George decided not to take the bait; instead he sat down on a stone bench opposite. The ground between them was paved with irregular flat stones. Thin grass and a scattering of tiny flowers grew between the stones like discardedconfetti.
He looked at Millie. “I’m surprised to see you here. Isn’t it difficult to wheel my father on the crazy paving?”
Before Millie could answer, however, his father said, “Have you met my lovely new assistant?”
“Forgive me, I should have said goodmorning.”
Millie looked up briefly. “Hello, again.” Then she turned to his father. “Yes, we met yesterday.”
For some reason, she seemed uncomfortable, as if lying. George’s reputation as a shrewd lawyer came, in part, from his ability to sense when people were hiding information. He watched her as she tried to look busy with inserting a bookmark between the pages and closingthe book.
His father was in a mischievous mood. “Isn’t she a far cry from the limp rag you hired for me three months ago?” He looked at her. “Don’t blush, girl, it’s the truth. When you first turned up here, O Lordy, you were as plain as the back of a kitchencupboard.”
Millie stood up and pretended to collect books and brush the back ofher skirt.
“Father, can we talk about business?” George placed his files on the bench beside him.
Millie looked grateful for the rescue. “I’ll just run inside and check if everything is ready.”
George’s eyes followed her as she set off towards the house. Her yellow skirt swayed and danced around her knees as she hurried across thewide lawn.
Back of a kitchen cupboard?He shook his head. Millie wasn’t model thin but rather what he thought of as gracefully curvy.He wasn’t pleased. The agency had assured him she was badly dressed, overweight, and unattractive.
“I know what you’re thinking, my boy.”
I seriously doubt it. George tore his eyes awayfrom her.
“It was an evil joke hiring someone who looked like she did, but I have the last laugh, haven’t I?” His father was smug. “You see, I’ve transformed her.”
And I plan to get to the bottom of this.George kept his thoughts to himself and opened the first lever-arch file. “This is all tenant accounts, conveyancing and overduerepairs.”
His father made a careless sweeping gesture with the back of his hand. “We have an agent to deal withall that.”
“Yes, Lockley has done his best and completed everything up to the point where your signature was needed.”
A moment passed in silence.
George hated to state the obvious, but his father remained deliberately obtuse. “And that’s where the process has ground to a halt.”
He waited for his father to respond, but the old man merely looked back at him as if it had nothing to dowith him.
“Father, you need to sign these.”
“You have a power of attorney; you can sign for me.”
“These areyouraffairs; you are the seigneur. I can’t run the island whe—”
Fast as a bullet, his father interrupted. “Icannot run the island. I am a frail old man, remember? That’s what you said in your long submission to the court when you tied up my estates and entailed everything in trust to stop me doing what I liked with my own money.” He paused for a long moment, but as soon as George opened his mouth to speak, his father continued. “Since you have taken charge of my house and the employment of my staff, you can jolly well take charge of the rest of myaffairs.”
George counted to ten, took a deep breath, and willed himself not to react to the emotionalblackmail.
Stick to business. He counted to ten again. “You cannot hold up urgent work for want of a simple signature. I have a job that takes up all my time in London. I can’t keep flitting back and forth every few months. It isn’t fair on the people here.”
“Indeed not. You must move here and take up the work you were born to do. I am retired. I want to hand over the seigneurship to you.”
They glared at each other, grey eyes to icy blue, both equally determined. He and his father understood each other perfectly. He knew what the old man was about to say.
“It’s your responsibility and your privilege to govern La Canette just as your family have done before you. You have played at being a corporate man in the city long enough. Time yougrew up.”
