Bred By the Duke (Bred By The Royals #2)

Chapter One

Rochelle

The letter has been sitting on my kitchen table since it arrived this morning, and I've read it enough times now that I could recite it at a party.

Following a strategic review, we regret to inform you that your role as Senior Project Manager with Lyle and Fox is no longer tenable…

I already knew. My boss had called me into his office last thing on Friday and told me the news. They tried to frame it as a mutual agreement, but we both knew I was being pushed.

My phone goes off face down against the wood and vibrates itself in a slow circle toward the fruit bowl. Cassia's name lights up on the screen with an image of her behind it, smiling over a dripping ice cream cone.

“Rochelle.” Her voice is up at a pitch I've only heard twice, once when her horse got out and once at her father's funeral. “Rochelle, I need you to not panic.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Hmm. That's usually your job.”

“Delia's gone,” she squeaks.

I run through my mental rolodex of names associated with Cassia. “Who's Delia?”

“My wedding planner.” There's a wobble under it. “She emailed at eleven o'clock last night. Family emergency, terribly sorry, returning half the fee. Ro, the wedding is Saturday.”

I turn the letter over so I don't have to look at it. “Okay. What's actually still to do?”

“Everything. That's the maddening part. Marquee, flowers, caterers, quartet, car, cake, all of it. It’s all booked and paid for, and I have the receipts. But she was doing the week.” The words start coming faster.

“She had a schedule. She was supposed to be here from tomorrow to tell everyone where to go and what time the vans arrive.

Mamma thinks the marquee people come Thursday, Theo swears it's Friday, nobody knows whether the chairs come with the marquee or separately, there are eleven bedrooms to make up, and I've called the florist three times, but she hasn't picked up.”

“Breathe,” I say, though I think we’re passed that and into full-blown meltdown territory already.

“You do this.” She says it like an accusation. “This is literally your entire job. You stand in the middle of a disaster with a clipboard and make people in high-vis do things on time.”

“That's a beautiful summary of my career.” Ex-career, my brain reminds me.

“Could you come early?” She asks very fast, like she is ripping off a band aid and crossing everything all at once.

“I know it's an enormous ask and you'd have to get the time off, and if you can't then say so and I'll cope.

I'll just be sick in a hedge and marry him anyway with half a marquee and no chairs.”

I look at the letter, the signature, the last line about wishing me every success in my future endeavors.

“Funnily enough,” I say, “I can get the time off.”

There’s a sound like she has clapped her hand over her mouth, then a muffled, “Oh my God.”

“I'll drive up first thing in the morning.”

“Rochelle.” She's crying now, in the same loud, unembarrassed way she does everything. “You are the best human alive, and I'm naming my first child after you.”

I snort and think how her family would have a coronary if any of their descendants were named Rochelle.

“You don’t need to do that.”

After she hangs up, I sit for a while with both hands flat on the table and just breathe.

I have two months' pay, a house that needs more repairs than I know how to handle, and grandparents who ask me every Sunday how work is going because it makes them proud to hear about it. I haven't told a single person that I’ve lost my job because I don’t even know how to say those words out loud.

At least helping Rochelle with her wedding will take my mind off it. And as her best friend and maid of honor, it’s my duty to step up when she needs it.

Even if that means spending five whole days at Fernwicke Hall.

***

Fernwicke Hall in September, with the sun coming in low across the front and the whole west face gone the color of a peach, is truly breathtaking. Seven years I've been coming here and it still does that to me, that little lurch in the chest when the house comes out from behind the beeches.

There's a lorry parked square across the courtyard entrance with nobody in the cab.

There's a man on the south lawn holding one end of a tape measure with the other end lying in the grass thirty feet away.

Two women in aprons are carrying a trestle table out of the east door and appear to be arguing about where to take it.

I have never in my life been so pleased to see such a mess.

Cassia comes down the front steps at a jog before I've got my door open, wearing riding boots and a sweater with a hole in the elbow. She takes hold of me by both arms and shakes me slightly.

“They want to put the marquee on the croquet lawn.” She looks like she might vomit.

“Where do you want the marquee to go?” I ask, lifting my laptop bag out of the back seat when she finally lets me go.

”On the South side of the house so it can get the most sun all day.” She says this like it’s obvious, and I remind myself that it’s her wedding. She has dreamed of this day since she was three years old. She is allowed to be snarky.

“Okay,” I say with a certainty I’m hoping helps her to relax. “Then that’s where it will go. Now, did Delia leave you with any information, at all, about this week?”

Cassia looks like she is about to dissolve into another puddle of tears when she must remember something because her face suddenly lights up.

“There was a box-thingy she was carrying around last week...” She lifts a fingernail to her mouth and starts chewing the edge of it. Her classic tell that she is thinking hard.

She spins around and says, “Follow me.”

The box turns out to be a lever arch file, a plastic wallet of receipts, and a printed floor plan with three different sets of pencil marks on it.

It isn't nothing. It isn't a plan either.

I clear the round table in the morning room, one of those rooms this family keeps immaculate and never sits in, and I lay everything out in the order it needs to exist rather than the order she filed it.

After just a couple of hours, I have a master list. Every supplier, every contact number, every amount paid and outstanding, every delivery window, and a column headed COMPLETE that is almost entirely empty.

At the top I put the four things that cannot move: registrar, marquee, kitchen access for the caterers and cake designer, and flowers on Friday afternoon, or they'll be wilted or dead by Saturday.

Then I start calling.

The marquee firm is already here and reluctantly erecting it on the South bank; the chairs will come separately on Friday from a company who have us down for a hundred and twenty when Cassia says a hundred and sixty.

I pull out the hard copies of the original e-mail and warn them that this is not the wedding they want to mess up.

The florist picks up on the fourth attempt and turns out not to have been ignoring anybody.

She's been at a funeral in Ely, her assistant has been off with shingles, and the roses are a problem because of the drought, but she can do dahlias.

The quartet has us down for the wrong village.

The cake designer isn't having a meltdown about the icing, the cake designer is having a meltdown because nobody has told her whether there's a fridge, and there is, there's a cold larder the size of my entire house.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I notice that I’m not thinking about my job, or lack of a job, and it feels good.

I'm on the phone to a man called Thomas about videography, walking backward down the length of the terrace with my thumb holding a spot on the floor plan, when a voice behind me says:

“You've blocked in the crane.”

I turn around, startled.

Lucas.

Four years. Four years, and I've gotten quite good at not thinking about the way he looks. Now all that hard work is undone, because he’s standing eight feet away in a dark suit with no tie and his collar open.

There’s more gray at his temples than there should be at thirty-two, and he’s holding a set of keys like he was on his way somewhere before he found me.

Everything goes warm. My mouth, my throat, the backs of my knees.

Four years ago, on the day after Christmas, at something past one in the morning, that man had one hand in my hair and my back against the library wall while he kissed me.

And then he stopped, looked at me like I was something he'd broken, and walked out without a word.

I tell Thomas I'll call him back and end the call without hearing his answer.

“The van isn't mine,” I manage.

He doesn't move. “Cassia said you were coming on Friday.”

“Cassia's wedding planner cancelled.”

“So I hear.” His eyes move over me, slow enough to make me feel self-conscious. Then he drops his gaze to the floor plan in my hand, the columns, the highlighter, the four pens and phone I'm holding in my other fist. “You've done all of this today?”

“It's what I'm here for.”

Cassia's voice arrives around the corner ahead of her, delighted and entirely oblivious. “Lucas, Rochelle made them move the marquee, thank god, so you don’t need to yell at anyone. But if you’re available, I could really do with you telling Uncle Peregrine that he is blocking the crane and a wedding is not the best place to bring a dog who is about to give birth. ”

Lucas nods once. “I’ll tell him now. And I’ve cleared the rest of the week so I can help. I didn’t realize you’d already called the cavalry.” His eyes slide back to me when he says this, and my stupid skin does that stupid thing where it goes all pink and prickly.

He will be here all week.

My stomach rolls over like I’ve driven over a hill too fast.

He won’t be off doing his Dukely duties of visiting places and making speeches. He will be here. Helping with the wedding.

Christ.

I came here with the intention of burying myself in work and wedding festivities so I could forget about my life. I’d accepted that I would see him on Saturday. He is the bride’s brother, after all. But there are three days before then that I thought he would be too busy to even be here.

“Right,” Cassia says, “I'm taking her. She needs feeding before we start on the next debacle.” She takes my arm, pulling me out of my thoughts and out of Lucas’s vicinity.