“Not that it’s not lovely to see you, Mum, but what are you doing here?”
“I thought, seeing as Petey’s clearly staying?—”
“And how might you know about that?” William said.
“The great goddess works in mysterious ways,” she said. “I thought we should talk about who’s doing what at the village fair. It’d be nice to split the workload three ways this year.”
After breakfast I went across to the Old Coach House, where all the production equipment was still set up. All the fixed cameras were still in place in the house too.
In the Old Coach House, I found my fellow producers, Thandiwe and Haruto, freshly arrived from the Travelodge and already beavering away at their computers, sorting the footage we’d collected. We would spend the day working out narratives and sequences. Once we had those, we would send the instructions to our team of editors, who were working remotely from their living rooms, basements, crack dens, and so on.
At the end of the day, I returned to the folly to find William sitting at his desk in a white business shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, face lit by the screen of a laptop. I almost did a double take.
“Is that new?”
This whole vision was new. Who was this guy?
“I’ve been making some investments,” he said. “I had a meeting with the new accountant today. And the old one. Seemed only right to sack him face to face. But the new one, well, she hit me with some real talk. So it’s down to business, I’m afraid.”
That made me smile. I walked around the desk and sat on the edge of it, winding my arm around William’s head and bringing my lips to his. His body felt so good against mine. I wanted him to pull me down onto the desk and swing his leg up over me, to feel the weight of him pressing down into my body. He looked so sexy in shirtsleeves. The cut was struggling to contain his chest. I ran a hand down the fabric and circled his nipple playfully.
“And how was your day?” he asked.
“I’ve had enough of looking at a screen for one day.”
“Me too.” William closed his laptop and stood. “Are you hungry?”
I was, but not for food.
I put on a shirt, at William’s insistence, and we ate dinner in the dining room, at Bramley’s insistence. There were candles and three courses and Bramley had lit a fire in the fireplace. I realised the pair of them were putting on a show to impress me. I was being wooed. My God, I felt special.
Over dinner, William told me what his new accountant had to say. It was really none of my business, but I enjoyed that he trusted me enough to tell me. I held his hand across the corner of the table. William didn’t just need to find £4.3 million, he needed to find at least £12 million—and the target kept growing.The debt was accruing daily interest. He still had to pay tax on any money he raised, still had to fund the estate’s ongoing operating costs, had to find capital to pay for any investments and improvements that would help ensure the estate was profitable long into the future, and had to find enough to cover the insurance costs of his new revenue streams. The mountain he had to climb had almost tripled in height, yet William seemed determined to reach the summit. He seemed upbeat, ready to meet the challenge. That made me feel incredibly proud of him, and I told him so.
“Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and a tarte au citron,” William said, as we dug into Bramley’s delicious dessert with our spoons.
“Sorry?”
“What’s the link?”
“Oh!” I shovelled more dessert into my mouth to give myself thinking time.
“William Winters reporting there, on the proposed new statue to the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. And from a tart who left a deeply bitter aftertaste to one that’s so good you’ll want to stick your nob in it. Bramley’s in the kitchen next, with his lemon tart recipe.”
William guffawed, nearly choking on his pie. “That is such a talent. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as clever as you.”
He may as well have called me a good boy and scratched my belly. I don’t think I’d realised I had a praise kink until that moment, but there it was. I couldn’t get enough. As I sat there, tummy way too full, staring at the thin white cotton shirt struggling to contain William’s body, I wanted to climb him like a mountain lion.
Back at the folly, I was so horny I was scratching at my skin. When I came in from the bathroom in my briefs, William was still in his shirt and chinos, lying back on what was notionallymy bed, propped up on his hands. His shirt was stretched so tight over his chest, at any second the thread holding the buttons was going to lose its battle and they were going to fire across the room like bullets. I was probably going to lose an eye. The cut of his new beige chinos made his package look huge, like it was the centre of the room, like everything else had been designed around it, like it was a sodding chandelier. We were waiting for the kettle to boil on the gas ring, but I didn’t want tea. I wanted William.
I took a chance. He’d been wooing me all night, right? The lights were green this time, I was sure of it. I slid onto the bed, one knee either side of his thighs, feeling the heat of him between my legs. I crept up the bed towards him, my eyes never leaving his. I put my hand on his chest and pushed him down onto the bed. He did not resist. I leant over him; I kissed him. My hand found his buttons, and I undid his shirt.
“You look so sexy in this,” I said.
“Golly.”
I kissed his neck, his jaw, his collarbone. “Who knew dressed could be even sexier than undressed?”
“If that’s true,” he said, arching his back as I pulled his shirt tails free of his chinos, “why are you undressing me?”
