He handed the iPad back to Pierre. “I’ve asked Persephone here to look into the history of the island. Not recent history, but folk tradition remnants of its ancient history. We have various ruins that date back to the Middle Ages. Why don’t you work together and see if you can collect enough for an article with pictures? Something to make it come alive.”
A smile broke out on Gabriel’s face and his eyes unfocused as if he were imagining something.
“You’ll be adequately compensated for the extra work,” Du Montfort added.
Gabriel blinked and turned back to him. “No need. This sounds like an incredible project. I’d be delighted to do it.”
“Good. Start with Margo’s Arch this morning.”
Gabriel stood up, as if he couldn’t wait to start. “I’ll do my very best, Mr Du Montfort. We can go as soon as…” He gave Pierre a questioning look.
“Off you go, young man.” Lord M waved him away. “I’ll only need a few minutes with Persephone alone.”
“Good. I’ll meet you down in the kitchen when you’re ready,” he told Pierre as he left the study.
Pierre waited for him to leave. “What am I supposed to find at Margo’s Arch?” As far as she remembered it was just an old stone arch in the middle of the wood.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked you to look into it. I only know there is more to that place than meets the eye. Find out and make it into an interesting article.”
“You want me towriteit?” She stared at him open mouthed. He’d only said collect information before, no mention of actually writing.
“What’s wrong with you, girl? Did you never write papers for your college degree, or do they teach in emojis these days?”
“Yes, but… “
“Get in touch with National Geographic,” he said. “BBC History, Discover, andHistoire Vivante.”
“But, Lord M, these are respected magazines.”
“Lord?” He warned her with his eyes.
“They publish articles for academics,” she went on, refusing to be side-tracked. “They’re written by experts.”
“And who is an expert on our little forgotten island?”
Not her! She was good at funny one-liners and silly poems for greeting cards. “Well…you could invite someone.” She thought of the many celebrities invited to George and Millie’s wedding. Surely some of them could recommend famous journalists or…or…
“Girl. You can’t work for me forever and you have far more brains than answering my letters demands.”
Her heart hammered inside her chest. “Are you unhappy with me or with my work?”
“Unhappy with you?” His blue eyes softened on her. “No, my dear Persephone, you are one of the very few things that bring me pleasure. But your work.” He turned his face to glance out of the window.
Pierre knew him too well to be fooled; he wasn’t distracted by the shapes of clouds piling up above East Hill. That he needed to look away from her and the sigh he tried to suppress made it clear that he dreaded what he had to say.
“My dear, I want you to help me make this wedding a grand affair.”
“Grander than a wedding breakfast for two thousand people?” She sat down next to him.
He rubbed a hand over his forehead and through his white hair. Not for the first time, she saw the resemblance to his handsome son. Lord M must have been quite the lady-killer in his youth. If the rumours were true, he had charmed his way into the hearts of hundreds of women.
“I only have one son,” he finally said. “And until recently, he didn’t even talk to me.”
Pierre remembered a little of this. When she first started working here, George had lived in London and everyone in the house held their breath whenever he came to visit. He and his father had had a terrible relationship, and the arguments between them were legendary.
“I don’t wantanothersociety wedding. These days you only need to sleep with a footballer or a singer to become famous yourself and splash your wedding pictures all over the news.” He waved a hand over the pile of papers on his side table. “This will be a different kind of grand wedding. I want something worthy of George and Millie, worthy of my ancestors, and of this little island. Perhaps it will stop the new generation from leaving to find work elsewhere. I don’t want La Canette to empty and lose its place in history.” He turned slightly to look out of the window again, the landscape, the hill, the forest, and the sea beyond.
“We have been forgotten.” He turned back to her, and his voice was sad. “No one knows anything about La Canette, and if they did, it’s as the island where playboy aristocrats came with their lovers to hide from the press. Our history has been lost. No one ever wrote about us, so the facts are all fragmented and buried in books about other things, an anecdote here, a reference there. You need to unearth them and stitch them together into a meaningful story.” His voice roughened with feeling. “I want to give us our place in history.”
