Тилли Бэгшоу – The Bachelor: Racy, pacy and very funny! (страница 15)

‘There’s no such thing,’ Henry said dismissively. ‘Americans don’t understand about class. And who’s this other bod you’ve asked?’ he added, before Eva could object to this last remark. ‘The random dog-walker?’

‘He’s a writer. His name’s Barney, and he’s also nice.’

‘How do you know?’ Henry asked reasonably. ‘You’ve only met him once.’

‘Twice,’ Eva corrected him. ‘I ran into him again the day before yesterday. So tonight will make three times. We need to meet some new people, darling.’ Walking up behind him, she ran a hand lovingly over Henry’s bottom.

‘I don’t see why,’ said Henry, rinsing off his face. Splashing on some aftershave, he started to get dressed.

He wasn’t thrilled about spending an evening with Graydon James’s number two and some random Paddy whose only claim to fame was that he obviously fancied Eva. But the real fly in tonight’s ointment was the fact that George Savile and her deathly dull husband Robert were coming. Evidently Henry had invited them months ago, to show off Hanborough, and forgotten all about it. But after his recent relapse, the thought of having Georgina – loose-lipped and drunk – under his roof and at the same table as Eva was enough to make him want to break out in hives.

As far as Henry was concerned, this evening couldn’t end soon enough.

‘Good to see you, mate.’ Richard Smart handed Henry an embarrassingly cheap bottle of wine as he stood in front of Hanborough’s grand portcullis. ‘Shame about this place, though. Bit of a shithole, isn’t it? Did you realize that bit’s actually falling down?’

He gestured behind him to the ruined northern tower and battlements.

Henry grinned. He loved Richard. Other than gaining a few inches in height, and a seriously fun and amazing wife, Lucy, he hadn’t changed at all since Henry first met him at pre-prep school when they were both five years old. He had the same cheeky smile, the same sandy blond hair that managed to look permanently dirty and unbrushed, no matter what he did to it, the same puerile but undeniably funny sense of humour. As a country GP, with a modest inheritance from his oil-executive father, Richard was comfortably off, but he’d never come close to the sort of fame and success that Henry had enjoyed. Not that he cared. Richard Smart didn’t have an envious bone in his body. In fact it was Henry who sometimes begrudged Richard his perpetually sunny nature. As Lucy put it, ‘If Rich got any more optimistic, he’d have to be sectioned.’

‘You’re late,’ said Henry.

‘Naturally,’ said Richard. ‘That’s how you know it’s us and not aliens who’ve stolen our bodies.’

‘Archie threw up,’ Lucy added helpfully over his shoulder.

Archie was either one of their sons or one of their dogs. Henry couldn’t keep up with the Smart menagerie. Every time you turned around some new yet-to-be-domesticated creature seemed to have joined the household.

‘Well, thank God you’re here,’ said Henry. ‘It’s like the house of bloody horrors in there.’

Richard leaned forward to hug him, but Henry assumed a look of mock disgust. ‘Not you, you big pleb. No one’s pleased to see you. It’s your wife I’m interested in. You don’t think anyone would ask you to dinner if it weren’t for Lucy, do you?’

‘Probably not,’ Richard admitted, watching impassively as Henry scooped Lucy up into his arms and made a big show of kissing her while she laughingly told him to get lost. In cut-off jeans and a slightly stained Madonna T-shirt, Lucy Smart had taken the evening’s casual dress code to its limits, but she still managed to look lovely, exuding warmth and mischief like a naughty schoolgirl. With her short, tomboyish haircut and long, slightly off-kilter nose, Lucy was sexy rather than pretty. But she had the sort of confidence that made both men and women love her. Henry had also always got the impression that Lucy was seriously highly sexed, although Richard had never said so, and that was one question even Henry didn’t have the balls to ask.

Putting Lucy down, he read the label on Richard’s wine. Then he led the two of them into the castle, holding the bottle at arm’s length and dropping it into the moat with a satisfying plop on the way, without breaking stride.

‘Oi!’ complained Richard. ‘That was Tesco Finest!’

‘Exactly,’ drawled Henry. ‘I love you, Rich, but I can’t let you poison us. Not all of us anyway.’

Leading them into the kitchen – they still didn’t have a table large enough for the formal banqueting hall, and Eva preferred kitchen suppers anyway – Henry made the introductions.

‘Everyone, this is Lucy Smart and some guy she took pity on.’

Richard walked around the table, smiling and shaking hands with everyone.

Henry went on, ’This is Barney Griffith, a friend of Eva’s. And Flora, who’s taking over the restoration work at Hanborough.’

Christ, thought Richard, looking at Flora’s impressive assets squeezed into a figure-hugging dark green shift dress. What happened to the gay guy? Eva had better watch her back there.

‘You know my brother and his wife, Kate?’ Henry went on.

‘How nice to see you again,’ Kate said regally, offering her hand to Lucy Smart like a duchess awaiting a kiss of submission.

‘Hi!’ Lucy smiled, ignoring the hand and hugging her, an experience Kate appeared to enjoy about as much as having lemon juice squirted into her eye.

Henry looked with irritation at the two remaining empty chairs.

‘We’re still waiting for the Saviles.’

Richard Smart rolled his eyes. ‘George is coming?’

‘Sadly,’ muttered Henry.

Richard knew Henry’s business partner, Georgina Savile, of old, and had always disliked her. At school, girls like Georgina – the ones who were too pretty to bother making an effort – had always made a beeline for Henry, looking through Richard as if he didn’t exist. George’s husband Robert was all right, but a crashing bore, always banging on about his latest case, which usually involved tax or shipping and was never a nice juicy celebrity divorce, or a murder, or something you might actually want to talk about at a dinner party. Unchivalrously, Richard took the seat next to Flora’s, leaving Lucy beside the Saviles’ empty chairs.

‘Hello.’ Richard grinned at Flora. ‘You are absolutely bloody gorgeous.’

Flora laughed loudly. She’d forgotten how direct English men could be.

‘Er … thank you?’

‘Richard Smart. You can trust me, I’m a doctor.’

‘Flora Fitzwilliam.’

They shook hands. ‘So where are you from, Flora Fitzwilliam? And what are you doing here? I detect an American accent.’

‘How do you do it, Holmes?’ Lucy teased him from across the table.

‘I’m from New York,’ said Flora. ‘Well, I live in New York. With my fiancé,’ she heard herself blurting, unnecessarily.

‘Git,’ said Richard. ‘I hate him already.’

‘Leave the poor girl alone, Rich,’ said Lucy, adding to Flora, ‘If he annoys you, just hit him.’

‘Let’s eat,’ said Henry, leaning over and helping himself to a large scoop of Jansson’s Temptation, a delicious Swedish dish of potato and onion with cream and anchovies that was one of Eva’s specialities.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for Robert and George?’ asked Eva.

‘Definitely not,’ said Henry, kissing her on the mouth. (Rather too ostentatiously in Barney Griffith’s opinion, although nobody else seemed to mind.) ‘If they’re rude enough to show up late, we can be rude enough to start without them. Besides, I’m starving.’

Christ, he’s arrogant, thought Barney. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but there was a vibe about Henry Saxton Brae that he didn’t like one little bit. The cut-glass accent didn’t help. But it was more than that. Something to do with the possessiveness of that kiss, as if Eva were a car or a diamond necklace, a trophy to be paraded. There was just a certain assumption, an entitlement to all of Henry’s gestures, looks and words that spoke of a deeply ingrained sense of superiority. He didn’t seem like Eva’s type at all.

Still, it was all good stuff for the novel, Barney thought, knocking back his second glass of better-than-decent claret: dinner in a castle, Henry being dastardly, Eva being good and wholesome and bewitching, an exquisite but fragile glass doll.

Barney had been astonished last week when Eva Gunnarson had tracked down his cottage, knocked on the door and invited him to dinner. (Why did that sort of thing – random dinner invitations from supermodels – never happen when other people were around? Like his ex-girlfriend Maud, for example?) So astonished that he almost said no, on some sort of weird, self-defeating autopilot. The thing was, Barney barely knew Eva. They’d bumped into each other once or twice walking the dogs, and somehow he found she was wonderfully easy to talk to, but that was it. Astonishing as it seemed, this stunning girl was clearly lonely.

She needs a friend, Barney told himself. And it wasn’t as if he had so many better things to do on a Saturday night.

In any case, he was delighted he’d got over himself and agreed to come, as it turned out he wasn’t the only singleton invited. Eva, God bless her, had sat him next to the new interior designer for Hanborough, an absolute cracker of a girl and very much Barney’s type: petite, blonde, curvy, and with the sort of boobs that frankly made a man happy to be alive. She was American (nobody’s perfect), but so far at least she seemed to have a very English sense of humour, not to mention a wonderfully unexpected, raucous laugh that made her sound like a French truck driver.