Sarah felt the breath leave her body and her strength drain out of her. It was as well she was sitting down, she thought as she concentrated on looking normal. She hadn't realised, until that moment, quite how much her feelings for Hugo had changed that day. From feeling edgy and unsure about him she had come to see that not only was she more than passingly attracted to him, but she liked and trusted him. It was an emotion she hadn't felt in years. And now this.
‘Er – well,' said Hugo, clearly rather thrown.
Sarah was aware that he was looking at her but kept her eyes on a small puddle of coffee that had been left by someone's teaspoon. When she thought of what happened after Ashlyn's wedding, even if it was only kissing, it made her feel sick. If he was engaged he must have been in a committed relationship when he not only kissed her but asked her out. Was he hedging his bets? She couldn't believe how she'd let herself be taken in. At least she could congratulate herself on not agreeing to go out with him and certainly not actively encouraging him to ask again.
‘I heard she was mad to marry you,' said Rupert teasingly.
‘I think Sarah would say she would indeed be mad to marry me,' Hugo agreed amicably.
It took Sarah every ounce of determination to meet his eyes. She had to compose herself. She'd had a shock, that was all. She'd allowed herself to hope, but the others need never know what was going on inside her at that moment. 'Oh yes. I'd definitely say that.’
For a moment they looked directly at each other. Sarah thought she might have seen a hint of apology in Hugo's expression – an attempt at an explanation – but it didn't make her feel one iota better. What sort of woman did he think she was? Another conquest?
‘Sarah's very cynical for a wedding planner,' went on Hugo. Maybe she'd imagined that look. He didn't sound at all contrite.
Feeling she was being mocked was the jolt she needed. She wouldn't let this affect her. She was strong, capable and above all a consummate professional. And it was his life – what did she really care? she told herself firmly. 'Not too cynical – just cynical enough.’
Fenella laughed, apparently unaware of the shock Sarah had received in the past two minutes. 'You're so sensible. My parents complain that people don't stick at marriage these days and give up at the first sign of trouble. But why should you stick together for ever if you're not happy? Luckily Rupes and I are two of a kind. We fit.' She smiled fondly at her husband.
‘You're very lucky,' said Sarah, 'but on the whole I think it's better not to get married in the first place. But please don't tell anyone. It would be very bad for business.' Everyone laughed. 'Could I have my tour now?’
Chairs scraped on the stone-flagged floor as everyone got up and Sarah wondered if Electra (what a name!) was the girl she'd seen Hugo with in London. Despite all her lectures to herself, how had she let her guard down enough to think he might genuinely like her? How could she have been such a fool? Still, they had to work together and her professionalism would get her through.
‘So,' said Fenella. 'Shall I do the tour guide bit? Or shall you?' she said to her husband.
‘Let's all go,' said Hugo. 'I want to see it too and Fen might not be able to answer all my technical questions.'
‘You are unbearably sexist, Hugo,' complained Fenella good-naturedly.
Hugo gave his friend a lazy smile that would have made any girl's stomach clench, Sarah acknowledged – but not hers, not now. She was never going to be so silly as to even think about him again. Thank goodness she hadn't let her guard down too much before! She felt she'd had a narrow escape. If you can kiss a girl like he'd kissed her when you're engaged to someone else, you are a low-down, dirty, rotten scoundrel and not to be trusted. However charming you were.
‘Do you mind hanging on while I get my camera?' he asked. 'Some pictures could be really useful.'
‘For the "before", do you mean?' asked Rupert.
He smiled. 'I thought Sarah could use them. She has a top celebrity client who might be interested in using Somerby as a venue.’
Hugo went and Fenella said to Sarah, 'So who's your client? Or can't you say?'
‘I can't say, I'm afraid, but I'd love it if she chose to come here. Is the house very dilapidated? Oh, sorry, was that rude?'
‘Rude but understandable. Come on,' said Fenella, 'I'll show you. In fact it's not too bad structurally, as far as you can tell. The roof is mostly sound and it's not too dreadfully damp. There's woodworm but no dry rot that we've discovered. We did have a jolly thorough survey before we moved in.' She made a face. 'My parents insisted. They wanted us to sell it and buy somewhere sensible. We're getting a roof expert in tomorrow for the bit that Rupert's worried about. That did fail the test. Rupert, can you and Hugo find us when he comes back?’
The two women left the huge kitchen and went through the green baize door to the hallway. Sarah stopped and noticed that the ceiling was dark with centuries of grime but the floor was parquet and in good order. Sarah couldn't decide just then if she thought it would benefit from several coats of paint, or was more picturesque as it was.
The drawing room was beautiful, made so by its semicircular ceiling-to-floor windows through which summer sunshine now streamed. It too had a parquet floor that needed, according to Sarah's unskilled eye, nothing more than a good polish. The walls had the tattered remains of wallpaper that was more like a mural than paper, although a repeating pattern could be detected. Birds of paradise flitted between trailing vines and classical columns. Distant vistas included pyramids and rolling hills.
‘What fantastic wallpaper,' said Sarah.
‘Isn't it? We're hoping to get a paper restorer to tell us about it. If we were millionaires we'd get it reproduced and put it back,' said Fenella.
‘Even as it is, it's heavenly,' said Sarah. 'In fact I'm not sure that it would be as good if there weren't great bits missing. It might be too much.'
‘We had exactly the same thought, but there's probably a middle way.' Fenella paused. 'Do you really think you might persuade your client to come here? I mean, let's face it, although we've started work, it's still in relatively bad decorative order, as an estate agent would say. I'd call it shabby.’
Sarah was outraged by this description. 'No, not shabby! Shabby-chic if you must, decaying grandeur, fading aristocracy, any of those things – but not just shabby!’
Fenella laughed. 'OK. But will you be able to sell it to her?'
‘I'm not sure, to be honest. She was so set on the traditional English country church thing and I'd need to see the rest of it. And of course what it really depends on is if you can get your licence in time.'
‘Oh, here are the boys,' said Fenella as voices could be heard echoing through the empty house. 'Have you met Electra, Sarah?'
‘No.'
‘You'd like her. She's fun.’
Sarah managed some sort of smile as if the prospect of meeting Electra was, while not at the top of the list of most-wanted events, at least not at the bottom. In fact, it languished a few places behind Godzilla in a temper. 'It's a beautiful house,' Sarah said to Rupert as the men joined them. 'I can't wait to see the rest of it.'
‘The library's through here,' said Fen. 'This is the one without a decent floor.' She opened double doors into a room as enormous as the drawing room.
‘Just put something down to cover it and paint it white,' said Hugo, raising his camera.
At least while he was taking a fusillade of shots from every conceivable angle, she didn't have to talk to Hugo, and nor could Rupert and Fenella. It helped. She didn't want the subject of Electra coming up just now. By the time they left, Sarah was convinced she'd feel absolutely fine about Hugo having a fiancée – why she'd allowed him to inhabit the emotional part of her brain even for a nanosecond was beyond her. But she'd have all that soppy stuff well under control any minute now.
‘Let's have a look at what's through here,' she said firmly and walked as if she was thinking only of her client, the venue and the floor.
‘The piece de resistance is this,' said Rupert, ushering them through the door of a panelled study.
‘Ah, the chapel,' said Hugo. 'Amazing!'
‘It's actually quite a recent addition to the house,' said Fenella. 'One of Rupe's ancestors made a fortune doing something dubious like slave-trading – exploiting someone, anyway – and absolved his sins by building this. It's not to my taste, actually.’
A high, vaulted ceiling, a marble floor and three stained-glass windows at the end made it look, to Sarah's eyes, more like a small church than somewhere for a mere family to worship. In fact, she'd arranged weddings in churches that felt far smaller.
‘It's an almost perfect example of the High Church revival,' said Rupert. 'Not exactly a copy of much earlier churches but it reflects the best medieval precedents and shows a return to sacramental tradition.'
‘You sound very knowledgeable,' said Hugo. 'Been boning up on it all, have you?'
‘Of course.' Rupert laughed a little defiantly. 'I'm almost an expert now.'
‘Don't encourage him, Hugo,' said Fenella. 'He'll bang on for hours if you let him.'
‘What I need to know,' said Sarah, on tenterhooks for the answer, 'is could you actually use it for weddings? Getting a licence for the house is one thing, but if you could have the ceremonies here, it would be even more wonderful.’
Fenella and Rupert exchanged glances. 'That's what we're hoping for,' said Fenella. 'Like you, we thought using the house for weddings would be nice, but if people could actually get married in the chapel, well, that would be brilliant.'
‘The aunts, who I inherited from, were always thinking up money-making schemes and I know they talked abut weddings, but I'm not sure if they got as far as getting it licensed.'
‘We haven't followed up seeing about getting the chapel licensed because we thought the house was in far too bad order for us to use it,' explained Fenella. 'We didn't know what we wanted to do anyway. It's only quite recently that we decided the house needs to earn money and not just us.'
‘Would it still be consecrated?' asked Hugo. 'Presumably if it is, you could still have weddings here.’
Fenella shook her head. 'Don't know that either. Sorry to seem so stupid. We haven't been moved in all that long.'
‘I know,' said Hugo. 'I was at your house moving party when you left the old place.’
Sarah felt that at any moment she might be exposed to distressing details of what Hugo got up to at that party, whom he met, or went home with, and how much fun Electra was. She wanted to get back on track. 'So do you have to go through the house to get into it? I'm just wondering-'
‘No!' Rupert interrupted her gleefully. 'The beauty part' – he strode across the aisle to the other side – 'is that it has access to the outside world. It was so the local people could use it too. At the time there was something happening that meant the local church was out of action, and so the ancestor who was building this had the side door put in.'
‘This could be so perfect,' said Sarah, almost trembling with excitement and anxiety. Please, she muttered, don't show me this fabulous venue and then let it be unusable. 'I'd be so grateful if you could find out if it's licensed, or still consecrated or whatever. I'm sure I could talk my client into coming here, if it would be legal. It would be just the place.'
‘Let's have a look at it from the side door. It's no good trying to persuade her to walk through a ploughed field,' said Hugo.
‘We could mow the grass,' said Rupert.
They all went out of the side door. A long path came up a gentle slope from a small wooded area by the road, through parkland to the door of the chapel.
‘If she really wants all the extras,' said Hugo, 'I've got a mate who does film sets. He'd turn this into a graveyard as traditional as you liked.'
‘I'd try to convince Carrie not to have a fake churchyard,' said Sarah. Too late, she realised she shouldn't have used Carrie's name.
‘Oh my God!' said Fenella. 'You're not talking about Carrie Condy, are you? I am a major fan of hers.'
‘She is a surprisingly good actress for one with her assets,' went on Rupert.
‘Mm,' said Hugo, obviously thinking about them too. Sarah felt herself blush. It was totally unlike her to be so unprofessional – it was bloody Hugo's fault! 'Well, yes, it is her, but please – I beg of you – don't tell anyone! I should never have let her name out like that. I should be sacked!’
‘But it's your company,' said Hugo.
‘I should think of something else to do for a living!’
‘Well, don't beat yourself up about it,' said Fenella, sensing Sarah really was distressed. 'We won't tell anyone. We certainly wouldn't want to jeopardise her coming here. It would be so wonderful!'
‘It'll mean a lot of hard work, poppet,' said Rupert to his wife. He turned to Sarah. 'Would she want the whole house? Including bedrooms?’
Sarah nodded, priding herself on being back in full control of her emotions again. 'It would be a hell of a lot of work. She might want to use the bedrooms to get dressed in and stuff, even if she stays in a hotel. But financially, it would be well worthwhile for you to do them up.' She paused. 'I'd get a good deposit for you, so you could do the work.'
‘We've got some capital we could use but not really enough. Would the deposit cover all the extra help we'd need to get in?' asked Fenella.
‘I'd make sure it would,' said Sarah, determined at that moment to bring her celebrity wedding here whatever it took. It would put Somerby on the venue map as nothing else could.
‘So how do you get paid, if that's not a rude question?' asked Rupert.
‘I like to negotiate a flat fee if I can,' said Sarah. 'That's what I'm doing with Carrie. Not all wedding planners do it like that, but I prefer it. It gives me an incentive to get good deals so that my clients have saved money by having me. Or at least,' she went on, thinking back to some of the weddings she'd organised, 'not spent hugely more.'
‘So we wouldn't have to pay you?' asked Fenella, obviously doubtful.
‘No! I'm not saying some of the big hotels don't give me good rates, things like that, but I don't take backhanders. I want to be neutral, so I look for the perfect venue for each client.'
‘Very virtuous,' muttered Hugo.
Sarah shot him a black look, but realised she was more angry with herself than him.
‘It could all be so perfect!' said Fenella, suddenly all dreamy.
‘Yes,' agreed Sarah and then she remembered – her bloody sister's wedding. She turned to Hugo. 'How long would it take to get from Steeple Colby-’
Hugo might have been a complete bastard, but he was quick on the uptake. 'Oh, your sister's wedding?’
She nodded.
‘Not sure. An hour, possibly?’
Sarah closed her eyes while she worked things out. How soon could she reasonably leave her sister's wedding, overlooking the fact that she shouldn't leave it at all? What was the minimum time she could spend with Carrie before the event, given that Elsa and Bron would be with her, getting dressed and stuff. When she opened her eyes again she hadn't found an answer to her question. Fen and Rupert were looking concerned. 'Sorry – nothing for you two to worry about. It's just that my sister has chosen to get married the very same day as Carrie Condy.'
‘And she can't change-’
Sarah interrupted Fenella's question. 'It's at her fiancé's parents' church, the date is booked and she's pregnant. They wouldn't be able to get another Saturday for weeks, by which time the baby would be showing.'
‘Ah,' said Fenella, obviously understanding the dilemma. 'Do his parents know she's pregnant?'
‘I think so, but none of the other relations must know. They'd really prefer for her to be a virgin bride although she's been married before.' Sarah knew she shouldn't be sharing all this intimate information with virtual strangers but it helped to talk about it and Fenella seemed understanding and discreet.
‘Well, if you do have Carrie's wedding here, I'll help you as much as I can,' said Fenella. 'After all, a lot of what you do is checking on caterers, things like that, isn't it?'
‘Mm,' said Sarah.
‘Well, I'm used to doing things like that. And if it's here, I'll want everything to go as smoothly as possible.’
Fenella was very reassuring. It was probably a good thing Sarah had washed a little family linen in public.
‘That could be marvellous – I usually arrive at a venue at dawn and leave twenty-four hours later…' She made a deprecating gesture. 'Well, sometimes it feels like that. I do have to make sure everything is tidy.'
‘It sounds exhausting!' said Fenella sympathetically.
‘It is quite full on, but most of the hard work is done beforehand and if you trust your suppliers and it all goes well, it's very satisfying.'
‘Well, don't you worry about this end,' said Fenella. 'If Carrie Condy has her wedding here, she won't regret it. I promise.’
Looking at Fenella, Sarah felt confident that she was organised, determined and brave. She hoped she wouldn't need her to be brave to help with Carrie's wedding, but the other two characteristics were essential. 'I'm going to work really hard on getting her to decide on Somerby,' she said. 'And if not Carrie, the very next wedding that might be remotely suitable.’
If effort of will alone could have made Sarah sprout wings and fly home and thus avoid travelling with Hugo, it would have happened. But even more mundane solutions like hiring a car or finding a taxi were too difficult. After all, she didn't want to announce to Fenella, Rupert and Hugo himself that she was so upset with him for not having told her he was engaged that they couldn't share a car. It sounded childish, even to herself.
So when the time came, and she'd hugged both Rupert and Fenella, she got in and accepted her fate.
The moment he'd closed the door of the car, Hugo said, 'Sarah, I want to explain about Electra-’
She flung her hands up in a warding-off gesture, suddenly feeling like her sister Lily. She would have preferred him to wait until she was somewhere that would allow her to leap out of the car on the pretext of calling in on old friends. 'No, no, please don't! Why should you? It's nothing to do with me.'
‘The thing is, I feel I should explain-'
‘No!' She stopped feeling like Lily and became her own, fierce self again. 'Please don't. It's quite unnecessary.' She laughed, trying to prove that she hadn't been remotely fazed by the announcement. 'Just don't ask me to arrange a wedding on the eighteenth of August! I don't think I could fit in another one on that day.’
Hugo sighed. 'I promise I won't do that.'
‘Super.' Sarah was pleased with her apparent insouciance. Maybe if she acted it long enough and hard enough she'd gradually begin to feel it.
‘So, keeping my personal life off limits, what did you think of the venue?'
‘Fabulous! Really, really good. I just hope it's licensed for weddings.'
‘You could get Carrie to get married in a register office a couple of days before and then have a blessing at Somerby. It could look nearly like a proper wedding.'
‘I had thought of that and it's my back-up solution, but selling the idea to Carrie will be really difficult. It's just not traditional.'
‘But it's been done by a lot of celebs lately.'
‘I know, but I want to pursue the normal route first. If it's possible, it would be much the best.' She paused, knowing that she should now take time to thank Hugo for taking her to such a beautiful house. She bit her lip. 'Thank you so much for taking me to Somerby. It's really lovely.' There, it was done.
Hugo sighed again. He seemed a lot less cheery than he had been on the outward journey – depressed, almost. 'That's OK, Sarah. I am only too happy to help you. And Fen and Rupert, of course.'
‘How did you meet them?' With relief, Sarah steered their conversation off the rocks and into calm water. She could listen to Hugo go on about what Rupert got up to at school until they finally got home.