“Hello?”
He went through to the kitchen. Empty. He ran upstairs, but his father’s study was equally empty.
“Hello?” he called down the upper gallery. “Mrs B? Anybody home?”
No oneanswered.
He took his luggage over to his room. The afternoon sun streamed through the glass, and the room felt like an oven. George lifted the sash window open to let in the cool breeze, then the window on the other wall to create a draught. Ah, so that’s where theyall were.
Everyone was gathered round the water-lily pool under one of the willows. Millie looked beautiful, even from a distance, in a white dress. Like a bride-to-be. His lips parted in a wide smile. Everyone seemed to be standing in a circle around her and someone else.
His father.
George was temporarily distracted from looking at Millie by the sight of his father standing.On hisown legs.
The phone rang, Rob Matthews again. George was about to reject it, but Rob must have something important to be so persistent.
“Hello?” George put the phone to his ear, his eyes on the garden. His father seemed to be making a speech ofsome kind.
“Rob? What is it?” He was impatient to go into the garden and join them. Then Rob’s words sank in, and George gave his full attention to the call. “What?”
“Exactly. I’ve been trying to reach you for two days,”Rob said.
“I was in Belgium.” He’d finished his work in Brussels then took a day to go to Antwerp. A special trip. For Millie.
“I sent you three emails. I’m afraid I was powerless to stopthe deal.”
If Rob was wrong, George was going to fire him. “You have tostop it.”
“The headland and the cottage don’t fall into the historic Du Montfort estate. It isn’t bound by the terms of the trust.”
“Of course they’re not in the Du Montfort estate. It was my mother’s property left to her by her father.” George reached for his briefcase and found his iPad and searched his emails. Anything from Rob Matthews, like all island business, was filtered into a separate folder, and George checked it once a week. He propped the iPad on the large blackwood chest of drawers and turned it on.
“But unless your mother left instructions in her will, the property would have passed to her next of kin, your father. Believe me, I spent the last forty-eight hours looking for a legal impediment, but there was none. He cansell it.”
Sell it?
“—or he can transfer ownership.”
“He can’tdo that.”
This was the least amusing mix-up in the history of—
“I am afraid he can, and he has. The deeds came through this morning, and I have sent them to your father. He was very insistent the thing be done very quickly. I tried to make him delay until you could be reached, but—” Rob sighed heavily. “Well, you know your father. I’m afraid he wouldn’t listen to me.”
George’s disbelief gave way to anger. “It isn’t histo give.”
The long list of unread emails scrolled down the screen, but he was too impatient. Rob’s voice took on the tone he used whenever he delivered bad news. “Your only option is to find the new owners and buy it back, then it will be yours and—”
“Who?”
Rob must have been rifling through files. “He gave the property to a, just a sec, to a—”
“To a what?” George wished Rob were here so he could shake the information out of him. “Who’d he give it to?”
“A lady,” Rob finally said. “Emeline JosephineSummers.”
Through the window, George saw his father hold up a glass of Champagne, with one hand; his other arm was around Millie’s shoulders. Their heads came close together. George couldn’t tell what they were doing, the angle was wrong, but it lasted a long minute. When they pulled apart, Millie’s face was red, and she had a big smile. Everyone raised their glasses and drank. The sounds of cheers and laughter reached him across the long garden.
