by Sharon Booth
"I'm not," he said. "I just like to observe."
It was on the tip of my tongue to make a joke about men who had a thing for sheep, but I decided he wasn't in the mood to hear it. "Are you going back to the Hall?" I said uncertainly. "Only, I've been gone a while, and I think Susie will be waiting to get off home. I should get back."
He didn't look at me, merely shrugged. "You go. I'll be along in a while."
I hesitated, wondering if he was okay to be left alone. He was in a most peculiar mood, that was certain. "Mr Rochester, are you sure you're all right?" I said quietly.
He finally turned to face me. "I just have some thinking to do, that's all." He smiled suddenly, and it was like sunshine after a storm. "Don't look so anxious. Everything's fine."
"Okay. Well, if you're sure …" I could hardly challenge him, so I turned and headed in the direction of Moreland Hall, leaving him behind, and thinking I'd never understand that man in a million years. And yet, I wanted to. Oh, I really wanted to.
Chapter Fifteen
I told Mrs F about my strange encounter with our boss as soon as I got back to the Hall.
"Do you think he's all right? He was most peculiar."
"Sounds like he's got a lot on his mind," she said.
I waited for her to elaborate, but she clearly wasn't in the mood. Or maybe it was just not for her to say. Sighing, I excused myself and took Adele out into the grounds, where we spent a pleasant half hour sitting by the lake, while I read to her from The Wind in the Willows, and she hunted for her very own Toad. She shrieked with excitement when she thought she'd found him, hiding under the drooping branches of a willow tree, and I didn't like to tell her that she'd actually found a common frog. We agreed to leave him alone to snooze in peace and headed back to the house.
Some of the guests had already arrived, judging by the cars parked in the drive. As I led Adele towards the kitchen, I wondered if the special female friend was among them. Why was she so special that Mrs F kept singling her out for mention? Was she romantically involved with Mr Rochester? Surely not. She hardly sounded the type of woman any man would fall for, let alone someone as intelligent as him. Then again, male hormones were notoriously fickle, something I knew all too well.
"She's here," Mrs F informed me, as soon as I returned. She ushered Adele over to the kitchen table and set down a plate of scrambled eggs on toast. "It'll have to do for now," she said, casting an apologetic look at me. "I'm rushed off my feet, and she'll be having some supper at Mrs Turner's later, anyway."
"Who's here?" I enquired, although my sinking heart proved I'd already guessed who she meant.
Mrs F tutted. "Her name's Briony Walsingham-Quinton. Huge chest, and a brain the size of a peanut. You won't be able to miss her, trust me."
"Sounds delightful," I said. "Her name's bigger than her IQ, by the sounds of it."
"Oh, don't you underestimate her," she said knowingly. "She may not know the capital of Italy, but she's sharp as a knife in other ways. Very good at getting what she wants, is that one. And I reckon she wants Ethan Rochester."
My stomach plummeted. "Really?" Well, hadn't I already guessed as much? "And does he want her?"
She sniffed. "He's married," she pointed out, as if that answered that question, which it didn't. Not really.
"Surely, she's not his type?" I said.
She eyed me curiously. "And what would you say was his type?"
How would I know? Around five-foot-two with green eyes and reddish-blonde hair? Fat chance. Someone with a double-barrelled name and big boobs would be more like it. I sighed. "I suppose you're right. He's a man. Any woman with a pulse."
"Do you really believe that?" She shook her head. "You may be surprised. But I do worry about him. He's very vulnerable. Lonely. And she's manipulative. I wouldn't put it past her to trap him."
"Trap him? How could she trap him?"
"Not for me to say," she said, giving me a look that clearly said that surely I could work it out for myself.
I felt sick. He wouldn't, would he? "But he's married," I protested, throwing her own words back at her, even though I knew the mysterious Antonia Rochester didn't appear to be much of a factor in his life. "Surely, he wouldn't ...?"
"Wouldn't what?" She hurried over to the oven to check on whatever was baking in there. "All I know is, he's looking for something that Antonia isn't giving him, and Briony would be only too happy to offer it, even though she'd be the worst possible choice for him. We can only hope," she added, pulling on her oven gloves, "that his self-control isn't lowered by all that champagne they'll be quaffing tonight. Maybe we ought to keep an eye on him, just in case?"
I launched into a rather satisfying fantasy, in which Briony fell down the stairs and twisted her ankle, and spent the entire weekend in her bedroom, while Mr Rochester caught sight of me in my new dress and couldn't take his eyes off me. As we danced together, I’d murmur, ‘I wonder how Briony is?’ Gently his lips would brush my ear as he’d whisper, ‘Briony who?’
Ooh, that was a nice fantasy, but the banging of the oven door, and Mrs F's call to Adele to hurry up with her tea because she needed the table clearing, soon brought me back to real life, and I tutted to myself. Talk about an overactive imagination! All the same, I couldn't decide whether I was looking forward to finally meeting that Briony woman, or dreading the very thought of it.
#
The house was full of people. It felt quite strange to see so many new faces and hear such a buzz of conversation everywhere I went. Usually the place was quiet, and always felt empty. The bedrooms in the east wing were finally being used, and the spare ones in the west wing were also taken, so for the first time in years, the house was as it would have been in Ethan's great-grandfather's day, when he'd employed plenty of servants and held regular house parties.
The bar staff were busy sorting out glasses and stacking drinks in one of the rooms. The downstairs rooms were all decorated with twinkling lights, and I was finally allowed to see the drawing room. I couldn't wait to see who'd won in the battle between Mrs F and Paolo.
As Paolo unlocked the door with a flourish, I gasped. "Good grief!"
He folded his arms and gave me a smug look. "Mrs Fairweather set the rules. I obey. She get what she want. Is just Mr Rochester's thing, yes?"
I wasn't quite sure what to say. "Er ..."
"He is man's man. I have that make very clear to me. No Oberon for Mr Rochester. I give him masculine theme, you agree?"
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I thought he was rather taking the mickey, when I heard a shriek behind me and realised Mrs F had arrived.
"Is this your idea of revenge?" she said, glaring at Paolo. "You silly little man."
Paolo looked furious. "You say to me, no fairies for Mr Rochester. You say to me, no feminine side for Mr Rochester. You say to me, he is manly, strong. I do as you ask, and you still insult me!"
"It's ridiculous," she snorted, not very tactfully. "He's a grown man, not a little boy. What's with the colour scheme? It's not a baby shower!"
"It is the masculine colour, is it not?" Paolo demanded. He seemed totally confused, and I couldn't help but smile. He'd definitely given her what she'd insisted upon, and it wasn't his fault that he'd taken her literally.
The room was wall to wall blue. Talk about overkill. There were symbols of masculinity everywhere. The bunting wasn't little flags, but stripy ties. There were party bags—party bags! As if he was about seven!—in the shape of shirts, with little bow ties on them. A large poster of a huge, military-style moustache hung on one wall, with the words Happy Birthday Ethan written beneath it. The cake was a three-tier extravaganza: the bottom tier a black jacket, complete with buttons; the second tier a white shirt collar and black tie; the top tier a bowler hat. Little cupcakes had been decorated with blue icing and black moustaches. Blue and white balloons bobbed everywhere, and one wall had been completely covered in old newspapers, some dating from the year Ethan was born, and some, to M
rs F's unmistakable horror, displaying the obvious charms of various topless models.
In one corner of the room, a sofa shaped like a racing car had been set facing a large flat screen television. A dartboard hung from one wall, a blackboard with a list of beers of the world chalked on it from another, and a pool table had been set up ready for play.
Did Mr Rochester drink beer? Did he play darts, or pool? Judging by Mrs F's face, I thought not.
There was nothing about the party theme that seemed to have any bearing on his life. at all. On balance, it would probably have been wiser to allow Paolo to go with his Midsummer Night's Dream theme.
"Oh, my word! How kitsch!" A shrill voice behind me almost shattered my eardrums, and I turned around to see who I presumed to be Briony Walsingham-Quinton standing there, her hands clasped to her substantial bosom and her lip curled in a sneer. It had to be her. Mrs F had said she had a huge chest, and the intrusive woman certainly fitted the bill. They had to be fake, surely? Especially given the fact that she was the size of a stick insect everywhere else.
But, damn it, she was pretty. Exceptionally so. I’d been hoping she'd have a face like Shrek, but no such luck. Even without her ample assets, she would turn any man's head. She had long, dark, glossy hair that fell almost to her waist, and wore a tight shirt, tucked into a pencil skirt that revealed a slender, yet somehow curvy, figure. How sickening.
Paolo's dark, waxed eyebrows knitted together. "Kitsch? Kitsch? How dare you? This is Mr Rochester in a room. You see? I create masculine masterpiece." He glared pointedly at Mrs F. "Just as I was commanded."
"Well, this is different," said a young man, who'd just rushed up behind Briony and put his arm around her waist in a rather proprietary way. She didn't seem to mind, though, which was encouraging. "What is it? A birthday party, or a baby boy's Christening?"
Paolo reared up like an angry stallion. "This is party for grown man. Man's man," he added, scowling. "See? All trappings of man's life. The pool table, the beers of the world, the racing car sofa."
"Where are the real page three models?" the young man demanded, looking approvingly at the awful, sexist newspaper cuttings.
To my disgust, Briony giggled, tapping him playfully on the arm. "Oh, Joel! You are terrible."
"Wait until Ethan sees this," Joel said with a grin. "He's going to love it. Not."
Paolo turned a cold stare on him. "Mr Rochester already sees, and approves. He is man of taste."
I didn't know which of us was most surprised. Probably Mrs F, judging by the dramatic way she clasped her chest and said, "Never!"
I couldn't have put it better myself. I'd have thought Adele's piggy bank would be bursting with fifty pence pieces after Mr Rochester saw that dreadful display.
"Just shows you, Mrs Fairweather," Briony said coolly. "Maybe you don't know Ethan as well as you suppose."
As I hooked my arm through Mrs F's, Briony turned her gaze on me, as if seeing me for the first time.
"I don't think we've been introduced?" she said coolly.
"Er, Cara Truelove," I said, taking the hand she offered with some reluctance and shaking it limply.
"Briony Walsingham-Quinton," she said. "I don't believe I've heard of you before. Are you a friend of Ethan's, or family?"
I was about to answer, but didn't get the chance. From behind me, Mr Rochester's voice replied, "Miss Truelove is Adele's nanny. Ah, you've all seen Paolo's theme, then? What do you think? Isn't it quite … astonishing?"
Paolo looked most gratified and shot Mrs F a smug look, while Briony giggled again and abandoned Joel to attach herself to my employer.
"Oh, darling, it's amazing. So much fun!"
"I thought you'd like it," he said, which just shows how little he knew her. He smiled at me, but I didn't smile back. I was still smarting from the Adele's nanny remark, even though he was perfectly right, and that was all I was, after all, so why I was annoyed about it, I couldn't imagine.
"You don't even play pool," Mrs F snapped, determined to get one over on Paolo.
"But it will be fun learning," Mr Rochester told her. "Joel here is very good. He can teach me."
"Ooh, and I'll learn, too." Briony fluttered her eyelashes. "We can learn together."
He looked surprisingly eager. "Great idea. Joel, you'll teach us, won't you?"
Joel beamed. "Be delighted."
"Excellent!" Briony simpered.
I couldn't believe Mr Rochester had fallen for it.
Mrs F and I exchanged glances, before she said, "Right, this won't get the baby his bonnet. I'm getting back to my kitchen."
"I'll come with you," I said, keen to get away from the gushing Briony and gullible Ethan Rochester.
"Aren't you both good." Briony smiled sweetly at us. "Ethan is so lucky to have such hard-working staff."
Mrs F pulled on my arm, and we headed back to the kitchen, saying nothing in reply to her clearly patronising comment.
"Told you," she said, as she closed the kitchen door behind us and hurried to the cupboard, from where she grabbed a couple of therapeutic teabags. "Now you know what I mean."
"Okay," I said, "she's a bitch. I agree. But what's Ethan playing at? He can't possibly like that party theme! And why is he so nice to her? Why did he even invite her? Is he really that stupid?" He'd gone down in my estimation. I felt quite deflated suddenly. "I'd better take Adele off Michael's hands. I'll get her things packed and hand her over to Susie, then I'll get changed. Can't say I'm really looking forward to this party, though."
"If it's too awful, me and you and Michael will slip away early. We can have drinks and food in my sitting room. Be better than hobnobbing with that bunch." She sighed. "And we've got to put up with them all tomorrow, too. No doubt they'll be nursing hangovers, demanding cooked breakfasts, and being snappy and irritable. At least they'll be gone by teatime. Just grit your teeth and bear it, Cara."
"Lucky Mrs Rochester," I said. "Jennifer, I mean. Up there in her room, away from it all."
Although, for all I knew, she may have really wanted to attend. Maybe she approved of Briony. Perhaps she was hoping that her son would marry the woman—if he ever divorced his wife, of course.
Really, the man seemed incorrigible. It appeared he had women littered all over the place. Antonia, Briony, Adele's mother .... Could he really be as bad as he seemed?
Chapter Sixteen
I wasn't really looking forward to the party, but I was determined to pull out all the stops when it came to my appearance, nevertheless. There was no way I was going to let Briony Wotsit-Quaver, or whatever her name was, look down her nose at me.
As soon as I reached my room, I hurried over to the wardrobe and took out the dress, holding it against myself and admiring my reflection in the mirror. I'd tried it on as soon as I got home from Helmston, and I'd been thrilled with how well it fitted. I planned to curl my hair and take my time applying my makeup, so I’d look all glamorous and confident. Ethan Rochester wouldn't know what had hit him.
Hanging the dress on the wardrobe door, I peeled off my clothes and dropped them in the laundry basket, then headed into the en-suite to take a shower. I still got a thrill from having my very own bathroom. It seemed like the height of luxury to me, especially since the shower was one of those huge walk-in ones that could easily fit two people in the cubicle, and had a shower head the size of a planet.
I thought of the cheap shower over the bath, back at the flat in Oddborough, with the plastic shower curtain that was decorated with big orange fish, and I shuddered, not so much because of the shower, but at the memory of the mysterious hairs that always seemed to be embedded in the soap, and the scum that Seth left around the bath, having long ago decided that cleaning it out after himself was unnecessary, as clearly, there were mysterious bathroom fairies who did the job perfectly well for him.
My fault, I supposed, as I massaged shampoo into my hair and considered where things had started to go wrong for us. I'd grown tired of waiting for Seth to d
o his fair share, and had simply started to do it for him, which meant that, in the end, he saw everything on the domestic front as being my job. A bit like he saw everything on the money-making front as my job, too—or anything else that involved work, or thinking, really, except for writing poetry which was clearly his domain, however bad he was at it.
I wondered how he was coping at Isolde's place. I didn't believe for a second that he was staying in her tiny box room. She would have made it very clear to him that he was welcome to share with her, and I was pretty certain that Naomi would have encouraged their relationship. After all, if her best friend and brother got together, Naomi need never fear that she would have to get off her sorry backside and find a home for herself, or a job to pay for it. What a trio of losers, they were, I thought. How had I spent so long propping them up? They didn't even like me. Yet, there I was, the only one of them working, paying rent, so they could sit in comfort every day, while I was at the nursery, eating their way through my biscuits and having the cheek to sell my piano!
The piano. I felt a sudden sadness at the thought of it. I hoped whoever had bought it was taking care of it and treating it well. I remembered Granny Reed, sitting beside me on the piano stool, her bony fingers scuttling over the keys like spider legs. I could almost smell her lavender perfume, and the musky scent of that dusty old room. I blinked away the image. It was no use getting upset. What had happened had happened. I could only hope that she, somehow, knew that I had moved on with my life, and that I would never have sold the piano if I'd had any choice. Though, maybe it was a good thing that Seth had. Would I ever have finally snapped and made the decision to leave if he hadn't? I would never know.
I rinsed the shampoo off my hair and stepped out of the shower. With a giant, fluffy bath sheet wrapped around myself, I wandered back into the bedroom and sat on the bed, rubbing my hair with a towel.
The room seemed to darken quite suddenly. A glance out of the window revealed grey clouds had rolled in, dismissing the sunshine from duty. Beneath them, the trees waved quite frantically, almost as if they were trying to attract my attention.
