They both turned to look at this year’s cake-baking marquee, already full to bursting and with a loud and rowdy queue huddled and dripping outside.
Max grinned. ‘Somewhere in the ninety per cent range I’d say. We should rope in a supermodel to judge the cakes every year.’
Eva Gunnarson, the latest face (and body) of La Perla lingerie and a regular on the pages of Maxim and Sports Illustrated, was the supermodel in question, recently engaged to the Honourable Henry Saxton Brae. A former Under-21s England tennis champion, Henry was considered almost as much of a pin-up as his girlfriend. He was as tall, dark and handsome as Eva was blonde, willowy and generally physically perfect. The combination of his good looks, charm, immense wealth and old, aristocratic family name saw Henry regularly named in Tatler as one of England’s most eligible bachelors, and for the last five years he’d been renowned as a playboy on the London social scene.
But all that had changed since the couple’s engagement, and with both of them moving to Hanborough and taking up country life. They had thrilled the entire Swell Valley this year by announcing their intention to restore Hanborough Castle as both a family home and working estate. Eva had made an effort to get involved in the village between her hectic international modelling jobs. But Henry Saxton Brae himself had been maddeningly elusive, and today seemed to be no exception.
Inside the marquee, temperatures were rising, not just because of the heaving mass of bodies straining to catch a glimpse of Eva Gunnarson looking effortlessly gorgeous in a pair of skinny jeans and a tank top.
‘The cakes are going to get damaged. You must keep people back, Vicar. My spun-sugar daisies are extremely delicate. Icing like that doesn’t make itself, you know.’ One of the ladies from the WI was haranguing the vicar.
‘No, of course not.’ The Reverend Bill Clempson mopped his brow uncomfortably. Picking up a loudhailer he shouted ineffectually into the throng, ‘If I could ask everybody to step back from the display itself …’
‘Would you like me to help, Vicar?’
Gabe Baxter, another local celebrity and Bill Clempson’s one-time arch nemesis in the village, pushed his way to the front of the crowd around the cake stall. Relations between Bill and Gabe had improved since Bill had married his wife Jenny, who used to work as a vet up at the Baxters’ farm and had always got along well with both Gabe and Laura, his wife. But the vicar still didn’t completely trust Fittlescombe’s most lusted-after farmer.
‘I think we’ve got things under control.’
Ignoring him, Gabe grabbed the loudhailer, handing the vicar his sticky plastic pint of warm beer.
‘Move back, please. Everyone move right back from the tables.’
Then he walked forwards with his arms outstretched. The crowds, who’d ignored Bill, immediately retreated a good five feet. It was like watching a slightly pissed Moses part the waves in the Red Sea.
‘Thank you! That was marvellous.’
Gabe looked up to see Eva Gunnarson standing before him.
‘I’m Eva.’
‘Gabe.’ With an effort he pulled himself together enough to shake her hand. Gabe was besotted with his wife, Laura, but Eva was disarmingly gorgeous, and he had had three beers. She had a lovely, natural face up close, Gabe noticed, the kind that looked more beautiful without much make-up. Wholesome. With her long tousled hair pushed back from her face in tumbling, golden waves, the future Mrs Saxton Brae looked younger than she did in her magazine pictures.
‘So is your fella going to put in an appearance today? You do realize half the women in this village are besotted with him. I’m including my wife in that.’ He didn’t mention that Laura had also said of Eva, ‘She’s so gorgeous that you want to hate her but you can’t. Which almost makes you want to hate her more.’
‘I can’t blame people for fancying Henry,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘He’s gorgeous. And yes, I hope he’s coming today.’ She looked at her watch anxiously. ‘Timekeeping’s not his strongest suit. But he did promise me.’
‘Don’t waste your time talking to this guy.’ Santiago de la Cruz – Sussex cricketing hero and a good friend of Gabe’s – suddenly appeared, inserting himself between Gabe and Eva and kissing the latter on both cheeks as if they were old friends. Dark-skinned and blue-eyed, with just a hint of grey creeping in at the temples of his oil-black hair, Santiago had once been something of a player himself, in a past life, before he met and married his angelic wife Penny. ‘He barely even lives here any more, you know. Spends half his time in London.’
‘That is not true!’ Gabe protested, although it was. Laura’s TV production company had really taken off in the last two years, and they didn’t spend as much time in the valley as they used to. ‘I was bloody born here, unlike some Johnny-come-latelies I could mention.’
‘Penny was born here,’ Santiago countered.
‘Penny de la Cruz? Are you her husband?’ Eva smiled, delighted to have made the connection.
Santiago nodded. ‘You’ve met?’
‘Just briefly. She mentioned she’s an artist and that she’s got some sketches of the castle she did ages ago. She very kindly offered to frame one for us as a moving-in present.’
‘That sounds like Penny.’ Santiago positively glowed with pride. The de la Cruz marriage was a very happy one.
People are so nice here, thought Eva, watching Gabe and Santiago cackle away at each other’s jokes like two naughty schoolboys. Angela Cranley had been lovely to her earlier too, telling her funny anecdotes about Graydon James, the designer Henry had hired to work on Hanborough, and who had once built a house for Angela’s ex-husband Brett.
‘He used to shimmer about the house like Liberace, in trousers so tight they were more like ballet dancer’s tights. In the end Brett couldn’t take it any more. He asked him if he wouldn’t mind covering up a bit, or words to that effect. Graydon just looked at him and said, deadly serious, “For your information, Mr Cranley, the cluster is being worn much further forward this year.” It took a lot to shut my ex-husband up, I can tell you, but that did it.’ Angela wiped away tears of mirth.
Eva already felt sure that the move to the Swell Valley was going to be the start of a new life, a much happier life, for her and Henry.
She pictured the two of them at this same village fete five years from now – married by then, of course – and perhaps even with a child running around. A gorgeous little boy, just like Henry …
Eva looked at her watch again.
‘We’ll have to start without him,’ Max Bingley complained to Richard Smart, an old prep-school friend of Henry’s and another new local face. Richard had recently accepted the position as Fittlescombe’s new GP, and with his wife Lucy was renting Riverside Hall in Brockhurst from Sir Eddie and Lady Wellesley, who were spending the year abroad.
‘I know. And I agree,’ he told Max. ‘Henry does have a lot of brilliant qualities, honestly. But I’m afraid punctuality’s never been one of them.’
‘Who do you suggest we rope in to give out the prizes?’ Max asked.
Richard looked around, scanning the muddy field for inspiration.
‘What about Seb?’
Both men looked across at Henry’s elder brother Sebastian. Squat, fat and balding, with a voice so offensively upper class he sounded as if he had an entire plum tree crammed into his mouth, Seb Saxton Brae was as well meaning as he was dull.
‘He is a lord. And master of the Swell Valley Hunt,’ Richard reminded Max.
Seb and Henry’s father, Harold, had died unexpectedly last year,