Mod cons? I looked around again for some modern conveniences. Perhaps the wheezing dorm-size refrigerator counted. I had sleepwalked through my first day in the cottage, dazed by jet lag and the accumulated exhaustion of the previous weeks. Having subsisted on the cheese, crackers, and chocolate bars that I had stashed in my carry-on, I was ready for a real meal.
However, the stove was the coldest thing in the room, and I gave up when my efforts to light it produced nothing more than a series of empty clicks and an alarming smell of gas. Time to get back behind the wheel.
I stalled the little car twice before proceeding down the lane in a series of stuttering fits and jerks. Eventually, I rolled into the village of Bradgate at a sedate eight miles per hour, only to discover that the nearest grocery store was on the highway leading out of town. I got lost twice trying to navigate the infernal traffic circles, and on my way to the highway, I bounced my rental car off three more stone walls lining the country lanes. Then I spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to unlock a grocery cart from the stand at the front of the store—why was the charmingly named Waitrose so coldly futuristic compared to my Zabar’s on Seventy-Second Street? Where were the sleekly black-clad couples shopping for ten-dollar bags of organic vegan granola and the pretty Asian nannies with their expertly coiffed and attired charges?
The only other patrons in this supermarket were an elderly lady absentmindedly inspecting tired-looking apples for worms; a gray-haired mother with four boys hanging from her limbs; and a group of eyebrow-pierced teenagers giggling over the candy bars.
Even the lines were disappointingly short. I had become accustomed to answering my backlog of emails while waiting in line to pay, always allowing at least twenty-five minutes for standing in place. Here, I went right up to the wooden counter. As I put down my yogurt, coffee, milk, extra-virgin olive oil, vegetables, and cheese, the elderly man behind the register eyed me suspiciously. “You visitin’?”
I started. Was Bradgate that small? Was I so obviously an outsider?
There was a brief pause, followed by a cackle of laughter. “Ha! Care o’ Sir John the Icy, eh? Hope you dun have to take care of those wild gels!” He grinned as he rang up my purchases. I smiled hesitantly back.
“So, what brings you to these parts? Seems an odd place for an American girl like yourself, and clearly a city girl, too!” He nodded his plaid cap toward my ensemble: black leather boots, black peacoat, and silk scarf that did more for fashion than it did for warmth.
I had just stuffed the last yogurt container into my bag and pretended I hadn’t heard. “Must be off, then, good day, sir!” I shot back cheerily, and walked briskly out of the store.
I paused at the dusty ATM on the corner and gamely tried my debit card, having been assured by my bank that international transactions were possible. The ATM disagreed. An angry message flashed up in red on the screen: “No cash for you, uncouth American!” it read, or something to that effect. Damn!
Driving back onto the estate, I wondered at the curiosity of the old man in the shop. And what was that he had called John? Sir John the Icy? Perhaps, but there was that spark of attraction, that hint of sexual heat . . . Lucian flashed into my mind again, and I shuddered, recalling the bruises that my last encounter with sexual heat had left me.
Distracted, I swung the car into the long tree-lined driveway and cringed as the front right fender once again smacked into a stone wall with a resounding thwack. “Fuck!” I shouted, banging the steering wheel with my fist until my hand ached. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!” I flung open the battered door and practically threw myself out of the car, stomping around to inspect the fender and cursing all the while at the top of my lungs.
Naturally, a dark blue Mercedes sedan chose that moment to purr up the lane from the house and come to a sedate stop inches from my bruised fender.
John got out of the car and surveyed me in silence, the tiniest hint of a smile playing around his mouth. “Having a spot of bother?” he inquired, bending to examine the fender.
“I can’t get used to driving on the wrong side of the road!” I burst out, perilously close to tears. “And my debit card won’t work, so I can’t get cash, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to work the stove, so I’m starving and cold and—” I stopped, throttling back my tale of woe. This was what I had wanted, right? After the Three Misfortunes and then those final tempestuous days in New York, all I’d wanted was a complete change—a metamorphosis—an oasis of peace and quiet as far from my usual pace as possible. So how could I complain, after barely two days, that I was so completely out of my comfort zone?
John straightened up, giving a final valedictory pat to the crumpled fender. “I’ll send Maisie, the housemaid, down to help you with the cottage,” he said calmly. “I suggest Mick at Bradgate Motors for the car. I’ll tell him to expect you.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“I also suggest getting rid of the rental car,” he added. “An automatic transmission will bankrupt you here.”
I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, but I knew he was right, so I just nodded mutely.
He turned to get into his car, then turned back. “Dinner tonight at seven o’clock,” he said. “No need to dress.”
Chapter 3
DINNER AT THE great house! At least I didn’t have to worry about my host greeting me in black tie and tails—or so I assumed that was what “no need to dress” meant. I conjured up an image of the elegant Lord John Grey greeting me at the door stark naked, and shook my head hastily to dismiss it. If this were a romance novel, I reflected, the reader would be bored already, since the ending—me and the (conveniently widowed) Sir John sailing off together into the sunset—would be so obvious.
My life, however, was no romance novel. My New York incarnation was never romantic; I dressed in black, gulped down endless Starbucks mocha lattes, devoured the Financial Times, and occasionally found time for a furtive, unsatisfying fumble with Lucian.
And now . . . I caught sight of myself in the hallway mirror and grimaced at my once highlighted and glossy, wavy auburn hair tied up into a mousy brown ponytail without the services of my salon ladies in New York; once carefully made-up eyes shadowed by lack of sleep; once Armani-clad body covered in dust and mud from my fight with the stove and the car. No, I was no romantic heroine.
Besides, there were the four children! At thirty-five, I had never once regretted my childless state—no biological clock for me. I had never even enjoyed playing with dolls; LEGOs were more my speed. I had watched my friends marry and eventually become parents, frantically dividing themselves between their jobs and homes until they pulled apart at the seams. It was one of the reasons, I always thought, why I had managed to eclipse so many others and become one of Wall Street’s top hedge fund managers: my single-minded devotion to “the deal.”
But that was before. My mind drifted to my assistant’s neatly written list of “priority phone calls to return” from my last day at the bank: Lucian, his lawyer, Lucian again, my lawyer, Lucian, AmCan Bank’s chief executive officer, Marcus Dyer, my fellow trader Gary, the bank’s general counsel, the district attorney’s office.
Lucian, in a blind fury.
My stomach clenched at the memory of that awful day.
And this was now, and I was dressing for my first dinner with a British milord: Sir John the Icy. I managed to pull myself together enough to find a slightly creased black Theory tunic and black leggings, adorning it only with a brooch necklace that I had found in a secondhand store in Soho. My grand entrance was marred a bit by the coating of leaves and dirt I acquired while walking up the half-mile path to the manor. Perhaps John would drive me home in one of the six estate cars I had spotted in the garage, tucked discreetly between the house and the stables.
The white-aproned Maisie took my sweater and handed me a sherry, then directed me toward the “evening salo
n,” a large, lofty room divided into several casual conversation areas and dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, giving out onto a stone-flagged patio. Magnificent views of the setting sun over rolling meadow and gently forested hills stretched as far as the eye could see. This wasn’t like the faux-old gray shingles of Hamptons estates, acquired by annual spring power-washings designed to emulate the old-money look. No, this was genuine ancestral age garnered by generations of wealth and privilege.
Lucian would be pea-green with envy. Once I had walked into his office when he was on the speakerphone with his mother, shouting and cursing at her in English while she wailed at him in Portuguese. Originally Luciano Federiçao, Lucian had reinvented himself at college and become the nattily dressed investment banker Lucian Fellowes, light-years removed from the fisherman’s son of Fall River, Massachusetts. With brute force and ferocious charm, he had climbed the Manhattan ladder until his faint accent was just a sensual wisp and his gleaming black hair was reminiscent of exoticism rather than Ellis Island.
He had been furious at me for witnessing that conversation, and his fury was always painful; I flinched at the memory, still angry with myself for allowing the Three Misfortunes to push me into Lucian’s arms. Why had it taken the threat of jail to dislodge me from New York and Lucian?
Shaking my head, I walked into the “salon” and smiled at Jane, who had hurried down the stairs and entered the room just behind me. “Which horse do you like to ride?” I asked her. I had explored the stables at some length that afternoon and hoped the horses would provide a safe topic of conversation. Young girls and horses—what could be more natural?
Jane said something too low for me to hear. “Sorry?” I asked. The bay gelding I had admired that afternoon was grazing in the far meadow, the fading sunlight dappling his coat with gilt; I wondered how he would feel soaring over a fence. Spectacular, I suspected.
“I hate riding,” she muttered.
I swung around, distracted from the horse. “What? Are you kidding?” I couldn’t believe it—the beautiful horses and the lovely countryside were a dream come true for a young rider. Certainly they would have been for me, confined to Central Park’s cramped trails until I started riding on the Florida circuit. I could never do anything unless I did it to the fullest; nothing less than the national championships would satisfy me. It was the same with derivatives trading.
“I hate riding,” she repeated a little more firmly. She cast a defiant glance at her father, who had come up beside her and was shaking his head at me in silent warning.
Unabashed, I continued, “You must have had the wrong teachers, then. Nothing in the world is as much fun as riding!”
John quirked a quizzical eyebrow at me. “Nothing?” he inquired. Good God, the man was attractive! He wore a ratty blue sweater and wrinkled, ancient khakis that Lucian wouldn’t have been caught dead in—but he had an allure that Lucian, with all his surface finesse, had never achieved. My danger antennae snapped up, and I found myself blushing furiously.
“Nothing,” I retorted, every bit as defiantly as his daughter.
“Well, then, you must have had the wrong teachers,” he murmured.
I gulped, and Jane looked between us a little uncertainly. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.
“Nothing!” I snapped.
“Riding,” her father said at the same moment.
Jane frowned.
“Never mind,” said John, looking bored, and I wondered if I had dreamed the entire exchange. “Jane dislikes riding, and I’m afraid Katherine lacks the focus that a serious rider requires.”
Though I hated to agree with him, he was right about the focus required of a great rider. I smiled at Jane, thinking that this serious-looking girl probably was better suited to the task of mastering a twelve-hundred-pound animal than her younger sister. Riding was the only time that I felt all-powerful, in control. “Maybe we could ride together sometime?” I suggested.
“No,” said Jane. Before her father could comment on her rudeness, she walked away.
“Well!” I said.
“I suppose you are a champion rider?” John inquired, looking as if nothing could interest him less.
“Yes,” I said just as coolly. “I am.”
A small silence fell. Finally, I remembered that there was a third daughter—the youngest, Mary. I said, “What about Mary?”
“Excuse me?”
“Does Mary ride?”
“Her physical condition precludes that,” John said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must see to the . . .” And off he went, too.
It seemed I had managed to offend two of the Greys already, and the evening was only half an hour old. What on earth was little Mary’s “physical condition,” though?
Dinner began carefully. The son and heir—six-year-old Henry—arrived pink and shining from a recent bath, deposited by a rail-thin nanny in skintight jeggings who was already pulling on her jacket as she pushed him into the room. “I’m off, then,” she said unnecessarily. She was out the door before John had mustered a goodbye.
Well! I thought again. This time I had the sense not to say it aloud.
Henry plopped himself into a chair next to mine and pulled out an electronic game that started burping immediately. “No games at the dinner table,” said John.
Henry bobbed his head obediently and transferred the game to his lap, where it continued burping and chirring.
A burst of Adele erupted from Katherine’s lap, and she bent her blond head to tap as furiously as Henry at a tiny keyboard.
“No texting, either,” John said wearily, and Katherine’s head bobbed, too.
I glanced over at Jane on my other side and noticed that she held a book in her lap, turning the pages quietly so as not to draw her father’s attention. So, I thought. Quite the happy family.
Chapter 4
“MY MUMMY DIED,” Henry informed me.
John had confiscated the electronic game and Katherine’s cell phone (Jane, cagier than her siblings, had secreted her book in the folds of the tablecloth) and asked each of the children to tell me something about him- or herself. This, apparently, was Henry’s notion of dinner table conversation.
“She died when I was born. Deirdre is my nanny, but Jane calls her the Wicked Witch. I am Henry, heir to Bradgate, and I’m six.” He turned to his father. “Now can I have my game back?”
John’s lips tightened. Quickly, Jane said, “I take care of Henry, too, don’t I? Much better than Deirdre.”
I couldn’t blame her, given the teenager’s hasty departure and lack of a farewell to her charges. Having been raised by a series of nannies, I considered myself expert in distinguishing the good ones from the Wicked Witches—and I was certain that Deirdre fell into the second category. But it was none of my business.
Smiling for the first time, the little boy nodded at his eldest sister, and I saw the resemblance between them: both thin, with fine reddish-brown hair and expressive eyes. They didn’t look anything like their father, I thought. They must look like their late mother—Aline Marguerite de Chissay, according to my Internet research.
“Deirdre is temporary,” John said sharply. “Nannies seem to come and go very quickly in this household. As an MP, I spend most of my weeks in London and weekends here.”
“Ah,” I said. An absentee father, and the children in Nannyland. No wonder he seemed so ill at ease with them.
“Jane is fourteen, and she attends Priory Hall,” John continued, striving mightily to turn this into polite conversation, “and Katherine and Mary attend St. Ann’s. Henry is at St. Swithin’s. I thought it best for them to remain in their schools rather than disrupt them with a move to London.”
“I’m thirteen,” Katherine said. “And I should love to move to London! I think your clothes are very glam. Is that how they dress in New York? Will yo
u take me shopping?”
John scowled.
“Anyway,” Katherine said hastily, “next year I’ll go to Priory with Jane, but I shall hate it because it’s only girls!”
Yes, I could imagine that Katherine might enjoy the presence of boys. Unlike her pencil-straight older sister, Katherine already had some small curves to her body (lovingly displayed by her tight V-neck sweater). Her thick ringlets and ready smile were probably irresistible to boys, even the thirteen-year-old variety.
“Poor old Jane here is going to marry a horrible man and get her head cut off,” Katherine announced, tossing her own blond head in disdain. “And I shall fall madly in love and die for the sake of my lover, just like Lady Katherine Grey! Lady Jane Grey’s younger sister,” she added with a glance at my bemused face.
At a loss, I glanced over at John, who was trying to hide a smile. “As usual,” he said, “Katherine here has her facts somewhat muddled.”
“Lady Jane Grey was beheaded, wasn’t she?” I ventured, feeling reasonably sure that this, at least, was fact. After my high school trip to England, I had read masses of historical fiction about the teenage queen, innocent victim of her power-mad male relatives. Lady Jane Grey and her family had figured prominently in the Internet accounts of Bradgate Hall, too.
“Oh, yes,” said her namesake seriously. “She was a silly fool who was forced into a horrible marriage—”
“See?” cried Katherine.
“—and then forced to accept the crown, even though she knew she shouldn’t have—”
“She even cried and fainted,” chimed in Mary, speaking for the first time. “She didn’t want to be queen at all.”
“—and she was queen for nine days, and then she was beheaded,” finished Jane, determinedly riding over her sisters’ interjections.
“Poor thing,” I said.
“She was only sixteen when she died,” said John in a low voice, and I glanced at him, realizing that the young queen had been only a year or so older than his eldest daughter when she was executed.
Nannyland Page 2
