He said his goodbyes to Doris, and they left.
Outside Pierre checked her watch. “We can still make it to the church. There’s three hours of daylight left, but I’m not sure about lunch.”
Gabriel was standing in the middle of the cobblestone lane, looking at the small shopfronts. Mill Lane was narrow, so all the shops looked like dolls houses squeezed together. Almost absentmindedly, he unslung his bag and took out his camera. “We could stay here,” he said, still looking around. He didn’t take any pictures, but he seemed to need to hold the camera in his hand, as if it made him complete.
“The smell of freshly fried fish and chips.” — He nodded towards the village square at the bottom of the lane — “Has woken up my stomach, and now I’m too hungry to cycle anywhere.” Then he glanced back at her with a question in his eyes. “Shall we have lunch? You had some errands here, didn’t you?” he asked.
Really, he must be reading her mind.
“Well…” She hesitated. “I did want to check out the second-hand bookshop.” She pointed towards The Pages which had its door open.
“But there’s not enough time to visit the church and the booksh—”
“Never mind the church.” Gabriel had been scanning the row of shops opposite and did a double-take. “I really like old bookshops. Actually, I love old-fashioned villages like this.” A wistful expression had come into his face, and he was looking around like a hungry child looks at someone else’s birthday cake. “I’ll never see anything like this in California.”
“We could take the afternoon off and stay here.”
He gave her a gorgeous smile. One of those slow things that started on his lips, then deepened and widened across his face until it lit up his eyes, then came back down to his mouth and sparkled.
No wonder Doris had been won over so completely.
______
That night, Nicole was loud on the phone again.
“Of course, they are. He’s related to the Queen.”
If she meant Lord M, and who else could she be talking about, then she was wrong. Lord M had told her himself, in front of Pierre, that he was related to the Queen only in the same way that anyone was related to anyone else, six degrees of separation and all that.
“You should see the list of guests, bishops, diplomats, politicians, film stars, and royals.”
Pierre had been the one to compile the invitation list six months ago, the only royals were minor, and most of them had been invited because it was impolite not to. Apart from the Duke of Gloucester, everyone one else had sent their apologies.
As for film stars, Pierre couldn’t think who Nicole meant.
“My God, you should see the designers schmoozing me. Dior, Prada, Fendi, Jimmy Choo, you name them, they’ve been on the phone offering their services. But His Lordship wants something a little less ordinary, lessHello Magazine,if you know what I mean.”
Pierre blew out a long breath through pursed lips, she reached for her phone next to the pillow and swiped it to get into her music library. Classical music would be nice and soothing. She found a Mozart playlist and pushed her earbuds in and tried to go back to sleep.
Something woke her up.
Shouting.
“What? No, we can’t give up.” Nicole must be pacing up and down her room and had reached the window, because she came through clear as a bell. And really loud.
“Who has ten thousand dollars to throw away? Can’t he wait a couple of weeks? I’m selling my house, and I should have the money as soon as we complete.”
Where was Gabriel? No one could sleep though this noise. Unless he was in his little room on the 3rdfloor. Pierre wished she too were sleeping far away.
She reached under her pillow for her phone again. Mozart had long finished. How long was Nicole going to be on the phone?
“In which case, this had better be worth it. I want them to target the top zip codes. Silicon Valley, Malibu, Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, Manhattan, you know the market.” There was a brief pause. Then, “I will have the website updated tomorrow. I have a top photographer on it; we’ll have the images. I’m telling you, statues and coats of arms going back three hundred years. I’m not working with just any B-list aristocrat, they are an ancient family.”
Pierre pushed the earbuds in place and tapped on a Florence & the Machine album. Then, with the voices muffled again, she climbed out of bed, dragged her duvet off and carried it and a pillow over to the sofa in the other room.
Tomorrow, Nicole would find out they hadn’t taken any pictures of the church or the statues or any Du Montfort coats of arms. She was selling her house and throwing lots of money into this new business. Yet she, Pierre, had neglected Nicole’s request and wasted time on her own errands today. Couldn’t she have squeezed enough time to take Gabriel to the church if she’d really tried? If she hadn’t told him about Hedge, he wouldn’t have sacrificed his work in order to come with her to the village.
The sofa was suddenly not very comfortable. In her mind, a new card message started writing itself.
