Jessica Hart - Hitched!

‘He had to do something,’ he said frankly. ‘These stately homes are expensive to keep up. Roly nearly passed out when he saw the first heating bill!’

‘Does Lord Whellerby know you call him Roly?’ I asked disapprovingly. In spite of his regular requests for progress reports, he had never visited the site, apparently happy to appoint the laid-back George as his go-between.

‘We were at school together,’ George said. ‘He’s lucky if Roly is all I call him!’

‘Oh.’ I was disconcerted. ‘I’d imagined an older man.’

‘No, he’s thirty-two. He never expected to inherit Whellerby. The last Lord Whellerby was his great-uncle, and he had a son and a grandson who were groomed to take over the estate in due course. But they had a whole string of family tragedies and Roly was pitched into the middle of things.’

‘It must have been difficult for him,’ I said, still trying to picture Lord Whellerby as a young man instead of the experienced landowner I’d imagined.

‘It was. This is a big estate. It was a lot to take on, and Roly had never even lived in the country before. He had no experience and he was frankly terrified. I don’t blame him,’ said George.

‘Oh.’ The breeze was pushing in some clouds, I noticed worriedly. It kept blowing my hair around my face and I wished I’d taken the time to plait it. My hair, by the way, is another bane of my life. It is fine and straight and brown and I can’t do anything with it other than let it hang there.

I pulled away a strand that had plastered itself against my lips, still trying to reconfigure this new information about Lord Whellerby, who was, after all, the client.

‘Did you come here at the same time?’ I asked George.

‘Not immediately. Roly inherited an estate manager from his great-uncle and the guy was running rings round him. I was...at a loose end, shall we say? Roly invited me up to keep him company for a while, and when the estate manager left he asked if I wanted the job.’ George grinned and spread his hands. ‘I had nothing better to do, so here I am.’

That rang true. George was exactly the kind of person who would get a job because of who he knew rather than what he knew, I thought darkly.

‘Jobs for the boys, in fact?’

George’s smile was easy. ‘No one else would employ me,’ he said, clearly unfazed by my disapproval.

I sniffed. ‘I still think you should show your employer some respect and refer to him as Lord Whellerby,’ I said primly.

‘Do you call Hugh Mr Morrison?’

‘That’s different.’

‘How?’

‘He’s not a lord, for a start.’

George made a big deal of shaking his head and then smacking his ear as if to clear it. ‘Sorry, that was really weird,’ he told her. ‘For a minute there I thought we were in the twenty-first century, but, thank God, we’re back in the nineteenth where we all know our place!’

‘Maybe it is old-fashioned of me,’ I conceded, ‘but I happen to think there’s nothing wrong with using a title to show a bit of respect.’

‘You call me George.’

‘And your point is...?’

He raised his hands in surrender and smiled. ‘I’d hate to be called Mr Challoner, anyway,’ he said. ‘I’d constantly be looking over my shoulder for my father.’ For a second, his mouth was set and a grimness touched his eyes, but so fleetingly that afterwards I decided that I must have imagined it.

A moment later, and the blue eyes were full of laughter once more. As they rested on my face I realised just how long I had been standing and talking to him when I should have been overseeing the pouring of the concrete.

‘Look, did you want something in particular?’ I said, summoning my best crisp manner. ‘Because I really do need to get on.’

‘I’m on my way up to the Hall. I just thought I’d drop by and see how things were going so I can give Roly—excuse me, Lord Whellerby—an update.’

‘I’ve done a progress report if he’d like one.’

‘Another one?’

‘I got the impression Lord Whellerby likes to be kept informed,’ I said stiffly. ‘It’s part of my job to keep the client happy.’

‘I must remember to tell Roly that,’ said George with a wink, which I met with a stony look.

‘Would he like this report or not?’

‘Oh, absolutely.’

‘Fine.’ Tucking my clipboard under my arm, I shouted to Frank over the sound of the concrete mixer. ‘Can you carry on, Frank?’ I pointed at the clouds. ‘And keep an eye on those!’

Frank lifted a hand in acknowledgement and I led the way to the site office. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but there is no way to walk gracefully through mud in a pair of Wellington boots. The mud sucked at my feet and made horrible squelching sounds, and I was horribly aware of George behind me, watching me waddle. I had to resist the urge to tug my safety jacket further down over my rear.

‘Boots,’ I said, pointing to George’s feet when we reached the prefabricated building that housed the site office, and he threw a crisp salute. Needless to say, he had made it across the mud as if he were walking across a perfectly mown lawn.

I ignored him. My boots were so clogged with mud that I struggled to get them off even using the scraper at the bottom of the steps, but after a tussle that George watched with undisguised amusement I managed to replace them with a pair of pumps I kept just inside the door. Tossing my hard hat onto a chair, I stalked across to my computer and pulled up the file, my colour still high.

George—of course—had no trouble taking off his own boots. He lounged in the doorway in his socks while I bent over the printer and concentrated fiercely on the pages spewing out. I could feel his eyes on me, and I plucked at the collar of the simple blue shirt I was wearing, wishing I could blame the single electric radiator for the warmth climbing into my cheeks.

Collecting up the pages, I banged them neatly together on the desk and fastened them with a bang of the stapler. ‘There you go.’

‘Thanks.’

But instead of leaving, George threw himself down in the visitor’s chair on the other side of the desk and flicked through the pages. ‘I see you’ve changed the specifications for the storm water drainage system,’ he said, then he glanced up at my face. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Nothing. I was just...surprised.’

‘What, you thought I couldn’t read a report?’

‘Of course not.’ I tugged at my shirt front. The truth was that I had assumed that he was too laid-back to pick up on the details of the report. ‘You don’t strike me as a details person, that’s all.’

A faint smile curled his mouth. ‘I can pay attention when required,’ he said.

‘Right.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Well, as you’ve noted, I’m putting in a different kind of underground chamber to store the rainwater run-off. I think this one is a better design.’

‘More expensive though,’ George commented, flicking through to the figures.

‘It is, but we’re saving money with a better deal on the glass wool cavity insulation slabs. If you look at the last page, you’ll see we’re still on target to stick to the budget.’

‘Good. We can’t—’ George broke off as a disembodied voice started shouting:

HEY, YOUR PHONE IS RINGING! PICK UP THE PHONE! YES, YOU, IT’S YOUR PHONE. DON’T EVEN TRY AND IGNORE IT! PICK IT UP RIGHT NOW!

He laughed at my expression. ‘Good, isn’t it?’

Embarrassed at having jumped so obviously, I smoothed back my hair. ‘Hilarious,’ I said, watching as George extracted the still-squawking phone from his pocket. I always leapt to answer my phone, but George only studied the screen in a leisurely manner, apparently able to ignore the noise it was making.