Read For All the Wrong Reasons Online
Authors: Louise Bagshawe
For All the Wrong Reasons
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Contents
Outstanding Praise for Louise Bagshawe's For All The Wrong Reasons
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This book is dedicated to my darling husband, Anthony.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks are, as usual, due to all the people without whom there would have been no book. First amongst them is my editor Rosie de Courcy, who has a lucid, practically infallible grasp of what should stay and what should go. I must thank her for her patience and her perception as well as her good ideas. Michael Sissons, my agent, quietly and supremely confidently steered me through a rough career patch during the writing of this book. All writers should be lucky enough to have him as their agent, but I'm glad they're not, as then he would have no time for me. I also want to thank Peter Matson, Tim Corrie, Brian Siberell, the team at ILA, and Alan Greenspan for their invaluable help steering my career during the time I wrote this book. I'm hoping to get a few more agents so I can have my own cricket team. Seriously, though, I would be lost without them. My mother and father were beacons of sanity when I was throwing away previous manuscripts, and Alice and Seffi (hi, darlings!) kept me focused on the important stuff. Thanks to Nigel and Melissa Huddleston for taking me under their wing when I first got to L.A.; and thanks to Susan Cartsonis for giving me my shot. Anthony had to put up with most of my whining, so I dedicated the book to him and named the hero for him. Michael is inspired by Anthony, so you'll be able to read for yourselves just how cool my husband is. All my friends deserve thanks, but I want to give a special mention to Fred Metcalf, Barbara Kennedy Brown, and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Finally, my thanks are due with this and every book to the whole team at Orion, especially Susan Lamb.
ONE
Diana Verity looked at her reflection and smiled.
The mirror in her mother's bedroom was spotted slightly with age around its antique frame, but nothing could detract from the dazzling vision she saw there. Diana was a lovely girl who had never looked lovelier. It was marvelous to be a bride, but infinitely better to be a young, beautiful one, wearing a dress which cost more than some people made in a year, bedecked with minute silk roses and hand-sewn crystals, carrying a bouquet personally put together by the top florist in London. Her hair gleamed like spun glass; John Frieda had opened just for her, at an ungodly hour, and Joel himself had attended to the choppy fringe that swung so delightfully under the glittering tiara of Swarovski crystal, jet and cultured pearls which kept her small veil in place. Diana had been tempted by an all-over cathedral-length veil, but nothing should be allowed to obscure the view of her dress for her guests, not to mention the photographers from
Tatler
and
Hello!
who were massing outside the church.
You might as well not be married at all if nobody could see how exquisite you looked. Perhaps the pictures would even console Daddy for the colossal dent Diana had put in his wallet. Basia Zarzycka gowns did not come cheap.
“You look stunning, darling.”
Victoria Verity pursed thin, immaculately painted lips and regarded her eldest daughter with a critical eye. Diana was a gorgeous, selfish, spoilt butterfly, but today all you noticed was the butterfly part. It cost Ernie, her fiancé, a lot of money to keep Diana in the wonderfully groomed, plucked and polished state to which she had become accustomed, but Victoria had no doubt that when he saw his bride Ernie would think she had been worth every penny. A wedding day is trumpeted as the most important in a bride's life, Vicky thought, and maybe it is. But there is a certain type of groom for whom the wedding is almost equally important. She considered her future son-in-law with well-bred distaste.
Ernest Foxton was the bad boy of British publishing. After ruthlessly trimming down one of Britain's oldest imprints, firing staff en masse and pruning unprofitable authors relentlessly from its list, he was heading across the pond to America. Ernie had dual citizenship through his mother, and now it had come in useful. He'd been tapped to run Blakely's, the old-fashioned New York house whose share-holders thought it needed a major revamp. Ernest was a cutthroat businessman, Victoria reflected, and he knew the value of a beautiful, graceful English wife at his side as he networked through the charity balls and opening nights that constituted Manhattan's social scene. It was no surprise to her that a ring had been produced, and a fast wedding arranged.
Diana had risen to the challenge. She had never used her considerable brainsâher mother felt sure they were considerable, if only Di would dig them outâfor anything other than sneaking her way into the hottest Alexander McQueen show, or snatching up the last Prada limited-edition yellow calfskin handbag. She had dropped out of college, and taken a job at
Vogue
as a fashion assistant, accepting their minute wages and living on the generous allowance Ernie provided. Victoria knew Diana gave legendary dinner parties and was a bit of an “It” girl. In snagging Ernie, her finest hour had come, and her life, presumably, would be one Page Six after another. With barely four months' notice, Diana had managed to put together a stellar guest list full of people she didn't care about, a delightful reception at Brown's, spectacular flowers, a string quartet and a handmade dress designed especially for her. Ernie would be proud.
“It's not too bad, is it?”
Diana turned around this way and that, admiring the tiny cap sleeves and almost indecently low bodice, the plunging back covered with a Greek-goddess silk drape and her white satin slippers stitched with delicate gold thread.
“It's almost too much.”
Susie Amberson, Diana's chief bridesmaid and younger cousin, gave Diana a jealous smile. It was
so
unfair that she should look like this, her brown hair all silky and gleaming, her slim silhouette sparkling with white and glittering like Cinderella. What on earth did Ernie see in her? There was a rumor going around the girls that last week Diana had flown into Manhattan
just to get her eyebrows plucked
at the John Barret salon in Bloomingdale's. The wedding was already the talk of London. “Sophie Rhys-Jones went for subtlety. I thought that was
so
tasteful.”
“Darling.” Diana turned those luminous blue eyes on her, which she had emphasized with blue mascara, and which still somehow managed to look natural. “You couldn't be more wrong. Minimalism is so over. So nineties. It's all about modern classics today.”
“Modern classics,” Susie said, with a trace of sarcasm, all she dared. After all, you couldn't be rude to the bride, even if you were the maid of honor. Diana had chosen the bridesmaids' outfits and they were a picture of subtle beauty; moss-green velvet. Empire-waisted gowns, with tiny bouquets of pink rosebuds and small white clouds of baby's breath and a white rose in full blossom pinned into everyone's hair. Susie scowled, Even the satisfaction of bitching that Diana had made her look like a heifer was denied to her.
“That's right.” Diana spritzed herself lightly with rosewaterâshe would not use anything as unsubtle as a perfume today. “A wedding where people are formally dressed. Full skirts and trains and veils and tiaras. Classical waltzes instead of cheesy eighties disco. Did you know I have an usher standing at the door who is passing out carnations to any man that turns up without a buttonhole?”
“How thoughtful,” Susie said nastily.
Diana gave her a blossoming smile, and Susie was left with the unpleasant feeling that Diana found her bitchiness amusing. She had meant to put a small fly in the ointment, and had wound up only helping Diana enjoy herself more. Which was just like Diana Verity: she never did a stroke of work; she just floated through life. It was obnoxious.
“I like to help people out when they are ignorant of the right way to behave,” Diana said.
Susie flushed and picked up her bouquet. Bitch. She hated Diana, from the tips of her satin slippers to the elegant, perfectly plucked and now almost legendary eyebrows.
“Hurry up, darling.” Victoria poked her head around from behind the screen where she was getting changed into her pink Chanel suit. “We don't want to keep the carriage waiting.”
Ernie Foxton sat in his home office and tapped at the computer keys. It was a glorious, sunlit morning outside in Chelsea, and his best man, resplendent in his morning suit, was downstairs telling obscene jokes to the ushers. But Ernie was oblivious to all this. He had the blinds down, and the pristine creases in his trousers could only be seen by the dull light of his computer screen. He was online, checking his stocks. It was a morning ritual that never changed. He saw no reason to change it now just because he was getting married.
His biotech stocks were up again. Terrific. He had made over 400 percent on those babies and had no intention of cashing them in just yet. What else? His US trust had taken a small dive, in line with the Dow, but he wasn't particularly concerned. Ernie knew money and he knew the Dow only went one way, upward. That's if you were prepared to wait a few months for the inevitable “corrections” to right themselves. It was only the pikers, the fools who had blood instead of ice-water running through their veins, who sold when things got a little bearish. Buy and hold and you always make money.
He tapped a few letters on his keyboard. BLKY, the sign for his new publishing firm. Good, it was up one and an eighth, on the news that Grant Valentine had been fired and he'd been appointed to replace him. That was significant enough to impress his new bosses already, before he'd even stepped out of the Concorde, or introduced his fragrant and deliciously decorative little wife. Ah yes. Wife. Better not keep her waiting. He quickly sold some cotton futures he wasn't sure about and bought a few more shares in Blakely's. A celebration.
Things were good, and they were going to stay that way.
Ernie switched off the computer and drew the curtains, allowing daylight to flood into the gloomy burgundy and mahogany tones of the room. A glass of Krug was fizzing pleasantly on the side of his desk, awaiting him. He picked it up and sipped reflectively. Just a little something to relax him before the ceremony. It was a bore, but you had to go through it. Besides, Diana had reassured him that the coverage was going to be fantastic. His parents, both dead now, had been a wide boy city trader from the East End of London and a cook at Chelsea FC. His father's hard work and financial flair had made enough money for Ernie to be sent to Eton, where he had learned little academically, but enough snobbery to make him violently ashamed of both of them. He'd worked like a demon with an eye only for money and as a result, he'd made enough cash to wipe out the embarrassing stain of his parentage. The wedding today would be attended by a wonderful mixture of London society with enough titles for Ascot, and a bride who was undeniably top drawer, even if she had no money. Ernie didn't need money; he needed what Diana could bring him. In New York she'd be a marvelous asset. Just the right touch to complete his profile. He was sure he'd made the right decision.
