Tilly Bagshawe - The Bachelor - Racy, pacy and very funny!

‘I’m fine,’ Flora exhaled. ‘I just wish I’d known she was coming.’

‘George?’

Flora nodded. ‘I wish I’d been prepared, that’s all.’

‘Did you know she was Henry’s business partner?’

‘No! I mean, I knew he had a partner called George Savile, but I assumed it was a guy. She was called Georgie Lynne back when I knew her. She made my life hell at school.’ Flora shook her head bitterly at the memories. ‘I’m not sure I’d have taken this job if I’d known it meant running into Georgie again.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Barney said robustly. ‘Of course you’d have taken the job. School was a lifetime ago. And, even if it weren’t, you can’t let bullies like her get the better of you.’

‘Can’t you?’ sighed Flora. She felt defeated suddenly, and horribly low. This guy Barney had been really sweet all evening. But all she wanted right now was to talk to Mason; to feel his safe, comforting arms around her.

In one short evening, Georgina Savile had managed to poison what should have been one of the happiest, most triumphant moments of Flora’s career. Redesigning Hanborough Castle! Coming back to England, to the glorious Swell Valley, not as an exiled fraudster’s daughter but as a success in her own right. Why, why did that loathsome, manipulative bitch have to be Henry Saxton Brae’s partner? Of all people! It wasn’t fair. After tonight it was only a matter of time until the entire valley knew all about Flora’s dad and her history, the dark past she’d worked so hard to transcend and forget.

She turned on the engine.

‘Thanks for being so nice this evening,’ she said to Barney.

‘My pleasure.’

‘And sorry about your hand.’

‘Oh!’ He gave a brave, it-was-nothing shrug. ‘My pleasure again.’

‘I’d better get to my bed. Early start tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ said Barney, reluctantly stepping back from the car. ‘Well, sleep well. It was lovely to meet you, Flora.’

‘And you.’

Barney stood and watched as Flora drove away.

That’s the girl I’m going to marry , he thought.

Summer rolled into the Swell Valley late that year, slow and heavy and swollen with sticky heat like a river of molasses about to burst its banks. But when it finally came it brought record temperatures and an oppressive humidity that made it feel more like a Floridian mangrove swamp than the Sussex countryside.

While the local villagers sweated, cooling themselves off with ice lollies from the Preedys’ shop or cold jugs of Pimm’s from The Fox, up at Hanborough Castle the work never stopped. Flora had even started to lose some of her famous curves simply from running around the site all day, overseeing work and shouting directions till her throat was hoarse.

Tony Graham, the contractor, was efficient and on the ball, but he did have a habit of making a drama out of a crisis and niggling over the very tiniest details, right down to which brand of nails Flora wanted for the new joists. He also had the world’s most annoying, nasally voice, so grating that it had begun to creep into Flora’s nightmares. When Eva was around, Flora at least had a friendly face to talk to, or share an occasional snatched lunch with up at the castle. On rare occasions, Barney Griffith might join the two of them, or drag them down to The Fox for an after-work drink. But then Barney would be sucked back into the black hole of his book, and Eva would jet off to another photoshoot somewhere exotic, leaving Flora with only Mono-Tony, as she’d christened the contractor, for company.

Apart, of course, from Henry.

Ever since the awful night when George Savile had turned up to dinner and done her best to humiliate Flora in front of her new client and his friends, Flora had struggled to get a handle on Henry. Her first impressions of him had been wholly negative. He seemed rude, arrogant, selfish and a snob. Six weeks working for him up at Hanborough had confirmed that Henry certainly could be all of these things – and worse, if Eva’s suspicions and tabloid gossip were anything to go by. Henry Saxton Brae’s reputation as a womanizer was legendary, and though he’d yet to be caught cheating since getting engaged to Eva, Eva’s first meeting with Flora had made it clear that not even his fiancée would have put it past him.

But there was another side to Henry, too. He’d defended Flora when George attacked her that night, and on other occasions since. (It was astonishing how frequently George seemed to ‘drop in’ at Hanborough, for someone who purported to live in London.) Flora had also noticed how soppy Henry could be with his dogs, Whiskey and Soda, when he thought no one was looking, hugging and tickling them and sneaking them cuts of prime fillet steak from the fridge. Yet whenever Eva was around, he ignored the dogs completely, always letting her walk them alone, almost as if he were deliberately trying to conceal his affection.

One time Flora had walked in on him in the study, rolling around on the floor with the two Irish setters, giggling like a kid. Henry had flushed beet-red and leapt to his feet, as embarrassed as if he’d just been caught romping with a porn star.

‘I was just … I was, er … did you want something?’ He smoothed down his hair and did his best to regain his usual sang-froid.

‘Only to show you these.’

Flora unrolled her finally finished plans for the new library. When she took over the Hanborough project from Graydon and Guillermo, the idea had been to restore the old library – a vast, wood-panelled room with Victorian stained-glass windows, like a chapel, but riddled with rot and in a worse state of repair than anywhere else in the castle. Restoring this room alone would account for almost a fifth of the entire budget. When Flora had suggested a smaller, much more romantic library in one of the original towers, based on Vita Sackville-West’s idyllic study at Sissinghurst, Henry had leapt at the idea.

‘Sissinghurst is one of the few school trips I remember from my prep-school days,’ he’d told Flora. ‘They had a pond there that was so covered in bright green algae, it looked like a lawn. I went running down the path and plunged straight into it. Got the shock of my life! My mother said I smelt like a sewer rat for weeks afterwards.’ His eyes lit up, as they always did on the rare occasions he mentioned his mother. ‘Anyway, I loved that library, with the winding stairs and the Persian rugs and the old globe. Like living in a lighthouse.’

‘I think we could do a spectacular lighthouse library here,’ said Flora. ‘And for a fraction of the cost of restoring the old one.’

Flora had spent untold hours perfecting the new designs, delighted that Henry seemed as enthusiastic about the idea as she was. But now, standing in his study with the plans spread out on his desk, she felt unaccountably nervous.

Would he like them? Had he changed his mind?

Her nerves intensified as he leaned over the drawings, frowning as he studied each one intently.

Oh God , thought Flora. Perhaps she’d over-egged the Sissinghurst thing. It was only an inspiration, after all. Flora’s library was a lot cleaner and simpler, a lot more modern.