He twiddled his fingers in the air in a farewell gesture, sketched a wink at Eva that came and went so fast she wasn’t even sure whether she’d actually seen it, and turned to go.
‘Toodles!’ he said over his shoulder as he made his exit. ‘So looking forward to working with you!’
Chapter Seven
Stanclere Hall
I need to find something I can actually do here, Brianna Jade thought as she carefully picked up her breakfast tray and moved it to the side of the coverlet. Carefully, because it was as ancient and rickety as everything else in this house; one of the little carved feet was bent at an odd angle. It was really cool, like a little table that went over your legs, so you could sit up, prop yourself against the tapestried headboard of the bed with the Harrods hypo-allergenic pillows your mom had had shipped down here on emergency after one appalled night spent on the nasty old feather ones, eat your egg whites scrambled with spinach and lean turkey slices, and sip your non-fat-milk cappuccino without ever leaving your bed.
And yes, Tamra and Brianna Jade had swiftly imposed their dietary requirements on the rapidly expanding staff at Stanclere Hall. Or rather, Tamra’s dietary requirements; Brianna Jade would really not have minded putting on a few pounds, now that her days of competing in pageants which had a swimwear section were well and truly behind her. Tamra had been too responsible a mother to let her daughter live on yoghurts, cigarettes and Red Bull, like many of the other girls; she had always been very strict about Brianna Jade maintaining reasonably healthy eating habits and working out, and – unlike most of the other mothers – she had led by example.
But sometimes I’d really kill for a sausage, instead of turkey slices that don’t really taste of anything, Brianna Jade thought wistfully. Mom says we can’t get those low-fat chicken sausages over here that we used to live on back home. Which sucks, ’cause I loved those.
She was getting restless, her toes twitching. Time to get up. But the trouble with getting up was that then she’d have to decide what she was going to do all day, a problem that was becoming increasingly acute. Normally, a bride-to-be would have been thoroughly absorbed in all of the many and various details of planning her wedding: Brianna Jade had known girls back in the US who literally quit their jobs a year before the wedding date in order to devote themselves entirely to the process. However, Tamra had insisted on taking over all of the wedding organization so that Brianna Jade wouldn’t be so distracted by it that she lost sight of what was much more important – bonding with her fiancé.
That had made sense on many levels: Tamra was a highly skilled organizer, whereas Brianna Jade’s skills most definitely didn’t extend in that direction. But the trouble was that it left Brianna Jade with very little to occupy her time. She went up to London every now and then to look at flower-arrangement ideas, to Milan for initial fittings for her dress, but frankly, she trusted her mother’s ability and taste much more than she did her own, and simply ended up agreeing with everything that Tamra had chosen.
Nor did Brianna Jade have much to do with the renovations of Stanclere Hall. They were being planned by a team of structural engineers and architects, with Tamra, again, serving as designer and project manager. Brianna Jade was more than happy for her mother to take control, while duly consulting Edmund, of course. She herself wouldn’t have known where to start when it came to building works. But again, it left her with barely any involvement, apart from picking out her favourites from the array of paint, wallpaper, carpet and tile samples pre-selected by her mother.
The depressing revelation slowly dawning on her was that, apart from the pageant requirements of keeping herself in optimal physical condition, maintaining perfect grooming, smiling beautifully and walking up and down steps in ankle-length dresses, she actually had very few useful skills or interests. In West Palm Beach, the ready-made social life of young people her own age had swept her along on a wave of shopping, morning-to-night parties, and dating. Here the nearest shops were miles away, the parties were only in the evening, and – well, she was engaged. She was no intellectual, had never regretted not going to college, and wasn’t remotely tempted to take courses now, or even pick up anything more demanding than a magazine.
So the problem wasn’t settling into Stanclere Hall, becoming used to it being her home now, per se: the problem was that she didn’t have enough to do. She hadn’t had much in common with the West Palm Beach crowd, but the social whirl had at least kept her busy. Here, for the first time in her life, Brianna Jade would have to generate her own entertainment, build her own interests, and she had no experience in how to even start going about that.
‘You need to get involved in running the house,’ Tamra had said to her on the phone yesterday: the internet connection at Stanclere Hall wasn’t good enough for them to Skype yet. ‘There’s nothing to stop you. It’s not like Edmund’s got a possessive mom living there who wants to run everything her own way, like Lady Lufton in Framley Parsonage. Or a mean old housekeeper who’s obsessed with Edmund’s dead wife, like Mrs Danvers in Rebecca, with a huge bunch of keys she won’t give you, hanging on a chatelaine from her waist. That’s why the mistress of a house is called a chatelaine, did you know? Because she has all the keys—’
‘Mom, do you do anything right now but read British novels about stately homes and Lords and Ladies?’ Brianna Jade asked impatiently.
Her mother had laughed, a long, dirty laugh that was very familiar to her daughter.
‘Oh honey, don’t you worry about me,’ she’d said happily. ‘I’m getting my oats.’
‘GreatMomgladtohearityoudeserveitpleasedon’ttellmeanydeets, okay?’ Brianna Jade rattled off.
‘No worries, honey,’ Tamra said. ‘I’ve got Lady Margaret for that side of things. We’re pretty much BFFs at this point. She’s really cool. I didn’t know Duke’s daughters had such dirty minds.’
Brianna Jade sighed. ‘I wish I had a BFF down here,’ she said wistfully. ‘Edmund takes me to lots of parties and dinners and stuff, but I haven’t really clicked with anyone yet.’
‘Oh, hang on in there, honey,’ Tamra said easily. ‘It’ll come, I promise you. You just keep going to the parties and being your sweet self, and you’ll find some nice girlfriends sooner or later. You know, you’re engaged now – you’re not a threat to any of them, and once they realize that you’re not going anywhere, they’ll settle in and want to be friends with the new Countess-to-be. Then you can pick and choose the best ones. Like Mary Gresham in—’
‘Mom! No more people from novels!’ her daughter wailed. ‘Please!’
‘I’m going to send you a box of books,’ Tamra promised ominously. ‘I’ll put Post-Its on ’em so you can see which are the easiest to start with. That could be something for you to do, you know? In between going round the Hall, making notes about everything that needs doing! I know we’ve got the roofers coming in next week, but honey, there’s so much you could get on with. What about planning your whole master suite? His and hers bathrooms? Go ahead, order a whole bunch of bathroom magazines and start picking stuff out! You can run it past Edmund if you want, but honestly I think he’ll be pretty much Rhett Butler about it as long as you don’t go crazy with the marble and gold. They really don’t like that over here. It’s like the opposite of West Palm Beach.’
‘Rhett Butler?’ Brianna Jade’s perfect nose crinkled up charmingly.
‘He won’t give a damn!’ Tamra said impatiently. ‘Jeez, BJ, we’ve seen Gone With the Wind tons of times!’
‘I don’t remember stuff like you do,’ Brianna Jade said, not at all daunted; she knew that Tamra’s brain was faster and retained more information than hers did. Brianna Jade could never have taken over Ken’s Fracking Crown, nor would she have wanted to. But Mom’s pretty much cleverer than anyone – it’s just that people don’t realize it for a while because she’s so gorgeous.
‘I really miss you, Mom,’ she said wistfully. ‘Maybe we can watch Gone With the Wind again in your scree
ning room when I come up to London next week?’
‘Sure thing, honey,’ Tamra said happily. ‘I’ll go order it now. Oh, I’m so looking forward to seeing you! I’ve found some great new boutiques to take you to.’
‘I actually don’t need any more clothes, Mom,’ Brianna Jade said. ‘Things aren’t that dressy in the countryside. I’m mostly in my workout clothes and jeans and wellington boots.’
‘Hush your mouth!’ Tamra said, laughing; clearly she thought her daughter was joking. ‘Oh, and I’ve joined this club called Loulou’s where everyone goes – George Clooney and Mick Jagger and Princess Eugenie were in the other night! Mind you, it’s so damn dark in there you can’t tell who everyone is until you fall over ’em . . .’
‘Oh, that sounds fun,’ Brianna Jade said gamely, to which Tamra giggled more.
‘Oh please, you can’t fool me,’ she said. ‘I’m way more into that kind of thing than you are. You’d be happier in the screening room eating popcorn and watching a movie. Now go off and take a stroll round your new home and figure out how many bedrooms you’re going to have to lose to make them all en suites, okay? I’ve got an architectural consultant all booked in to make sure we’re not ripping down anything precious, but you should have a sense of what you want before this lady starts, so we know what we’re working with . . . oh, and let me know how the new kitchen ranges are, will you? They were supposed to get delivered today. We got two and they cost, like, nine grand each, plus the tank, so they’d better be perfect!’
The thing is, Brianna Jade thought as she slipped out of bed, Mom cares about all that stuff so much more than I do. Bedrooms, bathrooms, architects, roofs, kitchen ranges, plumbing, pipes, guttering – or maybe it’s not that she cares about it more, it’s that anything she takes on, she gets real – really – thorough about. I’ve got no idea how many bedrooms we should lose! I’m actually way more interested in the gardens than the house. And the farms. I want to explore the farms.
Okay, that’s something that’s actually got me excited! She threw on a dressing gown and went to shower. Her mom’s bathroom improvements couldn’t come too soon; the shower was three doors down the corridor, its tiles chipped, its fittings rusty, its water a trickle compared to what she was used to in the US – and Mom’s house here. And every single London hotel we’ve stayed in. It’s not a British thing, it’s a stately home thing. Poor Stanclere Hall, it won’t recognize itself after Mom gives it a makeover!
Then she pulled on a sports bra, running shorts, a loose Stella McCartney pale pink tank and her running shoes, tied her thick strawberry-blonde hair back into a ponytail with one of the No-Snag elastics she and Tamra shipped over in bulk from the States, and headed along the rickety corridor and down the creaking front stairs, leaving her bedroom door open to signal that one of the new maids hired from Stanclere village would know to clean the room and bring down her breakfast tray.
It still made Brianna Jade feel weird, having staff around the house. Even though she’d lived for years in Ken Maloney’s Florida mansion, with its discreet fleet of Hispanic maids in black dresses and white aprons slipping silently from one room to another, always smiling, doing their work so invisibly they almost seemed like magical elves, she had never quite got used to it. And back in West Palm Beach, the staff had been employed by her stepdad and her mom; now they were her fiancé’s employees, soon to be hers, and that felt, honestly, even weirder.
The kitchen was bustling with activity. Mostly workmen, putting the final touches to the magnificent new pale yellow Smallbone kitchen that Tamra had ordered at vast expense. The two ranges, Rayburn oil-fired, top of the line, anchored the huge room, enormous cast-iron mammoths in British racing green. Mrs Hurley, who had been the cook at Stanclere Hall for twenty-odd years, was standing, arms folded, staring at them with her lips tightly pressed together, looking so grim that Brianna Jade, who usually found her very friendly, hesitated on the threshold, debating for a long nervous moment whether she should just turn tail.
Don’t be a coward, she told herself firmly. Like Mom says, you don’t work for them, they work for you.
‘Is everything all right, Mrs Hurley?’ she said feebly. ‘I mean, with the stoves? My mom asked me to check.’
Mrs Hurley turned to look at the Earl’s fiancée, a ridiculously pretty and incongruous figure, her long tanned glossy limbs shown off by her pink and grey running gear, and it became clear that the grimness of the cook’s expression had actually been an attempt to repress the strength of her emotions at seeing her kitchen so radically transformed for the better.
‘Oh, Miss Brianna,’ she said – there was absolutely no way Brianna Jade could induce her to drop the ‘Miss’ – ‘it’s just like a miracle, it really is. Not just one, but two! After the old Aga – honestly, you should have been here to see them cart it out. The state it was in! It half fell apart when they were getting it on their fork lift.’
‘All grease and rust, it were,’ came the muffled agreement from a young man wedged behind the second Rayburn, fitting the oil-supply pipe and fire valve. ‘You’re well rid of that.’
‘I was having a bit of a moment. Silly of me to be sorry to see it go, when I know perfectly well it was only fit for the scrapheap,’ Mrs Hurley said, sniffing. ‘But I knew all its quirks better than my own cooker at home. I could coax it to do anything I wanted. Well, almost anything. The last time I tried a soufflé was ten years ago, and oh dear, what a disaster that was! The previous Earl didn’t let me forget it for years. Mr Edmund’s such a sweet-tempered man, he’s not fussy at all, but his father was quite another kettle of fish. He was very particular about his food, just like your mother. Oh, don’t think I’m saying a word about that, Miss Brianna! Mrs Maloney has high standards and knows exactly what she prefers, and a compliment from her really means something.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t have standards as high as my mom,’ Brianna Jade admitted.
‘Oh well.’ Mrs Hurley smiled at her tolerantly. ‘Hopefully it’ll come with time, and you have a very good example in Mrs Maloney. But goodness, there’ll be no excuse for any mess-ups with my baking now, will there? I thought I’d do ham and cheese mini-soufflés for a starter tonight. I could leave the cheese out for you, Miss Brianna, and make yours with non-fat milk?’
‘That’s fine, Mrs Hurley,’ Brianna Jade said quickly. ‘I’m not actually that fussed about dieting. I know my mom’s very careful about it, but it’s not that huge an issue for me.’
‘Are you sure, Miss Brianna?’ Mrs Hurley frowned. ‘Mrs Maloney was nice enough to sit down with me, right here at this table, and take the time to run through all of her and your requirements and make suggestions for how to adapt my recipes for both of you. I must say, she’s an example to all the ladies who aren’t spring chickens any more! You can see she’s very concerned to keep her figure, and who can blame her?’
One of the workmen who’d helped to bring in the Rayburns, a labourer in Stanclere employ, whistled long and appreciatively at the mention of Tamra’s figure.
‘That’s enough from you, Gideon Banks. And you young enough to be Mrs Maloney’s son!’ Mrs Hurley snapped, flapping him out into the yard with both hands. ‘Anyway, Miss Brianna, I wouldn’t want your mother coming back and telling me I’ve been feeding you the wrong things and getting all cross with me because you won’t fit into your wedding dress any more, would I?’
‘I’ll run for half an hour extra,’ Brianna Jade said, torn between frustration and amusement that even when Tamra wasn’t here, her forceful personality prevailed. She sighed. ‘Mom’s right about the wedding dress.’
If I’m going to be on the cover of Style Bride, my figure needs to be perfect. Model-perfect.
‘That’s right, dear,’ Mrs Hurley said comfortably. ‘After the wedding you can let things slip a bit, put on a few pounds. But not before. Oh, I can’t wait to see you in your dress! There won’t have been a more beautiful bride at Stanclere ever. So it’s a low-fat soufflé for you,
then a nice roast with all the trimmings on the side for Mr Edmund, and summer pudding for him. If you pick the bread off, you can have all the berries you want. Your mother said berries are anti-aging. I’ve been eating plenty ever since she told me that, but I can’t say I’ve seen any difference myself.’
Outside in the yard, Gideon Banks sniggered loudly, but Mrs Hurley pointedly ignored him. She was a scrawny, big-boned woman with greying hair scraped back from her forehead and a twenty-a-day cigarette habit which had miraculously not affected her excellent palate.
‘Great,’ Brianna said, crossing to the gigantic Siemens American-style fridge-freezer, pulling a glass from the brandnew cupboard and holding it first against the ice and then the water dispenser. ‘I’ll just grab some water so I’m hydrated before I go for my run—’
‘And for lunch,’ Mrs Hurley overrode her, ‘your mother gave me a recipe for low-calorie crêpes stuffed with courgette. She said she got it from a healthy-eating magazine. We’ve got so many courgettes from the kitchen garden, and I’ll make your batter with non-fat milk and grate a very little low-fat mozzarella on the top. Mr Edmund can have his with a nice béchamel.’
‘Lucky Mr Edmund!’ Brianna Jade muttered resentfully into the fridge door.
‘And a tomato salad,’ Mrs Hurley finished cosily. ‘With lots of balsamic vinegar and basil. Your mother says you only need a drop of oil in the dressing with that.’
‘You know,’ Brianna Jade turned round and propped her hips against the yellow wooden panel doors behind which the fridge-freezer was concealed, a discreet rectangle cut into it by the Smallbone kitchen fitters for the ice and water dispensers, ‘I really don’t need a cooked meal in the middle of the day, Mrs Hurley. Not if it’s too much trouble with all of Mom’s recipe suggestions. I can easily fix snacks myself. In fact, I’d sort of like to. It’d give me something to do, and I never really learnt how to cook. Maybe you could show me how to make those crêpes . . .’
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