‘Don’t they look marvellous?’ Eva turned to Barney breathlessly, as one by one they galloped off across the Downs, the hounds crying frantically in front of them, obviously close to a kill. ‘We don’t have anything like this in Sweden. Did you see the fox?’
‘No.’ Barney looked considerably less enthused. ‘But I hope the poor little sod got away.’
‘Oh. You don’t like hunting?’
‘I hate it. It’s cruel, it’s riddled with snobbery, and it’s downright bloody dangerous. They practically trampled us to death back there.’
Eva said nothing. This was clearly an exaggeration, but there was no mistaking the strength of Barney’s feelings. She wanted to change the subject, to return to the easy, chatty conversation they’d been having before. But, before she had a chance, Barney abruptly announced he had to get back to work, turned around and left her, with only the most cursory of goodbyes.
Eva watched him go feeling curiously deflated. He’d seemed so nice before.
Whistling for the dogs, she turned around herself and began the long tramp back to Hanborough. It was weird to think that this time tomorrow she’d be in Milan on a shoot, in a world about as far removed from this one as possible.
Perhaps it would do her good to get away for a while? The whole text thing had left a sour taste in her mouth. And things always improved between her and Henry after they’d spent some time apart.
Graydon James sighed with relief as the bellboy showed him into his suite at The Dorchester.
It wasn’t his beloved Manhattan. But at least he was in London, free from the cloying silence of the Swell Valley, with all its ghastly green hills and sheep and fresh air. How did people live there? Young, beautiful people in the prime of their lives, like Henry Saxton Brae? It was a crime against humanity that that boy was straight, but even Graydon knew a dead horse when he saw one. He was too old for futile flogging. Too old, as well, to cope with Guillermo’s relentless bitching and whining about being ‘left out of the process’ at Hanborough.
‘He only ever talks to you,’ Guillermo had pouted at Graydon last night in bed, sulking like a toddler about Henry’s preference for the organ grinder over the monkey. ‘He’s never once asked my opinion on anything. Not the plans for the master suite, not the Venetian finishes, not the fabrics. Nothing! It’s like he thinks I’m your lackey.’ He gazed down sullenly at his taut, dancer’s abs, his huge cock lying limp and slug-like between his legs, sulking like its owner.
‘Well, you are,’ Graydon shot back nastily. He’d had enough of tiptoeing around Guillermo’s ego. He had the damn job, didn’t he? ‘Like it or not, I’m the boss. Clients like to deal with the boss. It makes them feel they’re getting what they paid for. If you can’t handle that, you’re in the wrong job, sweetheart.’
An architect had already drawn up plans for the structural restoration of the castle, but Graydon had made it a condition that he and his team would run the entire project, from foundations to flower arrangements. As project manager, Guillermo would be working eighteen-hour days and getting his perfectly manicured hands seriously dirty. The fact that he was already complaining about the client, not to mention contributing nothing to this crucial first week of site meetings, did not bode well.
‘I’m going up to town for a few days,’ Graydon informed him curtly. ‘Little Miss Wonder-Tits is off on a job, so you’ll have Handsome Henry all to yourself. See if you can convince him you’re more than just a pretty face.’ Grabbing Guillermo’s hand, Graydon placed it firmly on his cock. ‘And see if you can convince me that I haven’t made a big mistake in trusting you with this.’
In fairness to Guillermo, the sex was still good. But Graydon was tiring of the attitude.
Throwing his case down on the bed, Graydon ordered himself a double espresso with cantuccini from room service – that was something else that sucked in the countryside. Coffee. Henry Saxton Brae drank Tesco instant. If there were ever any question about his sexuality, that cleared it right up. Idly checking his messages, Graydon ignored the one from his accountant, noted three from Flora, pleading to be allowed to leave Nantucket, and one from a prospective client, a Russian oligarch with a positively palatial house in London, opposite Hyde Park. He stopped abruptly at one from World Of Interiors.
‘Good afternoon, Mr James. My name is Carly di Angelo. We’re doing a cover piece for our September issue on the world’s most beautiful city apartments. We were wondering, would Flora Fitzwilliam be prepared to talk to us about West Fifty-Sixth Street? I’ve tried contacting her directly but can’t seem to get through. I understand she’s on an island somewhere … ’
Graydon rang back instantly.
‘Miss di Angelo? Graydon James. Yes, I’m afraid Flora’s not available at present. But it just so happens I’m in London and I’d be very happy to talk to you about our work at West Fifty-Sixth. Perhaps you weren’t aware, but I actually lead the design team myself?’
He hung up, purring with pleasure.
Graydon hadn’t done a stitch of the work on Luca Gianotti’s stunning Manhattan penthouse apartment. It had all been Flora, from start to finish, and the baseball legend had been ecstatic with the results. But the project had been commissioned under the GJD – Graydon James Designs – brand. As far as Graydon was concerned, that made West Fifty-Sixth Street his. Just as Hanborough would be his, and Lisa Kent’s Siasconset folly, and anything else that his staff worked on.
If Flora, or Guillermo, or any of the ingrates didn’t like it, they could spend the next thirty years building their own fucking empires. None of them would ever have amounted to anything without the great Graydon James.
Graydon glanced at his diamond-encrusted, special-edition Cartier Roadster, an accessory so dazzlingly flamboyant it might make a rap mogul think twice. He was meeting the lovely Miss di Angelo at The Wolseley in two hours. Just enough time for housekeeping to press his shirt while he popped to the spa for a mini-manicure.
God, it was good to be back in civilization.
Henry Saxton Brae was in a foul mood.
First, the stupid little girl from the wine bar whose WhatsApp had almost caused him serious problems with Eva had refused to go quietly and was threatening to sell details of her ‘affair’ with Henry to the Daily Mirror. (Actually a few nights of drunken, broom-cupboard shagging that had finished months ago.)
‘Go ahead,’ Henry told her scathingly. ‘Only plebs read the Mirror. No one I know will have the faintest idea you even exist.’
But in the end he’d been forced to drive down to London and try to reason with her (Henry’s lawyer having pointed out patiently that it wasn’t, in fact, a crime to publish things that were true, and that no court in the land would grant Henry an injunction).
Having talked Marie down from the ledge, Henry had been ‘summoned’ to Hatchings by his brother’s godawful social-climbing wife, Kate, a painfully middle-class, overgrown pony clubber with a highly developed superiority complex, for a ‘vitally important’ family meeting. This turned out to be some utter guff about giving money to the Countryside Alliance for a pro-hunting ‘war chest’ to be used in the catastrophic event of a new Labour government.
‘This is life-or-death stuff, Henry,’ Sebastian announced pompously, and without even a hint of irony. ‘Our generation are the last line of defence. We’re the bloody Normandy beaches.’
Henry rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, come on, Seb.’
‘You