by Wendy Holden
As hanging about on the sidelines was obviously social suicide, Alexa dived into the crowd. She needed to make friends, fast. Apart from anything else, Florrie was elsewhere being a bridesmaid, and it was not at all clear how Alexa would get to the wedding breakfast. It was some distance away, at Willoughby Hall, and no one had offered her a lift so far.
And would it be worth it anyway? If Lady Annabel had seated her at the back of the Minster for the wedding, there were no prizes for guessing where she would be at the wedding breakfast. On table one hundred million, right by the door, with all the bores, misfits and commoners Florrie’s mother had been reluctant to ruin any other tables with.
Alexa tried to pull herself together. There was no point in being negative. She had to look for opportunities. Create some, if necessary.
‘Peregrine!’ She hailed the first person she recognised; a tall young man in tails who seemed to be having trouble standing on his own feet. The Marquess of Dymchurch’s younger brother had been one of the groomsmen, making a hopeless hash of handing out hymn books and service sheets at the cathedral door. His long face was flushed and spotty, he wore very dark round sunglasses – as indeed he had throughout the service – and his hair stood aloft in dryish brown spikes. ‘Couldn’t bag a ride off you up to Willoughby, could I?’ Alexa purred with an ingratiating smile.
Peregrine looked startled. He twisted his fat red lips. ‘Well, thing is, I’ve sort of got rather a full car. Taking twenty guys already.’
‘Surely there’s room for a little one,’ Alexa wheedled. Her situation was desperate. If she couldn’t get a lift, she would have to catch the bus. Her ever-delicate finances, strained in the extreme now she was full-time life assistant to Florrie, would not even cover the cost of a taxi.
Tension filled the sunny air. Alexa could see the beginnings of a sweat breaking out on Peregrine’s bald pink forehead.
She decided to force the issue. She turned a piteous look on him. ‘I’ve got such a painful ankle. Twisted it on these wretched cobbles!’ She shook her head in just enough mock despair to allow a strand or two from her chignon to pull away from its rigidly hairsprayed fellows and fall winsomely over her face. ‘I’d be so grateful if you could fit me in too.’
Behind his sunglasses, Peregrine’s face was evidently panicked. ‘Er . . .’ he stuttered.
Alexa was smiling brilliantly. ‘So kind of you. You can’t imagine how sore my ankle is.’
Peregrine’s expression had something about it of the rabbit caught in the headlights. He sensed he was in the grip of a higher power, but had no idea how to remove himself from its influence.
Alexa now had complete command of the situation. ‘I simply can’t walk another step.’ She sighed, performing an apparently agonised hop forward. Quick as a flash, she had grabbed his arm and now hung there like a limpet.
As there was obviously no shaking her off, either literally or metaphorically, Peregrine Dymchurch now accepted the inevitable. ‘You’d better come this way,’ he grunted, dragging her in the direction of a large sand-coloured vintage motorcar with huge headlights, spare wheel on the back and a folded-down hood. It was parked at the edge of the cobbled area and was already full of lissom girls and young men with cigarettes at the corner of their mouths struggling with champagne corks. Pop! went one of the bottles. There was a roar of approval, followed by shrieks as the bottle’s contents gushed on to the antique leather seats.
Rising above them all was the familiar honk of Tara Shropshire. ‘Chased by a rhino . . . Tallulah . . . lost five hundred million in the crash . . . Guy Pelly . . . her lips are huge . . . this amazing band, they’re all Etonians . . . he giggles if you tickle his beard . . . Sting . . . poor her, she got bitten by a tramp . . . Beast of Blenheim . . . he looks fabulous in eyeliner . . . Zen weekend in Tuscany . . . then we all fell off the yacht . . .’
The yabbering stopped abruptly. The entire car fell silent as Peregrine approached with Alexa. She could sense him mouthing frantically at them. ‘No room, no more room,’ they yelled, as if in response.
But Alexa had not got this far to fail in her mission now. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she piped up sweetly. ‘I could,’ she turned and fluttered her eyelashes at Peregrine, ‘sit on someone’s lap!’
The defeated Peregrine could do nothing but bow to the inevitable. Sulkily, he opened the car’s back door. She was in in a purple flash, her injured ankle miraculously healed, squirming on to the first pair of male knees she found. These belonged to a plump, sweaty young earl whose fortune Alexa knew to be in the low to medium bracket, and whose family chateau in Cornwall was partly ruined. Nonetheless, he was a port in a storm.
‘This is cosy!’ she exclaimed with every appearance of delight, as the other sullen young things shoved up to accommodate her. From across the back seat, Tara Shropshire shot her a look of loathing. Alexa smiled sweetly back.
The vintage limousine, amid a good deal of convivial roaring, singing of the Eton Boating Song and brandishing of champagne bottles, wove unsteadily between the hedges of the narrow country lane for many miles. It then swung in suddenly between a pair of large red-brick gates topped with snarling heraldic beasts in cream-coloured stone. The curve was so sharp and sudden that a couple of the champagne bottles flew out into the hedges by the gates, accompanied by howls of disappointment.
Alexa, perched on the lap of the sweating earl, was relieved to be on the estate’s private road. The driving had been even worse than she had imagined, narrowly missing a bus, several cars and a line of cyclists; at least here they would not meet anything oncoming.
Throughout, however, she had directed a bright flow of chat at the earl. At first he had not responded at all, then had done so in unfriendly grunts. After she had begun to grind her bottom subtly but effectively into his groin, he had come alive. ‘I say,’ he remarked. ‘You’re not nearly as bad as Beatrice’s mother told us all you were.’
‘Thank you, that’s adorable of you,’ returned Alexa sweetly, not betraying by the merest flutter of an eyelid the wave of fury she felt. But she’d get even with Lady Annabel. And seduce Viscount Whyske. In the course of the journey, she had been forming a plan that even his formidable mother would be unable to stop.
The car was climbing further up into the park and passing over the ridge where the great spread of Willoughby Hall was first seen by the visitor. The view was magnificent and meant to be so; from the elevation of the road, everything from the Hall’s grand main entrance to the stable block and kitchens could be seen below, like a small, homogenous and very highly decorated town, its roofline busy with turrets, towers, pinnacles and flags.
‘I always think,’ drawled one of the girls beside Alexa, a snooty redhead, ‘that dear old Willers looks like it’s been designed by someone who’s never studied architecture but thinks it can’t be all that hard.’
Honks of supercilious laughter greeted this remark. Alexa smiled with the rest, although she did not agree in the least. To her, Willoughby Hall represented paradise, the fulfilment of all her dreams. To be mistress of such a place, she felt, would be El Dorado, Shangri-La, Elysium and Nirvana all rolled into one.
The car shot down the final descent to the Hall at an alarming rate, accompanied by screams from the back. Apparently unable to stop, it hurtled towards the great building with a momentum that seemed likely to propel it up the great wide flight of shallow front steps and into the building itself.
There was a small, colourful crowd of guests before the mansion. Alexa recognised Lady Annabel’s large pink hat. They watched first in interest, then alarm as the car gained upon them, finally scattering like a flock of multicoloured pigeons just as the vehicle described a large and unsteady curve in front of the steps and skidded to a halt, spraying a tsunami of gravel that rained painfully on the assembled hats and the handbags lifted to shield faces.
Lady Annabel was the first to recover, detach herself and march over, her spike heels biting into the gravel. ‘For goodness’ sake,
Peregrine!’ she snapped at the driver. ‘Crash that car and you wipe out five ancient lines!’
Her eyes, glittering in the shade of her brim, now turned on Alexa, still seated on the earl’s lap and trying subtly to shift herself from the consequences of what she had started. He really seemed very excited indeed, and besides the insistent swelling in his groin, she could feel him panting rapidly behind her. His hot, sweaty hands, clamped round her bottom, were burning wetly through the thin material of her dress.
As an expression of visceral contempt crossed Florrie’s mother’s features, Alexa smiled politely back, longing to explain to Lady Annabel that the situation wasn’t what it seemed, that she had bigger fish to fry. Some of Lady Annabel’s own fish, to be precise.
Yet for the successful execution of her plan, she needed to get into the Hall as quickly as possible, before any of the other guests. Only then would she have the advantage she sought.
Sheepishly, the bright young things emerged from the limousine and set about making up lost ground with their elders. Alexa, meanwhile, slipped away. Willoughby’s façade had been built to impress and was extensive; it took her a good five minutes before she found some open double doors leading into the conservatory.
She slipped in, grateful for her silver pumps, which made no sound on the marble floor, and sneaked in the direction of where she guessed the main hall to be. Her heart raced as she hurried through a couple of ornate reception rooms, their heavy furniture slumbering beneath mirrors and chandeliers.
As she had anticipated, the wedding lunch was set out in Willoughby’s massive entrance hall, a Victorian extravaganza of marble pillars, statues, gilt torchères, chandeliers, moulded cornucopia and ancestral portraits. She hurried across the mosaic marble of the anteroom, mere feet now from the gilded entrance to the hall and its sea of circular tables draped in white linen.
‘Can I help you?’ A voice shattered the silence.
Alexa froze. Damn. Damn.
Chapter 23
She took a deep breath and turned with a brilliant smile. ‘I’m Alexa MacDonald,’ she gushed at the morning-suited butler. ‘Lady Florence’s flatmate.’
It was just possible that a look flashed across the retainer’s face, as if he had been told something about this person. But within nanoseconds his long basset-hound features had resumed their normal respectful, attentive expression. ‘Indeed, modom,’ he intoned, bowing slightly.
‘I’m looking for the loos.’ Alexa staged a rueful laugh.
‘You’re in quite the wrong part of the house, modom. The lavatories are outside, in the stableyard, next to the plant shop and the café.’
Alexa headed off the way she had come. In the second anteroom, she slipped behind a large brocade curtain and waited until she calculated the butler had gone. Slipping out again, she returned to the hall. She was careful to crouch as she moved between the tables, their surfaces a jumble of white-themed flower arrangements, glasses, bottles of water and table numbers on gilt stands.
She looked about frantically. Where was it?
Ah. There. Between the two alabaster pillars that marked the entrance to the hall from the anteroom on the other side. The table plan.
She hurried over to the easel on which the large, hand-calligraphed document, not unlike the Magna Carta, was propped. She frowned at the details of who was sitting where. Here was the bride’s table, the top table, with Lady Annabel on it, of course, and the royals either side of her. Next to the Prince of Wales was Florrie, and seated next to her was Lord Sebastian de Loxley, a trainee duke who was presumably the best Lady Annabel could do for her daughter at the moment. And here, opposite, was Ed Whyske, dammit, next to Camilla Fish.
She searched for her own name, her forefinger following the ornately hand-written rows of Lord This and Lady That. Tables 60 to 70, moving further back in the room. Still no Miss Alexa MacDonald. Her insides twisted with fear. Tables 70 to 80. Still nothing. Her heart speeded up. Tables 80 to 90, oh God, still nothing, it couldn’t be true. Tables 90 to . . . and there, finally, she was. Between someone called Brian Spratt and a Mr Leonard Donkin. On Table 94, at the far back of the hall. It wasn’t so much Siberia as the islands north of it. And the sea to the north of those.
Even though she had been expecting it, Alexa felt the humiliation almost physically. But this was no time for anger. She who hesitates is lost, she reminded herself, before moving rapidly into action. Flitting lightly between tables, glancing hurriedly over her shoulder, she switched the place cards. In a matter of moments, Camilla Fish was between Messrs Spratt and Donkin and Alexa herself next to Viscount Whyske.
And now. Dare she? Her fingers seized the card bearing Lady Annabel’s name. Within seconds she had moved it from beside the PoW to next to the Lord Lieutenant of the county. Someone called Mrs Justice Pomfrey, who had been beside the Lord Lieutenant, was now promoted to royalty. There was just time, too, to move Tara Shropshire from beside Prince Harry and stick her next to the Chief Constable.
She rubbed her hands with glee. But not for long. Now she heard, like a gathering storm, the rumble of approaching voices coming along from the anteroom. Lunch must be about to start. And she was yet to remove the most important item of all.
Stepping smartly to the entrance, she picked up the table plan and its easel – fortunately it was lighter than it looked – and hurried it away to behind the nearest curtain. With that gone, no one would be any the wiser. People could only locate their seats from the cards on the tables.
Except Lady Annabel, of course, but with the evidence removed, she would be hard pressed to make a fuss. And if the Prince of Wales sat down first, with Mrs Justice Pomfrey beside him, even she could hardly make them get up again.
Satisfied, Alexa sailed out of the main hall and across one of the sitting rooms. In a side passage she found a downstairs cloakroom and locked herself in. If that pompous bloody butler thought she was using the public loos, he had another thing coming.
She revived her hair and make-up as fast as was humanly possible. She noted with delight the new, bold sparkle in her dark eyes and consolidated the effect with some more mascara, then slicked on a new layer of lip gloss. But that was all there was time for.
With one final triumphant glance in the mirror, one hurried smooth of her hair, she hurried back to the main hall, ready to take her seat next to Viscount Whyske and opposite the Prince of Wales.
She approached the bridal table with a casual confidence. The Prince, rather to her regret, was not yet present, but Viscount Whyske was, sitting in his allotted place and looking round with his accustomed blank stare. ‘Hello, Ed,’ Alexa beamed, putting her hand in proprietorial fashion on the slender gilt frame of the seat beside him, pulling it out and sitting down.
Florrie, who had plonked herself down opposite and was slathering butter on to a roll, leant over. ‘Oh, sitting there, are you, Lexie? Great. Ma told me she shoved you about twenty tables away.’
‘Did she?’ Well Ma had not succeeded. Alexa could not resist asking, nonetheless, ‘Why would she do that?’
Florrie rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, you know what Ma’s like. Convinced you’re the most awful castle-creeper. She’s been banging on at me all morning about it. Wants you out of the flat and everything.’
Alexa did not flinch under these powerful blows. Instead, she gave a pretty laugh. ‘Dear Lady Annabel. Such a wonderful sense of humour. Because, in fact . . .’ she reached triumphantly over to pluck the place card from among the shining cut-crystal glasses, ‘she’s put me here . . .’
Her voice died away. Her throat dried in horror. Her hand shook violently.
There was some mistake. It was not possible. The card that she was looking at bore another name, not hers. In the few minutes she had been in the lavatory, someone had swapped it back.
‘Er, hi there.’ The slow, vague voice of Lady Camilla Fish came from behind. ‘I, you know, think that’s my seat, OK? Is that cool with you?’
Confused as she rarely
was, Alexa stood up and in her agitation knocked some of the glasses over. The sharp, insistent ring of ancestral crystal under duress brought unwelcome attention her way, among it the mocking eyes of Lady Annabel showing the Prince of Wales to his seat.
Head bowed to disguise the beetroot red of her face, Alexa made her way as best she could to Table 94, in the seas to the north of the islands north of Siberia. The one time she glanced up, she caught the eye of Lady Annabel’s butler. His expression, before it reverted to its habitual deferential blank, might have been that of one who, instructed to watch for someone moving place cards about, had successfully thwarted their endeavours.
As she sat down between Brian Spratt and Leonard Donkin, Willoughby’s head gardener and estate manager respectively, Alexa knew she had lost the battle. Spratt’s views on the difficulties of growing tree ferns in a northern climate went in one ear and out the other, as did Donkin’s patent method of tackling foot rot in sheep. Filling her head, like a scream, was the knowledge that Lady Annabel had won the day, that Camilla Fish would win Ed, that she herself would be obliged to move out of Florrie’s flat in short order and that her liaison with the Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpes was over. And that Lady Annabel would trumpet to the whole of Facebook her antics at Beatrice’s wedding.
She was staring down at her water glass, wondering whether to smash it, slash her wrists and end it all now, when she felt a hand on her shoulder and a familiar smooth voice in her ear. ‘She stiffed me too. Table 110, and so far back in the cathedral I was practically in the bloody bus station.’
Alexa twisted round. ‘Barney!’ she said in surprise, recognising him from Florrie’s dinner party. Donkin and Spratt had stopped talking, she saw, and were staring open-mouthed at the vision in three-piece violet linen with a large purple orchid in the buttonhole.
‘Join the club,’ she said ruefully.
Barney’s mouth was hissing at her ear. ‘So why don’t we get together? Defeat the common enemy? You’ll be needing a place to stay, at the very least.’