‘I told you so, darling,’ Edmund said, putting an arm around Brianna Jade’s shoulders, only to have her, too, jump as if she’d been stung.
‘My God,’ he said, backing away. ‘I’m definitely like Kryptonite to the Maloney women this afternoon.’
The footman arrived with a silver tray bearing a pitcher of Martinis and three frosted glasses.
‘We’ll have it here, in front of the fire,’ Tamra instructed: she had such natural authority that it never occurred to her that it was for Edmund or Brianna Jade to give orders in their own home. Edmund, who was not easily offended, grinned and obediently followed her and the footman to the coffee table in front of the fire, surrounded on three sides by velvet armchairs and sofas.
‘The Fracking Queen commands, and we obey,’ he muttered cheerfully under his breath.
‘Here’s what I’m thinking,’ Tamra said, not looking at either of them as she drank half her Martini in one gulp. ‘This is going to come out eventually, the whole Pork Queen thing. I say we might as well turn it to our advantage. I’ve been mulling things over for a while, trying to think of a way the estate can get more self-sufficient. I can keep pumping money into it, but I hate the idea that I’m just pissing it away down the drain, you know?’
Edmund started to say something, but Tamra held up one perfectly manicured hand.
‘Please! I made the deal and I’ll stick to it – no need to defend yourself,’ she said. ‘But it’d be great if Stanclere could start generating some income, and this whole mess with Barb gave me the germ of a really good concept.’
Now she did look from Edmund to Brianna Jade, her eyes flashing in triumph as they always did when she made a great business point.
‘Organic sausages!’ she said. ‘We’ll start with them, anyway. We can even use Brianna Jade’s Pork Queen past as publicity – neutralize any negativity at one stroke. If the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire can run a thriving business out of Chatsworth – farm shops, holiday rentals – I don’t see why you can’t do the same here. I know there are some empty cottages on the estate that would make great holiday lets, and I can do those up – but building the whole Stanclere brand will be what gets people making bookings. Sausages and bacon are the first things I thought of, obviously, but I did some research on Chatsworth and Dayleford Organics on my iPad in the helicopter, and I have tons of ideas for products. Jams, biscuits, cakes, liqueurs – Mrs Hurley would love to supervise the kitchens – not here, of course, we’d need a proper, purpose-built kitchen on the estate – then we’d get the products into Fortnum’s and Selfridges and start a mail-order business. There’s a company called Dukeshill that has a great website – cuts of meat plus bacon and pies; we should look at that in detail and analyse their business model.’
‘Abel would definitely enjoy expanding the piggeries,’ Edmund agreed appreciatively as Tamra finally ran out of breath. ‘We’re just producing pork for the needs of the house at the moment, which really isn’t using his considerable skills to the best advantage.’
‘And Brianna Jade loves the pigs. She’s always visiting them, aren’t you, honey?’ her mother said. ‘See, this is a way no one can tease you about that any more – you can hang out there as much as you want. Oh, look, you have some straw on you. Were you helping out in the barn?’
She reached over to pick the straw off her daughter’s sweater. Brianna Jade’s face went as red as the embers glowing at the heart of the fire.
‘I think this is wonderful,’ Edmund said, leaning forward to touch his fiancée’s hand. ‘Don’t you, Brianna? I know I’d feel much prouder of Stanclere if it were starting to at least try to pay for itself, rather than living on your money, wouldn’t you?’
Brianna Jade managed a nod.
‘You know I’ve been reading all the nineteenth-century novels about American heiresses coming to Britain and marrying into the aristocracy,’ Tamra said with increasing enthusiasm – she had finished her first Martini by now and was pouring herself another. ‘The Buccaneers, The Duke’s Children, The Shuttle – there are tons! I’ve given Brianna Jade copies of all of them. I don’t know if you’ve had time to get to any of the books yet, honey?’
Brianna Jade shook her head. Time? she thought. More like inclination! Come on, Mom, I’m not you, I’ve never been a reader.
‘Oh, I love Trollope,’ Edmund said appreciatively. ‘We have his entire works here in the library – do borrow any that you’d like.’
‘Cool!’ Tamra said, driving on however with the point she was making like a juggernaut. ‘But you know what’s missing from those novels? Apart from Bettina in The Shuttle, what isn’t in them is the business brains those girls inherited from their tycoon dads who made the big bucks in the first place. You know? Those guys were first-generation millionaires, robber barons, they made truckfuls of money. No way would their daughters not have inherited their brain power. Those girls would have come over the Atlantic, married their Duke or Earl, rolled up their sleeves and got to work making their estates productive!’
Her eyes gleamed with excitement at her literary observation, her hair shone in the firelight; she looked positively resplendent. Edmund gazed at her in admiration.
‘I must say, Tamra, I never thought of that,’ he said. ‘And I’ve read the Trollope and the Wharton books. Very good point! This idea of yours is brilliant. I feel an idiot for not thinking of it myself.’
He turned eagerly to Brianna Jade.
‘Darling, how do you feel about taking over the whole sausage and bacon side of things, as it were?’ he asked. ‘You could liaise between Mrs Hurley and Abel, work on increasing production and flavours for different sausages. We’ll do research, look at the companies Tamra mentioned and see how they run things. You’ll be able to spend your whole time at the piggeries if you’d like.’
With a choking sob, Brianna Jade jumped to her feet, clumsily manoeuvred between the sofa and the coffee table, then ran across the Great Hall and up the stairs, disappearing from sight.
‘What on earth?’ Edmund said, staring after her, a frown creasing his forehead. ‘Do you think I should go after her? Did I say something wrong?’
He looked back at Tamra, who promptly ducked her head and took another long pull at her cocktail.
‘To be frank, Brianna Jade’s been on edge since you upped sticks and left us alone here,’ he said. ‘She’s missed you horribly, Tamra. I must say, I have too. You bring a wonderful energy to the Hall – we’ve all missed you. Mrs Hurley in particular.’
‘I just felt I should leave you two kids alone for a while,’ Tamra said into her glass, staring down at the lemon twist and swirling it around as if it had suddenly become the most interesting thing she had ever seen. ‘Or we’ll start playing out a rerun of some nineteen-seventies sitcom called And Mom Makes Three.’
She cleared her throat, setting down the glass.
‘But say hi to Mrs Hurley for me. I’d get her to oversee the whole production side of things here if I were you. She deals amazingly with new challenges, and when the renovations are finished, just housekeeping the Hall isn’t going to be a big enough deal for her.’
She was on her feet now, visibly uncomfortable at having a tête-à-tête with Edmund.
‘The helicopter should be back soon,’ she said, not meeting his eyes. ‘I might just go wait for it. I have an appointment in London this evening – well, not an appointment, but someone I have to see. I’m determined to get Brianna Jade the Style Bride cover.’
Edmund rose as well, too much of a gentleman to stay seated while a lady was standing.
‘But if the helicopter’s going to Heathrow and back, it’ll still be quite a while till it returns, won’t it?’ he asked, his forehead furrowed in confusion. ‘You haven’t even finished your drink!’
‘Uh – look, Edmund, I think you should go and check on your fiancée,’ Tamra said. ‘You know, bond with her? Like I keep saying you should do?’ She heard the slightly hysterical note in her voice,
and caught herself. ‘And I’ll go say hi to Mrs Hurley, how’s that?’
‘Well, of course that’s fine,’ Edmund said, still confused but too polite to question his mother-in-law-to-be about her sudden mood swings. ‘It was such a pleasure to see you, Tamra. I do hope you’ll come back and spend more time with us in future.’
He leaned forward tentatively, to see if he would be allowed to give Tamra his customary kiss on the cheek, but by now he was aware that Tamra was evincing symptoms of sensitivity so extreme that she was as likely to slap him across the face as let him kiss her, and he signalled his intentions so clearly that he gave her plenty of time to execute a defensive manoeuvre. Which was exactly what she did, making a great play of grabbing her bag and holding it in front of her to ward him off.
‘It’s been a pleasure,’ he said courteously. ‘Literally a flying visit! Thank you so much for dropping in – oh look, I did it again – and sorting out our problem for us. I really don’t think Brianna Jade would have managed it on her own. She was so keen to protect you, you know. Honestly, I don’t mean to be self-deprecating, but you really are her first priority. She’s so grateful to you for all the sacrifices you’ve made for her.’
The choking sob Tamra gave on hearing these words was identical to the one Brianna Jade had emitted just a short time earlier, and so was the speed at which she shot across the Hall in the direction of the servants’ wing and Mrs Hurley’s office. Edmund stared after her, struggling nobly with what he knew was a sexist impulse to assume that both women, so physically alike, were also synchronized in their monthly cycles and were simultaneously suffering with uncharacteristically nasty bouts of premenstrual tension.
But frankly, he thought, it’s the most flattering explanation as far as I’m concerned. Otherwise I really do have to assume that I not only forgot to wash this morning, but for the last three days, and I pong like a laundry bin full of schoolboys’ socks and jockstraps after a rugby match.
As the thought occurred to him, he actually raised his arm and sniffed under the armpit. The relief of securing empirical evidence that he had, in fact, not only washed but applied his Nivea For Men Sensitive 48 Hours deodorant stick that morning, as always – they could call it ‘48 Hours’ all they wanted, but Edmund, a fundamentally cautious soul, wasn’t prepared to live that dangerously – was blotted out as soon as he realized that he had just committed the most appalling breach of etiquette. Blushing from head to toe at having just sniffed his own armpit in the middle of his own Great Hall for anyone to see, the Earl of Respers went upstairs to find out if his fiancée was in any mood to receive him, or if she were, perhaps, going through some particularly awful women’s problem and the sight of him would only exacerbate it for some unknown reason.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jodie Raeburn was working late, as she did for the three days every month when the latest issue of Style was due at the printers. Plus the two days a month when Mini Style was ditto, plus the days when she had to oversee special issues . . . She worked late more often than not, frankly. But there was no need to rush home, as her fiancé was still in New York: hopefully he would be moving to London later this year. Currently he edited the fashion pages of Style Men, and the plan was for him to transfer to the parallel role in London when the job came free and his visa was issued.
Though she missed him, Jodie was fine with the temporary separation: these were the crucial career-building years for her, in which she needed to devote much more of her time to her job than to her private life. Luckily her fiancé, having met her at work, fully understood how driven she was.
Jodie had never made any secret of her ambition to one day take over from Victoria Glossop as editor of US Style, and she was well on her way to achieving it. The plan was to follow Victoria’s career path, which meant working like a dog in her twenties, then get married and try for children in her early thirties. After which time, hopefully, Victoria would have loosened her hold on the reins in New York enough to consider Jodie fully qualified to take over from her there as editor . . .
Though Victoria had to pull the move of going to Harper’s for a while, raise her value until Dupleix caved in and asked her back, Jodie reflected. I might have to do that too. It wouldn’t at all hurt me to work outside Dupleix for a while – and God knows, Victoria responds to nothing so well as a show of power.
‘Jodie? I’m so sorry to disturb you while you’re going over proofs.’
Jodie looked up to see her assistant, Catalina, standing half in her office, half out, her figure so slim that this meant that her body was barely visible. Jodie really did try to employ Style staffers who were not sample size, but, annoyingly, Catalina had been by far the best qualified candidate on paper, and equally impressive at her interview; Jodie had had no choice but to hire her. She did make sure that there were plates of elegant little sandwiches and tasteful nibbles lying around the Style offices to counteract any idea that Style demanded that its personnel all maintain a UK size four, but so far Catalina hadn’t put on a pound, rather to Jodie’s annoyance.
‘What is it?’ she said abruptly, her concentration entirely on the images and text in front of her.
‘It’s someone called Tamra Maloney,’ Catalina said. ‘She says she doesn’t have an appointment, but she wants to see you anyway, and she’s brought—’
‘Cocktails!’ Tamra announced, swirling into Jodie’s office not by pushing Catalina aside, but by fully opening the door and using the considerable space that Catalina’s skinny frame left vacant. Behind her came a young man wearing the black trousers, white shirt and black waistcoat of the professional waiter: he was carrying an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne in one hand, and a tray in the other which bore two martini glasses and a silver shaker.
‘They’re Pimm’s Cup Martinis,’ Tamra continued, gesturing to the young man to put down the tray on the white laminated table between the two burgundy Fritz Hansen ‘Egg’ chairs. ‘With a champagne float.’
‘How did you get into the building?’ Jodie asked, her brows drawing together. ‘Security’s very strict. I’m sure no one here gave you entry clearance.’
Catalina shook her head in confirmation as Tamra said airily, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t expect me to tell you if I’d slipped some poor underpaid security guy a fifty and told him I was a friend of yours come to buy you a drink while you were working late, would you? Because then you’d have to sack the guy, and that would be totally unfair when he thought he was helping to give you a lovely surprise.’
Jodie assessed Tamra Maloney’s Prada camel coat, her Ferragamo boots and Reed Krakoff bag, her experienced fashion editor’s eye identifying every single label and season instantly. She had met Tamra, of course, at Stanclere Hall the day of the shoot, but Jodie’s focus, in such a tight schedule, had been entirely on the logistics of making the day work, and the girls who would be modelling for her, as well as the particular challenge of working with royalty. And Tamra had not been trying to stand out from the crowd: for her, that day had been all about Brianna Jade.
But Jodie had certainly noticed Tamra then: it was impossible not to. Her particular kind of burnished golden perfect-featured beauty might not be model-fashionable from Jodie’s perspective as a magazine editor, but it was unmistakable.
Christ, she really does wear clothes well, Jodie admitted. So much poise. If we were back in the 1980s, she could have been one of the classic supermodels. She’s got that whole Christie Brinkley/Cheryl Tiegs American blonde confidence.
Something else was tugging at Jodie’s memory as she looked at Tamra standing there in the middle of her office on the bright Marimekko rug, coat pushed back so that she could put her hands on her jean-clad hips, and the image in Jodie’s head wasn’t of the Amazonian, Versace-clad beauties who had walked the runways in the 1980s. Eventually she located it, and it came as quite a shock: although Tamra and she looked nothing alike, and Tamra exuded much more confidence than Jodie had done then, Jodie was remembering hersel
f, standing in this very office, in front of Victoria Glossop, the then-editor of Style, years ago, interviewing for the position of Victoria’s assistant.
Then, as now, Victoria had liked to rule by fear, although her new relationship had certainly softened many of her rougher edges. And she had conducted the interview with Jodie by adding and subtracting points, out loud, when she approved or disapproved of something Jodie was saying or wearing.
Ten points, Jodie thought now. Tamra just admitted to bribing the guard downstairs and stopped me from sacking him in a couple of sentences. That was very well done. I get people trying to force their way in to see me all the time, and no one’s ever pulled it off like this woman has.
‘I should get security to chuck you out,’ she said, testing Tamra just as Victoria had tested her years ago.
‘Oh, poor Michael,’ Tamra said, smiling beautifully at both Jodie and the young waiter. ‘He had this huge balancing act carrying everything over here from Claridge’s, and all the way up in the elevator – you’re not going to make him take it all back again, are you? At least let him pour the drinks!’
Ten more points. The Pimm’s Martinis did sound delicious.
‘Catalina, it’s fine,’ Jodie said, releasing her poor assistant from limbo: Catalina had been following the dialogue between her boss and the interloper like a trapped mouse at a catfight. She positively scrambled to get out of the office and close the door behind her. Michael, after a nod from Tamra, filled the glasses from the cocktail shaker, leaving a good centimetre on top for the Pol Roger, which he opened with the tiniest, most elegant of pops and then trickled carefully on top of the pale cinnamon Pimm’s-tinged martini.
‘You can go, Michael. Thank you,’ Tamra said.
She had already taken care of the tip: the waiter smiled and followed Catalina out of the office, leaving Jodie and Tamra together.
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