The Baronet's Wedding Engagement

by Jessica Hart

  “Look at that! See how she’s touching herself?” she said to Ally out of the corner of her mouth as Cressida fluttered her fingers along her beautiful clavicle. “God, that’s such a giveaway. And all that mirroring! Why not just throw herself across the table and beg him to ‘take me now’?”

  “Hhmm.” Ally craned her neck to see round Flora. “Doesn’t look as if he’s enjoying it much though, does he?”

  That was true. He didn’t. Flora was insensibly cheered to realize that Ally was right. Max’s head was inclined courteously towards his companion, but his body language was definitely uncomfortable. Of course, that could be because she wasn’t his Stella.

  “Maybe you’re in with a chance after all,” Ally suggested.

  “Yeah, right. If I lost four stone and chopped six inches off my legs. Look at how thin she is.” Flora turned back to the bar to take another sip of her wine. “Anyway, I’m not interested in Max Kennard,” she added belatedly, realizing that was what she should have said in the first place.

  And yet there she was, glancing back at the table without meaning to, just as Max picked up his beer and glanced towards the bar, and their eyes met for a jarring second that seemed to plunge them both into a pool of stillness, cut off from the noise and laughter of the rest of the pub so effectively that Flora could only hear the buzzing in her ears and the thud of her heart. Even Ally beside her had receded behind some invisible wall.

  Then someone moved and the line of sight was broken. Flora buried her nose in her glass, mortified to have been caught staring.

  “What was that about?” asked Ally, who missed nothing.

  “Nothing,” said Flora.

  “It looked like something to me.”

  “Well, it isn’t. Max has got no interest in me, and he’s not my type either. What are you doing?” she added, puzzled, when Ally peered behind her.

  “Just checking to see whether your pants are on fire, and let me tell you, Floradear, they are definitely smouldering.”

  Flora couldn’t help laughing. “Stop it! It’s true!”

  “Okay, I totally believe you,” said Ally with mock earnestness. “You’re so over that crush. You’ve got no interest in Max Kennard at all. None. Zero. Zip. Got it.”

  Flora shoved at her lightly. “Oh, shut up. Or rather, don’t. Tell me what you want to talk to Hope about instead.”

  “Good morning!” Flora looked up with a smile when Max went into the kitchen on the following Monday. She was looking annoyingly bright and cheerful, the professional-looking apron wrapped neatly over a lurid orange top, and she was dicing carrots with breath-taking speed and precision.

  At least, Max assumed that’s what was taking his breath away. He certainly hoped it was nothing to do with the blueness of her eyes or the warm curve of her mouth.

  Whatever it was only added to the scratchy, prickly, edgy feeling that had dogged him all weekend. Ever since dinner with Cressida at the Three Bells, in fact.

  It hadn’t been a successful evening. Max blamed Flora. When he first met Cressida, he had liked the fact that she was so tastefully dressed and restrained, but on Friday night she had seemed a little ... colourless. She was pleasant, though, Max reminded himself.

  Perhaps she was too impressed by the fact that he was a baronet, but at least she wasn’t provocative. She didn’t spend half a morning making a cup of coffee. She didn’t roll her eyes at him or criticize him.

  She didn’t have a husky laugh that drifted through the crowds and seemed to caress the back of his neck. A laugh that whispered over his skin and uncurled in erotic dreams that had left him aroused and unsatisfied and in a thoroughly bad mood.

  All in all, dinner with Cressida would have been fine if a certain someone hadn’t been perched there at the bar, Max couldn’t help thinking. Somehow it had been impossible to ignore Flora. Probably because of that bright top she wore. He couldn’t honestly accuse her of trying to draw attention to herself, but it was hard to concentrate on Cressida when Flora had been sitting there with Ally. They weren’t shouting or screaming. They were just having a conversation and enjoying themselves. Nothing wrong with that.

  They were just ... distracting.

  They had made a striking pair. Ally Parker had always been a pretty girl, and Flora was ... vivid, Max decided was the best way to describe her. She wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t even particularly pretty, but there was a vibrancy about her, a lushness and a warmth, that made everyone around her seem just a little muted in comparison.

  And clearly he hadn’t been the only one to think so, Max remembered morosely Pete Harmon, the landlord, who Max had always liked until then, had put his arms round Ally and Flora at the same time and called them his ‘favourite girls’ – although no prizes for guessing that his wife didn’t feel the same. Both girls hugged him back, obviously delighted to see him. Lucky Pete, Max had found himself thinking, and his hand tightened around his glass of beer while Cressida gushed about Hasebury Hall and how she had once spent a whole afternoon dreaming in the gardens. Or possibly reading in the gardens: Max had rather lost the thread of the conversation by then.

  He had forced himself to concentrate on Cressida, but Flora kept tugging at the edges of his vision. She and Ally were clearly having a great time. They were greeted by almost everybody who came into the pub and there was much hugging and kissing, and then there were the other men, lurking, jockeying for attention. Both girls were clearly lively and popular. Everything he could never be.

  Or would ever want to be, Max reminded himself quickly. His parents had both been lively and popular and intensely sociable, and look where that had got them.

  “Yes, I’m fine, thank you, and yes, I did have a lovely weekend, actually. Thank you so much for asking, Bella.” Belatedly, Max tuned in to the fact that Flora was talking pointedly to the dogs who were watching her, tails wagging doubtfully, unsure what was required but willing to please. “And how about you? Did you have some nice walks? Crunch up some bones with those big teeth of yours? You did? Excellent. And what about you, Ted? Oh, right, you don’t answer either. Just like your master, in fact.”

  Max’s glower bounced right off her. “Obviously you didn’t have a nice weekend,” she said to him. “What happened? Didn’t your date work out?”

  “It wasn’t a date,” he growled. “It was just ... dinner.”

  Flora opened her blue eyes wide. “It looked like a date to me,” she said provocatively as she scraped the carrots into a bowl and picked up an onion, peeling and chopping it with alarming competence. No one should be able to wield a knife with that level of expertise.

  “I’m surprised you noticed,” he said sourly. “I could hardly hear what Cressida was saying over all the cackling at the bar.”

  “Wow, somebody’s cranky this morning!”

  Max sucked in a short, irritable breath and then let it out more slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I’m not in a good mood this morning.”

  “You don’t say!” She glanced at him. “Would a coffee make it better?”

  “It might.”

  Flora smiled. “Let me just put these on to sweat, then I’ll make some coffee.”

  Chapter Five

  Max watched as she added the finely diced onions to the pan and gave it a shake. “Aren’t you baking today?”

  “No, I’m trying out something for the wedding – tweaking the recipe for a rosemary and redcurrant reduction that I think might go very nicely with medallions of lamb. It’s just a possibility for now, of course.”

  He sighed. “Don’t talk to me about that wedding!”

  “Why, what’s happened?”

  “I’ve just had Hope on the phone. Apparently Jonas’s sister-in-law, who’s the Crown Princess and basically top dog over there, is giving her grief about seating plans.”

  Flora reached into the fridge for the coffee beans and sent him a mystified look as she crossed to the coffee machine. “Seating plans?”

  “That�
��s what I said.” Max propped himself against the counter to watch the competent way she operated the machine. He really should learn how to do it himself, but his eyes kept drifting away from what she was doing to her profile, to the tilting corners of her mouth, along the warm line of her jaw to where it met her throat and – He looked closer. “Please tell me those aren’t bananas hanging from your ears!”

  “Aren’t they cute?” Flora shook her head from side to side, which set the earrings swinging. “Ally gave them to me.”

  “They look ridiculous.”

  “Oh, stop with the flattery. I would have worn my diamonds, of course, but I’m having them cleaned. And anyway, a style guru like you knows that diamonds are so last season.” She clipped the puck into the machine. “So what’s the issue with the seating plans, anyway?”

  “Apparently this Crown Princess Anna is very keen on protocol, and she’s getting all wound up about the fact that I’m single and that means she won’t be able to arrange the tables so that they go boy-girl-boy-girl. Or something. Hope explained it to me, but to be honest I lost interest at ‘seating plan’. But the upshot is that the entire principality will apparently collapse into disorder if I don’t have a partner for the family meeting and announcement of the engagement in San Michele in February.”

  “It sounds like this Anna or whatever her name is needs to get a life,” said Flora.

  “I couldn’t agree more, and so does Hope, but she’s obviously been sucked into the argument and I could tell that she was upset. I think the whole royal thing is getting to her.”

  “It must be tough.” Flora handed him his coffee and he thanked her as she turned back to make one for herself. “I mean, it sounds like a fairy tale, marrying a prince and living in a palace, but how much fun can it be having to behave yourself the whole time and worry about protocol?”

  “Quite. I’m worried about how Hope’s going to deal with it all. She’s already getting into a state about keeping the Crown Princess happy and we haven’t even got to the official engagement, let alone the wedding, not to mention the reality of being married. I don’t want to make things worse by refusing to take someone,” he said. “It doesn’t seem a lot for her to ask.”

  Flora leant companionably against the counter beside him and sipped her own coffee, some frothy, creamy confection. “Do you think I’m going to have find a partner too? I’m a bridesmaid so I suppose I’ll be on the seating plan somewhere.” She grimaced. “I hope not.”

  Max thought of all the men clustered around her on Friday night. “You don’t have a boyfriend you can ask?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve sworn off men since my last boyfriend.”

  There was a milky moustache on her upper lip. Max watched her run her tongue unselfconsciously over it to lick it away, and his throat dried. He coughed to clear it.

  “Who was that?” he asked. Was that squeezed voice really his? “Someone local?”

  “No, I met Rich in London. I did the whole falling passionately in love thing,” she said lightly, although Max guessed it was an effort. “We moved in together and for a while it was great. Rich is a chef, and like me he was working most evenings, so we didn’t have to explain to each other about the unsociable hours. He’s brilliant, a bit driven and obsessive, but he can be huge fun.”

  “In my experience, brilliant people are rarely fun all the time.”

  “No,” she agreed. “It was quite a lot of work to keep Rich happy, I realize now. He’s hyperactive, and needs constant stimulation. If he’s not cooking, he wants to be off trying other food or sourcing ingredients or talking about a possible television show ...” Flora sipped her coffee, remembering. “It was exciting but if we did sometimes have an evening off together Rich always wanted to go out and find somewhere new to eat. I love food, and I love eating out and trying new dishes too, but there were times when all I wanted was to slob on the sofa, watching telly in my pyjamas.”

  Max listened in disbelief as she told him about how wonderful Rich had been. He sounded a complete tosser to Max. What kind of man chose to go out and spend a fortune on a lot of poncey rabbit food when he could be comfortable on a sofa with Flora?

  And Flora in pyjamas, too. It was disturbing just how vividly he could imagine it. She would be soft and lusciously curved, and the pyjamas would slither seductively over her breasts if she lifted arms. Max wanted to imagine her in ivory silk, but that wouldn’t be Flora. No, the pyjamas would be scarlet or hot pink and if you put an arm around her, the slippery material would shift over her warm skin, and when you slid your hands beneath it, she would forget whatever she was watching on television and smile and wriggle round to climb on top of you and ... and ... dear God, where was he?

  Pyjamas ... television ... eating out ... With difficulty, Max dragged his attention back to the conversation, appalled at how easily his mind had veered out of control. He really must get a grip.

  Flora had stopped talking. She had lost him at pyjamas ... no, don’t go there again, Max instructed himself firmly. He cleared his throat again and dredged up a memory of a previous conversation.

  “This is the same boyfriend who gave you an ultimatum to choose him or your grandfather?”

  “Yes,” she admitted with a sigh. She put down her cup. “You don’t need to tell me. I’m not good at picking them.”

  “Well, I can’t talk. I’m divorced.”

  “Still, I’m sure it won’t be a problem to find a partner for Hope’s wedding,” said Flora. “You can take Cressida.”

  “I don’t think that would be appropriate,” said Max austerely.

  “Why on earth not?” Flora gave the vegetables in the pan a stir. “She looks the part, and you said yourself that she was very nice. There’d be no risk of her eating her peas off her knife or anything, either. She looked very well behaved.”

  “It’s not that.” Max hunched a shoulder. “It’s more ... taking her as my partner to the family party might be awkward. I hardly know her, after all.”

  “The party in San Michele isn’t until February. There’s plenty of time to get to know her.”

  “That’s just it. If we keep going out and getting to know each other, before we know where we are, we’ll be in a relationship, and it’s only a step then to expectations being raised and hints being dropped about marriage ... It doesn’t seem fair to go through all of that and then tell her I only need her with me at the wedding to keep some Crown Princess happy.”

  Flora winced. “Ouch. No, that wouldn’t be good.”

  “Quite. The last thing I want is for anyone to think I’m in the market for getting married again.”

  “I can’t believe it would be that hard to find someone to produce as your squeeze,” she said after a moment. “It’s not as if it’s a hard sell. For heaven’s sake: a week in gorgeous San Michele in February, a week guzzling champagne and eating amazing meals and staying in a fairy-tale castle, a ringside seat at a royal wedding ... What’s not to like? And in return, all she’d have to do would be to sit next to you and smile for a few photos. Please! You’ll be beating them off, Max. I’d do it myself if I wasn’t going anyway.”

  With a final stir of the pan, Flora went over to the fridge and started rummaging around for the mustard. Some Worcestershire sauce perhaps, too?

  Her head in the fridge, it took her a while to realize that there was silence behind her. Straightening with the mustard in her hand, she turned to see Max watching her with a very peculiar expression.

  “What?” she said.

  “Why don’t you?” he said slowly.

  “Why don’t I what?”

  “Come to San Michele as my girlfriend.”

  Flora laughed. “I was joking!”

  “I’m not.”

  Flora looked behind her in case he was talking to some other woman secreted in the fridge.

  “You want me to be your girlfriend?” she said carefully, still half convinced that she had misheard him.

  “To pretend to be,�
�� he corrected with unflattering speed. “You said it yourself: all that’s required is a show. We’d just need to turn up, look suitably affectionate, sit through a few dinners and then when it came to the wedding, smile for some photos. How hard could that be?”

  “Yes, but ...” Flora stopped. “Are you serious?”

  “The more I think about it, the better an idea I think it is.” Levering himself up from the counter, Max began to pace around the kitchen. “You’re single; I’m single. We’re solving the Crown Princess’s seating plan in one fell swoop. Nobody’s going to be hurt if we seem to be spending time together. Plus, you’re going anyway so it’s not like I need to fill you in on the situation. You know Hope. And you’re not going to have any false expectations of me. You’ve made it clear that you don’t want to stay in Combe St Philip so I don’t have any worries that you’re harbouring a secret yearning to be lady of the manor.”

  Belatedly realizing that the fridge door was still wide open, Flora closed it. “Delicious as you are, my dreams lie elsewhere,” she agreed.

  “Exactly! But you’re committed to the wedding in any case. I think it could work, don’t you?”

  “Honestly, no.”

  Max looked taken aback. “Why not?”

  “Well, for a start, I don’t look like someone who’d be your girlfriend. Don’t give me that look,” she said when he said nothing. “You know perfectly well what I mean. You like your women beautiful and dainty and elegant, and I don’t qualify on any count.”

  “The Crown Princess isn’t going to know that,” he pointed out.

  “That’s one response,” she agreed. “Another might be: oh, but you are beautiful and elegant, Flora, and I’m tired of having to bend down to whisper sweet nothings in fairy-like ears.”

  “I’m sorry, I might not be a style guru, but there’s no way you can be described as elegant,” said Max, eyeing her top with disfavour.

  “Right. You could always say that you don’t care about the way I dress because I’m so incredibly sexy I don’t need clothes.”