Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
HUGH
“ M iss Hutton appreciates the cordiality of the invitation, but she will be unable to attend today,” Bertrand says diplomatically. His eyes betray nothing.
I frown. “Why not?”
He clears his throat. “I believe she is busy… with the cottage.”
She’s not too busy to come to tea. She just did that to annoy me. Thoroughly annoyed, I wave him away.
He leaves quickly, shutting the door behind him, and I stay in the office, trying to distract myself with work. I try to focus, flip a page, rearrange myself on my swivel chair, but it’s useless. Exasperation is clawing up my chest, turning into a slow, simmering anger.
Pushing my chair back, I stand and start pacing the room.
Once, twice, thrice. I don’t get it— what’s wrong with her?
Why would she be so damn rude as to turn me down like that?
She doesn’t listen when I’m straight with her, and she doesn’t budge when I try to play nice.
And now she’s got me spinning and confused about how to handle her.
I stop by the window and glare out at the estate.
My eyes go past the immaculate lawns, the stables in the distance to her crumbling cottage squatting there like a stain.
My hands flex restlessly as I head out of the office.
I stalk down the hall, past the portraits of all my ancestors and into the study.
I need something, anything, to settle this itch under my skin.
I grab a bottle of whiskey from the shelf.
It’s old and expensive, the kind I’d usually savor in the evening before dinner.
I pour a glass, the amber liquid glugging out slowly, and bring it to my lips, but drinking this early in the day is just not my thing.
I set it down on the table, untouched. It’s not what I want.
Not sitting here stewing alone. I remember the engagement party I was invited to by one of my old mates from Eaton.
I’d brushed it off earlier, said I couldn’t make it as I would be tied up with work, but now it might be the lifeline out of this brooding hole I’m sinking into.
I pull out my phone, swipe to the calendar, and there it is.
It’s tonight in Mayfair. I check the time, and I’m glad to see that it’s still early enough for me to make it if I leave now.
The idea settles in, not ideal, but it will do.
A loud club would just piss me off more, but something smaller and more intimate like this party feels like a more bearable way to shake her out of my head.
I grab my keys from the hall table and head to the garage, my steps purposeful. I slide into my car, turn on the ignition, and the engine snarls and awakens, vibrating through me. I zoom out of the estate, tires screaming on the gravel, before smoothing out as I hit the open road.
I get there a few hours later, the city smearing past the windows, and pull up to Charles’s swanky townhouse.
One of his staff lets me into the warm interior.
A sophisticated laugh drifts through an open door.
I recognize the laugh and follow. Charles is there, grinning from ear to ear, his sparkling fiancée, Camila, on his arm.
When he sees me, he looks surprised, his eyebrows shooting up to his prematurely receding hairline.
“You came! What a fantastic surprise,” he calls out. “Come and have a glass of champagne with us.”
I hand over a check as my wedding gift. I hand it to Charles since I won’t be at the wedding.
“Thank you, Hugh,” Camila says with a flirtatious smile.
I’m not a fan of Charles’s fiancée. I think she’s a sly social climber, but Charles is in love and must learn the hard way.
I don’t stay long in their company. The place is crawling with faces from the old days.
All sprawled into sofas, jackets off, laughing without a care in the world.
As I weave through the crowd, the low hum of their voices and clinking glasses wrap around me.
I spot him, James, leaning against a pillar near the bar, his tie loosened, a tumbler of something dark in his hand, and quickly make a beeline for him.
My old Uni mate. One of the sharper wits I remember from our late-night debates at Oxford.
He catches my eye and he grins, slow and easy, and pushes off the pillar to meet me halfway.
“Bloody hell, Hugh. I didn’t expect to see you here,” he says, clapping my shoulder.
I shrug and grab a whiskey from the bar. “Come join the others,” he says, and we drift to a couple of corner sofas tucked away from the main bustle.
We settle in, the beat-up leather seats melting under us, and the talk turns to the past, the stuffy dorms, the endless lectures, the stupid pranks we pulled to stay sane. My glass sits heavy in my hand, the whiskey’s smoky edge tickling my nose as I swirl it, half-listening.
“You were always so damn quiet,” James says, leaning back, his voice carrying that old teasing lilt.
“We thought you just weren’t an ass, but you were plotting to take over the world,” Tarquin adds.
The others erupt into laughter. I join in, a low rumble in my chest, though it’s more reflex than feeling.
“You’ve been planning it since you came out of the womb, haven’t you?” he adds, pointing his glass at me.
They laugh again, the sound mingling with the piano tinkling somewhere across the room. I tip my head, smiling faintly, but it fades quickly, the noise settling into a dull buzz as my mind drifts back to the skittish minx in the cottage at the bottom of my garden.
The groom slides in beside me, his suit still crisp despite the hour,
“I thought you’d be the last among us to get married,” I say.
A grin tugs at his mouth. “I thought so too,” he explains, “but then I walk into Nordstrom one day looking for a tie, and see her. She wasn’t like all the others. She was reluctant. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since.”
So that’s how she did it. I glance at Camila and catch her sharp eyes on us.
“It’s still hard to believe it’s been this easy to get her to say yes. I’m spooked, honestly, still kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.” He shrugs, a little laugh escaping.
I feel for the guy, but raining on his parade is just going to ruin his happiness, and why should I ruin it even if it is going to be temporary?
“Maybe there’s no other shoe to drop,” I say quietly.
“Maybe always expecting the worst to happen is not how we’re supposed to be.
” The lie hangs heavily between us, but he doesn’t notice.
I take another sip as he studies me over the rim of his glass.
“What about you?” he asks, leaning in a fraction, his tone lighter now. “Should I just carry on assuming there’s no one special in your life, even though every woman besides my Camila is banging down your bedroom door?”
The question prickles under my skin, and I run my thumb along the edge of my glass. “There might be,” I find myself muttering, “someone I’m slightly interested in.”
His eyes widen and his brows shoot up so dramatically with astonishment that anyone would think I just confessed to a crime.
“Hold your horses there, James. I distinctly remember saying, slightly,” I say dryly.
“Slightly is a major improvement by your standards,” he notes, his voice rising a notch. “You haven’t shown interest in any woman since Meredith, and that was, what, five years ago?”
I grimace, the name a sour taste I’d rather forget.
“Yeah, well,” My tone is casual even though I already regret the lapse in my judgment.
I should have kept my mouth shut. “I’m just a little intrigued that she would be quite happy if I didn’t even exist. In fact, it’s possible that the fact I even breathe irritates her.
Normally, I wouldn’t give a damn and would even prefer it that way, but I have to close a business deal that needs her cooperation. ”
He laughs, a garrulous bark that proves he’s had more to drink than I originally thought. “Oh wow! Who is this paragon of virtue, and where did you find her?”
“You wouldn’t know her. She’s American.”
“Americans are always impressed by titles. Does she know your are the 12 th Duke of Beauclerk?”
“No, and quite frankly, I don’t think it would help my case. Dealing with her is like a stubborn mare.” I think for a moment, before reflecting aloud. “Since she won’t give in to logic, perhaps I should try the charm route.”
“Charming? That’s a tall order for you. You’re God-like and naturally intimidating.”
“Trust me, she’s not intimidated at all,” I admit dryly.
“No offence,” James says with a grin, his elbow nudging mine, “but does she know how rich you are?”
I pause, glass halfway to my lips.
James shakes his head in despair and astonishment as if I’ve missed the obvious. “She doesn’t, does she? She needs to know who you are, Hugh. Not only are you richer than Croesus, you are the most eligible bachelor in our fair island, if not the entire world.”
I shake my head at his ridiculous assertion. He has definitely had far too much to drink.
“It’s true, though,” he argues stubbornly.
“Who else owns a company managing billions in assets and comes from generational royalty. You’re as rare and golden as a hen’s tooth, and you need to ensure that she knows this.
This is how you’ll get her to stick to you like Velcro… the way all the others have.
He leans back and crosses his arms. “You have to blow your own trumpet sometimes. Brag with confidence. After all, you’ve earned the right. All the Dukes I know are selling their Rembrandts and Monets just to stay afloat. You? You’ve managed to get into the Forbes richest list.”
I groan.
“My advice,” he says, his voice dropping to a slurring whisper. “Unless she’s been living under a rock, she knows exactly who you are. You’ve been on enough magazine covers. She knows she’s onto a good thing, but she’s just playing hard to get. Give her time, and she’ll show her true colors.”
I hold his gaze for a beat, then look away. How strange. He knows exactly how the game is played, and yet, he fell right into the oldest trap in the book with Camila’s.
“Right,” I murmur. “Right.”
He claps my shoulder once firmly, before his fiancée sweeps in, all smiles and glitter. Brushing my arm, she pulls him away for a dance.
“Don’t be a stranger, Hugh,” she calls coyly over her shoulder, and then they’re gone, swallowed by the swaying crowd.
Alone, I sit stewing on his words—give her time.
Makes sense. She’s just arrived, and has barely unpacked, and time is probably what she needs to come around and see reason.
But time is what I don’t have. Those nasty developers are circling her land like a blood-maddened shark.
I don’t want them getting to her first, or worse, her selling to them out of spite just to stick it to me.
I swirl the whiskey and watch the light fracture through it, and a bizarre thought drops into my head.
I’m going to get her. By hook or by crook, I’m going to get her.
I frown. Not her, I mean the property, obviously.
I’m going to get it. One way or another. I’m going to get it. If I get her too, it will be the juicy cherry on the cake.