Tarquin looked down at her tiny fingers grasping the pale grey sleeve of his jacket. You could have literally heard a pin drop on the stone floor of the gazebo as he very gently raised his own
hand and detached her grasp, letting her nerveless, limp fingers fall by her side. He drew the back of his sleeve roughly over his eyes and the fabric came away wet with tears.
‘It’s over, Milly,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You can keep the ring.’
This prompted not only very audible exclamations from the people seated at the front but, even worse, urgent requests from people in the back rows to repeat what Tarquin had said. As guests
swivelled round to pass on the shocking news, hissing, ‘He says it’s off! He says she can keep the ring!’ Tarquin turned away from his dumbfounded bride and walked slowly from the
gazebo. He paused for a moment, standing just outside it, drawing in a deep breath, and seeming to Eva, who was gazing up at him in a kind of paralysed wonder, to be considering something very deep
and serious.
Finally, he exhaled, slowly, steadily, and looked down at Eva. He was very pale, but his cornflower-blue eyes were no longer brimming with tears.
‘I need to go for a walk,’ he said softly. ‘Will you come with me?’
She couldn’t say a word. For a second, she couldn’t even move. But then Tarquin, very gravely, held out his hand, and she found herself rising to her feet, putting her fingers into
his, and walking, by his side, away from his aborted wedding, down the slope that led to the road and to the woodland path beyond.
‘It’s a
different
kind of miracle!’ Ludo muttered to himself, shaking his head in amazement.
The red blotches on Milly’s slim chest had now spread up her neck in a flush of absolute mortification. She stared wildly after her departing groom.
‘I don’t understand!’ she wailed. ‘What just
happened
?’
She turned to a horrified Father Liam, who was coming forward to comfort her.
‘Did we get married?’ she asked, clutching frantically onto the faintest of hopes. ‘Is it legal? Did we actually get married?’
Father Liam shook his head sombrely. And Milly’s shrieks of frustration and fury on hearing this news were so high and piercing that the white doves enclosed peacefully in the dovecote,
waiting to be released at the end of the ceremony, became so agitated, flapping their wings and shuffling around, that a stream of bird poo started running down the side of the pretty wooden
birdhouse.
Milly and Tarquin’s wedding ceremony had taken place mid-morning, to allow for lunch afterwards and then dancing until dusk on the outdoor dance floor, before the guests
adjourned to the villa behind the church when the May evening became too chilly for comfort after sunset. However, Brianna Jade and Edmund’s wedding, scheduled for the same day so that Tamra
could be sure that Princess Sophie would attend this one and not Milly and Tarquin’s, did not have to consider the same weather constraints as an outdoor marriage in Tuscany. Tamra and the
planner had chosen an early afternoon timeslot, which allowed guests to arrive up till lunchtime on the day itself and gave plenty of time for the second
Style Bride
team to potter happily
around through Stanclere Hall with their cameras and videocameras.
A journalist with a Dictaphone followed the photographer, dictating a near-constant stream of notes into the machine, trailed by an assistant to the wedding planner who was trying to answer her
questions as fast as she could ask them. The Great Hall alone was enough to keep
Style Bride
occupied for days: it had been transformed into an entrance arbour, many of the sofas removed
to make room for two rows of huge flowering white magnolia trees in china pots, towering above the guests, perfuming the air. Clusters of white Claire Austin roses, selected for their strong scent
of meadowsweet, heliotrope and vanilla, were arranged in low silver vases on the polished tables and on the gleaming black piano. In the fireplace was a dark pink Gertude Jekyll rose bush, entirely
filling the space where the grate had been: Tamra had specified that the dark rose colour of her dress and of the flowers the little bridesmaids would throw should come through in hints throughout
the decorations, a subtle contrast to the main theme of white flowers and glossy green leaves.
‘Jekyll spelt like Jekyll and Hyde?’ the journalist was asking the assistant when a text came in for her.
‘Yes, I’ve got it all on a spreadsheet for you – I’ve emailed you the Excel document. And the roses in the chapel are Claire Austin too,’ the assistant was
answering, only to be cut off as the journalist gasped, having just checked her phone.
It was from her counterpart at Milly and Tarquin’s wedding, who was dying to share the incredibly juicy news with as many people as she could: as a
Style
employee, she was almost
the only person at the wedding to have a mobile phone to hand, the other guests having been relieved of theirs.
‘Oh my
God
!’ the journalist exclaimed, staring down at the screen. ‘Best gossip of the year!’
‘What?’
The wedding planner’s assistant eagerly leaned over and the journalist tilted the phone over to her. She gasped.
‘Bloody
hell
,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Because she didn’t write her own
vows
? That’s rough.’
‘It looks like he went off with the maid of honour!’ the journalist said, scrolling down. ‘This is crazy! And I can’t Tweet it – shit, I’d get so many RTs,
but Jodie would kill me.’
She looked up to see that the assistant had disappeared: the latter, very well aware of which side her bread was buttered, had shot off to deliver the news to Tamra. Busy supervising the final
touches being put to the flower arrangements in the chapel, Tamra initially greeted this information with unabashed joy. The collapse of Milly and Tarquin’s ceremony meant, of course, that
there was no longer any competition for Brianna Jade to take the
Style Bride
cover. A few minutes later, however, when more details of the events in Tuscany were conveyed, Tamra was, like
the journalist, shaking her head in disbelief.
‘She didn’t write her own vows, so he left her at the
altar
?’ she repeated, looking at Lady Margaret. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘He’s always been
terribly
sensitive,’ Lady Margaret said, pulling a grimace so exaggerated she looked like a gargoyle.
‘But Margaret – I mean, come
on
. Lord, I know I threw Milly out of the Hall for being a total bitch, but no one deserves that! You think she cheated on him or
something?’
‘He went off with the maid of honour!’ the assistant said breathlessly.
Lady Margaret shrugged. ‘Nice girl. Can’t blame him.’
‘What a
disaster
,’ Tamra sighed. ‘Thank God Edmund’s not going to pull a stunt like that.’
‘No, he’s solid through and through,’ Lady Margaret said gruffly, looking at Tamra under lowered brows. ‘Stick by his word no matter what, that’s Edmund. Like all
the Respers. Very responsible family. Knew that when I suggested him for Brianna Jade. Though I—’ She stopped. ‘Well, never mind that. You don’t need to worry about
Edmund.’
‘Oh, I’m not,’ Tamra said quickly. ‘Not at all.’ She smiled distractedly at the assistant. ‘You did a great job coming to tell me,’ she said.
‘I’ll make sure you get a bonus for this.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Maloney,’ the assistant beamed, dashing out of the chapel to resume her normal duties.
‘Well, I guess I better go tell Brianna Jade that she’s
Style
Bride of the Year!’ Tamra said, her face flushed with excitement from the news, her dark eyes
sparkling.
But Brianna Jade, when duly informed of the bizarre turn of events in Tuscany, was not as gleeful as her mother had expected.
‘Honey, this is
it
!’ Tamra crowed. ‘Don’t you get it – you’re guaranteed the cover! It was down to the two of you, and no way can Milly be
Style
Bride of the Year now that this has happened. Even if Milly and Tarquin patch things up, they’re selling happy weddings, not a walkout at the altar, you know?’
Brianna Jade, who was sitting on a stool in her lavish bathroom, her hair in curlers being put up by two stylists, her face already a perfect, eerily smooth mask of natural-looking make-up,
couldn’t nod with four hands winding rollers onto her scalp. She managed to say: ‘Wow, Mom, I can’t help feeling sorry for Milly. I mean, being left at the altar –
that’s as harsh as it gets.’
‘I know, hon. But hey, it’s still great news,’ Tamra said exultantly. ‘What can I say – you’re nicer than me. That’s not exactly a newsflash to
anyone.’
‘Tamra, sweetie, leave the girl alone,’ Lady Margaret said, sweeping her friend away. ‘Let everyone do their work. She should be thinking about her own wedding, not someone
else who made a total cock-up of theirs.’
The hairstylists, plus the make-up artist who was waiting to do final touch-ups on Brianna Jade, burst into excited babbling about this incredibly juicy piece of gossip: the make-up artist was
already checking Twitter on her phone and posting what she’d just heard. But Brianna Jade, facing the mirror as the hot curlers were removed and the bouncy curls brushed out and pinned into
place, wasn’t really absorbing the fact that her
Style Bride
title was assured. Her attention was entirely directed towards trying, as best she could, to reconstruct the conversation
– or rather, the monologue – that Edmund had had with her last night.
She had only started to remember it halfway through the morning. She had debated taking her Valium, and decided not to: she surely ought not to be on anti-anxiety medication the day of her
wedding. And she felt quite calm, because there was so much on her schedule today that she didn’t have any spare time to wander around wishing that she were down at the piggeries . . .
She dragged her thoughts away from that avenue, focusing instead on what Edmund could possibly have been talking about. She’d been racking her brains to try to remember a night where she
and he had gone at it in a much kinkier way than usual, which seemed to be the gist of what he’d been saying.
But she couldn’t. She really couldn’t.
Edmund had said that she hadn’t seemed like herself, which was gradually beginning to make her think that the woman he was talking about hadn’t been her at all, bizarre though that
sounded. But how, and when, could a misunderstanding on that scale have happened? Who could the other woman have
been
?
Because Brianna Jade had been so zonked as she fell asleep last night, Edmund’s words were only coming back to her in fits and starts. There had been something about punching – no,
that couldn’t be right.
‘
Punch
,’ she said out loud. ‘Not
punching. Punch.
’
‘You what, love?’ The hairstylist looked down at her. ‘What was that?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, used enough by now to having her hair and make-up done to know not to shake her head.
He returned to his work, and Brianna Jade to her thought process:
punch
, she repeated to herself. Punch had been served that night of the house party at the weekend of the photo shoot,
Saturday night, after Milly had derailed Brianna Jade so completely with those nasty little side digs about her and Abel, which had turned out to be right on the money . . .
Anyway
– she bit her lip hard, smearing the lip gloss – she had gone to bed early that night, hadn’t participated in the croquet or the Twister or the late-night
partying. She hadn’t had any of the punch. And as she recalled, Edmund had said the woman he’d thought was her had seemed tipsy – that was right, he’d definitely said
‘tipsy’. Another little piece falling into place. So a drunk woman had – what? Staggered into Edmund’s room and got into bed with him for some random reason? Brianna Jade
had been in her own bed, fast asleep, but how would some other woman know that Edmund’s fiancée wasn’t in bed with him already? And even if she did somehow know that Edmund was
alone, why would she suddenly decide to have sex with him? It didn’t make sense.
Could the mystery woman have mistaken Edmund’s room for someone else’s? That seemed a lot more likely, but it was the master suite, so it would be hard to make that sort of error . .
.
Wait.
She took a breath.
The fish
. The horrible stinky fish that Dominic had put in Edmund’s bed that night, some sort of icky British posh custom that, to do him
justice, Edmund hadn’t defended because of tradition or any bullshit like that. It had taken ages to air the room out, the mattress had been ruined, Edmund had slept in the guest room down
the hall until the smell was—
The guest room down the hall
. The room to which Dominic had been assigned, but which Edmund had insisted on swapping with him.
So Dominic was in Edmund’s room, and Edmund was
in Dominic’s – which means the woman who had sex with Edmund thought she was having sex with Dominic!
Brianna Jade let out a long breath of triumph. She wasn’t at all accustomed to having to work through a string of clues, come to the only logical conclusion, and she felt as satisfied as
if she’d solved one of the British crime mysteries she liked to watch in the afternoons on TV. Miss Marple and Poirot, explaining to a selected group of people at the finale why the empty
bottle of tanning lotion had been thrown out of the window of the hotel, or the reason the colonel’s wife hadn’t taken her handbag when she went to visit the vicarage. In fact, Brianna
Jade was so busy being pleased with herself that it didn’t occur to her that a crucial factor was missing from the puzzle she had just nearly completed: any jealousy on her part that Edmund
had, by mistake and through no fault of his own, had sex with someone who wasn’t her, and which had clearly been infinitely better than the sex he had with his fiancée . . .
She reached for her phone, which was lying on the marble surround of the huge sink, and scrolled through the contacts list. She had a feeling that she had Dominic’s number in it from a
weekend Edmund had spent shooting with him up on the Isle of Harris, where mobile service was famously patchy for Edmund’s network and he’d wanted her to have Dom’s number as well
just in case she needed to reach him. Yes, here it was. She dialled it, putting Dom on speaker, because she couldn’t hold the phone to her ear due to the activity going on around her
scalp.