“Asking your family for help isbig.”
“They’re still horrible people.”
“Agreed. That lunch was the longest two hours of my life.”
“The point is,” Petey said, “I would do anything for you too.”
“I know.”
I looked into Petey’s eyes.
“I love you,” I said. “And I will be your liege man of life and limb, and I promise to serve you faithfully, with worldly honour.”
Petey’s grin lit up his whole face.
“I love you, too, my lord,” he said, pecking me on the lips. “So we’re clear, that is still incredibly cringey.”
I tapped him on the butt. “Come on, get dressed, get your camera. We’ve got a hundred and twenty-four days to save the estate.”
Chapter 57
Petey
Bang!The Wetherby’s auctioneer bought his gavel down on the sale of another piece of Buckford’s horrendous art collection.
“Sold to the lady in the pink hat for eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”
The Great Hall was full to bursting with collectors, media, and theSaving the Love Manorfilm crew. There was real excitement about the auction—and not only in the room. Thanks to a little marketing push from Jonty, Zoë, Ellie, Armando, and the otherLove Manorinfluencers, the Buckford art auction had captured global attention. A bank of phones had been installed along one wall to accommodate overseas bidders. The auction was going to be the final episode of season one ofSaving the Love Manor—and it was the biggest episode we’d recorded since the one featuring Sunny and Ludo’s wedding several weeks earlier (and, thanks to Sunny’s mum, that one had BAFTA written all over it). I’d been running around barking directions at my team through my headset but circled back to where William was sitting with his mum, his Aunty Karma, and Gran. They were all wearing hats decorated in acorns. For luck,apparently. It was good TV—if Indira could convince one of the channels to buy it.
“How are we going?” I asked.
“Not good,” William said, eyes full of concern. I reached for his hand, and he grabbed mine, putting it to his mouth and kissing it.
Gran looked up from her notepad, where she was keeping tally of the numbers.
“We’ve raised eight point five million quid so far,” she said. “Which is a lot of carrots, to be fair.”
She was right. It was wild to be throwing around these kinds of numbers so casually, let alone to be worried they weren’t nearly enough. The house was a money pit, with a long list of essential repairs. The target we needed to raise had been shifting northwards constantly, with the accountant revealing (on camera, obviously) the final amount we needed to gross was £14.6 million. Ten per cent of anything raised today went to Wetherby’s Auction House, and twenty per cent would go in capital gains tax. We needed £4.3 million to cover the original tax bill, £130,000 to cover the interest, and the rest to fund repairs and William’s plans for the estate, including buying the rights toThe Love Manor. But the trouble with selling the art was, much like selling the village, we could only do it once. This auction was our first and last hope. Everything depended on it.
“Next, a beautiful buckskin mare by George Stubbs,” the auctioneer announced. “Where shall we start the bidding? Do I have any takers at three hundred thousand?”
“How many pictures left?” I asked
Bunny leant over to whisper in my ear. “The Stubbs, the two Reynoldses, and the Holbein,” she said.
“What will be will be,” Karma said. Which wasn’t exactly encouraging.
I squatted down beside William. He turned to look at me. “Whatever happens, we will make this work,” I said. “You and me. Together.”
William nodded. “We’re a team.” He squeezed my hand.
“I need to get back to it,” I said—conscious a camera was trained on William and our family to capture their every reaction. I slipped back into the shadows, like a good producer, to watch from a bank of monitors.
The Stubbs went for £720,000.
The first Reynolds went for £610,000. The second for £820,000.
On the monitor, I could see William looking agitated as the bidding began on the final painting— the creepy Holbein of Queen Elizabeth the Undead. He was biting his thumbnail, his hands shaking, his knees bouncing. Bunny put her arm around his shoulder. I wanted to be there beside him, but I had a job to do. Everything rested on this painting. When the gavel fell, it had sold for £2.2 million. The air left my lungs. That only took us to £12.85 million—almost £2 million short of our goal. My eyes were glued to William on the monitor. He looked devastated. I knew how he felt.
