Ooh, "ruthless, dangerous"... You"re trying to put me off him, Charlie?
This time I stayed quiet.
"Sorry, Trude. I just... well, I"ve reached a point in my life when I"m looking back and seeing where being a total a.r.s.e has got me. I"m seeing the one woman I"ve truly loved and, well, I don"t know what I"m trying to say. But goodness, Trudy: who"d have thought you"d drive me to stupidly expensive flowers and chasing you like this because I can"t shake you out of my thoughts. Not that I"d want to, of course."
Oh, Charlie.
"This has to stop, Charlie. You may have reached that point in your life, but, well, I haven"t. I"m sorry. You"re sweet. You"re a catch. You"re just not my catch."
Silence. A different kind of silence this time.
At least I"d managed to slap him down without mentioning Will this time.
"So... that"d be a "no" to dinner, then?" he said. Joking. That was good. Joking had to be good.
Maybe Will was a mind-reader after all. The next day he emailed me and that gave me a route into him, a safe means of communication. Introducing the idea of a book by email was the perfect way to keep things cool and professional.
Or at least that"s what I thought.
Dear Trudy Parsons-Editorial, So sorry not to have been in touch sooner, and just when I was redeeming myself in your eyes, I hope.
I could explain, but then you"d think that all I did was make excuses for myself. Suffice to say, my absence has been unavoidable, and there hasn"t been a moment of each day when I haven"t regretted it.
All of which is a very long-winded way of reaching my point, which is that I wanted to say how much I enjoyed our lunch the other day, and how much I appreciated your time and willingness to at least not consider me a complete a.r.s.e for my behaviour.
I would, of course, be keen to repeat such a lunch, if you wouldn"t consider that too dull a proposition?
Yours, inestimably, Will B-S So Charlie thinks Will is dangerous, a "bad lot" as he had put it. And me? What did I think of Will? Well, he was certainly an a.s.s or an "a.r.s.e" as they said it over here, which made him sound like even more of an a.s.s... and at the wedding I"d seen just how arrogant and over-bearing he could be. But Charlie was warning about a whole different order of badness. Unless it was just jealousy breaking through? Did he see Will as a rival?
Professional, Trudy. Keep it professional.
I"d been thinking about this since yesterday. I didn"t know exactly what Will did, with all his traveling and absences, but I"d picked up enough hints to believe it might be something interesting, something with a story behind it. Might it be a story worth publishing? I was really beginning to think that it might be.
Dear Will Bentinck-Stanley, Thank you for your correspondence. It means a lot to us here at Ellison and Coles. I would like to talk with you about your proposed book. Please make an appointment through my secretary, Ellie Waters.
Kind regards, T P-E.
I pressed "send" before I had time to catch myself and rethink. Would he laugh? Would he simply think I"d gone completely mad and confused him with someone who had actually sent a book proposal? I"d hoped to hit quirky and intriguing, but now I was nervous about how he might take it.
I lost myself in reading through the ma.n.u.script of the latest novel by a much-respected author who had been on the Ellison and Coles list for at least two decades, delivering a slim, and bound to be award-laden novel every two years, like clockwork. It was good, the prose was slick and the imagery quite breathtaking, but my head was somewhere else entirely.
Some time later a tap on my door broke through my concentration.
"Hi. It"s Ellie. There"s a man for you. A car. Are you free?"
"What?"
"A driver for the Honorable Will Bentinck-Stanley, he says."
The cheek!
I almost told Ellie to send him away. What kind of signal did it send out that I would just drop everything when summoned? I was no Eleanor, sworn to obey her man, and nor would I ever be.
I made him wait.
But after a few minutes my curiosity got the better of me and I went down to the front office where a guy in a black suit and a turban was waiting.
I"d been trying to contact Will, after all; I"d requested a meeting. Sure, his manners and presumptuousness sucked, but it was in my interests to see him. My professional interests.
I"ll see your sumptuous flowers and raise you the House of Lords.
He might as well have said that to Charlie.
So maybe my ex had upped his game with the sensitivity and expensive flowers, but this?
I lost track of the route as Will"s driver took short-cuts through a series of back streets somewhere near the Thames. When I saw Big Ben I started to get my bearings, and then we were sweeping through a security barrier, waved through by armed policemen who barely even glanced into the car.
We parked underground, and while I was still catching my breath, the driver was there at my door, holding it open, and saying, "Ma"am."
I decided there and then that I wasn"t going to allow Will to impress me. I was a grown woman. A professional woman. Let him play his game, but I would just stand back and observe coolly.
Maybe this was what Charlie was scared of: that Will would pull out all the stops just to get me into bed.
I stopped myself, finding it odd that I was even thinking like this.
My year had certainly turned itself around. From a January remarkable for a bout of Norovirus and a burst water pipe at the apartment, to being pursued by two keen guys who seemed determined to keep upping the stakes. I could live with that.
We went up some anonymous stairs from the car park and suddenly I found myself being escorted through corridors lined with dark, polished wood; smooth, stone floors; marble statues in niches. People rushed by. Men and women in suits with others scurrying in their wake, security guards standing behind desks and at doorways.
"Just where in h.e.l.l are we?" I said under my breath.
"The Lords, Ma"am," said my driver escort. "Mr Bentinck-Stanley has an office here."
"So tell me," I said, looking at Will at last over the rim of my rose spritzer, "what"s a dude like you doing with an office in the House of Lords?"
We were sitting in a bar with windows overlooking a terrace by the Thames. The interior was dark, with tables divided off into more private booths by wooden screens, and far too many faces I recognized from TV and the papers drinking liquor and looking, to be frank, rather bored with each other"s company.
"A dude like me?" He had that smile on his face again. Half-amused, and I didn"t know if he was just a little awkward or if he was having some private joke at my expense.
"Yes, a dude like you. You want me to elaborate?"
"The House is useful as a base," he said, as if just anyone could get an office here on the grounds that it might be useful as a base. "My father, well, he still sits occasionally. That gives me contacts, and they have reason to accommodate me."
It took me a moment to catch up, and then I realized that his father was a Lord of some kind, then. "Does that mean you will, erm, sit, someday, too?" That would be why his driver had introduced himself to Ellie as driver to "the Honorable Will Bentinck-Stanley". d.a.m.n, but I was slow sometimes, the dumb Yankee unfamiliar with all these quaint English ways. Hereditary legislators, of all things: Will really was a man of considerable power simply because of the family he"d been born into.
Will shrugged, doing that whole disingenuous thing again. Whatever, the gesture said.
"The old man"s not as active as he once was," he went on.
No kidding. I remembered Will and Eleanor"s father from the wedding, a white-haired man bent over like a fragile stick insect.
"I help him. I act as an advisor to him and others. I make myself useful, you know?"
"Is that why you dash off to Algeria and who knows where else to save lives"
"You make me sound like James Bond"
"and then go missing for several days when you"ve been pursuing me and really should be paying more attention to that pursuit?"
""Pursuit"? But you"re the one pursuing me. You"re the one who demanded a meeting to discuss some supposed book! Of all the flimsy pretexts, Ms Parsons-Editorial."
"It"s not flimsy and it"s not a pretext. Don"t flatter yourself. I do think there might be a book project to discuss and I have no other interest in seeing you than to have that discussion."
That threw him. He just sat there, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to go on.
"I don"t know much about you," I said. All the way here I"d rehea.r.s.ed what to say, but now it just didn"t seem to come together. I want to publish a book I don"t think you can write, about stuff I"m guessing you do. Was it really that flimsy? Was this really just a pretext put together by my subconscious to allow me to stalk a hot young rich guy who"d once made a drunken pa.s.s at me?
"And so...?" he prompted. I must have seemed such a clumsy, unprofessional klutz!
"Okay," I started all over again. "You"re part of the English aristocracy, your family is clearly rich and you"re the one who manages its affairs. All this in an age when the old families are going bankrupt and can"t even maintain their stately homes without turning them into tourist attractions.
"You"re not only keeping your family afloat, you"re successfully steering them into the twenty-first century. Not only that, but as well as walking the corridors of power you"re actively wanted there by people who use you as a consultant, an advisor, a G.o.d knows what else. You drop hints about an exciting James Bond lifestyle where you travel the world fighting the good fight. Others drop similar hints about you"
"You really have been stalking me."
"You"re not an easy man to stalk. For someone with such a successful life, your profile is very low. You"re discreet, you guard your privacy..." That"s where I ran out of steam, realizing I"d talked myself into a corner.
He just smiled, waiting for me to go on. Finally, he said, "I do like that you think it"s a good fight I"m engaged in. But I think that you see the flaw in your pitch, now, don"t you?"
I did, and I was seriously p.i.s.sed that I"d made such a bad job of all this.
"According to your carefully compiled research although some might argue that it borders on the stalkerish I am either a spoilt young toff from a good family that"s somehow clung onto its money, and I build myself up with stories of wheeling and dealing and derring do. If that"s the case, then this book that you mentioned doesn"t really have a story to tell, does it? Unless it"s going to be some kind of vicious character dissection, which is hardly going to appeal to me, now, is it?"
I shrugged. I really didn"t know him This whole foolish venture was spun on a drunken conversation and a great deal of speculation. I remembered his behavior at Ethan and Eleanor"s wedding: he could easily be the spoilt rich kid he described, a mixture of tall stories and the arrogance of someone who had always had everything he wanted. That had certainly been my first impression of him, and it hadn"t been undermined when he tried to impress me with his wealth and force himself on me, then bragged to his friends that he would have me whenever he wanted.
"Or," he continued, "your rather melodramatic fantasy has. .h.i.t somewhere close to the mark. In which case, just what would someone who works quietly behind the scenes, making things happen and stopping other things from happening... just what would such a saintly, self-sacrificing figure have to gain by putting his story in a book that you no doubt antic.i.p.ate becoming a commercial success, with all the publicity that would entrain?"
"You"re enjoying this, aren"t you?"
"I"m not enjoying your discomfort, no," he said. "But I can"t help but enjoy the company."
That G.o.d-d.a.m.ned thing of his, that uncanny knack for making me blush. I"m not a girl who blushes. Not for anyone but Will Bentinck-Stanley, at least.
He raised his gla.s.s, I raised mine, and we c.h.i.n.ked, eyes locked together.
"So is that a "no"?"
"You don"t even know if there"s a story to tell."
"Is there?"
He shook his head. "I"m just a"
"An "ordinary guy"...? Were you really going to say that?"
"A spoilt young toff who would really rather keep his name out of the papers. Believe me: I"ve been there and no good ever comes of it. I just want a quiet life, and to be allowed to get on with doing the things I do."
"Which are?"
"I make things happen. I look after the interests of my family, which often aligns with the interests of others. Duty to family and country, and all that. It"s nowhere near as glamorous as you would like it to be, I fear. And it is most certainly not going to be the subject of a book from the publisher of High Heels and Panties."
d.a.m.n. I"d commissioned that one, the autobiography of a high cla.s.s call girl, and a book that had upset the career paths of a Member of Parliament and a top newspaper editor, to name only two. The book was clever and insightful and it had met our criterion of "not so much dumbing down as smarting up" but... well. I could see why it wouldn"t look good to someone like Will.
d.a.m.n.
And then that was it. Over.
Even as I was dwelling on my mishandling of the whole approach, Will reached for his jacket pocket, produced an iPhone and read something on its screen.
He looked up, shrugged, and said, "b.u.g.g.e.r. Sorry. Really I am." As he spoke he was getting to his feet. "I"m going to have to love you and leave you. Well... you know. Leave you, at any rate."
He was doing that fl.u.s.tered thing again, deflecting from the fact that he was standing up, ushering me to my feet, and hurrying me out of that riverside bar buried away in the Houses of Parliament.
"Sorry. Really I am," he said again. And I knew I was being fobbed off, that he"d had enough of the games and just wanted me out of there now. Suddenly I was just one of the many people who wanted a piece of him, and that had transformed me from a piece of a.s.s he was pursuing to just another wannabe.
We strode along one picture-lined corridor and then the Sikh driver was there, waiting.
"Would you mind, Maninder?" said Will, then he gave me one last apologetic smile and hurried away.
Back in the office, Ellie was buzzing around, fetching me coffee, re-organizing my towering in tray, and clearly waiting to get the low-down on my chauffeur-driven lunch date. In the end I had to wave her away, like I was fending off a swarm of flies. I shut my office door, leaned against it, and finally took a big, calming breath.
Steady, girl. So what exactly happened back there, then?
What had happened was that an arrogant young rich kid had tried to wow me. He"d sent a flash car and driver, he"d had me whisked through high security into the heart of political power, he"d plied me with alcohol and fine food.
And then...
Was that all part of the plan, too, the phone message? Was he still gaming me, or did he just lose interest, a child discarding a toy that had at first appeared shiny and novel?
I concentrated on work for the rest of the day, plowing through my in-box, and then sitting in a two-hour marketing meeting, that ran on until past six.
Every time my mind wandered back to what had happened at lunchtime, I stamped down on the stray thoughts, hard. The book scheme had been a long shot, and clearly wasn"t going anywhere. And if it really was a ploy on the part of my over-s.e.xed, romantically-starved subconscious then it was not only a sign of desperation but it was clearly not going to work either. If Will"s dismissal had been genuine, then he had clearly lost any interest; and if it was part of his game plan, then I just didn"t play by those rules. I wasn"t going to be played like a fish on a line by someone who thought he could control me like that.