Milly was used to actresses throwing tantrums, make-up artists being bitchy, directors yelling in frustration or trying to seduce her. But she was a sheltered girl brought up in an
upper-middle-class household, and never, ever, had she been confronted by a working-class woman used to scrapping down and dirty. Milly couldn’t move: she stood there, paralysed, as Edmund
turned from the buffet table with the baffled expression of a man who’s suddenly found himself in the middle of a catfight.
‘Wait, what’s all this about?’ he said.
‘Let Tamra deal with this, Ed,’ Lady Margaret said quickly to him, seeing how Tamra’s eyes darkened even more at the sound of Edmund’s voice. ‘Stay out of
it.’
Taking Milly’s inability to budge as a sign not of fear but of defiance, Tamra stormed around the head of the table, and Milly actually squealed in panic and darted behind Edmund, thinking
that Tamra was coming for her. Instead, Tamra swept magnificently out of the room and could be heard tearing up the staircase. It sounded as if she were taking the treads two at a time.
Irresistibly, drawn as if by a powerful magnet, every guest and most of the staff present in the dining room filtered outside into the Great Hall. No one dared to follow Tamra upstairs, but a
degree of crashing and banging could be heard from the unrenovated guest wing, and in just a couple of minutes, Tamra emerged on the long balcony that led to the staircase, clasping an armful of
clothes, two terrified-looking maids following her, laden with more clothes and Milly’s luggage.
‘Here!’ Tamra screamed, opening her arms and dropping Milly’s clothes theatrically down the two-storeys-high well of the staircase. ‘Take all your boho hippy-dippy crap
and get the hell out of here!’
Underwear, tights, blouses, jeans tumbled down onto the polished wood floor. Tamra reached for the second bundle the maid was carrying and grabbed a pair of shoes in one hand, at which everyone
shrieked and ducked back against the wall.
‘Mom, no!’ Brianna Jade yelled.
Tamra was breathing so hard that everyone could hear her panting: apart from her daughter, the rest of the spectators were keeping as silent as they could to avoid drawing down her wrath on
their own heads. Courageously, Brianna Jade stepped out into the hallway, directly into Tamra’s line of fire, crossing her fingers that Tamra wouldn’t see a blonde head and start
chucking shoes at it before she realized her target was her own daughter.
‘Mom, stop!’ she called. ‘You’ve made your point, okay? She’ll go! Don’t throw any shoes! Or Jesus – Mom, put down the curling tongs! Put them
down
!’
‘I think you should probably nip out the back to the garages,’ Lady Margaret said to Milly in an undertone. ‘No point staying here now, is there? We’ll find Tarquin and
send him out to you. I’ll get a maid to, er, re-pack your cases.’
‘Clearly, this is a terribly awkward situation, but even with my duty as a host to guests under my roof, I have to second Tamra’s decision,’ Edmund said gravely, walking out to
stand next to Brianna Jade, his deeper voice and his quiet authority drawing every eye. Even Tamra, who had snatched Milly’s curling tongs from the pile the maid was carrying, and was poised
with one arm back, rather like the statue of the discus thrower in the gazebo, still panting as loudly as an athlete in the middle of a race, stared down at him, his serious grey eyes meeting hers
for a moment before he turned to encircle her daughter with one arm, regarding Brianna Jade with great devotion.
‘My fiancée comes first,’ Edmund continued, as Lady Margaret hustled Milly away before Tamra could send the tongs or the shoes hurtling down towards her target’s blonde
head. ‘I can’t permit anyone, even an invited guest, to treat Brianna Jade with anything less than the respect she deserves. I did notice how upset you were yesterday,’ he added
to Brianna Jade more quietly, ‘but I didn’t realize it was Milly causing it. I do apologize for not asking you about it yesterday, but I’m so glad you came to find me last
night.’ He squeezed her tightly.
‘I don’t understand—’ Brianna Jade started to say, looking up at him in puzzlement.
‘What’s going on?’ Sophie’s voice came from up above them, and they both craned back to look at her. ‘I heard screaming – is everything all right?’
‘Tamra’s chucking Milly out for winding up Brianna Jade,’ Dominic said, strolling out from the dining room. He had a full glass of Bloody Mary in one hand, a cheese muffin in
the other, and looked a little better: after his last retching fit had proved abortive, with practically nothing left to come up, he was proceeding to re-line his stomach.
‘Oh, fair enough,’ Sophie said, leaning on the balcony and heaving a long yawn. She was wearing a towelling robe, and her feet were in fluffy mules. ‘Milly
was
being
pretty vile yesterday. Did she finally go too far?’
‘Clearly,’ Dominic said, shrugging his shoulders.
Behind Sophie, down the corridor, the footman who had brought the breakfast she had requested to have served in her suite slipped out, tucking his shirt into his trousers and buttoning his
waistcoat, heading down towards the service stairs with a very self-satisfied smile on his face: Sophie had always had a taste for working-class men in uniform.
‘Oh, breakfast was
delicious
, by the way,’ Sophie added with an equally satisfied smile, checking out of the corner of her eye that the footman had made his escape
discreetly. ‘Thank you so much, Tamra. I must say, your hospitality is first-rate in
every
respect ...’
‘Dom, would you go and roust out Tarquin?’ Edmund asked. ‘Tell him I’m sorry and all that, but one simply can’t have this kind of thing going on.’
‘Absolutely,’ Dominic said, starting to climb the stairs, leaving a muffin crumb trail scattered behind him as he went. He winked at Tamra as he passed her. ‘Look, sorry about
last night,’ he muttered, reaching out to give her a discreet pat on the bottom. ‘I’ll make it up to you tonight, eh? Believe me, when I’m not completely blotto, I know how
to give a girl a good time. Got a lot of tricks up my sleeve. This time tomorrow you’ll be telling everyone that was the best shag you ever had – trust me on that.’
Tamra made such an awful choking sound that everyone down in the Hall looked up, concerned that she was having a fit. The shoes and curling tongs fell from her hands. One high heel nearly
tumbled through the open balustrade and down onto the maid who was now, under Mrs Hurley’s instructions, on her knees swiftly gathering up Milly’s scattered clothes; the maid screeched
in fear, but Dominic, showing great aplomb, punted the shoe aside just in time, knocking it back onto the hallway carpet.
‘Nicely done, if I do say so myself,’ he observed complacently.
Tamra turned and ran. Down the balcony and into the corridor that led to the main wing of Stanclere Hall, heading with a sprinter’s speed for her rooms, slamming the door behind her and,
her whole body shaking, grabbing the tasselled cord on the wall of her living room and tugging on it so hard that if it had been one of the old bell-pulls it would have come straight out of the
ceiling in a cloud of dust and plaster. But this had been one of her innovations when this wing had been remodelled, to keep the idea of old-fashioned bell-pulls, so familiar to everyone from
Downton Abbey
, and she had organized the rewiring of the ancient system so that it was now electrically operated: a tug on the cord rang pagers clipped to the waist of three maids who,
between them, were responsible for the main wing on a shift system, two on duty at any time during the day.
The maid who was closest flicked a switch indicating to the others that she was answering the summons, and in under a minute she was knocking on the door, terrified of Tamra’s current
state of mind but even more frightened of arriving late. She found the Earl of Respers’ future mother-in-law sitting on the wide upholstered seat of the curving bow window, staring out to the
park beyond, and was very grateful that Tamra did not turn her head to look at her: the reflection of Tamra’s face in the glass was paralysing enough. The absolute stillness, the black holes
that were her eyes, the dead-white face, as if all the golden tan had faded at the speed of light . . .
‘Pack up all my things,’ Tamra said to the window in a voice as dead and emotion-free as her facial expression. ‘And have my car brought around. I’m going back to London
immediately.’
‘Yes, madam,’ the maid said, hurrying into the bathroom, beginning to sort Tamra’s toiletries and perfumes into her matched set of red lizard Aspinall of London vanity cases
while paging Tamra’s driver to bring the Bentley to the side entrance where the suitcases could be loaded into it.
The window recess had been turned into a cosy bower to Tamra’s specific design, pale grey velvet seat cushions piped in matching silk, with throw pillows in shades of darker grey velvet
and slub silk scattered artfully around, sea-green velvet curtains framing the stone alcove. And yet Tamra, curled up, hugging her knees, was utterly oblivious to both the comfort surrounding her
and the beauty of the newly tended park beyond, the soft colours of the oak trees in autumn and the deep green of the lawns. She stared at the mullioned window panes, her entire body aching: she
felt as if she was just a shell, as if someone had hollowed her out, harvested every organ, leaving her effectively a zombie who could walk and talk but whose eyes were blank and sightless.
All I can do is pretend that it never happened. Leave Stanclere at once, and do my best not to come back until the day of the wedding, not to see him –
She shuddered from head to toe.
Not to see him until he marries my daughter.
‘So
this
is where the red carpet will go?’ Milly asked. ‘That’s terribly important, you know – everyone will be wearing heels. And
besides, it’ll look much better in the photographs . . .’
‘Of course!’ both Ludo and Marco Baldini, the very dapper local agent who was Ludo’s fixer in Chianti, assured the bride-to-be.
‘The carpet will run up the little hill to the oratory,’ Ludo added, winding his arm through Milly’s. ‘And we’ll have another one crossing it, as it were, when you
make your entrance from the side of the church and walk around it all the way to the gazebo. But darling, we don’t want to cover
all
the grass in carpet, you know? My suggestion for
my more rustic spring and summer weddings is that the ladies wear heels but bring a lovely pair of elegant flat sandals as well.’
He winked confidentially at Milly’s pretty face, which was framed delightfully between her white mohair beret and the matching fur collar of her rose-pink wool coat.
‘You know, when one’s had a little too much champagne, and one is dancing, it can get a little slippy on the dance floor. Flats are
always
a good idea, actually – I
like to check that the bridal party has them just as a backup.’
‘This is
so
beautiful!’ Eva sighed to Tarquin, following behind Milly as they walked up the little slope to the oratory of the Madonna della Neve d’Agosto. The
exquisite little church nestled in the heart of the Chianti hills, fifteen minutes down a narrow, winding dirt road whose rises and falls Marco Baldini’s Range Rover had navigated expertly on
the last leg of their trip from Pisa airport. On their right, the hillside fell sharply away to a spectacular view of the Chianti valley below, the tight marching lines of the vineyards, the vines
now stark and black, pruned back after the September harvest, and the fluffy grey-green olive trees, their fields busy with workers on ladders hand-picking the fruit.
‘Sadly, all that is left of the castle that once was here is this church,’ Marco Baldini was explaining to an uninterested Milly. ‘The Castello of Montagliari was the noble
seat of the aristocratic Gherardini family – their name will be most famous to you from the portrait of the
Mona Lisa
by Leonardo da Vinci, because it is believed that the original
of that lady was Lisa Gherardini, of this family. But when that was painted, her family castle was no longer here, because the Florentine Republic became so jealous of the power of the Gherardinis
that they razed the castello to the ground, leaving only the church and a well.’
‘A well?’ Milly repeated blankly.
‘For water, darling,’ Tarquin said, coming up behind her and dropping a kiss on the top of her head, or rather on the beret. ‘Rather important, water, you know? Can’t
really manage without it.’
‘So did the Mona Lisa live here?’ Milly asked, having tuned out almost all of the historical information. ‘That would be
fantastic
for publicity!’
‘No, darling,’ Tarquin told her patiently. ‘Marco just said that the castle wasn’t here any more, and she could scarcely live in the church, could she?’
‘She lived in Florence,’ Marco explained. ‘She was married very young to a rich silk merchant and had many children. Her husband was called Francesco del Giocondo, which is why
the portrait is also known as
La Gioconda
. . .’
But he tailed off, seeing that Milly had lost interest again. She was walking up to the medieval oratory, a pale yellow building that dated back to the thirteenth century, with a wide and
gracious portico running round three sides, the space generous enough to comfortably accommodate dining tables and chairs; the high loggia had arches, providing a series of frames through which
diners would look out and see the jaw-droppingly beautiful Tuscan landscape beyond as dusk fell and the sun set.
‘Isn’t this
exactly
the small scale, rustic setting that you wanted, dear?’ Ludo said, keeping pace with her. ‘
Very
intimate and charming –
totally
original, they’ve only just opened it as a wedding venue, so you’ll be the first celebs to use it – and the food will be absolutely spectacular. Not just
delicious, but
utterly
photogenic. Gabriella, who owns the place and runs it with her son Leonardo, is the most extraordinary chef.’