Unexpected Blessings (28 page)
G
ideon Harte stood in the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel waiting for Evan. Glancing at the clock above the revolving door, he saw that it was ten minutes to one, and he knew that she would come rushing in at any moment. Evan was punctual. It was another characteristic they had in common, and it was one which pleased him.
He wished they were having lunch alone. The idea of meeting her parents had suddenly lost its appeal, perhaps because it had assumed such enormous proportions in the past few days. In fact, he wished they hadn’t come to London at all. Their presence was making her nervous and distracted; she hadn’t been herself since their arrival, and she was growing more ambivalent about telling her father the truth about Robin Ainsley.
Initially he had said whatever decision she made about that was all right with him. But he had come to realize how much the truth really mattered. He felt it was important her father knew he was part Harte, as she herself was.
This train of thought dissipated as she came whirling through the revolving door, a smile illuminating her face when she saw him. He thought how pretty she looked in a loose, rather floaty frock made of pale-blue cotton. She had on very high-heeled blue sandals, which made her appear even more willowy; there were smokey-blue beads at her neck and on her ears and these echoed the colour of her large, wide-set eyes.
‘I’m not late, Gid, am I?’ she asked, her smile wide and warm.
He shook his head. ‘Early, in fact. But where are your parents?’
‘I told them to meet us here at one-fifteen. I just wanted a few minutes alone with you. I haven’t seen you since Thursday night and I’ve missed you.’
‘Me too, you.’ Taking her arm he went on, ‘Let’s go and sit over there on the sofa, shall we?’
‘I told Mom that we’d be in the Grill, so we might as well go in.’
After being seated at Gideon’s favourite table in a corner, he ordered a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and then sat back and looked at her, a smile on his face. ‘You look wonderful, Evan,’ he began, and then stopped abruptly. The smile slipped. ‘You’re not wearing your ring,’ he said, staring at her left hand.
She stared back at him, her face suddenly colouring a bright pink.
‘Evan, you haven’t told them, have you?’
‘Look, Gideon, please don’t be angry, but I just didn’t dare say anything on Friday night. I hadn’t seen them for months, and Dad was definitely in a peculiar mood, to say the least, and I didn’t want to hit them with that straight away. I wanted to wait until after they met you.’
‘Oh, and does that make a difference to you? What they think of me? Will you change your mind about me if they don’t approve?’
‘Don’t be silly, of course I won’t,’ she said in a low voice, leaning closer to him. ‘You know I love you, that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But my father’s always been a bit…well, possessive of me, and he’s got to adjust to the fact that I’m not going home, that I’m going to be living in London. He’ll have to come to terms with that.’
‘Yes, he certainly will.’ His green eyes narrowed darkly.
‘Please try and see it from my point of view, Gideon. Please, darling.’
He sighed. ‘I suppose I understand…well, a little bit. And what about Robin? Have you told him about Robin Ainsley, have you told your father he’s actually a Harte, a member of the family he loves to hate?’
She bit her lip. ‘No, I haven’t. I just felt it was better, kinder, not to bring up all of this stuff when he’d just seen me for the first time in eight months. Mom was great, of course, and I had lunch with her yesterday. She knows how much I care for you. I know she’s expecting me to marry you, Gid, and she gives us her blessing. She said so.’
‘That’s good to know,’ he muttered, the tension in his shoulders relaxing. ‘I’m not being difficult, Evan, I simply want them to know about our engagement so that I can tell my parents before someone else does. After all, the cousins are in on our secret which of course isn’t one anymore.’
Always cued in to his moods, she was sorry his voice wasn’t calmer. ‘I promise I’ll tell them soon, and that I’ll talk to my father about Robin as well–’
The arrival of a waiter with the champagne interrupted this conversation, and once it had been poured and they had clinked glasses, taken a sip, she said, ‘I hope he understands about Glynnis and Robin…I hope he won’t be terribly upset.’
‘I suppose it will be a shock,’ Gideon murmured a little grudgingly, and then he deftly changed the subject when he started to talk about the newspapers he ran, and his plans for the next few months.
Gideon was surprised. Owen and Marietta Hughes were pleasant, and certainly her father didn’t seem to be quite the curmudgeon Evan had made him out to be.
Gideon had done a double-take when they had first arrived at the table and Evan was introducing them. Her father was the spitting image of Gideon’s great-uncle, Robin Ainsley, and it was something of a shock to see the strong family resemblance. It was much more pronounced in her father than it was in Evan. There was no doubt that Owen Hughes was actually a Harte. Tall, slender, good-looking, he had Robin’s aquiline features and dark hair flecked with grey. It took Gideon only a moment to recognize that he had a very strong likeness to his own great-grandfather, Winston Harte the first, the brother of Emma.
Her mother was a bit of a surprise, too. A pretty woman in a soft and feminine way, she looked very young, and there was no hint of the manic depressive about her. In fact, she was full of smiles and genial good humour. That was the medication kicking in, no doubt about that, Gideon decided.
After the waiter had served them champagne, and they had all toasted each other, there was a bit of small talk about the weather and such, which suddenly seemed endless to him.
Eventually Gideon managed to get all of that out of the way, and he said, ‘I had hoped to take you out to the Waterside Inn at Bray for lunch, but unfortunately, I’m working today. I have to get back to the papers fairly early, and it’s a bit of a drive there and back. But another time perhaps, I know how much you like the water and sailing, Mr Hughes.’
‘I do, yes,’ Owen Hughes said, ‘and it would’ve been great on a hot day like this. On the other hand, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Grill here at the Dorchester. My mother brought me here when I was a little boy.’
‘Did she really!’ Gideon exclaimed, and threw a pointed look at Evan, who glanced away, not wanting to have prolonged eye contact. Also, she was truly startled. She hadn’t known her father had come back to London as a child; what else didn’t she know, she wondered.
‘I came to England with her several times in the fifties,’ her father was telling Gideon, and Evan pricked up her ears alertly; her mother, who was staring at her intently, gave her a knowing look.
Evan ignored this, and said, ‘I was telling Gideon you were planning a trip to France, Dad, and he wondered if you were intending to go to the south at all?’
‘Probably. I’d like to take your mother to Monte Carlo, she’s never been there.’
‘It’s very built-up these days,’ Gideon murmured, ‘a pile of concrete, to be exact. But if you do go, perhaps Evan and I could join you for a couple of days.’
‘That’d be nice,’ Owen responded, in a voice so low it was almost inaudible. It was obvious he was taken aback by Gideon’s suggestion.
‘It would be absolutely lovely,’ Marietta jumped in, smiling hugely. ‘We haven’t had a vacation together for years, have we, Evan?’
‘No, Mom.’
‘I thought you couldn’t get away from work,’ her father said, his eyes on her.
‘I can’t, at least not when you’re planning to be in Paris, when you’re touring around, visiting Normandy and such. But later on I think I can swing a long weekend.’
‘Sounds good,’ her father answered in a clipped fashion.
Gideon said, ‘Shall we order? I’m not rushing you, but I do like to have a leisurely lunch on Sunday, don’t you, Mrs Hughes?’
‘I certainly do, Gideon, and please call me Marietta.’
‘I will, thank you very much.’
‘I know this is one of your favourite places, Gideon, Evan told me that. So what do you recommend?’ Marietta asked, looking at her daughter’s boyfriend, liking him a lot, liking his clean-cut good looks, his direct approach, his straightforwardness. She prayed Owen wouldn’t spoil things today by being grumpy and grudging with Evan, because she intuitively knew that these two were very much a couple, and that the relationship was extremely serious. But had Owen picked that up? She wasn’t sure.
Gideon, studying the menu, looked up and smiled at Marietta. ‘I tend to have the same things all the time,’ he explained. ‘Usually smoked salmon or potted shrimps, something like that to start with, and then I’m afraid I always fall for what’s on the trolley, either roast lamb or roast beef.’
‘And Yorkshire pudding,’ Evan interjected. ‘However, Gideon says there’s only one place where they make real Yorkshire pudding and that’s Yorkshire.’
Gideon laughed. ‘I’m prejudiced, I’m afraid, being a Yorkshireman born and bred. They do a sort of popover here and it’s very good, really it’s very good.’
‘I think I’ll have the roast beef,’ Evan said. ‘What about you, Mom? And Dad?’
‘The same,’ her mother answered.
Owen nodded. ‘That’s my choice, too, and I’ll start with the Morecambe Bay potted shrimps.’ Looking at Marietta he murmured, ‘Why don’t you try them, dear?’
‘Thanks, Owen, but I’d prefer the asparagus. Cold with vinaigrette.’
Once all of the orders had been taken, Gideon said, ‘Talking about Yorkshire pudding, I do hope you’ll come up to stay with my parents at Allington Hall, or perhaps at Pennistone Royal with my aunt, Paula O’Neill and her husband Shane. I know they’d love it.’ When there was no response from anyone, Gideon pressed on undeterred. ‘It’s such beautiful country, most especially the Dales where we all live. Have you ever been to Yorkshire?’
‘Yes, I have,’ Owen said without thinking, startling himself as well as everyone else. In order to cover his embarrassment at blurting this out, and wanting to cut off any further discussions about Yorkshire, he swiftly added, ‘I did quite a lot of touring around with my mother when I was a little boy. She wanted me to know her country. And so she took me up to Scotland, and also to Wales. She was Welsh, you know.’
‘So I’d heard,’ Gideon murmured, and gave Evan a sly look.
Evan ignored Gideon; she was almost afraid to look at him in case she began to laugh. So instead she said to her father, ‘Fancy that, Dad, you
are
secretive! You never told me you’d toured the length and breadth of Great Britain. Did he tell you, Mom?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ Marietta said, and she spoke the truth.
‘You’d like Pennistone Royal,’ Gideon went on, determined to catch Owen out if he could, to make him say something about the Hartes. ‘It’s a wonderful house, very old, and one of England’s great stately homes. But what you’d love about it, I think, is the furniture. My great-grandmother, Emma Harte, was an expert on Georgian furniture, and she collected it. I understand from Evan that you’re also an expert on this period.’
‘Yes, I am considered such,’ Owen said, afraid to say too much in case he let something slip that he shouldn’t.
During the first course, as she cut into her thinly-sliced smoked salmon, Evan looked first at her mother, then at her father, and said, ‘It would be nice if you could visit Yorkshire. We could have a weekend there together.’
‘I’m not sure,’ her father murmured in that very low voice again.
‘I think it would be wonderful,’ Marietta exclaimed, flashing a bright smile at Gideon and Evan who sat opposite her. ‘And you know, Owen, you could do a bit of business up there perhaps, go to a few antique shops. I’ve heard they’re very good. You might find some Georgian pieces.’
‘Oh yes, especially in Harrogate,’ Evan interjected. ‘Think about it, Dad.’
‘I will,’ he muttered and concentrated on his potted shrimps.
Halfway through the first course, Gideon asked, ‘Would anyone like wine? Since we’re all having the roast beef I think a full-bodied red would be excellent.’
‘Thank you,’ Marietta said, once more taking the lead, wanting to put this nice young man at ease.
Gideon motioned for the wine waiter, and after studying the wine list he finally ordered a Chateau Duhart-Milon, one of his father’s favourites. To Owen he explained, ‘Dad likes this wine very much, and I’m sure you will, Mr Hughes. It’s from the Domaines Barons de Rothschild, and it’s superb.’
Owen merely nodded. He had a sinking feeling that this young man, with his looks, magnetism, self-confidence and personal charm, had undoubtedly conquered his daughter. It made him sad that she was lost to him, and in a funny way he resented Gideon for being who and what he was: a Harte and a superior Harte at that. The chatting went on around him; he was lost in his morose thoughts.
It was towards the end of the lunch that Gideon suddenly lifted his glass and, looking at Owen and Marietta, he said slowly, ‘I would like you to join me in a toast to Evan.’
All three of them were startled, especially Evan, but they picked up their glasses and stared back at Gideon.
He said softly, in a loving voice, ‘Here’s to you, Evan, the most unique woman I’ve ever met, and my future wife.’
There was a stunned silence.
Gideon, fully aware that he had dropped a bombshell, glanced at Owen and Marietta and said, ‘One of the reasons I wanted to have lunch with you both today is to tell you that Evan and I are engaged. I do hope you approve.’
Owen, totally astonished, looked at Evan furiously, then cleared his throat several times. Finally he said in an uptight tone, ‘Why yes, if that’s what Evan wants.’
He scrutinized his daughter with a degree of intensity, and so did Gideon, turning to face her. Gideon noticed at once how pale her face had become, but otherwise her expression was unreadable.
Marietta, aware of the enormous discomfort between her husband and her daughter, jumped to the rescue yet again. ‘Congratulations to the two of you, Evan, Gideon! You have our blessing. We’re delighted for you.’ Disregarding her husband’s obvious anger and disgruntlement, the dark look on Owen’s face, she asked, ‘And when will you make it official?’