An Eligible Bachelor (18 page)

A year or so ago, however, she’d listened to a programme on Radio Four about novel writing, and it had rekindled her ambition. A germ of an idea had planted itself in her brain, and on the advice of the programme she had rushed out to buy a notebook – pink, like the notebooks she had originally used for
Chelsea Virgin
– and started to jot down notes in the few quiet moments she had. Now the notebooks numbered three and were kept in the bottom of her tights drawer. Every time she thought about them she felt both fear and excitement, but she’d consistently had the excuse of lack of time to stop her doing anything concrete with them.

Now, however, it seemed she no longer had an excuse. And she was champing at the bit to get started. The time was right. She no longer felt fear, just the tingle of anticipation, the itch to give some sort of shape to the ramblings she had begun.

Happy that she had somewhere to put her intended
addition to the family, she trotted back inside to the kitchen and found the Yellow Pages. There was an agency in Cheltenham that a lot of her friends used. She picked up the phone and dialled the number, idly doodling smiley faces over the pad she’d efficiently opened to make notes.

The girl at the agency was very apologetic.

‘You’ve called at a very bad time. Everyone’s been snapped up for the beginning of term.’

‘Oh,’ said Henty, deeply disappointed. ‘But I’m desperate!’

‘There is one possibility,’ said the girl. ‘But there is a slight snag that you might not be very happy about.’

‘Try me,’ said Henty.

Moments later, she put the phone down with a mischievous grin. Charles wouldn’t like it, but sod Charles. After all, it was his fault in the first place.

The wind whistled up the platform at Eldenbury as Guy and Richenda stood waiting for the Paddington train. Richenda shivered, and snuggled down further into her sheepskin coat. Guy put an arm round her and hugged her to him.

‘Chilly?’

‘Freezing.’

She snuggled into him, grateful for his warmth. Thankfully, their little spat of the day before seemed to have been forgotten. By the time she and Madeleine had got back from John Lewis, Guy was resolutely cheerful. He’d restored all the furniture to its rightful place and put all the paintings back on the walls. The three of them had a roast chicken supper together in the kitchen, and
the atmosphere had been far more relaxed than at breakfast. Richenda no longer felt as if Madeleine was trying to undermine her or score points – maybe they’d bonded somehow in the bedding department.

The train drew in and Richenda felt a pang. For two pins she wouldn’t get on. She wanted to stay and muck in with everyone else; do her bit, prove that she didn’t mind getting her hands dirty. But she was contractually obliged to turn up at the editing suite the next morning. She might like to think that her life was her own, but it wasn’t. Far from it.

Guy opened the door into the first-class carriage. She picked up her holdall and climbed on board. Guy shut the door and they shared a long, lingering kiss through the window. The whistle blew and Richenda withdrew her head with a smile.

‘Phone me when you get home,’ instructed Guy, and she nodded, then made her way into the carriage to find a seat. Thankfully, she found an empty table. She didn’t want to have to make polite conversation with anyone. Or worse, be recognized. She sank into the forward-facing seat gratefully, tucking her bag underneath her feet.

As the train drew out of the station, Richenda felt like crying. Hastily, she put on her dark glasses. What on earth was the matter with her? She should be walking on air. She was a star. She was engaged to the most gorgeous man on the planet.

The problem was simple: she didn’t know who she was, or what role she was playing. Lady Jane? Richenda Fox? Nearly Mrs Guy Portias? For a moment she felt like
mousy, plain nobody Rowan Collins again. Unsure, uncertain, unsettled…

Guy strode back through the station car park. He had that deflated feeling, an emptiness in the pit of his stomach that comes with a train-station farewell. And he felt angry with himself. The past couple of days had not gone as he’d planned. After the initial excitement of their engagement the week before, and then the official announcement in the papers over the weekend, the atmosphere between him and Richenda had become rather strained. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising. There was bound to be a bit of an anticlimax after all the fuss and attention. But he felt annoyed with himself for letting it get to him.

He certainly hadn’t meant to be so beastly to Richenda the day before by throwing her offer back in her face. It had been a sweet gesture, as she knew that deep down he hated having to exploit Eversleigh Manor’s charms. But he’d had to come over all macho. He felt racked with guilt as he remembered her crestfallen face. Why had he humiliated her like that? He could at least have been gracious about it, thanked her but refused politely. More to the point, he could have accepted it. Guy had no doubt that she was making the sort of serious money needed to maintain a manor house like that. And if they were to be married…

But she had hit a raw nerve. Guy would have liked nothing better than to have the kind of money to keep Eversleigh going, to run it as it should be run. But he’d never settled down or stuck at anything, so now he was
paying the price. He supposed he could have gone into the City, like a lot of his schoolmates, and made a killing – a killing that would amply underwrite the maintenance of a Cotswold manor house.

But then, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be him. She’d told him time and again that it was his waywardness that she loved, his lack of convention, his scruffiness. The fact that he was his own master. So that wouldn’t have been the solution. Guy told himself he should just be grateful that he and his mother had hit upon an alternative way of keeping their legacy going. And it wasn’t such an awful fate – or at least, he hoped not. They’d know better after next weekend what they’d let themselves in for.

All he regretted now was that they hadn’t had time to make up properly for their disagreement. Richenda had seemed a little subdued when he’d kissed her goodbye, and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. So he stopped off at the florist’s in the high street and ordered some flowers to be sent to her flat; the assistant assured him they would be waiting for her when she arrived back.

As he drove back home, Guy realized it was the first time he’d ever sent anyone flowers, and he smiled to himself. This must be the real thing.

On Monday evening, Charles stepped off the train from Paddington on to the platform at Eldenbury. As the rest of the local commuters either trickled off to the car park to collect the cars they’d left there that morning, or sauntered out to their waiting spouses, he stood by the ticket office. He would either have to walk, telephone a taxi or call Henty and be very, very apologetic and humble.

He knew she didn’t deserve to be treated the way she had. He’d walk up to the off-licence, buy a bottle of champagne. There were gallons of champagne at home, but somehow walking in through the door with a chilled bottle wrapped in tissue showed thought. And he’d get a big bag of her favourite cashew nuts as a peace offering.

As he set off purposefully up the high street, he saw with surprise that Twig was still open.

Two voices carried on a hot debate in his head.

Henty would much prefer flowers to champagne.

Not from Twig, she wouldn’t.

Take the label off. Tell her you got them from the florist’s in Charlotte Street and brought them back on the train.

OK. But what if Fleur’s in there?

What if she is? Anyway, she probably won’t be.

Of course she will! Anyway, you know that’s why you’re going in. Because you want to see her. You’re crazy, Charles. That way madness lies…

He pushed open the door, stepped over the threshold and into the hallowed atmosphere of Twig. The floor was limestone, the walls a very pale green, and along the back ran a dark wood counter topped with copper. In a huge semicircle in front of the counter were ranged zinc buckets stuffed with flowers whose names Charles couldn’t even begin to guess. They ranged from the fragile to the exotic, from pale pink to raging red, flaming orange and deepest purple. The scent was overpowering. It made him feel quite peculiar. His pulse was racing nineteen to the dozen.

Fleur appeared, as if by magic, through a curtain of glass beads that tinkled back into place behind her.

Charles smiled awkwardly.

‘Hi,’ he offered. ‘I’ve come to buy some flowers.’

Fleur brushed her hair back with one hand and surveyed him with amusement.

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place, then.’

‘What do you recommend?’

‘Well,’ she said, businesslike. ‘That all depends. On who they’re for. And why.’

She moved forward, and Charles resisted the instinct to step back.

‘Um. My wife.’ Flustered, he looked along the buckets and pointed to some fat, pale pink peonies. ‘Those are nice.’

She nodded approvingly.

‘They’re sweet. They’d look lovely with some roses and some larkspur.’

‘Perfect.’

Charles watched as she deftly assembled his chosen
blooms, snipping them to the required length and mixing them with a selection of frondy foliage until they were gathered into an artfully casual arrangement, as if they’d been plucked from the hedgerows by some willowy, Pre-Raphaelite maiden on a ramble. Charles frowned.

‘She’ll never be able to arrange them like that. They’ll look a mess as soon as she gets them out.’

Fleur wound some hairy string around the stems.

‘If she keeps the string tied, they’ll stay like this. Just remember to keep topping them up with water.’

She pulled a length of dark green organza ribbon from a holder on the wall and wound it around the string, then tied it in a big, fat bow with a flourish, snipping the ends with her scissors so they formed an inverted v shape at each end.

Charles nearly fainted when she told him the price.

‘They are out of season.’

‘No – that’s fine.’ He handed over his credit card. While they waited for the machine to do its thing, he cleared his throat.

‘You know, watching you… you make it look so easy. And it’s got me thinking: there aren’t any flower-arranging programmes on telly.’

Fleur raised an eyebrow.

‘I can’t imagine it would make gripping viewing.’

‘I don’t know – with the right person. Everyone’s looking for the new big thing. Let’s face it, cooking and houses have been done to death. Likewise gardens. And antiques. They’re now reduced to making programmes about the best way to clean out your lavatory. I think it would be a winner. Everybody loves flowers and everybody thinks
they can’t do a thing with them. Give a woman a bunch of flowers and she panics.’ Charles said it as if he thrust bouquets at Henty all the time. ‘We should talk.’

Fleur looked at him, puzzled.

‘I thought you just did books.’

‘Well, primarily, but everything’s very fluid these days. Books feed TV and vice versa. I’ve got contacts,’ Charles assured her airily. ‘And obviously we’d do a book to accompany the series.’

‘There’s masses of books on flower arranging.’

‘I think there’d already been a few cookery books before Nigella came along. Hasn’t affected her sales figures.’

‘Nigella?’ Fleur looked at him, amused. ‘You’re not comparing me to her, surely?’

‘Same concept. Men want you, women want to be you.’

A less vain woman would have given Charles a slap at this point. But Fleur was rather warming to his idea.

‘I was actually thinking about opening a flower-arranging school here. But a TV show would be much more exciting.’

‘Let me draft a proposal for a format. Can you make a lunch in town to talk it over?’

Fleur thought about it.

‘I could leave the shop with my assistant.’

‘What about Thursday? I’ll show you what I’ve come up with and you can add your ideas. Then we can think about a screen test. Get the whole package together.’

Fleur was looking a little shell-shocked, but Charles had gone into kick-ass mode. He could talk the talk when he wanted to; he made it hard to say no. Which she had no intention of doing.

‘That sounds great,’ she said, trying to keep the tremor of excitement out of her voice. The credit-card machine finally spewed out his receipt. Charles signed it with a flourish.

‘See you Thursday. Oh – and best not to breathe a word to anybody. There’s bound to be people still crawling round from
Lady Jane
. You don’t want somebody else jumping on the bandwagon and getting in first with the idea.’

Fleur watched Charles go, feeling a little fizz in the pit of her stomach.

She was dangerously bored. She’d bagged her wealthy husband ten years ago, a dear little country solicitor with bright brown eyes and a gentle nature. She’d had her two children, one of each, immaculately turned out and well-behaved and now both at school. She’d started her own business to stop her going insane with boredom, and now it was turning out to be such a success with, it seemed, the minimum of input from her (for Fleur was nothing if not the mistress of delegation), she was ready for the next challenge.

Charles Beresford intrigued her. Half of her knew he was a bit of a knob, self-satisfied. But there was no doubt he was attractive, with those heavy-lidded eyes. And Robert, bless him, wasn’t up to much in the bedroom stakes. If she put on underwear with strategic bits missing, he nearly had a heart attack. At thirty-six, Fleur knew she was at her sexual peak, and she wanted someone to peak with. Charles Beresford would definitely be up for it.

And if what he was saying about a TV programme was true, then so much the better. Fleur was shallow and, like most shallow people, craved fame. She’d been in agony throughout the filming of
Lady Jane,
wanting desperately to mix with the famous faces that passed through Eversleigh, but they’d looked straight through her when they passed her on the high street. She was a nobody, a Cotswold housewife with a flower shop. As the provider of flowers she’d hoped to be invited to the wrap party, but no invitation had materialized and it had stuck in her craw.