minutes to impress me.’
Arrogant dick! thought Flora. You’d need a lot more than thirty minutes to impress me, asshole. But she reminded herself that she was here for Hanborough, not its spoiled prick of an owner.
‘And a few ground rules,’ Henry went on. ‘If you get the job, you’ll be working for me, not with me. This isn’t a fucking commune.’
With a heroic effort, Flora managed to keep her face neutral.
‘And I don’t want you living on site. Under any circumstances. Not after what happened last time.’
This was too much. Flora flushed scarlet.
‘If you’re suggesting I’m a thief, Mr Saxton Brae, then I’m sorry but I’m afraid I have no further interest in this position.’
‘Of course I’m not suggesting that,’ said Henry. He’d noticed she was shaking. He’d obviously hit a nerve, although he wasn’t sure why, exactly. ‘I simply meant that Eva and I value our privacy.’
‘As do I,’ Flora said crisply. ‘That won’t be a problem.’
Flora’s father had been a thief. Well, a fraudster. But it amounted to the same thing. She’d spent most of her teenage years suffering for his crimes; tainted, distrusted, guilty by association. She would never let that happen again. Certainly not because of a low-life, pilfering scumbag like Guillermo. Nor would she condescend to be judged by the likes of a snob like Henry Saxton Brae.
‘Good,’ Henry said briskly, regaining control of the conversation. ‘We’re on the same page, then. Follow me, please. And if you could try not to ruin any more of my rugs …’
The next three days were a complete whirlwind, so much so that Flora completely forgot to call Mason.
‘You’re still alive, then?’ he quipped, when she finally answered his call on Wednesday morning. Flora was standing in her ‘new’ home, actually a fifteenth-century cottage in the tiny hamlet of Lower Hanborough, surrounded by a sea of John Lewis boxes. ‘I was starting to worry your plane had gone down in the Bermuda triangle or something.’
‘Sorry. I should have called,’ said Flora, distractedly trying to unpack a desperately needed coffee machine from its Fort Knox-like packaging. ‘I can’t tell you how insane things have been since I got here.’
She briefly filled Mason in on Henry Saxton Brae’s arrogance and rudeness, Graydon’s disappearing act, and the whirlwind of winning the job, meeting contractors, finding and moving in to Peony Cottage and trying to come up with an initial design plan, all within the space of thirty-six hours.
‘He sounds like a total douche,’ said Mason, after Flora told him about Henry’s ‘you work for me, not with me’ line.
‘He is, unfortunately,’ Flora agreed. ‘But you know what they say. Every douche has a silver lining. In this case it’s Hanborough. I mean the castle is just … beyond. And the valley and the village and this cottage … Oh my God, Mason, you would die if you saw it. It’s like a little doll’s house with all these beams you have to duck under and creaky stairs with original boards and a cute little garden that looks as if it was planted by Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. You would love it.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’ Mason laughed. ‘I’d spend the whole time whacking my head on the ceiling and pining for ESPN. But I can hear how much you love it. I’m happy for you, Flora.’
He means it, thought Flora. She could hear the smile in his voice, along with the lapping Caribbean waves in the background. He’s so kind and understanding. I really am the luckiest girl on earth.
‘Have you thought any more about what we talked about?’ asked Mason.
‘What’s that?’
‘Moving the wedding forward?’
‘Oh!’ Flora put down the half-opened coffee machine and frowned. ‘Well, yes. Sort of. I mean, I’d like to. But it’s just, you know, logistics. I’m here. You’re there. Christmas is really soon.’
‘We’ll get a wedding planner. They can do logistics. You just show up and marry me.’
Flora laughed. ‘I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, honey.’ She looked up at the kitchen clock, a heavy, turn-of-the-century wooden affair with a loud, ominous tick you could never quite turn into background noise. ‘Shit! I’m really sorry, Mason, but I have to go. I’ve got a meeting up at the castle in, like, ten minutes.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Mason, sounding distracted himself all of a sudden. Was that a woman’s voice Flora could hear in the background? ‘I have to go too. Henrietta’s organized a boat trip.’
‘That’s nice of her,’ said Flora through gritted teeth. Maybe she could fall overboard?
‘I know, isn’t it? We’re all headed to some private island for lunch. It should be great. I’ll call when I’m back in New York, OK, honey? Don’t work too hard.’
‘I won’t,’ said Flora. But Mason had already hung up.
She’d left Peony Cottage in a fluster, feeling anxious and not a little depressed about the thought of Henrietta Bitch Branston whisking her fiancé off to some fancy island for a romantic picnic. But as soon as Flora crested the hill at the top of Hanborough’s long, tree-lined drive, her worries floated away like seeds on the wind.
It was as if the castle exerted some strange kind of magic over her; some heady, hypnotic pull. Perhaps the Normans had known something Flora didn’t when they positioned it here? She wasn’t a big believer in mysticism, energy lines and feng shui and all that nonsense. But there was no question that simply being at Hanborough promoted a deep sense of wellbeing. It made Flora feel calm and content, the architectural equivalent of smoking a really mellow joint.
Or perhaps, more prosaically, she felt relaxed because it was a glorious June day, Henry was away until tomorrow morning, and he’d taken his secretary, the sweet Mrs French, with him. That meant Flora could have her meetings in peace – two contractors were preparing their bids this morning. After that, Flora was free to roam the castle and grounds alone, letting her creativity flow. The prospect made her feel excited, like a teenager on her first, unchaperoned date.
The contractor meetings were mercifully brief. The first guy, a leering middle-aged wide boy named Brian Hunter, was a definite no. Having first asked Flora to ‘fetch her boss’, he then expressed frank amazement that Flora was in charge, and proceeded to patronize her for the next twenty minutes, taking only short breaks from comments like, ‘You leave that to me, love. I’m the expert’ or, ‘With respect, darling, you’re not an architect, are you?’ to drool at Flora’s tits. (It was warm today, and Flora had made the mistake of wearing a lowish-cut army-green tank top and Bermuda shorts. On another woman these would have looked unremarkable, but on Flora’s pneumatically pint-sized figure, they were more temptation than Brian Hunter could bear.)
The second man, Tony Graham, was better. Older and a bit of a stickler for detail (with his monotone, accountant’s voice, it was fair to say Tony wasn’t going to bowl anybody over with his charisma), he was also professional and thorough. Equally importantly, he was prepared to follow directions. A lot of contractors thought they knew better than the architects or designers, but Graham seemed content to
