The Bachelor: Racy, pacy and very funny!

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

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.