Chapter 4
Still chuckling and shaking his head, Roman went back inside the shop. The team had invited a carefully curated guest list
to its opening reception, and the main floor was pleasingly full. It was amazing how many of Portneath’s great and good were
prepared to accept a glass of celebratory fizz on a Monday lunchtime—perhaps especially from the Montbeaus, who had a reputation
for being lavish and genial hosts.
Roman surveyed the scene with satisfaction. The chatter was rising in volume and was full of bonhomie. The canapés—the most
delicious and elegant available in Portneath—were from Freya’s, the newest and hottest eatery in town, just as Roman’s sister,
Perdita, had advised him. She had been right. Freya’s impeccably trained service staff were weaving through the guests in
their neat slate-gray aprons with wooden boards of canapés balanced on outstretched fingers.
From his vantage point by the door, Roman could see his father, Henry, on the far side of the shop, taking a napkin-wrapped bottle from the serving staff at the bar and working his way around the room, topping up glasses with a clap on the shoulder here and a wave to a crony across the room there.
Henry—a handsome and heavyset man in his sixties—oozed charisma and consequence.
He was, as Roman frequently dared to tease him, the epitome of white, male, upper-class privilege, despite his fondness for announcing to anyone who would listen he was a self-made man.
While a lifetime of wily business decisions had—it was true—done something to fill the Montbeau family coffers, he had made some expensive mistakes too, especially recently.
He tended not to mention them, of course.
When he became too unbearably puffed up, Roman would point out that the easiest way to make money was to have some, and having a substantial country estate to monetize, plus a little black book filled with rich and aristocratic friends from Eton and Oxford, hadn’t exactly been a disadvantage either.
After more than ten years away, Roman was definitely a little embarrassed by his background. As a teen, surrounded by his
posh, braying mates, he had been—well, he was prepared to admit it now—he had been a bit of a dick. These days, he was determined
to ensure this was something he and his father didn’t have in common. It had not taken long for him to realize that the privilege of birth counted for nothing in the United States—not
in business terms anyhow. Socially, on the other hand, his good looks and British accent had been a gold pass to all the best
parties, with dinners and book launches in Manhattan interspersed with weekend trips to Long Island. It had been fun...
at first.
Professionally, it had taken several years in the States after graduation, working his way up in blue-chip businesses, for
him to learn how to get the best out of his team—and it wasn’t by pulling rank. Far more satisfyingly, he had demonstrated
himself to have a genuine gift, and a love, for commerce.
Now here he was. Roman had been summoned to refill the treasure chest and, in doing so, gradually take up his new role as
the patriarch of the Montbeau family, whether he liked it or not.
There had been endless rows since he had returned.
It was the old, old story of the head of the family ceding power, reluctantly, to his successor, Roman mused.
Young buck taking over from old buck. He sighed as he surveyed the busy scene and a heavy weight settled in his stomach.
He was supposed to want this. It was his birthright, although it felt to him more like a curse.
And his mother pushing suitable young women at him every five minutes wasn’t helping.
When he had looked around for something he could make his own, the opportunity to deliver the brutal but necessary coup de
grace to Bootles and launch a new venture in its place had been too good to miss. Okay, so it didn’t have to have been a bookshop, but he genuinely had no desire to cause unnecessary pain to the Capelthorne family. Business was
business, and it was just that the premises were perfect for books, he acknowledged to himself, looking around him. Sparkling,
new, and expensively fitted out, the shop looked stunning. It was light, bright, and modern but also graciously steeped in
history, with its stunning balcony curving around the top floor, its soaring high ceilings and vast, twinkling art deco chandelier.
It was the opposite of the dimly lit, labyrinthine, crooked, and cozy Capelthorne’s across the way.
Whether this Capelthorne woman, Jules, knew it or not, Capelthorne’s was already doomed, Roman reminded himself with a twinge of regret.
He gave it six months, but even if the competition from Portneath Books hadn’t already finished it off, the financial equivalent of a hand grenade was already primed and set to explode.
Unfortunately, when it did, that was going to be the fault of the Montbeau family too.
Yep, the ancient feud was set to continue, which was a shame.
He had surreptitiously inquired about her name all those years ago, pretending his questions were of no consequence but attracting teasing from his mates all the same.
He found out she was a Capelthorne, and at the time, it had just made her more intriguing.
And now here she was. In the normal course of events, Roman might even have made a play.
.. He had only had his fleeting memories of her as a teenager to go by until the other night, but now their meeting at the train station was haunting him.
She had become even more beautiful than he remembered.
She was spiky too, but that was fine, he decided with a smile.
Unlike his father, he had no interest in yes-women.
Roman liked a challenge, and Jules, he suspected with some pleasure, was a worthy adversary.
Not that he was short of opportunities for romance, if he wanted it, he thought, watching a tall, slender woman with a waterfall
of shiny blond hair introduce herself charmingly to an equally polished brunette wearing quietly expensive clothes. This must
be one of the local influencers his glamorous right-hand woman, Cally, had identified. Cally was an asset. She had excellent
credentials in the social media side of marketing; in fact, there seemed no end to her skills. A smart, Ivy League–educated
American beauty, Cally had been quick to accept Roman’s invitation to return to Devon with him from New York. And she had
made no secret of being prepared to take things to a more personal level... Roman, uncharacteristically, had, so far, failed
to take her up on the offer. It was good to know the option existed, he admitted to himself, accepting a drink from a member
of the waitstaff and catching the eye of the mayor with a smile.
But he couldn’t afford to be distracted by women. Not now. Dismissing thoughts of Jules and Cally from his mind in favor of greeting his guests, he dived into the fray. Minutes later, chatting to Portneath’s suave,
blue-suited MP about his work in the States, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and heard his father’s booming voice:
“My boy telling you how it’s done?” he inquired. “Chip off the old block, don’t you think?”
The MP made some sycophantic noises, and Roman tried hard to arrange his face into a pleasant, neutral demeanor.
It wasn’t that he didn’t share a desire with his father to win at business—he was hungry enough for that, all right—but his father was content with success only if it included annihilating the opposition. He was spiteful. A bully.
In that sense, Roman told himself, he was nothing like his father.
It was late, but Jules was too wired to sleep. She was curled up at the foot of Flo’s bed in the little office, her hands
wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate. With Flo regarding her kindly over the rim of her own mug, Jules pressed her hand to
her chest to soothe her suddenly pounding heart. It had been doing it all day, whenever she relived the moment the hoardings
came down, followed by her brief but fierce row with Roman.
Aunt Flo raised an eyebrow in gentle inquiry, and Jules summoned a wobbly smile. “I’m fine,” she said. “I just keep thinking...
we’ve got to find a way to fight back.”
“Of course,” Aunt Flo began. “But... look, darling, the last thing I want you to think is that I am giving up—”
“Good. Because you’re not,” Jules insisted. “Over my dead body.”
“More likely mine, statistically,” Aunt Flo observed prosaically. “I think we need to be reasonable and not let this enmity
between the two families get in the way of making sensible commercial decisions.”
Jules wasn’t listening. “He didn’t need to open a bookshop,” she burst out, not for the first time that day. “I mean, why
a bookshop? That’s deliberate provocation. That’s war.”
“I know, I know... but this shop’s not been going well for a while now,” Aunt Flo reasoned.
“Even if the Montbeaus do deal the final blow, one can’t blame them entirely if Capelthorne’s has reached the end of the line anyhow.
We have been underinvested for a very long time.
We need new systems, a thorough refit, more staff. ..”
“I love the shop just exactly the way it is,” protested Jules. “I don’t want it to change.”
“Unfortunately, not enough customers feel the same way as you.” Aunt Flo smiled sadly, putting her hand over Jules’s and giving
it a comforting squeeze. “If it’s time, it’s time.”
“Well, what if it isn’t?” declared Jules. “ I’m here—I’ve got nowhere else to be, not now that I’ve lost my job anyhow—and I’m not going to let that horrible man beat me.
Us.”
Aunt Flo’s head drooped in acknowledgment and what looked like deep fatigue. She was an elderly woman, Jules remembered with
a twinge of remorse.
“I’m just saying I can help,” she explained less stridently. “All is not lost.”