgina’s nickname for Eva, because she was Swedish and, in George’s mind, disposable. Looking at his Patek Philippe watch, Henry felt his anxiety levels rise still further. ‘I have to go. I’m going to be late.’

‘For what? Your curfew?’ Georgina taunted, slipping a ridiculously tight pink T-shirt over her nude push-up bra.

‘For the village fete,’ said Henry, grabbing his car keys from the desk. ‘I’m supposed to be giving out prizes.’

George threw her slender neck back and laughed loudly.

‘I’d forgotten you’re playing the country gentleman now. How priceless!’

‘I’m not playing,’ said Henry.

Henry had bought Hanborough Castle, the Swell Valley’s most idyllically romantic estate, six months ago, and now lived there full time with his bride-to-be. The whole thing was ridiculous. Taking Henry Saxton Brae out of London was like taking a killer whale out of the ocean. Henry was a predator, not a pet.

‘Run along then,’ George taunted. ‘The lord of the manor mustn’t be late for the fete.’

Henry stormed out, slamming the office door behind him.

Only once she was alone did George’s triumphant smile fade and the familiar melancholy, deflated feeling take hold. Henry would come to his senses one day. George felt sure of it. But it was hard waiting sometimes.

She’d hoped her wedding to Robert would be the wake-up call Henry needed. But he’d seemed not to care at all. George was pretty sure he was faking his indifference. But it was still hard. Henry’s engagement to the awful, vacuous, goody two-shoes Eva Gunnarson had been even harder. George had grown used to him screwing around. He was one of England’s most eligible bachelors, after all. Rampant promiscuity went with the territory, and George knew that the one-night stands meant nothing to him. But Henry’s new-found devotion to that Swedish bitch was different. That had changed everything.

Eva wouldn’t win, though. Not in the long run. Henry would soon tire of country life, and of her. And when he did, Georgina Savile would be there to claim her prize.

He still needs me, George thought, caressing the bruises on her back again, but lovingly this time. I’m his drug. We’re each other’s drug.



PART ONE (#u63b902be-411f-586e-aff5-73c85f527ea3)




CHAPTER ONE (#u63b902be-411f-586e-aff5-73c85f527ea3)


‘I can’t believe how many people turned up. In this weather! It’s like a bloody monsoon.’

Max Bingley huddled under an oversized umbrella with Angela Cranley, surveying the rain-soaked quagmire that was this year’s Fittlescombe Fete. Swell Valley’s prettiest village always held its annual fete in the lower field at Furlings. The Georgian gem of a house had once been the family seat of the Flint-Hamiltons, but was now the home of Angela and Max, Fittlescombe’s happiest unmarried couple, who were delighted to carry on the tradition.

‘I know,’ said Angela. ‘How much of the turnout do you think is down to the lovely Ms Gunnarson?’

They both turned to look at this year’s cake-baking marquee, already full to bursting and with a loud and rowdy queue huddled and dripping outside.

Max grinned. ‘Somewhere in the ninety per cent range I’d say. We should rope in a supermodel to judge the cakes every year.’

Eva Gunnarson, the latest face (and body) of La Perla lingerie and a regular on the pages of Maxim and Sports Illustrated, was the supermodel in question, recently engaged to the Honourable Henry Saxton Brae. A former Under-21s England tennis champion, Henry was considered almost as much of a pin-up as his girlfriend. He was as tall, dark and handsome as Eva was blonde, willowy and generally physically perfect. The combination of his good looks, charm, immense wealth and old, aristocratic family name saw Henry regularly named in Tatler as one of England’s most eligible bachelors, and for the last five years he’d been renowned as a playboy on the London social scene.

But all that had changed since the couple’s engagement, and with both of them moving to Hanborough and taking up country life. They had thrilled the entire Swell Valley this year by announcing their intention to restore Hanborough Castle as both a family home and working estate. Eva had made an effort to get involved in the village between her hectic international modelling jobs. But Henry Saxton Brae himself had been maddeningly elusive, and today seemed to be no exception.

Inside the marquee, temperatures were rising, not just because of the heaving mass of bodies straining to catch a glimpse of Eva Gunnarson looking effortlessly gorgeous in a pair of skinny jeans and a tank top.

‘The cakes are going to get damaged. You must keep people back, Vicar. My spun-sugar daisies are extremely delicate. Icing like that doesn’t make itself, you know.’ One of the ladies from the WI was haranguing the vicar.

‘No, of course not.’ The Reverend Bill Clempson mopped his brow uncomfortably. Picking up a loudhailer he shouted ineffectually into the throng, ‘If I could ask everybody to step back from the display itself …’

‘Would you like me to help, Vicar?’

Gabe Baxter, another local celebrity and Bill Clempson’s one-time arch nemesis in the village, pushed his way to the front of the crowd around the cake stall. Relations between Bill and Gabe had improved since Bill had married his wife Jenny, who used to work as a vet up at the Baxters’ farm and had always got along well with both Gabe and Laura, his wife. But the vicar still didn’t completely trust Fittlescombe’s most lusted-after farmer.

‘I think we’ve got things under control.’

Ignoring him, Gabe grabbed the loudhailer, handing the vicar his sticky plastic pint of warm beer.

‘Move back, please. Everyone move right back from the tables.’

Then he walked forwards with his arms outstretched. The crowds, who’d ignored Bill, immediately retreated a good five feet. It was like watching a slightly pissed Moses part the waves in the Red Sea.

‘Thank you! That was marvellous.’

Gabe looked up to see Eva Gunnarson standing before him.

‘I’m Eva.’

‘Gabe.’ With an effort he pulled himself together enough to shake her hand. Gabe was besotted with his wife, Laura, but Eva was disarmingly gorgeous, and he had had three beers. She had a lovely, natural face up close, Gabe noticed, the kind that looked more beautiful without much make-up. Wholesome. With her long tousled hair pushed back from her face in tumbling, golden waves, the future Mrs Saxton Brae looked younger than she did in her magazine pictures.

‘So is your fella going to put in an appearance today? You do realize half the women in this village are besotted with him. I’m including my wife in that.’ He didn’t mention that Laura had also said of Eva, ‘She’s so gorgeous that you want to hate her but you can’t. Which almost makes you want to hate her more.’

‘I can’t blame people for fancying Henry,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘He’s gorgeous. And yes, I hope he’s coming today.’ She looked at her watch anxiously. ‘Timekeeping’s not his strongest suit. But he did promise me.’

‘Don’t waste your time talking to this guy.’ Santiago de la Cruz – Sussex cricketing hero and a good friend of Gabe’s – suddenly appeared, inserting himself between Gabe and Eva and kissing the latter on both cheeks as if they were old friends. Dark-skinned and blue-eyed, with just a hint of grey creeping in at the temples of his oil-black hair, Santiago had once been something of a player himself, in a past life, before he met and married his angelic wife Penny. ‘He barely even lives here any more, you know. Spends half his time in London.’

‘That is not true!’ Gabe protested, although it was. Laura’s TV production company had really taken off in the last two years, and they didn’t spend as much time in the valley as they used to. ‘I was bloody born here, unlike some Johnny-come-latelies I could mention.’

‘Penny was born here,’ Santiago countered.

‘Penny de la Cruz? Are you her husband?’ Eva smiled, delighted to have made the connection.

Santiago nodded. ‘You’ve met?’

‘Just briefly. She mentioned she’s an artist and that she’s got some sketches of the castle she did ages ago. She very kindly offered to frame one for us as a moving-in present.’

‘That sounds like Penny.’ Santiago positively glowed with pride. The de la Cruz marriage was a very happy one.

People are so nice here,thought Eva, watching Gabe and Santiago cackle away at each other’s jokes like two naughty schoolboys. Angela Cranley had been lovely to her earlier too, telling her funny anecdotes about Graydon James, the designer Henry had hired to work on Hanborough, and who had once built a house for Angela’s ex-husband Brett.

‘He used to shimmer about the house like Liberace, in trousers so tight they were more like ballet dancer’s tights. In the end Brett couldn’t take it any more. He asked him if he wouldn’t mind covering up a bit, or words to that effect. Graydon just looked at him and said, deadly serious, “For your information, Mr Cranley, the cluster is being worn much further forward this year.” It took a lot to shut my ex-husband up, I can tell you, but that did it.’ Angela wiped away tears of mirth.

Eva already felt sure that the move to the Swell Valley was going to be the start of a new life, a much happier life, for her and Henry.

She pictured the two of them at this same village fete five years from now – married by then, of course – and perhaps even with a child running around. A gorgeous little boy, just like Henry …

Eva looked at her watch again.

‘We’ll have to start without him,’ Max Bingley complained to Richard Smart, an old prep-school friend of Henry’s and another new local face. Richard had recently accepted the position as Fittlescombe’s new GP, and with his wife Lucy was renting Riverside Hall in Brockhurst from Sir Eddie and Lady Wellesley, who were spending the year abroad.

‘I know. And I agree,’ he told Max. ‘Henry does have a lot of brilliant qualities, honestly. But I’m afraid punctuality’s never been one of them.’

‘Who do you suggest we rope in to give out the prizes?’ Max asked.

Richard looked around, scanning the muddy field for inspiration.

‘What about Seb?’

Both men looked across at Henry’s elder brother Sebastian. Squat, fat and balding, with a voice so offensively upper class he sounded as if he had an entire plum tree crammed into his mouth, Seb Saxton Brae was as well meaning as he was dull.

‘He is a lord. And master of the Swell Valley Hunt,’ Richard reminded Max.

Seb and Henry’s father, Harold, had died unexpectedly last year, making Sebastian the youngest Lord Saxton Brae in four generations. He and his wife Kate had moved into Hatchings, the family’s impressive estate (though not in Hanborough Castle’s league), the day after the funeral.

‘Oh, go on,’ said Richard. ‘Ask him. He’d love to do it.’

Max sighed. Beggars really couldn’t be choosers. And, at the end of the day, it was only the raffle prizes.

Picking his way through the mud, Max waved at Seb. ‘Lord Saxton Brae? I wonder if I might have a word?’




CHAPTER TWO (#u63b902be-411f-586e-aff5-73c85f527ea3)


‘I don’t understand. I want a pool. I am damn well having a pool. What kind of a goddamn summer house doesn’t have a goddamn swimming pool?’

Lisa Kent’s over-plumped, chipmunk-cheeked face positively twitched with anger. The ex-wife of billionaire hedge fund-founder Steve Kent, Lisa was used to getting her own way. Indeed, ever since her husband traded her in for a (much) younger model, getting her own way had become something of a raison d’être for the former Mrs Kent. If Lisa weren’t so utterly obnoxious, Flora Fitzwilliam would almost have felt sorry for her. As it was, however, Flora felt sorry for herself. Being Lisa Kent’s interior designer was about as much fun as having a dentist’s drill slowly inserted into a rotten tooth. The fact that Lisa was building her house on Nantucket Island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, during the coldest, wettest May that anybody could remember, didn’t help matters.

How do people live here? Flora wondered. I’d kill myself.

Luckily her prison sentence on the Cape was almost at an end. This time next month Flora would be in England, thank God, working on the job of her dreams. She held on to that fact like a drowning man to a raft, as Lisa ranted on.

‘The thing is,’ Flora explained patiently, once she could get a word in edgeways, ‘you’re right on the cliff here. Erosion up on Baxter Road is a huge issue, as you know. Digging foundations for a pool would seriously compromise …’

‘I don’t care what it would compromise!I’m paying you to fix these problems.’

Actually you’re paying Graydon James, my boss, Flora thought. You probably have dry-cleaning tickets worth more than my wages on this project.

But she kept this thought to herself, sticking doggedly to the facts at hand.

She tried a blunter approach.

‘If you try to dig a pool, Lisa, your house will fall into the ocean. I’m sorry, but that’s what will happen. You knew this when you bought up here. That’s why we never drew up plans for a pool when we did the garden design.’

Lisa’s pretty green eyes narrowed. ‘Karen Bishop has a pool.’

Flora sighed.

Her wealthy client had been a theatre actress in her youth, a great beauty by all accounts. She still maintained a lithe, yoga-toned figure, and her blonde highlighted bob brought out the fine bone structure that no amount of fillers could ruin completely. But these days Lisa Kent looked expensive rather than beautiful. Well put together. Groomed.

Like a dog, Flora thought, a little unkindly.

It would help a lot if she smiled from time to time.

‘Karen Bishop lives on Lincoln Circle,’ Flora explained.

‘Exactly. Right on the cliff.’

‘It’s a different cliff, Lisa.’ Really, it was like trying to reason with a tantruming toddler. ‘Different geography. Different building codes.’

‘I don’t care! Karen always thought she was better than me, even before the divorce. I won’t have her and William lording it over me at the Westmoor Club because my stupid designers couldn’t build me a stupid swimming pool. I mean it, Flora. Fix this. Fix it!’

Lisa Kent jabbed a diamond-encrusted finger in Flora’s general direction and stormed back into her half-built house.

Flora bit her lower lip and counted to ten.

Don’t take it personally. Do not take it personally.

The reality was, Lisa Kent was an unhappy, embittered woman. She’d given the best years of her life to a man who’d discarded her like a used condom at the first signs of ageing, moving on with his new wife and new life without a backward glance. No house, no pool, no diamonds would ever make up for that humiliation.

Flora Fitzwilliam, on the other hand, was engaged to be married to a wonderful, kind, handsome, intelligent, rich man. Mason Parker was the best thing that had ever happened to her, period. The second best thing was her job. At only twenty-three, straight out of design school in Rhode Island, Flora had landed her dream job, the dream job in interior design, working for the great Graydon James in Manhattan.

Graydon James, designer of the new Gagosian Gallery in San Francisco and the stunning limestone and curved glass Centre des Arts in Paris. Graydon James, who had built New York’s ‘Nexus’, a neoclassical hotel voted ‘Most Beautiful New Building in America’ by InStyle magazine and World of Interiors’ ‘Top Luxury Hotel’ for three years in a row. Graydon James, whose vision could vary wildly from project to project, but always within the context of clean lines and a famously pared-down aesthetic, an alchemy that no other living designer could ever quite seem to match. From private homes to libraries, from Spanish nightclubs to Middle Eastern palaces, Graydon was a design master long before his lifestyle brand propelled him into the ranks of the super-rich and made him a household name from Dubrovnik to Dubai.

All Flora’s classmates at RISD had been spitting with envy when she’d landed the job with Graydon James.

Of course, most of them envied Flora anyway. Not only was she uniquely talented as a designer, with a true artist’s eye, but she was also the most lusted-after girl on campus. Which wasn’t to say she was necessarily the most beautiful. At only five foot two, with her Puerto Rican mother’s curvaceous figure – tiny waist, big boobs, big bum – and her English father’s blond colouring, Flora was more of a Fifties pin-up than a modern-day model. Plenty of girls at RISD were taller, thinner and more classically pretty. But Flora’s brand of seaside-postcard sauciness was a huge hit with all the men. One ex-boyfriend observed that Flora always looked as if she should be winking, sitting on a sailor’s lap and wearing his cap at a jaunty angle (with not much else on underneath).

There were always malicious rumours flying around during her college years, that Flora had flirted with her RISD professors to achieve her top scores. But at least no one could accuse her of flirting her way to the top with the famously gay Graydon James. Only last year James had been quoted in Vanity Fair talking about his ‘vagina allergy’ and the fact that ninety per cent of his workforce were very young, very handsome men.

When Graydon looked at Flora Fitzwilliam, all he saw was talent.

True, the pay was terrible, barely a living wage. And true, the hours were endless, and many of the clients were abusive and unreasonable, just like Lisa Kent. But Flora was working with Graydon James. The Graydon James, design genius and now heir apparent to Ralph Lauren’s taste and lifestyle empire, thanks to an aesthetic as chic and classically understated as Graydon himself was flamboyant and loud. Many people found it bizarre that someone as flamingly gay, extravagant and attention-seeking as Graydon, with his penchant for Cavalli silk shirts, heavy eyeliner and preposterously young lovers, could produce houses and hotels and museums of such breathtaking simplicity and class. But Flora understood perfectly. Through his art, Graydon fulfilled a yearning that he could never satisfy in his own real life. There was a peace to Graydon’s designs, however grand, a calm constancy that spoke of history and permanence and beauty and depth. The spaces Graydon designed were the antidote to his shallow, excessive, restless party life.

His art was his escape. Flora, of all people, could understand that.

Now, three years into the job, she had become Graydon’s right-hand woman. Now Graydon Jamesasked her, Flora Fitzwilliam, for advice on designs. He relied on her, entrusting her with major projects like Lisa Kent’s thirty-million-dollar Siasconset beach house. And next month Flora would be starting work on probably the single most coveted job in international interior design: the restoration of the idyllic Hanborough Castle in England’s famously beautiful Swell Valley. Professionally, artistically, the Hanborough job was a dream come true.

At least it would be, just as soon as her Nantucket nightmare was over.

I must not complain, Flora thought, gazing out across the Siasconset bluffs at the roiling grey waters of the Atlantic.

She’d been here a week now, staying at a quaint little guesthouse in town, but Nantucket’s famous charm seemed to have eluded her. In fact Flora found the island deeply depressing, with its grey, clapboard houses, cranberry bogs and miles of windswept beaches, not to mention the sour-faced locals, who always seemed to glare at you as you passed, as if you were engaged in some deeply personal dispute with them, but no one had bothered to tell you what it was. Everyone here seemed to be at war with everyone else. The über-rich residents of Baxter Road, like Lisa Kent, were daggers drawn with the local fishermen and year-round islanders, who resented them shipping in tons of sand, at vast expense, to try to shore up their crumbling properties. Flora couldn’t imagine living in such a poisonous atmosphere of envy and loathing every day. It seemed to her as if the grey clouds gathering in the May skies were heavy not with rain, but with the islanders’ petty resentments and grievances. A thunderstorm would do all of them good.

The situation with the ‘Sconset bluffs would be funny if it weren’t so tragic – the arrogance of rich New Yorkers believing they could hold back the mighty Atlantic Ocean. That a big enough cheque would stop global warming in its tracks and save them and their precious beach houses from inevitable disaster. Talk about the foolish man building his house upon the sand! You couldn’t make this stuff up.

The site foreman turned to Flora. ‘What do you want me to do? We can’t start digging a pool. The town hall will shut us down in a heartbeat.’

‘Of course you can’t,’ Flora agreed. ‘I’ll talk some sense into her.’

The foreman raised an eyebrow. He liked Flora. She worked hard and got on with it, not like most of the poncey designers out here. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she looked like Marilyn Monroe. But she’d clearly bitten off more than she could chew with this Kent bitch.

‘Good luck with that,’ he said to Flora. ‘And until you get her to change her mind? What should I tell my guys?’

‘Tell them they can take the day off. As many days as it takes, in fact. Mrs Kent will pay for their time. She can afford it.’




CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_4f31b0ad-1e68-5a9b-9c3d-656d26c1496e)


Snaking his way through rain-slicked country lanes, Henry smiled as he eased his foot down on the accelerator of his new Bugatti Veyron, delighting in the roar of the engine as the car surged forwards. The Veyron was the man-made equivalent of a leopard, he decided. Or perhaps a black panther was a better analogy. Dark, sleek, elegant and insanely powerful. Henry loved it.

He felt the last flutterings of guilt in his chest over his latest slip-up with Georgina. But they soon faded, like the dying wingbeats of a trapped butterfly. Guilt was a waste of time. Eva didn’t know, and what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

He would do better next time.

He did feel bad about missing the fete, mostly because he knew Eva really cared about all that ‘community spirit’ bollocks. Traffic out of London had been so horrendous that not even the mighty Veyron could have got Henry to Fittlescombe on time. But Seb had already texted to say he’d filled in with the raffle prizes. So all was well that ended well.

At thirty, Henry had the world at his feet. He was successful, rich, intelligent, handsome and charming – when he wanted to be. He was engaged to be married to one of the most desirable women in the world, who also happened to be deeply kind and loyal, two qualities Henry himself had been known to lack. And then there was Hanborough, the icing on the already mouthwatering cake that was Henry Saxton Brae’s life.

Despite all his success, there was still a part of Henry that felt like the younger son. Growing up, he had always known it would be Seb who would inherit the family estate in its entirety; Seb who would one day become Lord Saxton Brae. Henry was fond of his elder brother. It was hard not to be. For all his outward pomposity, Sebastian didn’t have a mean bone in his body. But on some deep, subconscious level, it was important to Henry to own a house that was better than his brother’s, better than Hatchings. And not just a house. An estate. Something with land and a future, that could be left to future generations.

The problem was that this dream home had to be in the Swell Valley, the most beautiful part of England, in Henry’s opinion, and the part of the country where the Saxton Braes had lived for generations. That left precious few options, and although some were on a par with Hatchings, none really outshone it in terms of grandeur.

Hanborough Castle was easily the most impressive house in the county. Moated, and of Norman origin, with extensive medieval additions, it sat atop the South Downs at the end of a mile-long drive, with incredible views that stretched from the sea to the south right across the entire Swell Valley to the north. There were oak trees in Hanborough’s vast swathes of parkland that were believed to date back to the Conquest. Unfortunately, the entire estate had been gifted to the nation in 1920. As far as anybody knew, there was no mechanism for the house ever to return to private hands.

But Henry Saxton Brae rarely took ‘no’ for an answer. Somehow, nobody quite knew exactly how he did it, but apparently it involved an offshore trust and a large chunk of Gigtix’s shares as collateral, he had pulled strings with English Heritage and the relevant government department, and emerged as Hanborough’s new owner and saviour. Budget cuts had seen the property fall into serious disrepair over the last twenty years. Henry was one of the few individuals with both the money and the inclination to bring Hanborough back to life.

The rain had finally stopped and twilight was softly falling over the Sussex countryside as Hanborough shimmered into view.

God, it’s beautiful, Henry thought, gazing at the shadowy turrets, like something out of a fairy tale. Graydon James, the designer, was arriving next week to begin the restoration. The plan was that next summer, after a traditional church wedding at St Hilda’s, Henry and Eva would host a star-studded reception up at Hanborough, to officially launch the castle as a family home, and to begin their lives as man and wife.

It would be a new start for the estate, and for Henry.

He would be responsible. Faithful. Married.

The end of his bachelor days.

And only a year to go …




CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_da609e87-33c9-5317-864d-ef84f99e7b19)


‘Forget it, Graydon. You don’t take me seriously!’

Graydon James lay back against a riot of purple and peach silk cushions on his vintage B&B Italia daybed and watched Guillermo, his latest toy boy, pack. If by ‘pack’ one meant strutting around Graydon’s apartment naked, pouting and tossing one’s long, blue-black, Indian Brave mane of hair with gloriously theatrical panache while occasionally throwing a T-shirt into a Louis Vuitton Weekender.

‘Don’t be a drama queen, William,’ Graydon drawled in his famously deep, gravelly, smoker’s voice. ‘You know I value your talent.’

‘Yeah, right,’ the young man grumbled. ‘All eight inches of it.’

‘Don’t sell yourself short.’ Graydon grinned. ‘Closer to ten, I’d say. When you make an effort.’

‘Piss off,’ the boy hissed.

He’s even more magnificent when he’s angry, Graydon thought. At sixty-five, Graydon James’s libido was not what it used to be, but his artist’s eye could still appreciate the male form, especially when presented in such an exquisitely chiselled package as Guillermo.

Graydon knew people mocked him for his young lovers. That they saw him as a sad old queen, desperately clinging to the vestiges of his own, long-lost youth. Those people could all go fuck themselves. Graydon knew the truth: he was a huge success; rich, famous, preposterously talented. The rules of the hoi polloi did not apply to him. If he wanted a twenty-year-old lover, he would buy himself one, just the same way he bought himself a slice of chocolate cake or a couture smoking jacket or anything else that brought him pleasure.

Graydon James lived for pleasure. Yet, at the same time, he enjoyed a challenge, romantically as much as professionally. It wasn’t Guillermo’s young, perfect body that made Graydon feel alive so much as moments like this one. The drama. The tension. The passion. Sex was all well and good, but nothing beat the addictive thrill of romance. Hope and despair. Agony and ecstasy.

Graydon patted the seat beside him. ‘What do you want, William? Exactly? Come and talk to me.’

‘It’s Guillermo,’ the boy smouldered. ‘And you know what I want.’

Graydon patted the seat again. Guillermo narrowed his eyes briefly, then trotted to his master’s side like a chastened puppy.

‘I want the London job. The castle.’

Graydon shook his head. ‘It’s impossible. Hanborough’s a huge project. You can’t possibly manage it alone.’

‘I wouldn’t be alone though, would I?’ Guillermo put a hand suggestively on the old man’s thigh. ‘You could come with me.’

‘Only part time.’ Graydon closed his eyes as the boy’s fingers crept higher. ‘I can’t leave New York for too long. Besides, I’d go mad. I loathe the countryside. You do realize Hanborough Castle isn’t actually in London? It’s in the middle of nowhere. You’d hate it.’

‘I want that job.’

Guillermo’s dark brown eyes locked with the great designer’s. A challenge. Graydon’s pupils dilated with desire.

‘I’m a good designer, Graydon.’ Guillermo coiled his fingers around the old man’s hardening cock and squeezed gently.

No, you’re not, thought Graydon. But it was hard to hold on to the thought as Guillermo’s fingers began to move and the waves of pleasure built.

Flora Fitzwilliam was a good designer, perhaps a great one. Flora was Graydon’s protégée, and he had already as good as promised the Hanborough job to her.

He’d first come across Flora’s work by chance when an important client, a minor member of the Rockefeller clan, had dragged him along to some ghastly charity event at the Rhode Island School of Design. Flora was one of the graduating class whose portfolios were being showcased. Graydon only had to see her fabric prints and a single chaise longue to realize he’d found a pearl among swine, a rare and precious diamond in the rough. The bold simplicity of Flora’s designs, her eye for light and her pure aesthetic, elegant and classic but with a wonderful youthful twist, reminded him of his own, best early work. Flora Fitzwilliam had something that Graydon James had once had, but lost. That was the brutal truth. Graydon could choose to be envious, or he could harness Flora’s magic and use it to revivify his own vast but flagging brand. He could subsume her talent, polish it up a little, and present it to the world as his own. Better yet, if he managed the girl properly, she’d be grateful to him for doing it.

A few cursory enquiries into Flora Fitzwilliam’s background told him all he needed to know. Born wealthy and privileged, Flora’s family had lost everything when her father had been sent to jail for fraud. The penury and shame that had followed had destroyed Flora’s mother. But the teenage Flora was made of stronger stuff, and had turned to art and ambition to drag her out of the morass. She was a girl after Graydon James’s own heart: ambitious, artistic, and profoundly insecure. She knows what it’s like to have a good life and then lose it, Graydon thought. She won’t want to risk that again.

He was right. By artfully combining carrot and stick – the dangled chance of promotion and responsibility, along with the constant threat of being replaced – Graydon had managed to tie Flora’s star to his own over the last three years, with a nigh on unbreakable bond.

It wasn’t so much that she had earned the job restoring the magnificent Hanborough Castle (although she certainly had done that). It was more that Graydon knew Flora would hit the ball out of the park, then roll over meekly when he, Graydon, took the lion’s share of the credit for her work. Well, perhaps not meekly. But she’d accept it in the end. There were other advantages too. Flora had been to boarding school in England, and understood the English upper classes and their tastes far better than Graydon. Henry Saxton Brae, Hanborough’s new owner, was closer to Flora’s age. Plus, if Flora was on site at Hanborough, Graydon didn’t need to worry about rushing straight back to New York, a city it pained him to leave as much as it hurt to abandon a lover.

Unquestionably, Flora Fitzwilliam was the best person for the job.

On the other hand, Flora was not able to do the things to his dick that Guillermo was about to.

Decisions, decisions …

Running his hands through the boy’s hair, Graydon murmured, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Then he pulled Guillermo’s head down into his lap, groaning with satisfaction as his young lover got to work.

Mason Parker looked up from his Mac when he heard the key in the lock.

‘Flora? Sweetheart? Is that you?’

‘No. It’s an axe murderer.’ Flora dropped her suitcase in the hallway with a loud thud and walked into the bedroom.

Sprawled on top of the bed in his immaculate bachelor pad on Broadway and Bleecker, wearing a pair of Ralph Lauren boxer shorts and a faded James Perse T-shirt, and with his blond hair still slick from the shower, Mason looked as preppily handsome as ever. He did, however, close his computer hurriedly when Flora walked in.

Flora grinned. ‘Was that a porn slam?’

‘Of course not.’ Mason blushed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You won’t mind if I take a look then,’ Flora said archly.

Before Mason could stop her she’d reached across the bed and grabbed his MacBook Air, flipping it open to reveal a screenshot of some very boring-looking graphs. ‘Bloomberg? Really? Wow. I guess it’s true what they say: While the cat’s away, the mouse will check out bond yield curves.’

‘You sound disappointed.’ Mason looked hurt. ‘Would you rather I were watching porn?’

‘Of course not. I’m only teasing.’

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Flora kissed him on the mouth. He tasted of toothpaste and his skin smelled of soap, the same Roger & Gallet variety he always used.

The truth was, Flora sometimes wished that Mason would watch porn. Or lose his temper, or wear the wrong kind of shirt to an event, or forget to clean his teeth. Something, anything, to make him more normal, more fallible – more like her. Other Wall Street bankers spent their days manipulating the Libor rate or insider trading. Why did Mason always have to be so good?

But of course she was being silly. Flora loved Mason, and she knew how lucky she was to have him. He was smart, handsome and kind, not to mention loaded. Manhattan’s pretty, blonde, gold-digging socialites had always been drawn to him like moths to a flame. But he chose me, Flora reminded herself. The girl with no money, no family, no connections. He loves me.

Mason’s family, the Parkers, were old East Coast money, with estates in Westchester County and an impressive portfolio of real estate in the city. OK, so Mason wasn’t wild and rebellious and unpredictable, like Flora’s beloved father Edmund had been. But Edmund Fitzwilliam had wound up in jail at forty and dead at forty-six. Hardly an example Flora wanted her future husband to emulate.

‘I wasn’t expecting you back till next weekend,’ Mason said, extracting himself from Flora’s embrace and climbing into bed, pulling back the covers for her to slide in next to him. ‘What happened to the Wicked Witch of Nantucket?’

‘Oh, she’s still there. Probably sending out her flying monkeys as we speak,’ said Flora, stripping off her clothes and leaving them all in a pile on the floor, earning herself a disapproving look from Mason, although he quickly cheered up when she climbed naked into bed, coiling her slender legs around him like a snake and pressing her magnificent, soft breasts against his chest.

‘Actually, Lisa’s all right,’ Flora said, while Mason pulled his T-shirt over his head, revealing a taut, athlete’s body. ‘She saw sense on the pool in the end, and she let me go early because there’s really nothing for me to do on site right now, other than keep her company.’

‘Hmmm,’ Mason murmured, burying his face in Flora’s ample cleavage. He’d missed having her around these last few weeks, and he really didn’t care about her Nantucket client, or anything other than getting inside her.

This time next year they would be husband and wife, and Flora would be too busy with babies and running a household to worry about her so-called ‘career’. Fannying about with cushions and paint swatches was all very well as a hobby, but Mason struggled to take Flora’s ambitions as an interior designer seriously. If she wanted an outlet for her artistic, feminine side, she could redecorate their Hamptons beach house to her heart’s content.

‘The poor woman’s terribly lonely,’ Flora went on. ‘Her husband did such a number on her. I think she’s lost all her confidence since the divorce. It’s sad.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Mason murmured, slipping an eager hand between Flora’s thighs. ‘She knew what she was getting into. No one marries a guy like Steve Kent for love.’

This was probably true, but it still made Flora wince to hear Mason say it.

‘That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?’

Mason looked up from her breasts. ‘Flora?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please stop talking.’

Swinging his leg across Flora’s tiny body, Mason positioned himself above her, propped up on his elbows. Then, with no further foreplay, he eased himself inside her, closing his eyes and thrusting his hips in the familiar rhythm. Flora closed her eyes too and tried to return his excitement. Mason wasn’t a bad lover. And she had missed him, a lot. But for some reason she was finding it hard to get into the mood. Probably because Graydon had called earlier and left her a cryptic message. Something about ‘shifting priorities’. Flora couldn’t say why, exactly, but his voicemail had left her with a sinking feeling. Despite her position as Graydon James’s protégée, insecurity dogged her constantly, gnawing away at her happiness like a persistent rat chewing its way through an elevator cable. One day, Flora feared, the rat would triumph, the cable would break, and she would fall from the dizzy heights of her present position and plummet back into utter oblivion. Where you belong,a voice in her head added spitefully.

‘You OK, honey?’ Mason murmured, flushed from a climax that Flora hadn’t even noticed.

‘Hmm? Oh, yes. Of course.’ She kissed him. ‘Wonderful.’

She would be tough with Graydon this time. She wasn’t going to let him dick her around. After dumping her on Nantucket for the last month, he damn well owed her, and he knew it, ‘shifting priorities’ or not.

‘No way, Graydon. No fucking way!’

Graydon watched Flora Fitzwilliam pace in front of his desk like a caged lion, her oversized breasts heaving up and down with indignation as she stalked back and forth. With her elegantly coiffed blonde hair, bright red lipstick and killer heels, Flora had made an effort to look businesslike this morning. She’s trying to project confidence, Graydon thought, almost pityingly. To appear in control. It was a touching effort, but quite doomed, and deep down they both knew it. There would only ever be one captain of this ship, and it wasn’t Flora.

‘You promised me Hanborough Castle,’ she seethed. ‘You promised.’

‘I know I did, my dear,’ Graydon conceded. ‘But this is a business. And in business one must be pragmatic. Lisa Kent simply adores your work. She’s hinted at multiple future commissions, but only if you’re at the helm.’

‘I’ll talk to Lisa,’ Flora protested. ‘She’ll be fine.’

Graydon’s face hardened. ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. For heaven’s sake, Flora, you should be flattered.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ Flora hissed. ‘I’m not flattered and I’m not stupid either, Graydon. This is a total stitch-up. It has nothing to do with business.’

‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

‘Who’s doing the Hanborough job?’ Flora demanded accusingly.

‘I don’t see what that’s—’

‘Who have you given it to, behind my back?’

‘I’ll be working on Hanborough myself,’ Graydon muttered. ‘At least to start with.’

‘Oh! To start with. And after that?’

Graydon James glanced out of the window at the New York skyline. He did at least have the decency to look sheepish when he answered Flora’s question.

‘After that Guillermo’s going to be keeping an eye on things.’

Flora looked as if her head might be about to fly off her body.

‘Guillermo? That would be Guillermo with no experience, not to mention no bloody talent, would it? Guillermo who you just happen to be sleeping with?’

‘That’s enough, Flora.’ Graydon’s voice was like ice. ‘My private life is not your concern. I’m prepared to make a lot of allowances for a talent like yours. But you needn’t start thinking you’re indispensable.’

Flora turned away from him. She was shaking, but now it was as much from fear as from anger. This was unfair. This was so unfair. Graydon’s private life shouldn’t be her concern. But he made it her concern when he stole jobs from under her nose and handed them on a plate to one of his toy boys.

On the other hand, this was his company, his brand. He could sack her in an instant if he wanted to. She knew she’d gone too far.

‘I’m sorry.’ When she turned back around there were tears in her eyes. ‘You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that. But Hanborough Castle … It’s the project of a lifetime.’

‘A lifetime is a long time. There’ll be other Hanboroughs, my dear,’ Graydon said, handing her a tissue, sympathetic and avuncular again now that Flora had been suitably brought to heel. ‘It might not seem that way now, but there will.’

Flora looked at him, stricken. ‘No, there won’t,’ she said quietly. ‘Other projects, maybe even other castles. But not like this.’

Graydon James said nothing.

Flora was right. Hanborough Castle was the most romantic, most stunning house he had ever come across in his long and illustrious career. Restoring it truly was a once-in-a-lifetime commission.

If only it were in New York, he’d have done it himself.

Flora left the room, and Graydon did his best to stop the nagging doubts from creeping in.

That intoxicating little slut Guillermo had better be worth it.




CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_3d661097-bc8b-59e8-b314-188907c64f7d)


Eva Gunnarson stood by the drawing-room window at Hanborough, watching Henry stride across the lawn, followed by the two Americans.

It was hard not to laugh looking at the three of them: Henry, so masculine and handsome and English in his dark green corduroys and brushed cotton shirt, leading the way, while Graydon James and his pretty-boy sidekick, Guillermo, scurried along behind him like two gaudily dressed puppies.

Working as a model, Eva spent much of her professional life around gay men. But it was a long time since she’d met anybody quite as camp as Graydon. He’d arrived last night, wearing what could only be described as a rhinestone boiler suit and shoes with a little heel, like a flamenco dancer’s. He was only staying a week – after that the younger designer would be overseeing things for a month or two – but had nonetheless arrived with eight matching suitcases in hand-stitched leather, his initials stamped on to each one in solid gold.

‘Have you ever seen such a flamer?’ Henry asked Eva in bed last night, in a distinctly horrified tone. Henry was very old-school when it came to things like that. Time was when men were men, and pansies things that grew in the field …

‘What did you expect?’ Eva smiled. ‘This is Graydon James. Everyone knows he makes Elton John look macho.’

‘Do you think he’s … you know? With that other chap?’

Eva laughed loudly. Henry’s face was hilarious. As if he’d just seen a particularly revolting spider crawl out from under the covers.

‘I have no idea. But try not to think about it, darling. Just remember why you hired them. Graydon James is the best in the world.’

This was true. It was Brett Cranley who’d recommended Graydon for the Hanborough Castle job, but Henry had known Graydon by reputation long before that. The whole world knew Graydon James. Just having his name attached to your project gave a property a cachet that translated into millions of dollars of added value.

Graydon was the best, and Henry Saxton Brae only ever worked with the best.

Watching Henry now, pointing out some architectural feature or other to the great designer, Eva felt a surge of love for him. It had been a difficult week. She’d been so cross with him for bailing on the village fete that they’d ended up giving one another the cold shoulder for days.

Work was Henry’s excuse for everything. As he was the one who’d moved them all the way out here, Eva felt that the least he could do was to help her in her efforts to fit in.

‘You embarrassed me!’ she told him.

Henry just shrugged. ‘You shouldn’t be so easily embarrassed. It was only a stupid raffle.’

‘Stupid to you, maybe. But you made a commitment, Henry.’

‘Seb was there, wasn’t he? He was happy to do it. No one cares except you, Eva.’

In the end, as usual, it had been Eva who’d cracked first, even though Henry was in the wrong. He could keep up the silent treatment indefinitely, but Eva needed affection and companionship the way a plant needed sunlight and water. She’d reached over and touched his arm in bed one night, and of course then he’d pounced on her like a cat on a mouse and proceeded to have sex with her with the sort of crazed intensity only Henry was capable of. Over the two years they’d been together, Eva had learned to draw immense comfort from the desperation of Henry’s lovemaking. He approached her body every time like a man who’d just come out of prison. There was a profound neediness there, which was reassuring given how arrogant and aloof Henry could be in other ways.

He’s a complicated person, Eva told herself. But he loves me. And I love him.

I understand him.

In Eva’s opinion, it was Henry’s childhood that was responsible for what some people might see as his character flaws. Growing up as the second, neglected son of a great old family had left him with a burning impetus to succeed, to make his own way. All those years training to make it as a tennis star had taught him iron discipline, but they’d also taught him to be selfish, to trample down the competition whatever it took. Eva blamed his being sent away to boarding school at seven for his emotional coldness, and his parents’ divorce for his manipulative side.

‘Give it a rest, Sigmund,’ Henry would say, whenever she brought these theories up. Henry wasn’t a big believer in psychoanalysis, especially not when practised by his own girlfriend. He’d fallen for Eva because she was stunning, and because she loved him unconditionally. But if she needed something to fix, she should take up charity work. Or buy a model aeroplane kit. Henry used to love those at school.

A buzzing on the side table made Eva jump.

Henry’s mobile.

She picked it up without thinking and touched the new WhatsApp message. Instantly she felt her chest tighten and a lump rise up in her throat. The thumbnail picture was of a busty, dark-haired girl Eva had never seen before. Marie J. The message read:

‘Where r u handsome? Missed u this week. Again. When u back in London? M’, followed by a whole string of emoji winks and hearts, the sort of thing a schoolgirl would send.

Don’t jump to conclusions, Eva told herself. But it was hard. Especially after that ‘again’. She started scrolling back through Marie J’s chat history. There were far too many ‘handsomes’ for her liking, but nothing a hundred per cent conclusive of an affair. Yet—

‘What are you doing?’

Eva spun around guiltily. She hadn’t heard Henry come inside, but suddenly there he was, standing right behind her.

‘I might ask you the same question,’ she shot back, unable to help herself. ‘Who’s Marie?’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific than that, sweetheart,’ Henry drawled. ‘May I have my phone, please?’

‘No!’ Eva was shaking now, her eyes welling with tears. She was leaving for a modelling assignment tomorrow morning and the last thing she wanted to do was fight with Henry. Not until she had an explanation. ‘I want to know who Marie J is. And why she’s missing you and asking when you’re going to be back in London. I can’t go back to this, Henry. I just can’t!’

‘Eva,’ Henry’s voice softened. ‘For God’s sake. Marie J is a stupid little girl who works at the wine bar on Ebury Street. I’m one of her regulars.’

‘Regular whats?!’ Eva blurted hysterically.

‘Regular customers. At the bar. You’ve met her.’

‘No, I haven’t! I’ve never seen her before in my life!’

‘Yes, you have,’ Henry insisted patiently. ‘You’ve just forgotten. Because she’s instantly forgettable. Eva, I am not shagging the girl behind the bar at Ebury’s. Give me some credit.’

Eva hesitated. She wanted to believe him. She did believe him. Mostly. But with Henry’s past it was difficult to rebuild trust.

‘How does she have your number?’

‘She asked me for it and I gave it to her.’ A note of exasperation was creeping into Henry’s voice.

‘Why?’

‘Why not? Christ, if I went through your address book right now, how many blokes’ names do you think I’d find on there? D’you think I’d know all of them? Of course I bloody wouldn’t.’

This, Eva supposed, was true.

‘You want to know about paranoia, try dating a supermodel,’ Henry quipped. Taking the phone gently out of Eva’s hand, he slipped it into his pocket. Then he wrapped his arms around her tightly. ‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear.

‘I love you too.’

‘Nothing’s going on.’

Eva exhaled into him, relief flooding through her like the antidote to some deadly poison. Breathing in the lemon and patchouli smell of Henry’s Penhaligon’s aftershave, she felt a sudden rush of longing, and was just thinking of taking him back up to bed when Graydon James and Guillermo appeared in the drawing-room doorway.

‘Yoo-hoo!’ Graydon yodelled, gesturing at Henry like someone trying to bring a plane in to land. ‘Sorry to interrupt you two lovebirds. But Guillermo and I are done for now in the great hall. We were hoping you might show us up to the attic rooms? Talk us through your vision for the old servants’ quarters? If you can spare him, Princess.’

He winked at Eva, who grinned back. Graydon seemed fun. Unlike Guillermo, who stood around pouting a lot and looking bored, like a typical male model.

‘Of course.’ Eva wriggled out of Henry’s arms. ‘I was about to take the dogs for a walk anyway.’

‘Jeeves! Jeeves! Get back here this instant, you stupid fur-ball!’

Barney Griffith cupped his hands around his mouth like a loudspeaker as he bellowed into the wind. His Border terrier ignored him completely, and continued charging up the chalk hillside towards a field full of sheep.

Tall, broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, with a freckled complexion and merry, hazel eyes that lent him a permanently boyish look, Barney could have been very handsome if he weren’t so permanently unkempt. Clutching his most prized possession, the trusty Nikon D100 camera that had cost him a month’s wages back in the days when Barney had wages, he ran after the dog, giving himself a stitch almost immediately. In his defence, despite the fact it was almost June, a month of solid rain had left the Downs muddy enough to make walking without boots a fool’s errand. Consequently, Barney wasn’t exactly dressed for sprinting, in wellies and an old pair of canvas gardening trousers. But, even if he’d been in Lycra and Nikes, the truth was that he had become horribly unfit. There was a lot to be said for his new life as a novelist living full time in the countryside. But it did involve a lot of sitting on one’s arse eating Jaffa Cakes. At least when he’d been a City lawyer he’d had a corporate gym membership. He’d never used it, of course, but just having the card in his wallet had probably burned off a few calories …

‘For Christ’s sake, Jeeves!’ Panting like an asthmatic pensioner, and with sweat pouring down his face, Barney rounded the crest of the hill just in time to see a ravishingly attractive blonde emerge from the woods. She was very tall and wearing a yellow sundress with wellies that served to emphasize both her slender waist and absolutely endless legs. Two immaculately groomed Irish setters trotted obediently at her heels, their bracken-red coats gleaming and rippling in the wind, as if they were auditioning for a dog-food commercial.

‘You haven’t seen …’ Barney gasped, his soft Irish brogue coming in fits and starts. ‘… a scruffy … terrier … have you? The little sod’s … run off.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ the goddess replied. She had the faintest touch of some sort of accent, and looked vaguely familiar, in an untouchably beautiful sort of way. ‘Would you like me to help you look?’

Just then, a tired but not remotely sorry-looking Jeeves dashed back to his master, hurling himself headlong into Barney’s ankles in a frenzied attempt to make himself acquainted with the Irish setters, who both kept their eyes fixed on the horizon with regal disdain. It was like watching a tramp trying to chat up a pair of movie stars. The Gabor sisters in their heyday, perhaps.

Clipping Jeeves’s lead firmly back on, Barney finally caught his breath.

‘Thanks for the offer.’ He smiled up at the goddess. ‘But he’s back.’

‘So I see.’ The goddess smiled back. ‘I’m Eva, by the way.’

Eva! Of course. The bra girl, getting married to what’s-his-chops, with the castle.

‘Barney. Barney Griffith. I’d shake your hand but I’m sweating like a racehorse.’

‘That’s all right. It’s a beautiful day for some exercise.’ Bending down, Eva ruffled Jeeves’s matted fur affectionately. Barney noticed the absolutely enormous diamond on her engagement finger. Talk about the Rock of Gibraltar. That thing must have cost more than his cottage.

‘Your dog’s terribly sweet,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Jeeves. He’s yours.’ Barney offered her the lead. ‘I’m not even joking. He’s such a little sh … troublemaker. Not like your dogs.’ He looked admiringly at the setters, sitting calmly by their mistress’s side. ‘They’re perfect.’

‘Thanks. This is Whiskey and this is Soda. They’re good girls but they’re Henry’s dogs really.’

‘I like them less already.’ Barney grinned. It was odd. She really was incredibly pretty, yet for some reason he found himself talking to her like an old friend, without the usual pit-of-the-stomach nerves that usually plagued him when he fancied a girl. When he first met Maud, he’d barely been able to string a sentence together.

Why was he thinking about bloody Maud again?

Barney’s girlfriend of just over a year had recently dumped him, for good this time it seemed. By email.

‘I can’t support this charade any longer,’ Maud had written. (As if she’d supported it up till now!) ‘You’re not a novelist, Barney. You’re an unemployed corporate lawyer, fannying around on a computer. Throw away your future if you want to, but don’t expect me to come with you.’

Barney had begun at least eight different drafts in response. He wasn’t throwing away his future, he was following his heart; a concept Maud might understand better if she had a heart of her own.

‘Not everything can be measured in pounds and bloody pence!’ he started one note. But, of course, he hadn’t finished any of them.

Maud was right. How could he call himself a novelist when he couldn’t even finish a sodding email?

Turning his attention back to Eva’s dogs, he asked, ‘How do you keep them that shiny? I mean, are they even real?’

Eva giggled.

‘I’m serious. How many times a day do you have to wash them? Or I daresay you have live-in dog-washers up at the castle, do you?’

‘Not quite.’

It was nice to run into this funny, chatty Irishman. Nice to get out of Hanborough and clear her head. Eva had believed Henry earlier, about the flirty WhatsApp message. But, walking through the woods alone, doubts had already begun to creep in.

About a year ago, Henry had had a string of affairs. Well, more one-night stands really, but they’d still wounded Eva deeply. She’d just plucked up the courage to leave him when he’d broken down in tears, promised to change his ways for good, and proposed. That was the first proposal, and it had taken all Eva’s willpower to refuse. At that point, Henry’s remorse was just words. But in the months that followed he’d bought Hanborough, moved to the country (out of temptation’s way?), and proved his devotion to Eva in myriad ways, both small and large, culminating in a second proposal, complete with a mahoosive eight-carat diamond. This time Eva had said yes.

Now she was here, planning their wedding and helping Henry’s designers pick out wall colours and fabrics. She simply couldn’t face it if the cheating started again.

‘Well, I’m heading down towards Brockhurst,’ said Barney. ‘I’ll see you around, I’m sure.’

‘I’ll walk with you,’ said Eva, slightly to his surprise, falling into step beside him. It occurred to Barney that perhaps she was lonely. Maybe it was true what they said about supermodels being so intimidating that nobody ever spoke to them? Then again, she lived with her hotshot, heart-throb fiancé, so maybe not.

‘I’m not really out here for the exercise,’ Barney admitted, making sure he kept Jeeves on a tight lead as they picked their way down the steep slope.

‘No?’

He shook his head. ‘I like to say I walk for inspiration. I’m a writer, you see. But I’m actually just skiving off the book.’

‘You write books?’ Eva sounded impressed.

‘Theoretically,’ said Barney. ‘I’m supposed to be writing a book.’

‘A writer and a photographer?’ Eva looked at the Nikon hanging around his neck. ‘That’s pretty cool.’

‘Oh, no.’ Barney flushed. ‘Photography’s just a hobby.’

‘Oh my goodness!’

At that moment, seemingly out of nowhere, a pack of foxhounds erupted all around them, followed by a thunderous clattering of hooves. Pulling Whiskey and Soda close, Eva flattened herself against a tree, watching awestruck as the red-coated riders swarmed through the copse and then out again into open countryside. She recognized her brother-in-law-to-be, Sebastian, leading the charge, but he was far too focused on his quarry to notice her.

‘Don’t they look marvellous?’ Eva turned to Barney breathlessly, as one by one they galloped off across the Downs, the hounds crying frantically in front of them, obviously close to a kill. ‘We don’t have anything like this in Sweden. Did you see the fox?’

‘No.’ Barney looked considerably less enthused. ‘But I hope the poor little sod got away.’

‘Oh. You don’t like hunting?’

‘I hate it. It’s cruel, it’s riddled with snobbery, and it’s downright bloody dangerous. They practically trampled us to death back there.’

Eva said nothing. This was clearly an exaggeration, but there was no mistaking the strength of Barney’s feelings. She wanted to change the subject, to return to the easy, chatty conversation they’d been having before. But, before she had a chance, Barney abruptly announced he had to get back to work, turned around and left her, with only the most cursory of goodbyes.

Eva watched him go feeling curiously deflated. He’d seemed so nice before.

Whistling for the dogs, she turned around herself and began the long tramp back to Hanborough. It was weird to think that this time tomorrow she’d be in Milan on a shoot, in a world about as far removed from this one as possible.

Perhaps it would do her good to get away for a while? The whole text thing had left a sour taste in her mouth. And things always improved between her and Henry after they’d spent some time apart.

Graydon James sighed with relief as the bellboy showed him into his suite at The Dorchester.

It wasn’t his beloved Manhattan. But at least he was in London, free from the cloying silence of the Swell Valley, with all its ghastly green hills and sheep and fresh air. How did people live there? Young, beautiful people in the prime of their lives, like Henry Saxton Brae? It was a crime against humanity that that boy was straight, but even Graydon knew a dead horse when he saw one. He was too old for futile flogging. Too old, as well, to cope with Guillermo’s relentless bitching and whining about being ‘left out of the process’ at Hanborough.

‘He only ever talks to you,’ Guillermo had pouted at Graydon last night in bed, sulking like a toddler about Henry’s preference for the organ grinder over the monkey. ‘He’s never once asked my opinion on anything. Not the plans for the master suite, not the Venetian finishes, not the fabrics. Nothing! It’s like he thinks I’m your lackey.’ He gazed down sullenly at his taut, dancer’s abs, his huge cock lying limp and slug-like between his legs, sulking like its owner.

‘Well, you are,’ Graydon shot back nastily. He’d had enough of tiptoeing around Guillermo’s ego. He had the damn job, didn’t he? ‘Like it or not, I’m the boss. Clients like to deal with the boss. It makes them feel they’re getting what they paid for. If you can’t handle that, you’re in the wrong job, sweetheart.’

An architect had already drawn up plans for the structural restoration of the castle, but Graydon had made it a condition that he and his team would run the entire project, from foundations to flower arrangements. As project manager, Guillermo would be working eighteen-hour days and getting his perfectly manicured hands seriously dirty. The fact that he was already complaining about the client, not to mention contributing nothing to this crucial first week of site meetings, did not bode well.

‘I’m going up to town for a few days,’ Graydon informed him curtly. ‘Little Miss Wonder-Tits is off on a job, so you’ll have Handsome Henry all to yourself. See if you can convince him you’re more than just a pretty face.’ Grabbing Guillermo’s hand, Graydon placed it firmly on his cock. ‘And see if you can convince me that I haven’t made a big mistake in trusting you with this.’

In fairness to Guillermo, the sex was still good. But Graydon was tiring of the attitude.

Throwing his case down on the bed, Graydon ordered himself a double espresso with cantuccini from room service – that was something else that sucked in the countryside. Coffee. Henry Saxton Brae drank Tesco instant. If there were ever any question about his sexuality, that cleared it right up. Idly checking his messages, Graydon ignored the one from his accountant, noted three from Flora, pleading to be allowed to leave Nantucket, and one from a prospective client, a Russian oligarch with a positively palatial house in London, opposite Hyde Park. He stopped abruptly at one from World Of Interiors.

‘Good afternoon, Mr James. My name is Carly di Angelo. We’re doing a cover piece for our September issue on the world’s most beautiful city apartments. We were wondering, would Flora Fitzwilliam be prepared to talk to us about West Fifty-Sixth Street? I’ve tried contacting her directly but can’t seem to get through. I understand she’s on an island somewhere … ’

Graydon rang back instantly.

‘Miss di Angelo? Graydon James. Yes, I’m afraid Flora’s not available at present. But it just so happens I’m in London and I’d be very happy to talk to you about our work at West Fifty-Sixth. Perhaps you weren’t aware, but I actually lead the design team myself?’

He hung up, purring with pleasure.

Graydon hadn’t done a stitch of the work on Luca Gianotti’s stunning Manhattan penthouse apartment. It had all been Flora, from start to finish, and the baseball legend had been ecstatic with the results. But the project had been commissioned under the GJD – Graydon James Designs – brand. As far as Graydon was concerned, that made West Fifty-Sixth Street his. Just as Hanborough would be his, and Lisa Kent’s Siasconset folly, and anything else that his staff worked on.

If Flora, or Guillermo, or any of the ingrates didn’t like it, they could spend the next thirty years building their own fucking empires. None of them would ever have amounted to anything without the great Graydon James.

Graydon glanced at his diamond-encrusted, special-edition Cartier Roadster, an accessory so dazzlingly flamboyant it might make a rap mogul think twice. He was meeting the lovely Miss di Angelo at The Wolseley in two hours. Just enough time for housekeeping to press his shirt while he popped to the spa for a mini-manicure.

God, it was good to be back in civilization.




CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_f5b9937e-98a4-50d3-8a1b-a30a5126bb4c)


Henry Saxton Brae was in a foul mood.

First, the stupid little girl from the wine bar whose WhatsApp had almost caused him serious problems with Eva had refused to go quietly and was threatening to sell details of her ‘affair’ with Henry to the Daily Mirror. (Actually a few nights of drunken, broom-cupboard shagging that had finished months ago.)

‘Go ahead,’ Henry told her scathingly. ‘Only plebs read the Mirror. No one I know will have the faintest idea you even exist.’

But in the end he’d been forced to drive down to London and try to reason with her (Henry’s lawyer having pointed out patiently that it wasn’t, in fact, a crime to publish things that were true, and that no court in the land would grant Henry an injunction).

Having talked Marie down from the ledge, Henry had been ‘summoned’ to Hatchings by his brother’s godawful social-climbing wife, Kate, a painfully middle-class, overgrown pony clubber with a highly developed superiority complex, for a ‘vitally important’ family meeting. This turned out to be some utter guff about giving money to the Countryside Alliance for a pro-hunting ‘war chest’ to be used in the catastrophic event of a new Labour government.

‘This is life-or-death stuff, Henry,’ Sebastian announced pompously, and without even a hint of irony. ‘Our generation are the last line of defence. We’re the bloody Normandy beaches.’

Henry rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, come on, Seb.’

‘You don’t seem to realize. Hunting could be wiped out in this country,’ Lady Saxton Brae added dramatically, and entirely unnecessarily. ‘Gorn. For ever!’

Kate had an unfortunate habit of talking down to her husband’s wealthier, much more successful brother. She resented it deeply that Henry had bought Hanborough and moved back to the Swell Valley (‘our valley’) in an attempt to usurp Sebastian’s position as head of the family. She was also clever enough to realize that Henry looked down on her socially. Her ascension to the title of Lady Saxton Brae had changed nothing in her brother-in-law’s eyes.

‘What you don’t seem to realize, Kate,’ Henry yawned pointedly, ‘is that I don’t give a fuck.’

‘I say now. Steady on,’ Sebastian muttered uncomfortably. The new Lord Saxton Brae loathed confrontation, especially within the family. ‘We all care about the hunt. About preserving our traditions.’

‘Why don’t you pay for it, then?’ Henry asked bluntly. ‘Instead of coming begging to me?’

‘Nobody’s begging anybody,’ Kate hissed.

Her back was arched, like a cat’s. Henry noticed that her once pretty face was becoming more lined with age. When she was angry, like now, it wrinkled up even more. Pretty soon her puckered, furious, cat’s-arse mouth would disappear altogether. She did have a good figure, but today, as so often, it was swamped in a shapeless Country Casuals dress that made her look at least twenty years older. Combined with the hectoring, schoolmarm manner, she wasn’t doing herself any favours.

‘You know very well we aren’t cash rich like you are.’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Henry, deliberately goading her now.

‘Keeping Hatchings running has to be our first priority!’ Kate looked as if steam might be about to come out of her ears. ‘You have no conception of the pressure your brother’s under. This is a huge estate.’

‘I know. I was born here.’

‘Sebastian supports the hunt in countless other ways.’

‘But you expect me to write the cheque. Is that it?’

‘It’s not for us, dear boy,’ said Sebastian. ‘It’s for future generations of Englishmen. We must all do our bit. Your country needs you, and all that.’

In the end, for Seb’s sake, Henry had made a donation, but he was so furious at being hijacked, and particularly at his sister-in-law’s arrogant assumptions, that he’d refused to stay the night.

‘Oh, but you must stay,’ Kate announced patronizingly after dinner. ‘We insist, don’t we, darling? Sebastian and I want you to think of Hatchings as your home, Henry.’

‘I don’t think of it as my home. It is my home,’ Henry replied witheringly. ‘But luckily not my only one. Being “cash rich” does afford one certain options in life, you see. I’ll see myself out.’

By the time he got back to Hanborough it was after midnight. A full moon cast an eerily milky shadow over the castle’s ancient stones, and the still water of the moat shimmered like molten silver.

Henry used to ride over to Hanborough as a boy and play hide-and-seek among the Norman ruins. It was a paid attraction in those days, and open to the public, but all the staff went home at six o’clock and, as the house was empty, nobody thought to lock it. Sometimes, before important tennis matches, when his nerves were at their peak, Henry would close his eyes and visualize Hanborough. It had always been his happy place. Made for him. Meant for him. Waiting for him. Yet always tantalizingly out of his reach.

As an adult, even after he made his fortune, he’d never really believed he’d be able to own it. But now here he was.

He’d never made it to the top as a tennis player, a failure that still haunted him, despite everything. But owning Hanborough Castle was one dream that Henry had made come true.

Only two lights were on tonight, both in the West Wing, the most modern part of the castle, built in 1705. Henry had agreed to allow Guillermo, the weird, poof designer Graydon James had left in charge in his absence, to stay on site for the first couple of months, until works were properly under way. Henry wasn’t a fan of Guillermo’s. He found him sullen and uncommunicative, entirely lacking in his boss’s charisma and flair. But Graydon had assured him the boy was a brilliant designer, and very capable when it came to managing contractors, architects and the like.

‘If he’s doing his job properly, he won’t have time to go home,’ Graydon told Henry, which was reassuring given the astronomical fees Henry was paying to have GJD take on the restoration.

Luckily it was a big house. Guillermo had his own bedroom, living area and small kitchen in the West Wing, while Eva and Henry had their living quarters in the old medieval hall, which made up the southern aspect of the castle, overlooking Hanborough’s magnificent deer park. There was no reason for their paths and Guillermo’s to cross.

Pushing open the ancient, two-foot-thick wooden door, and heading up the spiral stone steps to his bedroom, Henry wished Eva were home. He was proud of her career and her huge success as a model. But he always missed her when she was away.

Henry and Sebastian’s mother Gina had died of breast cancer when Henry was eleven and Seb had just turned twenty. Even before she died, Henry had spent little time with her. Gina Saxton Brae was a famous socialite, hostess and much sought-after party guest, and though she loved her sons, no one could have described her as a ‘hands-on’ mother. Lord and Lady Saxton Brae employed excellent and devoted nannies for that sort of thing. Henry didn’t consider his childhood to have been unhappy. But he had grown used to missing his mother, and her early death had certainly been a turning point in his emotional life. There was a certain maternal quality to Eva – nurturing, one could say – that formed a strong part of his attraction to her. For all his infidelities, Eva remained the mother ship, and Henry always felt slightly lost when she wasn’t with him. The loneliness didn’t last long tonight, though. Slipping under the sheets, Henry suddenly realized how dog-tired he was. All the tension with Marie J, and the frustration of his trip to Hatchings, must have drained him more than he’d realized. Within minutes he was in a deep, dreamless sleep.

The noise that woke him wasn’t loud. More of a gentle rustling than anything else. But some sixth sense told Henry this wasn’t the June breeze through the leaves of the elm trees outside his window, or the scurrying of mice in the castle eaves.

Something was wrong.

Someone was in the house.

He sat bolt upright and listened.

There it was again. Rustling, with a faintly clinking, metallic edge, as if someone were slowly sweeping their hand through a vat of beer-bottle tops. It was coming from across the hall. Eva’s dressing room.

Without stopping to think, Henry leapt out of bed stark naked and – grabbing the nearest heavy object to hand, a solid marble bedside lamp – ran screaming into the dressing room to confront the intruder.

‘Aaaaaaaagh!’ Henry yelled, the lamp raised over his head, ready to slam into the burglar’s skull.

‘Aaaaaaaagh!’ Guillermo screamed back, dropping to his knees and cowering in abject terror. He was wearing a ridiculous pair of purple silk pyjamas. Above him, on the dressing table, Eva’s jewellery box was open, her rings and necklaces spread out messily across the lacquered wood. ‘Don’t kill me! Please! I … I … didn’t know you were home.’

Henry looked from Guillermo to the jewellery then back again.

‘So I see. You filthy little thief!’ He lifted the lamp higher. Guillermo cringed like a dog about to be beaten by its master. His mediocre career had always been hampered by the distraction of his cocaine habit, which he couldn’t fund on Graydon’s measly wages alone. But even Guillermo could see that this was unequivocally the death knell. Henry’s nakedness somehow made him seem even more menacing, like a savage warrior, his enormous, trunk-like dick swinging right at Guillermo’s eye level.

‘It’s not what it looks like!’ Guillermo stammered desperately.

‘Oh yes it bloody well is,’ roared Henry. ‘Get out of my house.’

‘Of course. I will.’ Scrambling to his feet, Guillermo backed away from Henry, edging himself around towards the door. ‘I can assure you this is all a misunderstanding, but I’ll … I’ll leave first thing in the morning.’

‘Now!’ Henry bellowed. ‘Get out now, before I call the police to come and get you. Or worse.’ He narrowed his eyes meaningfully.

Darting past him like a pyjama-clad eel, Guillermo bolted down the hall towards the West Wing, sobbing hysterically.

Henry stood there for a moment in shock.

Did that really just happen? Had Graydon James’s gigolo boyfriend really just tried to pocket a handful of his fiancée’s diamonds?

Talk about brass fucking balls!

Still, every cloud had a silver lining. Or, in this case, two. The useless Guillermo would be gone for good. And the price of Hanborough’s restoration works were about to be cut in half.

First thing in the morning, Henry would call Graydon James and renegotiate.

Smiling, he went back to bed.




CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_261f49c7-a994-5d6e-a6f5-c096264c2d57)


Flora Fitzwilliam stood on the lawn in Lisa Kent’s idyllic Siasconset garden and looked up at the house with real pride.

It was finished, at last. Painful as this job had been on many, many levels, Flora had to admit that the finished product was beautiful. The house itself was clad in traditional grey clapboard tiles. Thanks to Nantucket’s strict building codes, the materials were a given. But the fluid way that the building seemed to flow downhill at the rear, with each storey’s decks tumbling into the next, like a waterfall, or perfectly tiered paddy field, each one affording breathtaking views across the Atlantic Ocean – that was all Flora. As were the formal gardens: the flowerbeds overflowing with plump hydrangeas, delicate roses and glorious sprays of lavender that filled the whole plot with their heavy, intoxicating scent. The exquisitely constructed dry-stone walls, leading down to a private beach staircase, each riser carved lovingly from local limestone, all the way down to the soft white sand.

Inside, the house was just as beautiful, simple and pared down, despite Lisa’s initial insistence that she wanted something grand and opulent.

‘This is opulent,’ Flora had insisted, presenting an initially horrified Lisa with a headboard for the master suite made of driftwood. ‘What could be grander than the ocean? Than nature, right outside your window here, in all her glory. Your husband needed gold and marble to feel he lived in luxury. But his house was your prison, remember? This is your house, Lisa, your palace. A palace of light! Let it breathe. Let it sing.’

OK, so maybe she’d got a little carried away. But the point is, it worked. Lisa Kent had ended up with a stunning home, traditional yet unique, full of space and light. With its white wood and uncut stone, its subtle mix of textures, and of course ocean views from every room, the entire building was a testament to hope.

Lisa adored it. Draping her arm around Flora’s shoulders as if she were an old friend, she stood staring at the house with her, quite overcome with emotion.

‘You’ve changed my life,’ she told Flora, her eyes welling with tears. ‘Really. It’s perfect.’

‘I’m glad you like it,’ said Flora. ‘But you changed your own life, Lisa. You broke free from your marriage. That took courage.’

‘I guess that’s true.’ Lisa brushed away a tear, conveniently forgetting that it was Steve who had left her, not the other way around, and that she’d been frogmarched back into single life like a condemned woman to the gallows, kicking and screaming.

‘This was your vision. Your dream. I just helped you realize it, that’s all.’

Flora could afford to be generous. The job had been a triumph in the end, despite her disappointment over Hanborough. It would be a great addition to her portfolio. And tomorrow she was leaving Nantucket for good and heading off to the Bahamas with Mason for a much-needed romantic holiday.

As always on a project, Flora had become subsumed, to the point where she knew she’d been neglecting her fiancé. It wasn’t just the endless flying back and forth to the island. Even when she was home in Manhattan she was only half there, only half connected to Mason. He was up for partnership at the bank this year, and Flora knew he needed her to be there more, turning up to functions, having lunches with the other partners’ wives.

‘Think of it as training for when we’re married,’ he’d told her, jokingly, although Flora couldn’t help but feel that deep down he meant it. And, of course, she did want to support him in his career. She just wasn’t sure she was ready to give up her own, a subject on which Mason had begun dropping heavier and heavier hints.

We can cross those bridges when we come to them, Flora thought. He probably only resents my work because it’s been so all-consuming lately.

Yes, this vacation would do them both the world of good.

She said goodbye to Lisa and was getting into her rented Jeep when her cell phone rang. It was Graydon. For once Flora was happy to hear from him. After all, she had nothing but good news to report from Nantucket; another very satisfied client and a triumphant conclusion to what had been a difficult project.

‘Hey, you!’ she answered brightly. ‘How’s Merry Olde England?’

‘I need you here,’ Graydon hissed. ‘Now. Immediately. How soon can you be on a plane?’

Flora had only ever heard him this agitated once before, when a powerful French fashion conglomerate had made a hostile bid for GJD. That had been a truly awful few weeks, but it had taught Flora a lot about her boss. Including when not to cross him.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I’ll tell you what’s happened,’ Graydon seethed. ‘That duplicitous, giftless cretin Guillermo only got caught rifling through the family silver at Hanborough.’

‘No!’ Flora gasped.

‘I swear to God I will ruin him! I will flay him alive! The client woke up to find him elbow deep in his girlfriend’s jewellery. Can you credit it?’

Flora couldn’t. She was also finding it hard to stifle a laugh. She knew giving a job as prestigious as the Hanborough restoration to a muppet like Guillermo had been a mistake, but not even she had imagined it would come to this. Talk about karma.

‘I need you to take over.’

‘You still have the job?’ Flora was incredulous. ‘After that?’

‘For now,’ Graydon admitted grudgingly. ‘And at vastly reduced rates, I might add. But what could I do? If this were to get out and go around the industry it could devastate our reputation. Everybody knows we have the Hanborough Castle commission. To lose it now would be disastrous. Henry Saxton Brae’s got me over a barrel and he knows it.’

Flora tried not to visualize the divine Henry Saxton Brae having Graydon James over a barrel.

‘I’ve told him I can’t oversee it personally, not full time. I had to draw the line somewhere,’ Graydon huffed.

Flora let the full import of this statement sink in. She allowed herself a short but intense moment of deep, personal satisfaction.

‘You want me to take over the project?’

‘What? Of course I want you to take it over!’ Graydon barked. ‘I’m not flying you to England for a fucking vacation, Flora!’

Vacation.

The Bahamas.

Mason.

For a moment a dark cloud of foreboding hovered ominously over Flora’s happiness. They did need a vacation. And Mason really was her priority.

But she and Mason had their whole lives together to look forward to. There would only ever be one chance to restore Hanborough Castle.

‘I’ll catch a flight to London tonight,’ she heard herself telling Graydon. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘Good,’ Graydon said gracelessly, and hung up.

Mason Parker gripped the steering wheel of his Tesla Model S tightly and gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

‘You’re mad,’ said Flora.

‘No, I’m not,’ Mason grumbled. ‘I’m disappointed.’

He was driving her to JFK, something he’d hoped to be doing tomorrow, en route to their long-planned Bahamas vacation.

‘I’m disappointed too. But what was I supposed to do?’ Flora asked plaintively. ‘Turn down the job?’

Mason shrugged sulkily.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Flora. ‘If you’d been asked to work on some deal at the last minute, or to fly to meet an important client, you wouldn’t say “no”.’

‘That’s different,’ said Mason, taking the exit for the airport and immediately running into a solid wall of traffic.

‘How is it different?’ Flora bristled.

‘Because my job actually pays the bills,’ Mason snapped, in a rare loss of self-control. ‘Our bills. I’m sorry, Flora, but I’m done pretending our careers are on some sort of an equal footing.’ He paused meaningfully before the word ‘careers’, putting it in audible quotation marks. ‘I work really hard and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that when I plan, and pay for, an expensive vacation, my goddamn fiancée comes with me.’

Flora opened her mouth to speak then closed it again.

I work really hard?

What, and I don’t?

She was angry, but at the same time she knew that she was the one who had let Mason down. She was the one who’d changed their plans at the last minute. It was only natural that he should be disappointed.

Reaching out, she put a conciliatory hand on Mason’s leg. ‘We’ll do it another time, honey. Soon, I promise.’

‘I’m doing it next week,’ said Mason.

‘You’re still going?’ Flora failed to keep the surprise out of her voice. ‘On your own?’

‘Sure. Why not? The villa’s already paid for and I closed my deal. The Coateses are gonna be out there, so I won’t be on my own. And Chuck and Henrietta.’

Flora’s stomach lurched unpleasantly. Charles ‘Chuck’ Branston was Mason’s best buddy from Andover, and would be best man at Mason and Flora’s wedding next year. His sister Henrietta had always held a torch for Mason, and made no secret of her dislike for Flora, although Mason claimed not to see it.

Oh God, Flora thought miserably. He’ll be mad at me, and drunk half the time, and she’ll be all over him like a rash. In a tropical paradise.

What am I doing? What am I doing?

Mason pulled over and turned off the engine. How had they gotten here already?

‘Please don’t be mad,’ said Flora, this time with tears in her eyes. ‘I love you so much.’

‘I love you too.’ Mason softened, pulling her to him, inhaling the sweet, gardenia scent of her Kai perfume. ‘I’m only mad because I miss you, Flora. I want you with me. Now. All the time.’

‘I want that too,’ Flora whispered, relief flooding through her. He wasn’t going to run off with Henrietta Branston. She would get things started at Hanborough, then fly back and make it all up to him. Everything was going to be OK.

They both got out and Mason lifted Flora’s case out of the trunk.

‘Maybe we should bring the wedding forward?’ he said, setting it on the ground.

‘Bring it forward?’

‘Sure, why not? We could do it at Christmas.’

‘Christmas?’ Flora stammered. ‘This Christmas?’

‘I know it’s quite soon.’ Mason grinned, slipping an arm around her waist. ‘But just think, by this time next year we’d already be married and settled. How great would that be? You might even be pregnant.’

Flora forced herself to smile, shutting out the clang, clang of prison doors closing.

‘OK, well, let’s think about it.’ She kissed him. ‘I’d better run. Don’t want to miss my flight.’

‘Don’t talk to any boys on the plane!’ Mason yelled after her.

‘I won’t,’ Flora called back, waving and smiling till he was out of sight.

By the time the plane finally took off, engines roaring as it shook and juddered its way up into the clouds, Flora was so physically and emotionally exhausted she fell instantly asleep.

When she woke up three hours later, drenched with sweat after a horrible dream, the cabin lights were off. For a moment Flora felt the blind panic of not knowing where she was. But as the familiar sights reasserted themselves – blanket-covered passengers, smiling, red-skirted stewardesses – she exhaled, tipping her chair back and trying to relax for the first time in at least twenty-four hours.

It wasn’t easy.

Going back to England was a big deal for Flora, even without the tensions with Mason. The dream hadn’t helped.

It was the same dream she’d had hundreds of times before. She was back at Sherwood Hall, the English girls’ boarding school where she’d been so happy until the awful day her father had been arrested for fraud, and her world had collapsed around her like a straw house in the wind. She was walking up to the auditorium stage, about to receive the prize for Art & Design, when two things happened. First, her halterneck dress somehow untied itself and fell off, leaving her standing in front of the entire school naked. And second, Georgie, Flora’s most hated enemy at Sherwood, had popped up out of nowhere and started taking photographs, tossing her long blonde hair behind her and laughing spitefully as Flora frantically tried to cover herself with her hands.

God, that laugh. It was as if Georgie were right there in the Virgin Upper Class cabin with her, tormenting her, taunting her about everything from her transatlantic accent to her clothes to her weight to her (nonexistent at that time) love life.

‘You know what they say about Flora: it’s easy to spread.’

How many times had Flora heard that ‘joke’ at school? Hundreds? Thousands?

Georgie was far prettier than Flora, at least in Flora’s opinion. Yet she must have perceived Flora as some sort of threat. Either that or she was just a sadist who enjoyed humiliating people. Come to think of it, that was actually perfectly possible.

Before Flora’s dad went to prison, her Sherwood friends would stick up for her and protect her from the worst of Georgie’s barbs. But, after that, there was nothing. Everybody dumped her, like a hot lump of coal. The life Flora had believed she had – her friends, her family, her school, her entire place in this world – had evaporated like water spilled on a stove, instantly and completely. Sherwood became every bit as much of a prison for Flora as Mount McGregor Correctional Facility had been for her poor dad. Although Flora’s sentence was shorter. Unable to pay the fees, her mother had been forced to withdraw her and enrol her in public school back in New York. That would turn out to be a different form of prison.

But the point was that Flora had never been back to England since that awful time.

Until now.

Of course, now everything was different, she told herself firmly, pressing the call bell for the stewardess and ordering herself a belated dinner of steamed chicken and saffron rice. She was an adult now. Engaged to be married, happy, successful, flying into Heathrow first class on a ticket paid for by the great Graydon James. She was coming back to work on her dream job, restoring Hanborough Castle. Hanborough would be a career game-changer for Flora Fitzwilliam, the start of a new and, hopefully, much more profitable chapter in her life as a designer.

You’re not at Sherwood now, Flora reminded herself, taking a sip of the ice-cold Chablis that had arrived with her meal. Georgie and her gang of bullies can’t touch you now. None of them can.

She’d seen all the films on offer and wasn’t in the mood for TV, so after dinner she wandered down to the Upper Class bar and picked up a couple of magazines. Flipping through Tatler a few minutes later, she was amused to find a profile of her client, Henry Saxton Brae, in the ‘Ten Hottest Aristos’ feature. It seemed to Flora that the bar was embarrassingly low in this particular category, with most of the men on offer looking distinctly chinless, weedy and unappealing. Henry, however, was undoubtedly a looker, with dark hair and perfect features, slightly hooded eyes that gave him a predatory look, and a curl to his upper lip that was at once disdainful and sexy. He had a good figure too, tall and lean, no doubt a testament to his days as a teenage tennis star. His girlfriend, the model Eva Gunnarson, pictured with him at the end of the piece, was even more wildly beautiful, all flowing limbs and hair, like some exotic, land-bound mermaid.

But it wasn’t Eva, or Henry, that had Flora reading the piece over and over, poring lovingly over each page. It was the pictures of Hanborough in the background, with its moat and turrets, its crumbling keep and chapel tumbling against the grand Georgian style of the West Wing, more country house than castle on this one side. There was something charmingly higgledy-piggledy about the place, despite its indisputable grandeur. Flora loved the way that different generations had simply added their own touches, building on and over and around the original structure, which had clearly been intended as a fortress. Part palace, part battlement, part idyllic family home, Hanborough Castle was truly iconic, as English as toast and Marmite in some ways, and yet almost French or Italian in terms of its many romantic flourishes.

Flora felt adrenaline flood her veins at the thought of stepping inside. This time tomorrow she would literally be crossing that drawbridge and stepping into history. She, Flora Fitzwilliam, would add her vision to Hanborough, tying together all its different strands and styles, its quirks and its beauty and its majesty, evolved over a thousand years to meet here, now, in this moment.

She felt like a princess in a fairy tale. But it wasn’t a prince who had swept her off her feet, or made her dreams come true.

This is my moment. My chance. The pinnacle of my life as an artist.

The last chapter of Flora’s life in England had ended in misery and shame. It was time to write the next one. Time to create her own happy ending.




CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_6706fcaa-0522-5bb9-beac-0ef0177c0788)


The moment Flora stepped off the plane it started to rain. Lightly at first, just a few small drops dancing off the tarmac. But by the time she’d been through Customs and made it out to the Hertz car rental, sheets of water were bucketing down from menacing, charcoal-grey sky.

Tired, and unused to driving on the left-hand side of the road, never mind with her windscreen wipers going full pelt, Flora managed to take two wrong turns getting out of Heathrow and ended up going the wrong way around the M25. By the time she got back on track heading towards the Swell Valley, she was stressed, frustrated, and more than forty minutes late for her first site meeting with Graydon and the client.

‘Where are you?’ Graydon’s voice, low and gravelly and demanding, echoed around Flora’s car like a bear growling in its cave.

‘I’m on my way,’ she said. ‘The traffic’s terrible.’

‘I didn’t ask for a fucking traffic report,’ Graydon barked at her. Someone had woken up on the wrong side of bed this morning. ‘Just make sure you get there on time. Something came up in London so you’re going to have to meet Henry solo.’

Flora fought back the urge to scream. Or to ask Graydon whether what ‘came up’ was in fact some tart of a male stripper’s ten-inch hard-on, while she’d just flown halfway across the world to try to salvage the most prestigious job GJD had ever had, after Graydon’s last lover had just screwed it up royally.

‘Is there really no way you can be there?’ she asked, more in despair than expectation. ‘If the client’s expecting both of us—’

‘The client’s just secured my services for a pittance,’ Graydon snapped.

You mean my services, thought Flora, although she was wise enough not to say so.

‘He’ll get what he’s given.’

‘All right, but can you at least talk me through the … key points?’ asked Flora, grinding the car’s gears noisily into fifth. She hadn’t driven a stick since college and could barely see three feet in front of her in this rain. ‘What are his main … concerns?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ Graydon said airily. ‘He wants the place to look magnificent, without compromising the history. And he wants it done yesterday. He’s open to suggestion, creatively.’

‘Really?’ Flora perked up. Henry Saxton Brae had a reputation for arrogance, as well as for being controlling. She’d assumed he’d be one of those young clients who think they’re really an architect and who weighed down projects with their endless impractical demands. ‘He doesn’t have a wish list?’

‘Oh, well, you know, somewhat,’ muttered Graydon. Flora could hear muffled voices in the background on his end of the line. And laughter. ‘You’ll be fine. Just don’t be late. And don’t nick anything.’

He hung up.

Clearly Graydon’s panic over holding on to the Hanborough job had subsided since yesterday. Was it really only yesterday when he’d called her? Picturing herself in Lisa Kent’s Siasconset garden, Flora felt as if it were a week ago at least.

The clock on her dashboard said 11 a.m.

She would be late. That much was a fact.

The only question was by how much.

Oh well. It couldn’t be helped. Hopefully Henry Saxton Brae would understand.

Flora finally arrived at Hanborough at half past one, a full hour late for the meeting. As luck would have it, she wasn’t the only one.

‘Mr Saxton Brae’s been held up at a meeting, I’m afraid,’ a smiling, slightly plump, middle-aged secretary informed her, scurrying out to the car as soon as Flora pulled up. ‘He shouldn’t be long now. Can I offer you a cup of tea while you wait?’

‘That would be lovely, thank you.’

The rain had finally stopped, and it seemed to Flora as if the clouds had parted just for her as she followed the secretary across the drawbridge and walked through the ancient portcullis into the castle proper. Outside, sunlight fell in thick, bright shafts onto the honey-coloured stone, and bounced back off the swollen waters of the moat. Inside, however, all was dark and cold and damp. Magnificent, in its own way, with its high ceilings and winding stairwells and tapestry-hung walls. But distinctly lacking in light.

We’ll have to do something about that,thought Flora, although for the moment she wasn’t sure what. A mug of tea arrived, along with a Hobnob biscuit. Not until that moment had Flora realized how hungry she was. Wolfing down the biscuit, she distracted herself from her rumbling stomach by wandering down the halls, mug in hand, trying to get her bearings while simultaneously taking a mental photograph of her first impressions of each room and feature.

First impressions were vital, in Flora’s opinion. It was so easy to lose sight of the essence of a house, or any building for that matter, once it became too familiar. Part of the designer’s job was to keep hold of that freshness, those first ideas and thoughts and emotions that assailed you when you walked through the door. Because that was what future generations would see, long after she and Graydon and Henry Saxton Brae were gone.

‘What the hell are you doing in here?’

Flora jumped and spun around, promptly spilling half a mug of tea all over a priceless Persian rug.

‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry!’

She was standing in the drawing room, examining a rather wonderful antique harpsichord that had been inexplicably shoved into a corner, when Henry Saxton Brae surprised her. In a dark suit and blue shirt open at the neck, but with an Hermès silk tie dangling from his long fingers, he’d obviously just come from a business meeting. Flora’s first impressions of Henry were that he was incredibly handsome – far better looking than he was in the pictures – and incredibly angry.

He was also incredibly rude.

‘Where the fuck is Graydon?’

‘He got held up. In London. I’m Flora Fitzwilliam.’ Flora put down the mug and offered Henry her hand. ‘I just flew in from New York. I’ll be overseeing the project at Hanborough and I’m incredibly excited to—’

‘No.’ Ignoring Flora’s proffered hand, Henry looked her up and down, like a horse he’d been considering buying but now found wanting. ‘I don’t want you. You can go.’ And with that he turned around almost casually and left the room.

It took Flora a moment to recover. But only a moment.

Running out into the hallway, she called after Henry’s retreating back. ‘Excuse me.’ When Henry didn’t answer she raised her voice. ‘Hey!’

Henry turned around, still scowling.

‘If you have a problem working with me, the least you can do is have the courtesy to tell me what it is,’ Flora said defiantly.

Henry took a step towards her. He was still giving her the ‘appraising a racehorse’ look, although this time it was marginally less dismissive.

‘You’re too young,’ he said bluntly.

‘I’m twenty-six.’ Flora drew herself up to her full five foot two. This seemed to amuse Henry, if the small smile playing around the corners of his lips was anything to go by.

‘Exactly. I told Graydon I needed somebody experienced.’

‘I am experienced,’ Flora said firmly. ‘I’m also the best designer at GJD. By miles,’ she added, jutting her chin out defiantly.

Henry’s smile grew. ‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Flora. Her dream job was slipping through her fingers. This was no time to play the shrinking violet. ‘If you’d read my references—’

‘I don’t have time to read references,’ said Henry.

He was in a bad mood because George had just lost them an important deal, the match he’d been hoping to watch at Queen’s this morning had been rained off, and to top it all off that infernally arrogant queen Graydon James had sent his minion to a site meeting without him, blowing Henry off for some spurious ‘emergency’ up in town. The truth was that Henry had already decided to nix Graydon’s girl just to teach the arrogant sod a lesson before he’d even laid eyes on Flora. Then he’d walked in, seen how young she was, and felt even more justified about pulling the trigger.

But now he was having second thoughts. He liked the girl’s confidence. And Graydon had said she was the best of the best. From the beginning the great designer had always talked Guillermo down, emphasizing that he’d be overseeing everything at Hanborough personally. But he’d described Flora as ‘Phenomenal. A unique talent.’ And when Henry asked if she was as good as he was, Graydon had replied, ‘She’s the best I’ve ever seen.’ Henry got the sense that he meant it, and that compliments probably didn’t come easily for an ego like Graydon James’s.

‘What’s your name again?’ Henry asked Flora. The smile had disappeared and the look of disdain was back.

‘Flora.’

He looked at his watch. ‘All right, Flora. I’ll walk you around the castle, but I don’t have long. You’ve got thirty minutes to impress me.’

Arrogant dick! thought Flora. You’d need a lot more than thirty minutes to impress me, asshole. But she reminded herself that she was here for Hanborough, not its spoiled prick of an owner.

‘And a few ground rules,’ Henry went on. ‘If you get the job, you’ll be working for me, not with me. This isn’t a fucking commune.’

With a heroic effort, Flora managed to keep her face neutral.

‘And I don’t want you living on site. Under any circumstances. Not after what happened last time.’

This was too much. Flora flushed scarlet.

‘If you’re suggesting I’m a thief, Mr Saxton Brae, then I’m sorry but I’m afraid I have no further interest in this position.’

‘Of course I’m not suggesting that,’ said Henry. He’d noticed she was shaking. He’d obviously hit a nerve, although he wasn’t sure why, exactly. ‘I simply meant that Eva and I value our privacy.’

‘As do I,’ Flora said crisply. ‘That won’t be a problem.’

Flora’s father had been a thief. Well, a fraudster. But it amounted to the same thing. She’d spent most of her teenage years suffering for his crimes; tainted, distrusted, guilty by association. She would never let that happen again. Certainly not because of a low-life, pilfering scumbag like Guillermo. Nor would she condescend to be judged by the likes of a snob like Henry Saxton Brae.

‘Good,’ Henry said briskly, regaining control of the conversation. ‘We’re on the same page, then. Follow me, please. And if you could try not to ruin any more of my rugs …’

The next three days were a complete whirlwind, so much so that Flora completely forgot to call Mason.

‘You’re still alive, then?’ he quipped, when she finally answered his call on Wednesday morning. Flora was standing in her ‘new’ home, actually a fifteenth-century cottage in the tiny hamlet of Lower Hanborough, surrounded by a sea of John Lewis boxes. ‘I was starting to worry your plane had gone down in the Bermuda triangle or something.’

‘Sorry. I should have called,’ said Flora, distractedly trying to unpack a desperately needed coffee machine from its Fort Knox-like packaging. ‘I can’t tell you how insane things have been since I got here.’

She briefly filled Mason in on Henry Saxton Brae’s arrogance and rudeness, Graydon’s disappearing act, and the whirlwind of winning the job, meeting contractors, finding and moving in to Peony Cottage and trying to come up with an initial design plan, all within the space of thirty-six hours.

‘He sounds like a total douche,’ said Mason, after Flora told him about Henry’s ‘you work for me, not with me’ line.

‘He is, unfortunately,’ Flora agreed. ‘But you know what they say. Every douche has a silver lining. In this case it’s Hanborough. I mean the castle is just … beyond. And the valley and the village and this cottage … Oh my God, Mason, you would die if you saw it. It’s like a little doll’s house with all these beams you have to duck under and creaky stairs with original boards and a cute little garden that looks as if it was planted by Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. You would love it.’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’ Mason laughed. ‘I’d spend the whole time whacking my head on the ceiling and pining for ESPN. But I can hear how much you love it. I’m happy for you, Flora.’

He means it, thought Flora. She could hear the smile in his voice, along with the lapping Caribbean waves in the background. He’s so kind and understanding. I really am the luckiest girl on earth.

‘Have you thought any more about what we talked about?’ asked Mason.

‘What’s that?’

‘Moving the wedding forward?’

‘Oh!’ Flora put down the half-opened coffee machine and frowned. ‘Well, yes. Sort of. I mean, I’d like to. But it’s just, you know, logistics. I’m here. You’re there. Christmas is really soon.’

‘We’ll get a wedding planner. They can do logistics. You just show up and marry me.’

Flora laughed. ‘I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, honey.’ She looked up at the kitchen clock, a heavy, turn-of-the-century wooden affair with a loud, ominous tick you could never quite turn into background noise. ‘Shit! I’m really sorry, Mason, but I have to go. I’ve got a meeting up at the castle in, like, ten minutes.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Mason, sounding distracted himself all of a sudden. Was that a woman’s voice Flora could hear in the background? ‘I have to go too. Henrietta’s organized a boat trip.’

‘That’s nice of her,’ said Flora through gritted teeth. Maybe she could fall overboard?

‘I know, isn’t it? We’re all headed to some private island for lunch. It should be great. I’ll call when I’m back in New York, OK, honey? Don’t work too hard.’

‘I won’t,’ said Flora. But Mason had already hung up.

She’d left Peony Cottage in a fluster, feeling anxious and not a little depressed about the thought of Henrietta Bitch Branston whisking her fiancé off to some fancy island for a romantic picnic. But as soon as Flora crested the hill at the top of Hanborough’s long, tree-lined drive, her worries floated away like seeds on the wind.

It was as if the castle exerted some strange kind of magic over her; some heady, hypnotic pull. Perhaps the Normans had known something Flora didn’t when they positioned it here? She wasn’t a big believer in mysticism, energy lines and feng shui and all that nonsense. But there was no question that simply being at Hanborough promoted a deep sense of wellbeing. It made Flora feel calm and content, the architectural equivalent of smoking a really mellow joint.

Or perhaps, more prosaically, she felt relaxed because it was a glorious June day, Henry was away until tomorrow morning, and he’d taken his secretary, the sweet Mrs French, with him. That meant Flora could have her meetings in peace – two contractors were preparing their bids this morning. After that, Flora was free to roam the castle and grounds alone, letting her creativity flow. The prospect made her feel excited, like a teenager on her first, unchaperoned date.

The contractor meetings were mercifully brief. The first guy, a leering middle-aged wide boy named Brian Hunter, was a definite no. Having first asked Flora to ‘fetch her boss’, he then expressed frank amazement that Flora was in charge, and proceeded to patronize her for the next twenty minutes, taking only short breaks from comments like, ‘You leave that to me, love. I’m the expert’ or, ‘With respect, darling, you’re not an architect, are you?’ to drool at Flora’s tits. (It was warm today, and Flora had made the mistake of wearing a lowish-cut army-green tank top and Bermuda shorts. On another woman these would have looked unremarkable, but on Flora’s pneumatically pint-sized figure, they were more temptation than Brian Hunter could bear.)

The second man, Tony Graham, was better. Older and a bit of a stickler for detail (with his monotone, accountant’s voice, it was fair to say Tony wasn’t going to bowl anybody over with his charisma), he was also professional and thorough. Equally importantly, he was prepared to follow directions. A lot of contractors thought they knew better than the architects or designers, but Graham seemed content to stick to the spec. Flora liked him.

Even so, she was thrilled when Tony’s van finally pulled out of the drive and she was alone at last. With a sketchpad and pencil in hand, she wandered inside, deciding to start at the top, in the old servants’ quarters, and work her way down.

Two hours later, with a fat wodge of notes and sketches under her arm (there was so much potential here, beyond what was in the original architect’s plans), she’d made it as far as the master bedroom suite above the old chapel.

There were plenty of larger, grander rooms in the castle. Clearly Henry and Eva had chosen this one for its romantic feel rather than its square footage. The medieval arched windows, complete with mullioned panes, made you feel like Rapunzel when you looked out of them, and the leaning floor and uneven, original wood-panelled walls imbued the space with a real sense of history. An antique Elizabethan four-poster bed completed the look, although glancing at it Flora felt sure it would work far better turned ninety degrees, to give its occupants a view across Hanborough’s parkland. Or was it too low for that?

Slipping off her espadrilles, Flora lay back on the bed, twisting her head to the right and craning her neck to see if one could, in fact, look out whilst lying down.

‘Oh my God. Oh my God!Who are you?’

Flora sat up to find a blonde Amazon standing in the bedroom doorway. She had an embroidered overnight bag in one hand and a small Chanel purse in the other. Even in no make-up and wearing a tatty pair of boyfriend jeans and a white T-shirt, she was instantly recognizable as Henry Saxton Brae’s supermodel girlfriend, Eva Gunnarson.

‘I’m Flora.’ Flora blushed, hopping back down off the bed and feeling like a dwarf next to Eva. ‘I’m the new designer. You must be Eva.’

Eva glared at her. ‘What were you doing in our bed?’

‘Oh. That.’ Flora blushed as it suddenly dawned on her how it must have looked. ‘I was measuring. I was, er … trying to see the view.’

‘Henry!’ Eva pushed past her, storming first into the master bathroom, then into the dressing room. ‘Henry! Come out, you coward!’

Flora watched mortified as this beautiful girl opened wardrobes and slammed them shut again, tears streaming down her face. Finally she dropped to her knees and actually looked under the bed, before turning furiously back to Flora.

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s not here.’ Flora looked at her pityingly.

‘Don’t lie to me!’ Eva screamed. ‘Just how stupid do you think I am?’

Then suddenly, and without warning, she burst into explosive tears.

‘Oh gosh. Oh, no, please don’t. This is my fault. I didn’t know you were coming back today.’

‘Evidently!’

‘No! No, no, no. Look, Henry really isn’t here. He’s at a meeting. In Birmingham. Mrs French has gone with him.’

Eva looked confused. ‘Mary? How do you know Mary?’

‘She let me in, when I arrived last weekend,’ said Flora. ‘She gave me a cup of tea and I spilled it on your rug. Look, I really am the designer. And I really was measuring your bed height. For the view. There’s nothing … Henry and I … I mean I would never … I’m engaged!’ she finished desperately, waving Mason’s stunning ring in Eva’s general direction.

Eva looked from Flora’s ring to her face and back again. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.

‘Oh God. I’m sorry. Of course you are. I’m turning into one of those women.’

‘What women?’ asked Flora.

‘Pathetic, jealous, paranoid women. Women who don’t trust their own partner.’ She looked up at Flora miserably. ‘You must think I’m such a fool.’

‘Not at all,’ said Flora truthfully. ‘It’s my fault entirely. I can only imagine what I’d do if I came back to my apartment and found a strange chick in my fiancé’s bed.’

Eva giggled. It all seemed rather ridiculous suddenly.

‘Flora, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Eva.’ They shook hands. ‘Let’s never tell Henry about this.’

‘Never!’

Flora smiled broadly. She had a funny feeling that she and Eva were going to become friends. She just wondered how someone so vulnerable and nice had ever made it to the top in the cut-throat world of modelling? Or why she would choose to throw herself away on a smug, arrogant jerk like Henry Saxton Brae.

‘We’re having a dinner party next Saturday night,’ Eva announced suddenly. ‘Just a few local friends, nothing fancy. You must come.’

‘Oh no. I mean, thank you. But I wouldn’t want to intrude,’ Flora said, remembering Henry’s graceless comment about he and Eva ‘valuing their privacy’ and Hanborough not being a commune. Clearly he wasn’t the sort of man who considered his interior designer to be a social equal. ‘Besides, I have a ton of work to do. I’m still playing catch-up on the project. You have an incredible home, and I want to do it justice.’

‘And I’m sure you will,’ Eva said kindly. ‘But you have to eat. We’ll expect you next Saturday. Eight o’clock.’

‘I still don’t understand why you had to invite her,’ Henry grumbled.

It was an hour before the party, and he was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving. Stark naked after a shower, other than the white beard of shaving foam covering the lower half of his face, he looked as beautiful as ever, a Michelangelo sculpture in warm, damp flesh.

I’ll never stop wanting him, Eva thought. Never.

‘I didn’t have to invite her. I wanted to. She’s nice.’

‘She’s stroppy,’ said Henry. ‘More to the point, she’s an employee.’

Eva frowned, adjusting the straps on her pretty, vintage sundress. ‘You sound like a Victorian. She’s a designer, not the man who comes to empty the bins. And, by the way, her fiancé’s very rich. Mason Parker. I googled him. He comes from a very upper-class American family.’

‘There’s no such thing,’ Henry said dismissively. ‘Americans don’t understand about class. And who’s this other bod you’ve asked?’ he added, before Eva could object to this last remark. ‘The random dog-walker?’

‘He’s a writer. His name’s Barney, and he’s also nice.’

‘How do you know?’ Henry asked reasonably. ‘You’ve only met him once.’

‘Twice,’ Eva corrected him. ‘I ran into him again the day before yesterday. So tonight will make three times. We need to meet some new people, darling.’ Walking up behind him, she ran a hand lovingly over Henry’s bottom.

‘I don’t see why,’ said Henry, rinsing off his face. Splashing on some aftershave, he started to get dressed.

He wasn’t thrilled about spending an evening with Graydon James’s number two and some random Paddy whose only claim to fame was that he obviously fancied Eva. But the real fly in tonight’s ointment was the fact that George Savile and her deathly dull husband Robert were coming. Evidently Henry had invited them months ago, to show off Hanborough, and forgotten all about it. But after his recent relapse, the thought of having Georgina – loose-lipped and drunk – under his roof and at the same table as Eva was enough to make him want to break out in hives.

As far as Henry was concerned, this evening couldn’t end soon enough.

‘Good to see you, mate.’ Richard Smart handed Henry an embarrassingly cheap bottle of wine as he stood in front of Hanborough’s grand portcullis. ‘Shame about this place, though. Bit of a shithole, isn’t it? Did you realize that bit’s actually falling down?’

He gestured behind him to the ruined northern tower and battlements.

Henry grinned. He loved Richard. Other than gaining a few inches in height, and a seriously fun and amazing wife, Lucy, he hadn’t changed at all since Henry first met him at pre-prep school when they were both five years old. He had the same cheeky smile, the same sandy blond hair that managed to look permanently dirty and unbrushed, no matter what he did to it, the same puerile but undeniably funny sense of humour. As a country GP, with a modest inheritance from his oil-executive father, Richard was comfortably off, but he’d never come close to the sort of fame and success that Henry had enjoyed. Not that he cared. Richard Smart didn’t have an envious bone in his body. In fact it was Henry who sometimes begrudged Richard his perpetually sunny nature. As Lucy put it, ‘If Rich got any more optimistic, he’d have to be sectioned.’

‘You’re late,’ said Henry.

‘Naturally,’ said Richard. ‘That’s how you know it’s us and not aliens who’ve stolen our bodies.’

‘Archie threw up,’ Lucy added helpfully over his shoulder.

Archie was either one of their sons or one of their dogs. Henry couldn’t keep up with the Smart menagerie. Every time you turned around some new yet-to-be-domesticated creature seemed to have joined the household.

‘Well, thank God you’re here,’ said Henry. ‘It’s like the house of bloody horrors in there.’

Richard leaned forward to hug him, but Henry assumed a look of mock disgust. ‘Not you,you big pleb. No one’s pleased to see you. It’s your wife I’m interested in. You don’t think anyone would ask you to dinner if it weren’t for Lucy, do you?’

‘Probably not,’ Richard admitted, watching impassively as Henry scooped Lucy up into his arms and made a big show of kissing her while she laughingly told him to get lost. In cut-off jeans and a slightly stained Madonna T-shirt, Lucy Smart had taken the evening’s casual dress code to its limits, but she still managed to look lovely, exuding warmth and mischief like a naughty schoolgirl. With her short, tomboyish haircut and long, slightly off-kilter nose, Lucy was sexy rather than pretty. But she had the sort of confidence that made both men and women love her. Henry had also always got the impression that Lucy was seriously highly sexed, although Richard had never said so, and that was one question even Henry didn’t have the balls to ask.

Putting Lucy down, he read the label on Richard’s wine. Then he led the two of them into the castle, holding the bottle at arm’s length and dropping it into the moat with a satisfying plop on the way, without breaking stride.

‘Oi!’ complained Richard. ‘That was Tesco Finest!’

‘Exactly,’ drawled Henry. ‘I love you, Rich, but I can’t let you poison us. Not all of us anyway.’

Leading them into the kitchen – they still didn’t have a table large enough for the formal banqueting hall, and Eva preferred kitchen suppers anyway – Henry made the introductions.

‘Everyone, this is Lucy Smart and some guy she took pity on.’

Richard walked around the table, smiling and shaking hands with everyone.

Henry went on, ’This is Barney Griffith, a friend of Eva’s. And Flora, who’s taking over the restoration work at Hanborough.’

Christ, thought Richard, looking at Flora’s impressive assets squeezed into a figure-hugging dark green shift dress. What happened to the gay guy? Eva had better watch her back there.

‘You know my brother and his wife, Kate?’ Henry went on.

‘How nice to see you again,’ Kate said regally, offering her hand to Lucy Smart like a duchess awaiting a kiss of submission.

‘Hi!’ Lucy smiled, ignoring the hand and hugging her, an experience Kate appeared to enjoy about as much as having lemon juice squirted into her eye.

Henry looked with irritation at the two remaining empty chairs.

‘We’re still waiting for the Saviles.’

Richard Smart rolled his eyes. ‘George is coming?’

‘Sadly,’ muttered Henry.

Richard knew Henry’s business partner, Georgina Savile, of old, and had always disliked her. At school, girls like Georgina – the ones who were too pretty to bother making an effort – had always made a beeline for Henry, looking through Richard as if he didn’t exist. George’s husband Robert was all right, but a crashing bore, always banging on about his latest case, which usually involved tax or shipping and was never a nice juicy celebrity divorce, or a murder, or something you might actually want to talk about at a dinner party. Unchivalrously, Richard took the seat next to Flora’s, leaving Lucy beside the Saviles’ empty chairs.

‘Hello.’ Richard grinned at Flora. ‘You are absolutely bloody gorgeous.’

Flora laughed loudly. She’d forgotten how direct English men could be.

‘Er … thank you?’

‘Richard Smart. You can trust me, I’m a doctor.’

‘Flora Fitzwilliam.’

They shook hands. ‘So where are you from, Flora Fitzwilliam? And what are you doing here? I detect an American accent.’

‘How do you do it, Holmes?’ Lucy teased him from across the table.

‘I’m from New York,’ said Flora. ‘Well, I live in New York. With my fiancé,’ she heard herself blurting, unnecessarily.

‘Git,’ said Richard. ‘I hate him already.’

‘Leave the poor girl alone, Rich,’ said Lucy, adding to Flora, ‘If he annoys you, just hit him.’

‘Let’s eat,’ said Henry, leaning over and helping himself to a large scoop of Jansson’s Temptation, a delicious Swedish dish of potato and onion with cream and anchovies that was one of Eva’s specialities.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for Robert and George?’ asked Eva.

‘Definitely not,’ said Henry, kissing her on the mouth. (Rather too ostentatiously in Barney Griffith’s opinion, although nobody else seemed to mind.) ‘If they’re rude enough to show up late, we can be rude enough to start without them. Besides, I’m starving.’

Christ, he’s arrogant,thought Barney. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but there was a vibe about Henry Saxton Brae that he didn’t like one little bit. The cut-glass accent didn’t help. But it was more than that. Something to do with the possessiveness of that kiss, as if Eva were a car or a diamond necklace, a trophy to be paraded. There was just a certain assumption, an entitlement to all of Henry’s gestures, looks and words that spoke of a deeply ingrained sense of superiority. He didn’t seem like Eva’s type at all.

Still, it was all good stuff for the novel, Barney thought, knocking back his second glass of better-than-decent claret: dinner in a castle, Henry being dastardly, Eva being good and wholesome and bewitching, an exquisite but fragile glass doll.

Barney had been astonished last week when Eva Gunnarson had tracked down his cottage, knocked on the door and invited him to dinner. (Why did that sort of thing – random dinner invitations from supermodels – never happen when other people were around? Like his ex-girlfriend Maud, for example?) So astonished that he almost said no, on some sort of weird, self-defeating autopilot. The thing was, Barney barely knew Eva. They’d bumped into each other once or twice walking the dogs, and somehow he found she was wonderfully easy to talk to, but that was it. Astonishing as it seemed, this stunning girl was clearly lonely.

She needs a friend, Barney told himself. And it wasn’t as if he had so many better things to do on a Saturday night.

In any case, he was delighted he’d got over himself and agreed to come, as it turned out he wasn’t the only singleton invited. Eva, God bless her, had sat him next to the new interior designer for Hanborough, an absolute cracker of a girl and very much Barney’s type: petite, blonde, curvy, and with the sort of boobs that frankly made a man happy to be alive. She was American (nobody’s perfect), but so far at least she seemed to have a very English sense of humour, not to mention a wonderfully unexpected, raucous laugh that made her sound like a French truck driver.

Flora. Fabulous Flora.

He’d only met her five minutes ago, but Barney was already infatuated.

The first course was almost over by the time a clattering in the hallway announced that the last two guests had finally arrived.

Eva got up to go and greet them but Henry put a hand on her arm.

‘Leave it. They know where to go.’

He seemed angry at George, which was odd as he was the one who’d invited her, and he never normally minded about lateness, being perpetually late himself. Still, Eva had long ago given up trying to figure out Henry and Georgina’s relationship. They clearly worked well together in business, although outside of work they fought. A lot. Eva had always had the feeling that George didn’t like her very much, but Henry was at pains to deny this.

Glancing up she smiled at Flora, who smiled back. What a great girl she had turned out to be! Having her around the place these past two weeks had been like a breath of fresh air. For the first time, Eva felt involved in the changes being made at Hanborough.

‘It’s going to be your home too, you know,’ Flora told her. ‘Your children’s home. If you don’t like something we’re doing, or you’ve had an idea we haven’t thought of, you need to speak up.’

Perhaps it was odd to put it in these terms, but for the first time Eva felt as if she had an ally against Henry. Not that Henry was the enemy, of course. Eva loved him more than anything, more than life. But he had such a strong personality, such a forceful way of expressing himself. Sometimes it was easy to get lost in his shadow.

On the other side of the table, poor Lucy Smart was being talked to death by Sebastian on the only subject he ever spoke about – hunting. Eva saw the look of relief and gratitude on Lucy’s face when the Saviles walked in, mercifully stemming the flow.

‘So sorry we’re late,’ George announced, not looking remotely sorry. ‘Traffic was just ghastly.’ She’d pulled out all the stops tonight and looked utterly ravishing in skin-tight black leather biker trousers, a ribbed vest that showcased her perfectly toned and slender arms, and sexily spiked Gucci heels that tap-tapped on the flagstone floors like metallic raindrops whenever she moved. Hovering behind her in the Fulham uniform of green jeans and checked Hackett shirt, and looking chinless and awkward, was her husband Robert. He reminded Barney of a nervous zookeeper presenting some exotic but dangerous animal to the crowds.

Just as this thought entered his head, Barney felt Flora’s hand in his. Before he had time to feel ecstatic about it, she started digging her nails painfully into his palm.

‘No!’ she whispered. ‘Oh God, please no!’

‘What?’ Barney asked, wincing, but loath to reclaim his hand. ‘What’s wrong?’

Before Flora could answer, George let out a little shriek.

‘I don’t believe it!’ She pointed at Flora. ‘It can’t be! Flora Fitzwilliam? What on earth are you doing here?’

‘You two know each other?’

Henry scowled at George. It was bad enough that she’d showed up late, dressed like a slut and doing everything possible to divert every ounce of attention in the room onto herself. But now she was claiming some sort of connection with Flora. He didn’t know why that should annoy him so much, but it just did.

‘We were at school together,’ Flora said through gritted teeth.

‘Old school friends?’ Seb piped up. ‘How marvellous. Where was it?’

‘Sherwood,’ said George, tossing her long blonde hair backwards luxuriantly.

‘And we weren’t friends,’ Flora added meaningfully. ‘Not at all.’

Henry looked at Flora with increased respect.

‘Well, we barely had time to be, did we?’ trilled George, tap-tapping her way over to the empty seat closest to Flora’s. ‘Poor old Flora got chucked out after her daddy was caught with his hand in the till. How long did they give him again?’

‘Eight years.’ Flora’s face was frozen. Under the table she tightened her grip on Barney’s hand.

‘Oh, so he’s been out for ages now then,’ George said breezily, adding, ‘Pass the wine would you, Henry darling? I’m parched.’

‘He never got out. He died in prison.’

Flora’s voice was like a funeral bell, ringing out across the table. Everyone looked at one another awkwardly. Only Henry met Flora’s eyes, with an unexpected flash of sympathy.

‘I was eleven when my mother died,’ said Henry. ‘You never get over it.’

‘No,’ Flora agreed, surprised and touched that Henry would understand. ‘You don’t.’

Meanwhile, George helped herself to the remnants of Eva’s potatoes and two large slices of roast beef.

‘What a sad story,’ she said, in a tone that made it clear that she gave not even the slightest fraction of a shit. ‘But do tell. What brings you to Hanborough, Flora? I’m quite fascinated. You are a dark horse,’ she added to Henry, reaching across the table and squeezing his arm in an unduly intimate way. ‘Keeping her a secret.’

Henry retracted his arm as if he’d been scalded. ‘Don’t be silly, Georgina. There’s no secret.’

Bloody hell,thought Barney. What’s going on there?

‘Flora’s our new designer,’ said Eva, sensing the tension around the table but not exactly sure about the cause of it. ‘She’ll be overseeing the entire restoration. And she is quite brilliant.’ She smiled warmly.

‘I’m sorry, did you say your father went to prison?’ Seb’s wife Kate piped up in horrified tones, belatedly catching on to the conversation just as the rest of the table was hoping to move on.

‘Fraud,’ said George, slicing gleefully into her beef.

‘How shocking,’ Kate thundered.

‘And how awful for you,’ Lucy Smart said to Flora kindly. ‘Did you really have to leave your school?’

‘I didn’t mind that part so much,’ said Flora. ‘School had become pretty much unbearable anyway.’ Her eyes bored into George’s like lasers. ‘But it was a rough time in our lives. I try not to think about it.’

‘The chap we’re renting our house from went to prison,’ Richard Smart announced cheerfully, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Eddie Wellesley. Nice bloke, actually.’

‘Wasn’t that fraud too?’ asked Seb tactlessly.

‘Tax evasion,’ piped up Robert Savile, the first words he’d spoken since he and George arrived. ‘I come across quite a few evasion cases in my practice, actually. The last one I worked on …’

And he was off, succeeding where Eva had failed and dragging the conversation away from Flora at last.

For the rest of the meal, no one returned to the subject of Flora’s past, although George took every opportunity to take digs at her present.

‘I thought you said Graydon James was redesigning Hanborough?’ she asked Henry.

‘He was. He is.’

‘So how did you manage to end up with Flora? I don’t understand.’

‘A restoration like this is a long-term project,’ Henry answered, tight-lipped. He didn’t know what George was playing at exactly, but he didn’t like it. Everything was a power game with her. ‘Graydon was never going to be able to oversee it personally.’

‘Oh, I see. So he sent one of his juniors? That’s a shame. I hope he cut your bill.’

‘It’s not a shame at all,’ said Eva. ‘We’re delighted to have Flora here. Aren’t we, Henry?’

‘Delighted.’

Henry’s blue eyes flashed at Flora, and he smiled in a way that made her throat go dry. I can’t figure him out, she thought. One minute he’s being arrogant and obnoxious. And the next he’s sticking up for me.

‘You know, Graydon James worked on two of my friends’ houses and he did all the work himself,’ George went on, apparently hell-bent on irritating Henry. ‘You remember Lottie Calthorpe?’

‘No,’ Henry scowled.

‘Silly! Of course you do,’ trilled George, smiling. ‘Graydon did Lottie and William’s place in the Hamptons, and he was on site the entire time. Then again,’ George added smugly, ‘Lottie has never been one to accept second best.’

‘Nor am I,’ said Henry, leaning over and making another great show of kissing Eva. George’s smile died on her lips. Barney Griffith simply felt sick, and dirty, as if he’d been press-ganged into watching some sordid peep show.

As soon as pudding was over, Flora made her excuses and bolted out to her car like a bat from a burning belfry. Barney followed, just managing to tap on the window of Flora’s rented Volkswagen Touareg before she drove off.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, rubbing his sore hand. There were welts in his palm from where Flora’s nails had almost drawn blood. ‘That was seriously weird.’

‘I’m fine,’ Flora exhaled. ‘I just wish I’d known she was coming.’

‘George?’

Flora nodded. ‘I wish I’d been prepared, that’s all.’

‘Did you know she was Henry’s business partner?’

‘No! I mean, I knew he had a partner called George Savile, but I assumed it was a guy. She was called Georgie Lynne back when I knew her. She made my life hell at school.’ Flora shook her head bitterly at the memories. ‘I’m not sure I’d have taken this job if I’d known it meant running into Georgie again.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Barney said robustly. ‘Of course you’d have taken the job. School was a lifetime ago. And, even if it weren’t, you can’t let bullies like her get the better of you.’

‘Can’t you?’ sighed Flora. She felt defeated suddenly, and horribly low. This guy Barney had been really sweet all evening. But all she wanted right now was to talk to Mason; to feel his safe, comforting arms around her.

In one short evening, Georgina Savile had managed to poison what should have been one of the happiest, most triumphant moments of Flora’s career. Redesigning Hanborough Castle! Coming back to England, to the glorious Swell Valley, not as an exiled fraudster’s daughter but as a success in her own right. Why, why did that loathsome, manipulative bitch have to be Henry Saxton Brae’s partner? Of all people! It wasn’t fair. After tonight it was only a matter of time until the entire valley knew all about Flora’s dad and her history, the dark past she’d worked so hard to transcend and forget.

She turned on the engine.

‘Thanks for being so nice this evening,’ she said to Barney.

‘My pleasure.’

‘And sorry about your hand.’

‘Oh!’ He gave a brave, it-was-nothing shrug. ‘My pleasure again.’

‘I’d better get to my bed. Early start tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ said Barney, reluctantly stepping back from the car. ‘Well, sleep well. It was lovely to meet you, Flora.’

‘And you.’

Barney stood and watched as Flora drove away.

That’s the girl I’m going to marry,he thought.




CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_1ae2708e-5cd8-5fc7-a988-31bd67c658ae)


Summer rolled into the Swell Valley late that year, slow and heavy and swollen with sticky heat like a river of molasses about to burst its banks. But when it finally came it brought record temperatures and an oppressive humidity that made it feel more like a Floridian mangrove swamp than the Sussex countryside.

While the local villagers sweated, cooling themselves off with ice lollies from the Preedys’ shop or cold jugs of Pimm’s from The Fox, up at Hanborough Castle the work never stopped. Flora had even started to lose some of her famous curves simply from running around the site all day, overseeing work and shouting directions till her throat was hoarse.

Tony Graham, the contractor, was efficient and on the ball, but he did have a habit of making a drama out of a crisis and niggling over the very tiniest details, right down to which brand of nails Flora wanted for the new joists. He also had the world’s most annoying, nasally voice, so grating that it had begun to creep into Flora’s nightmares. When Eva was around, Flora at least had a friendly face to talk to, or share an occasional snatched lunch with up at the castle. On rare occasions, Barney Griffith might join the two of them, or drag them down to The Fox for an after-work drink. But then Barney would be sucked back into the black hole of his book, and Eva would jet off to another photoshoot somewhere exotic, leaving Flora with only Mono-Tony, as she’d christened the contractor, for company.

Apart, of course, from Henry.

Ever since the awful night when George Savile had turned up to dinner and done her best to humiliate Flora in front of her new client and his friends, Flora had struggled to get a handle on Henry. Her first impressions of him had been wholly negative. He seemed rude, arrogant, selfish and a snob. Six weeks working for him up at Hanborough had confirmed that Henry certainly could be all of these things – and worse, if Eva’s suspicions and tabloid gossip were anything to go by. Henry Saxton Brae’s reputation as a womanizer was legendary, and though he’d yet to be caught cheating since getting engaged to Eva, Eva’s first meeting with Flora had made it clear that not even his fiancée would have put it past him.

But there was another side to Henry, too. He’d defended Flora when George attacked her that night, and on other occasions since. (It was astonishing how frequently George seemed to ‘drop in’ at Hanborough, for someone who purported to live in London.) Flora had also noticed how soppy Henry could be with his dogs, Whiskey and Soda, when he thought no one was looking, hugging and tickling them and sneaking them cuts of prime fillet steak from the fridge. Yet whenever Eva was around, he ignored the dogs completely, always letting her walk them alone, almost as if he were deliberately trying to conceal his affection.

One time Flora had walked in on him in the study, rolling around on the floor with the two Irish setters, giggling like a kid. Henry had flushed beet-red and leapt to his feet, as embarrassed as if he’d just been caught romping with a porn star.

‘I was just … I was, er … did you want something?’ He smoothed down his hair and did his best to regain his usual sang-froid.

‘Only to show you these.’

Flora unrolled her finally finished plans for the new library. When she took over the Hanborough project from Graydon and Guillermo, the idea had been to restore the old library – a vast, wood-panelled room with Victorian stained-glass windows, like a chapel, but riddled with rot and in a worse state of repair than anywhere else in the castle. Restoring this room alone would account for almost a fifth of the entire budget. When Flora had suggested a smaller, much more romantic library in one of the original towers, based on Vita Sackville-West’s idyllic study at Sissinghurst, Henry had leapt at the idea.

‘Sissinghurst is one of the few school trips I remember from my prep-school days,’ he’d told Flora. ‘They had a pond there that was so covered in bright green algae, it looked like a lawn. I went running down the path and plunged straight into it. Got the shock of my life! My mother said I smelt like a sewer rat for weeks afterwards.’ His eyes lit up, as they always did on the rare occasions he mentioned his mother. ‘Anyway, I loved that library, with the winding stairs and the Persian rugs and the old globe. Like living in a lighthouse.’

‘I think we could do a spectacular lighthouse library here,’ said Flora. ‘And for a fraction of the cost of restoring the old one.’

Flora had spent untold hours perfecting the new designs, delighted that Henry seemed as enthusiastic about the idea as she was. But now, standing in his study with the plans spread out on his desk, she felt unaccountably nervous.

Would he like them? Had he changed his mind?

Her nerves intensified as he leaned over the drawings, frowning as he studied each one intently.

Oh God, thought Flora. Perhaps she’d over-egged the Sissinghurst thing. It was only an inspiration, after all. Flora’s library was a lot cleaner and simpler, a lot more modern.

‘You don’t like it,’ she blurted.

‘No,’ said Henry, still glued to the plans, still frowning. ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

Flora bit her lower lip. Damn it. She’d already gone out on a limb with Graydon on this. Graydon had always felt more comfortable with the original, grander, much more expensive library, but had caved in when Flora insisted the client shared her vision. Surprisingly, Flora and Henry seemed to have a lot in common when it came to taste in architecture and interiors. Eva preferred a much more modern and, to Flora’s mind, urban aesthetic. But Flora and Henry frequently saw eye to eye about Hanborough, something else that had helped Flora warm to him.

Not this time, though.

‘I don’t like it,’ Henry repeated. Looking up at her, his frown was now almost a scowl. ‘I bloody love it.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Flora.

Henry grinned, pulling her into a hug and twirling her around, to Flora’s combined delight and astonishment. ‘You’re a genius, Flora Fitzwilliam! It’s perfect.’

‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ Flora exhaled.

‘It’s warm. It’s intimate,’ said Henry. He’d set her back down on the carpet, but his hands were still resting loosely on her hips. All of a sudden Flora felt intensely aware of his physical presence: the scent of his aftershave; the way the fabric of his shirt strained slightly against his muscular arms. And his eyes, which had gone from embarrassed when she first walked in, to angry, now had a playful, teasing look to them that Flora found she had no idea how to handle.

Looking down at her, he smiled and said gruffly, ‘I can climb up there when I’m under attack. Lock myself away.’

‘Are you often under attack?’ Flora heard herself ask, in a voice that was not quite her own.

‘Sometimes.’

Was it Flora’s imagination, or did his hands just tighten around her hips?

‘Well. It will be somewhere to retreat to, then. Every home should have a retreat,’ she replied briskly, doing her best to sound professional.

‘I never retreat.’

Henry’s upper lip curled arrogantly, the same way it had the day Flora first met him. She’d loathed his arrogance then. Now she felt something else, something thoroughly disconcerting. ‘But it’ll be the perfect space to plan my counter-attack.’

Smiling, he released her, and walked around to the other side of the desk.

What just happened? thought Flora. Had they been talking about her new library? Or something else entirely?

Gathering up her plans, she left, the disconcerting feeling still hovering unpleasantly in the pit of her stomach.

About two weeks after Flora’s encounter with Henry in the study, Graydon James decided to pay an impromptu site visit to Hanborough. Eva, back from her latest Sports Illustrated shoot in Australia, insisted that Graydon stay at the castle as their guest.

‘That way you can spend a few days and really get a sense of what Flora’s been achieving here. Henry and I both just love her,’ she’d added loyally, winking at Flora, who wished the ground would open up and swallow her.

They were all in the formal drawing room at Hanborough. ‘All’ being the operative word. Henry, still in tennis whites after an early morning game with Richard Smart, was nursing a large gin and tonic by the window, looking less than thrilled by Graydon James’s unannounced and typically flamboyant arrival. Graydon, now on his third Bellini, had shown up in an open-topped pink Porsche 911, wearing a preposterous 1930s golfing outfit consisting of plus fours and a peach sweater, teamed with a dreadful Sherlock Holmes cap. Eva was there, boho chic in a bright orange cotton kaftan that would have looked like a curtain on anyone else, while Flora was looking pale and tired in boyfriend jeans and an old shirt of Mason’s tied at the waist that she basically lived in these days. George Savile, minus her dreary husband this time, had just ‘dropped in’, again, for lunch, looking typically chic in a Stella McCartney jumpsuit and sky-high heels. She greeted Graydon with a screech of delight and the sort of ecstatic hug usually reserved for a husband returning from war.

‘Graydon! Thank goodness you’re here to liven things up a bit,’ George trilled, linking arms possessively with the great designer in a clear message to Flora that the two of them were great friends, and that she’d better watch her back.

Flora had arrived for lunch tired, and now felt utterly exhausted. Graydon’s guest appearance was absolutely the last thing she needed. Clearly Eva thought she was doing Flora a favour by inviting Graydon to stay at the castle, and telling him how much they loved Flora’s work. She wasn’t to know how pathologically jealous Graydon was of other designers, even his own staff, and how paranoid of having his thunder stolen. Especially by Flora.

‘Well,’ Graydon beamed, first at George and then at Eva. ‘I must say it’s nice to be made so welcome. If you’re really sure it’s no imposition, I’d love to stay a couple of nights. I loathe the drive back to London, and The Dorchester’s become so corporate these days, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, dreadful,’ George agreed with a shudder. ‘I wouldn’t put my gardener up there. The place is alive with Russians.’

‘There’s a perfectly good pub in Fittlescombe. They’ve got rooms,’ Henry muttered, too quietly for Graydon to hear but loudly enough to earn himself a reproachful look from Eva.

‘It’s no imposition at all. We’d be delighted to have you.’

‘In that case, I think I might stay too,’ said George. ‘Make a house party of it. If that’s all right?’ She fluttered her eyelashes innocently at Eva.

‘Not really,’ thundered Henry.

‘Of course it’s all right,’ said Eva, simultaneously. She’d never warmed to George. She’d tried, many times, but Henry’s business partner always had a knowing, sour look on her face when talking to Eva, as if she were laughing at some private joke that Eva strongly suspected was at her expense. Despite this, Eva continued to be hospitable and to hold out repeated olive branches to Georgina. One day, she felt sure, her kindness would pay off, and George would realize that Eva was a decent person and that she made Henry happy.

‘We’d love to have you. There are plenty of rooms, after all.’

‘Even if it is still a building site!’ George laughed, adding teasingly, ‘But I suppose genius can’t be rushed, eh, Flora?’

Die. Thought Flora. Die, die, die, you poisonous, manipulative cow.

Flora couldn’t understand why George kept showing up like a bad smell when it was clear that Henry didn’t want her here. Or why either Henry or Eva put up with it.

The only thing she knew for sure was that it was going to be a very, very long few days.

Flora’s first official walk-through of the site with Graydon began at eight o’clock the next morning. It did not go well.

No doubt irked by Eva’s lavish praise of Flora’s designs the day before, Graydon systematically ripped into every last inch of her work. Nothing was good enough. The fixtures in the guest bathroom suites were too modern. The window dressings in the state rooms too traditional. The reclaimed stone Flora had used for the floor in the great hall was too expensive. The oak boards in the master bedroom too cheap.

‘And as for this folly,’ Graydon jabbed a gold-ringed finger at the new library plans in derision. ‘This will have to go.’

‘It can’t,’ said Flora, aghast. They were standing just inside the castle doors, in a room known as the hall. A long refectory bench lined one wall. Flora sat down on it wearily. ‘Henry loves it. It’s his favourite room in the entire castle. Plus it represents a huge saving over the original plan.’

‘I don’t care what it represents,’ Graydon snapped, sitting beside her. ‘I’m not having my name associated with that piece of kitsch.’

Flora’s eyes widened. Coming from a man wearing an aqua-blue sweater with two felt puppies appliquéd on the front, this was a bit rich.

‘Besides,’ Graydon added, his tone softening slightly, ‘Henry Saxton Brae is not the only person we’re trying to please here.’

Flora looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The International Designer of the Year award is being held in London next year,’ said Graydon. ‘It’s been moved forward to June, which means all submissions must be put before the judges by April.’

Flora looked at him blankly. The Hanborough restoration would not be close to finished by April. The plan had been to get everything but the South Wing completed by next August, in time for Henry and Eva’s wedding. At the current rate of progress, even that was going to be a stretch.

‘You’re not thinking of entering Hanborough?’

‘I’m not thinking about it, no,’ Graydon said caustically. ‘I’m doing it. Or, rather, we’re doing it. Together.’

Flora opened her mouth to protest but Graydon wasn’t finished.

‘I happen to have two close friends on the panel. It’s going to be a much more avant-garde group of judges than in previous years. We’re going to have to rethink a lot of the plans here if we want to have a shot at winning. Introduce some much more innovative, modern elements. Think sustainability. Eco-friendly. Old meets new.’

Flora imagined Henry wincing at every one of these expressions.

‘Take a look at these.’ Flipping open his MacBook Air, Graydon showed Flora a slide show of images. One was of a steel-framed barn with a retractable glass roof. Another of a Plexiglas tunnel connecting the East and West wings of the castle at the rear.

Flora shook her head. ‘There’s just no way. For one thing, Henry’s a traditionalist. He’ll never agree to anything like that.’

‘Then you must make him agree,’ said Graydon, unyielding.

‘Even if I could, this stuff is all way over budget,’ protested Flora. ‘And you want it done by next April? At the rate we’ve been going we’ll struggle to get the current plans finished by next August.’

Graydon fell silent for a moment, his lips pursed.

‘Perhaps I made a mistake in entrusting you with a project of this significance,’ he said at last. ‘Our mutual friend Mrs Savile confided in me that you’ve been struggling.’

‘I have not been struggling!’ Flora said hotly. ‘And Georgina Savile is no friend of mine.’

‘Hmmm,’ Graydon mused. ‘Well, you do look terribly tired, Flora. I have a new fellow working for me in New York, Riccardo. Perhaps it makes sense for him to take over from here? I know he’s chomping at the bit for a challenge.’

Flora could instantly visualize Riccardo, no doubt Graydon’s latest squeeze.

‘Sure,’ she quipped. ‘That’s a great idea, Graydon. Because Guillermo worked out so well.’

Graydon’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t owe you this job, Flora.’

‘No, you don’t. But you gave it to me, and I’ve done all you asked – and more. And, Henry and Eva love me,’ Flora said defiantly. ‘They would have to agree to any change in designer and, I’m telling you now, they won’t. Not in a million years. So if you want the slightest chance of getting these changes made, or entering Hanborough for the International Designer of the Year award, the fact is, Graydon, you do need me. You do.’

She was quivering with rage, glaring at Graydon, daring him to deny it. For a moment Graydon glared back, equally furious. Then, to Flora’s surprise, he smiled.

‘Thank goodness,’ he said. ‘I’d started to think the old, ambitious Flora Fitzwilliam was gone for ever. So, we’re on the same page? Winning International Designer of the Year will mean more for your career than it will for mine, darling.’

‘You’d share the award with me?’ Flora’s eyes widened. ‘I mean, we’d enter Hanborough together?’

‘Of course,’ Graydon said breezily. ‘As a team. My brand. My vision. Your hard graft. What do you say?’

Flora’s mind raced. She made a mental list of pros and cons. The cons list was considerably longer.

Graydon’s plans were frankly hideous, a betrayal not only of Henry and of Hanborough, but of Flora’s own artistic integrity.

Changing tack so radically and aiming for an April completion would mean working even harder than she was now, which scarcely seemed possible.

It would also leave her even less time for Mason – fewer trips home, and no time at all to focus on planning their wedding.

On the pros side, if by some miracle they pulled it off, she, Flora Fitzwilliam, would be International Designer of the Year. Her name and Graydon’s, side by side, as equals.

‘OK.’ She smiled back at Graydon. ‘I’m in.’

‘Wonderful,’ the old man purred. ‘So, how do you plan to convince our friend Henry to change his plans and double his budget?’

‘I don’t,’ said Flora.

Graydon frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I have a better idea.’ Flora smiled cryptically. ‘Trust me.’

‘What do you think?’

Flora and Eva were sprawled out in old-fashioned deckchairs in the back garden of Peony Cottage. It was a glorious, baking hot summer afternoon and Flora had asked Eva over specially for tea and cake. ‘I have something I want to show you privately,’ she’d told her up at the castle, the day Graydon flew back to New York. ‘Shall we meet at my cottage? Around four?’

Eva was entranced by Flora’s cottage, with its simple, cool whitewashed walls and artfully placed earthenware, and its overblown but exquisite back garden, bursting with sweet-smelling clematis and honeysuckle, its beds crowded with pretty pink roses and towering hollyhocks in white and pink and deep purple, the colour of overripe plums.

‘It’s like a Kate Greenaway postcard,’ she sighed. ‘Like something from a hundred years ago.’

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ agreed Flora. ‘I love it here. It’s my sanctuary.’

‘Lucky you,’ said Eva. ‘I mean, obviously I’m incredibly blessed to live at Hanborough. Who wouldn’t want to wake up in a fairy-tale castle every day, right?’

‘But?’ Flora prodded.

‘Well. It’s Henry’s home, really,’ said Eva.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that here, at Peony Cottage, you can do what you like. You’ve made it your home because you designed all the interiors yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I love what you’re doing up at Hanborough,’ Eva explained hastily. ‘It’s just that you’re doing it. You and Henry. Not me.’

Flora beamed. This couldn’t be going more perfectly.

‘That’s exactly why I invited you over,’ she said. ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head. Graydon and I both felt that you’ve been excluded from the design process up till now, and that maybe what we’ve been doing up at the castle is a bit …’ She searched around for the right word. ‘A bit simplistic – a bit one-dimensional, shall we say – as a result. Take a look at these.’

Slowly, one by one, Flora walked Eva through Graydon’s revised plans. Naturally far more of a modernist than Henry, Eva was instantly drawn to the stark, minimalist, even industrial style of the party barn, with its steel and glass and light. ‘It looks very Swedish,’ she observed approvingly. Within half an hour, Flora had as good as convinced Eva that the designs were her own – or at least that she and Graydon had merely ‘anticipated’ her vision.

‘I know Henry wants Hanborough to feel like your home too,’ said Flora. ‘That’s why he moved here, after all. So the two of you could make a life together.’

‘That’s true,’ Eva mused, flipping longingly through the new plans.

‘But you need to speak up for yourself,’ Flora told her. ‘I can’t do it. If I showed Henry these plans, he’d shut me down immediately. But you can. And I really think you should.’

Eva nodded, taking another sip of Earl Grey tea from Flora’s shabby-chic china cup. Flora noticed she had left her fruit cake completely untouched. Being a world-famous lingerie model did have some disadvantages, apparently.

‘You’re right,’ said Eva boldly, tucking the plans under her arm. ‘I can’t complain about being left out of the process if I never tell Henry what I want. Thanks, Flora.’ Standing up to her full five feet eleven, towering over Flora, she hugged her goodbye. ‘And thanks for asking me over today. I really appreciate your friendship. I hope you know that.’

‘Likewise,’ said Flora, suppressing a mighty wave of guilt.

She felt bad, using Eva so blatantly to get these design changes past Henry. But it was the only way. Henry and Flora had such similar tastes; if Flora presented them he would smell a rat immediately. Plexiglas tunnels and party barns were definitively not Flora’s style. And the International Designer of the Year award was not going to win itself.

‘I’m sorry,’ Henry told Flora two days later, re-presenting her own plans to her over coffee in the castle kitchen, ‘I know these are big changes. And I know they’re godawful. But it means so much to Eva. I want to at least meet her halfway.’

‘I understand.’ Flora nodded sympathetically. ‘You realize it’s a lot more money?’

Henry shrugged. ‘Money’s not a problem. Don’t tell your bloody boss I said that,’ he added quickly.

‘Of course not,’ said Flora, trying her best to look loyal and supportive. Once again she successfully suppressed a pang of guilt. She was surprising herself by how good she was becoming at this manipulation lark. Perhaps she’d learned more from Graydon James than she realized?

‘I’m not having the tunnel,’ Henry said firmly. ‘It looks like a fucking small intestine.’

Flora laughed loudly. She wouldn’t tell Graydon that either, although she wanted to.

‘But I told her yes to the barn.’

‘OK,’ said Flora. ‘I’ll put the change orders in to Tony and we’ll get started.’

Draining her coffee, she was getting up to leave when Henry put a hand on her arm.




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