Swept off Her Feet

The Finishing Touches
The Little Lady Agency and the Prince
Little Lady, Big Apple The Little Lady Agency

Hester Browne’s novels are

“Funny and flirty.”—Glamour
•
“Entertaining, whip smart.” —Chicago
•
Sun-Times
•
“Funny and original.” —People
•
“Deliciously addictive.” —Cosmopolitan
•
“Endearing and empowering.” —Publishers
•
Weekly
•
“Hilarious.” —Redbook
•
“Effortlessly witty and utterly winning.” —The Washington Post

More praise for Hester Browne and her irresistible storytelling

“Hester Browne writes with such wit and polish. I love it.”

—Sophie Kinsella, #1 bestselling author of
Twenties Girl
and
Confessions of a Shopaholic

“A fun, hilarious novel. . . . Charming secondary characters and a breezy writing style knock this book out of the park.”

—Romantic Times
(4 stars)

“First-rate fun.”

—
Freshfiction.com

“Like a latter-day Jane Austen, the talented Hester Browne proves that nice girls can finish first.”

—Susan Wiggs,
New York Times
bestselling author

Swept Off Her Feet
is also available as an eBook

A
LSO BY
H
ESTER
B
ROWNE
The Little Lady Agency
Little Lady, Big Apple
The Little Lady Agency and the Prince
The Finishing Touches

Gallery Books
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Hester Browne

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition March 2011

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
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.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Browne, Hester.
Swept off her feet / by Hester Browne.—1st Gallery Books trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
1. Chick lit. I. Title.
PR6102.R695S84 2011
823’.92—dc22
2010030941

ISBN 978-1-4391-6884-4
ISBN 978-1-4391-6888-2 (ebook)

For the Flourish Walls reelers, belles and trotters,
with love and thanks

I fell in love with Scottish reeling a few years ago, and when I say fell, I mean,
fell
. Evie’s encounter with the log basket is based on my own undignified destruction of a similar basket during my first encounter with a truly masterful spinner. I don’t know why the Scots bothered with claymores when they could have easily spun the English right back over the border with one flick of their mighty wrists, taking out chunks of Hadrian’s Wall as they went.

Now, though—at last!—I have a proper place to apologize to the Charterhall Academy of Scottish Dance for the broken furniture, and to thank its long-suffering teachers for their wonderful hospitality. Kettlesheer Castle, the McAndrews, and the famous table are fictional, but the magic of reeling and turning and skimming across a roomful of kilts and bare arms at two a.m. is entirely real. Thank you so much for inviting me.

I’m constantly grateful to my agents, Lizzy Kremer and David Forrer, for their encouragement and jokes, and to my editor, Kara Cesare, and the team at Gallery Books, for their enthusiasm and patience. The writer is only one person in the Reel of the Romantic Novel, and I’m lucky to dance it with some wonderful people.

Everyone has a weakness. Some
people have a weakness for champagne cocktails. Or older men with French accents.

My weakness is old French champagne glasses. Preferably ones that have seen a bit of
après
-midnight action. Or English pub glasses with real Victorian air bubbles, or those 1950s Babycham glasses with the cute little faun.

Any kind of glasses, actually, they don’t have to match.

Old
sun
glasses too, come to think of it. Also, gloves (satin evening ones, especially), vintage wedding photos, fountain pens, trophies for long-forgotten tournaments, postcards …

Okay, fine.

My name is Evie Nicholson, and I am addicted to The Past.

“A child’s teddy bear, circa 1935.” Pause. “Missing one eye. And left arm.”

Max looked up from the printout the auctioneer had enclosed with the delivery, and fixed me with his best withering
gaze. It wasn’t the one he used to persuade rich Chelsea wives to buy chaise longues they didn’t strictly need. It was astonishing what Max could sell, simply by draping his lanky frame over it and flashing his Heathcliff eyes. Only now they were looking less
Come to bed, Cathy
and more
I’m going to burn down your house and do something unspeakable to your puppy
.

“Would you please explain why you bought a one-armed blind teddy, the stuff of pure childhood nightmares?” he inquired.

“He’s a Steiff, and he was going for a tenner,” I muttered, picking the bear out of the delivery box.

Up close, he was a bit . . .
mangy
. When I’d spotted him in a box in the salesroom, all I’d seen was his threadbare nose, the fur worn away by thousands of kisses from his sailor-suited owners. I’d seen T-strap shoes and nursery teas and nannies with starched aprons. This brave little bear had once had pride of place in a smart London nursery; I couldn’t stand seeing him waved around by some unfeeling porter, unwanted. He was worth
one
bid, surely?

“You paid a tenner,” repeated Max, “for something even the moths have moved out of?”

I tweaked the bear’s wonky limbs into an appealing hug. “Someone’s obviously loved him. He deserves a good retirement home.”

“Someone loved Adolf Hitler, but that doesn’t mean I’d be happy to fork out real money to sell him in my shop. With or without eyes.” Max shook the paper again, and it opened up to another three pages. He let out a strangled squeak of horror.

Three pages! I bit my lip, and propped the bear on a bookshelf. I didn’t remember buying quite so much. I’d gone in
there with my catalogue strictly marked up and sat on my hands for loads of amazing bargains.

“Honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks,” I said. “I’ll pay for some of those myself. I can always eBay what—”

Max’s hands flew up as if he were warding off evil spirits. “Don’t say
that
word in
this
shop!” he roared.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“Oh, God.” He hunched his narrow shoulders and closed his eyes, squeezing his hand over his forehead in theatrical despair. “We’re going to have to have The Talk again, Evie. Where shall I begin? With the fact that one man’s junk is nearly always
another man’s junk
?”

“But—”

“There is a difference between collecti
bles
, and dust collect
ors
,” he began with vicarlike relish. “To succeed in antiques, you’ve got to ignore the item and focus on the
person
you can sell it to. . . .”

I clamped my lips shut. This was a major bone of contention between Max and me, but for the purpose of filling in the ten minutes until my sister, Alice, galloped to my rescue, I decided to let him do his routine. Antiques for me were all about the lives they’d once been part of. I loved the whispers of the past they carried, the proof that those period films had once been real life. Max, on the other hand, was all about the money. He obsessed about the covert movement of valuables from one wealthy family to another like someone studying the Premiership football-team transfer market, but with Sheraton dining sets instead of soccer players.

His shop in Chelsea, where I worked and he flounced about, provided a small taxable income, most of which was snapped up by his ex-wife, Tessa, but Max’s real work was discreetly
acquiring treasures from the impoverished English aristocracy and finding new homes for them in Cheshire, New England, or the millionaires’ mansions on the outskirts of London. A bit like Robin Hood, except he was the only one who made any money, and I was the one who wore the tights.

“Your problem is that you only ever buy for
yourself
,” he droned on, “and you’re hardly the most discerning—”

“That’s not fair!” I protested. “I spotted some Chanel costume brooches for Mrs. Herriot-Scott. Big camellias, genuine, in an old biscuit tin—no one else bothered to check it.”

I didn’t add that
I’d
only opened it because I was a sucker for lockets concealing wartime sweethearts, and you only found those by trawling the depths of general house-clearance boxes. And biscuit tins.

Max ground to an abrupt halt at the mention of Mrs. Herriot-Scott, one of his favorite clients. We loved her, and her insatiable desire for expensive plastic.

“Ah, well, that’s different.” His black eyes glittered as he calculated the markup. “What about that Georgian card table Jassy de la Mara asked us to look at?”

I glanced at the door and surreptitiously checked my watch. Max was on the second page, when my bidding had got a bit . . . well, emotional.

“The card table wasn’t right. Reproduction. But I picked up some nice cranberry glass,” I said.

Max’s face was crumpling alarmingly as he read on.

“And I got some Weymss piggy banks,” I added, my voice rising. “For Valentine’s presents? It’s that time of year?”