by Maya Rodale, Caroline Linden, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe
“Mom? What the f—… What are you doing here?” A familiar waft of patchouli hit her nose.
“Language, honey. You’ll shock Nanny.”
Nanny was taking the appearance of an eternal hippy from Pennsylvania with the same calm with which she’d witnessed the chef’s sexual shenanigans. “Come in, Arwen. Molly and I are having a nice cup of green tea. Isn’t it lovely that she’s come to see you?”
Arwen and Molly hugged each other. “It’s good to see you, Mom. You’re looking great.” She always did. Though Arwen often complained to her friends that her fifty-year-old mother hadn’t changed her style since she was a teenager, the flowing floral skirts and gauzy tops suited her. She kept her skin in good shape by always wearing a hat outside on the farm and if her long curly blond hair contained any gray, it didn’t show. Flamboyant beaded jewelry, collected around the world before she and Benjamin settled down, complemented her wardrobe.
“And you’re looking tired, though I do like your hair like that. Makes you look less uptight.”
“Thanks.” She rolled her eyes. “Why are you here and where’s Dad?”
“I’ve left him.”
Tottering to the table, Arwen pulled out a chair and collapsed. “No.” The one thing in her whole life she’d have bet on was her parents’ devotion to one another. “Tell me what happened. No, first coffee.”
“She’s had a shock,” Molly said to Nanny. “Give her some of that green tea.”
“I need caffeine, preferably through an IV.”
Molly handed her a mug of pale liquid. “Drink this. You need the antioxidants.”
For all her new age airs, Molly didn’t take disobedience well. It was easier to give in. “Explain,” she said, taking a sip and wishing it was a latte. On top of everything else, she really didn’t need green tea and parental drama.
“We were at a folk festival on the Isle of Man.”
“I wondered what you were doing there.”
“We took a trip to celebrate our thirtieth anniversary.”
“Of what?”
“Don’t be so ordinary, honey. Of the day we pledged our eternal love in the ashram in India. We’ve often told you about that.”
“I didn’t realize you did anything so ‘ordinary’ as observe an anniversary. So what happened to the pledge of eternal love?”
“Benjamin asked me to marry him.”
“Mom, that’s so sweet and romantic.” Arwen had to get up and give her another hug. “Can I do the wedding? I promise it’ll be just the way you want it.”
Molly held her daughter convulsively. “We have never believed in the shackles of marriage. Without absolute freedom I cannot live with him.”
“So don’t marry. I think it would be lovely if you tied the knot, but it won’t matter either way. Not after all these years.”
“You don’t understand,” she cried, releasing Arwen and stretching her arms toward the ceiling. “Benjamin has betrayed everything I thought we held sacred. Nothing will ever be the same again.”
Oh, for God’s sake. She really didn’t need this. “You always make such a big deal about things.”
Nanny interrupted her sharply. “Don’t speak to your mother like that, Arwen. Principles should be respected.” The elderly woman made her feel six years old.
Arwen closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. So much for a peaceful morning. She didn’t think she could manage this crisis right now, or even take in the incredible fact that her parents had split up. “We must talk about this more, Mom,” she said, “but I’m totally swamped at the moment. Where are you staying? Do you want to share my room here?”
“I reserved a room at The Bull’s Head in the village.”
“Once I’m done for the day here, I’ll meet you and and we’ll talk over dinner. Do you have enough money? Do you need my credit card?”
“Really, Arwen! Don’t treat me like a child.”
Arwen apologized and saw her mother out to her rental car. Her mom and dad must make up their quarrel; they had to. Meanwhile Arwen must get her day back on track, starting with a powerful infusion of caffeine.
Though she didn’t have time for her parents’ nonmarital difficulties, the first thing she did when she reached the gazebo—temporarily free of Web-surfing, e-mailing, boozing, chatting guests—was to try, without success, to track down her father. She also left a message for her brother, who was doing his doctorate at Berkeley.
She could only hope Dad was on his way to find Molly. She just couldn’t believe they would break up. All through her childhood they’d barely ever even argued. When she started kindergarten, she’d been mortified to discover that most kids’ parents had the same last name and wedding pictures. Later she understood that it was a less rosy picture: divorce and stepparents were problems she didn’t have to deal with. And even in conservative rural Pennsylvania a few women kept their own names after marriage.
It was ridiculous to care that her parents had never married, and most of the time Arwen didn’t. They were always just there, at home with their organic crops, well-loved farm animals, and mutual adoration, expressed through inappropriate public displays of affection. And most of all, together.
Distracted as she was, she managed to get some work done then ruined her mood by doing a Web search. Jezebel.com had a feature on Jane’s visit to the bridal shop, complete with pictures of her in a hideous wedding dress. Arwen’s eyes popped out of her head: the byline was Roxanna Lane, Jane’s maid of honor. At least no one could blame her, or Harry, for that one. Perhaps Jane had given permission for the picture.
At least Roxanna’s piece gave no clue as to the location. Apparently they only had one photographer to worry about at Brampton. In fact the latest rumor reported by Perez Hilton was that Duke and Jane had emulated Madonna; the entire corps of paparazzi had besieged Skibo Castle, many miles away in Scotland.
On the way down from the gazebo, she thought she caught sight of a telephoto lens protruding from a rhododendron bush. She stuck out her tongue. Thankfully no one was going to pay for a photo of an obscure wedding planner with bad hair and an insane mother who wanted to get divorced without ever being married.
As the foot of the hill, emerging from the trees and shrubs on her way to the house, she met Harry. “Hello, darling, you’re looking down in the dumps.” His voice always seemed to improve her mood, however much she told herself it was strictly business between them.
“It’s that photographer,” she said, not wanting to talk about her family. “How are we going to keep him out? Could you drive him off with your gun?”
He was carrying a shotgun over his arm, to go with a very English country outfit of rust-colored corduroy pants, a green quilted vest, and tall black boots. Jane Sparks’s historical romances tended to dwell on men in boots and she could see why. Hot.
“I could, but he’ll just come back. I can’t have him arrested unless he actually does some damage. I’ve talked to Duke about calling in a firm from London, but it’s almost impossible to police such big grounds and we can’t stop people from using the right-of-way footpaths. Besides, a large security presence could have the effect of drawing more attention to the place.”
“I don’t trust those outfits,” Arwen said. “I swear the paparazzi have spies in them. I have to ask this, Harry.” She stopped, hating to voice her suspicions but she knew she had been super careful about confidentiality. She had a nondisclosure agreement in her contact with Duke Austen, and had demanded the same from all her vendors. “Could one of your staff have sold the story?”
“Anything is possible among so many,” he said with a sigh. “Mark is making discreet inquiries and he’s pretty good at rooting out the truth. But honestly I don’t think so. We’ve had trouble here, before, with the tabloids harassing my parents and they aren’t well liked. When they descend in force, they’re like an invading army.”
“The important thing is that no one but the official photographer gets pictures of the wedding its
elf. I’d like to get my hands on whoever tipped him off. I really don’t need this aggravation on top of everything else.”
“Sit for a minute,” Harry said, carefully laying down his gun and patting a gothic-style wooden garden bench. “What you need is a neck rub and ten minutes of meditation. Empty your mind.”
She didn’t quite obey, but her brain abandoned parents and paparazzi in favor of the magic of Harry’s hands. Leaning into his big body she felt her stress melt away, along with her resolve to keep him at a distance.
So he’d lied to her. Big deal. “Mm,” she murmured.
“I’ve told you before, you work too hard. Once this bash is over, I recommend a few days’ holiday at a luxury country house hotel. I happen to know the owner and I can get you a bargain rate.”
That sounded great: a week in the Chinese bedroom in the family quarters, long walks in the park, no phone calls, meals in the kitchen with Nanny and Harry, evenings in the Gold Saloon…
However much she dreaded the mounds of work that awaited her in New York, she shouldn’t abandon Valerie for much longer. “I need to get back to the city.”
“You must find it very quiet and dull here.”
“Are you kidding? I suppose it’ll be quiet once everyone’s left, but weddings themselves are always insanity.” He smoothed out a stubborn knot in her shoulder. “Oh, that’s good.”
She stopped worrying about work and start imagining everyone gone except herself and Harry. Perhaps they could get together tonight, when the bachelor and bachelorette parties were out for their respective dinners.
Then she remembered her mother. She needed to talk sense into Molly. And into herself, too.
Harry was too good for a short vacation affair and there was no chance of anything else. Geography and background ensured that. Arwen wasn’t in kindergarten now and her parents no longer embarrassed her—at least not with their marital status—but Harry belonged to a different world. He had parents who had been chased by paparazzi. Did that happen to all lords or were they celebrities? It was just one more reason why it was sensible for her to keep her distance before she started getting ideas about a long-term relationship. Harry might claim that being a lord meant nothing to him, but he would find himself an English woman who understood English ways. He was handy at fixing things and great at sex, but there was a whole lot more to life than those two admirable skills. Unfortunately.
“More?” His deep accents buzzed in her ear. She leaned back, sending the message yes. His fingers had unknotted all the tension in her neck and sent hot streaks through her veins. If only she could spend the whole day like this.
Then she thought about the exciting jobs that could come her way once the success of this wedding made the gossip rounds. It was her passport to the kind of party planning she’d always dreamed of. She mustn’t forget what Luxe Events had at stake.
“No,” she said. “I need to check on tomorrow’s menus before the tent people show up.”
“Stay a while.”
“And you need to prevent mayhem on the hunting field.”
“You’re right. I need to get back to the shooting party,” he said. “I suppose I should go. Do you think we could have a quiet dinner tonight, just the two of us?”
“I can’t.” Reluctantly Arwen stood up. “I’m joining the bachelorette party at the pub. I promised Jane.”
A lie, but a necessary one. No way was she introducing her loony tunes mother to the future Lord Melbury.
Walking a mile across country to the moor where the gamekeeper and his men had conveyed the shooting party, Harry reflected on the oddity of the tech billionaire’s chosen stag party. He’d have expected something more conventional, like strippers jumping out of computer-shaped cakes. If that had been Duke’s preference, he had no doubt Arwen would have laid it on without a blink.
She’d been wearing another of her chic little dresses and all he could think about was getting her out of it. Well, not quite all. He found her stimulating in a number of ways, but the undressing option was always at the back of his dirty male mind. He was the one who needed ten minutes of meditation. Having her pressed against him reduced his mind to porridge.
He was making progress. She’d pretty much forgiven him for being a lord-in-waiting and for his house’s killer lack of Wi-Fi. By the end of the week he trusted that clothes would be removed. All very satisfactory.
Trouble was, he wanted more than that: to make her laugh and relax and stop worrying so much; to explore the vulnerability that peeped out from behind the tough (not hard-boiled!) exterior; to make her coffee in the kitchen every morning; to learn about her childhood on a farm and the mysterious parents she avoided talking about. They couldn’t possibly be more bizarre than his and he wanted to tell her about them, too. With something like panic he realized she’d be leaving in four days and crossing the damnably wide Atlantic Ocean.
The thought of a quick shag followed by her return to America, then nothing more between them but an occasional e-mail, was depressing. But what did he have to offer her?
He’d listened to her and Mark chatting about places in New York he’d never heard of. A successful businesswoman with a glamorous life couldn’t possibly want to take on a dull Englishman with a quixotic determination to save a white elephant of a house he couldn’t really afford.
Chapter Eight
The day before the wedding started badly. For the rehearsal dinner, at Jane’s request, Arwen had ordered special cream dessert cakes from a London bakery. Apparently this outfit was the successor to Gunter’s, a historic business that was big in Regency romance. The delivery had been made three days earlier and stowed in one of the giant refrigerators in the kitchen. That morning, it was discovered the thing wasn’t working.
Since the Next Gordon Ramsey disclaimed all responsibility for a machine that didn’t contain his creations, they had no way of knowing how long the cakes had been unchilled. Arwen wasn’t about to risk giving a hotel full of guests food poisoning from bad cream. Compounding the problem, the Next G.R. steadfastly refused to turn around and provide desserts he hadn’t been contracted for.
While venting her frustration to Harry, an unlikely savior appeared in the form of Duke’s lawyer, Archer Quinn, who had made the acquaintance of a woman in a nearby cottage. Arwen didn’t trouble to ask how a chef for one of the Boston area’s best restaurants happened to be in the vicinity with a cooler full of desserts. She merely thanked God for the existence of Natalie Corcoran.
While she had signal, she called New York to check in with Valerie.
“Guess what,” she said to Harry as they headed back to Brampton House from Natalie’s house. “Val heard that our lunatic chef has lost his investors for a US expansion because he’s impossible to work with. He’s about to be the Ex-Next Gordon Ramsey and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
“Brilliant news. I take it you are no longer thinking of sleeping with the man.”
“Puh-lease. He’s the last man in the world I’d ever do.”
“I’m encouraged. I just moved up the list a notch.”
“Idiot. You’re not an asshole.”
“Thank you for the vote of approval.”
“You’re welcome.”
They walked on for a few minutes, Arwen sneaking glances at him as they went. His habitual calm was wonderfully soothing and she realized that after spending much of the last month in England, she’d come to appreciate a measured approach to life. Take last night. The Bull’s Head had been full of screaming wedding guests, so she’d taken her mother to The Pineapple of Perfection. It was a quiet night and Carol and Sheila had joined them and the four of them had a great chat over a bottle of wine.
Molly and Carol bonded over organic food while Arwen and Sheila talked movies. It was also one of the few times in her life that Arwen could remember spending time with her mom without her dad being present. Perhaps they just needed a vacation from each other.
Sheila occasionally got up to see
to a straggler or two at another table and everyone was totally relaxed about it, so different from Arwen’s life in New York where everyone wanted everything yesterday and it was her job to provide it. Her life didn’t hold enough moments like this one, strolling through a gorgeous park in sunshine, with a good man at her side.
“Do you miss living in London?” she asked.
“Not at all. I had a job in a merchant bank and never knew how much I hated it until I left. Now I must try to make the hotel profitable. I could use an experienced wedding planner on the staff.” He wore that hopeful, sheepish grin she found so appealing.
On impulse she tucked her arm into his. “Whatever our relationship is or will be, and at this point I have no idea, I’d like to say I’ve enjoyed working with you. You’ve been great the last few days.” He looked a bit embarrassed, as though unaccustomed to freely expressed praise. “Are you blushing, Harry? You Englishmen are too adorable.”
He recovered quickly enough. “Thanks, darling. Same to you. Together we are a well-oiled machine. Only one more day and I don’t believe anything else can go wrong.”
“Bite your tongue.”
“Um, I think we talked about that phrase before.”
That afternoon, Arwen stood on the front steps of the mansion, making sure all was as it should be for the official group wedding pictures. A man with a very large camera sauntered around the corner, for all the world as though he had the right to be there. There was something familiar about him, although his face was concealed by the brim of a tweed cap. About to head up the drive, he turned and saw Arwen standing at the foot the front steps.
“Hello, bonnie lassie,” he said with a cheeky grin. “I was hoping I’d run into you.”
She knew him.
She’d been working on her laptop, sitting at the empty bar after lunch at the Next Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant, waiting for His Highness to come out and discuss terms. This man—his name was Angus something—had taken the next stool and struck up a conversation. Charmed by his gingery good looks and mellifluous Scottish tones, she’d chatted for five or ten minutes. Although she had told him about her job when he asked, she was one hundred percent certain she hadn’t mentioned Duke Austen or Brampton House. He must have got the truth out of the Next G.R. or his staff. She was going to kill that randy chef.