‘What on earth has this Buffy done?’
‘She’s getting married!’
George was grinning. He thought this was funny! I glared at him
as I mentally counted to ten.
‘OK, look, I’m sure we can sort this out, Saffron,’ I said,
keeping my voice calm, ‘but not here. We’ll go back to my cottage, I’ll make you
a cup of tea, and it’ll all be fine.’
‘What c-cottage?’ sobbed Saffron.
‘The cottage where I
live
,’ I said
with emphasis, and Saffron lifted her head, momentarily distracted from whatever
crisis had been precipitated by the unknown Buffy.
‘I thought you said you were living at Whellerby Hall?’
‘I said I
worked
on the estate.’ I
drew a calming breath. ‘This is Lord Whellerby’s home and we’re intruding.’
‘Oh...really...no problem...’
‘Who’s Lord Whellerby?’ Saffron’s puzzled question broke over
Roly’s inarticulate stammer.
For answer, I turned her to face Roly, who shifted from foot to
foot and blushed painfully.
‘Oh, you should have told me!’ Saffron gazed at him, her eyes
still swimming with tears. ‘You’ve been so sweet to me, too.’
‘Pleasure,’ he muttered, embarrassed. ‘Please, call me
Roly...er...I mean...’ He lost himself in a morass of pleasantries.
I suppressed a sigh. This wasn’t how I had imagined my client!
But somehow I had to retrieve something from the situation. I hadn’t wanted to
meet him this way, but I would just have to make the best of it.
Tugging my jacket into place, I stepped forward and offered my
hand. ‘I’m so sorry about the misunderstanding, Lord Whellerby,’ I said briskly,
avoiding George’s amused gaze. ‘I’m Frith Taylor, the site engineer—and
Saffron’s sister, as you’ve obviously gathered.’
‘Er...delighted.’ Roly looked daunted by my formality, but he
shook my hand.
‘Thank you for looking after Saffron,’ I went on. ‘We’ll get
out of your way now.’
‘Oh, but there’s no n-need to go just y-yet,’ said Roly,
dismayed. ‘Stay and, er, have some coffee or something.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said firmly, ‘but we’ve imposed
enough. Come along, Saffron,’ I added to my sister, who was drawing shuddery
little breaths and wiping tears pitifully from her cheeks with the back of her
hand.
‘It’s starting to rain.’ Roly dug in his pocket and produced a
handkerchief, which he offered to Saffron, while my eyes flew to the window in
consternation.
Sure enough, the clouds I’d told Frank to watch out for had
grown into a threatening mass, and a sulky drizzle was already smearing the
panes of the elegant windows.
Roly didn’t care about my foundations. ‘You’ve been so upset,’
he told her. ‘Sit and have something warm to drink before you go out in the
cold,’ he said, ignoring the tray of coffee that they had been drinking before
George and I arrived.
Saffron took the handkerchief with a tremulous smile and dabbed
at her cheeks with it. ‘You’re so kind,’ she whispered, and Roly swelled with
pleasure.
Oh, please,
I thought, and caught
George’s eye. His expression was perfectly straight, but his blue eyes brimmed
with amusement.
‘I really don’t think you should go out just yet,’ Roly was
saying. ‘Now that your sister is here, you’ll feel better. I’m sure she won’t
mind staying a bit longer and perhaps we can all help you resolve your
problem.’
I opened my mouth to object to the delay, but George got in
first. ‘You may as well give in,’ he murmured in my ear as Roly led Saffron
tenderly back to the sofa. ‘Once Roly starts stringing together real sentences,
there’ll be no budging him.’
‘But the foundations—’
‘You want to keep your client happy, don’t you? I’ll organise
coffee and you see if you can find out why the diabolical Buffy’s marriage has
thrown her into disarray.’
So I found myself sitting on the sofa opposite my sister and my
client, keeping a fretful eye on the rain, while Saffron, tears miraculously
dried now that she had everyone fussing around her, lapped up Roly’s
admiration.
‘I’m
so
sorry to cause all this
trouble,’ she was saying, her eyes wide and green. I have green eyes too, as a
matter of fact, but mine are the ditchwater end of the spectrum while Saffron’s
are like the deep green of the Caribbean. Or so I’ve been told.
‘I can’t
tell
you how much better I
feel! I was so upset last night, I couldn’t sleep a wink. I couldn’t get hold of
Frith, and I really
needed
her, so in the end I just
had to come and find her myself. It was quite an adventure.’
I frowned. ‘How did you get here?’ I asked, trying to imagine
Saffron finding out about trains or looking at a map.
‘Burke drove me.’
I should have known. Only Saffron would think being driven up
the motorway in the back of luxurious limousine with tinted windows counted as
an adventure.
‘I had no idea it would be so
far
,’
Saffron said and Roly gazed at her admiringly.
‘You must be exhausted.’
‘Oh, I am, but now that I’m here that doesn’t matter.’ Bravely,
Saffron lifted her chin and managed a wobbly little smile.
Privately, I thought that my father’s chauffeur was likely to
be more tired than Saffron, but I knew better than to say so. I cast another
glance at the window. For now the heavy rain was holding off, but I really
needed to be on the site.
It was George who poured out the coffee when it arrived and
passed around the cups. Then he sprawled in the corner of the sofa, one arm
along the back, long legs stretched at an angle towards me. I perched at the
other end, pretending not to notice that if I leant back he would be able to
touch my shoulder. He’d hardly have to move at all to stroke my hair, or let his
fingers drift along my jaw.
My pulse kicked a little just at the thought of it.
Annoyed with myself, I inched further along until I was pressed
against the arm of the sofa. Why was I even thinking about George? I had more
important problems to deal with.
‘So, Saffron.’ I cleared my throat and set my cup and saucer on
the table between the two sofas. ‘What exactly is the problem with Buffy?’
‘She’s not going to be here for my wedding!’ said Saffron, eyes
glistening with remembered outrage. ‘She met this guy when she was skiing in
Aspen earlier this year, and she thought it was just, like, a holiday romance,
but yesterday he rang her and asked her to go back and marry him, and she’s
like, yes, I’m changing my life, so she’s going next week.’
Crushed by the unfairness of it all, Saffron subsided back into
the cushions, her beautiful mouth trembling.
‘What a shame,’ said Roly loyally and patted her hand.
I was irritatingly aware of George’s hand just inches away. He
was just sitting there, not doing anything but still making the air hum with an
energy that made my scalp shrink alarmingly and raised the hairs on the back of
my neck.
Not to mention making it almost impossible to concentrate.
‘Well, that’s OK, isn’t it?’ I had to feel my way cautiously.
This wasn’t quite how I had anticipated demonstrating my negotiating skills to
the client, but Roly was paying close attention and was so obviously smitten
with Saffron that I would have to be careful. ‘I mean, it’s quite romantic,
isn’t it?’
‘What about my wedding? How am I going to manage without my
chief bridesmaid?’
‘Can’t one of your other bridesmaids do it?’ The last time I
had been involved in exhaustive bridesmaid negotiations, Saffron had planned on
at least six.
‘There’s no one suitable.’
I was losing patience. ‘Being chief bridesmaid doesn’t call for
great management skills,’ I said. ‘It’s not exactly life and death stuff, is
it?’
A mistake. Saffron’s emerald eyes flashed and she bounced up
indignantly on the cushions. ‘Are you saying my wedding’s not important?’
‘Well, it’s not—’ A casual nudge against my knee by George’s
foot made me pause, and realise that I was going about this quite the wrong way.
‘I mean, of
course
it’s important for you,’ I
amended with a quick glance at Roly. ‘I just thought one of the other girls
would do as well.’
It turned out that I had
no idea
what was involved in planning a wedding. Saffron enumerated all the chief
bridesmaid’s duties, ticking them off on her fingers, until I was lost in
details of fittings and favours and rehearsal dinners.
‘And then, of course, there’s the hen party,’ said Saffron.
‘That’s nearly as important as the wedding itself. That’s your main job.’
‘Wait, hold on!
My
job?’ I
struggled forward on the sofa in consternation.
‘You’re the only one who can do it.’
‘Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no.’ I waved my hands frantically to
push the very idea away. ‘That’s a very bad idea.’
George, the beast, was shaking with laughter. I could feel it
reverberating along the sofa, and I glared at him.
‘But you’re my sister,’ said Saffron, hurt.
‘Saffron, we discussed this before, and we agreed I wouldn’t
fit in with everyone else.’
‘And you’re good at managing projects,’ Saffron went on as if I
hadn’t spoken. ‘It has to be you.’
I drew in a deep breath. I had to put a stop to this right
away. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said as firmly as I knew how. ‘I can’t drop everything to
run up and down to London, Saffron. I’ve got a visitor and conference centre to
build on schedule and on budget...’
I stopped, realising that I might as well have been speaking
Polish. It was doubtful if Saffron had ever come across the word ‘budget’
before.
‘The thing is, Hugh’s depending on me to see this project
through for him,’ I tried to explain. ‘I can’t let him down.’
‘But you can let
me
down!’
Suppressing a sigh, I tried a different tack. ‘You need a
bridesmaid who can really give you the attention you deserve,’ I said. ‘One of
your friends who lives in London and has the time to find you just the right
place for your party, and help you choose all the wedding details. You know I’m
no good at that kind of thing,’ I added with a cajoling smile, but Saffron
refused to be consoled.
‘You’re my sister.’ Saffron’s lower lip trembled tragically.
‘I’d think you’d
want
to be part of my big day.
There’s no one else I can rely on. Daddy’s always working, and I’ve never had a
mother.’
Saffron: barely a GCSE to her name, but a PhD in emotional
blackmail.
‘You’ve got Jax.’
‘He’s touring, and anyway he’s no good at wedding stuff.’ The
green eyes swam with tears. Wordlessly, Roly reached for her hand, and Saffron
permitted herself a little sob. ‘Couldn’t you at least organise the hen party?
Otherwise I won’t have one, and what sort of bride doesn’t have a party?’
I drew a breath and told myself to stay firm. ‘I would, but I
have this pesky thing called a job. I realise you may not have come across the
concept before,’ I added, although the irony was lost on Saffron, ‘but a job
involves turning up at a specific time and place and working in exchange for
money.’
‘Well, that’s not a problem. Daddy would pay you if you need
money.’
My expression tightened. ‘I’m not taking anything from him,’ I
said in a flat voice. ‘And anyway, it’s not about money. It’s about
responsibility. I’ve made a commitment to see this job through until Hugh is
better. We have a contract and a responsibility to our client—who is Lord
Whellerby here,’ I said, not that I expected that to mean much to Saffron.
It was too much to hope that my sister might realise what an
awkward situation she was putting me in and suddenly become rational.
Not that Roly was helping by patting Saffron’s hand
sympathetically, as if her bridesmaid crisis were more important than getting
his new conference centre built on time.
Saffron pouted. ‘I don’t see why you need a stupid job anyway.
If you’d only talk to Daddy, you could do whatever you liked. I don’t understand
why you’re both so stubborn about each other!’
‘My career
is
what I like,’ I said,
exasperated. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t understand
that
!’
‘Then what am I going to do?’ Saffron’s face crumpled. ‘Oh, I
can’t believe you’d be this mean to me!’
I rubbed my temples. I loved my sister, but sometimes she could
be exasperating.
‘I know the wedding is important to you, Saffron, but the
conference centre is important to Lord Whellerby,’ I said. ‘A lot of money and a
lot of jobs are depending on it, and the project has to come in on time.’
I threw an appealing look at Roly, who missed his cue
completely. ‘I’m sure a week or two late wouldn’t matter,’ he said, gazing
adoringly at Saffron, who was making a great play of biting her lip while the
tears trembled and sparkled bewitchingly on the ends of her lashes.
Helplessly, I turned without thinking to George. I don’t know
what my expression was like, but I must have seemed as if I was begging for
help.
‘I think it would matter to Hugh Morrison,’ he said. ‘It’s not
that long since his heart attack, and any delays would add a stress that he just
doesn’t need at the moment.’
‘Exactly,’ I said, with a grateful look, and Roly looked
chastened.
Sensing that she was losing her support, Saffron slumped back.
‘You don’t seem to realise that organising a wedding is stressful too,’ she
complained. ‘It’s one of the most stressful times of your life, and that’s why
you need the support of your family. But if this Hugh person is more important
to you than I am, I—’
George sat forward. ‘Perhaps I could make a suggestion?’
I immediately looked wary, Saffron hopeful. ‘What?’ she asked
tearfully.
‘You want Frith to organise a bridal party for you, but she
can’t spare the time to go to London, right?’ He waited for Saffron to nod,
while my brows drew together suspiciously. ‘So why not have the party here?’ he
said.