Nancy Warren - British Bad Boys

“I’ll do my best,” he said simply, and she believed him with all her heart.

“But how did you get Maxine to agree? She’s got this thing about paying off the debt first.”

“I managed to convince her that she was wrong. No one should postpone happiness for silly reasons.”

The words sent an odd pang through her. Was she doing that? Pushing away happiness for stupid reasons? Like she’d decided never to love again because it had gone wrong once?

George hugged her back and then extricated himself to open the champagne. The business of opening and pouring gave them all enough time to pull themselves together.

He handed them each a flute of golden, bubbling wine. He’d obviously raided the family cellars for something fabulous.

“I’d like to toast my future wife. The woman I’d almost ceased to believe existed. My countess. My love.”

Rachel watched him, heard the sincerity of his words, but what struck her was the way he was looking at Maxine. It was so familiar, that look, and she realized it was the way Jack had looked at her this morning when he’d told her he loved her.

Love. How could you avoid it when it hit you any more than you could hold onto it when it was gone?

“I wish you every happiness,” she said, feeling emotion choke her. She turned to her sister, feeling that it was all becoming too much. “And I don’t care if you do become a countess. I’m not curtsying to you.”

“Throw her in the dungeon, Earl!”

And by dint of being very silly they managed to bring the atmosphere down from its almost painful high to a more rollicking foolishness.

“So when did you decide to get married?”

“We started talking about all the work we’ve already done for Chloe’s wedding. It wasn’t any old wedding, but a pretty big society deal. I told George what you’d said. That we should start working the phones for another society wedding to slot in its place.”

Max reached for his hand. “And he said that perhaps our wedding would do. He said he’s not as rich as the guy Chloe’s going to marry, but his family is much older.”

“You’re such a snob, George,” Rachel said.

Maxine grinned at her. “And there’s bad news for you, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I know. Even though I am fundamentally opposed to the entire patriarchal institution, you’re going to make me cater your wedding.”

“Worse. You’re a bridesmaid.”

Jack didn’t ring Rachel for a week. He cursed himself up and down for being such a stupid prat as to blurt out the fateful words that had made Rachel run from him. He decided a woman that petrified of love needed space and time to come to terms with the possibility that she was in it.

Of course, she loved him. He was almost positive that she must. He’d rushed things, that’s all. He, who’d somehow managed never to fall very hard in thirty-four years, had gone arse over teakettle for a rather bad-tempered chef with violent tendencies almost the moment he met her.

When he could stand it no longer, he rang and she sounded pleased to hear from him. Phew, he thought. First hurdle passed. She hadn’t hung up and told him she never wanted to see him again. And she hadn’t gone back to America. He suggested a date for next Friday and she accepted.

He took her into Salisbury, to an ancient pub he thought she’d like. The food was good, and he didn’t think Los Angeles could boast many places as old. The spires of the cathedral rose in gray majesty and the day was perfect.

With George and Max’s wedding as well as Chloe’s rather surprising decision to study painting in the south of France, there was plenty to talk about. None of it personal.

He’d brought her a cookbook from the shop round the corner from him, the way he’d have brought another woman flowers. She was so pleased with her present that she kept opening it and reading bits of recipes to him.

After the pub lunch, they strolled the narrow streets of the medieval village and toured the cathedral. He wondered if it was a mistake to visit a cathedral, such a grand, solemn place that rather reminded one of the serious ceremonies of life. Birth, death…marriage. But she seemed entranced by the cathedral and when the choir began to practice, she held his hand and stood, rapt.

When he took her home, he was prepared to make do with a quick snog and drive back to London. She gave him her mischievous smile. “Why don’t I practice on you? I’ll cook something from my new book. For dinner tonight.” He helped her in the kitchen, finding pleasure and companionship in being her sous chef. They ate dinner with Max and George, and then she took him to her room, where they made love with quiet sweetness. Her mind might not have been ready to face up to her love, but her body told him everything he’d hoped to hear. They ate breakfast on their own, rising much later than anyone else.

After that it became a regular thing for them to spend Friday evenings, which turned into Saturdays, together. Sometimes they had the entire weekend, but she often did the catering for a small wedding, or an afternoon tea for the ladies of the straw hat society or some such thing. He regretted the hours they could have spent together, but not the way he could see her becoming more and more a part of the estate.

He thought it was a very good thing for her to be exposed to so much successful love as she was surrounded by, not only at the great house, but also in the pub where Arthur and Meg’s affair progressed most satisfactorily. They were back from America and the novelist was hard at work on the next bit of terror she planned to unleash on unsuspecting readers.

Where they’d settle permanently was anyone’s guess. He thought Arthur would follow Meg anywhere.

Would he? he wondered. If Rachel wanted to go back to California, would he be willing to go with her?

He wasn’t sure if being willing to relocate was a true test of love, but he rather thought he would. If his choice was London without her or L.A. with her, he thought he’d be wearing Oakleys, striping his nose with zinc, and ordering half-caps with wings quite happily on Sunset Strip.

One Friday, as he arrived at the estate after a hellish slog down the M5, George said, “Can I have a word?”

The earl had obviously been on the lookout for him, for he’d even beaten Wiggins to the door.

“Yeah, sure,” Jack said, loosening his tie.

George took him into a book-lined library that his father had used as a study. George kept an office on a different floor, out of the way of the tourists, so the library still had the formal atmosphere of the old earl.

George chatted idly about football, but Jack could see there was something on his mind, and after two and a half hours of driving that had consisted of jerking forward a few feet then idling for several minutes, he was more than ordinarily anxious to see Rachel.

Finally he interrupted a pointless treatise on Manchester United’s last match. “What is it you want, George?”

“Well, the thing is, I’d like it very much if you’d be one of my groomsmen. For the wedding.”

The irritation that had begun to build dissipated immediately. He felt the grin spread on his face and shook George’s hand heartily. “I’d be delighted. Thank you for asking me.”

“I hesitated, because I know you’ve been in about a hundred wedding parties.”

“Not so many. Not quite fifty, I should think. But I’d be truly happy to stand up for you.”

“Thanks.” George blew out a breath. “There’s such an awful lot to think about with a wedding. You were starting to look so cross I thought you’d refuse.”

“Actually, I thought you were about to ask me what my intentions were with regard to your future sister.”