Love Me

Episode 18

I haven’t taken advantage of it,’ he’d reminded her acidly, before walking

away from her.

Since then, the contact between them had been as minimal as both of them

could make it.

‘Oh, Nichol, that’s wonderful,’ she told her employer truthfully. ‘I’ve missed

you.’ It was true. She had missed him and suddenly something occurred to her.

‘Look, I’ve got to come down to Europe to see some people. Why don’t we

drive back together? I’m going to have to stay overnight anyway... The

Bella?’ she responded, when he told her where he was planning to stay, and

then teased him, ‘Isn’t that a bit romantic...?’

‘I’ve heard some good things about its designer,’ Nichols responded mock-

sternly. ‘My interest in the place is purely professional.’

By the time Kelly had completed her telephone call David had gone. Good; the

less contact she had with him the better. She much preferred her solitary evening

meals to the trauma of spending any time with him, even if she did sometimes

wonder where he was eating and with whom and if he stayed with her all night.

It had to be Nick, of course. The woman was forever telephoning him, purring

smugly down the line whenever Kelly answered, demanding, ‘Tell David to ring

me; he’s got my number.’

She was sure he had, Kelly had decided acidly, him and every other man who

was subjected to the divorcee’s high octane blend of sexuality.

The shop occupied by Georges and Company, master gilders and

restorers, was down a narrow alley, a small courtyard of buildings that time

seemed to have forgotten.

Walking into the courtyard was like walking back in time, Kelly decided as

she gasped in delight at the Aliza framework of the narrow buildings with

their outward-jutting upper storeys.

‘They belong to one of the royal estates,’ the chief partner in the business,

Stuart Georges, informed Kelly. ‘And they’re very strict, not just about the

maintenance of the building but about who they take as tenants as well. We got

our tenancy after we had been commissioned to work on one of the royal

palaces.’

An hour later, after Kelly had discussed city Hall and the work required

on it, he turned to her and told her, ‘We can do it, but it’s going to be very costly.’

‘Very costly is fine,’ Kelly assured him and then smiled at him as she added

softly, ‘Exorbitantly costly isn’t; there’s enough work here to keep you in

business for nearly some months...guaranteed work.’

‘Our order books are already full,’ he told her urbanely.

‘Not according to my contacts,’ Kelly retaliated. ‘The way I heard it, one of

your biggest contracts has been withdrawn due to lack of funds.’

‘I don’t know who your informants are...’ Stuart Georges began huffily, but

Kelly stopped him.

‘Let’s be honest with one another, shall we?’ she suggested firmly. ‘We’re

both busy people with no time to waste on silly point-scoring. You’re the best in

the business in this country and I want the best for City Hall, but...there are

other firms.

‘We shall need a guarantee that the contract will be seen through to its end,’

he told her, frowning. ‘I don’t like carrying all my eggs in one basket...’

‘You shall have it,’ Kelly assured him.

‘Mmm... From the records you’ve shown us the original workmanship was

done to a very high standard, especially the wood-carving.’

‘If not Ribbons himself, then certainly one of his most skilful pupils,’

Kelly agreed.

‘The records you’ve got of the original designed decor are excellent; they

even list the furniture and each room’s colour scheme,’ he assessed.

She had David to thank for that, Kelly acknowledged. Normally it fell to her lot

to search painstakingly through the records to put together a composite picture of

what a property had originally looked like. On this occasion David had done all

that spadework for her. Not that she had allowed him to see how impressed she

was. She wasn’t prepared to do anything that would allow him to think he had

some sort of advantage over her.

When the time came for her and Stuart Georges to part company Kelly had his

agreement to concentrate exclusively on the work on City Hall, even though

she had had to agree to a substantial bonus payment to get him to do so. She

made sure she held tightly to budget where she could, but she would never take

the less expensive option when it came to employing the best craftsmen. It

would be worth it, she exulted as she left the courtyard. City Hall was worth

it.

She had arranged to meet Nichol at his hotel for afternoon tea. He loved that

type of tradition and, as he happily informed her an hour later when she was

shown up to his private suite, ‘No other country serves an afternoon tea quite like Europe..

‘I should hope not,’ was Kelly’s tongue-in-cheek response, then she started to

tell him about her visit to the gilders.

‘You’re sure they’ll be as good as the European?’ he asked her at one point,

suddenly very professional and alert.

‘Better,’ Kelly told him simply. ‘You see, the original work on the house was

carried out by workmen who had trained in Italy, rather like

Georges, artisans, and my guess is that their workmanship, although European in

conception, would have had a decidedly English interpretation to it—where an

European craftsman might have carved cherubs and allegorical scenes from the

great masters, an English craftsman would have carved animals and birds, things

from nature.’

‘Why don’t you stay here tonight?’ Nichol suggested once they had finished

talking about her visit to Messrs Georges and Company. ‘I can ring down and

book you a room.’

Kelly shook her head.

‘No, thanks; I’ve already arranged to stay overnight with my mother.’

Knowing that Nichols had a business dinner organized, Kelly left just after five

o’clock, having arranged to pick him up at ten in the morning.

She drove to her mother’s, suffering the latter’s perfumed embrace after her

mother’s maid had let her into the apartment.

‘Darling, it’s my bridge evening this evening. I could cancel it but...’

‘No, please don’t.’ Kelly checked her mother with a smile.

‘Well, at least we can have dinner together and you can tell me all your news.

How is dear David? So exciting, his inheritance...the title...’

Kellu’s smile faded.

David’s fine,’ she told her mother, adding dismissively, ‘We don’t see an awful

lot of one another; we’re both busy.’

‘Oh, darling, such a shame,’ her mother protested.

‘I...’ Kelly gave her a direct look. ‘At one time you thoroughly disapproved

of him.’ And my feelings for him, Kelly could have added, but she didn’t.

Her mother made a small moue. ‘But, darling, that was before...’

‘Before what?’ Kelly challenged her wryly. ‘Before he inherited the title...’

‘Well, these things do make a difference.’ Her mother defended herself as

Kelly gave her a quizzical look. David is now an extremely eligible man.’

‘Mother! These days a woman doesn’t need an eligible man,’ Kelly told her.

‘We can support ourselves. ‘Every woman needs a man to love her, Kelly,’ her mother told her sadly. ‘I

still miss your father.’

Immediately Kelly was contrite. Her mother was old-fashioned and out of

touch in her ideas, her thinking, but she had genuinely loved both Kelly’s own

father and her second husband, Jack’s father, and Kelly knew that despite the

business with which she filled her days she was sometimes lonely.

‘Have you seen Elly recently?’ she questioned, wanting to turn

the conversation into happier channels.

‘Oh, yes,’ her mother responded immediately and warmly, ‘and they’ve

invited me to Otel Place for New Year.’

Several hours later, as she prepared for an early night, Kelly wondered what

David was doing. Not going to bed on his own if his recent behaviour pattern was

to be followed. Angrily, she closed her eyes. What did it matter to her who David

spent his nights with or how?

What did it matter?

All the world, that was how much it mattered, but no one but her must ever

know that.

Even before he had kissed her she had known the truth. Just the way her body,

her senses, her being, had reacted the moment she had set eyes on him again had

told her that what she had tried to dismiss as a mere childish crush had

somewhere, somehow, against all the odds and certainly against her own will,

turned into real adult love. She ached for David—to be at one with him, at peace

with him, to be loved by him, to share his life, to bear his children—with such an

intensity that sometimes she didn’t know quite how she was going to be able to

go on bearing it.

Live one day at a time, that was her present motto; just get through each

minute, each hour, just go on telling herself that ultimately it was going to get

better, that once the work on city Hall was finished and she was out of

David’s orbit she would be able to rebuild her defences and, with them, her own

life. That was what she told herself, but deep down inside she wasn’t sure she

truly believed it.

‘We’ll have to call at the Rectory first,’ Kelly warned Nichol as she drove north.

‘I don’t have the keys to city Hall with me.’

‘That’s fine by me,’ Nichol assured her. ‘How are you and David getting along,

by the way? ‘He’s a client of the Trust,’ Kelly pointed out severely.

‘So you haven’t fallen in love with him, then,’ Nichol teased her. Somehow

Kelly managed to force a responsive smile. Nichol meant no harm. He took a

paternal interest in her and often told her, only semi-jokingly, that it was time

she fell in love. He had no idea about the real state of affairs between her and

David, the real state of her heart, her emotions.

‘Say, this is really beautiful countryside,’ he commented as they drove

through .

‘But still not as beautiful as city,’ Kelly teased him.

Immediately he was off, enthusing about the house and its architecture.

Kelly’s heart sank when she pulled up outside the Rectory and saw that David’s

Rolls Royce was there. There was another car outside as well and Kelly’s heart

dropped even further when she recognised it. Perhaps with her away and the

opportunity to have the house to themselves, David and Nick had decided on a

change of venue and had spent the night together here.

David had given her a set of keys to the Rectory, and rather than disturb him she

used them to unlock the door, but to her discomfort, as they walked through the

hall, David and Nick were just coming downstairs.