Chapter Four
Ditty smiled encouragingly. ‘Ready? The first place we want to start is with a history of your courtship. Then likes, dislikes, passions. Then we’ll move on to a review of the town and where might be best to locate the proposal.’
A spark of excitement rushed up her spine.
This was, perhaps, the most exciting part of the whole process. The very beginning, when all options were open and she could let her imagination run riot.
Proposal while galloping across London in a game of tag? Why not?
Proposal in a boat in the middle of a lake? Of course!
Proposal after clambering to the top of St Paul’s Cathedral, looking out over London? She’d organised that, and the other two, and plenty more besides.
But with a new client, there was always the chance their story would give her an idea she had never considered before, and that was what made Ditty so excited about working with Mr Paisley.
Charles Paisley, she corrected silently as she waited for her client to speak. Certainly not the Mr Paisley she had first encountered.
Will you just let me speak, woman! You’re here for my brother. I’m a Paisley brother, yes, but not the one who hired you!
Ditty shook her head to push the irritating man’s words from her mind. What did he have against proposal planners, or romance, anyway? Why would a man like that be so determined to make her life difficult just as she arrived in a new town?
She had long ago abandoned the hope for romantic love—seeing her mother fall apart after her father’s death had been terrible indeed.
To love, it was clear to Ditty, meant to grieve, and she would not, could not do that again.
She would not allow anyone else into her heart if it meant it being torn apart when she lost them.
Mr Paisley—he had told her to call him Charles, but Ditty had a hard time with that, it was most indecorous—was frowning. ‘Likes. Dislikes?’
Ditty nodded as she leaned back in the comfy sofa in the man’s drawing room. Soft wintery sunlight drifted through the wide windows overlooking a garden that was spacious and, in the summer, undoubtedly beautiful.
Her client was seated opposite her in an armchair across a console table. He looked perturbed.
She waited another minute, and then smiled. ‘It can be difficult to get started,’ she said softly. ‘Let’s start with a history of the two of you.’
Charles looked up with panic in his eyes. ‘Why does this feel like giving a deposition?’
Ditty chuckled, and that seemed to immediately put the man at ease.
He sat back more easily, crossed one leg over the other and shrugged. ‘Sorry, Ditty,’ he said, evidently far more at home using her nickname than she was using his first name. ‘It’s just—I am sure you can understand. Being a lawyer, this feels more like an interrogation than— Henry!’
Ditty froze. The door had just opened behind her but she had rather assumed it would be…
well, she wasn’t sure who she thought it would be.
A maid perhaps, supplying additional cakes.
A footman bringing a message. A clerk from the law firm.
Miss Yorke was, according to Charles, visiting a cousin for a time while she tied up the sale of her and her father’s home.
She wasn’t due back until the day before the planned proposal.
But it wasn’t her.
Henry Paisley, the irritating man whose displeasure she had managed to avoid for almost a whole four and twenty hours, stepped into the room and halted as he awkwardly met her gaze. ‘Ah.’
Ditty held up her chin, trying to show him she was absolutely unworried by his presence.
She wasn’t. But then, she could not deny her heart had skipped a beat as she caught the gaze of the older Paisley brother. There was something about him, even though she could not stop thinking about how annoying he had been. There was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
It brought out a passion—no, an anger in her that no man, not even Thomas, ever had.
Perhaps that was what was most disconcerting.
‘Henry! Come in, sit and meet—oh, but of course, you two would have met yesterday,’ Charles said with a beaming smile. ‘Come, sit.’
Well, it spoke well of Mr Paisley, Ditty had to admit, that his brother was so evidently delighted to see him. That was something.
But it was their disagreement yesterday on the drive from the staging post to the inn that surely explained why Mr Paisley looked so uncomfortable. ‘My apologies, Charles, I didn’t realise you were with… I can come back another time.’
‘Don’t be daft, man, sit! I’d be glad to have your input, it turns out I hired a proposal planner for good reason,’ said Charles with a laugh.
Ditty watched the two men with interest. Now this was fascinating. The moment Mr Paisley stepped in, Charles had perked up and changed into a confident man, eager to demonstrate how confident he was. Fascinating.
The dynamics of brothers, she had always assumed, was rather complicated. But this was something more.
Mr Paisley bit his lip. Ditty found her attention drawn to the curve of his jaw. ‘I really can’t stay long.’
‘Sit, man, how many times do I have to say it?’ his brother said genially. ‘I’m about to give Ditty a full and true account of Miss Yorke and my courting history. You can add to it, tell me where I went wrong!’
And there it was, Ditty thought. Just a hint of painful truth in that sentence. What had happened between these two brothers—or was this just what happened when a younger brother had the impressive law firm, the house and the lady of his dreams?
She wasn’t even aware what Mr Paisley did for employment, or whether he was a gentleman of leisure—as the eldest, he would have inherited whatever family wealth there was, surely—but whatever it was, it couldn’t be that prestigious. Not driving a dog cart like his around the place.
‘Fine. I’ve got five minutes,’ said Mr Paisley quietly.
There were a myriad of seats available in the large drawing room, but Ditty found her breath caught in her throat as he moved toward the sofa upon which she was sitting. Surely he wouldn’t—
He wouldn’t. Mr Paisley walked straight past her, not giving her a second glance, and sat in a chair across from his brother.
Ditty managed to slowly let out the breath she had been holding.
She was being ridiculous. She was here to work, not become distracted by irritating gentlemen who did not appreciate her skills.
‘How did you meet?’ she said aloud, turning her gaze to Charles.
He grinned. ‘Oh, you should have been there, Ditty. I was in Marchester—the nearest city, I happen to have a number of clients there…’
Ditty nodded as the man spoke, jotting things in her notebook.
It was a standard situation. Introduction by mutual friends, courting whenever he went back to the city, and then—
‘She moved here?’ Ditty found herself interrupting.
Charles nodded. ‘With her father. He sold his law practice, he was planning to retire anyway, and—’
‘But—here?’
She immediately wished she had not done so, even though the temptation had been too great to resist.
Moving to this tiny town once Charles had proposed—now that, she could understand. But Ditty had never encountered someone moving out of a city to a town like this before a proposal had been accepted. It was unheard of!
‘You might find,’ came Mr Paisley’s voice quietly, ‘there are a few charms here in our town you can’t find in a city.’
Ditty shot him a look. As if he could know—had she not lived in both and found only grief in a small town?
At least in the city it was easier to forget, easier to be distracted from life’s hardships.
‘I was asking your brother,’ she said sweetly, turning back to Charles. ‘So, she and her father moved here.’
There was a twinkle in his eye as he continued. ‘That she did. When I realised she had given up so much for me, and was the best sort of woman I could ever meet, I knew I had to marry her.’
Ditty nodded. That made sense. The calculation had been made, and he was a lawyer, he was used to weighing up cases. She would struggle to find a better offer, and so he wanted to ensure that no other gentleman noticed the same thing.
‘Wonderful, that is most helpful, thank you,’ she said, jotting down another few notes. ‘Likes and dislikes.’
‘Mine?’
‘Yours, hers, the two of you together,’ said Ditty, looking up and smiling. ‘Don’t worry, there won’t be a test. It’s just to get an understanding of the two of you, see if I can spot an opportunity to maximise the romance.’
A snort came from her left.
Ditty glared over at Mr Paisley. ‘I’m sorry, did you have something to say?’
‘Me? No, not at all,’ said the most irritating man on the planet, raising up his hands. ‘Just…interesting.’
Interesting? Interesting? What did that mean?
Ditty knew she should ignore him—knew she would only get more irritable if she engaged with his nonsense.
But really, what did he think he was doing? This wasn’t his proposal, it was his brother’s, and she was going to do an excellent job. So why did he keep interrupting?
‘Interests,’ she said firmly, turning back to Charles.
His gaze flickered between the two of them for a moment, before his shoulders once again relaxed. ‘Right. Interests. Well, we both like good food…’
There wasn’t anything particularly unusual in the list he gave her. Ditty wrote them all down diligently, regardless. There was every possibility something might come to her later, when she could leave this frosty atmosphere the elder Paisley had brought with him and return to her room at the inn.
She almost smiled just to think of it. Now, there was a woman who understood how to manufacture romance. Every single inch of the room she had been shown to was covered in love hearts. Every surface, the wallpaper—even the gas lamp had a pink heart-shaped cover.
‘Well, I’ve got some good places to start here,’ Ditty said aloud. Charles beamed. ‘Now, Mr Paisley—’
‘I told you, call me Charles.’