The Bachelor

by Tilly Bagshawe

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Nothing’s going on.’

  Eva exhaled into him, relief flooding through her like the antidote to some deadly poison. Breathing in the lemon and patchouli smell of Henry’s Penhaligon’s aftershave, she felt a sudden rush of longing, and was just thinking of taking him back up to bed when Graydon James and Guillermo appeared in the drawing-room doorway.

  ‘Yoo-hoo!’ Graydon yodelled, gesturing at Henry like someone trying to bring a plane in to land. ‘Sorry to interrupt you two lovebirds. But Guillermo and I are done for now in the great hall. We were hoping you might show us up to the attic rooms? Talk us through your vision for the old servants’ quarters? If you can spare him, Princess.’

  He winked at Eva, who grinned back. Graydon seemed fun. Unlike Guillermo, who stood around pouting a lot and looking bored, like a typical male model.

  ‘Of course.’ Eva wriggled out of Henry’s arms. ‘I was about to take the dogs for a walk anyway.’

  ‘Jeeves! Jeeves! Get back here this instant, you stupid fur-ball!’

  Barney Griffith cupped his hands around his mouth like a loudspeaker as he bellowed into the wind. His Border terrier ignored him completely, and continued charging up the chalk hillside towards a field full of sheep.

  Tall, broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, with a freckled complexion and merry, hazel eyes that lent him a permanently boyish look, Barney could have been very handsome if he weren’t so permanently unkempt. Clutching his most prized possession, the trusty Nikon D100 camera that had cost him a month’s wages back in the days when Barney had wages, he ran after the dog, giving himself a stitch almost immediately. In his defence, despite the fact it was almost June, a month of solid rain had left the Downs muddy enough to make walking without boots a fool’s errand. Consequently, Barney wasn’t exactly dressed for sprinting, in wellies and an old pair of canvas gardening trousers. But, even if he’d been in Lycra and Nikes, the truth was that he had become horribly unfit. There was a lot to be said for his new life as a novelist living full time in the countryside. But it did involve a lot of sitting on one’s arse eating Jaffa Cakes. At least when he’d been a City lawyer he’d had a corporate gym membership. He’d never used it, of course, but just having the card in his wallet had probably burned off a few calories …

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Jeeves!’ Panting like an asthmatic pensioner, and with sweat pouring down his face, Barney rounded the crest of the hill just in time to see a ravishingly attractive blonde emerge from the woods. She was very tall and wearing a yellow sundress with wellies that served to emphasize both her slender waist and absolutely endless legs. Two immaculately groomed Irish setters trotted obediently at her heels, their bracken-red coats gleaming and rippling in the wind, as if they were auditioning for a dog-food commercial.

  ‘You haven’t seen …’ Barney gasped, his soft Irish brogue coming in fits and starts. ‘… a scruffy … terrier … have you? The little sod’s … run off.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ the goddess replied. She had the faintest touch of some sort of accent, and looked vaguely familiar, in an untouchably beautiful sort of way. ‘Would you like me to help you look?’

  Just then, a tired but not remotely sorry-looking Jeeves dashed back to his master, hurling himself headlong into Barney’s ankles in a frenzied attempt to make himself acquainted with the Irish setters, who both kept their eyes fixed on the horizon with regal disdain. It was like watching a tramp trying to chat up a pair of movie stars. The Gabor sisters in their heyday, perhaps.

  Clipping Jeeves’s lead firmly back on, Barney finally caught his breath.

  ‘Thanks for the offer.’ He smiled up at the goddess. ‘But he’s back.’

  ‘So I see.’ The goddess smiled back. ‘I’m Eva, by the way.’

  Eva! Of course. The bra girl, getting married to what’s-his-chops, with the castle.

  ‘Barney. Barney Griffith. I’d shake your hand but I’m sweating like a racehorse.’

  ‘That’s all right. It’s a beautiful day for some exercise.’ Bending down, Eva ruffled Jeeves’s matted fur affectionately. Barney noticed the absolutely enormous diamond on her engagement finger. Talk about the Rock of Gibraltar. That thing must have cost more than his cottage.

  ‘Your dog’s terribly sweet,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Jeeves. He’s yours.’ Barney offered her the lead. ‘I’m not even joking. He’s such a little sh … troublemaker. Not like your dogs.’ He looked admiringly at the setters, sitting calmly by their mistress’s side. ‘They’re perfect.’

  ‘Thanks. This is Whiskey and this is Soda. They’re good girls but they’re Henry’s dogs really.’

  ‘I like them less already.’ Barney grinned. It was odd. She really was incredibly pretty, yet for some reason he found himself talking to her like an old friend, without the usual pit-of-the-stomach nerves that usually plagued him when he fancied a girl. When he first met Maud, he’d barely been able to string a sentence together.

  Why was he thinking about bloody Maud again?

  Barney’s girlfriend of just over a year had recently dumped him, for good this time it seemed. By email.

  ‘I can’t support this charade any longer,’ Maud had written. (As if she’d supported it up till now!) ‘You’re not a novelist, Barney. You’re an unemployed corporate lawyer, fannying around on a computer. Throw away your future if you want to, but don’t expect me to come with you.’

  Barney had begun at least eight different drafts in response. He wasn’t throwing away his future, he was following his heart; a concept Maud might understand better if she had a heart of her own.

  ‘Not everything can be measured in pounds and bloody pence!’ he started one note. But, of course, he hadn’t finished any of them.

  Maud was right. How could he call himself a novelist when he couldn’t even finish a sodding email?

  Turning his attention back to Eva’s dogs, he asked, ‘How do you keep them that shiny? I mean, are they even real?’

  Eva giggled.

  ‘I’m serious. How many times a day do you have to wash them? Or I daresay you have live-in dog-washers up at the castle, do you?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  It was nice to run into this funny, chatty Irishman. Nice to get out of Hanborough and clear her head. Eva had believed Henry earlier, about the flirty WhatsApp message. But, walking through the woods alone, doubts had already begun to creep in.

  About a year ago, Henry had had a string of affairs. Well, more one-night stands really, but they’d still wounded Eva deeply. She’d just plucked up the courage to leave him when he’d broken down in tears, promised to change his ways for good, and proposed. That was the first proposal, and it had taken all Eva’s willpower to refuse. At that point, Henry’s remorse was just words. But in the months that followed he’d bought Hanborough, moved to the country (out of temptation’s way?), and proved his devotion to Eva in myriad ways, both small and large, culminating in a second proposal, complete with a mahoosive eight-carat diamond. This time Eva had said yes.

  Now she was here, planning their wedding and helping Henry’s designers pick out wall colours and fabrics. She simply couldn’t face it if the cheating started again.

  ‘Well, I’m heading down towards Brockhurst,’ said Barney. ‘I’ll see you around, I’m sure.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you,’ said Eva, slightly to his surprise, falling into step beside him. It occurred to Barney that perhaps she was lonely. Maybe it was true what they said about supermodels being so intimidating that nobody ever spoke to them? Then again, she lived with her hotshot, heart-throb fiancé, so maybe not.

  ‘I’m not really out here for the exercise,’ Barney admitted, making sure he kept Jeeves on a tight lead as they picked their way down the steep slope.

  ‘No?’

  He shook his head. ‘I like to say I walk for inspiration. I’m a writer, you see. But I’m actually just skiving off the book.’

  ‘You write
books?’ Eva sounded impressed.

  ‘Theoretically,’ said Barney. ‘I’m supposed to be writing a book.’

  ‘A writer and a photographer?’ Eva looked at the Nikon hanging around his neck. ‘That’s pretty cool.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Barney flushed. ‘Photography’s just a hobby.’

  ‘Oh my goodness!’

  At that moment, seemingly out of nowhere, a pack of foxhounds erupted all around them, followed by a thunderous clattering of hooves. Pulling Whiskey and Soda close, Eva flattened herself against a tree, watching awestruck as the red-coated riders swarmed through the copse and then out again into open countryside. She recognized her brother-in-law-to-be, Sebastian, leading the charge, but he was far too focused on his quarry to notice her.

  ‘Don’t they look marvellous?’ Eva turned to Barney breathlessly, as one by one they galloped off across the Downs, the hounds crying frantically in front of them, obviously close to a kill. ‘We don’t have anything like this in Sweden. Did you see the fox?’

  ‘No.’ Barney looked considerably less enthused. ‘But I hope the poor little sod got away.’

  ‘Oh. You don’t like hunting?’

  ‘I hate it. It’s cruel, it’s riddled with snobbery, and it’s downright bloody dangerous. They practically trampled us to death back there.’

  Eva said nothing. This was clearly an exaggeration, but there was no mistaking the strength of Barney’s feelings. She wanted to change the subject, to return to the easy, chatty conversation they’d been having before. But, before she had a chance, Barney abruptly announced he had to get back to work, turned around and left her, with only the most cursory of goodbyes.

  Eva watched him go feeling curiously deflated. He’d seemed so nice before.

  Whistling for the dogs, she turned around herself and began the long tramp back to Hanborough. It was weird to think that this time tomorrow she’d be in Milan on a shoot, in a world about as far removed from this one as possible.

  Perhaps it would do her good to get away for a while? The whole text thing had left a sour taste in her mouth. And things always improved between her and Henry after they’d spent some time apart.

  Graydon James sighed with relief as the bellboy showed him into his suite at The Dorchester.

  It wasn’t his beloved Manhattan. But at least he was in London, free from the cloying silence of the Swell Valley, with all its ghastly green hills and sheep and fresh air. How did people live there? Young, beautiful people in the prime of their lives, like Henry Saxton Brae? It was a crime against humanity that that boy was straight, but even Graydon knew a dead horse when he saw one. He was too old for futile flogging. Too old, as well, to cope with Guillermo’s relentless bitching and whining about being ‘left out of the process’ at Hanborough.

  ‘He only ever talks to you,’ Guillermo had pouted at Graydon last night in bed, sulking like a toddler about Henry’s preference for the organ grinder over the monkey. ‘He’s never once asked my opinion on anything. Not the plans for the master suite, not the Venetian finishes, not the fabrics. Nothing! It’s like he thinks I’m your lackey.’ He gazed down sullenly at his taut, dancer’s abs, his huge cock lying limp and slug-like between his legs, sulking like its owner.

  ‘Well, you are,’ Graydon shot back nastily. He’d had enough of tiptoeing around Guillermo’s ego. He had the damn job, didn’t he? ‘Like it or not, I’m the boss. Clients like to deal with the boss. It makes them feel they’re getting what they paid for. If you can’t handle that, you’re in the wrong job, sweetheart.’

  An architect had already drawn up plans for the structural restoration of the castle, but Graydon had made it a condition that he and his team would run the entire project, from foundations to flower arrangements. As project manager, Guillermo would be working eighteen-hour days and getting his perfectly manicured hands seriously dirty. The fact that he was already complaining about the client, not to mention contributing nothing to this crucial first week of site meetings, did not bode well.

  ‘I’m going up to town for a few days,’ Graydon informed him curtly. ‘Little Miss Wonder-Tits is off on a job, so you’ll have Handsome Henry all to yourself. See if you can convince him you’re more than just a pretty face.’ Grabbing Guillermo’s hand, Graydon placed it firmly on his cock. ‘And see if you can convince me that I haven’t made a big mistake in trusting you with this.’

  In fairness to Guillermo, the sex was still good. But Graydon was tiring of the attitude.

  Throwing his case down on the bed, Graydon ordered himself a double espresso with cantuccini from room service – that was something else that sucked in the countryside. Coffee. Henry Saxton Brae drank Tesco instant. If there were ever any question about his sexuality, that cleared it right up. Idly checking his messages, Graydon ignored the one from his accountant, noted three from Flora, pleading to be allowed to leave Nantucket, and one from a prospective client, a Russian oligarch with a positively palatial house in London, opposite Hyde Park. He stopped abruptly at one from World Of Interiors.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr James. My name is Carly di Angelo. We’re doing a cover piece for our September issue on the world’s most beautiful city apartments. We were wondering, would Flora Fitzwilliam be prepared to talk to us about West Fifty-Sixth Street? I’ve tried contacting her directly but can’t seem to get through. I understand she’s on an island somewhere … ’

  Graydon rang back instantly.

  ‘Miss di Angelo? Graydon James. Yes, I’m afraid Flora’s not available at present. But it just so happens I’m in London and I’d be very happy to talk to you about our work at West Fifty-Sixth. Perhaps you weren’t aware, but I actually lead the design team myself?’

  He hung up, purring with pleasure.

  Graydon hadn’t done a stitch of the work on Luca Gianotti’s stunning Manhattan penthouse apartment. It had all been Flora, from start to finish, and the baseball legend had been ecstatic with the results. But the project had been commissioned under the GJD – Graydon James Designs – brand. As far as Graydon was concerned, that made West Fifty-Sixth Street his. Just as Hanborough would be his, and Lisa Kent’s Siasconset folly, and anything else that his staff worked on.

  If Flora, or Guillermo, or any of the ingrates didn’t like it, they could spend the next thirty years building their own fucking empires. None of them would ever have amounted to anything without the great Graydon James.

  Graydon glanced at his diamond-encrusted, special-edition Cartier Roadster, an accessory so dazzlingly flamboyant it might make a rap mogul think twice. He was meeting the lovely Miss di Angelo at The Wolseley in two hours. Just enough time for housekeeping to press his shirt while he popped to the spa for a mini-manicure.

  God, it was good to be back in civilization.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Henry Saxton Brae was in a foul mood.

  First, the stupid little girl from the wine bar whose WhatsApp had almost caused him serious problems with Eva had refused to go quietly and was threatening to sell details of her ‘affair’ with Henry to the Daily Mirror. (Actually a few nights of drunken, broom-cupboard shagging that had finished months ago.)

  ‘Go ahead,’ Henry told her scathingly. ‘Only plebs read the Mirror. No one I know will have the faintest idea you even exist.’

  But in the end he’d been forced to drive down to London and try to reason with her (Henry’s lawyer having pointed out patiently that it wasn’t, in fact, a crime to publish things that were true, and that no court in the land would grant Henry an injunction).

  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-d
eath 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.’